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HISTORY
FOR READY REFERENCE
FROM THE BEST
HISTORIANS, BIOGRAPHERS, AND SPECIALISTS
THEIR OWN WORDS IN A COMPLETE
SYSTEM OF HISTOEY
FOR ALL USES, EXTENDING TO ALL COUNTRIES AND SUBJECTS,
AND REPRESENTING FOR BOTH READERS AND STUDENTS THE BETTER AND
NEWER LITERATURE OF HISTORY IN THE
ENGLISH LANGUAGE
BY
J. N. LARNED
WITH NUMEROUS HISTORICAL MAPS FROM ORIGINAL STUDIES AND DRAWINGS BY
ALAN C. REILEY
REVISED AND ENLARGED EDITION
IN SIX VOLUMES
VOLUME II— ELECTRICAL to GERUSIA
SPRINGFIELD, MASS.
THE C. A. NICHOLS CO., PUBLISHERS
1901
OopnuoHT, 1894,
BY J. N. LAKNED.
COPTEIOHT, 1901,
BT J. N. LARNBD.
The Riverside Prets, Cambridge, Mass., TJ. 8, A,
Printed by H. O. Houghton & Company.
College
Ubrarv
/ -
LIST OF MAPS.
Map of Europe at the close of the Tenth Century To follow page 1048
Map of Europe in 1768 To follow page IIU
Four maps of France, A. D. 1154, 1180, 1314 and 1360, To follow page 1200
Two maps of Central Europe, A. D. 843 and 888 On page 1437
Map of Germany at the Peace of Westphalia To follow page 1519
Maps of Germany, A. D. 1815 and 1866; of the Netherlands, 1830-1839; and
of the ZoUverein To follow page 1576
LOGICAL OUTLINES, IN COLORS.
English history, To follow page 807
French history To follow page 1188
German history, To follow page 1463
1158206
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
Franklin.
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY AND IN-
VENTION.— That amber when rubbed attracts
light bodies was known in tlie earliest tinips.
"It is the one single experiment in electricity
which has come down to us from the remotest
antiquity. . . . The power of certain fishes, nota-
bly what is known as the 'torpedo,' to produce
electricity, was known at an early period, and
was commented on by Pliny and Aristotle." Un-
til the 16th century there was no scientific study
of these phenomena. "Dr. Gilbert can justly be
called the creator of the science of electricity
and magnetism. His experiments were prodi-
gious in number. ... To him we are indebted
for the name ' electricity,' which he bestowed
upon the power or property which amber ex-
hibited in attracting light bodies, borrowing the
name from the substance itself, in order to de-
fine one of its attributes. . . . This application
of experiment to the study of electricity, begvui
by Gilbert three hundred years ago, was indus-
triously pursued by those who came after hini,
and the nest two centuries witnessed a rapid
development of science. Among the earlier stu-
dents of this period were the English philoso-
pher, Robert Boyle, and the celebrated burgo-
master of Magdeburg, Otto von Gucricke. The
latter first noted the sound and light accom-
panymg electrical excitation. These were after-
wards independently discovered by Dr. Wall, an
Englishman, who made the somewhat prophetic
observation, ' This light and crackling seems in
some degree to represent thunder and lightning.'
Sir Isaac Newton made a few experiments in
electricity, which he exhibited to the Royal So-
ciety. . . . Francis Hawksbee was an active and
useful contributor to experimental investigation,
and he also called attention to the resemblance
between the electric spark and lightning. The
most ardent student of electricity in the early
years of the eighteenth century was Stephen
Gray. He performed a multitude of experiments,
nearly all of which added something to the rapidly
accumulating stock of knowledge, but doubtless
his most important contribution was his discovery
of the distinction between conductors and non-
conductors. . . . Some of Gray's papers fell into
the hands of Dufay, an officer of the French
army, who, after several years' service, had re-
signed his post to devote himself to scientific
pursuits. . . . His most important discovery was
the existence of two distinct species of electricity,
which he named 'vitreous' and 'resinous.' ...
A very important advance was made in 1745 in
the invention of the Leyden jar or phial. As
has so many times happened in the history of
scientific discovery, it seems tolerably certain
that this interesting device was hit upon by at
least three persons, working Independently _ of
each other. One Cuueus, a monk named Kleist,
and Professor Muschenbroeck, of Leyden, are all
accredited with the discovery. ... Sir William
Watson perfected it by adding the outside metal-
lic coating, and was by its aid enabled to fire
gunpowder and other inflammables." — T. C.
Mendenhall, A Century of Electricity , ch. 1.
A. D. 1745-1747. — Franklin's identification
of Electricity with Lightning.— " In 1745 Mr.
Peter Collinson of the Royal Society sent a
[Leyden] jar to the Library Society of Philadel-
phia, with instructions how to use it. This fell
into the hands of Benjamin Franklin, who at
once began a series of electrical experiments
On March 28, 1747, Franklin began his fanwua
letters to Collinson. ... In these letters he pro-
pounded the single-fluid theory of electricity,
and referred all electric phenomena to its accu-
mulation in bodies in quantities more than their
natural share, or to its being withdrawn from
them so as to leave them minus their proper por-
tion." Meantime, numerous experiments with
the Leyden jar had convinced Franklin of the
identity of lightning and electricity, and he set
about the demonstration of the fact. "The ac-
count given by Dr. Stuber of Philadelphia, an
intimate personal friend of Franklin, and pub-
lished in one of the earliest editions of the works
of the great philosopher, is as follows : — ' The
plan which he ' had originally proposed was to
erect on some high tower, or other elevated
place, a sentry-box, from which should rise a
pointed iron rod, insulated by being fixed in a
cake of resin. Electrified clouds passing oyer
this would, he conceived, impart to it a portion
of their electricity, which would be rendered evi-
dent to the senses by sparks bemg emitted when
a key, a knuckle, or other conductor was pre-
sented to it. Philadelphia at this time offered
no opportunity of trying an experiment of this
kind. Whilst Franklin was waiting for the erec-
tion of a spire, it occurrred to him that he might
have more ready access to the region of clouds
by means of a common kite. He prepared one
by attaching two cross-sticks to a silk handker-
chief, which would not suffer so much from the
rain as paper. To his upright stick was fixed
an iron point. The string was, as usual, of
hemp, except the lower end, which was silk.
Where the hempen string terminated, a key was
fastened. With this apparatus, on the appear-
ance of a thunder-gust approaching, he went
into the common, accompanied by his son, to
whom alone he communicated his intentions, well
knowing the ridicule which, too generally for
the interest of science, awaits unsuccessful ex-
periments in philosophy. He placed himself
under a shed to avoid the rain. His kite was
raised. A thunder-cloud passed over it. No
signs of electricity appeared. He almost de-
spaired of success, when suddenly he observed
the loose fibres of his string move toward an
erect position. He now pressed his knuckle to
the key, and received a strong spark. How ex-
quisite must his sensations have been at this
moment! On his experiment depended the fate
of his theory. Doubt and despair had begun to
prevail, when the fact was ascertained in so clear
a manner, that even the most incredulous could
no longer withhold their assent. Repeated
sparks were drawn from the key, a phial was
charged, a shock given, and all the experiments
made which are usually performed with elec-
tricity.' And thus the identity of lightning and
electricity was proved. . . . Franklin's proposi-
tion to erect lightning rods which would convey
the lightning to the ground, and so protect the
buildings to which they were attached, found
abundant opponents. . . . Nevertheless, public
opinion became settled . . . that they did pro-
tect buildings. . . . Then the philosophers raised
a new controversy as to whether the conductors
should be blunt or pointed ; Franklin, Cavendish,
and Watson advocating points, and Wilson blunt
ends. . . . The logic of experiment, however,
showed the advantage of pointed conductors; and
people persisted then in preferring them, as they
797
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
Galvani and
Volta.
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
have done ever since." — P. Benjamin, The Age of
Electricity, ch. 3.
A. D. 1753-1820. — The beginnings of the
Electric Telegraph. — "The first actual sugges-
tion of an electric telegraph was made in an
anonymous letter published in the Scots Maga-
zine at Edinburgh, February 17th, 1753. The
letter is initialed ' C. M.,' and many attempts
have been made to discover the author's identity.
. . . The suggestions made in this letter were
that a set of twenty -six wires should be stretched
upon insulated supports between the two places
which it was desired to put in connection, and at
each end of every wire a metallic ball was to be
suspended, having under it a letter of the alpha-
bet inscribed upon a piece of paper. . . . The
message was to be read off at the receiving sta-
tion by observing the letters which were succes-
sively attracted by their corresponding balls, as
soon as the wires attached to the latter received
a charge from the distant conductor. In 1787
Monsieur Lomond, of Paris, made the very im-
portant step of reducing the twenty-six wires to
one, and indicating the different letters by various
combinations of simple movements of an indi-
cator, consisting of a pith-ball suspended by
means of a thread from a conductor in contact
with the wire. ... In the year 1790 Chappe,
the inventor of the semaphore, or optico-mechan-
ical telegraph, which was in practical use pre-
vious to the introduction of the electric telegraph,
devised a means of communication, consisting of
two clocks regulated so that the second hands
moved in unison, and pointed at the same Instant
to the same figures. ... In the early form of
the apparatus, the exact moment at which the
observer at the receiving station should read off
the figure to which the hand pointed was indi-
cated by means of a sound signal produced by
the primitive method of striking a copper stew-
pan, but the inventor soon adopted the plan of
giving electrical signals instead of sound sig-
nals. ... In 1795 Don Francisco Salva . . .
suggested . . . that instead of twenty-six wires
being used, one for each letter, six or eight wires
only should be employed, each charged by a
Leyden jar, and that different letters should be
formed by means of various combinations of sig-
nals from these. . . . Mr. (afterwards Sir Francis)
Ronalds . . . took up the subject of telegraphy
in the year 1816, and published an account of
his experiments in 1833," based on the same idea
as that of Chappe. . . . "Ronalds drew up a
sort of telegraphic code by which words, and some-
times even complete sentences, could be trans-
mitted by only three discharges. . . . Ronalds
completely proved the practicability of his plan,
not only on [a] short underground line, . . . but
also upon an overhead line some eight miles in
length, constructed by carrying a telegraph wire
backwards and forwards over a wooden frame-
work erected in his garden at Hammersmith.
. . . The first attempt to employ voltaic electric-
ity in telegraphy was made by Don Francisco
Salva, wliose frictional telegraph has already
been referred to. On the 14th of May, 1800, Salva
read a paper on ' Galvanism and its application
to Telegraphy ' before the Academy of Sciences
at Barcelona, in which he described a number of
experiments which he had made in telegraphing
over a line some 310 metres in length. ... A
few years later he applied the then recent dis-
covery of the Voltaic pile to the same purpose,
the liberation of bubbles of gas by the decompo-
sition of water at the receiving station being the
method adopted for indicating the passage of the
signals. A telegraph of a very similar character
was devised by Sommering, and described in a
paper communicated by the inventor to the
Munich Academy of Sciences in 1809. Sommer-
ing used a set of thirty-five wires corresponding
to the twenty-five letters of the German alphabet
and the ten numerals. . . . Oersted's discovery
of the action of the electric current upon a sus-
pended magnetic needle provided a new and
much more hopeful method of applying the elec-
tric current to telegraphy. The great French
astronomer Laplace appears to have been the
first to suggest this application of Oersted's dis-
covery, and he was followed shortly afterwards
by Ampere, who in the year 1830 read a paper
before the Paris Academy of Sciences. " — G. W.
De Tunzelmann, Electricity in Modern Life,
ch. 9.
A. D. 1786-1800. — Discoveries of Galvani
and Volta. — "The fundamental experiment
which led to the discovery of dynamical elec-
tricity [1786] is due to Galvani, professor of anat-
omy in Bologna. Occupied with investigations
on the influence of electricity on the nervous ex-
citability of animals, and especially of the frog,
he observed that when the lumbar nerves of a
dead frog were connected with the crural mus-
cles by a metallic circuit, the latter became
briskly contracted. . . . Galvani had some time
before observed that the electricity of machines
produced in dead frogs analogous contractions,
and he attributed the phenomena first described
to an electricity inherent in the animal. He as-
sumed that this electricitj', which he called vital,
fluid, passed from the nerves to the muscles byi
the metallic arc, and was thus the cause of con-
traction. This theory met with great support, (
especially among physiologists, but it was not
without opponents. The most considerable of
these was Alexander Volta, professor of physics
in Pavia. Galvani's attention had been exclu-
sively devoted to the nerves and muscles of the
frog ; Volta's was directed upon the connecting
metal. Resting on the observation, which Gal-
vani had also made, that the contraction is more
energetic when the connecting arc is composed of
two metals than where there is only one, Volta
attributed to the metals the active part in the
phenomenon of contraction. He assumed that the
disengagement of electricity was due to their
contact, and that the animal parts only ofiiciated
as conductors, and at the same time as a very
sensitive electroscope. By means of the then
recently invented electroscope, Volta devised
several modes of showing the disengagement of
electricity on the contact of metals. ... A mem-
orable controversy arose between Galvani and
Volta. The latter was led to give greater exten-
sion to his contact theory, and propounded the
principle that when two heterogeneous sub-
stances are placed in contact, one of them always
assumes the positive and the other the negative
electrical condition. In this form Volta's theory
obtained the assent of the principal philosophers
of his time." — A. Ganot, Elementary Treatise on
P/iysici ; tr. by Atkinson, bk. 10, ch. 1. — Volta's
theory, however, though somewhat misleading,
did not prevent his making what was probably
the greatest step in the science up to this time,
in the invention (about 1800) of the Voltaic pile,
798
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
Oersted
and Ampere.
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
the first generator of electrical energy by chemi-
cal means, and the forerunner of the vast number
of types of the modern "battery."
A. D. 1810-1890. — The Arc light.— "The
earliest instance of applying Electricity to the
production of light was in 1810, by Sir Hum-
phrey Davy, who found that when the points of
two carbon rods whose other ends were connected
by wires with a powerful primary battery were
brought into contact, and then drawn a little way
apart, the Electric current still continued to jump
across the gap, forming what is now termed an
Electric Arc. . . . Various contrivances have
been devised for automatically regulating the
position of the two carbons. As early as 1847, a
lamp was patented by Staite, in which the car-
bon rods were fed together by clockwork. . . .
Similar devices were produced by Poucault and
others, but the first really successful arc lamp
was Serrin's, patented in 1857, which has not only
itself survived until the present day, but has had
its main features reproduced in many other
lamps. . . . The JablochkofE Candle (1876), in
which the arc was formed between the ends of a
pair of carbon rods placed side by side, and sepa-
rated by a layer of insulating material, which
slowly consumed as the carbons burnt down, did
good service in accustoming the public to the new
illuminant. Since then the inventions by Brush,
Thomson-Houston, and others have done much to
bring about its adoption for lighting large rooms,
streets, and spaces out of doors." — J. B. Verity,
Electricity up to Date for Light, Power, and Trac-
tion, ch. 3.
A. D. 1820-1825. — Oersted, Ampfere, and the
discovery of the Electro-Magnet. — "There is
little chance . . . that the discoverer of the mag-
net, or the discoverer and inventor of the mag-
netic needle, will ever be known by name, or
that even the locality and date of the discovery
will ever be determined [see CoMP.\ss]. . . . The
magnet and magnetism received their first scien-
tific treatment at the hands of Dr. Gilbert. Dur-
ing the two centuries succeeding the publication
of his work, the science of magnetism was much
cultivated. . . . The development of the science
went along parallel with that of the science of
electricity . . . although the latter was more
' fruitful in novel discoveries and unexpected ap-
plications than the former. It is not to be imag-
ined that the many close resemblances of the two
classes of phenomena were allowed to pass un-
noticed. . . . There was enough resemblance to
suggest an intimate relation ; and the connecting
link was sought for by many eminent philoso-
phers during the last years of the eighteenth and
the earlier years of the present century. " — T. C.
Mendenhall, A Century of Electricity, ch. 3. —
"The effect which an electric current, flowing in
a wire, can exercise upon a neighbouring com-
pass needle was discovered by Oersted in 1820.
This first announcement of the possession of
magnetic properties by an electric current was
followed speedily by the researches of Ampfere,
Arago, Davy, and by the devices of several other
experimenters, including De la Rive's floating
battery and coil, Schweigger's multiplier, Cum-
ming's galvanometer, Faraday's apparatus for
rotation of a permanent magnet. Marsh's vibrat-
ing pendulum and Barlow's rotating star-wheel.
But it was not until 1835 that the electromagnet
was invented. Arago announced, on 25th Sep-
tember 1820, that a copper wire uniting the poles
of a voltaic cell, and consequently traversed by
an electric current, could attract iron filings to
itself laterally. In the same communication he
described how he had succeeded in communicat-
ing permanent magnetism to steel needles laid at
right angles to the copper wire, and how, on
showing this experiment to Ampere, the latter
had suggested that the magnetizing action would
be more intense if for the straight copper wire
there were substituted one wrapped in a helix,
in the centre of which the steel needle might be
placed. This suggestion was at once carried out
by the two philosophers. ' A copper wire wound
in a helix was terminated by two rectilinear por-
tions which could be adapted, at will, to the op-
posite poles of a powerful horizontal voltaic pile ;
a steel needle wrapped up in paper was intro-
duced into the helix. ' ' Now, after some minutes'
sojourn in the helix, the steel needle had received
a sufliciently strong dose of magnetism.' Arago
then wound upon a little glass tube some short
helices, each about 2^ inches long, coiled altern-
ately right-handedly and left-handedly, and
found that on introducing into the glass tube a
steel wire, he was able to produce ' consequent
poles ' at the places where the winding was re-
versed. AmpSre, on October 23rd, 1820, read a
memoir, claiming that these facts confirmed his
theory of magnetic actions. Davy had, also, in
1820, surrounded with temporary coils of wire
the steel needles upon which he was experiment-
ing, and had shown that the flow of electricity
around the coil could confer magnetic power
upon the steel needles. . . . The electromagnet,
in the form which can first claim recognition ...
was devised by William Sturgeon, and is described
by him in the paper which he contributed to the
Society of Arts in 1825."— S. P. Thompson, The
Electromagnet, ch. 1.
A. D. 1825-1874.- The Perfected Telegraph.
— " The European philosophers kept on groping.
At the end of five years [after Oersted's discov-
ery], one of them reached an obstacle which he
made up his mind was so entirely insurmountable,
that it rendered the electric telegraph an impossi-
bility for all future time. This was [1825] Mr.
Peter Barlow, fellow of the Royal Society, who
had encountered the question whether the length-
ening of the conducting wire would produce any
effect in diminishing the energy of the current
transmitted, and had undertaken to resolve the
problem. . . . ' I found [he said] such a consid-
erable diminution with only 200 feet of wire as
at once to convince me of the impracticability of
the scheme.'. . . The year following the an-
nouncement of Barlow's conclusions, a young
graduate of the Albany (N. Y.) Academy — by
name Joseph Henry — was appointed to the pro-
fessorship of mathematics in that institution.
Henry there began the series of scientific investi-
gations which is now historic. . . . Up to that
time, electro-magnets had been made with a
single coil of naked wire wound spirally around
the core, with large intervals between the strands.
The core was insulated as a whole : the wire was
not insulated at all. Professor Schweigger, who
had previously invented the multiplying galvano-
meter, had covered his wires with silk. Henry
followed this idea, and, instead of a single coil of
wire, used several. . . . Barlow had said that
the gentle current of the galvanic battery became
so weakened, after traversing 200 feet of wire,
that it was idle to consider the possibility of
799
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY. ne Telegraph. ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
making it pass over even a mile of conductor and
then affect a magnet. Henry's reply was to
point out that the trouble lay in the way Bar-
low's magnet was made. . . . Make the magnet
so that the diminished current will exercise its
full effect. Instead of using one short coil,
through which the current can easily slip, and
do nothing, make a coil of many turns ; that in-
creases the magnetic field : make it of fine wire,
and of higher resistance. And then, to prove
the truth of his discovery, Henry put up the
first electro-magnetic telegraph ever constructed.
In the academy at Albany, in 1831, he suspended
1,060 feet of bell-wire, with a battery at one end
and one of his magnets at the other; and he
made the magnet attract and release its armature.
The armature struck a bell, and so made the
signals. Annihilating distance in this way was
only one part of Henry's discovery. He had
also found, that, to obtain the greatest dynamic
effect close at hand, the battery should be com-
posed of a very few cells of large surface, com-
bined with a coil or coils of short coarse wire
around the magnet, — conditions just the reverse
of those necessary when the magnet was to be
worked at a distance. Now, he argued, suppose
the magnet with the coarse short coil, and the
large-surface battery, be put at the receiving
station ; and the current coming over the line be
used simply to make and break the circuit of that
local battery. . . . This is the principle of the
telegraphic 'relay.' In 1835 Henry worked a
telegraph-line in that way at Princeton. And
thus the electro-magnetic telegraph was com-
pletely invented and demonstrated. There was
nothing left to do, but to put up the posts, string
the lines, and attach the instruments." — P. Ben-
jamin, The Age of Electricity, ch. 11. — "At last
we leave the territory of theory and experiment
and come to that of practice. ' The merit of in-
venting the modern telegraph, and applying it
on a large scale for public use, is, beyond all
question, due to Professor Morse of the United
States. ' So writes Sir David Brewster, and the
best authorities on the question substantially
agree with him. . . . Leaving for future con-
sideration Morse's telegraph, which was not in-
troduced until five years after the time when he
was impressed with the notion of its feasibilit}',
we may mention the telegraph of Gauss and
Weber of Gottingen. In 1833, thej' erected a
telegraphic wire between the Astronomical and
Magnetical Observatory of Gottingen, and the
Physical Cabinet of the University, for the purpose
of carrying intelligence from the one locality to
the other. To these great philosophers, however,
rather the theory than the practice of Electric
Telegraphy was indebted. Their apparatus was
so improved as to be almost a new invention by
Steinhill of Munich, who. In 1837 . . . succeeded
in sending a current from one end to the other of
a wire 36,000 feet in length, the action of which
caused two needles to vibrate from side to side,
and strike a bell at each movement. To Stein-
hill the honour is due of having discovered the
important and extraordinary fact that the earth
might be used as a part of the circuit of an
electric current. The introduction of the Elec-
tric Telegraph into England dates from the same
year as that in which Steinhill's experiments
took place. William Fothergill Cooke, a gentle-
man who held a commission in the Indian army,
returned from India on leave of absence, and
afterwards, because of his bad health, resigned
his commission, and went to Heidelberg to study
anatomy. In 1836, Professor Monke, of Heidel-
berg, exhibited an electro-telegraphic experiment,
' in which electric currents, passing along a con-
ducting wire, conveyed signals to a distant station
by the deflexion of a magnetic needle enclosed
in Schweigger's galvanometer or multiplier. ' . . .
Cooke was so struck with this experiment, that
he immediately resolved to apply it to purposes
of higher utility than the illustration of a lecture.
... In a short time he produced two telegraphs
of different construction. When his plans were
completed, he came to England, and in February,
1837, having consulted Faraday and Dr. Roget
on the construction of the electric-magnet em-
ployed in a part of his apparatus, the latter gen-
tleman advised him to apply to Professor Wheat-
stone. . . . The result of the meeting of Cooke
and Wheatstone was that thej' resolved to unite
their several discoveries; and in the month of
May 1837, they took out their first patent ' for
improvements in giving signals and sounding
alarms in distant places by means of electric cur-
rents transmitted through metallic circuits.' . . .
By-and-by, as might probably have been antici-
pated, difficulties arose between Cooke and
Wheatstone, as to whom the main credit of intro-
ducing the Electric Telegraph into England was
due. . . . Mr. Cooke accused Wheatstone (with
a certain amount of justice, it should seem) of
entirely ignoring his claims ; and in doing so Mr.
Cooke appears to have rather exaggerated his
own services. Most will readily agree to the
wise words of Sir. Sabine : ' It was once a popu-
lar fallacy in England that Jlessrs. Cooke and
Wheatstone were the original inventors of the
Electric Telegraph. The Electric Telegraph had,
properly speaking, no inventor; it grew up as
we have seen little by little. " — H. J. Nicoll, Oreat
Movements, pp. 434-429. — "In the latter part of
the year 1833, Samuel F. B. Morse, an American
artist, while on a voyage from France to the
United States, conceived the idea of an electro-
magnetic telegraph which should consist of the
following parts, viz: A single circuit of con-
ductors from some suitable generator of elec-
tricity ; a system of signs, consisting of dots or
points and spaces to represent numerals ; a method
of causing the electricity to mark or imiirint
these signs upon a strip or ribbon of paper by
the mechanical action of an electro-magnet oper-
ating upon the paper by means of a lever, armed
at one end with a pen or pencil ; and a method of
moving the paper ribbon at a uniform rate by
means of clock-work to receive the characters.
... In the autumn of the year 1835 he con-
structed the first rude working model of his in-
vention. . . . The first public exhibition . . .
was on the 2d of September, 1837, on which oc-
casion the marking was successfully effected
through one third of a mile of wire. Immediately
afterwards a recording instrument was con-
structed . . . which was subsequently employed
upon the first experimental line between Wash-
ington and Baltimore. This line was constructed
in 1843-44 under an appropriation by Congress,
and was completed by May of the latter year.
On the 27th of that month the first despatch was
transmitted from Washington to Baltimore. . . .
The experimental line was originally constructed
with two wires, as Morse was not at that time
acquainted with the discovery of Steinheil, that
800
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY. ^« Dynamo. ELECTRICAL DISCOVERT.
the earth might be used to complete the circuit.
Accident, liowever, soon demonstrated this fact.
. The following year (1845) telegraph lines
began to be built over other routes. ... In Oc-
tober, 1851, a convention of deputies from the
German States of Austria, Prussia, Bavaria,
Wurtemberg and Saxony, met at Vienna, for the
purpose of establishing a common and uniform
telegraphic system, under the name of the Ger-
man-Austrian Telegraph Union. The various
systems of telegraphy then in use were subjected
to the most thorough examination and discussion.
The convention decided with great unanimity
that the Morse system was practically far superior
to all others, and it was accordingly adopted.
Prof. Steinheil, although himself ... the in-
ventor of a telegraphic system, with a magna-
nimity that does him high honor, strongly urged
upon the convention the adoption of the Ameri-
can system.". . . The first of the printing tele-
graphs was patented in the United States by
Royal E. House, in 1846. The Hughes printing
telegraph, a remarkable piece of mechanism,
was patented by David E. Hughes, of Kentucky,
in 1855. A system known as the automatic
method, in which the signals representing letters
are transmitted over the line through the instru-
mentality of mechanism, was originated by
Alexander Bain of Edinburgh, whose first patents
were taken out in 1846. An autographic tele-
graph, transmitting despatches in the reproduced
hand-writing of the sender, was brought out in
1850, by F. C. Bakewell, of London. The same
result was afterwards accomplished with varia-
tions of method by Chas. Cros, of Paris, Abbe
Caseli, of Florence, and others; but none of
these inventions has been extensively used.
" The possibility of making use of a single wire
for the simultaneous transmission of two or
more communications seems to have first sug-
gested itself to Jloses G. Farmer, of Boston,
about the year 1852." The problem was first
solved with partial success by Dr. Gintl, on the
line between Prague and Vienna, in 1853, but
more perfectly by Carl Frischen, of Hanover, in
the following year. Other inventors followed
in the same field, among them Thomas A. Edison,
of New Jersey, who was led by his experiments
finally, in 1874 to devise a system "which was
destined to furnish the basis of the first practical
solution of the curious and interesting problem
of quadruplex telegraphy. "—G. B. Prescott, Elec-
tricity and the Electric Telegraph, ch. 29-40.
A. D. 1831-1872.— Dynamo-Electrical Ma-
chines, and Electric Motors.— " The discovery
of induction by Faraday, in 1831, gave rise to
the construction of magneto-electro machines.
The first of such machines that was ever made
was probably a machine that never came into
practical use, the description of which was given
in a letter, signed ' P. M. , ' and directed to Fara-
day, published in the Philosophical Magazine of
2nd August, 1832. We learn from this descrip-
tion that the essential parts of this machine were
six horse-shoe magnets attached to a disc, which
rotated in front of six coils of wire wound on
bobbins." Sept. 3rd, 1832, Pixii constructed a
machine in which a single horse-shoe magnet
was made to rotate before two soft iron cores,
wound with wire. In this machine he introduced
the commutator, an essential element in all mod-
ern continuous current machines. "Almost at
the same time, Ritchie, Saxton, and Clarke con-
structed similar machines. Clarke's is the best
known, and is still popular in the small and
portable ' medical ' machines so commonly sold.
. . . A larger machine [was] constructed by
Stohrer (1843), on the same plan as Clarke's, but
with six coils instead of two, and three com-
pound magnets instead of one. . . . The machines,
constructed by Nollet (1849) and Shepard (1856)
had still more magnets and coils. Shepard'a
machine was modified by Van Malderen, and
was called the Alliance machine. ... Dr. Wer-
ner Siemens, while considering how the inducing
effect of the magnet can be most thoroughly
utilised, and how to arrange the coils in the most
efficient manner for this purpose, was led in 1857
to devise the cylindrical armature. . . . Sinste-
deninl851 pointed out that the current of the
generator may itself be utilised to excite the
magnetism of the field magnets. . . . Wilde [in
1863] carried out this suggestion by using a small
steel permanent magnet and larger electro mag-
nets. . . . The next great improvement of these
machines arose from the discovery of what may
be called the dynamo-electric principle. This
principle may be stated as follows: — For the
generation of currents by magneto-electric in-
duction it is not necessary that the machine
should be furnished with permanent magnets;
the residual or temporary magnetism of soft iron
quickly rotating is sufficient for the purpose. . . .
In 1867 the principle was clearly enunciated and
used simultaneously, but independently, by
Siemens and by Wheatstone. ... It was in
February, 1867, that Dr. C. W. Siemens' clas-
sical paper on the conversion of dynamical into
electrical energy without the aid of permanent
magnetism was read before the Royal Society.
Strangely enough, the discovery of the same
principle was enunciated at the same meeting of
the Society by Sir Charles Wheatstone. . . .
The starting-point of a great improvement in
dynamo-electric machines, was the discovery by
Pacinotti of the ring armature ... in 1860. . . .
Gramme, in 1871, modified the ring armature,
and constructed the first machine, in which he
made use of the Gramme ring and the dynamic
principle. In 1872, Hefner-Alteneck, of the
firm of Siemens and Halske, constructed a ma-
chine in which the Gramme ring is replaced by
a drum armature, that is to say, by a cylinder
round which wire is wound. . . . Either the
Pacinotti-Gramme ring armature, or the Hefner-
Alteneck drum armature, is now adopted by
nearly all constructors of dynamo-electric ma-
chines, the parts varying of course in minor de-
tails." The history of the dynamo since has
been one of a gradual perfection of parts, result-
ing in the production of a great number of types,
which can not here even be mentioned. — A. R.
von Urbanitzky, Electricity in the Service of Man,
pp. 227-242.— S. P. Thompson, Dynamo Electrical
Machines.— Electric Motors.— "It has been
known for forty years that every form of elec-
tric motor which operated on the principle of
mutual mechanical force between a magnet and
a conducting wire or coil could also be made to
act as a generator of induced currents by the re-
verse operation of producing the motion mechan-
ically. And when, starting from the researches
of Siemens, Wilde, Nollet, Holmes and Gramme,
the modem forms of magneto-electric and dyna-
mo-electric machines began to come into com-
mercial use, it was discovered that any one or
51
801
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
Light
and Locomotion.
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
the modern machines designed as a generator of
currents constituted a far more efficient electric
motor than any of the previous forms which had
been designed specially as motors. It required
no new discovery of the law of reversibility to
enable the electrician to understand this; but 1o
convince the world required actual experiment."
— A. Guillemin, Ekctvicity and Magnetum, pt. 2.
ch. 10. sect. 3.
A. D. 1835-1889.— The Electric Railway.—
"Thomas Davenport, a poor blacksmith of Bran-
don, Vt., constructed what might be termed the
first electric railway. The invention was crude
and of little practical value, but the idea was
there. In 1835 he exhibited in Springfield, Mass. ,
a small model electric engine running upon a
circular track, the circuit being furnished by pri-
mary batteries carried in the car. Three years
later, Robert Davidson, of Aberdeen, Scotland,
began his experiments in this direction. . . . He
constructed quite a powerful motor, which was
mounted upon a truck. Forty battery cells, car-
ried on the car, furnished power to propel the
motor. The battery elements were composed of
amalgamated zinc and iron plates, the exciting
liquid being dilute sulphuric acid. This locomo-
tive was run successfully on several steam rail-
roads in Scotland, the speed attained was four
miles an hour, but this machine was afterwards
destroyed by some malicious person or persons
while it was being taken home to Aberdeen. In
1849 Moses Farmer exhibited an electric engine
which drew a small car containing two persons.
In 1851, Dr. Charles Grafton Page, of Salem,
Mass, , perfected an electric engine of consider-
able power. On April 29 of that year the engine
was attached to a car and a trip was made from
Washington to Bladensburg, over the Baltimore
and Ohio Railroad track. The highest speed at-
tained was nineteen miles an hour. The electric
power was furnished by one hundred Grove cells
carried on the engine. . . . The same year,
Thomas Hall, of Boston, Mass., built a small
electric locomotive called the Volta. The current
was furnished by two Grove battery cells which
were conducted to the rails, thence through the
wheels of the locomotive to the motor. This was
the first instance of the current being supplied
to the motor on a locomotive from a stationary
source. It was exhibited at the Charitable Me-
chanics fair by him in 1860. ... In 1879, Messrs.
Siemen and Halske, of Berlin, constructed and
operated an electric railway at the Industrial Ex-
position. A third rail placed in the centre of
the two outer rails, supplied the current, which
■was taken up into the motor through a slid-
ing contact under the locomotive. ... In 1880
Thomas A. Edison constructed an experimental
road near his laboratory in Menlo Park, N. J.
The power from the locomotive was transferred
to the car by belts running to and from the shafts
of each. The current was taken from and re-
turned through the rails. Early in the year of
1881 the Lichterfelde, Germany, electric railway
■was put into operation. It is a third rail sj'stem
and is still running at the present time. This
may be said to be the first commercial electric
railway constructed. In 1883 the Daft Electric
Co. equipped and operated quite successfully an
electric system on the Saratoga & Mt. McGregor
Railroad, at Saratoga, N. Y." During the next
five or six years numerous electric railroads,
more or less experimental, were built. ' ' Octo-
ber 31, 1888, the Council Bluffs & Omaha Rail-
way and Bridge Co. was first operated by elec-
tricity, they using the Thomson-Houston sys-
tem. The same year the Thomson-Houston Co.
equipped the Highland Division of the Lynn &
Boston Horse Railway at Lynn, Mass. Horse
railways now began to be equipped with electric-
ity all over the world, and especially in the
United States. In February, 1889, tlie Thomson-
Houston Electric Co. had equipped the line from
Bowdoiu Square, Boston, to Harvard Square,
Cambridge, of the West End Railway with elec-
tricity and operated twenty cars, since which time
it has increased its electrical apparatus, until now
it is the largest electric railway line in the world."
— E. Trevert, Electric Railway Engineering,
a pp. A.
A. D. 1841-1880.— The Incandescent Elec-
tric Light. — "AVhile the arc lamp is well adapted
for hghting large areas requiring a powerful,
diffused light, similar to sunlight, and hence is
suitable for outdoor illumination, and for work-
shops, stores, public buildings, and factories,
especially those where colored fabrics are pro-
duced, its use in ordinary dwellings, or for a
desk light in offices, is impractical, a softer,
steadier, and more economical light being re-
quired. Various attempts to modify the arc-
light by combining it with the incandescent were
made in the earlier stages of electric lighting.
. . . The first strictly incandescent lamp was in-
vented in 1841 by Frederick de Molyens of Chel-
tenham, England, and was constructed on the
simple principle of the incandescence produced
by the high resistance of a platinum wire to the
passage of the electric current. In 1849 Petrie
employed iridium for the same purpose, also
alloys of iridium and platinum, and iridium and
carbon. In 1845 J. W. Starr of Cincinnati first
proposed the use of carbon, and, associated with
King, his English agent, produced, through the
financial aid of the philanthropist Peabody, an
incandescent lamp. ... In all these early ex-
periments, the battery was the source of electric
supply; and the comparatively small current re-
quired for the incandescent light as compared
with that required for the arc light, was an argu-
ment in favor of the former. . . . Still, no sub-
stantial progress was made with either sj'stem
till the invention of the dynamo resulted in the
practical development of both systems, that of
the incandescent following that of the arc. Among
the first to make incandescent lighting a prac-
tical success were Sawyer and Man of New York,
and Edison. For a long time, Edison experi-
mented with platinum, using fine platinum wire
coiled into a spiral, so as to concentrate the heat,
and produce incandescence; the same current
producing only a red heat when the wire, whether
of platinum or other metal, is stretched out. . . .
Failing to obtain satisfactory results from plati-
num, Edison turned his attention to carbon, the
superiority of which as an incandescent illumin-
ant had already been demonstrated; but its
rapid consumption, as shown by the Reynier
and similar lamps, being unfavorable to its use
as compared with the durability of platin^um and
iridium, the problem was, to secure the superior
illumination of the carbon, and reduce or pre-
vent its consumption. As this consumption ivas
due chiefly to oxidation, it was questionable
whether the superior illumination were not due
to the same cause, and whether, if the carbon
802
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY. The Telephone ELECTRICAL DISCOVERY.
■were inclosed in a glass globe, from which oxy-
gen was eliminated, the same illumination could
be obtained. Another diflSculty of equal mag-
nitude was to obtain a sufficiently perfect va-
cuum, and maintain it in a hermetically sealed
globe inclosing the carbon, and at the same time
maintain electric connection with the generator
through the glass by a metal conductor, subject
to expansion and contraction different from that
of the glass, by the change of temperature due
to the passage of the electric current. Sawyer
and Man attempted to solve this problem by fill-
ing the globe with nitrogen, thus preventing
combustion by eliminating the oxygen. . . . The
results obtained by this method, which at one
time attracted a great deal of attention, were
not sufficiently satisfactory to become practical;
and Edison and others gave their preference to
the vacuum method, and sought to overcome the
difficulties connected with it. The invention of
the mercurial air pump, with its subsequent im-
provements, made it possible to obtain a suf-
ficiently perfect vacuum, and the difficulty of
introducing the current into the interior of the
globe was overcome by imbedding a fine plati-
num wire in the glass, connecting the inclosed
carbon with the external circuit ; the expansion
and contraction of the platinum not differing
sufficiently from that of the glass, in so fine a
wire, as to impair the vacuum. . . . The car-
bons made by Edison under his first patent in
1879, were obtained from brown paper or card-
board. . . . They were very fragile and short-
lived, and consequently were soon abandoned.
In 1880 he patented the process which, with
some modifications, he still adheres to. In this
process he uses filaments of bamboo, which are
taken from the interior, fibrous portion of the
plant."— P. Atkinson, Elements of Electric Light-
ing, ch. 8.
A. D. 1854-1866.— The Atlantic Cable.—
' ' Cyrus Field . . . established a company in
America (in 1854), which . . . obtained the right
of landing cables in Newfoundland for fifty years.
Soundings were made in 1856 between Ireland
and Newfoundland, showing a maximum depth
of 4,400 metres. Having succeeded after several
attempts in laying a cable between Nova Scotia
and Newfoundland, Field founded the Atlantic
Telegraph Company in England. . . . The length
of the . . . cable [used] was 4,000 kilometres,
and was carried by the two ships Agamemnon
and Niagara. The distance between the two sta-
tions on the coasts was 2,640 kilometres. The
laying of the cable commenced on the 7th of
August, 1857, at Valentia (Ireland) ; on the third
day the cable broke at a depth of 3,660 metres,and
the expedition had to return. A second expedi-
tion was sent in 1858; the two ships met each
other half-way, the ends of the cable were joined,
and the lowering of it commenced in both direc-
tions; 149 kilometres were thus lowered, when a
fault in the cable was discovered. It had, there-
fore, to be brought on board again, and was broken
during the process. After it had been repaired,
and when 476 kilometres had been already laid,
another fault was discovered, which caused
another breakage ; this time it was impossible to
repair it, and the expedition was again unsuccess-
ful, and had to return. In spite of the repeated
failures, two ships were again sent out in the
same year, and this time one end of the cable
was landed in Ireland, and the other at New-
foundland. The length of the sunk cable was
3,745 kilometres. Field's first telegram was sent
on the 7th of August, from America to Ireland.
The insulation of the cable, however, became
more defective every day, and failed altogether
on the 1st of September. From the experience
obtained, it was concluded that it was possible
to lay a trans- Atlantic cable, and the company,
after consulting a number of professional men,
again set to work. . . . The Great Eastern was
employed in laying this cable. This ship, which
is 211 metres long, 25 metres broad, and 16 metres
in height, carried a crew of 500 men, of which
120 were electricians and engineers, 179 mechan-
ics and stokers, and 115 sailors. The manage-
ment of all affairs relating to the laying of the
cable was entrusted to Canning. The coast cable
was laid on the 31st of July, and the end of it
was connected with the Atlantic cable on the 23rd.
After 1,326 kilometres had been laid, a fault was
discovered, an iron wire was found stuck right
across the cable, and Canning considered the mis-
chief to have been done with a malevolent pur-
pose. On the 2nd of August, 2,196 kilometres
of cable were sunk, when another fault was dis-
covered. While the cable was being repaired it
broke, and attempts to recover it at the time were
all unsuccessful ; in consequence of this the Great
Eastern had to return without having completed
the task. A new company, the Anglo-American
Telegraph Company, was formed in 1866, and at
once entrusted Messrs. Glass, Elliott and Com-
pany with the construction of a new cable of
3,000 kilometres. Different arrangements were
made for the outer envelope of the cable, and
the Great Eastern was once more equipped to
give effect to the experiments which had just
been made. The new expedition was not only
to lay a new cable, but also to take up the end of
the old one, and join it to a new piece, and thus
obtain a second telegraph line. The sinking again
commenced in Ireland on the 13th of July, 1866,
and it was finished on the 27th. On the 4th of
August, 1866, the Trans- Atlantic Telegraph Line
was declared open."— A. R. von Urbanitzky,
Electricity in the Service of Man, pp. 767-768.
A. D. 1876-1892.— The Telephone.- "The
first and simplest of all magnetic telephones is the
Bell Telephone. " In " the first form of this instru-
ment, constructed by Professor Graham Bell, in
1876. . . a harp of steel rods was attached to the
poles of a permanent magnet. . . . When we sing
into a piano, certain of the strings of the instru-
ment are set in vibration sympathetically by the
action of the voice with different degrees of
amplitude, and a sound, which is an approxima-
tion to the vowel uttered, is produced from the
piano. Theory shows that, had the piano a
much larger number of strings to the octave, the
vowel sounds would be perfectly reproduced.
It was upon this principle that Bell constructed
his first telephone. The expense of constructing
such an apparatus, however, deterred Bell from
making the attempt, and he sought to simplify
the apparatus before proceeding further in this
direction. After many experiments with more
or less unsatisfactory results, he constructed the
instrument . . . which he exhibited at Philadel-
phia in 1876. In this apparatus, the transmitter
was formed by an electro-magnet, through which
a current flowed, and a membrane, made of gold-
beater's skin, on which was placed as a sort of
armature, a piece of soft Iron, which thus
803
ELECTRICAL DISCOVERT.
ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.
vibrated in front of the electromagnet ■when the
membrane was thrown into sonorous vibration.
... It is quite clear that when we speak into a
Bell transmitter only a small fraction of the
energy of the sonorous vibrations of the voice
can be converted into electric currents, and that
these currents must be extremely weak. Edison
applied himself to discover some means by
which lie could increase the strength of these cur-
rents. Elisha Gray had proposed to use the varia-
tion of resistance of a fine platinum wire attached
to a diaphragm dipping into water, and hoped
that the variation of extent of surface in contact
would so vary the strength of current as to re-
produce sonorous vibrations; but there is no
record of this experiment having been tried.
Edison proposed to utilise the fact that the resist-
ance of carbon varied under pressure. He had
independently discovered this peculiarity of car-
bon, but it had been previously described b}'
Du Moncel. . . . The first carbon transmitter was
constructed in 1878 by Edison. "^ — W. H. Preece,
and J. Maier, The Telephoiu., ch. 3—1. — In a pam-
phlet distributed at the Columbian Exposition,
Chicago, 1893, entitled "Exhibit of the American
Bell Telephone Co." the following statements are
made: "At the Centennial Exposition, in Phila-
delphia, in 1876, was given the first general pub-
lic exhibition of the telephone by its inventor,
Alexander Graham Bell. To-day, seventeen years
later, more than half a million instruments are in
daily use in the United States alone, six hundred
million talks by telephone are held every year, and
the human voice is carried over a distance of twelve
hundred miles without loss of sound or syllable.
The first use of the telephone for business pur-
poses was over a single wire connecting only two
telephones. At once the need of general inter-
communication made itself felt. In the cities
and larger towns exchanges were established and
all the subscribers to any one exchange were
enabled to talk to one another through a central
office. Means were then devised to connect two
or more exchanges by trunk lines, thus affording
means of communication between all the sub-
scribers of all the exchanges so connected. This
■work has been pushed forward until now have
been gathered into what may be termed one
great exchange all the important cities from
Augusta on the east to Milwaukee on the west,
and from Burlington and Buffalo on the north to
Washington on the south, bringing more than
one half the people of this country and a much
larger proportion of the business interests, within
talking distance of one another. . . . The lines
which connect Chicago with Boston, via New
York, are of copper wire of extra size. It is
about one sixth of an inch in diameter, and
■weighs 435 pounds to the mile. Hence each cir-
cuit contains 1,044,000 pounds of copper. . . .
In the United States there are over a quarter of a
million exchange subscribers, and . . . these make
use of the telephone to carry on 600,000,000 con-
versations annually. There is hardly a city or
town of 5,000 inhabitants that has not its Tele-
phone Exchange, and these are so knit together
by connecting lines that intercommunication is
constant." The number of telephones in use in
the United States, on the 20th of Becember in
each year since the first introduction, is given as
follows: 1877, 5,187; 1878, 17.567; 1879, 52,517;
1880, 123,380; 1881, 180,592; 1882, 237,728; 1883,
298,580; 1884, 325,574; 1885, 330,040; 1886, 353,-
518; 1887,380,277; 1888, 411,511; 1889,444,861;
1890, 483,790; 1891, 512,407; 1892, 552,720.
ELEPHANT, Order of the.— A Danish order
of knighthood iu.stituted in 1693 by King Chris-
tian V.
ELEPHANTINE. See Egypt: The Old
Empire and the Middle Empiee.
ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES, The.—
Among the ancient Greeks. " the mysteries were
a source of faith and hope to the initiated, as are
the churches of modern times. Secret doctrines,
regarded as holy, and to be kept with inviolable
fidelity, were handed down in these brother-
hoods, and no doubt ■n^ere fondly believed to
contain a saving grace by those ■n-ho were ad-
mitted, amidst solemn and imposing rites, under
the veil of midnight, to hear the tenets of the
ancient faith, and the promises of blessings to
come to those who, with sincerity of heart and
pious trust, took the obligations upon them.
The Eleusinian mysteries were the most impos-
ing and venerable. Their origin extended back
into a mythical antiquity, and they were among
the few forms of Greek worship which were
xinder the superintendence of hereditary priest-
hoods. Thirlwall thinks that ' they were the re-
mains of a worship which preceded the rise of
the Hellenic mythology and its attendant rites,
grounded on a view of Nature less fanciful, more
earnest, and better fitted to awaken both philo-
sophical thought and religious feeling. ' This con-
clusion is still further confirmed by the moral
and religious tone of the poets, — such as jEschy-
lus, — whose ideas on justice, sin and retribution
are as solemn and elevated as those of a Hebre'W
prophet. The secrets, whatever they were, were
never revealed in express terms ; but Isocrates
uses some remarkable expressions, when speak-
ing of their importance to the condition of man.
'Those who are initiated,' says he 'entertain
sweeter hopes of eternal life ' ; and how could
this be the case, unless there were imparted at
Eleusis the doctrine of eternal life, and some
idea of its state and circumstances more compati-
ble with an elevated conception of the Deity and
of the human soul than the vague and shadowy
images which haunted the popular mind. The
Eleusinian communion embraced the most emi-
nent men from every part of Greece, — statesmen,
poets, philosophers, and generals; and when
Greece became a part of the Roman Empire, the
greatest minds of Rome drew instruction and
consolation from its doctrines. The ceremonies
of initiation — which took place every year in the
early autumn, a beautiful season in Attica — were
a splendid ritual, attracting visitors from every
part of the world. The processions moving from
Athens to Eleusis over the Sacred Way, some-
times numbered twenty or thirty thousand peo-
ple, and the exciting scenes were well calculated
to leave a durable impression on susceptible
minds. . . . The formula of the dismissal, after
the initiation 'U'as over, consisted in the mysteri-
ous words ' konx,' ' ompa.x ' ; and this is the only
Eleusinian secret that has illuminated the world
from the recesses of the temple of Demeter and
Persephone. But it is a striking illustration of
the value attached to these rites and doctrines,
that, in moments of extremest peril — as of im-
pending shipwreck, or massacre by a victorious
enemj', — men asked one another, ' Are you in-
itiated ? ' as if this were the anchor of their hopes
804
ELEUSINIAN MYSTERIES.
ELTEKEH.
for another life. " — C. C. Felton, Greece, Ancient
and Modern, c. 2, led. 10. — " The Eleusinian mys-
teries continued to be celebrated during the whole
of the second half of the fourth century, till they
were put an end to by the destruction of the tem-
ple at Eleusis, and by the devastation of Greece
in the invasion of the Goths under Alaric in 395 "
(see Goths: A. D. 395).— W. Smith, Mte to Oih-
bon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, ck. 25.
Also in : R. Brown, ne Great Dionysiak Myth,
ch. 6, sect. 2. — J. J. I. von DoUinger, The Gentile
and the Jeic, hk. 3 (v. 1). — See, also, Eleusis.
ELEUSIS. — Eleusis was originally one of
the twelve confederate townships into which
Attica was said to have been divided before the
time of Theseus. It " was advantageously situ-
ated [about fourteen miles N. W. of Athens] on
a height, at a small distance from the shore of
an extensive bay, to which there is access only
through narrow channels, at the two extremities
of the island of Salamis : its position was import-
ant, as commanding the shortest and most level
route by land from Athens to the Isthmus by the
pass which leads at the foot of Mount Cerata
along the shore to Megara. . . . Eleusis was
built at the eastern end of a low rocky hill, which
lies parallel to the sea-shore. . . . The eastern
extremity of the hill was levelled artificially for
the reception of the Hierum of Ceres and the
other sacred buildings. Above these are the
traces of an Acropolis. A triangular space of
about 500 yards each side, lying between the hill
and the shore, was occupied by the town of
Eleusis. . . . To those who approached Eleusis
from Athens, the sacred buildings standing on
the eastern extremity of the height concealed the
greater part of the town, and on a nearer ap-
proach presented a succession of magnificent ob-
jects, well calculated to heighten the solemn
grandeur of the ceremonies and the awe and rev-
erence of the MystiE in their initiation. ... In
the plurality of enclosures, in the magnificence
of the pyla; or gateways, in the absence of any
general symmetry of plan, in the small auxiliary
temples, we recognize a great resemblance be-
tween the sacred buildings of Eleusis and the
Egyptian Hiera of Thebes and Philaj. And this
resemblance is the more remarkable, as the De-
meter of Attica was the Isis of Egypt. We can-
not suppose, however, that the plan of all these
buildings was even thought of when the worship
of Ceres was established at Eleusis. They were
the progressive creation of successive ages. . . .
Under the Roman Empire ... it was fashion-
able among the higher order of Romans to pass
some time at Athens in the study of philosophy
and to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries.
Hence Eleusis became at that time one of the
most frequented places in Greece ; and perhaps
it was never so populous as under the emperors
of the first two centuries of our sera. During the
two following centuries, its mysteries were the
chief support of declining polytheism, and almost
the only remaining bond of national union among
tiie Greeks ; but at length the destructive visit of
the Goths in the year 396, the extinction of
paganism and the ruin of maritime commerce,
left Eleusis deprived of every source of pros-
perity, except those which are inseparable from
its fertile plain, its noble bay, and its position on
the road from Attica to the Isthmus. . . . The
village still preserves the ancient name, no further
altered than is customary in Romaic conver-
sions." — W. M. Leake, Topography of Athens,
V. 2 ; 2'he Demi, sect. 5.
ELGIN, Lord. — The Indian administration
of. See IsDix: A. D. 1862-1876.
ELIS. — Elis was an ancient Greek state,
occupying the country on the western coast of
Peloponnesus, adjoining Arcadia, and between
Messenia at the south and Achaia on the north.
It was noted for the fertility of its soil and the
rich yield of its fisheries. But Elis owed greater
importance to the inclusion within its territory
of the sacred groimd of Olympia, where the cele-
bration of the most famous festival of Zeus came
to be established at an early time. The Elians
had acquired Olympia by conquest of the city
and territory of Pisa, to which it originally be-
longed, and the presidency of the Olympic games
was always disputed with them by the latter.
Elis was the close ally of Sparta down to the year
B. C. 421, when a bitter quarrel arose between
them, and Elis suffered heavily in the wars
which ensued. It was afterwards at war with
the Arcadians, and joined the jEtolian League
against the Achaian League. The city of Elis
was one of the most splendid in Greece ; but little
now remains, even of ruins, to indicate its de-
parted glories. See, also, Oltmpic Gambs.
ELISII, The. See Lygians.
ELIZABETH, Czarina of Russia, A. D.
1741-1761 Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia,
and the Thirty Years War. See Germany:
A. D. 1618-1620; 1620; 1621-1623; 1631-1632,
and 1648 Elizabeth, Queen of England,
A. D. 1558-1603 Elizabeth Farnese, Queen
of Spain. See Italy: A. D. 171.5-1735; and
Spalx: a. D. 1713-1725, and 1726-1731.
ELIZABETH, N. J.— The first settlement
of. See New Jersey: A. D. 1664-1067.
ELK HORN, OR PEA RIDGE, Battle of.
See United States of Am. : A. D. 1862 (Janc-
AEY — March : IVIissouri — Arkansas).
ELKWATER, OR CHEAT SUMMIT,
Battle of. See United States op Am. : A. D.
1861 (August — December: West Virginia).
ELLANDUM, Battle of.— Decisive victory
of Ecgberht, the West Saxon king, over the
Mercians, A. D. 823.
ELLEBRI, The. See Ireland, Tribes of
Early' Celtic inhabitants.
ELLENBOROUGH, Lord, The Indian ad-
ministration of. See India: A. D. 1836-1845.
ELLICE ISLANDS. See Polynesi.4.
ELLSWORTH, Colonel. See United
States of Aju. : A. D. 1861 (jVIay : Virginia).
ELMET. — A small kingdom of the Britons
which was swallowed up in the English king-
dom of Northumbria early in the seventh cen-
tury. It answered, roughly speaking, to the
present West-Riding of Yorkshire. . . . Leeds
' ' preserves the name of Loidis, by which Elmet
seems also to have been known." — J. R. Green,
The Making of Eng. , p. 254.
ELMIRA, N. Y. (then Newtown).— Gen.
Sullivan's Battle with the Senecas. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1779 (August —
September).
ELSASS. See Alsace.
ELTEKEH, Battle of.— A victory won by
the Assyrian, Sennacherib, over the Egyptians,
before the disaster befel his army which is
related in 2 Kings xix. 35. Sennacherib's own
account of the battle has been found among the
805
ELTEKEH.
ENGLAND, A. D. 449-547.
Assyrian records. — A. H. Sayce, Fresh Light
from tile Ancient Monumentg, ch. 6.
ELUSATES, The. See Aquitatne, Tribes
OF ANCIENT.
ELVIRA, Battle of (1319). SeeSPADj: A. D.
1273-1460.
ELY, The Camp of Refuge at. See Eng-
land: A. D. 1069-1071.
ELYMAIS. See Elam.
ELYMEIA. See Macedonia.
ELYMIANS, The. See Sicily: Eaelt en-
habitants.
ELYSIAN FIELDS. See Canabt Islands.
ELZEVIRS. See Printing: A. D. 1617-
1680.
EMANCIPATION, Catholic. SeelKBLAHo:
A. D. 1811-1839.
EMANCIPATION, Compensated ; Pro-
posal of President Lincoln. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1862 (March).
EMANCIPATION, Prussian Edict of. See
Germany: A. D. 1807-1808.
EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATIONS,
President Lincoln's. See United States op
Am. : A. D. 1862 (September), and 1863 (Janu-
ary).
EMANUEL, King of Portugal, A. D. 1495-
1521 Emanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy,
A. D. 1553-1.580.
EMBARGO OF 1807, The American. See
United States op Am. : A. D. 1804-1809, and
1808.
EMERICH, King of Hungary, A. D. 1196-
1204.
EMERITA AUGUSTA. —A colony of
Roman veterans settled in Spain, B. C. 27, by the
emperor Augustus. It is identified with modern
Merida, in Estremadura. — C. Merivale, Hist, of
tlte Romans, ch. 34, note.
EMESSA.— Capture by the Arabs (A. D.
636). See Mahometan Conquest: A. D. 632-
639.
EMIGRES OF THE FRENCH REVO-
LUTION. See France : A. D. 1789 (July-
August), (August — October) ; 1789-1791 ; 1791
(July— September) : and 1791-1792.
EMITES, The. See Jews : Early Hebrew.
EMMAUS, Battle of. — Defeat of a Syrian
army under Gorgias by Judas Maccaboeus, B. C.
166. — Josephus, Antiq. of the Jews, bk. 12, ch. 7.
EMMENDINGEN, Battle of. SeeFRANCE-.
A. D. 1796 (April — October).
EMMET INSURRECTION, The. See
Ireland : A. D. 1801-1803.
EMPEROR.— A title derived from the
Roman title Imperator. See Imperator.
EMPORIA, The. See Carthage, The
Dominion of.
ENCOMIENDAS. See Slavery, Modern :
OP the Indians ; also, Repartimientos.
ENCUMBERED ESTATES ACT, The.
See Ireland: A. D. 1843-1848.
ENCYCLICAL AND SYLLABUS OF
1864, The. See Papacy: A. D. 1864.
ENCYCLOPAEDISTS, The. — " French
literature had never been so brilliant as in the
second half of the 18th century. BufEon, Diderot,
D'Alembert, Rousseau. Duclos, Condillac, Hel-
vetius, Holbach, Raynal, Condorcet, Mably, and
many others adorned it, and the ' Encyclopaedia,'
which was begun in 1751 under the direction of
Diderot, became the focus of an intellectual in-
fluence which has rarely been equalled. The
name and idea were taken from a work published
by Ephraim Chambers in Dublin, in 1728. A
noble preliminary discourse was written by
D'Alembert ; and all the best pens in France were
enlisted in the enterprise, which was constantly
encouraged and largely assisted by Voltaire.
Twice it was suppressed by authority, but the
interdict was again raised. Popular favour now
ran with an irresistible force in favour of the
philosophers, and the work was brought to its
conclusion in 1771." — W. E. H. Lecky, Hist, of
Eng. in the 18th Century, ch. 20 (». 5).
Also in : J. Morley, Diderot and the Encyclo-
pedists, ch. 5 (ii 1).— E. J. Lowell, The Eve of tlie
French ReDolution, ch. 16.
ENDICOTT, John, and the Colony of
Massachusetts Bay. See Massachusetts;
A. D. 1623-1629, and after.
ENDIDJAN, Battle of (1876). See Russia:
A. D. 1859-1876.
ENGADINE, The. See Switzerland:
A. D. 1396-1499.
ENGEN, Battle of (1800). See France:
A. D. 1800-1801 (May— February).
ENGERN, Duchy of. See Saxony: The
Old Duciiy.
ENGHIEN, Due d', The abduction and
execution of. See France: 1804-1805.
ENGLAND.
Before the coming of the English. — The
Celtic and Roman periods. See Britain.
A. D. 449-547. — The three tribes of the Eng-
lish conquest. — The naming of the country. —
"It was by . . . three tribes [from Northwestern
Germany], the Saxons, the Angles, and the Jutes,
that southern Britain was conquered and colo-
nized in the fifth and sixth centuries, according
to the most ancient testimony. ... Of the
three, the Angli almost if not altogether pass
away into the migration: the Jutes and the
Saxons, although migrating in great numbers,
had yet a great part to play in their own homes
and in other regions besides Britain ; the former
at a later period in the train and under the name
of the Danes ; the latter in German history from
the eighth century to the present day." — W.
Stubbs, Const. Hist, of England, «. 1, ch. 8. —
"Among the Teutonic settlers in Britain some
tribes stand out conspicuously ; Angles, Saxons,
and Jutes stand out conspicuously above all.
The Jutes led the way ; from the Angles the land
and the united nation took their name ; the Sax-
ons gave us the name by which our Celtic neigh-
bours have ever known us. But there is no
reason to confine the area from which our fore-
fathers came to the space which we should mark
on the map as the land of the continental Angles,
Saxons, and Jutes. So great a migration is
always likely to be swollen by some who are
quite alien to the leading tribe ; it is always cer-
tain to be swollen by many who are of stocks
akin to the leading tribe, but who do not actually
belong to it. As we in Britain are those who
806
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ENGLAND, A. D. 449-547.
ENGLAND, A. D. 449-473.
stayed beliind at the time of the second great
migration of our people [to America], so 1 ven-
ture to look on all our Low-Dutch kinsfolk on
the continent of Europe as those who stayed
behind at the time of the first great migration of
our people. Our special hearth and cradle is
doubtless to be found in the immediate march-
land of Germany and Denmark, but the great
common home of our people is to be looked on
as stretching along the whole of that long coast
where various dialects of the Low-Dutch tongue
are spoken. If Angles and Saxons came, we
know that Frisians came also, and with Frisians
as an element among us, it is hardly too bold to
claim the whole Netherlands as in the widest
sense Old England, as the land of one part of the
kinsfolk who stayed behind. Through that
whole region, from the special Anglian corner
far into what is now northern France, the true
tongue of the people, sometimes overshadowed
by other tongues, is some dialect or other of
that branch of the great Teutonic family which
is essentially the same as our own speech. From
Flanders to Sleswick the natural tongue is one
which differs from English only as tlie historical
events of fourteen hundred years of separation
have inevitably made the two tongues — two dia-
lects, I should rather say, of the same tongue —
to differ. From these lands we came as a people.
That was our first historical migration. Our
remote forefathers must have made endless
earlier migrations as parts of the great Aryan
body, as parts of the smaller Teutonic body.
But our voyage from the Low-Dutch mainland
to the isle of Britain was our first migration as a
people. . . . Among the Teutonic tribes which
settled in Britain, two, the Angles and the
Saxons, stood out foremost. These two be-
tween them occupied by far the greater part of
the land that was occupied at all. Each of these
two gave its name to the united nation, but each
gave it on different lips. The Saxons were the
earlier invaders ; they had more to do with the
Celtic remnant which abode in the land. On
the lips then of the Celtic inhabitants of Britain,
the whole of the Teutonic inhabitants of Britain
were known from the beginning, and are known
still, as Saxons. But, as the various Teutonic
settlements drew together, as they began to have
common national feelings and to feel the need of
a common national name, the name which they
chose was not the same as that by which their
Celtic neighbours called them. They did not
. call themselves Saxons and their land Saxony ;
they called themselves English and their land
England. I used the word Saxony in all serious-
ness ; it is a real name for the Teutonic part of
Britain, and it is an older name than the name
England. But it is a name used only from the
outside by Celtic neighbours and enemies; it
was not used from the inside by the Teutonic
people themselves. In their mouths, as soon as
they took to themselves a common name, that
name was English ; as soon as they gave their
land a common name, that name was England.
. . . And this is the more remarkable, because
the age when English was fullj' established as
the name of the people, and England as the name
of the land, was an age of Saxon supremacy, an
age when a Saxon state held the headship of
England and of Britain, when Saxon kings grew
step by step to be kings of the English and lords
of the whole British island. In common use
then, the men of the tenth and eleventh centuries
knew themselves by no name but English." —
E. A. Freeman, The Eiiylish People in its Three
Homes (Lectures to American Audiences, pp. 30-
31, and 45-47). — See Angles and Jutes, and
Saxons.
A. D. 449-473. — The Beginning of English
history. — The conquest of Kent by the Jutes.
— "In the year 449 or 450 a band of warriors
was drawn to the shores of Britain by the usual
pledges of land and pay. The warriors were
Jutes, men of a tribe which has left its name to
Jutland, at the extremity of the peninsula that
projects from the shores of North-Germany, but
who were probably akin to the race that was
fringing the opposite coast of Scandinavia and
settling in the Danish Isles. In three ' keels ' —
so ran tlie legend of their conquest — and with
their Ealdormen, Hengest and Horsa, at their
head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet in the Isle
of Thanet. "With the landing of Hengest and
his war-band English history begins. ... In
the first years that followed after their landing.
Jute and Briton fought side by side; and the
Picts are said to have been scattered to the winds
in a great battle on the eastern coast of Britain.
But danger from the Pict was hardly over when
danger came from the Jutes themselves. Their
numbers probably grew fast as the news of their
settlement in Thanet spread among their fellow
pirates who wei'e haunting the charmel ; and with
the increase of their number must have grown
the difficulty of supplying them with rations and
pay. The dispute which rose over these ques-
tions was at last closed by Hengest's men with a
threat of war." The threat was soon executed;
the forces of the Jutes were successfully trans-
ferred from their island camp to the main shore,
and the town of Durovernum (occupying the site
of modern Canterbury) was the first to experience
their rage. "The town was left in blackened
and solitary ruin as the invaders pushed along
the road to London. No obstacle seems to have
checked their march from the Stour to the Med-
way." At Aylesford (A. D. 455), the lowest ford
crossing the Medway, " the British leaders must
have taken post for the defence of AVest Kent;
but the Chronicle of the conquering people tells
. . . only that Horsa fell in the moment of vic-
tory; and the flint-heap of Horsted which has
long preserved his name . . . was held in after-
time to mark his grave. . . . The victory of
Aylesford was followed by a political change
among the assailants, whose loose organization
around ealdormen was exchanged for a stricter
union. Aylesford, we are told, was no sooner
won than ' Hengest took to the kingdom, and
^Ue, his son.'. . . The two kings pushed for-
ward in 457 from the Medway to the conquest of
AVest Kent." Another battle at the passage of
the Cray was another victory for the invaders,
and, " as the Chronicle of their conquerors tolls
us, the Britons ' forsook Kent-land and fled with
much fear to London.'. . , If we trust British
tradition, the battle at Crayford was followed by
a political revolution in Britain itself. ... It
would seem . . . that the Romauized Britons rose
in revolt under Aurelius Ambrosianus, a descend-
ant of the last Roman general who claimed the
purple as an Emperor in Britain. . . . The revo-
lution revived for a while the energy of the prov-
ince." The Jutes were driven back into the Isle
of Thanet, and held there, apparently, for some
80
ENGLAND, A. D. 449-473.
The Saxons.
ENGLAND, A. D. 547-633.
years, with the help of the strong fortresses of
Richborough and Reculver, guarding the two
mouths of the inlet which then parted Thanet
from the mainland. " lu 465 however the petty
conflicts which had gone on along the shores of
the Wantsum made way for a decisive struggle.
. . . The overthrow of the Britons at Wipped's-
fleet was so terrible that all hope of preserving
the bulk of Kent seems from this moment to have
been abandoned; and ... no further struggle
disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and settlement.
It was only along its southern shore that the
Britons now held their ground. ... A final vic-
tory of the Jutes in 473 may mark the moment
when they reached the rich pastures which the
Roman engineers had reclaimed from Romney
Marsh. . . . With this advance to the mouth of
the Weald the work of Hengest's men came to
an end ; nor did the Jutes from this time play any
important part in the attack on the island, for
their after-gains were limited to the Isle of Wiglit
and a few districts on the Southampton Water."
— J. R. Green, The Making of England, cli. 1.
Also in: J. M. Lappenberg, Eist. of Eng.
under the Anglo-Saxon Kings, r. 1. pj). 67-101.
A. D. 477-527. — The conquests of the Sax-
ons. — The founding of the kingdoms of Sus-
sex, .Wessex and Essex. — "Whilst the Jutes
were conquering Kent, their kindred took part in
the war. Ship after ship sailed from the North
Sea, filled with eager warriors. The Saxons now
arrived — Ella and his three sons landed in the
ancient territory of the Regni (A. D. 477-491).
The Britons were defeated with great slaughter,
and driven into the forest of Andreade, whose
extent is faintly indicated by the wastes and
commons of the Weald. A general confederacy
of the Kings and ' Tyrants ' of the Britons was
formed against the invaders, but fresh reinforce-
ments arrived from Germany ; the city of Andre-
ades-Ceastre was taken by storm, all its inhabit-
ants were slain and the buildings razed to the
ground, so that its site is now entirely unknown.
From this period the kingdom of the South Sax-
ons was established in the person of Ella; and
though ruling only over the narrow boundary of
modem Sussex, he was accepted as the first of
the Saxon Bretwaldas, or Emperors of the Isle of
Britain. Encouraged, perhaps, by the good tid-
ings received from Ella, another band of Saxons,
commanded by Cerdic and his son Cynric, landed
on the neighbouring shore.Jn the modern Hamp-
shire (A. D. 494). At first they made but little
progress. They were opposed by the Britons;
but Geraint, whom the Saxon Chroniclers cele-
brate for his nobility, and the British Bards extol
for his beauty and valour, was slain (A. D. 501).
The death of the Prince of the ' Woodlands of
Dyfnaint,' or Damnonia, may have been avenged,
but the power of the Saxons overwhelmed all
opposition ; and Cerdic, associating his son Cyn-
ric In the dignity, became the King of the terri-
tory wliich he gained. Under Cynric and his
son Ceaulin, the Saxons slowly, yet steadily,
gained ground. The utmost extent of their do-
minions towards the North cannot be ascertained ;
but they had conquered the town of Bedford:
and it was probably in consequence of their geo-
graphical position (A. D. 571) with respect to the
countries of the Middle and East Saxons, that
the name of the West Saxons was given to this
colony. The tract north of the Thames was soon
lost; but on the south of that river and of the
Severn, the successors of Cerdic, Kings of Wes-
sex, continued to extend their dominions. The
Hampshire Avon, which retains its old Celtic
name, signifying ' the Water, ' seems at first to
have been their boundary. Beyond this river,
the British princes of Damnonia retained their
power; and it was long before the country as far
as the Exe became a Saxon March-land, or bor-
der. About the time that the Saxons under Cer-
dic and Cynric were successfully warring against
the Britons, another colony was seen to establish
itself in the territory or kingdom which, from its
geographical position, obtained the name of East
Saxon}' ; but whereof the district of the Middle
Saxons, now Jliddlesex, formed a part. London,
as you well know, is locally included in Middle
Saxony ; and the Kings of Essex, and the other
sovereigns who afterwards acquired the country,
certainly possessed many extensive rights of sover-
eignty in the city. Yet, I doubt much whether
London was ever incorporated in any Anglo-
Saxon kingdom ; and I think we must view it as
a weak, tributary, vassal state, not very well
able to resist the usurpations of the supreme
Lord or Suzerain, ^Escwin, or Ercenwine, who
was the first King of the East Saxons (A. D. 527).
His son Sleda was married to Ricola, daughter
to Ethelbert of Kent, who afterwards appears as
the superior, or sovereign of the country; and
though Sleda was King, yet Ethelbert joined in
all important acts of government. This was the
fate of Essex — it is styled a kingdom, but it
never enjoyed any political independence, being
always subject to the adjoining kings." — F. Pal-
grave, Hist, of the Anglo Saxons, cli. 3. — "The
descents of [the West Saxons], Cerdic and Cyn-
ric, in 495 at the mouth of the Itchen, and a
fresh descent on Portchester in 501, can have
been little more than plunder raids; and though
in 508 a far more serious conflict ended in the
fall of 5,000 Britons and their chief, it was not
till 514 that the tribe whose older name seems to
have been that of the Gewissas, but who were to
he more widely known as the West Saxons, actu-
ally landed with a view to definite conquest." —
J. R. Green, The Making of England, ch. 3. —
' ' Tlie greatness of Sussex did not last beyond
the days of its founder .lElle, the first Bretwalda.
Whatever importance Essex, or its offshoot, Mid-
dlesex, could claim as containing the great city
of London was of no long duration. We soon
find London fluctuating between the condition
of an independent commonwealth, and that of a
dependency of the Jlercian Kings. Verj' differ-
ent was the destiny of the third Saxon Kingdom.
Wessex has grown into England, England into
Great Britain, Great Britain into the United
Kingdom, the United Kingdom into the British
Empire. Every prince who has ruled England
before and since the eleventh century [the inter-
val of the Danish kings, Harold, son of Godwine,
and William the Conqueror, who were not of the
West Saxon house] has had the blood of Cerdic
the West Saxon in his veins. At the close of the
sixth century Wessex had risen to high import-
ance among the English Kingdoms, tliough the
days of its permanent supremacy were still far
distant." — E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the Norman
Conq. of Eng., ch. 3, sect 1.
A. D. 547-633. — The conquests of the An-
gles. — The founding of their kingdoms. —
" Northwards of the East Saxons was established
the kingdom of the East Angles, in which a
808
ENGLAND, A. D. 547-633.
The Angles.
ENGLAND, A. D. 597-685.
northern and a southern people (Northfolc and
Suthfolc) were distinguished. It is probable
that, even during the last period of the Roman
sway, Germans were settled in this part of
Britain; a supposition that gains probability
from several old Saxon sagas, which have refer-
ence to East Anglia at a period anterior to the
coming of Hengest and Horsa. The land of the
Gyrwas, containing 1,200 hides . . . comprised
the neighbouring marsh districts of Ely and
Huntingdonshire, almost as far as Lincoln. Of
the East Angles Wehwa, or Wewa, or more com-
monly his son Ufla, or Wuffia, from whom his
race derived their patronymic of Uffings or
Wuffings, is recorded as tlie first king. The
neighbouring states of Jlercia originated in the
marsh districts of the Lindisware, or inhabitants
of Lindsey (Lindesig), the northern part of Lin-
colnshire. With these were united the Middle
Angles. This kingdom, divided by the Trent
into a northern and a southern portion, gradually
extended itself to the borders of Wales. Among
the states which it comprised was the little king-
dom of the Hwiccas, conterminous with the later
diocese of Worcester, or the counties of Glouces-
ter, Worcester, and a part of Warwick. This
state, together with that of the Hecanas, bore
the common Germanic appellation of the land of
the Magesa;tas. . . . The country to the north of
the Humber had suffered the most severely from
the inroads of the Picts and Scots. It became
at an early period separated into two British
states, the names of which were retained for
some centuries, viz, : Deifyr (Deora rice), after-
wards Latinized into Deira, extending from the
Humber to the Tyne, and Berneich (Beorna
rice), afterwards Bernicia, from the Tyne to the
Clyde. Here also the settlements of the German
races appear anterior to the date given in the
common accounts of the first Anglian kings of
those territories, in the middle of the sixth cen-
tury." — J. M. Lappenberg, Hist, of Eng. iinder
the Anglo-Saxon Kings (Thorpe), ii. 1, pp. 113-117.
— The three Anglian kingdoms of Northumber-
land, Mercia and East Anglia, "are altogether
much larger than the Saxon and Jutish King-
doms, so you see very well why the land was
called 'England' and not 'Saxony.'. . . 'Sax-
onia ' does occur now and then, and it was really
an older name than 'Anglia,' but it soon went
quite out of use. . . . But some say that there
were either Jutes or Saxons in the North of Eng-
land as soon or sooner than there were in the
south. If so, there is another reason why the
Scotch Celts as well as the Welsh, call us Saxons.
It is not unlikely that there may have been some
small Saxon or Jutish settlements there very
early, but the great Kingdom of Northumber-
land was certainly founded by Ida the Angle in
547. It is more likely that there were some Teu-
tonic settlements there before him, because the
Chronicle does not say of him, as it does of Hen-
gest, Cissa and Cerdic, that he came into the
land by the sea, but only that he began the
Kingdom. . . . You must fully understand that
in the old times Northumberland meant the
whole land north of the Humber, reaching as
far as the Firth of Forth. It thus takes in part
of what is now Scotland, including the city of
Edinburgh, that is Eadwinesburh, the town of
the great Northumbrian King Eadwine, or Ed-
win [Edwin of Deira, A. D. 617-633]. . . . You
must not forget that Lothian and all that part of
Scotland was part of Northumberland, and that
the people there are really English, and still
speak a tongue which has changed less from the
Old-English than the tongue of any other part of
England. And the real Scots, the Gael in the
Highlands, call the Lowland Scots 'Saxons,'
just as much as they do the people of England
itself. This Northumbrian Kingdom was one of
the greatest Kingdoms in England, but it was
often divided into two, Beornicia [or Bernicia]
and Deira, the latter of which answered pretty
nearly to Yorkshire. The chief city was the old
Roman town of Eboracum, which in Old-English
is Eoforwic, and which we cut short into York.
York was for a long time the greatest town in
the North of England. There are now many
others much larger, but York is still the second
city in England in rank, and it gives its chief
magistrate the title of Lord-Mayor, as London
does, while in other cities and towns the chief
magistrate is merely the Mayor, without any
Lord. . . . The great Anglian Kingdom of the
Mercians, that is the Marchmen, the people on
the march or frontier, seems to have been the
youngest of all, and to have grown up gradually
by joining together several smaller states, includ-
ing all the land which the West Saxons had held
north of the Thames. Such little tribes or states
were the Lindesfaras and the Gainas in Lincoln-
shire, the Magessetas in Herefordshire, the Hwic-
cas in Gloucester, Worcester, and part of War-
wick, and several others. . . . When Mercia
was fully joined under one King, it made one of
the greatest states in England, and some of the
Mercian Kings were very powerful princes. It
was chiefly an Anglian Kingdom, and the Kings
were of an Anglian stock, but among the Hwic-
cas and in some of the other shires in southern
and western Mercia, most of the people must
really have been Saxons." — E. A. Freeman, Old
English Hist, for Children, ch. 5.
A. D. 560.— Ethelbert becomes king of Kent.
A. D. 593. — Ethelfrith becomes king of
Northumbria.
A. D. 597-685. — The conversion of the Eng-
lish. — "It happened that certain Saxon chil-
dren were to be sold for slaves at the market-
place at Rome ; when Divine Providence, the great
clock-keeper of time, ordering not only hours,
but even instants (Luke ii. 38), to his own
honour, so disposed it, that Gregory, afterwards
first bishop of Rome of that name, was present
to behold them. It grieved the good man to see
the disproportion betwixt the faces and fortunes,
the complexions and conditions, of these children,
condemned to a servile estate, though carrying
liberal looks, so legible was ingenuity in their
faces. It added more to his sorrow, when he
conceived that those youths were twice vassals,
bought by their masters, and ' sold under sin '
(Rom. vii. 14), servants in their bodies, and
slaves in their souls to Satan ; which occasioned
the good man to enter into further inquiry with
the merchants (which set them to sale) what they
were and whence they came, according to this
ensuing dialogue: — Gregory. — ' Whence come
these captives ? ' Merchants. — ' From the isle of
Britain.' Gregory. — ' Are those islanders Chris-
tians?' Merchants. — 'O no, tliey are Pagans.'
Gregory.— 'It is sad that the author of darkness
should possess men with so bright faces. But
what is the name of their particular nation?'
Merchants. — ' They are called Angli.' Gregory.
809
ENGLAND, A. D. 597-685.
Christianity. ' ENGLAND, 6TH CENTURY.
— 'And well may, for their "angel like faces";
it becometh such to be coheirs witli tlie angels
in heaven. In what province of England did
they live?' Merchants. — 'In Deira.' Gregory.
— ' They are to be freed de Dei ira, " from the
anger of God." How call ye the king of that
country ? ' Merchants. — ' Ella. ' Gregory. —
' Surely hallelujah ought to be sung in his king-
dom to the praise of that God who created all
things. ' Thus Gregory's gracious heart set the
i sound of every word to the time of spiritual
goodness. Nor can his words be justly censured
for levity, if we consider how, in that age. the
elegance of poetry consisted in rhythm, and the
eloquence of prose in allusions. And which was
the main, where liis pleasant conceits did end,
there his pious endeavours began; which did
not terminate in a verbal jest, but produce real
effects, which ensued hereupon." — Thomas Ful-
ler, The Church History of Britain, bk. 2, sect.
1. — In 590 the good Gregory became Bishop
of Rome, or Pope, and six years later, still re-
taining the interest awakened in him by the
captive English youth, he dispatched a band of
missionary monks to Britain, with their prior,
Augustine, at their head. Once they turned
back, affrighted by what they heard of the
ferocity of the new heathen possessors of the
once-Christian island of Britain ; but Gregory
laid his commands upon them again, and in the
spring of 597 they crossed the channel from Gaul,
landing at Ebbsfleet, in tlie Isle of Thanet, where
the Jutish invaders had made their first land-
ing, a century and a half before. They found
Ethelbert of Kent, the most powerful of the
English kings at that time, already prepared to
receive them with tolerance. If not with favor,
through the influence of a Christian wife —
queen Bertha, of the royal family of the Franks.
The conversion and baptism of the Kentish king
and court, and the acceptance of the new faith
by great numbers of the people followed quickly.
In November of the same year, 597, Augustine
returned to Gaul to receive his consecration as
"Archbishop of the English," establishing the
See of Canterburj', with the primacy which has
remained in it to the present day. The East
Saxons were the next to bow to the cross and in
604 a bishop, Mellitus, was sent to London.
This ended Augustine's work — and Gregory's —
for both died that year. Then followed an in-
terval of little progress in the work of the mis-
sion, and, afterwards, a reaction towards idolatry
which threatened to destroy it altogether. But
just at this time of discouragement in the south,
a great triumph of Christianity was brought
about in Northumberland, and due, there, as in
Kent, to the influence of a Christian queen.
Edwin, the king, with many of his nobles and
his people, were baptised on Easter Eve, A. D.
627, and a new center of missionary work was
established at York. There, too, an appalling
reverse occurred, when Northumberland was
overrun, in 633, by Penda, the heathen king of
Mercia ; but the kingdom rallied, and the Chris-
tian Church was reestablished, not wholly, as be-
fore, under the patronage and rule of Rome, but
partly by a mission from the ancient Celtic
Church, which did not acknowledge the suprem-
acy of Rome. In the end, however, the Roman
forms of Christianity prevailed, throughout
Britain, as elsewhere in western Europe. Before
the end of the 7th century the religion of the
Cross was established firmly in all parts of the
island, the South Saxons being the latest to re-
ceive it. In the 8th century English missionaries
were laboring zealously for the conversion of
their Saxon and Frisian brethren on the con-
tinent. — G. F. Maclear, Conversion of the West :
The English.
Also in: The Venerable Bede, Ecclesiastical
History. — H. Soames, The Anglo Saxon Church.
— R. C. Jenkins, Canterbury, ch. 2.
End of the 6th Century. — The extent, the
limits and the character of the Teutonic con-
quest. — " Before the end of the 6th century the
Teutonic dominion stretched from the German
ocean to the Severn, and from the English Chan-
nel to the Firth of Forth. The northern part of
the island was still held by Picts and Scots, Celtic
tribes, whose exact ethnical relation to each
other hardly concerns us. And the whole west
side of the island, including not only modern
Wales, but the great Kingdom of Strathclyde,
stretching from Dumbarton to Chester, and the
great peninsula containing Cornwall, Devon and
part of Somerset, was still in the hands of inde-
pendent Britons. The struggle had been a long
and severe one, and the natives often retained
possession of a defensible district long after the
surrounding country had been occupied by the
invaders. It is therefore probable that, at the
end of the 6tli century and even later, there may
have been within tlie English frontier inaccessible
points where detached bodies of Welshmen still
retained a precarious independence. It is proba-
ble also that, within the same frontier, there stiU
were Roman towns, tributary to the conquerors
rather than occupied by them. But by the end
of the 6th century even these exceptions must
have been few. The work of the Conquest, as a
whole, was accomplished. The Teutonic settlers
had occupied by far the greater part of the terri-
tory which they ever were, in the strictest sense,
to occupy. The complete supremacy of the
island was yet to be won; but that was to be
won, when it was won, by quite another process.
The English Conquest of Britain differed in sev-
eral important respects from every other settle-
ment of a Teutonic people within the limits of
the Roman Empire. . . . Though the literal ex-
tirpation of a nation is an impossibilitj', there is
every reason to believe that the Celtic inhabitants
of those parts of Britain which had become
English at the 6th century had been as nearly
extirpated as a nation can be. The women would
doubtless be largely spared, but as far as the male
sex is concerned, we may feel sure that death,
emigration or personal slavery were the only
alternatives which the vanquished found at the
hands of our fathers. The nature of the small
Celtic element in our language would of itself
prove the fact. Nearl_y every Welsh word which
has found its way into English expresses some
small domestic matter, such as women and slaves
would be concerned with." — E. A. Freeman,
Hist, of the Korman Conquest of Eng., ch. 3, sect.
1. — "A glance at the map shows that the mass
of the local nomenclature of England begins
with the Teutonic conquest, while the mass of
the local nomenclature of France is older than
the Teutonic conquest. And, if we turn from
the names on the map to the living speech of
men, there is the most obvious, but the most im-
portant, of all facts, the fact that Englishmen
speak English and that Frenchmen speak French.
810
ENGLAND, 6TH CENTURY.
The Conquest.
ENGLAND. A. D. 655.
That is to say, in Gaul the speech of Rome lived
through tlie Teutonic conquest, while in Britain
it perished in the Teutonic conquest, if it had
not passed away before. And behind this is the
fact, very much less obvious, a good deal less
important, but still very important, that in Gaul
tongues older than Latin live on only in corners
as mere survivals, while in Britain, while Latin
has utterly vanished, a tongue older than Latin
still lives on as the common speech of an appre-
ciable part of the land. .Here then is the final
result open to our own eyes. And it is a final
result which could not have come to pass unless
the Teutonic conquest of Britain had been some-
thing of an utterly different character from the
Teutonic conquest of Gaul — unless the amount of
change, of destruction, of havoc of every kind,
above all, of slaugliter and driving out of the ex-
isting inhabitants, had been far greater in Britain
than it was in Gaul. If the Angles and Saxons in
Britain had been only as the Goths in Spain, or
even as the Franks in Gaul, it is inconceivable
that the final results should have been so utterly
different in the two cases. There is the plain
fact: Gaul remained a Latin-speaking land; Eng-
land became a Teutonic-speaking land. The ob-
vious inference is that, while in Gaul the Teu-
tonic conquest led to no general displacement of
the inhabitants, in England it did lead to such a
general displacement. In Gaul the Pranks simply
settled among a subject people, among whom
they themselves were gradually merged ; in
Britain the Angles and Sa.\ons slew or drove out
the people whom they found in the land, and
settled it again as a new people." — E. A. Free-
man, The Englinh People in its Three Homes
{Lectures to American Audiences), pp. 114-115. —
"Almost to the close of the 6th century the
English conquest of Britain was a sheer dispos-
session of the conquered people ; and, so far as
the English sword in these earlier daj'S reached,
Britain became England, a land, that is, not of
Britons, but of Englishmen. There is no need
to believe that the clearing of the land meant the
general slaughter of the men who held it, or to
account for such a slaughter by supposed differ-
ences between the temper of the English and
those of other conquerors. . . . The displace-
ment of the conquered people was only made
possible by their own stubborn resistance, and
by the slow progress of the conquerors in the
teeth of it. Slaughter no doubt there was on the
battle-field or in towns like Anderida, whose long
defence woke wrath in their besiegers. But for
the most part the Britons cannot have been
slaughtered; they were simply defeated and
drew back." — J. R. Green, 17te Making of Eng-
land, eh. 4. — The view strongly stated above, as
to the completeness of the erasure of Romano-
British society and influence from the whole of
England except its southwestern and north-
western counties, by the English conquest, is
combated as strongly by another less prominent
school of recent historians, represented, for ex-
ample, by j\Ir. Henry C. Coote (The, Romans of
Britain) and by Mr. Charles H. Pearson, who
says: "We know that fugitives from Britain
settled largely during the 5th century in Armor-
ica and in Ireland ; and we may perhaps accept
the legend of St. Ursula as proof that the flight,
in some instances, was directed to the more civil-
ized parts of the continent. But even the pious
story of the 11,000 virgins is sober and credible
by the side of that history which assumes that
some million men and women were slaughtered
or made homeless by a few ship-loads of con-
querors. " — C. H. Pearson, Hist, of Eng. during
the Early and Middle Ages, v. 1, ch. 6. — The
opinion maintained by Prof. Freeman and Mr.
Green (and, no less, by Dr. Stubbs) is the now
generally accepted one.
7th Century. — The so-called " Heptarchy."
— " The old notion of an Heptarchy, of a regu-
lar system of seven Kingdoms, united under the
regular supremacy of a single over-lord, is a
dream which has passed away before the light of
historic criticism. Tlie English Kingdoms in
Britain were ever fluctuating, alike in their
number and in their relations to one another.
The number of perfectly independent states was
sometimes greater and sometimes less than the
mystical seven, and, till the beginning of the
ninth century, the whole nation did not admit
the regular supremacy of any fixed and per-
manent over-lord. Yet it is no less certain that,
among the mass of smaller and more obscure
principalities, seven Kingdoms do stand out in a
marked way, seven Kingdoms of which it is
possible to recover something like a continuous
history, seven Kingdoms which alone supplied
candidates for the dominion of the whole island. '*
These seven kingdoms were Kent, Sussex, Essex,
Wessex, East Anglia, Northumberland and Mer-
cia. — E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the Norman Conq.
of Eng., ch. 3.— "After the territorial boundaries
had become more settled, there appeared at the
commencement of the seventh century seven or
eight greater and smaller kingdoms. . . . Histo-
rians have described this condition of things as
the Heptarchy, disregarding the early disappear-
ance of Sussex, and the existence of still smaller
kingdoms. But this grouping was neither based
upon equality, nor destined to last for any
length of time. It was the common interest of
these smaller states to withstand -the sudden and
often dangerous invasions of their western and
northern neighbours; and, accordingly, which-
ever king was capable of successfully combating
the common foe, acquired for the time a certain
superior rank, which some historians denote by
the title of Bretwalda. By this name can only
be understood an actual and recognized tempo-
rary superiority ; first ascribed to JElla of Sussex,
and later passing to Northumbria, until Wessex
finally attains a real and lasting supremacy. It
was geographical position which determined these
relations of superiority. The small kingdoms in
the west were shielded by the greater ones of
Northumberland, Mercia and Wessex, as though
by crescent-shaped forelands — which in their
struggles with the Welsh kingdoms, with Strath-
clyde and Cumbria, with Picts and Scots, were
continually in a state of martial activity. And
so the smaller western kingdoms followed the
three warlike ones ; and round these Anglo-Saxon
history revolves for two whole centuries, until in
Wessex we find a combination of most of the
conditions which are necessary to the existence of
a great State." — R. Gneist, Hist, of the Eng. Con-
stitution, ch. 3.
A. D. 617. — Edwin becomes king of North-
umbria.
A. D. 634. — 0sv7ald becomes king of North-
umbria.
A. D. 655. — Oswi becomes king of Northum-
bria.
811
ENGLAND, A. D. 670.
The Danes.
ENGLAND, A. D. 855-880.
A. D. 670. — Egfrith becomes king of North-
umbria.
A. D. 688.— Ini becomes king of the West
Saxons.
A. D. 716. — Ethelbald becomes king of
Mercia.
A. D. 758. — Offa becomes king of Mercia.
A. D. 794. — Cenwulf becomes king of Mercia.
A. D. 800. — Accession of the West Saxon
king Ecgberht.
A. D. 800-836. — The supremacy of Wessex.
— The first king of all the English. — "And now
I have come to the reigu of Ecgberht, the great
Bretwalda. He was an ^theling of the blood of
Cerdic, and he is said to have been the son of
Ealhmund, and Ealhmund is said to have been
an Uuder-king of Kent. For the old line of the
Kings of Kent had come to an end and Kent was
now sometimes under "Wessex and sometimes
under Mercia. . . . Wlien Beorhtric died in 800,
he [Ecgbei'ht] was chosen King of the West-
Saxons. He reigned until 836, and in that time
he brought all the English Kingdoms, and the
greater part of Britain, more or less under his
power. The southern part of the island, all
Kent, Sussex, and Essex, he joined on to his own
Kingdom, and set his sons or other .(Ethelings to
reign over them as his Under-kings. But Nor-
thumberland, Mercia, and East-Auglia were not
brought so completely under his power as this.
Their Kings submitted to Ecgberht and acknowl-
edged him as their over-lord, but they went on
reigning in their own Kingdoms, and assembling
their own Wise Men, just as they did before.
They became what in after times was called his
'vassals,' what in English was called being his
' men. ' . . . Besides the English Kings, Ecgberht
bi'ought the Welsh, both in Wales and in Corn-
wall, more completely under his power. ... So
King Ecgberht was Lord from the Irish Sea to
the German Ocean, and from the English Chan-
nel to the Firth of Forth. So it is not wonderful
if, in his charters, he not only called himself King
of the West-Saxons or King of the West-Saxons
and Kentishman, but sometimes ' Rex Anglorum,'
or 'King of the English.' But amidst all this
glory there were signs of great evils at hand.
The Danes came several times." — E. A. Free-
man, Old English Hist, for Children, ch. 7.
A. D. 836.— Accession of the West Saxon
king Ethelwulf.
A. D. 855-880.— Conquests and settlements
of the Danes. — The heroic struggle of Alfred
the Great. — The " Peace of Wedmore " and
the " Danelaw." — King Alfred's character and
reign. — " The Danish invasions of England . . .
fall naturally into three periods, each of which
finds its parallel in the course of the English Con-
quest of Britain. . . . We first find a period in
which the object of the invaders seems to be
simple plunder. They land, they harry the coun-
try, they fight, if need be, to secure their booty,
but whether defeated or victorious, they equally
return to their ships, and sail away with what
they have gathered. This period mcludes the
time from the first recorded invasion [A. D. 787]
till the latter half of the ninth century. Next
conies a time in which the object of the North-
men is clearly no longer mere plunder, but settle-
ment. ... in the reign of Ethelwulf the son of
Ecgberht it is recorded that the heathen men
wintered for the first time in the Isle of Sheppey
[A. D. 855]. This marks the transition from the
first to the second period of their invasions. . . •
It was not however till about eleven years from
this time that the settlement actually began.
Meanwhile the sceptre of the West-Saxons passed
from one hand to another. . . . Four sons of
Ethelwulf reigned in succession, and the reigns
of the first three among them [Ethelbald, A. D.
858, Ethelberiit, 860, Ethelred, 866] make up to-
gether only thirteen years. In the reign of the
third of these princes, Ethelred I., the second
period of the invasions fairly begins. Five years
were spent by the Northmen in ravaging and con-
quering the tributary Kingdoms. Northumber-
land, still disputed between rival Kings, fell an
easy prey [867-869], and one or two puppet
princes did not scruple to receive a tributary
crown at the hands of the heathen invaders. They
next entered IVIercia [868], they seized Notting-
ham, and the West-Saxon King hastening to the
relief of his vassals, was unable to dislodge them
from that stronghold. East Anglia was completely
conquered [866-870] and its King Eadmund died
a martyr. At last the full storm of invasion
burst upon Wessex itself [871]. King .iEthelred,
the first of a long line of West-Saxon hero-Kings,
supported by his greater brother .iElfred [Alfred
the Great] met the invaders in battle after battle
with varied success. He died and .iElfred suc-
ceeded, in the thick of the struggle. In this year
[871], the last of Ethelred and the first of
iElfred, nine pitched battles, besides smaller en-
gagements, were fought with the heathens on
West-Saxon ground. At last peace was made ;
the Northmen retreated to London, within the
Jlercian frontier; Wessex was for the moment
delivered, but the supremacy won by Ecgberht
was lost. For a few years Wesse.x was subjected
to nothing more than temporary incursions, but
Northumberland and part of Mercia were system-
atically occupied by the Northmen, and the land
was divided among them. ... At last the North-
men, now settled in a large jaart of the island,
made a second attempt to add Wessex itself to
their possessions [878]. For a moment the land
seemed conquered ; jElfrcd himself lay hid in the
marshes of Somersetshire ; men might well deem
that the Empire of Ecgberht and the Kingdom of
Cerdic Itself, had vanished for ever. But the
strong heart of the most renowned of Englishmen,
the saint, the scholar, the hero, and the lawgiver,
carried his people safely through this most terri-
ble of dangers. Within the same year the Dragon
of Wessex was again victorious [at the battle of
Ethandun, or Edington], and the Northmen were
driven to conclude a peace which Englishmen,
fifty years sooner, would have deemed the lowest
depth of degradation, but which might now bo
fairly looked upon as honourable and even as
triumphant. By the terms of the Peace of Wed-
more the Northmen were to evacuate Wessex and
the part of Mercia south-west of Watling-Street;
they, or at least their chiefs, were to submit to
baptism, and they were to receive the whole land
beyond Watling-Street as vassals of the West-
Saxon King. . . . The exact boundary started
from the Thames, along the Lea to its source,
then right to Bedford and along the Ouse till it
meets Watling-Street, then along Watling-Street
to the Welsh border. See 'jElfred and Guthrum's
Peace,' Thorpe's 'Laws and Institutes,' i. 153.
This frontier gives London to the English ; but it
seems that .Alfred did not obtain full possession
of London till 886." The territory thus conceded
812
ENGLAND, A. D. 855-880. Alfred tli« Great. ENGLAND, A. D. 855-880.
to the Danes, -wliicli included all northeastern
England from the Thames to the Tyne, was
thenceforth known by the name of the Danelagh
or Danelaw, signifying the country subject to
the law of the Danes. The Peace of Wedmore
ended the second period of the Danish invasions.
The third period, which was not opened until a
full century later, embraced tlie actual conquest
of the whole of England by a Danish king and its
temporary annexation to the dominions of the
Danish crown.- — E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the Nor-
man Conq. of Eng., ch. 2, with foot-note. — "Now
that peace was restored, and the Danes driven out
of his domains, it remained to be seen whether
Alfred was as good a ruler as he was a soldier.
. . . What did he see ? The towns, even London
itself, pillaged, ruined, or burnt down; the mon-
asteries destroyed ; the people wild and lawless ;
Ignorance, rougluiess, insecurity everywhere. It
is almost incredible with what a brave heart he
set himself to repair all this ; how his great and
noble aims were still before him ; how hard he
strove, and how much he achieved. First of all
he seems to have sought for helpers. Like most
clever men, he was good at reading characters.
He soon saw who would be true, brave, wise
friends, and he collected these around him. Some
of them he fetched from over the sea, from France
and Germany ; our friend Asser from Wales, or,
as he calls his country, 'Western Britain,' while
England, he calls ' Saxony.' He says he first saw
Alfred ' in a royal vill, which is called Dene ' in
Sussex. ' He received me with kindness, and
asked me eagerly to devote myself to his service,
and become his friend ; to leave everything which
I possessed on the left or western ban k of the
Severn, and promised that he would give more
than an equivalent for it in his own dominions.
I replied that I could not rashly and incautiously
promise such things ; for it seemed to be unjust
that I should leave those sacred places in which
I had been bred, educated, crowned, and ordained
for the sake of any earthly honour and power,
unless upon compulsion. Upon this he said, "If
you cannot accede to this, at least let me have
your service in part; spend six months of the
year with me here, and the other six months
in Britain. " ' And to this after a time Asser con-
sented. What were the principal things he turned
his mind to after providing for the defence of his
kingdom, and collecting his friends and counsel-
lors about him ? Law — j ustice — religion — ■ edu-
cation. He collected and studied the old laws of
his nation ; what he thought good he kept, what
he disapproved he left out. He added others,
especially the ten commandments and some other
parts of the law of Moses. Then he laid them
all before his Witan, or wise men, and with their
approval published them. . . . The state of jus-
tice in England was dreadful at this time. . . .
Alfred's way of curing this was by inquiring into
all cases, as far as he possibly could, himself; and
Asser says he did this ' especially for the sake of
the poor, to whose interest, day and night, he ever
was wonderfully attentive ; for in the whole king-
dom the poor, besides him, had few or no pro-
tectors.' . . . When he found that the judges had
made mistakes through ignorance, he rebuked
them, and told them they must either grow wiser
or give up their posts ; and soon the old earls and
other judges, who had been unlearned from their
cradles, began to study diligently. . . . For re-
viving and spreading religion among his people
he used the best means that he knew of ; that is,
he founded new monasteries and restored old
ones, and did his utmost to get good bishops and
clergymen. For his own part, he strove to prac-
tise in all ways what he taught to others. , . .
Education was in a still worse condition than
everything else. . . . All the schools had been
broken up. Alfred says that when he began to
reign there were very few clergymen south of the
Humber who could even understand the Prayer-
book. (That was still in Latin, as the Roman
missionaries had brouglit it.) And south of the
Tliames he could not remember one. His first
care was to get better-educated clergy and bish-
ops. And next to get the laymen taught also.
. . . He founded monasteries and schools, and
restored the old ones which had been ruined. He
iiad a school in his court for his own children and
the children of his nobles. But at the very out-
set a most serious difficulty confronted Alfred.
Where was he to get books ? At this time, as far
as we can judge, there can only have been one,
or at most two books in the English language —
the long poem of CaBdmon about the creation of
the world, &c., and the poem of Beowulf about
warriors and fiery dragons. There were many
English ballads and songs, but whether these were
written down I do not know. There was no book
of history, not even English history ; no book of
geography, no religious books, no philosophy.
Bede, who had written so many books, had writ-
ten them all in Latin. ... So when they had a
time of ' stillness ' the king and his learned friends
set to work and translated books into English;
and Alfred, who was as modest and candid as he
was wise, put into the preface of one of his trans-
lations tliat he hoped, if any one knew Latin bet-
ter than he did, that he would not blame him, for
he could but do according to his ability. . . .
Beside all this, he had a great many other occu-
pations. Asser, who often lived with him for
months at a time, gives us an account of his busy
life. Notwithstanding his infirmities and other
hindrances, ' he continued to carry on the govern-
ment, and to exercise hunting in all its branches;
to teach his workers in gold and artificers of all
kinds, his falconers, hawkers, and dog-keepers;
to build houses, majestic and good, beyond all
the precedents of his ancestors, by his new me-
chanical inventions; to recite the Saxon books
(Asser, being a Welshman, always calls the Eng-
lish, Saxon), and especially to learn by heart the
Saxon poems, and to make others learn them ; he
never desisted from studying most diligently to
the best of his ability ; he attended the mass and
other daUy services of religion ; he was frequent
in psalm-singing and prayer; ... he bestowed
alms and largesses on both natives and foreigners
of all countries ; he was affable and pleasant to
all, and curiously eager to investigate things un-
known.' " — M. J. Guest, Lectures on the Hist, of
Eng., led. 9. — "It is no easy task for anyone
who has been studying his [Alfred's] life and
works to set reasonable bounds to their reverence,
and enthusiasm, for the man. Lest the reader
should think my estimate tainted with the pro-
verbial weakness of biographers for their heroes,
let them turn to the words in which the earliest,
and the last of the English historians of that time,
sum up the character of Alfred. Florence of
Worcester, writing in the century after his death,
speaks of him as ' that famous, warlike, victorious
king ; the zealous protector of widows, scholars.
813
ENGLAND, A. D. 855-880.
Alfred the Great.
ENGLAND, A. D. 955.
orphans and the poor ; skilled in the Saxon poets ;
affable and liberal to all ; endowed with prudence,
fortitude, justice, and temperance; most patient
under the infirmity which he daily suffered; a
most stern inquisitor in executing justice; vigi-
lant aud devoted in the service of God.' Mr.
Freeman, in his ' History of the Norman Con-
quest,' has laid down the portrait in bold aud last-
ing colours, in a passage as truthful as it is elo-
quent, which those who are familiar with it will
be glad to meet again, while those who do not
know it will be grateful to me for substituting
for any poor words of my own. ' Alfred, the
unwilling author of these great changes, is the
most perfect character in history. He is a sin-
'gular instance of a prince who has become a hero
of romance, who, as such, has had countless im-
aginary exploits attributed to him, but to wliose
character romance has done no more than justice,
and who appears in exactly the same light in his-
tory and in fable. No other man on record has
ever so thoroughly united all the virtues both of
tlie ruler and of the private man. In no other
man on record were so many virtues disfigured
by so little alloy. A saint without superstition,
a scbolar without ostentation, a warrior all whose
wars were fought in the defence of his country,
a conqueror whose laurels were never stained by
cruelty, a prince never cast down by adversity,
never lifted up to insolence in the day of triumph
— there is no other name in history to compare
with his. Saint Lewis comes nearest to him in
the union of a more than monastic piety with the
highest civil, military, and domestic virtues.
Both of them stand forth in honourable contrast
to the abject superstition of some other royal
saints, who were so selfishly engaged in the care
of their own souls that they refused either to
raise up heirs for their throne, or to strike a blow
on behalf of their peoijle. But even in Saint
Lewis we see a disposition to forsake an immedi-
ate sphere of duty for the sake of distant and
unprofitable, however pious and glorious, under-
takings. The true duties of the King of the
French clearly lay in France, and not in Egypt
or Tunis. No such charge lies at the door of the
great King of the West Saxons. With an inquir-
ing spirit whicli took in the whole world, for
purposes alike of scientific inquiry and of Chris-
tian benevolence, Alfred never forgot that his
first duty was to his own people. He forestalled
our own age in sending expeditions to explore
the Northern Ocean, aud in sending alms to the
distant Churches of India; but he neither forsook
his crown, like some of his predecessors, nor neg-
lected his duties, like some of his successors.
Tlie virtue of Alfred, like the virtue of Washing-
ton, consisted in no marvellous displays of super-
human genius, but in the simple, straightfor-
ward discharge of the duty of the moment. But
Washington, soldier, statesman, and patriot, like
Alfred, has no claim to Alfred's further characters
of saint and scholar. William the Silent, too, has
nothing to set against Alfred's literary merits;
ind in his career, glorious as it is, there is an ele-
ment of intrigue and cliicanery utterly alien to
the noble simplicity of both Alfred and Washing-
ton. The same union of zeal for religion and
learning witli the highest gifts of the warrior and
the statesman is found, on a wider field of action,
in Charles the Great. But even Charles cannot
aspire to the pure glory of Alfred. Amidst all
lihe splendour of conquest and legislation, we can-
not be blind to an alloy of personal ambition, of
personal vice, to occasional unjust aggressions
and occasional acts of cruelty. Among our own
later princes, the great Edward alone can bear
for a moment the comparison with his glorious
ancestor. And, when tried by such a standard,
even the great Edward fails. Even in him we do
not see the same wonderful union of gifts and
virtues which so seldom meet together; we can-
not acquit Edward of occasional acts of violence,
of occasional recklessness as to means ; we can-
not attribute to him the pure, simple, almost
childlike disinterestedness which marks the char-
acter of Alfred.' Let Wordsworth, on behalf of
the poets of England, complete the picture :
' Behold a pupil of the monkish gown.
The pious Alfred, king to justice dear !
Lord of the harp and liberating spear ;
Mirror of princes ! Indigent renown
Might range the starry ether for a crown
Equal to his deserts, who, like the year.
Pours forth his bounty, like the day doth cheer.
And awes like night, with mercy -tempered frown.
Base from this noble miser of his time
No moment steals ; pain narrows not his cares —
Though small his kingdom as a spark or gem,
Of Alfred boasts remote Jerusalem,
And Christian India, through her widespread
clime.
In sacred converse gifts with Alfred shares.
— Thos. Hughes, Alfred the Great, ch. 24.
Also m: R. Pauli, Life of Alfred the Qreat. —
Asser, Life of Alfred. — See, also, Normans, and
Education, Medieval.
A. D. 901. — Accession of the West Saxon
king Edward, called The Elder.
A. D. 925. — Accession of the 'West Saxon
king Ethelstan.
A. D. 938. — The battle of Brunnaburgh. —
Alfred the Great, dying in 901, was succeeded by
his son, Edward, and Edward, in turn, was fol-
lowed, A. D. 925, by his son Athelstane, or ^th-
alsten. In the reign of Athelstane a great league
was formed against him by the Northumbrian
Danes with the Scots, with the Danes of Dulilin
and with the Britons of Strathclyde and Cumbria.
Athelstane defeated the confederates in a mighty
battle, celebrated in one of the finest of Old-
English war-songs, and also in one of the Sagas
of the Norse tongue, as the Battle of Brunna-
burgh or Brunanburh, but the site of which is
unknown. ' ' Five Kings and seven northern
larls or earls fell in the strife. . . . Constantlne
the Scot fled to tlie north, mourning his fair-
haired son, who perished in the slaughter. Anlaf
[or Olaf, the leader of the Danes or Ostmen of
Dublin], with a sad and scattered remnant of his
forces, escaped to Ireland. . . . The victory was
so decisive that, during the remainder of the
reign of Athelstane, no enemy dared to rise up
against him; his supremacy was acknowledged
without contest, and his glory extended to dis-
tant realms." — F. Palgrave, Hist, of the Anglo-
Saxons, ch. 10. — Mr. Skene is of opinion that
the battle of Brunnaburgh was fought at Aid-
borough, near York. — W. F. Skene, Celtic Scot-
land, ». 1, p. 357.
A. D. 940. — Accession of the West Saxon
king Edmund.
A. D. 946. — Accession of the West Saxon
king Edred.
A. D. 955.- -Accession of the West Saxon
king Edwig.
814
ENGLAND, A. D. 958.
The Witenagemot.
ENGLAND, A. D. 958.
A. D. 958.— Accession of the West Saxon
king Edgar.
A. D. 958. — Completed union of the realm.
Increase of kingly authority. — Approach to-
wards feudalism.— Rise of the Witenagemot.
—Decline of the Freemen. — ' Before Alfred's
son Edward died, the whole of Mercla was in-
corporated with his immediate dominions. The
way in which the thing was done was more re-
markable than the thing itself. Like the Romans,
he made the fortified towns the means of uphold-
ing his power. But unlike the Romans, he did
not garrison them with colonists from amongst
his own immediate dependents. He filled them,
as Henry the Fowler did afterwards in Saxony,
with free townsmen, whose hearts were at one
with their fellow countrymen around. Before
he died in 924, the Danish chiefs in the land be-
yond the Humber had acknowledged his over-
lordship, and even the Celts of Wales and Scot-
land had given in their submission In some form
which they were not likely to interpret too strictly.
His son and his two grandsons, Athelstan, Ed-
mund, and Edred completed the work, and
when after the short and troubled interval of
Edwy's rule in Wessex, Edgar united the undi-
vided realm under his sway in 958, he had no in-
ternal enemies to suppress. He allowed the
Celtic Scottish King who had succeeded to the
inlieritance of the Pictish race to possess the old
Northumbrian land north of the Tweed, where
they and their descendants learned the habits
and speech of Englishmen. But he treated him
and the other Celtic kings distinctly as his in-
feriors, though it was perhaps well for him that
he did not attempt to impose upon them any
very tangible tokens of his supremacy. The
story of his being rowed by eight kings on the
Dee is doubtless only a legend by which the
peaceful king "was glorified in the troubled times
which followed. Such a struggle, so successfully
conducted, could not fail to be accompanied by
a vast increase of that kingly authority which
had been on the growth from the time of its first
establishment. The hereditary ealdormen, the
representatives of the old kingly houses, had
passed away. The old tribes, or — where their
limitations had been obliterated by the tide of
Danish conquest, as was the case in central and
northern England — the new artificial divisions
which had taken their place, were now known as
shires, and the very name testified that they were
regarded only as parts of a greater whole. The
shire mote still continued the tradition of the old
popular assemblies. At its head as presidents of
its deliberations were the ealdorman and the
bishop, each of them owing their appointment to
the king, and it was summoned by the shire-
reeve or sheriff, himself even more directly an
officer of the king, whose business it was to see
that all the royal dues were paid within the shire.
In the more general concerns of the kingdom,
the king consulted with his Witan, whose meet-
mgs were called the Witenagemot, a body, which,
at least for all ordinary purposes, was composed
not of any representatives of the shire-motes,
but of his own dependents, the ealdormen, the
bishops, and a certain number of thegns whose
name, meaning ' servants ', implied at least at
first, that they either were or had at one time been
in some way in the employment of the king. . . .
The necessities of war . . . combined with the
sluggishness of the mass of the population to
favour the growth of a military force, which
would leave the tillers of the soil to their own
peaceful occupations. As the conditions which
make a standing army possible on a large scale
did not yet exist, such a force must be afforded
by a special class, and that class must be com-
posed of those who either had too much land to
till themselves, or, having no land at all, were re-
leased from the bonds which tied the cultivator
to the soil, in other words, it must be composed
of a landed aristocracy and its dependents. In
working out this change, England was only aim-
ing at the results which similar conditions were
producing on the Continent. But just as the
homogeneousness of the population drew even
the foreign element of the church into harmony
with the established institutions, so it was with
the military aristocracy. It grouped itself round
the king, and it supplemented, instead of over-
throwing, the old popular assemblies. Two
classes of men, the eorls and the gesiths, had be'en
marked out from their fellows at the time of tlie
conquest. The thegn of Edgar's day differed
from both, but he had some of the distinguish-
ing marks of either. He was not like the gesith,
a mere personal follower of the king. He did not,
like the eorl, owe his position to his birth. Yet
his relation to the king was a close one, and he
had a hold upon the land as firm as that of thfe
older eorl. He may, perhaps, best be described
as a gesith, who had acquired the position of an
eorl without entirely throwing off his own charac-
teristics. . . . There can be little doubt that Jhe
change began in the practice of granting special
estates in the folkland,or common undivided land,
to special persons. At first this land was doubt-
less held to be the property of the tribe. [This is
now questioned by VinogradofE and others. See
FoLCLAND.] . . . When the king rose above the
tribes, he granted it himself with the consent of his
Witan. A large portion was granted to churcKes
and monasteries. But a large portion went in
privates estates, or book land, as it was called,
from the book or charter which conveyed tRem
to the king's own gesiths, or to members of His
own family. The gesith thus ceased to be a mere
member of the king's military household. He
became a landowner as well, with special duties
to perform to the king. ... He had special juris-
diction given him over his tenants and serfs, ex-
empting him and them from the authority of the
hundred mote, though they still remained, except
in very exceptional cases, under the authority of
the shire mote. . . . Even up to the Norman con-
quest this change was still going on. To the end,
indeed, the old constitutional forms were not
broken down. The hundred mote was not aban-
doned, where freemen enough remained to fill it.
Even where all the land of a hundred had passed
under the protection of a lord there was little out-
ward change. . . . There was thus no actual
breach of continuity in the nation. The thegn-
hood pushed its roots down, as it were, amongst
the free classes. Nevertheless there was a dan-
ger of such a breach of continuity coming about.
The freemen entered more and more largely into
a condition of dependence, and there was a
great risk lest such a condition of dependence
should become a condition of servitude. Here
and there, by some extraordinary stroke of luck,
a freeman niight rise to be a thegn. But the con-
dition of the class to which he belonged was de-
teriorating every dav. The downward progress
815
ENGLAND, A. D. 958. Danish Conquest. ENGLAND, A. D. 1016-1042.
to serfdom was too easy to take, and by large
masses of the population it was already taken.
Below the increasing numbers of the serfs was to
be. found the lower class of slaves, who were ac-
tually the property of their masters. The Witcn-
agemot was in reality a select body of thegns, if
the bishops, who held their lands in much the
same way, be regarded as thegns. In was rather
an inchoate House of Lords, than an inchoate Par-
liament, after our modern ideas. It was natural
that a body of men which united a great part of
the wealth with almost all the influence in the
kingdom should be possessed of high constitu-
tional powers. The Witenagemot elected the
king, though as yet they always chose him out
of the royal family, which was held to have sprung
from the god Woden. There were even cases in
which they deposed unworthy kings." — S. R.
Gardiner and J. B. Mulliuger, Introd. to the Study
of Em/. Hist., pt. 1, ch. 2. sect. 16-31.
A. D. 975. — Accession of the West Saxon
king Edward, called The Martyr.
A. D. 979. — Accession of the West Saxon
king Ethelred, called The Unready.
A. D. 979-1016. — The Danish conquest. —
"Then [A. D. 979] commenced one of the longest
and most disastrous reigns of the Saxon kings,
with the accession of Ethelred II., justly styled
Ethelred the Unready. The Northmen now re-
newed their plundering and conquering expedi-
tions against England; while England had a
worthless waverer for her ruler, and many of her
chief men turned traitors to their king and coun-
try. Always a laggart in open war, Ethelred
tried in 1001 the cowardly and foolish policy of
buying off the enemies whom he dared not en-
counter. The tax called Dane-gelt was then
levied to provide ' a tribute for the Danish men
on account of the great terror which they caused.'
To pay money thus was In effect to hire the
enemy to renew the war. In 1003 Ethelred tried
the still more weak and wicked measure of rid-
ding himself of his enemies by treacherous mas-
sacre. Great numbers of Danes were now living
in England, intermixed with the Anglo-Saxon
population. Ethelred resolved to relieve himself
from all real or supposed danger of these Scan-
dinavian settlers taking part with their invading
kinsmen, by sending secret orders throughout
his dominions for the putting to death of every
Dane, man, woman, and child, on St. Brice's
Day, Nov. 13. This atrocious order wa.s exe-
cuted only in Southern England, that is, in the
West-Saxon territories; but lai-ge numbers of the
Danish race were murdered there while dwelling
in full security among their Saxon neighbours.
. . . Among the victims was a royal Danish
lady, named Gunhilde, who was sister of Sweyn,
king of Denmark, and who had man-ied and set-
tled in England. . . . The news of tlie massacre
of St. Brice soon spread over the Continent, ex-
citing the deepest indignation against the English
and their king. Sweyn collected in Denmark a
larger fleet and army than the north had ever be-
fore sent forth, and solemnly vowed to conquer
England or perish in the attempt. He landed on
the south coast of Devon, obtained possession of
Exeter by the treachery of its governor, and then
marched through western and southern England,
marking every shire with fire, famine and slaugh-
ter; but he was unable to take London, which
was defended against the repeated attacks of the
Danes with strong courage and patriotism, such
as seemed to have died out in the rest of Sason
England. In 1013, the wretched king Ethelred
fled the realm and sought shelter in Normandy.
Sweyn was acknowledged king in all the northern
and western shires, but he died in 1014, while his
vow of conquest was only partly accomplished.
The English now sent for Ethelred back from
Normandy, promising loyalty to him as their
lawful king, ' ijrovided he would rule over them
more justly than he had done before.' Ethelred
willingly promised amendment, and returned to
reign amidst strife and misery for two years
more. His implacable enemy, Sweyn, was in-
deed dead; but the Danish host which Sweyn
had led thither was still in England, under the
command of Sweyn's sou, Canute [or Cnut], a
prince equal in military prowess to his father,
and far superior to him and to all other princes
of the time in statesmanship and general ability.
Ethelred died in 1016, while the war with Canute
was yet raging. Ethelred's son, Edmund, sur-
named Ironside, was chosen king by the great
council then assembled in London, but great num-
bers of the Saxons made their submission to
Canute. The remarkable personal valour of Ed-
mund, strongly aided by the bravery of his faith-
ful Londoners, maintained the war for nearly a
year, when Canute agreed to a compromise, by
which he and Edmund divided the land between
them. But within a few months after this, the
royal Ironside died by the hand of an assassin,
and Canute obtained the whole realm of the
English race. A Danish dynasty was now [A. D.
1016] established in England for three reigns." —
Sir E. S. Creasy, Hist, of Etuj., v. 1, ch. 5.
Also in: J. M. Lappenberg, Eng. under the
Anglo-Saxon Kings, v. 2, pp. 151-333. — See, also,
Malden, and Ass.yndun, Battles of.
A. D. 1016. — Accession and death of King
Edmund Ironside.
A. D. 1016-1042. — The Reign of the Danish
kings. — "Cnut's rule was not as terrible as
might have been feared. He was perfectly un-
scrupulous in striking down the treacherous and
mischievous chieftains who had made a trade of
Ethelred's weakness and the country's divisions.
But he was wise and strong enough to rule, not
by increasing but by allaying those divisions.
Resting his power upon his Scandinavian king-
doms beyond the sea, upon his Danish country-
men in England, and his Danish huscarles, or
specially trained soldiers in his service, he was
able, without e veu the appearance of weakness, to
do what in him lay to bind Dane and Englishman
together as common instruments of Ms power.
Fidelity counted more with him than birth. To
bring England itself into unity was beyond his
power. 'The device which he hit upon was
operative onlj' in hands as strong as his own.
There were to be four great earls, deriving their
name from the Danish word jarl, centralizing the
forces of government in Wessex, in Mercia, in
East Anglia, and in Northumberland. With
Cnut the four were officials of the highest class.
They were there because he placed them there.
They would cease to be there if he so willed it.
But it could hardly be that it would always be
so. Some day or another, unless a great catas-
trophe swept away Cnut and his creation, the
earldoms would pass into territorial sovereignties
and the divisions of England would be made evi-
dent openly." — S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mul-
linger, Int. to tfie Study of Eng. Hist., ch. 3, sect.
816
ENGLAND, 1016-1042.
7?ie last Saxoji King.
ENGLAND, 1043-1066.
25. — "He [Canute] ruled nominally at least, a
larger European dominion than any English sov-
ereign has ever done ; and perhaps also a more
homogeneous one. No potentate of the time came
near him except the king of Germany, the em-
peror, with whom he was allied as an equal.
The king of the Norwegians, the Danes, and a
great part of the Swedes, was in a position to
found a Scandinavian empire with IJritain an-
nexed. Canute's division of his dominions on his
death-bed, showed that he saw this to be impos-
sible; Norway, for a century and a half after
his strong hand was removed, was broken up
amongst an anarchical crew of piratic and blood-
thirsty princes, nor couid Denmark be regarded
as likely to continue united with England. The
English nation was too much divided and de-
moralised to retain hold on Scandinavia, even if
the condition of the latter had allowed it. Hence
Canute determined that during his life, as after
his death, the nations should be governed on
their own principles. . . . The four nations of
the English, Northumbrians, East Angles, Mer-
cians and West Saxons, might, each under their
own national leader, obey a sovereign who was
strong enough to enforce peace amongst them.
The great earldoms of Canute's reign were per-
haps a nearer approach to a feudal division of
England than anything which followed the Nor-
man Conquest. . . . And the extent to which
this creation of the four earldoms affected the
history of the next half-century cannot be ex-
aggerated. The certain tendency of such an
arrangement to become hereditary, and the cer-
tain tendency of the hereditary occupation of
great fiefs ultimately to overwhelm the royal
power, are well exemplified. . . . The Norman
Conquest restored national unity at a tremendous
temporary sacrifice, just as the Danish Conquest
in other ways, and by a reverse process, had
helped to create it." — W. Stubbs, Const. Hut. of
Eng., ch. 7, sect. 77.— Canute died in 1035. He
was succeeded by his two sons, Harold Barefoot
(1035-1040) and Harthacnute or Hardicanute
(1040-1042), after which the Saxon line of kings
was momentarily restored. — E. A. Freeman,
Hist, of the Norman Conq. of Eng., ch. 6.
A. D. 1035. — Accession of Harold, son of
Cnut.
A. D. 1040. — Accession of Harthacnut, or
Hardicanute.
A. D. 1042. — Accession of Edv^ard the
Confessor.
A. D. 1042-1066.— The last of the Saxon
kings. — "The love which Canute had inspired
by his wise and conciliatory rule was dissipated
by the bad government of his sons, Harold and
Harthacnut, who ruled in turn. After seven
years of misgovemment, or rather anarchy, Eng-
land, freed from the hated rule of Harthacnut
by his death, returned to its old line of kings,
and ' all folk chose Edward [surnamed The Con-
fessor, son of Etheired the Unready] to king,' as
was his right by birth. Not that he was, accord-
ing to our ideas, the direct heir, since Edward,
the son of Edmund Ironside, stUl lived, an exile
in Hungary. But the Saxons, by choosing Ed-
ward the Confessor, reasserted for the last time
their right to elect that one of the hereditary line
who was most available. With the reign of
Edward the Confessor the Norman Conquest
really began. We have seen the connection be-
tween England and Normandy begun by the
marriage of Etheired the Unready to Emma the
daughter of Richard the Fearless, and cemented
by the refuge offered to the English exiles in the
court of the Norman duke. Edward had long
found a home there in Canute's time. . . .
Brought up under Norman influence, Edward
had contracted the ideas and sympathies of ^s
adopted home. On his election to the English
throne the French tongue became the language
of the court, Norman favourites followed in his
train, to be foisted into important offices of State
and Church, and thus inaugurate that Norman-
iziug policy which was to draw on the Norman
Conquest. Had it not been for this, William
would never have had any claim on England."
The Normanizing policy of king Edward roused
the opposition of a strong English party, headed
by the great West-Saxon Earl Godwine, who
had been lifted from an obscure origin to vast
power in England by the favor of Canute, and
whose son Harold held the earldom of East
Anglia. "Edward, raised to the throne chiefly
through the influence of Godwine, shortly mar-
ried his daughter, and at first ruled England
leaning on the assistance, and almost over-
shadowed by the power of the great earl." But
Edward was Norman at heart and Godwine was
thoroughly English; whence quarrels were not
long in arising. They came to the crisis in 1051,
by reason of a bloody tumult at Dover, provoked
by insolent conduct on the part of a train of
French visitors returning home from Edward's
Court. Godwine was commanded to punish the
townsmen of Dover and refused, whereupon the
king obtained a sentence of outlawry, not only
against the earl, but against his sons. "God-
wine, obliged to bow before the united power of
his enemies, was forced to fly the land. He
went to Flanders with his son Swegen, while
Harold and Leofwine went to Ireland, to be well
received by Dermot king of Leinster. Many
Englishmen seem to have followed him in his
exile: for a year the foreign party was triumph-
ant, and the first stage of the Norman Conquest
complete. It was at this important crisis that
William [Duke of Normandy], secure at home,
visited his cousin Edward. . . . Friendly rela-
tions we may be sure had existed between the
two cousins, and if, as is not improbable, Wil-
liam had begun to hope that he might some day
succeed to the English throne, what more favour-
able opportunity for a visit could have been
found? Edward had lost all hopes of ever hav-
ing any children. . . . William came, and it
would seem, gained all that he desired. For this
most probably was the date of some promise on
Edward's part that William should succeed him
on his death. The whole question is beset with
difliculties. The Norman chroniclers alone men-
tion it, and give no dates. Edward had no right
to will away his crown, the disposition of which
lay with King and Witenagemot (or assembly of
Wise Men, the grandees of the country), and his
last act was to reverse the promise, if ever given,
in favour of Harold, Godwine 's son. But were
it not for some such promise, it is hard to see
liow William could have subsequently made the
Normans and the world believe in the sacredness
of his claim. . . . William returned to Nor-
mandy; but next year Edward was forced to
change his policy." Godwine and his sons re-
turned to England, with a fleet at their backs;
London declared for them, and the king sub-
52
817
ENGLAND, 1042-1066.
Claims of
William of Normandy.
ENGLAND, 1066.
mitted himself to a reconciliation. " The party
of Godwine once more ruled supreme, and no
mention was made of the gift of the crown to
William, Godwine, indeed, did not long sur-
vive his restoration, but dying the year after,
1053, left his son Harold Earl of the" West-Sax-
ons and the most important man in England."
King Edward the Confessor lived yet thirteen
years after this time, during which period Earl
Harold grew continually in influence and con-
spicuous headship of the English party. In 1063
It was Harold's misfortune to be shipwrecked on
the coast of France, and he was made captive.
Dnke William of Normandy intervened in his
behalf and obtained his release; and "then, as
the" price of his assistance, extorted an oath from
Harold, soon to be used against him. Harold, it
is said, became his man, promised to marry Wil-
liam's daughter Adela, to place Dover at once in
William's hands, and support his claim to the
English throne on Edward's death. By a strata-
gem of William's the oath was unwittingly
taken on holy relics, hidden by the duke under
the table on which Harold laid hands to swear,
whereby, according to the notions of those days,
the* oath was rendered more binding." But two
years later, when Edward the Confessor died,
the English Witenagemot chose Harold to be
king, disregarding Edward's promise and Har-
old's oath to the Duke of Normandy. — A. H.
Johnson, T/w Normans in Europe, cli. 10 and 13.
Also in: E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the. Norman
Cong. ofEnf/., eh. 7-10.— J. R. Green, Tlie Gonq.
of Eng., eh. 10.
A. D. io66. — Election and coronation of
Harold.
A. D. io66 (spring and summer). — Prepara-
tions of Duke \A/illiam to enforce his claim to
the English crown. — On receiving news of Ed-
^vard's death and of Harold's acceptance of the
crown, Duke William of Normandy lost no time
In demanding from Harold the performance of
the engagements to which lie had pledged him-
self by his oath. Harold answered that the oath
had no binding effect, by reason of the compul-
sion under which it was given ; that the crown of
England was not his to bestow, and that, being
tibe chosen king, he could not marry without
consent of the Witenagemot. When the Duke
had this reply he proceeded vrith vigor to secure
from his own knights and barons the support he
would need for the enforcing of his rights, as he
deemed them, to the sovereignty of the English
reslm. A great parliament of the Norman
barons was held at Lillebonne, for the consider-
ation of the matter. " In this memorable meet-
ing there was much diversity of opinion. The
Duke could not command his vassals to cross the
sea; their tenures did not compel them to such
service. William could only request their aid to
fight his battles in England: many refused to
engage in this dangerous expedition, and great
debates arose. . . . William, who could not re-
store order, withdrew into another apartment:
and, calling the barons to him one by one, he
argued and reasoned with each of these sturdy
vassals separately, and apart from the others.
He exhausted all the arts of persuasion; — their
present courtesy, he engaged, should not be
turned into a precedent, . . . and the fertile
fields of England should be the recompense of
their fidelity. Upon this prospect of remuner-
ation, the barons assented. . . . William did not
confine himself to his own subjects. All the
adventurers and adventurous spirits of the neigh
bouring states were invited to join his standard.
. . . To all, such promises were made as should
best incite them to the enterprise — lands, —
liveries, — money, — according to their rank and
degree ; and the port of St. Pierre-sur-Dive was
appointed as the place where all the forces should
assemble. William had discovered four most
valid reasons for the prosecution of his offensive
warfare against a neighbouring people: — the
bequest made by his cousin; — the perjury of
Harold ; — the expulsion of the Normans, at the|
instigation, as he alleged, of Godwin; — and,
lastl)', the massacre of the Danes by Ethclred on
St. Brice's Day. The alleged perjury of Harold
enabled William to obtain the sanction of the
Papal See. Alexander, the Roman Pontiff, al-
lowed, nay, even urged liim to punish the crime,
provided England, when conquered, should be
held as the fief of St. Peter. . . . Hildebrand,
Archdeacon of the Church of Rome, afterwards
the celebrated Pope Gregory VII., greatly as-
sisted by the support which he gave to the decree.
As a visible token of protection, the Pope trans-
mitted to William the consecrated banner, the
Gonfauon of St. Peter, and a precious ring. In
which a relic ofthe chief of the Apostles was
enclosed."— Sir F. Palgrave, Ilist. of Normandy
and Eng., v. 3, pp. 300-303.— " William con-
vinced, or seemed to convince, all men out of
England and Scandinavia that his claim to the
English crown was just and holy, and that it
was a good work to help him to assert it in arms.
. . . William himself doubtless thought his own
claim the better; he deluded himself as he de-
luded others. But we are more concerned with
William as a statesman ; and if it be statesman-
ship to adapt means to ends, whatever the ends
may be, if it be statesmanship to make men
believe the worse cause is the better, then no
man ever showed higher statesmanship than
William showed In his great pleading before all
Western Christendom. . . . Others had claimed
crowns ; none had taken such pains to convince
all mankind that the claim was a good one.
Such an appeal to public opinion marks on one
side a great advance." — E. A. Freeman. William
the Conqueror, eh. 6.
A. D. io66 (September). — The invasion of
Tostig and Harold Hardrada and their over-
throw at Stamford Bridge. — "Harold [the
English king], as one of his misfortunes, had to
face two powerful armies, in distant parts of the
kingdom, almost at the same time. Rumours
concerning the intentions and preparations of the
Duke of Normandy soon reached England. Dur-
ing the greater part of the summer, Harold, at
the head of a large naval and military force, had
been on the watch along the English coast. But
months passed away and no enemy became visi-
ble. William, it was said, had been apprised of
the measures which had been taken to meet him.
. . . Many supposed that, on various grounds,
the enterprise had been abandoned. Provisitjns
also, for so great an army, became scarce. The
men began to disperse; and Harold, disbanding
the remainder, returned to London. But the
news now came that Harold Hardrada, king of
Norway, had landed in the north, and was ravag-
ing the country in conjunction with Tostig,
Harold's elder brother. This event came from
one of those domestic feuds which did so much
818
ENGLAND, 1066.
Battle of Sentac.
ENGLAND, 1066.
at this juncture to weaken the power of the
English. Tostig had exercised his authority in
Northumbria [as earl] in the most arbitrary man-
ner, and liad perpetrated atrocious crimes in
furtherance of his objects. The result was an
amount of disaffection which seems to have put
it out of the power of liis friends to sustain him.
He had married a daughter of Baldwin, count of
Flanders, and so became brother-in-law to the
duke of Normandy. His brother Harold, as he
affirmed, had not done a brother's part towards
him, and he was more disposed, in consequence,
to side with the Norman than with the Saxon
in the approaching struggle. The army with
which he now appeared consisted mostly of Nor-
wegians and Flemings, and their avowed object
was to divide not less than half the kingdom be-
tween them. . . . [The young Mercian earls
Edwin and Morcar] summoned their forces . . .
to repel the invasion under Tostig. Before Har-
old could reach the north, they hazarded an
engagement at a place named Fulford, on the
Ouse, not far from Bishopstoke. Their meas-
ures, however, were not wisely taken. They
were defeated with great loss. The invaders
seem to have regarded this victory as deciding
the fate of that part of the kingdom. They ob-
tained hostages at York, and then moved to
Stamford Bridge, where they began the work of
dividing the northern parts of England between
them. But in the midst of these proceedings
clouds of dust were seen in the distance. The
first thought was, that the multitude which
seemed to be approaching must be friends. But
the illusion was soon at an end. The dust raised
was by the march of an army of West Saxons
under the command of Harold." — R. Vaughan,
Bevolutions of Eng. Hist., bk. 3, ch. 1. — "Of the
details of that awful day [Sept. 25, 1066] we
have no authentic record. We have indeed a
glorious description [in the Heimskringla of
Snorro Sturleson], conceived in the highest spirit
of the warlike poetry of the North ; but it is a
description which, when critically examined,
proves to be hardly more worthy of belief than
a battle-piece in the Iliad. ... At least we know
that the long struggle of that day was crowned
by complete victory on the side of England.
The leaders of the invading host lay each man
read)' for all that England had to give him, his
seven feet of English ground. There Harold of
Norway, the last of the ancient Sea-Kings,
yielded up that flery soul which had braved death
in so many forms and in so many lands. . . .
There Tostig, the son of Godwine, an exile and
a traitor, ended in crime and sorrow a life
which had begun with promises not less bright
than that of his royal brother. . . . The whole
strength of the Northern army was broken; a
few only escaped by flight, and found means to
reach the ships at Riccall." — E. A. Freeman,
Hist, of the Norman Conq. of Eng., ch. 14, sect. 4.
A. D. io66 (October). — The Norman invasion
and battle of Senlac or Hastings. — The battle
of Stamford-bridge was fought on Monday, Sept.
25, A. D. 1066. Three days later, onthe Thursday,
Sept. 28, William of Normandy landed his more
formidable army of invasion at Pevensey, on the
extreme southeastern coast. The news of Wil-
liam's landing reached Harold, at York, on the
following Sunday, it is thought, and his victori-
ous but worn and wasted army was led instantly
back, by forced marches, over the route it had
traversed no longer than the week before. Wait-
ing at London a few days for fresh musters to
join him, the English king set out from that city
Oct. 12, and arrived on the following day at a
point seven miles from the camp which his an-
tagonist had entrenched at Hastings. Meantime
the Normans had been cruelly ravaging the coast
country, by way of provoking attack. Harold
felt himself driven by the devastation they com-
mitted to face the issue of battle without wait-
ing for a stronger rally. "Advancing near
enough to the coast to check William's ravages,
he intrenched himself on the hill of Senlac, a low
spur of the Sussex Downs, near Hastings, in a
position which covered London, and forced the
Norman army to concentrate. With a host sub-
sisting by pillage, to concentrate is to starve, and
no alternative was left to William but a decisive
victory or ruin. Along the higher ground that
leads from Hastings the Duke led his men in the
dim dawn of an October morning to the mound of
Telham. It was from this point that the Nor-
mans saw the host of the English gathered thickly
behind a rough trench and a stockade on the
height of Senlac. Marshy ground covered their
right. ... A general charge of the Norman foot
opened the battle ; in front rode the minstrel
Taillefer, tossing his sword in the air and catch-
ing it again while he chanted the song of Roland.
He was the first of the host who struck a blow,
and he was the first to fall. The charge broke
vainly on the stout stockade behind which the
English warriors plied axe and javelin with
fierce cries of ' Out, Out,' and the repulse of the
Norman footmen was followed by the repulse of
the Norman horse. Again and again the Duke
rallied and led them to the fatal stockade. . . .
His Breton troops, entangled in the marshy
ground on his left, broke in disorder, and a cry
arose, as the panic spread through the army,
that the Duke was slain. ' I live,' shouted Wil-
liam as he tore off his helmet, ' and by God's help
will conquer yet.' Maddened by repulse, the
Duke spurred right at the standard ; unhorsed,
his terrible mace struck down Gj'rth, the King's
brother, and stretched Leofwine, a second of
Godwine's sons, beside him; again dismounted,
a blow from his hand hurled to the ground an
unmannerly rider who would not lend him his
steed. Amid the roar and tumult of the battle
he turned the flight he had arrested into the
means of victor}'. Broken us the stockade was
by his desperate onset, the shield-wall of the
warriors behind it still held the Normans at bay,
when William by a feint of flight drew a part of
the English force from their post of vantage.
Turning on his disorderly pursuers, the Duke
cut them to pieces, broke through the abandoned
line, and was master of the central plateau, while
French and Bretons made good their ascent on
either flank. At three the hill seemed won, at
six the fight still raged around the standard,
where Harold's hus-carls stood stubbornly at
bay on the spot marked afterward by the high
altar of Battle Abbey. An order from the Duke
at last brought his archers to the front, and their
arrow-flight told heavily on the dense masses
crowded around the King. As the sun went
down, a shaft pierced Harold's right eye ; he fell
between the royal ensigns, and the battle closed
with a desperate melee over his corpse." — J. R.
Green, A Short History of the English People, ch.
2, sect. 4.
819
ENGLAND, 1066.
Spoils of the
Conquest.
ENGLAND, 1067-1087.
Also in : E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the Norman
Conq. of Eng., ch. 15, sect. 4. — E. S. Creasy,
Fifteen Deeinve Battles of the World, ch. 8. — Wace,
Boman de Ron ; trans, by Sir A. Malet.
A. D. 1066-1071. — The Finishing of the Nor-
man Conquest. — "It must be well understood
that this great victory [of Senlac] did not make
Duke William King nor put him in possession of
the whole land. He still held only part of Sus-
sex, and the people of the rest of the kingdom
showed as yet no mind to submit to him. If
England had had a leader left like Harold or
Gyrth, William might have had to fight as many
battles as Cnut had, and that with much less
chance of winning in the end. For a large part
of England fought willingly on Cnut's side,
while William had no friends in England at all,
except a few Norman settlers. William did not
call himself King till he was regularly crowned
more than two months later, and even then he
had real possession only of about a third of the
kingdom. It was more than three years before
he had full possession of all. Still the great
fight on Senlac none the less settled the fate of
England. For after that fight William never
met with any general resistance. . . . During*
the year 1067 William made no further con-
quests; all western and northern England re-
mained unsubdued; but, except in Kent and
Herefordshire, there was no fighting in any part
of the land which had really submitted. The
ne.xt two years were the time in which all Eng-
land was really conquered. The former part of
1068 gave him the West. The latter part of that
year gave him central and northern England as
far as Yorkshire, the extreme north and north-
west being still unsubdued. The attempt to win
Durham in the beginning of 1069 led to two re-
volts at York. Later in the year all the north
and west was again in arms, and the Danish fleet
[of King Swegen, in league with the English
patriots] came. But the revolts were put down
one by one, and the great winter campaign of
1069-1070 conquered the still imsubdued parts,
ending with the taking of Chester. Early in
1070 the whole land was for the first time in
William's possession; there was no more fight-
ing, and he was able to giye his mind to the
more peaceful part of his schemes, what we may
call the conquest of the native Church by the
appointment of foreign bishops. But in the
summer of 1070 began the revolt of the Fenlaud,
and the defence of Ely, which lasted till the
autumn of 1071. After that William was full
King everywhere without dispute. There was
no more national resistance ; there was no revolt
of any large part of the country. . . . The con-
quest of the land, as far as lighting goes, was
now finished." — E. A. Freeman, Short Mist, of
the Norinan Conq. of Eng., ch. 8, sect. 9y ch. 10,
sect. 16.
A. D. 1067-1087.— The spoils of the Con-
quest. — " The Norman army . . . remained con-
centrated around London [in the winter of 1067],
and upon the southern and eastern coasts nearest '
Gaul. The partition of the wealth of the invaded
territory now almost solely occupied them. Com-
missioners went over the whole extent of country
in which the army had left garrisons ; they took
an exact inventory of property of every kind,
public and private, carefully registering every
particular. ... A close inquiry was made into
the names of all the English partisans of Harold,
who had either died in battle, or survived the de-
feat, or by involuntary delays had been prevented
from joining the royal standard. All the prop-
erty of these three classes of men, lands, reve-
nues, furniture, houses, were confiscated; the
children of the first class were declared forever
disinlierited ; the second class, were, in like man-
ner, whoUj' dispossessed of their estates and
property of every kind, and, says one of the
Norman writers, were only too grateful for being
allowed to retain their lives. Lastly, those who
had not taken up arms were also despoiled of all
they possessed, for having had the intention of
taking up arms ; but, by special grace, they were
allowed to entertain the hope that after many
long years of obedience and devotion to the for-
eign power, not they, indeed, but their sons,
might perhaps obtain from their new masters
some portion of their paternal heritage. Such
was the law of the conquest, according to the
unsuspected testimony of a man nearly con-
temporary with and of the race of the conquer-
ors [Richard Lenoir or Noirot, bishop of Ely in
the 13th century]. The immense product of this
universal spoliation became the pay of those ad-
venturers of every nation who had enrolled under
the banner of the duke of Normandy. . . .
Some received their pay in money, others had
stipulated that they should have a Saxon wife,
and William, says the Norman chronicle, gave
them in marriage noble dames, great heiresses,
whose husbands had fallen in the battle. One,
only, among the knights who had accompanied
the conqueror, claimed neither lands, gold, nor
wife, and would accept none of the spoils of the
conquered. His name was Guilbert Fitz-Rich-
ard : he said that he had accompanied his lord to
England because such was his duty, but that
stolen goods had no attraction for him." — A.
Thierry, Hist, of the Conq. of Eng. by the Nor-
mans, bk. 4. — "Though many confiscations took
place, in order to gratify the Norman army, yet
the mass of property was left in the hands of its
former possessors. Offices of high trust were
bestowed upon Englishmen, even upon those
whose family renown might have raised the most
aspiring thoughts. But, partly through the in-
solence and injustice of AVilliam's Norman vas-
sals, partly through the suspiciousness natural
to a man conscious of having overturned the
national government, his yoke soon became more
heavy. The English were oppressed ; they re-
belled, were subdued, and oppressed again. . . .
An extensive spoliation of property accompanied
these revolutions. It appears by the great na-
tional survey of Domesday Book, completed near
the close of the Conqueror's reign, that the ten-
ants in capite of the crown were generally for-
eigners. . . . But inferior freeholders were much
less disturbed in their estates than the higher.
. . . The valuable labours of Sir Henry Ellis, in
presenting us with a complete analysis of Domes-
day Book, afford an opportunity, by his list of
mesne tenants at the time of the survey, to form
some approximation to the relative numbers of
English and foreigners holding manors under the
immediate vassals of the crown. . . . Though I
will not now affirm or deny that they were a
majority, they [the English] form a large pro-
portion of nearly 8,000 mesne tenants, who are
summed up by the diligence of Sir Henry Ellis.
. . . This might induce us to suspect that, great
as the spoliation must appear in modern times,
820
ENGLAND, 1067-1087.
The Camp of
Refuge.
ENGLAND, 1085-1086.
and almost completely as the nation was excluded
from civil power in the commonwealth, there is
some exaggeration in the language of those
writers who represent them as universally re-
duced to a state of penury and servitude. And
this suspicion may be in some degree just. Yet
those writers, and especially the most English in
feeling of them all, M. Thierry, are warranted by
the language of contemporarjf authorities." — H.
Hallam, The MUhUe Ages. eh. 8, pt. 3.—" By
right of conquest William claimed nothing. He
had come to take his crown, and he had unluckily
met with some opposition in taking it. The
crown-lands of King Edward passed of course
to his successor. As for the lands of other men,
in William's theory all was forfeited to the crown.
The lawful heir had been driven to seek his king-
dom in arms; no Eugli.shman had helped him;
many Englishmen had fought against him. All
then were directly or indirectly traitors. The
King might lawfully deal with the lands of all
as his own. . . . After the general redemption of
lands, gradually carried out as William's power
advanced, no general blow was dealt at English-
men as such. . . . Though the land had never
seen so great a confiscation, or one so largely for
the behoof of foreigners, yet there was nothing
new in the thing itself. . . . Confiscation of land
was the every-day punishment for various public
and private crimes. . . . Once granting the
original wrong of his coming at all and bringing
a host of strangers with him, there is singularly
little to blame in the acts of the Conqueror." —
E. A. Freeman, William the Conqueror, pp. 102-
104, 126. — "After each effort [of revolt] the royal
hand was laid on more heavily : more and more
land changed owners, and with the change of
owners the title changed. The complicated and
unintelligible irregularities of the Anglo-Saxon
tenures were exchanged for the simple and uni-
form feudal theory. ... It was not the change
from, alodial to feudal so much as from confusion
to order. The actual amount of dispossession
was no doubt greatest in the higher ranks." — W.
Stubbs. Coihit. Hist, of Eiirj., ch. 9, sect. 95.
A. D. 1069-1071. — The Camp of Refuge in
the Fens. — "In the northern part of Cambridge-
shire there is a vast extent of low and marshy
land, intersected in every direction by rivers. All
the waters from the centre of England which do
not flow into the Thames or the Trent, empty
themselves into these marshes, which in the lat-
ter end of autumn overflow, cover the land, and
are charged with fogs and vapours. A portion
of this damp and swampy country was then, as
now, called the Isle of Ely ; another the Isle of
Thorney, a third the Isle of Croyland. This dis-
trict, almost a moving bog, impracticable for cav-
alry and for soldiers heavily armed, had more
than once served as a refuge for the Saxons in
the time of the Danish conquest; towards the close
of the year 1069 it became the rendezvous of sev-
eral bands of patriots from various quarters, as-
sembling against the Normans. Former chief-
tains, now dispossessed of their lands, succes-
sively repaired hither with their clients, some by
land, others by water, by the mouths of the rivers.
They here constructed entrenchments of earth and
wood, and established an extensive armed station,
which took the name of the Camp of Refuge.
The foreigners at first hesitated to attack them
amidst their rushes and willows, and thus gave
them time to transmit messages in every direction.
at home and abroad, to the friends of old England.
Become powerful, they undertook a partisan war
by land and by sea, or, as the conquerors called
it, robbery and piracy." — A. Thierry, Hist, of the
Cong, of Eng. by the Kormans, bk. 4. — " Against
the new t3'ranny the free men of the Danelagh
and of Northumbria rose. If Edward the de-
scendant of Cerdic had been little to them, Wil-
liam the descendant of Rollo was still less. . . .
So they rose, and fought ; too late, it may be, and
without unity or purpose ; and they were worsted
by an enemy who had both unity and purpose;
whom superstition, greed, and feudal discipline
kept together, at least in England, in one compact
body of unscrupulous and terrible confederates.
And theirs was a land worth fighting for — a good
land and large : from Humber mouth inland to the
Trent and merry Sherwood, across to Chester and
the Dee, round by Leicester and the five burghs
of the Danes ; eastward again to Huntingdon and
Cambridge (then a poor village on the site of an
old Roman town) ; and then northward again into
the wide fens, the land of the Girvii, where the
great central plateau of England slides into the
sea, to form, from the rain and river washings of
eight shires, lowlands of a fertility inexhausti-
ble, because ever-growing to this day. Into those
fens, as into a natural fortress, the Anglo-Danish
noblemen crowded down instinctively from the
inland to make their last stand against the French.
. . . Most gallant of them all, and their leader in
the fatal struggle against William, was Hereward
the Wake, Lord of Bourne and ancester of that
family of Wake, the arms of whom appear on the
cover of this book." — C. Kingsley, Hereward the
Wake, Prelude. — The defence of the Camp of Ref-
uge was maintained until October, 1071, when
the stronghold is said to have been betrayed by
the monks of Ely, who grew tired of the disturb-
ance of their peace. But Hereward did not sub-
mit. He made his escape and various accounts
are given of his subsequent career and his fate.
— E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the Norman Conq. of
Eng., ch. 20, sect. 1.
Also in: C. M. Yonge, Cameos from Eng. Hist.,
first series, c. 8.
A. D. 1085-1086. — The Domesday Survey
and Domesday Book. — "The distinctive char-
acteristic of the Norman kings [of England] was
their exceeding greed, and the administrative
system was so directed as to insure the exaction
of the highest possible imposts. From this bent
originated the great registration that William
[the Conqueror] caused to be taken of all lands,
whether holden in fee or at rent; as well as the
census of the entire population. The respective
registers were preserved in the Cathedral of
Winchester, and by the Norman were designated
'le grand role,' ' le role royal,' 'le role de AVin.
Chester'; but by the Saxons were termed 'the
Book of the Last Judgment,' ' Doomesdaege Boc,'
'Doomsday Book.'" — B. Fischel, The '"English
Constitution, ch. 1. — For a different statement
see the following: "The recently attempted
invasion from Denmark seems to have impressed
the king with the desirability of an accurate
knowledge of his resources, military and fiscal,
both of which were based upon the land. The
survey was completed in the remarkably short
space of a single year [1085-1086]. In each
shire the commissioners made their inquiries by
the oaths of the sheriffs, the barons and their
Norman retainers, the parish priests, the reeves
821
ENGLAND, 1085-1086.
Domesday
Survey,
ENGLAND, 1087-1135.
and six ceorls of each township. The result of
their labours was a minute description of all the
lands of the kingdom, with the exception of the
four northern counties of Northumberland, Cum-
berland, Westmoreland and Durham, and part
of what is now Lancashire. It enumerates the
tenauts-in-chief, under tenants, freeholders, vil-
leins, and serfs, describes the nature and obliga-
tions of the tenures, the value in the time of King
Eadward, at the conquest, and at the date of the
survey, and, which gives the key to the whole
inquiry, informs the king whether any advance
in the valuation could be made. . . . The returns
were transmitted to Winchester, digested, and
recorded in two volumes which liave descended
to posterity under the name of Domesday Book.
The name itself is probably derived from Domus
Dei, the appellation of a chapel or vault of the
cathedral at Winchester in which the survey was
at first deposited." — T. P. Taswell-Langmead,
English Const. Hist., c7i. 2. — "Of the motives
which induced the Conqueror and his council to
undertake the Survey we have very little relia-
ble information, and much that has been written
on the subject savours more of a deduction from
the result than of a knowledge of the immediate
facts. We have the statement from the Char-
tulary of St. Mary's, Worcester, of the appoint-
ment of the Commissioners by the king himself
to make the Survey. We have also the heading
of the ' Inquisitio Eliensis ' which purports to
give, and probably does truly give, the items of
the articles of inquiry, which sets forth as fol-
lows: L What is the manor called? IL Who
held it in the time of King Edward 1 III. Who
now holds it '? IV. How many hides ? V. What
teams are there in demesne ? VI. What teams
of the men? VIL What villans? VIIL What
cottagers? IX. What bondmen? X. What free-
men and what sokemen ? XI. What woods ?
XII. What meadow ? XIII. What pastures ?
XIV. What mills ? XV. What fisheries ? XVL
What is added or taken away ? XVII. What
the whole was worth together, and what now ?
XVIII. How ranch each freeman or sokeman
bad or has ? All this to be estimated three times,
viz. in the time of King Edward, and when
King William gave it, and how it is now, and if
more can be had for it than has been had. This
document is, I think, the best evidence we have
of the form of the inquiry, and it tallies strictly
with the form of the various returns as we now
have them. . . . All external evidence failing,
we arc driven back to the Record itself for evi-
dence of the Conqueror's intention in framing it,
and anyone who carefully studies it will be driven
to the inevitable conclusion that it was framed
and designed in the spirit of perfect equity.
Long before the Conquest, in the period between
the death of Alti'ed and that of Edward the Con-
fessor, the kingdom had been rapidly declining
into a state of disorganisation and decay. The
defence of the kingdom and the administration
of justice and keeping of the peace could not be
maintained by the king's revenues. The tax of
Danegeld, instituted by Ethelred at first to buy
peace of the Danes, and afterwards to maintain
the defence of the kingdom, had more and more
come to be levied unequally and unfairly. Tlie
Church had obtained enormous remissions of its
liability, and its possessions were constantly in-
creasing. Powerful subjects had obtained further
remission, and the tax had come to be irregularly
collected and was burdensome upon the smaller
holders and their poor tenants, while the nobility
and the Church escaped witli a small share in
the burden. In short the tax had come to be
collected upon an old and uncorrected assess-
ment. It had probably dwindled in amount, and
at last had been ultimately remitted by Edward
the Confessor. Anarchy and confusion appears
to have reigned throughout the realm. The Con-
queror was threatened with foreign invasion,
and pressed on all sides by complaints of unfair
taxation on the part of his subjects. Estates
had been divided and subdivided, and the inci-
dence of the tax was unequal and unjust. He
had to face the ditflculties before him and to
count the resources of his kingdom for its defence,
and the means of doing so were not at hand. In
this situation his masterly and order-loving Nor-
man mind instituted this great inquiry, but
ordered it to be taken (as I maintain the study of
the Book will show) in the most public and open
manner, and with the utmost impartiality, with
the view of levying the taxes of the kingdom
equally and fairly upon all. The articles of his
inquiry show that he was prepared to study the
resources of his kingdom and consider the lia-
bility of his subjects from every possible point
of view." — Stuart Moore, On tJie Study of Domes-
day Book (Domesday Studies, v. 1). — " Domesdaj^
Book is a vast mine of materials for the social and
economical history of our country, a mine almost
inexhaustible, and to a great extent as yet
unworked. Among national documents it is
unique. There is nothing that approaches it in
interest and value except the Landuamabok, which
records the names of the original settlers in Ice-
land and the designations they bestowed upon
the places where they settled, and tells us how
the island was taken up and apportioned among
them. Such a document for England, describ-
ing the way in which our forefathers divided the
territory they conquered, and how ' they called
the lands after their own names,' would indeud
be priceless. But the Domesday Book does, in-
directly, supply materials for the history of the
English as well as of the Norman Conquest, for it
records not only how the lands of England were
divided among the Norman host which con-
quered at Senlac, but it gives us also the names
ot the Saxon and Danish holders who possessed the
lands before the great battle which changed all
the future history of England, and enables us to
trace the extent of the transfer of the laud from
Englishmen to Normans ; it shows how far the
earlier owners were reduced to tenants, and by
its enumeration of the classes of population —
freemen, sokemen, villans, cottiers, and slaves
— it indicates the nature and extent of the earlier
conquests. Thus we learn that in the West of
England slaves were numerous, while in the East
they were almost unknown, and hence we gather
that in the districts first subdued the British
population was exterminated or driven off, while
in the West it,,was reduced to servitude. " — I. Tay-
lor, Domesday Surmvals (Domesday Studies, v. 1).
Also in: E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the Norman
Conquest, cU. 31-23 and app. A in v. 5. — W. de
Gray Birch, Domesday Book. — F. W. Maitland,
Domesday Book (Diet. Pol. Econ.).
A. D. 1087-1135. — The sons of the Con-
queror and their reigns. — William the Con-
queror, when he died, left Normandy and Maine
to his elder son Robert, the English crown to
822
ENGLAND, 1087-1135.
Sons of
the Conqueror.
ENGLAND, 1087-1135.
his stronger son, William, culled Rufus, or tlie
Red, and only a legacy of £5,000 to his third son,
Heury, called Beauclerc, or The Scholar. The
Conqueror's half-brother, Odo, soon began to
persuade the Norman barons in England to dis-
place William Rufiis and plant Robert on the
English throne. "The claim of Robert to suc-
ceed his father in England, was supported by
the respected rights of primogeniture. But the
Anglo-Saxon crown had always been elective.
. . . Primogeniture . . . gave at that time no
right to the crown of England, independent of
the election of its jiarliamentary assembly. Hav-
ing secured this title, the power of Rufus rested
on the foundation most congenial with the feel-
ings and institutions of the nation, and from their
partiality received a ijopular support, which was
soon experienced to be impregnable. The dan-
ger compelled the king to court his people by
promises to diminish their grievances; which
drew 30,000 knights spontaneously to his ban-
ners, hapijy to have got a sovereign distinct
from hated Normandy. The invasion of Robert,
thus resisted by the English people, effected
nothing but some temporary devastations. . . .
The state of Normandy, under Robert's adminis-
tration, for some time furnished an ample field
for his ambitious uncle's activity. It continued
to exhibit a negligent government in its most
vicious form. . . . Odo's politics only facilitated
the reannexation of Normandy to England. But
tliis event was not completed in William's reign.
When he retorted the attempt of Robert, by an
invasion of Normandy, the great barons of both
countries found themselves endangered by the
conflict, and combined their interest to persuade
their resjx-ctive sovereigns to a fraternal i)acifi-
cation. The most important article of their re-
conciliation provided, that if either should die
without issue, the survivor should inherit his
dominions. Hostilities were then abandoned;
mutual courtesies ensued ; and Robert visited
England as his brother's guest. The mind of
William the Red King, was east in no common
mould. It had all the greatness and the defects
of the chivalric character, in its sti-oug but rudest
state. Impetuous, daring, original, magnani-
mous, and munificent ; it was also harsh, tyran-
nical, and selfish; conceited of its own powers,
loose in its moral principles, and disdaining con-
sequences. . . . While Lanfranc lived, William
had a counsellor whom he respected, and whose
good opinion he was careful to preserve. . . .
The death of Lanfranc removed the only man
whose wisdom and influence could have melior-
ated the king's ardent, but undisciplined tem-
per. It was his misfortune, on this event, to
choose for his favourite minister, an able, but an
xmprinciplcd man. . . . The minister advised
the king, on the death of every prelate, to seize
all his temporal possessions. . . . The great reve-
nues obtained from this violent innovation,
tempted both the king and his minister to in-
crease its productiveness, by deferring the nom-
ination of every new prelate for an indefinite
period. Thus he kept many bishoprics, and
among them the see of Canterbury, vacant for
some years ; till a severe illness alarming his con-
science, he suddenly appointed Anselm to the
dignity. . . . His disagreement with Anselm
soon began. The prelate injudiciously began
the battle by asking the king to restore, not only
the possessions of his see, which were enjoyed
by Lanfranc — a fair request — but also the lands
which had before that time belonged to it ; a de-
mand that, after so many years alteration of prop-
erty, could not be complied with without great
disturbance of other persons. Ansel m also exacted
of the king that in all things which concerned
the church, his counsels should be taken in pref-
erence to every other. . . . Though Anselm, as
a literary man, was an honour and a benefit to
his age, yet his monastic and studious habits
prevented him from having that social wisdom,
that knowledge of human nature, that discreet
use of his own virtuous firmness, and that mild
management of turbulent power, which might
have enabled him to have exerted much of the
influence of Lanfranc over the mind of his sov-
ereign. . . . Anselm, seeing the churches and
abbeys oppressed in their property, by the royal
orders, resolved to visit Rome, and to concert
with the pope the measures most adapted to
overawe the king. . . . William threatened,
that if he did go to Rome, he would seize all the
possessions of the archbishopric. Anselm de-
clared, that he would rather travel naked and on
foot, than desist from his resolution; and he
went to Dover with his pilgrim's staff and wal-
let. He was searched before his departure, that
he might carry away no money, and was at last
allowed to sail. But the king immediately exe-
cuted his threat, and sequestered all his lands
and property. This was about three years be-
fore the end of the reign. . . . Anselm continued
in Italy till William's death. The possession of
Normandy was a leading object of William's
ambition, and he gradually attained a prepon-
derance in it. His first invasion compelled Robert
to make some cessions; these were increased on
his next attack: and when Robert determined
to join the Crusaders, he mortgaged the whole
of Normandy to William for three years, for
10,000 marks. He obtained the usual success of
a powerful invasion in Wales. The natives were
overpowered on the plains, but annoyed the in-
vaders in their mountains. He marched an army
against Malcolm, king of Scotland, to punish his
incursions. Robert advised the Scottish king to
conciliate William ; Malcolm yielded to his coun-
.sel and accompanied Robert to the English court,
but on his return, was treacherously attacked by
Mowbray, the earl of Northumbria, and killed.
William regretted the perfidious cruelty of the
action. . . . Tlie government of William appears
to have been beneficial, both to England and
Normandy. To the church it was oppressive.
. . . He had scarcely reigned twelve years, when
he fell by a violent death." He was hunt-
ing with a few attendants in the New Forest.
"It happened that, his friends dispersing in
pursuit of game, he was left alone, as some
authorities intimate, with Walter Tyrrel, a noble
knight, whom he had brought out of France,
and admitted to his table, and to whom he was
much attached. As the sun was about to set, a
stag passed before the king, who discharged an
arrow at it. . . . At the same moment, another
stag crossing, Walter TyiTel discharged an arrow
at it. At this precise juncture, a shaft struck
the king, and buried itself in his breast. He
fell, without a word, upon the arrow, and ex-
pired on the spot. ... It seems to be a ques-
tionable point, whether Walter Tyrrel actually
shot the king. That opinion was certainly the
most prevalent at the time, both here and in
823
ENGLAND, 1087-1135.
Reign of Stephen.
ENGLAND. 1135-1154.
France. . . . None of the authorities intimate a
belief of a purposed assassination ; and, tlierefore.
It would be unjust now to impute it to any one.
. . . Henry was hunting in a different part of
the New Forest when Kufus fell. ... He left
the body to the casual charity of the passing
rustic, and rode precipitately to Winchester, to
seize the royal treasure. . . . He obtained the
treasure, and proceeding hastily to London, was
on the following Sunday, the third day after
"William's death, elected king, and crowned. . . .
He began his reign by removing the unpopular
agents of his unfortunate brother. He recalled
Anselm, and conciliated the clergy. He grati-
fied the nation, by abolishing the oppressive ex-
actions of the previous reign. He assured many
benefits to the barons, and by a charter, signed
on the day of his coronation, restored to the peo-
ple tlieir Anglo-Saxon laws and privileges, as
amended by his father ; a measure which ended
the pecuniary oppressions of his brother, and
which favoured tlie growing liberties of the na-
tion. The Conqueror had noticed Henry's ex-
panding intellect very early ; had given him the
best education which the age could supply. . . .
He became the most learned monarch of his day,
and acquired and deserved the surname of Beau-
clerc, or fine scholar. No wars, no cares of
state, could afterwards deprive him of his love
of literature. The nation soon felt the impulse
ftnd the benefit of their sovereign's intellectual
taste. He acceded at the age of 33, and gratified
the nation by marrying and crowning Mathilda,
daughter of the sister of Edgar Etheling by Mal-
colm the king of Scotland, who had been waylaid
and killed. " — S. Turner, Jlist. of England during
the Middle Ages, v. 1, ch. 5-6. — The Norman
lords, hating the "English ways" of Henry, were
soon in rebellion, undertaking to put Robert of
Normandy (who had returned from the Crusade)
in his place. The quarrel went on till the battle
of Tenchebray, 1106, in which Robert was de-
feated and taken prisoner. He was imprisoned
for life. The duchy and the kingdom were
again united. The war in Normandy led to a
war with Louis king of France, who had es-
poused Robert's cause. It was ended by the
battle of Bremule, 1119, where the French suf-
fered a bad defeat. In Henry's reign all south
Wales was conquered; but the north Welsh
princes held out. Another expedition against
them was preparing, when, in 1135, Henry fell
ill at the Castle of Lions in Normandy, and died.
— E. A. Freeman, The reign of William Rufus
and accession of Henry I.
Also in : Sir F. Palgrave, Hist, of Normandy
and Eng. , v. 4.
A. D. 113S-1154.— The miserable reign of
Stephen. — Civil war, anarchy and wretched-
ness in England. — The transition to heredi-
tary monarchy. — After the death of William
the Conqueror, the English throne was occupied
in succession by two of his sons, William II., or
William Rufus (1087-1100), and Henry I., or
Henry Beauclerk (1100-1135). The latter out-
lived his one legitimate son, and bequeathed the
crown at his death to his daughter, Matilda,
widow of the Emperor Henry V. of Germany and
now wife of Geoffrey, Count of Anjou. This
latter marriage had been very unpopular, both
in England and Normandy, and a strong party
refused to recognize the Empress Matilda, as she
was commonly called. This party maintained
the superior claims of the family of Adela,
daughter of William the Conqueror, who had
married the Earl of Blois. Naturally their choice
would have fallen upon Theobald of Blois, the
eldest of Adela's sons ; but his more enterpris-
ing younger brother Stephen supplanted him.
Hastening to England, and winning the favour
of the citizens of London, Stephen secured the
royal treasure and persuaded a council of peers
to elect him king. A most grievous civil war
ensued, which lasted for nineteen terrible years,
during which long period there was anarchy and
great wretchedness in England. "The land was
filled with castles, and the castles with armed
banditti, who seem to have carried on their ex-
tortions under colour of the military commands
bestowed by Stephen on every petty castellan.
Often the very belfries of churches were fortified.
On the poor lay the burden of building these
strongholds; the rich suffered in their donjeons.
Many were starved to death, and these were the
happiest. Others were flung into cellars filled
with reptiles, or hung up by the thumbs till they
told where their treasures were concealed, or
crippled in frames which did not suffer them to
move, or held just resting on the ground by
sharp iron collars round the neck. The Earl of
Essex used to send out spies who begged from
door to door, and then reported in what houses
wealth was still left ; the alms-givers were pres-
ently seized and imprisoned. The towns that
could no longer pay the blackmail demanded
from them were burned. . . . Sometimes the
peasants, maddened by misery, crowded to the
roads that led from a field of battle, and smote
down the fugitives without any distinction of
sides. The bishops cursed vainly, when the very
churches were burned and monks robbed. ' To
till the ground was to plough the sea; the earth
bare no corn, for the land was all laid waste by
such deeds, and men said openly that Christ slept,
and his saints. Such things, and more than we
can say, suffered we nineteen winters for our sins'
(A. 8. Chronicle). . . . Many soldiers, sickened
with the unnatural war, put on the white cross
and sailed for a nobler battle-field iu the East."
As Matilda's son Henry — afterwards Henry II.
— grew to manhood, the feeling in his favor
gained strength and his party made head against
the weak and incompetent Stephen. Finally, in
1153, peace was brought about under an agree-
ment "that Stephen should wear the crown till
his death, and Henry receive the homage of the
lords and towns of the realm as laeir apparent."
Stephen died the next year and Henry came to
the throne with little further dispute. — C. H.
Pearson, Hist, of Eng. during the Early and
Middle Ages, ch. 28. — " Stephen, as a king, was
an admitted failure. I cannot, however, but
view with suspicion the causes assigned to his
failure by often unfriendly chroniclers. That
their criticisms had some foundation it would not
be possible to deny. But in the first place, had
he enjoyed better fortune, we should have heard
less of his incapacity, and in the second, these
writers, not enjoying the same stand-point as
ourselves, were, I think, somewhat inclined to
mistake effects for causes. . . . His weakness
throughout his reign . . . was due to two causes,
each supplementing the other. Th&sewere — (1)
the essentially unsatisfactory character of his
position, as resting, virtually, on a compact that
he should be king so long only as he gave satis-
824
ENGLAND, 1135-1154.
Reign of Stephen.
ENGLAND, 1135-1154.
faction to those who had placed him on the
throne; (2) the existence of a rival claim, hang-
ing over him from the first, like the sword of
Damocles, and affording a lever by which the
malcontents could compel him to adhere to the
original understanding, or even to submit to
further demands. . . . The position of his op-
ponents throughout his reign would seem to
have rested on two assumptions. The first, that
a breach, on his part, of the 'contract' justi-
fied ipso facto revolt on theirs ; the second, that
their allegiance to the king was a purely feudal
relation, and, as such, could be thrown off at any
moment by performing the famous diffidatio.
This essential feature of continental feudalism
had been rigidly excluded by the Conqueror.
He had taken advantage, as is well known, of
his position as an English king, to extort an
allegiance from his Norman followers more abso-
lute than he could have claimed as their feudal
lord. It was to Stephen's peculiar position that
was due the introduction for a time of this per-
nicious principle into England. . . . Passing
now to the other point, the existence of a rival
claim, we approach a subject of great interest,
the theory of the succession to the English Crown
at what may be termed the crisis of transition
from the principle of election (within the royal
house) to that of hereditary right according to
feudal rules. For the right view on this sub-
ject, we turn, as ever, to Dr. Stubbs, who, with
his usual sound judgment, writes thus of the
Norman period: — 'The crown then continued to
be elective. . . . But whilst the elective prin-
ciple was maintained in its fulness where it was
necessary or possible to maintain it, it is quite
certain that the right of inheritance, and inherit-
ance as primogeniture, was recognized as co-
ordinate. . . . The measures taken by Henry I.
for securing the crown to his own children,
whilst they prove the acceptance of the heredi-
tary principle, prove also the importance of
strengthening it by the recognition of the elec-
tive theory. ' Mr. Freeman, though writing witli
a strong bias in favour of the elective theory, is
fully justified in his main argument, namely,
that Stephen 'was no usurper in the sense in
which the word is vulgarly used.' He urges,
apparently with perfect truth, that Stephen's
offence, in the eyes of his contemporaries, lay in
his breaking his solemn oath, and not in his sup-
planting a riglitful heir. And he aptly suggests
that the wretchedness of his reign may have
hastened the growth of that new belief in the
divine right of the heir to the throne, which first
appears under Henry H., and in the pages of
William of Newburgh. So far as Stephen is
concerned the case is clear enough. But we
have also to consider the Empress. On what did
she base her claim ? I think that, as implied in
Dr. Stubbs' words, she based it on a double, not
a single, ground. She claimed the kingdom as
King Henry's daughter ('regis Henrici filia'),
but slie claimed it further because the succession
had been assured to her by oath (' sibi juratum ')
as such. It is important to observe that the oath
in question can in no way be regarded in the
light of an election. . . . 'The Empress and her
partisans must have largely, to say the least,
based their claim on her riglit to the throne as
her father's heir, and . . . she and they appealed
to the oath as the admission and recognition of
that right, rather than as partaking in any way
whatever of the character of a free election. . . .
The sex of the Empress was the drawback to her
claim. Had her brother lived, there can be little
question that he would, as a matter of course,
have succeeded his father at his death. Or
again, had Henry II. been old enough to suc-
ceed his grandfather, he would, we may be sure,
have done so. . . . Broadly speaking, to sum up
the evidence here collected, it tends to the belief
that the obsolescence of the right of election to
the English crown presents considerable analogy
to tliat of canonical election in the case of Eng-
lish bishoprics. In both cases a free election de-
generated into a mere assent to a choice already
made. We see the process of cliange already in
full operation when Henry I. endeavours to ex-
tort beforehand from the magnates their assent
to his daughter's succession, and when they sub-
sequently complain of this attempt to dictate to
them on the subject. We catch sight of it again
when his daughter bases her claim to the crown,
not on any free election, but on her rights as her
father's heir, confirmed by the above assent.
We see it, lastly, when Stephen, though owing
his crown to election, claims to rule by Divine
right ('Dei gratia'), and attempts to reduce that
election to nothing more than a national ' assent '
to his succession. Obviously, the whole ques-
tion turned on whether the election was to be
held first, or was to be a mere ratification of a
choice already made. ... In comparing Stephen
with his successor the difference between their
circumstances has been insufficiently allowed for.
At Stephen's accession, thirty years of legal and
financial oppression had rendered unpopular the
power of the Crown, and had led to an im-
patience of official restraint which opened the
path to a feudal reaction; at the accession of
Henry, on the contrary, the evils of an enfeebled
administration and of feudalism run mad had
made all men eager for the advent of a strong
king, and had prepared them to welcome the in-
troduction of his centralizing administrative re-
forms. He anticipated the position of the house
of Tudor at the close of the Wars of the Roses,
and combined with it the advantages which
Charles II. derived from the Puritan tyranny.
Again, Stephen was hampered from the first by
his weak position as a king on sufferance, whereas
Henry came to his work unhampered by com-
pact or concession. Lastly, Stephen was con-
fronted throughout by a rival claimant, who
formed a splendid rallying-point for all the dis-
content in his realm ; but Henry reigned for as
long as Stephen without a rival to trouble him ;
and when he found at length a rival in his own
son, a claim far weaker than that which had
threatened his predecessor seemed likely for a
time to break his power as effectually as the
followers of, the Empress had broken that of
Stephen. He may only, indeed, have owed his
escape to that elficient administration which
years of strength and safety had given him the
time to construct. It in no way follows from
these considerations that Henry was not superior
to Stephen; but it does, surely, suggest itself
that Stephen's disadvantages were great, and
that had he enjoyed better fortune, we might
have heard less of his defects." — J. H. Round,
Geoffrey de Mandeville, ch. 1.
Also in ; Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second,
ch. 1. — See, also. Standard, Battle of thb
(A. D. 1137).
825
ENGLAND, 1154-1189.
First of the
Angevin Kings.
ENGLAND, 1162-1170.
A. D. 1154-1189.— Henry II., the first of the
Angevin kings (Plantagenets) and his empire.
— Henry II., who came to the English throne on
Stephen's death, was aheady, by the death of
his father, Geoffrey, Count of Anjou, the head
of the great house of Anjou, in France. From
his fatlier he inherited Anjou, Touraine and
Maine ; through his motlier, ]\Iatilda, daughter
of Henry I., he received the dukedom of Nor-
mandy as well as the kingdom of England ; by
marriage witli Eleanor, of Aquitaine, or Guienne,
he added to his empire the princely domain
which included Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge,
Perigord, Limousin, Angoumois, with claims
of suzerainty over Auvergne and Toulouse.
"Henry found himself at twenty-one ruler of
dominions such as no king before him had ever
dreamed of uniting. He was master of both
sides of the English Channel, and by his alliance
with his uncle, the Covmt of Flanders, he had
command of the French coast from the Scheldt
to the Pyrenees, while his claims on Toulouse
would carry him to the shores of the Mediter-
ranean. His subjects told with pride how ' his
empire reached from the Arctic Ocean to the
Pyrenees ' ; there was no monarch save the Em-
peror himself who ruled over such vast domains.
. . . His aim [a few years later] seems to have
been to rival in some sort the Empire of the West,
and to reign as an over-king, with sub-kings of
his various provinces, and England as one of
them, around him. He was connected with all
the great ruling houses. . . . England was forced
out of her old isolation ; her interest in the world
without was suddenly awakened. Englisli schol-
ars thronged the foreign universities; English
chroniclers questioned travellers, scholars, am-
bassadors, as to what was passing abroad. The
influence of English learning and English state-
craft made itself felt all over Europe. Never,
perhaps, in all the history of England was there
a time when Englishmen played so great a part
abroad. " The king who gathered tliis wide, in-
congruous empire under his sceptre, by mere
circumstances of birth and marriage, proved
strangely equal, in many respects, to its great-
ness. " He was a foreign king who never spoke
the Englisli tongue, who lived and moved for the
most part in a foreign camp, surrounded with a
motley host of Brabangons and hirelings. ... It
was under the rule of a foreigner such as this,
however, that the races of conquerors and con-
quered in England first learnt to feel that they
were one. It was by his power that England,
Scotland and Ireland were brought to some vague
acknowledgement of a common suzerain lord, and
the foundations laid of the United Kingdom of
Great Britain and Ireland. It was he who abol-
ished feudalism as a system of government, and
left it little more than a system of land tenure. It
was he who defined the relations established be-
tween Church and State, and decreed that in Eng-
land churchman as well as baron was to be held
under the Common Law. . . . His reforms estab-
lished the judicial system whose main outlines
have been preserved to our own day. It was
through his ' Constitutions ' and his ' Assizes ' that
It came to pass that over all the world the English-
speaking races are governed by English and not
by Roman law. It was by his genius for govern-
ment that the servants of the royal household
became transformed into Ministers of State. It
w as he who gave England a foreign policy which
decided our continental relations for seven hun-
dred years. The impress which the personality
of Henry II. left upon his time meets us wherever
we turn." — Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the Second,
ch. 1-2. — Henry II. and his two sons, Richard I.
(Coeur de Lion), and John, are distinguished,
sometimes, as the Angevin kings, or kings of
the House of Anjou, and sometimes as the Plan-
tagenets, the latter name being derived from a
boyish habit ascribed to Henry's father, Coimt
Geoffrey, of "adorning his cap witli a sprig of
' plantagenista, ' the broom which in early sum-
mer makes the open country of Anjou and JIaine
a blaze of living gold." Richard retained and
ruled the great realm of his father; but John
lost most of his foreign inheritance, including
Normandy, and became the unwilling benefac-
tor of England by stripping her kings of alien
interests and alien powers and bending their
necks to Magna Charta. — K. Norgate, England
under the Angerin Kings.
Also ik : W. Stubbs, The Early Plantagenets.
— See, also, Aquitaine (Guienne): A. D. 1137-
1152; Ireland: A. D. 1109-1175.
A. D. 1162-1170. — Conflict of King and
Church. — The Constitutions of Clarendon. —
Murder of Archbishop Becket. — "Archbishop
Theobald was at first the King's chief favourite
and adviser, but his health and his intiuence de-
clining, Becket [the Archdeacon of Canterbury]
was found apt for business as well as amusement,
and gradually became intrusted with the exer-
cise of all the powers of the crown. . . . The
exact time of his appointment as Chancellor has
not been ascertained, the records of the transfer
of the Great Seal not beginning till a subsequent
reign, and old biographers being always quite
careless about dates. But he certainly had this
dignitj' soon after Henry's accession. . . . Becket
continued Chancellor till the year 1162, without
any abatement in his favour with the King, or
in the power which he possessed, or in the
energy he displayed, or in the splendour of his
career. ... In April, 1161, Archbishop Theo-
bald died. Henry declared that Becket should
succeed, — no doubt counting upon his co-opera-
tion in carrying on the policy hitherto pursued
in checking the encroachments of the clergy and
of the see of Rome. . . . The same opinion of
Becket's probable conduct was generally enter-
tained, and a cry was raised that ' the Church
was in danger.' The English bishops sent a
representation to Henry against the appointment,
and the electors long refused to obey his man-
date, saying that ' it was indecent that a man
who was rather a soldier than a priest, and who
had devoted himself to hunting and falconry in-
stead of the study of the Holy Scriptures, should
be placed in the chair of St. Augustine. "...
The universal expectation was, that Becket
would now attempt the jsart so successfully
played by Cardinal Wolsey in a succeeding age ;
that, Chancellor and Archbishop, he would con-
tinue the minister and personal friend of the
King ; that he would study to support and ex-
tend all the prerogatives of the Crown, which he
himself was to exercise ; and that in the palaces
of which he was now master he would live with
increased magnificence and luxury. . . . Never
was there so wonderful a transformation.
Whether from a predetermined purpose, or from
a sudden change of inclination, he immediately
became in every respect an altered man. Instead
826
JDNGLAND, 1163-1170. nenry U. and Becket. ENGLAND, 1162-1170.
of the stately and fastidious courtier, was seen
the humble and squalid penitent. Next his skin
he wore hair-cloth, populous with vermin; he
lived upon roots, and his drink was water, ren-
dered nauseous by an infusion of fennel. By
way of further penance and mortification, he
frequently inflicted stripes on his naked back.
. . . He sent the Great Seal to Henry, in Nor-
mandy, with this short message, 'I desire that
you will provide yourself with another Chan-
sellor, as I find myself hardly sufiicient for the
duties of one office, and much less of two.' The
fond patron, who had been so eager for his eleva-
tion, was now grievously disappointed and
alarmed. ... He at once saw that he had been
deceived in his choice. . . . The grand struggle
which the Church was then making was, that all
churchmen should be entirely exempted from
the jurisdiction of the secular courts, whatever
crime they might have committed. . . . Henry,
thinking that he had a favourable opportunity
for bringing the dispute to a crisis, summoned
an assembly of all the prelates at Westminster,
and himself put to them this plain question:
'Whether they were willing to submit to the
ancient laws and customs of the kingdom?'
'Their reply, framed by Becket, was: ' We are
willing, saving our own order.'. . . The King,
seeing what was comprehended in the reserva-
tion, retired with evident marks of displeasure,
deprived Becket of the government of Eye and
Berkhamstead, and all the appointments which
he held at the pleasure of the Crown, and uttered
threats as to seizing the temporalities of all the
bishops, since they would not acknowledge their
allegiance to him as the head of the state The
legate of Pope Alexander, dreading a breach
with so powerful a prince at so unseasonable a
juncture, advised Becket to submit for the mo-
ment; and he with his bretliren, retracting the
saving clause, absolutely promised ' to observe
the laws and customs of the kingdom.' To
avoid all future dispute, Henry resolved to fol-
low up his victory by having these laws and
customs, as far as the Church was concerned, re-
duced into a code, to be sanctioned by the legis-
lature, and to be specifically acknowledged by
all the bishops. 'This was the origin of the
famous 'Constitutions of Clarendon.'" Becket
left the kingdom (1164). Several years later he
made peace with Henry and returned to Canter-
bury; but soon he again displeased the King,
who cried in a rage, ' Who will rid me of this
turbulent priest? ' Four knights who were pres-
ent immediately went to Canterbury, where they
slew the Archbishop in the cathedral (December
29, 1170). "The government tried to justify or
palliate the murder. The Archbishop of York
likened Thomas a Becket to Pharaoh, who died
by the Divine vengeance, as a punishment for
his hardness of heart; and a proclamation was
issued, forbidding any one to speak of Thomas
of Canterbury as a martyr : but the feelings of
men were too strong to be checked by authority ;
pieces of linen which had been dipped in his
blood were preserved as relics ; from the time of
his death it was believed that miracles were
worked at his tomb ; thither flocked hundreds of
thousands, in spite of the most violent threats of
punishment; at the end of two years he was can-
onised at Rome ; and, till the breaking out of the
Reformation. St. Thomas of Canterbury, for
pilgrimages and prayers, was the most distin-
guished Saint in England. "— Lord Campbell,
Livesofthe Lord Chancellors, ch. 3.— "What did
Henry IL propose to do with a clerk who was
accused of a crime ? . . . Without doing much
violence to the text, it is possible to put two dif-
ferent interpretations upon that famous clause
in the Constitutions of Clarendon which deals
with criminous clerks. . . . According to what
seems to be the commonest opinion, we might
comment upon tliis clause in some such words
as these :— Offences of which a clerk may be ac-
cused are of two kinds. They are temporal or
they are ecclesiastical. Under the former head
fall murder, robbery, larceny, rape, and the like;
under the latter, incontinence, heresy, disobedi-
ence to superiors, breach of rules relating to the
conuuct of divine service, and so forth. _ If
charged with an offence of the temporal kind,
the clerk must stand his trial in the king's court ;
his trial, his sentence, will be like that of a lay-
man. For an ecclesiastical offence, on the other
hand, he will be tried in the court Christian.
The king reserves to his court the right to decide
what offences are temporal, what ecclesiastical;
also he asserts the right to send delegates to super-
vise the proceedings of the spiritual tribunals.
. . . Let us attempt a rival commentary. The
author of this clause is not thinking of two dif-
ferent classes of offences. The purely ecclesi-
astical offences are not in debate. No one doubts
that for these a man will be tried in and punished
by the spiritual court. He is thinking of the
grave crimes, of murder and the like. Now
every such crime is a breach of temporal law,
and it is also a breach of canon law. The clerk
who commits murder breaks the king's peace,
but he also infringes the divine law, and — no
canonist will doubt this — ought to be degraded.
Very well. A clerk is accused of such a crime.
He is summoned before the king's court, and he
is to answer there — let us mark this word re-
spondere — for what he ought to answer for
there. What ought he to answer for there ? The
breach of the king's peace and the felony. When
he has answered, . . . then, without any trial, he
is to be sent to the ecclesiastical court. In that
court he will have to answer as an ordained clerk
accused of homicide, and in that court there will
be a trial (res ibi tractabitur). If the spiritual
court convicts him it will degrade him, and
thenceforth the church must no longer protect
him. He will be brought back into the king's
court, . . . and having been brought back, no
longer a clerk but a mere layman, he will be
sentenced (probably without any further trial) to
the layman's punishment, death or mutilation.
The scheme is this: accusation and plea in the
temporal court; trial, conviction, degradation, in
the ecclesiastical court; sentence in the temporal
court to the layman's punishment. This I be-
lieve to be the meaning of the clause."— F. W.
Maitland, Henry 11. and the Criminous Clerks
{English Ristmeal Review, April, 1892), pp. 224-
326._Xhe Assize of Clarendon, sometimes con-
fused with the Constitutions of Clarendon, was
an important decree approved two years later.
It laid down the principles on which the ad-
ministration of justice was to be carried out,
in twenty-two articles drawn up for the use
of the judges. — Mrs. J. R. Green, Henry the
Second, ch. 5-6.— "It may not be without -n-
Btruction to remember that the Constitutions
of Clarendon, which Becket spent his life in
827
ENGLAND, 1163-1170.
Richard Cosur de
Lion.
ENGLAND, 1205-1213.
opposing, and of which his death procured the
suspension, are now incorporated in the English
law, and are regarded, without a dissentient
voice, as among tlie wisest and most necessary
of English institutions; that the especial point
for which he surrendered his life was not the in-
dependence of the clergy from the encroach-
ments of the Crown, but the personal and now
forgotten question of the superiority of the see
of Canterbury to the see of York." — A. P. Stan-
ley, Historiail Memorials of Canterbury, p. 124.
Also in : W. Stubbs, Const. Hist of Eng. , ch.
12, sect. 139-141.— The same, Select Charters, pt.
4. — J. C. Robertson, Becket. — J. A. Giles, Life
and Letters of Tliomas A Becket. — R. H. Froude,
Hist, of the Contest between ArcJtbisJiop Thomas a
Becket and Henry II. (Remains, pt. 3, v. 2). — J. A.
Froude, Life and Times of Thomas Becket. — C.
H. Pearson, Hist, of England during the Early
and Middle Ages, v. 1, ch. 29. — ^ See, also. Benefit
OP Clergy, and Jury. Tri.'VL by.
A. D. 1 189. — Accession of King Richard I.
(called Coeur de Lion).
A. D. 1189-1199. — Reign of Richard Coeur
de Lion. — His Crusade and campaigns in
France. — "The Third Crusade [see Crusades:
A. D. 1188-1193], undertaken for the deliver-
ance of Palestine from the disasters brought
upon the Crusaders' Kingdom by Saladin, was
the first to be popular in England. . . . Richard
joined the Crusade in the very first year of his
reign, and every portion of his subsequent career
was concerned with its consequences. Neither
in the time of William Rufus nor of Stephen
had the First or Second Crusades found England
sufficiently settled for such expeditions. . . .
But the patronage of the Crusades was a heredi-
tary distinction in the Angevin family now reign-
ing in England : they had founded the kingdom
of Palestine ; Henry IL himself had often pre-
pared to set out; and Richard was confidently
expected by the great body of his subjects to re-
deem the family pledge. . . . Wholly inferior
in statesmanlike qualities to his father as he was,
the generosity, munificence, and easy confidence
of his character made him an almost perfect rep-
resentative of the chivalry of that age. He was
scarcely at all in England, but his fine exploits
both by land and sea have made him deservedly
a favourite. The depreciation of him which is to
be found in certain modern books must in all
fairness be considered a little mawkish. A King
who leaves behind him such an example of ap-
parently reckless, but really prudent valour, of
patience under jealous ill-treatment, and perse-
verance in the face of extreme difliculties, shin-
ing out as the head of the manhood of his day,
far above the common race of kings and emper-
ors,^ such a man leaves a heritage of example
as well as glory, and incites posterity to noble
deeds. His great moral fault was his conduct to
Henry, and for this he was sufficiently punished ;
but his parents must each bear their share of the
blame. . . . The interest of English affairs dur-
ing Richard's absence languishes under the ex-
citement which attends his almost continuous
campaigns. . . . Both on the Crusade and in
France Richard was fighting the battle of the
Plouse which the English had very deliberately
placed upon its throne ; and if the war was kept
oft its shores, if the troubles of Stephen's reign
were not allowed to recur, the country had no
right to complain of a taxation or a royal ransom
which times of peace enabled it, after all, to bear
tolerably well. . . . The great maritime position
of the Plantagenets made these sovereigns take
to the sea." — M. Burrows, Commentaries on the
Hist, of England, bk. 1, ch. 18. — Richard "was a
bad king ; his great exploits, his military skill, his
splendour and extravagance, his poetical tastes,
his adventurous spirit, do not serve to cloak his
entire want of sympathy, or even consideration
for his people. He was no Englishman. . . .
His ambition was that of a mere warrior." —
W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng., sect. 150 (v. 1).
Also en: K. Norgate, England under the An-
gerin Kings, v. 2, ch. 7-8.
A. D. 1 199. — Accession of King John.
A. D. 1205. — The loss of Normandy and its
effects. — In 1303 Philip Augustus, king of
France, summoned John of England, as Duke of
Normandy (therefore the feudal vassal of the
French crown) to appear for trial on certain grave
charges before the august court of the Peers of
France. John refused to obey the summons ; his
French fiefs were declared forfeited, and the
armies of the French king took possession of them
(see France: A. D. 1180-1224). This proved
to be a lasting separation of Normandy from
England, — except as it was recovered moment-
arily long afterwards in the conquests of Henry
V. "The Norman barons had had no choice
but between John and Philip. For the first
time since the Conquest there was no competitor,
son, brother, or more distant kinsman, for their
allegiance. John could neither rule nor defend
them. Bishops and barons alike welcomed or
speedily accepted their new lord. The families
that had estates on both sides of the Channel
divided into two branches, each of which made
terms for itself; or having balanced their inter-
ests in the two kingdoms, threw in their lot with
one or other, and renounced what they could not
save. Almost immediately Normandy settles
down into a quiet province of France. . . . For
England the result of the separation was more
important still. Even within the reign of John
it became clear that the release of the barons
from their connexion with the continent was all
that was wanted to make them Englishmen.
With the last vestiges of the Norman inherit-
ances vanished the last idea of making England a
feudal kingdom. The Great Charter was won
by men ^vho were maintaining, not the cause of
a class, as had been the case in every civil war
since 1070, but the cause of a nation. From the
year 1203 the king stood before the English
people face to face." — W. Stubbs, Constitutional
Hist, of Eng., ch. 12, sect. 152.— See France:
A. D. 1180-1334.
A. D. 1205-1213. — King John's quarrel with
the Pope and the Church. — On the death, in
1205, of Archbishop Hubert, of Canterbury, who
had long been chief minister of the crown, a
complicated quarrel over the appointment to the
vacant see arose between the monks of the cathe-
dral, the suffragan bishops of the province. King
John, and the powerful Pope Innocent III. Pt>pe
Innocent put forward as his candidate the after-
wards famous Stephen Langton, secured his
election in a somewhat irregular way (A. D.
1207), and consecrated him with his own hands.
King John, bent on filling the primacy with a
creature of his own, resisted the papal acticjn
with more fury than discretion, and proceeded
to open war with the whole Church. "The
828
ENGLAND, 1305-1213.
King John
and Magna Carta.
ENGLAND. 1315.
monks of Canterbury were driven from their
monastery, and wfien, in the following year, an
interdict which the Pope had intrusted to the
Bishops of London, Ely and Worcester, was
published, his hostility to the Church became so
extreme that almost all the bishops fled ; the
Bishops of Winchester, Durham, and Norwich,
two of whom belonged to the ministerial body,
being the only prelates left in England. The in-
terdict was of the severest form; all services
of the Church, with the exception of baptism
and extreme unction, being forbidden, while the
burial of the dead was allowed only in unconse-
crated ground ; its effect was however weakened
by the conduct of some of the monastic orders,
who claimed exemption from its operation, and
continued their services. The king's anger knew
no bounds. The clergy were put beyond the
protection of the law ; orders were issued to drive
them from their benefices, and lawless acts com-
mitted at their expense met with no punishment.
. . . Though acting thus violently, John showed
the weakness of his character by continued com-
munication with the Pope, and occasional fitful
acts of favour to the Church ; so much so, that,
in the following year, Langton prepared to come
over to England, and, upon the continued ob-
stinacy of the king. Innocent, feeling sure of his
final victory, did not shrink from issuing his
threatened excommunication. John had hoped
to be able to exclude the knowledge of this step
from the island . . . ; but the rumour of it soon
got abroad, and its effect was great. ... In a
state of nervous excitement, and mistrusting his
nobles, the king himself perpetually moved to
and fro in his kingdom, seldom staying more than
a few da3'S in one place. None the less did he
continue his old line of policy. ... In 1211 a
league of excommunicated leaders was formed,
including ail the princes of the North of Europe ;
Ferrand of Flanders, the Duke of Brabant, John,
and Otho [John's Guelphic Saxon nephew, who
was one of two contestants for the imperial
crown in Germany], were all members of it,
and it was chiefly organized by the activity of
Reinald of Dammartin, Count of Boulogne. The
chief enemy of these confederates was Philip of
Prance ; and John thought he saw in this league
the means of revenge against his old enemy. To
complete the line of demarcation between the two
parties. Innocent, who was greatly moved by the
description of the disorders and persecutions in
England, declared John's crown forfeited, and
Intrusted the carrying out of the sentence to
Philip. In 1213 armies were collected on both
sides. Philip was already on the Channel, and
John had assembled a large army on Barham-
down, not far from Canterbury." But, at the
last moment, when the French king was on the
eve of embarking his forces for the invasion of
England, John submitted himself abjectly to
Pandulf, the legate of the Pope. He not only
surrendered to all that he had contended against,
but went further, to the most shameful extreme.
"On the loth of May, at Dover, he formally re-
signed the crowns of England and Ireland into the
hands of Pandulf, and received them again as
the Pope's feudatory." — J. P. Bright, Hist, of
Em/. (Med.), v. 1, pp. 130-134.
Also m: C. H. Pearson, Hint, of Stiff, during
the Early and Middle Ages, v. 2, ch. 2.— E. F.
Henderson, Select Hist. Doc's of the Middle Ages,
bk. 4, no. 5. — See, also, BoDvufBS, Battle of.
A. D. 1206-1230. — Attempts of John and
Henry III. to recover Anjou and Maine. See
Anjou: A. D. 1206-1443.
A. D. 1215. — Magna Carta. — "It is to the
victory of Bouvines that England owes her Great
Charter [see Bouvines]. . . . John sailed for
Poitou with the dream of a great victory which
should lay Philip [of France] and the barons
alike at his feet. He returned from his defeat to
find the nobles no longer banded together in
secret conspiracies, but openly united in a defin-
ite claim of liberty and law. The author of this
great change was the new Archbishop [Lang-
ton] whom Innocent had set on the throne of
Canterbury. ... In a private meeting of the
barons at St. Paul's, he produced the Charter of
Henry I. , and the enthusiasm with which it was
welcomed showed the sagacity with which the
Primate had chosen his ground for the coming
struggle. All hope, however, liung on the for-
tunes of the French campaign ; it was the victory
at Bouvines that broke the spell of terror, and
within a few days of the king's landing the bar-
ons again met at St. Edmundsbury. ... At
Christmas they presented themselves in arms be-
fore the king and preferred their claim. The few
months that followed showed John that he stood
alone in the land. ... At Easter the barons
again gathered in arms at Brackley and renewed
their claim. ' Why do they not ask for my
kingdom? ' cried John in a burst of passion ; but
the whole country rose as one man at his refusal.
London threw open her gates to the army of the
barons, now organized under Robert Fitz-Walter,
' the marshal of the army of God and the holy
Church.' The example of the capital was at
once followed by Exeter and Lincoln ; promises
of aid came from Scotland and Wales ; the north-
ern nobles marched hastily to join their comrades
in London. With seven horsemen in his train
John found himself face to face with a nation in
arms. . . . Nursing wrath in his heart the tyrant
bowed to necessity, and summoned the barons to
a conference at Runnymede. An island in the
Thames between Staines and Windsor had been
chosen as the place of conference : the king en-
camped on one bank, while the barons covered the
marshy flat, still known by the name of Runny-
mede, on the other. Their delegates met in
the island between them. . . . The Great Charter
was discussed, agreed to, and signed in a single
day [June 15, A. D. 1215]. One copy of it still
remains in the British Museum, injured by age
and fire, but with the royal seal still hanging
from the brown, shriveled parchment." — J. R.
Green, Short Hist, of the English Peojjle, ch. 3,
sect. 3-3. — "As this was the first effort towards a
legal government, so is it beyond comparison the
most important event in our history, except that
Revolution without which its benefits would have
been rapidly annihilated. The constitution of
England has indeed no single date from which
its duration is to be reckoned. The institutions
of positive law, the far more important changes
which time has wrought in the order of society,
during six hundred years subsequent to the
Great Charter, have undoubtedly lessened its
direct application to our present circumstances.
But it is still the key-stone of English liberty.
All that has since been obtained is little more
than as confirmation or commentary. . . The es-
sential clauses of Magna Charta are those which
protect the personal "liberty and property of all
829
ENGLAND, 1215.
Magna Carta.
ENGLAND, 1215.
freemen, by giving security from arbitrary im-
prisonment and arbitrary spoliation. ' No free-
man (says tlie 29th chapter of Henry IIL's
charter, which, as the existing law, I quote in
preference to tliat of John, the variations not be-
ing very material) shall be taken or imprisoned,
or be disseised of his freehold, or liberties, or free
customs, or be outlawed, or e.xiled, or any other-
wise destroyed ; nor will we pass upon him, nor
send upon, but by lawful judgment of his peers,
or by the law of the land. We will sell to no
man, we will not deny or delay to any man, jus-
tice or right.' It is obvious that these words,
interpreted by any honest court of law, convey
an ample security for the two main rights of civil
society. " — H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, ch. 8, pt.
3. — " The Great Charter, although drawn up in
the form of a royal grant, was really a treaty be-
tween the king and his subjects. ... It is the
collective people who really form the other high
contracting party in the great capitulation, — the
three estates of the realm, not, it is true, arranged
in order according to their profession or rank,
but not the less certainly combined in one national
purpose, and securing by one bond the interests
and rights of each other, severally and all to-
gether. . . . The barons maintain and secure
the right of the whole people as against them-
selves as well as against their master. Clause by
clause the rights of the commons are provided
for as well as the rights of the nobles. . . . The
knight is protected against the compulsory exac-
tion of his services, and the horse and cart of the
freeman against the irregular requisition even of
the sheriff. . . . The Great Charter is the first
great public act of the nation, after it has realised
its own identity. . . . The whole of the consti-
tutional history of England is little more than a
commentary on Magna Carta. " — W. Stubbs,
Constitutiomil Hist. ofEng., ch. 12, sett. 155. — The
following is the text of Magna Carta: "John,
by the Grace of God, King of England, Lord of
Ireland, Duke of Normandy, Aquitaine, and
Count of Anjou, to his Archbishops, Bishops,
Abbots, Earls, Barons, Justiciaries, Foresters,
Sheriffs, Governors, Officers, and to all Bailiffs,
and his faithful subjects, greeting. Know ye,
that we, in the presence of God, and for the sal-
vation of our soul, and the souls of all our an-
cestors and heirs, and unto the honour of God
and the advancement of Holy Church, and
amendment of our Realm, by advice of our ven-
erable Fathers, Stephen, Archbishop of Canter-
bury, Primate of all England and Cardinal of
the Holy Roman Church ; Henry, Archbishop of
Dublin ; William, of London ; Peter, of Winches-
ter ; Jocelin, of Bath and Glastonbury ; Hugh, of
Lincoln; Walter, of Worcester ; William, of Cov-
entry; Benedict, of Rochester — Bishops: of Mas-
ter Paudulph, Sub-Deacon and Familiar of our
Lord the Pope ; Brother Aymeric, Master of the
Knights-Templars in England ; and of the noble
Persons, William Marescall, Earl of Pembroke;
William, Earl of Salisbury; William, Earl of
Warren; William, Earl of Arundel; Alan de
Galloway, Constaljle of Scotland; Warin Fitz-
Gterald, Peter FitzHerbert, and Hubert de Burgh,
Seneschal of Poitou ; Hugh de Neville, Matthew
FitzHerbert, Thomas Basset, Alan Basset, Philip
of Albiney, Robert de Roppell, John JIareschal,
John FitzHugh, and others, our liegemen, have,
in the first place, granted to God, and by this our
present Charter confirmed, for us and our heirs
forever: — i. That the Church of England shall
be free, and have her whole rights, and her liber-
ties inviolable ; and we will have them so ob-
served, that it may appear thence that the free-
dom of elections, which is reckoned chief and
indispensable to the English Church, and which
we granted and confirmed by our Charter, and
obtained the confirmation of the same from our
Lord the Pojje Innocent III., before the discord
between us and our barons, was granted of mere
free will; which Charter we shall observe, and
we do will it to be faithfully observed by our
heirs for ever. 2. We also have granted to all
the freemen of our kingdom, for us and for our
heirs for ever, all the underwritten liberties, to
be had and holden by them and their heirs, of us
and our heirs for ever: If any of our earls, or
barons, or others, who hold of us in chief by
military service, shall die, and at the time of his
death his heir shall be of full age, and owe a re-
lief, he shall have his inheritance by the ancient
relief — that is to say, the heir or heirs of an earl,
for a whole earldom, by a hundred pounds ; the
heir or heirs of a baron, for a whole barony, by
a hundred pounds ; the heir or heirs of a knight,
for a whole knight's fee, by a hundred shillings
at most; and whoever oweth less shall give less,
according to the ancient custom of fees, 3. But
if the heir of anj' such shall be under age, and
shall be in ward, when he comes of age he shall
have his inheritance without relief and without
fine. 4. The keeper of the land of such an heir
being under age, shall take of the land of the
heir none but reasonable issues, reasonable cus-
toms, and reasonable services, and that without
destruction and waste of his men and his goods ;
and if we commit the custody of any such lands
to the sheriff, or any other who is answerable to
us for the issues of the land, and he shall make
destruction and waste of the lauds which he hath
in custody, we will take of him amends, and the
land shall be committed to two lawful and dis-
creet men of that fee, who shall answer for the
issues to us, or to him to whom we shall assign
them; and if we sell or give to any one the cus-
tody of any such lands, and he therein make de-
struction or waste, he shall lose the same custody,
which shall be committed to two lawful and dis-
creet men of that fee, who shall in like manner
answer to us as aforesaid. 5. But the keeper, so
long as he shall have the custody of the land,
shall keep up the houses, parks, warrens, ponds,
mills, and other things pertaining to the land, out
of the issues of the same land ; and shall deliver
to the heir, when he comes of full age, his whole
land, stocked with ploughs and carriages, accord-
ing as the time of wainage shall require, and the
issues of the land can reasonably bear. 6. Heirs
shall be married without disparagement, and so
that before matrimony shall be contracted, those
who are near in blood to the heir shall have notice.
7. A widow, after the death of her husband,
shall forthwith and without difficulty have her /
marriage and inheritance ; nor shall she give any-
thing for her dower, or her marriage, or her in-
heritance, which her husband and she held at the
day of his death; and she may remain in the
mansion house of her husband forty days after
his death, within which time her dower shall be
assigned. 8. No widow shall be distrained to
marry herself, so long as she has a mind to live
without a husband; but yet she shall give se-
curity that she will not marry without our assent.
830
ENGLAND, 1215.
Magna Carta.
ENGLAND, 1215.
if she hold of us ; or ■without the consent of the
lord of whom she holds, if she hold of another,
9. Neither we nor our bailiffs shall seize any land
or rent for any debt so long as the chattels "of the
debtor are sufficient to pay the debt ; nor shall
the sureties of the debtor be distrained so long
as the principal debtor has sufficient to pay the
debt ; and if the principal debtor shall fail in the
payment of the debt, not having wherewithal to
pay it, then the sureties shall answer the debt ;
and if they will they shall have the lands and
rents of the debtor, until they shall be satisfied
for the debt which they paid for him, unless the
principal debtor can show himself acquitted
thereof against the said sureties. 10. If anyone
have borrowed anything of the Jews, more or
less, and die before the debt be satisfied, there
shall be no interest paid for that debt, so long as
the heir is under age, of whomsoever he may
hold ; and if the debt falls into our hands, we will
only take the chattel mentioned in the deed. 11.
And if any one shall die indebted to the Jews, bis
wife shall have her dower and pay nothing of
that debt ; and if the deceased left children under
age, they shall have necessaries provided for
them, according to the tenement of the deceased ;
and out of the residue the debt shall be paid,
saving, however, the service due to the lords, and
In like manner shall it be done touching debts
due to others than the Jews. 12. No scutage or
aid shall be imposed in our kingdom, unless by
the general council of our kingdom ; except for
ransoming our person, making our eldest son a
knight, and once for marrying our eldest daugh-
ter; and for these there shall be paid no more
than a reasonable aid. In like manner it shall be
concerning the aids of the City of London. 13.
And the City of London shall have all its ancient
liberties and free customs, as well by land as by
water: furthermore, we will and grant that all
other cities and boroughs, and towns and ports,
shall have all their liberties and free customs. 14.
And for holding the general council of the king-
dom concerning the assessment of aids, except in
the three cases aforesaid, and for the assessing of
scutages, we shall cause to be summoned the
archbishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater
barons of the realm, singly by our letters. And
furthermore, we shall cause to be summoned
generally, by our sheriffs and bailiffs, all others
who hold of us in chief, for a certain day, that is
to say, forty days before their meeting at least,
and to a certain place ; and in all letters of such
summons we will declare the cause of such sum-
mons. And summons being thus made, the busi-
ness shall proceed on the day appointed, accord-
ing to the advice of such as shall be present,
although all that were summoned come not. 15.
We will not for the future grant to any one that
he may take aid of his own free tenants, unless
to ransom his body, and to make his eldest son a
knight, and once to marry his eldest daughter;
and for this there shall be only paid a reasonable
aid. 16. No man shall be distrained to perforin
more service for a knight's fee, or other free tene-
ment, than is due from thence. 17. Common
pleas shall not follow our court, but shall be
holden in some place certain. 18. Trials upon
the Writs of Novel Disseisin, and of j\Iort d'an-
cestor, and of Darrein Presentment, shall not be
taken but in their proper counties, and after this
manner : We, or if we should be out of the realm,
our chief justiciary, will send two justiciaries
through every county four times a year, who,
with four knights of each county, chosen by the
county, shall hold the said assizes in the county
on the day, and at the place appointed. 19.
And if any matters cannot be determined on the
day appointed for holding the assizes in each
county, so many of the knights and freeholders
as have been at the assizes aforesaid shall stay to
decide them as is necessary, according as there is
more or less business. 26. A freeman shall not
be amerced for a small offence, but only accord-
ing to the degree of the offence ; and for a great
crime according to the heinousness of it, saving
to him his contenement ; and after the same man-
ner a merchant, saving to him his merchandise.
And a villein shall be amerced after the same
manner, saving to him his wainage, if he falls
under our mere}-; and none of the aforesaid
amerciaments shall be assessed but by the oath of
honest men in the neighbourhood. 21. Earls and
barons shall not be amerced but by their peers,
and after the degree of the offence. 22. No
ecclesiastical person shall be amerced for his lay
tenement, but according to the proportion of the
others aforesaid, and not according to the value
of his ecclesiastical benefice. 23. Neither a town
nor any tenant shall be distrained to make bridges
or embankments, unless that anciently and of
right they are bound to do it. 24. No sheriff,
constable, coroner, or other our bailiffs, shall hold
"Pleas of the Crown." 25. All counties, hun-
dreds, wapentakes, and trethings, shall stand at
the old rents, without any increase, except in our
demesne manors. 26. If any one holding of us
a lay fee die, and the sheriff, or our bailiffs, show
our letters patent of summons for debt which the
dead man did owe to us, it shall be lawful for the
sheriff or our bailiff to attach and register the
chattels of the dead, found upon his lay fee, to
the amount of the debt, by the view of lawful
men, so as nothing be removed until our whole
clear debt be paid ; and the rest shall be left to
the executors to fulfil the testament of the dead ;
and if there be nothing due from him to us, all
the chattels shall go to the use of the dead, sav-
ing to his wife and children their reasonable
shares. 27. If any freeman shall die intestate,
his chattels shall be distributed by the hands of
his nearest relations and friends, by view of the
Church, saving to every one his debts which the
deceased owed to him. 28. No constable or
bailiff of ours shall take corn or other chattels of
any man unless he presently give him money for
it, or hath respite of payment by the good-will
of the seller. 29. No constable shall distrain any
knight to give money for castle-guard, if he him-
self will do it in his person, or by another able
man, in case he cannot do it through any reason-
able cause. And if we have carried or sent him
into the army, he shall be free from such guard
for the time he shall be in the army by our com-
mand. 30. No sheriff or bailiff of ours, or any
other, shall take horses or carts of any freeman
for carriage, without the assent of the said free-
man. 31. Neither shall we nor our bailiffs take
any man's timber for our castles or other uses,
unless by the consent of the owner of the timber.
32. We will retain the lands of those convicted
of felony only one year and a day, and then they
shall be delivered to the lord of the fee. 33. All
kydells (wears) for the time to come shall be put
down in the rivers of Thames and Medway, and
throughout all England, except upon the sea-
831
ENGLAND, 1315.
Magna Carta.
ENGLAND, 1315.
coast. 34. The writ which is called prmcipe, for
the future, shall not be miuie out to any one, of
any tenement, whereby a freeman may lose his
court. 35- There shall be one measure of wine
and one of ale through our whole realm; and
one measure of corn, that is to say, the London
quarter ; and one breadth of dyed cloth, and rus-
sets, and haberjeets, that is to say, two ells within
the lists ; and it shall be of weights as it is of
measures. 36. Nothing from henceforth shall be
given or taken for a writ of inquisition of life or
limb, but it shall be granted freely, and not de-
nied. 37. If any do hold of us by fee-farm, or
by socage, or bj' burgage, and he hold also lands
of any other by knight's service, we will not
have the custody of the heir or land, which is
holden of another man's fee by reason of that
fee-farm, socage, or burgage ; neither will we
have the custody of the fee-farm, or socage, or
burgage, unless knight's service was due to us
out of the same fee-farm. We will not have the
custody of an heir, nor of any land which he
holds of another by knight's service, by reason
of any petty serjeanty by which he holds of us,
by the service of paying a Itnife, an arrow, or the
like. 38. No bailiff from henceforth shall put
any man to his law upon his own bare saying,
without credible witnesses to prove it. 39. No
freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or disseised,
or outlawed, or banished, or any ways destroyed,
nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send
upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his
peers, or by the law of the land. 40. We will
sell to no man, we will not deny to any man,
either justice or right. 41. All merchants shall
have safe and secure conduct, to go out of, and
to come into England, and to stay there and to
pass as well by land as by water, for buying and
selling by the ancient and allowed customs, with-
out any unjust tolls; except in time of war, or
when they are of any nation at war with us.
And if there be found any such in our land, in
the beginning of the war, they shall be attached,
without damage to their bodies or goods, until it
be known unto us, or our chief justiciary, how
our merchants be treated in the nation at war
with us; and if ours be safe there, the others
shall be safe in our dominions. 42. It shall be
larwful, for the time to come, for any one to go
out of our kingdom, and return safely and se-
curely by land or by water, saving his allegiance
to us ; unless in time of war, by some short space,
for the common benefit of the realm, except
prisoners and outlaws, according to the law of
the land, and people in war with us, and mer-
chants who shall be treated as is above mentioned.
43. If any man hold of any escheat, as of the
honour of Wallingford, Nottingham, Boulogne,
Lancaster, or of other escheats which be in our
hands, and are baronies, and die, his heir shall
give no other relief, and perform no other service
to us than he would to the baron, if it were in
the baron's hand; and we will hold it after the
same manner as the baron held it. 44. Those
men who dwell without the forest from hence-
forth shall not come before our justiciaries of
the forest, upon common summons, but such as
are impleaded, or are sureties for any that are at-
tached for something concerning the forest. 45.
We will not make any justices, constables, sher-
iffs, or bailiffs, but of such as Imow the law of
the realm and mean duly to observe it. 46. All
barons who have founded abbeys, which they
hold by charter from the kings of England, or by
ancient tenure, shall have the keeping of them,
when vacant, as they ought to have. 47. All
forests that have been made forests in our time
shall forthwith be disforested ; and the same shall
be done with the water-banks that have been
fenced in by us in our time. 48. All evil cus-
toms concerning forests, warrens, foresters, and
warreners, sheriffs and their officers, water-banks
and their keepers, shall forthwith be inquired
into in each county, by twelve sworn knights of
the same county, chosen by creditable persons of
the same county ; and within forty days after the
said inquest be utterly abolished, so as never to be
restored : so as we are first acquainted therewith,
or our justiciary, if we should not be in England.
49. We will immediately give up all hostages
and charters delivered unto us by our English
subjects, as securities for their keeping the peace,
and yielding us faithful service. 50. We will
entirely remove from their bailiwicks the rela-
tions of Gerard de Atheyes, so that for the future
they shall have no bailiwick in England ; we will
also remove Engelard de Cygony, Andrew, Peter,
and Gyon, from the Chancery ; Gyon de Cygony,
Geoffrey de Martyn, and his brothers; Philip
Mark, and his brothers, and his nephew, Geoffrey,
and their whole retinue. 51. As soon as peace is
restored, we will send out of the kingdom all
foreign knights, cross-bowmen, and stipendiaries,
who are come with horses and arms to the mol-
estation of our people. 52. If any one has been
dispossessed or deprived by us, without the law-
ful judgment of his peers, of his lands, castles,
liberties, or right, we will forthwith restore them
to him ; and if any dispute arise upon this head,
let the matter be decided by the five-and-twenty
barons hereafter mentioned, for the preservation
of the peace. And for all those things of which
any person has, without the lawful judgment of
his peers, been dispossessed or deprived, either by
our father King Henry, or our brother King
Richard, and which we have in our hands, or are
possessed by others, and we are bound to warrant
and make good, we shall have a respite till the
term usually allowed the crusaders; excepting
those things about which there is a plea depend-
ing, or whereof an inquest hath been made, by our
order before we undertook the crusade ; but as soon
as we return from our expedition, or if perchance
we tarry at home and do not make our expedi-
tion, we will immediately cause full justice to be
administered therein. 53. The same respite we
shall have, and in the same manner, about ad-
ministering justice, disafforesting or letting con-
tinue the forests, which Henry our father, and
our brother Richard, have afforested; and the
same concerning the wardship of the lands which
are in another's fee, but the wardship of which
we have hitherto had, by reason of a fee held of
us by knight's service ; and for the abbeys founded
in any other fee than our own, in which the lord
of the fee says he has a right ; and when we re-
turn from our expedition, or if we tarry at home,
and do not make our expedition, we will immedi-
ately do full justice to all the complainants in
this behalf. 54. No man shall be taken or im-
prisoned upon the appeal of a woman, for the
death of any other than her husband, 55. All
unjust and illegal fines made by us, and all amer-
ciaments imposed unjustly and contrary to the
law of the land, shall be entirely given up, or
else be left to the decision of the five-and-twenty
832
ENGLAND, 1215.
MagTia Carta.
ENGLAND, 1215.
barons hereafter mentioned for the preservation
of the peace, or of the major part of them, to-
gether with the aforesaid Stephen, Archbishop
of Canterbury, if he can be present, and others
whom he shall think fit to invite ; and if he can-
not be present, the business shall notwithstanding
go on without him ; but so that if one or more
of the aforesaid five-and-twenty barons be plain-
tiffs in the same cause, they shall be set aside
as to what concerns this particular affair, and
others be chosen in their room, out of the said
five-and-twenty, and sworn by the rest to decide
the matter. 56. If we have disseised or dis-
possessed the Welsh of any lands, liberties, or
other things, without the legal judgment of their
peers, either in England or in Wales, they shall
be immediately restored to them ; and if any dis-
pute arise upon this head, the matter shall be
determined in the Marches by the judgment of
their peers; for tenements in England according
to the law of England, for tenements in Wales
according to the law of Wales, for tenements of
the Marches according to the law of the Marches :
the same shall the Welsh do to us and our sub-
jects. 57. As for all those things of which a
Welshman hath, without the lawful judgment of
his peers, been disseised or deprived of by King
Henry our father, or our brother King Richard,
and wliich we either have in our hands or others
are possessed of, and we are obliged to warrant
it, we shall have a respite till the time generally
allowed the crusaders; excepting those things
about which a suit is depending, or whereof an
inquest has been made by our order, before we
undertook the crusade : but when we return, or
if we stay at home without performing our ex-
pedition, we will immediately do them full jus-
tice, according to the laws of the Welsh and of
the parts before mentioned. 58. We will with-
out delay dismiss the son of Llewellin, and all
the Welsh hostages, and release them from the
engagements they have entered into with us for
the preservation of the peace. 59. We will treat
■with AJe.xander, King of Scots, concerning the
restoring his sisters and hostages, and his right
and liberties, in the same form and manner as we
shall do to the rest of our barons of England ; un-
less by the charters which we have from his
father, William, late King of Scots, it ought to
be otherwise ; and this shall be left to the deter-
mination of his peers in our court. 60. All the
aforesaid customs and liberties, which we have
granted to be holden in our kingdom, as much as
it belongs to us, all people of our kingdom, as
well clergy as laity, shall observe, as far as they
are concerned, towards their dependents. 61.
And whereas, for the honour of God and the
amendment of our kingdom, and for the better
quieting the discord that has arisen between us
and our barons, we have granted all these things
aforesaid ; willing to render them firm and last-
ing, we do give and grant our subjects the
underwritten security, namely that the barons
may choose five-and-twenty barons of the king-
dom, whom they think convenient; who shall
take care, with all their might, to hold and ob-
serve, and cause to be observed, tne peace and
liberties we have granted them, and by this our
present Charter confirmed in this manner ; that is
to say, that if we, our justiciary, our bailiffs, or
any of our officers, shall in any circumstance
have failed in the performance of them towards
any person, or shall have broken through any of
53
these articles of peace and security, and the
offence be notified to four barons chosen out of
the five-and-twenty before mentioned, the said
four barons shall repair to us, or our justiciary,
if we are out of the realm, and, laying open the
grievance, shall petition to liave it redressed
without delay ; and if it be not redressed by us,
or if we should chance to be out of the realm, if
it should not be redressed by our justiciary within
forty days, reckoning from the time it has been
notified to us, or to our justiciary (if we should
be out of the realm), the four barons aforesaid
shall lay the cause before the rest of the five-and-
twenty barons ; and the said five-and-twenty bar-
ons, together with the community of the whole
kingdom, shall distrain and distress us in all the
ways in which they shall be able, by seizing our
castles, lands, possessions, and in any other man-
ner they can, till the grievance is redressed, ac-
cording to their pleasure ; saving harmless our
own person, and the persons of our Queen and
children; and when it is redressed, they shall be-
have to us as before. And any person whatsoever
in the kingdom may swear that he will obey the
orders of the five-and-twenty barons aforesaid in
the execution of the premises, and will distress
us, jointly with them, to the utmost of his power ;
and we give public and free liberty to any one
that shall please to swear to this, and never vf ill
hinder any person from taking the same oath.
62. As for all those of our subjects who will not,
of their own accord, swear to join the five-and-
twenty barons in distraining and distressing us,
we will issue orders to make them take the same
oath as aforesaid. And if any one of the five-
and-twenty barons dies, or goes out of the king-
dom, or is hindered any other way from carrying
the things aforesaid into execution, the rest of
the said five-and-twenty barons may choose an-
other in his room, at their discretion, who shall be
sworn in like manner as the rest. In all things
that are committed to the execution of these five-
and-twenty barons, if, when they are all assem-
bled together, they should happen to disagree
about any matter, and some of them, when sum-
moned, will not or cannot comCj whatever is
agreed upon, or enjoined, by the major part of
those that are present shall be reputed as firm
and valid as if all the five-and-twenty bad given
their consent ; and the aforesaid five-and-twenty
shall swear that all the premises they shall faith-
fully observe, and cause with all their power to
be observed. And we will procure nothing from
any one, by ourselves nor by another, whereby
any of these concessions and liberties may be re-
voked or lessened ; and if any such thing shall
have been obtained, let it be null and void;
neither will we ever make use of it either by
ourselves or any other. And all the ill-will, in-
dignations, and rancours that have arisen be-
tween us and our subjects, of the clergy and
laity, from the first breaking out of the dissen-
sions between us, we do fully remit and forgive :
moreover, all trespasses occasioned by the said
dissensions, from Easter in the sixteenth year of
our reign till the restoration of peace and tran-
quillity, we hereby entirely remit to all, both
clergy and laity, and as far as in us lies do fully
forgive. We have, moreover, caused to be made
for them the letters patent testimonial of Stephen,
Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, Henry, Lord
Archbishop of Dublin, and the bishops aforesaid,
as also of Master Pandulph, for the security and
833
ENGLAND, 1315.
The Barons' War.
ENGLAND, 1316-1274.
concessions aforesaid. 63. Wherefore we ■will
and firmly enjoin, that the Church of England
lu' free, and that all men in our kingdom have
and hold all the aforesaid liberties, rights, and
concessions, truly and peaceably, freely and
quietly, fully and wholly to themselves and their
heirs, of us and our heirs, in all things and places,
for ever, as is aforesaid. It is also sworn, as
well on our part as on the part of the barons,
that all the things aforesaid shall be observed in
good faith, and without evil subtilty. Given
under our hand, in the presence of the witnesses
above named, and many others, in the meadow
called Runingmede,between Windsor and Staines,
the 15th day of June, in the 17th year of our
reign." — W. Stubbs, Select Charters, pt. 5.- — Old
South Leaflets, Oeneral Series, no. 5.
Also in: E. F. Henderson, Select Hist. Doc's
of the Middle Ages, bk. 1, no. 7. — C. H. Pearson,
Ilist. of Eiig. dining the Early and Middle Ages,
r. 2, ch. 3.
A. D. 1216-1274. — Character and reign of
Henry III. — The Barons' War. — Simon de
Montfort and the evolution of the English Par-
liament. — King John died October 17,1316. "His
legitimate successor was a child of nine years
of age. For the first time since the Conquest the
personal government was in the hands of a minor.
In that stormy time the great Earl of Pembroke
undertook the government, as Protector. ... At
the Council of Bristol, with general approbation
and even with that of the papal legate, Magna
Charta was confirmed, though with the omission
of certain articles. . . . After some degree of
tranquillity had been restored, a second confirma-
tion of the Great Charter took place in the autumn
of 1317, with the omission of the clauses referring
to the estates, but with the grant of a new charta
de foresta, introducing a vigorous administration
of the forest laws. In 9 Henry III. JIagna Charta
was again confirmed, and this is the form in
which it afterwards took its place among the stat-
utes of the realm. Two years later, Henry III.
personally assumes the reins of government at
the Parliament of Oxford (1327), and begins his
rule without confirming the two charters. At first
the tutorial government still continues, which had
meanwhile, even after the death of the great Earl
of Pembroke (1219), remained in a fairly orderly
condition. The first epoch of sixteen years of
this reign must therefore be regarded purely as
a government by the nobility imder the name of
Henry III. The regency had succeeded in remov-
ing the dominant influence of the Roman Curia
by the recall of the papal legate, Pandulf, to Rome
(1331), and in getting rid of the dangerous foreign
mercenary soldierj' (1334). . . . With the dis-
graceful dismissal of the chief justiciary, Hubert
de Burgh, there begins a second epoch of a per-
sonal rule of Henry III. (1333-1353), which for
twenty continuous years, presents the picture of
a confused and undecided struggle between the
king and his foreign favourites and personal ad-
herents on the one side, and the great barons, and
with tliem soon the prelates, on the other. . . .
In 31 Henry III. the King finds himself, in con-
sequence of pressing money embarrassments,
again compelled to make a solemn confirmation
of the charter, in which once more the clauses re-
lating to the estates are omitted. Shortly after-
wards, as had happened just one hundred years
previously in France, the name ' parliamentum '
occurs for the first time (Chron. Dunst., 1344;
Matth. Paris, 1246), and curiously enough, Henry
III. himself, in a writ addressed to the Sheriff of
Northampton, designates with this term the as-
sembly which originated the Magna Charta. . . .
The name 'parliament,' now occurs more fre-
quently, but does not supplant the more definite
terms concilium, colloquium, etc. In the mean-
while the relations with the Continent became
complicated, in consequence of the family con-
nections of the mother and wife of the King, and
the greed of the papal envoys. . . . From the
year 1344 onwards, neither a chief justice nor a
chancellor, nor even a treasurer, is appointed, but
the administration of the country is conducted at
the Court by the clerks of the offices." — R. Gneist,
Hist, of t!w English Const.. i>. 1, pp. 313-321.—
' ' Nothing is so hard to realise as chaos ; and noth-
ing nearer to chaos can be conceived than the gov-
ernment of Henry III. Henry was, like all the
Plantagenets, clever ; like very few of them, he
was devout ; and if the power of conceiving a great
policy would constitute a great King, he would
certainly have been one. ... He aimed at mak-
ing the Crown virtually independent of the barons.
. . . HisconnexiouwithLouis IX., whose brother-
in-law he became, was certainly a misfortune to
him. In France the royal power had during the
last fifty years been steadily on the advance ; in
England it had as steadily receded ; and Henry
was ever hearing from the other side of the Chan-
nel maxims of government and ideas of royal au-
thority which were utterly inapplicable to the
actual state of his own kingdom. This, like a
premature Stuart, Henry was incapable of per-
ceiving ; a King he was, and a King he would be,
in his own sense of the word. It is evident that
with such a task before him, he needed for the
most shadowy chance of success, an iron strength
of will, singular self-control, great forethought
and care in collecting and husbanding his re-
sources, a rare talent for administration, the sa-
gacity to choose and the self-reliance to trust his
counsellors. And not one of these various quali-
ties did Henry possess. . . . Henry had imbibed
from the events and the tutors of his early child-
hood two maxims of state, and two alone : to trust
Rome, and to distrust the barons of England.
. . . He filled the placesof trust and power about
himself with aliens, to whom the maintenance of
Papal influence was like an instinct of self-pre-
servation. Thus were definitely formed the two
great parties out of whose antagonism the War
of the Barons arose, under whose influence the re-
lations between the crown and people of England
were remodelled, and out of whose enduring con-
flict rose, indirectly, the political principles which
contributed so largely to bring about the Re-
formation of the English Church. The few years
which followed the fall of Hubert de Burgh were
the heyday of Papal triumph. j\jid no triumph
could have been worse used. . . . Thus was the
whole country lying a prey to the ecclesiastical
aliens maintained by the Pope, and to the lay
aliens maintained by the King, . . . when Simon
de Montfort became . . . inseparably intermixed
with the course of our history. ... In the year
1358 opened the first act of the great drama
which has made the name of Simon de Mont-
fort immortal. . . . The Barons of England,
at Leicester's suggestion, liad leagued for the
defence of their rights. Tliey appeared armed
at the Great Council. . . . They required as the
condition of their assistance that the general
834
ENGLAND, 1316-1374.
Simon de Monffort.
ENGLAND, 1316-1274.
reformation of the realm should be entrusted
to a Commission of twenty-four members, half
to be chosen by tlie crown, and half by tliem-
selves. For the election of this body, prima-
rily, and for a more explicit statement of griev-
ances, the Great Council was to meet again at
Oxford on the 11th of June, 1358. When the
Barons came, tliey appeared at the head of thc-ir
retainers. The invasion of the Welsh was the
plea ; but the real danger was nearer home. They
seized on tlie Cinque Ports ; the unrenewed truce
with France was the excuse ; they remembered
too vividly King John and his foreign mercena-
ries. They then presented their petition. This
was directed to the redress of various abuses.
... To each and every clause the King gave his
inevitable assent. One more remarkable encroach-
ment was made upon the royal prerogative ; the
election in Parliament of a chief justiciar. . . .
The chief justiciar was the first officer of the
Crown. He was not a mere chief justice, after
the fashion of the present day, but the representa-
tive of tlie Crown in its high character of the
fountain of justice. . . . But the point upon
which the barons laid the greatest stress, from the
beginning to the end of their struggle, was the
question of the employment of aliens. That the
strongest castles and the fairest lands of England
should be in the hands of foreigners, was an in-
sult to the national spirit which no free people
could fail to resent. . . . England for the Eng-
lish, the great war cry of the barons, went home
to the heart of the humblest. . . . The great
question of the constitution of Parliament was not
heard at Oxford ; it emerged into importance when
the struggle grew fiercer, and the barons found
it necessary to gather allies round them. . . .
One other measure completed the programme of
the barons ; namely, the appointment, already re-
ferred to, of a committee of twenty-four. . . .
It amounted to placing the crown under the con-
trol of a temporary Council of Regency [see Ox-
ford, Provisions op]. . . . Part of the barons'
work was simple enough. The justiciar was
named, and the committee of twenty-four. To
expel the foreigners was less easy. Simon de
Montfort, himself an alien by birth, resigned the
two castles which he held, and called upon the
rest to follow. They simply refused. . . . But
the barons were in arras, and prepared to use
them. The aliens, with their few English sup-
porters, fled to Winchester, where the castle was
in the hands of the foreign bishop Aymer. They
were besieged, brought to terms, and exiled. The
barons were now masters of the situation. . . .
Among the prerogatives of the crown which
passed to the Oxford Commission not the least
valuable, for the hold which it gave on tlie gen-
eral government of the country, was the right to
nominate the sheriffs. In 1361 the King, who
had procured a Papal bull to abrogate the Pro-
visions of O.xford, and an army of mercenaries
to give the bull effect, proceeded to expel the
sheriffs who had been placed in office by the
barons. The reply of the barons was most memo-
rable ; it was a direct appeal to the order below
their own. They summoned three knights elected
from each county in England to meet them at St.
Albans to discuss the state of the realm. It was
clear that the day of the House of Commons
could not be far distant, when at such a crisis an
appeal to the knights of the shire could be made,
and evidently made with success. For a moment.
in this great move, the whole strength of the
barons was united ; but differences soon returned,
and against divided counsels the crown steadily
prevailed. In June, 1262, we find peace restored.
The more moderate of the barons had acquiesced
in the terms offered by Henry; Montfort, who
refused them, was abroad in voluntary exile. . . .
Suddenly, in July, the Earl of Gloucester died,
and the sole leadership of the barons passed into
the hands of Montfort. With this critical event
opens the last act in the career of the great Earl.
In October he returns privately to England. The
whole winter is passed in the patient reorganising
of the party, and the preparation for a decisive
struggle. Montfort, fervent, eloquent, and de-
voted, swayed with despotic influence the hearts
of the younger nobles (and few in those days lived
to be grey), and taught them to feel that the Pro-
visions of Oxford were to them what tlie Great
Charter had been to their fathers. They were
drawn together with an unanimity unknown be-
fore. . . . They demanded the restoration of the
Great Provisions. The King refused, and in Maj',
1363, the barons appealed to arms. . . . Henry,
with a reluctant hand, subscribed once more to
the Provisions of Oxford, with a saving clause,
however, that they should be revised in the coming
Parliament. On the 9tli of September, accord-
ingly. Parliament was assembled. . . . The King
and the barons agreed to submit their differences
to the arbitration of Louis of France. . . . Louis
IX. had done more than any one king of France
to enlarge the royal prerogative ; and Louis was
the brother-in-law of Henry. His award, given
at Amiens on the 23d of January, 1364, was, as
we should have expected, absolutely in favour
of the King. The whole Provisions of Oxford
were, in his view, an invasion of the royal power.
. . . The barons were astounded. . . . They at
once said that the question of the employment
of aliens was never meant to be included. . . .
The appeal was made once again to the sword.
Success for a moment inclined to the royal side,
but it was only for a moment ; and on the memora-
ble field of Lewes the genius of Leicester pre-
vailed. . . . With tlie two kings of England and
of the Romans prisoners in his hands, Montfort
dictated the terms of the so-called Mise of Lewes.
. . . Subject to the approval of Parliament, all
differences were to be submitted once more to
French arbitration. . . . On the 33d of June the
Parliament met. It was no longer a Great Coun-
cil, after the fashion of previous assemblies: it
included four knights, elected by each English
county. This Parliament gave such sanction as
it was able to the exceptional authority of Mont-
fort, and ordered that until the proposed arbitra-
tion could be carried out, the King's council should
consist of nine persons, to be named by the Bishop
of Chichester, and the Earls of Gloucester and
Leicester. The effect was to give Simon for the
time despotic power. . . . It was at length agreed
that all questions whatever, the employment of
aliens alone excepted, should be referred to the
Bishop of London, the justiciar Hugh le Despen-
ser, Charlesof Anjou, andthe Abbotof Bee. If on
any point they could not agree, the Archbishop
of Rouen was to act as referee. ... It was . . .
not simply the expedient of a revolutionary chief
in difficulties, but the expression of a settled and
matured policy, when, in December 1364, [Mont-
fort] issued in the King's name the ever-memora-
ble writs which summoned the first complete Par
835
ENGLAND, 1216-1274.
Edivard I.
ENGLAND, 1275-1S95.
Hament which ever met in England. The earls,
barons, and bishops received their summons as
of course ; and with them the deans of cathedral
churches, an unprecedented number of abbots
and priors, two knights from every shire, and two
citizens or burgesses from every city or borough
in England. Of their proceedings we know but
little ; but they appear to have appointed Simon
de Montfort to the office of Justiciar of England,
and to have thus made him in rank, what he had
before been in power, the first subject in the
realm. . . . Montfort . . . had now gone so far,
he had exercised such extraordinary powers, he
had done so many things which could never really
be pardoned, that perhaps bis only chance of
safety lay in the possession of some such office as
this. It is certain, moreover, that something
which passed in this Parliament, or almost exactly
at the time of its meeting, did cause deep oifence
to a considerable section of the barons. . . . Diffi-
culties were visibly gathering thicker around him,
and he was evidently conscious that disaffection
was spreading fast. . . . Negociations went for-
ward, not very smoothly, for the release of Prince
Edward. They were terminated in May by his
escape. It was the signal for a royalist rising.
Edward took the command of the Welsli border ;
before the middle of June he had made the bor-
der his own. On the 29th Gloucester opened its
gates to him. He had many secret friends. He
pushed fearlessly eastward, and surprised the gar-
rison of Kenilworth, commanded by Simon, the
Earl's second son. The Earl himself lay at Eves-
ham, awaiting the troops which his son was to
bring up from Kenilworth. . . . Ou the fatal
field of Evesham, fighting side by side to the last,
fell the Earl himself, his eldest son Henry, De-
spenser the late Justiciar, Lord Basset of Dray-
ton, one of his firmest friends, and a host of minor
name. With them, to all appearance, fell the
cause for which they had fought." — Simon de
Montfort (Quarterly Eev., Jan., 1866). — See
Parliament, The English : Early Stages of
ITS Evolution. — "Important as this assembly
[the Parliament of 1264] is in the history of the
constitution, it was not primarily and essentially
a constitutional assembly. It was not a gene-
ral convention of the tenants in chief or of the
three estates, but a parliamentary assembly of the
supporters of the existing government." — W.
Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng., ch. 14, sect. 177 (e. 2).
Also in : The same, Tlie Early Plantagenets.
— G. W. Prothero, Life of Simon de Montfort, ch.
11-12.— H. Blaauw, The Barons' War.^Q. H.
Pearson, England, Early and Middle Ages, v. 2.
A. D. 1271. — Crusade of Prince Edvyard.
See Crusades: A. D. 1270-1271.
A. D. 1272. — Accession of King Edward I.
A. D. 1275-1295. — Development of Parlia-
mentary representation under Edward I. —
" Happilj', Earl Simon [de Montfort] found a
successor, and more than a successor, in the
king's [Henry III. 's] son. . . . Edward I. stood
on the vantage ground of the throne. . . . He
could do that easily and without effort wliich
Simon could only do laboriously, and with the
certainty of rousing opposition. Especially was
this the case with the encouragement given by
the two men to the growing aspirations after
parliamentary representation. Earl Simon's as-
semblies were instruments of warfare. Edward's
assemblies were invitations to peace. . . . Barons
and prelates, knights and townsmen, came to-
gether only to support a king who took the
initiative so wisely, and who, knowing what
was best for all, sought the good of his kingdom
without thought of his own ease. Yet even so,
Edward was too prudent at once to gather to-
gether such a body as that which Earl Simon
had planned. He summoned, indeed, all the
constituent parts of Simon's parliament, but he
seldom summoned them to meet in one place or
at one time. Sometimes the barons and [irelates
met apart from the townsmen or the knights,
sometimes one or the other class met entirely
alone. ... In this way, during the first twenty
years of Edward's reign, the nation rapidly grew
in that consciousness of national unity which
would one day transfer the function of regulation
from the crown to the representatives of the
people." — S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Int. to the Study of Eng. Hist., ch. 4, sect. 17.—
" In 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from
both shires and boroughs representatives to aid
him in the new work of government. That part
of Earl Simon's work had not been lasting. The
task was left for Edward I. to be advanced by
gradual safe steps, but to be thoroughly com-
pleted, as a part of a definite and orderly arrange-
ment, according to which the English parliament
was to be the perfect representation of the Three
Estates of the Realm, assembled for purposes of
taxation, legislation and united political action.
. . . Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled
him to pass a great statute of legal reform, called
the Statute of Westminster the First, and to
exact the new custom on wool ; another assem-
bly, the same year, granted him a fifteenth. . . .
There is no evidence that the commons of either
town or county were represented. ... In 1283,
when the expenses of the Welsh war were be-
coming heavy, Edwaixl again tried the plan of
obtaining money from the towns and counties by
separate negotiation ; but as that did not provide
him with funds sufficient for his purpose, he
called together, early in 1283, two great assem-
blies, one at York and another at Northampton,
in which four knights from each shire and four
members from each city and borough were or-
dered to attend; the cathedral and conventual
clergy also of the two provinces were represented
at the same places by their elected proctors. At
these assemblies there was no attendance of the
barons; they were with the king in Wales; but
the commons made a grant of one-thirtieth on
the understanding that the lords should do the
same. Another assembly was held at Slire wsbury
tlie same year, 1283, to witness the trial of David
of Wales ; to this the bishops and clergy were not
called, but twenty towns and all the counties
were ordered to send representatives. Anotlier
step was taken in 1290: knights of the shire
were again summoned ; but still much remained
to be done before a perfect parliament was con-
stituted. Counsel was wanted for legislation,
consent was wanted for taxation. The lords
were summoned in May, and did their work in
June and July, granting a feudal aid and passing
the statute 'Quia Emptores,' but the knights
only came to vote or to promise a tax, after a
law had been passed ; and the towns were again
taxed by special commissions. In 1294, . . .
under the alarm of war with France, an alarm
which led Edward into several breaches of con-
stitutional law, he went still further, assembling
the clergy by their representatives in August,
836
ENGLAND. 1275-1295.
Parliamentary
Representation.
ENGLAND, 1375-1295.
and the shires by their representative knights in
October. The next year, 1295, witnessed the
first summoas of a perfect and model parliament;
the clergy represented by their bishops, deans,
archdeacons, and elected proctors ; tlie barons
summoned severally in person by tlie lying's
special writ, and the commons summoned by
writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing them to
send up two elected Ivnights from eacli shire, two
elected citizens from each city, and two elected
burghers from each borough. The writ by
which the prelates were called to this parliament
contained a famous sentence taken from the
Roman law, ' That whicli touches all should be
approved by all,' a ma.xim jvliich might serve as
a motto for Edward's constitutional scheme, how-
ever slowly it grew upon him, now permanently
and consistently completed." — W. Stubbs, The
Early Plantagenets, cli. 10. — "Comparing the
history of the following ages with that of the
past, we can scarcely doubt that Edward had a
definite idea of government before his eyes, or
that that idea was successful because it approved
itself to the genius and grew out of the habits of
the people. Edward saw, in fact, what the
nation was capable of, and adapted his constitu-
tional reforms to that capacity. But althougli
we may not refuse him the credit of design, it
may still be questioned whether the design was
altogether voluntary, whether it was not forced
upon him by circumstances and developed by a
series of careful experiments. . . . The design,
as interpreted by the result, was tlie creation of
a national parliament, composed of the tliree
estates. . . . This design was perfected in 1295.
It was not the result of compulsion, but tlie con-
summation of a growing policy. . . . But the
close union of 1295 was followed by tlie compul-
sion of 1297: out of tlie organic completeness of
the constitution sprang the power of resistance,
and out of the resistance the victory of the prin-
ciples, wliich Edward might guide, but which
he failed to coerce. " — W. Stubbs, Constitutional
Hist, of Eng., ch. 15, sect. 244 and ch. 14, sect.
180-182.— The same. Select Charters, pt. 7.—
"The 13th century was above all tilings the age
of the lawyer and tlie legislator. The revived
study of Roman law had been one of the greatest
results of the intellectual renaissance of the
twelfth century. The enormous growth of the
universities in the early part of the thirteenth
century was in no small measure due to the zeal,
ardour and success of their legal faculties. Prom
Bologna there flowed all over Europe a great
impulse towards the systematic and scientific
study of the Civil Law of Rome. . . . The
northern lawyers were inspired by their emula-
tion of the civilians and canonists to look at the
rude chaos of feudal custom with more critical
eyes. They sought to give it more system and
method, to elicit its leading principles, and to co-
ordinate its clashing rules into a harmonious
body of doctrine worthy to be put side by side
with the more pretentious edifices of the Civil
and Canon Law. In this spirit Henry de Brac-
ton wrote the first systematic exposition of Eng-
lish law in the reign of Henry III. The judges
and lawyers of the reign of Edward sought to
put the principles of Bracton into practice. Ed-
ward himself strove with no small success to
carry on the same great work by new legislation.
. . . His well-known title of the ' English Jus-
tinian' is not so absurd as it appears at first
sight. He did not merely resemble Justinian in
being a great legislator. Like the famous codifier
of the Roman law, Edward stood at the end of a
long period of legal development, and sought to
arrange and systematise what had gone before
him. Some of his great laws arc almost in form
attempts at the systematic codification of various
branches of feudal custom. . . . Edward was
greedy for power, and a constant object of his
legislation was the exaltation of the royal pre-
rogative. But he nearly always took a broad
and comprehensive view of his authority, and
thoroughly grasped the truth that the best in-
terests of king and kingdom were identical. He
wished to rule the state, but was willing to take
his subjects into partnership with him, if they in
return recognised his royal rights. . . . The same
principles which influenced Edward as a law-
giver stand out clearly in his relations to every
class of his subjects. ... It was the greatest
work of Edward's life to make a permanent and
ordinarj' part of the machinery of English gov-
ernment, what in his father's time had been but
the temporary expedient of a needy taxgatherer
or the last despairing effort of a revolutionary
partisan. Edward I. is — so much as one man
can be — the creator of the historical English
constitution. It is true that the materials were
ready to his hand. But before he came to the
throne the parts of the constitution, though al-
ready roughly worked out, were ill-defined and
ill-understood. Before his death the national
council was no longer regarded as complete un-
less it contained a systematic representation of
the three estates. All over Europe the thirteenth
century saw the establishment of a system of
estates. The various classes of the community,
which had a separate social status and a common
political interest, became organised communities,
and sent their representatives to swell the council
of the nation. By Edward's time there had
already grown up in England some rough an-
ticipation of the three estates of later history.
... It was with no intention of diminishing his
power, but rather with the object of enlarging
it, that Edward called the nation into some sort
of partnership with him. The special clue to
this aspect of his policy is his constant financial
embarrassment. He found that he could get
larger and more cheerful subsidies if he laid his
financial condition before the representatives of
his people. . . . The really important thing was
that Edward, like Montfort, brought shire and
borough representatives together in a single es-
tate, and so taught the country gentry, the lesser
landowners, who, in a time when direct partici-
pation in politics was impossible for a lower
class, were the real constituencies of the shire
members, to look upon their interests as more in
common with the traders of lower social status
than with the greater landlords with whom in
most continental countries the lesser gentry were
forced to associate their lot. The result strength-
ened the union of classes, prevented the growth
of the abnormally numerous privileged nobility
of most foreign countries, and broadened and
deepened the main current of the national life."
— T. F. Tout, Edward th4; First, ch. 7-8.— "There
was nothing in England which answered to the
'third estate ' in France — a class, that is to say,
both isolated and close, composed exclusively of
townspeople, enjoying no commerce with the
rural population (except such as consisted in the
837
ENGLAND, 1275-1295.
Papal pretensions
resisted.
ENGLAND, 1306-1393.
reception of fugitives), and at once detesting and
dreading the nobility by whom it was surrounded.
In England the contrary was the case. The
townsfolk and the other classes in each county
were thrown together upon numberless occasions ;
a long period of common activity created a cor-
dial understanding between the burghers on the
one hand and their neighbours the knights and
landowners on the other, and finally prepared
the way for the fusion of the two classes." — £.
Boutmy, The English Constitution, ch. 3.
A. D. 1279. — The Statute of Mortmain. —
' ' For many years past, the great danger to the
balance of power appeared to come from the
regular clergy, who, favoured by the success of
the mendicant orders, were adding house to house
and field to field. Never dying out like families,
and rarely losing by forfeitures, the monasteries
might well nigh calculate the time, when all the
soil of England should be their own. . . . Ac-
cordingly, one of the first acts of the barons
under Henry III. had been to enact, that no fees
should be aliened to religious persons or corpo-
rations. Edward re-enacted and strengthened
this by various provisions in the famous Statute
of Mortmain. The fee illegally aliened was now
to be forfeited to the chief lord under the King ;
and if, by collusion or neglect, the lord omitted
to claim his right, the crown might enter upon
it. Never was statute more unpopular with the
class at whom it was aimed, more ceaselessly
eluded, or more effectual." — C. II. Pearson, Hist,
of Enrihnid during tlie Early and Middle Ages,
1). 3, ch. 9.
A. D. 1282-1284.— Subjugation of Wales.
See Wales; A. D. 1283-1284.
A. D. 1290-1305.— Conquest of Scotland by
Edward I. See Scotland : A. D. 1290-1305.
A. D. 1297. — TheConfirmatio Chartarum of
Edward I. — "It was long before the King
would surrender the right of taking talliages
without a parliamentary grant. In order to
carry on his extensive wars he was in constant
need of large sums ot money, which he raised by
arbitrary exactions from all classes of his sub-
jects, lay and clerical." The disputes and the
resistance to which these exactions gave rise
grew violent in 1397, and Edward was at length
persuaded to assent to what was called the "Con-
firmatio Chartarum " — confirmation of the Great
Charter and the Charter of Forests. "The Con-
firmatio Chartarum. which, although a statute,
is drawn up in the form of a charter, was passed
on the 10th of October, 1397, in a Parliament at
which knights of the shire attended as repre-
sentatives of the Commons, as well as the la_y
and clerical baronage. . . . The Confirmatio
Chartarum was not merely a re-issue of Magna
Charta and the Charter of the Forest, . . . but
the enactment of a series of new provisions. . . .
By the 5th section of this statute the King ex-
pressly renounced as precedents the aids, tasks,
and prises before taken. . . . The exclusive right
of Parliament to impose taxation, though often
infringed by the illegal exercise of prerogative,
became from this time an axiom of the Constitu-
tion." — T. P. Taswell-Langmead, English Consti-
tution/il Histori/, ch.7.
14th Century.— The founding of manufac-
tures and trade. See Flanders : A. D. 1333-
1837, and TjiA')n, Medi.eval.
A. D. 1306-1303. — Resistance to the Pope.
—"For one hundred and fifty years succeeding
838
the Conquest, the right of nominating the arch-
bishops, bishops, and mitred abbots had been
claimed and e.\ercised by the king. This right
had been specially confirmed by the Constitu-
tions of Clarendon, which also provided that the
revenues of vacant sees should belong to the
Crown. But .lohn admitted all the Papal claims,
surrendering even his kingdom to the Pope, and
receiving it back as a fief of the Holy See. By
the Great Charter the Church recovered its liber-
ties; the right of free election being specially
conceded to the cathedral chapters and the re-
ligious houses. Every election was, however,
subject to the approval of the Pope, who also
claimed a right of veto on institutions to the
smaller church benefices. . . . Under Henry III.
the power thus vested in the Pope and foreign
superiors of the monastic orders was greatly
abused, and soon degenerated into a mere chan-
nel for draining money into the Roman excheq-
uer. Edward 1. firmly withstood the exactions
of the Pope, and reasserted the independence of
both Church and Crown. ... In the reign of
the great Edward began a series of statutes
passed to check the aggressions of the Pope and
restore the independence of the national church.
The first of the series was passed in 1306-7. . . .
This statute was confirmed under Edward III.
in the 4th, and again in the 5th year of his reign ;
and in the 25th of his reign [A. D. 1351], roused
' by the grievous complaints of all the commons
of his realm,' the King and Parliament passed
the famous Statute of Provisors, aimed directly
at the Pope, and emphatically forbidding his
nominations to English benefices. . . . Three
years afterwards it was found necessary to pass
a statute forbidding citations to the court of
Home — [the prelude to the Statute of Praemu-
nire, described below]. ... In 1389, there was
an expectation that the Pope was about to at-
tempt to enforce his claims, by excommunicating
those who rejected them. . . . The Parliament
at once passed a highly penal statute. . . . Mat-
ters were shortly afterwards brought to a crisis
by Boniface IX., wlio after declaring the stat-
utes enacted by the English Parliament null and
void, granted to an Italian cardinal a prebendal
stall at Wells, to which the king had already
presented. Cross suits were at once instituted
by the two claimants in the Papal and English
courts. A decision was given by the latter, in
favour of the king's nominee, and the bishops,
having agreed to support the Crown, were forth-
with excommunicated by the Pope. The Com-
mons were now roused to the highest pitch of
indignation," — -and the final great Statute of
Praemunire was passed, A. D. 1393. "The firm
and resolute attitude assumed by the country
caused Boniface to yield; 'and for the moment,'
observes Mr. Froude, 'and indeed forever under
this especial form, the wave of papal encroach-
ment was rolled back.'" — T. P. 'Taswell-Lang-
mead, Eng. Const. Hist., ch. 11.— "The great
Statute of Provisors, passed in 1351, was a very
solemn expression of the National determination
not to give way to the pope's usurpation of pat-
ronage. . . . All persons procuring or accepting
papal promotions were to be arrested In
1352 the purchasers of Provisions were declared
outlaws; in 1365 another act repeated the prohi-
bitions and penalties ; and in 1390 the parliament
of Richard II. rehearsed and confirmed the stat-
ute. By this act, forfeiture and banishment were
ENGLAND, iaa6-ia93.
Edward IIT.
and his ivars.
ENGLAND, 1333-1380.
decreed against future transgressors. " The Stat-
ute of Praemunire as enacted finally in 1393, pro-
vided that "all persons procuring in the court of
Rome or elsewhere such translations, processes,
sentences of excommunication, bulls, instru-
ments or other things which touch the king, his
crown, regality or realm, should suffer the pen-
alties of prajmunire" — which included imprison-
ment and forfeiture of goods. ' ' The name prae-
munire which marks this form of legislation is
taken from the opening word of the writ by
which the sheriff is charged to summon tlie de-
linquent." — W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Emj., ch.
19, sect. 715-71G.
A. D. 1307. — Accession of King Edward IL
A. D. 1310-1311. — The Ordainers. — " At the
parliament which met in JIarch 1310 [reign of
Edward IL] a new scheme of reform was pro-
mulgated, which was framed on the model of
that of 1258 and the Provisions of Oxford. It
was determined that the task of regulating the
affairs of the realm and of the king's household
should be committed to an elected body of twenty-
one members, or Ordainers, the chief of whom
was Archbishop Winchelsey. . . . The Ordain-
ers were empowered to remain in office until
Michaelmas 1311, and to make ordinances for the
good of the realm, agreeable to the tenour of the
king's coronation oath. The w-hole administra-
tion of the kingdom thus passed into their hands.
. . . The Ordainers immediately on their appoint-
ment issued six articles directing the observance
of the charters, the careful collection of the cus-
toms, and the arrest of the foreign merchants;
but the great body of the ordinances was re-
served for the parliament which met in August
1311. The famous document or statute known
as the Ordinances of 1311 contained forty-
one clauses, all aimed at existing abuses." — W.
Stubbs. Jlie Early PlantcKjenets, ch. 13.
A. D. 1314-1328. — Bannockburn and the re-
covery of Scottish independence. See Scot-
land: A. D. 1314; 1314-1328.
A. D. 1327. — Accession of King Edward III.
A. D. 1328. — The Peace of Northampton
with Scotland. See Scotland; A. D. 1328.
A. D. 1328-1360. — The pretensions and wars
of Edward IIL in France. See France; A. D.
1328-1339; and 1337-1360.
A. D. 1332-1370. — The wars of Edward III.
with Scotland. See Scotland: A. D. 1333-
1333, and 1333-1370.
A. D. 1333-1380.— The effects of the war in
France. — "A period of great wars is generally
favourable to the growth of a nobility. Men
who equipped large bodies of troops for the
Scotch or French wars, or who had served with
distinction in them, naturally had a claim for re-
ward at the hands of their sovereign. . . . The
13th century had broken up estates all over Eng-
land and multiplied families of the upper class;
the 14tli century was consolidating properties
again, and establishing a broad division between
a few powerful nobles and the mass of tlie com-
munity. But if the gentry, as an order, lost a
little in relative importance by the formation of
a class of great nobles, more distinct than had
existed before, the middle classes of England, its
merchants and yeomen, gained very much in im-
portance by the war. Under the firm rule of
the ' King of the Sea,' as his subjects lovingly
called Edward III., our commerce expanded.
Englishmen rose to an equality with the mer-
chants of the Hanse Towns, the Genoese, or the
Lombards, and England for a time overflowed
with treasure. The first period of war, ending
with the capture of Calais, secured our coasts;
the second, terminated by the peace of Bretigny,
brought the plunder of half France into the
English markets ; and even when Edward's reign
had closed on defeat and bankruptcy, and our
own shores were ravaged by hostile fleets, it was
still possible for private adventurers to retaliate
invasion upon the enemy. . . . The romance of
foreign conquest, of fortunes lightly gained and
lightly lost, influenced English enterprise for
many years to come. . . . The change to the lower
orders during the reign arose rather from the
frequent pestilences, which reduced the num-
ber of working men and made labour valu-
able, than from any immediate participation in
the war. In fact, English serfs, as a rule, did
not serve in Edward's armies. They could not
be men-at-arms or archers for want of training
and equipment ; and for the work of light-armed
ti-oops and foragers, the Irish and Welsh seem to
have been preferred. The opportunity of the
serfs came with the Black Death, while districts
were depopulated, and everywhere there was a
want of hands to till the fields and get in the
crops. The immediate effect was unfortunate.
. . . The indifference of late years, when men
were careless if their villans stayed on the prop-
erty or emigrated, was succeeded by a sharp in-
quisition after fugitive serfs, and constant legis-
lation to bring them back to their masters. . . .
The leading idea of the legislator was that the
labourer, whose work had doubled or trebled in
value, was to receive the same wages as in years
past ; and it was enacted that he might be paid
in kind, and, at last, that in all cases of con-
tumacy he should be imprisoned without the op-
tion of a fine. . . . The French war contributed
in many ways to heighten the feeling of English
nationality. Our trade, our language and our
Church received a new and powerful influence.
In the early years of Edward III.'s reign, Italian
merchants were the great financiers of England,
farming the taxes and advancing loans to the
Crown. Gradually the instinct of race, the influ-
ence of the Pope, and geographical position,
contributed, with the mistakes of Edward's
policy, to make France the head, as it were,
of a confederation of Latin nations. Genoese
ships served in the French fleet, Genoese bow-
men fought at Crecy, and English privateers
retorted on Genoese commerce throughout the
course of the reign. In 1376 the Commons peti-
tioned that all Lombards might be expelled the
kingdom, bringing amongst other charges against
them that they were French spies. The Floren-
tines do not seem to have been equally odious,
but the failure of the great firm of the Bardi in
1345, chiefly through its English engagements,
obliged Edward to seek assistance elsewhere ; and
he transfen'ed the privilege of lending to the
crown to the merchants of the rising Hanse
Towns." — C. H. Pearson, Eng. Hist, in the Four-
teenth Century, ch. 9. — "We may trace the destruc-
tive nature of the war with France in the notices
of adjoining parishes thrown into one for want
of sufficient inhabitants, ' of i^eople impoverished
by frequent taxation of our lord the king,' until
they had fled, of churches allowed to fall into
ruin because there were none to worship within
their walls, and of religious houses extinguished
839
ENGLAND, 1333-1380.
The Black Death.
ENGLAND, 1350-1400.
because the monks and nuns had died, and none
had been found to supply their places. ... To
the poverty of the country and the consequent
inability of the nation to maintain the costly
wars of Edward III., are attributed the enact-
ments of sumptuary laws, which were passed
because men who spent much on their table and
dress were unable ' to help their liege lord ' in
the battle field."— W. Denton, JSng. in the 15th
Century, int., pt. 2.
A. D. 1348-1349.— The Black Death and its
effects.— "The plague of 1349 . . . produced
in every country some marked social changes.
... In England the effects of the plague are
historically prominent chiefly among the lower
classes of society. The population was dimin-
ished to an extent to which it is impossible now
even to approximate, but which bewildered and
appalled the writers of the time ; whole districts
were thrown out of cultivation, whole parishes
depopulated, the number of labourers was so
much diminished that on the one hand the surviv-
ors demanded an extravagant rate of wages, and
even combined to enforce it, whilst on the other
hand the landowners had to resort to every anti-
quated claim of service to get their estates culti-
vated at all ; the whole system of farming was
changed in consequence, the great landlords and
the monastic corporations ceased to manage their
estates by farming stewards, and after a short
interval, during which the lands with the stock
on them were let to the cultivator on short leases,
the modern system of letting was introduced,
and the permanent distinction between the farmer
and the labourer established. " — W. Stubbs, Const.
Hist, of En(j., ch. 16, sect. 359.— "On the first of
August 1348 the disease appeared in the seaport
towns of Dorsetshire, and travelled slowly west-
wards and northwards, through Devonshire and
Somersetshire to Bristol. In order, if possible,
to arrest its progress, all intercourse with the
citizens of Bristol was prohibited by the authori-
ties of the county of Gloucester. These pre-
cautions were however taken in vain ; the Plague
continued to Oxford, and, travelling slowly in
the same measured way, reached London by the
first of November. It appeared in Norwich on
the first of January, and thence spread north-
wards. . . . The mortality was enormous. Per-
haps from one-third to one-half the population
fell victims to the disease. Adam of Monmouth
says that only a tenth of the population survived.
Similar amplifications are found in all the chroni-
clers. We are told that 60,000 persons perished
in Norwich between January and July 1349. No
doubt Norwich was at that time the second city
in the kingdom, but the number is impossible.
... It is stated that in England the weight of
the calamity fell on the poor, and that the higher
classes were less severely affected. But Edward's
daughter Joan fell a victim to it and three arch-
bishops of Canterbury perished in the same year.
. . . All contemporary writers inform us that the
immediate consequence of the Plague was a
dearth of labour, and excessive enhancement of
wages, and thereupon a serious loss to the land-
owners. To meet this scarcity the king issued a
proclamation directed to the sheriffs of the several
counties, which forbad the payment of higher
than the customary wages, under the penalties of
amercement. But the king's mandate was every
where disobeyed. . . . Many of the labourers
were thrown into prison: many to avoid punish-
ment fled to the forests, but were occasionally
captured and fined ; and all were constrained to
disavow under oath that they would take higher
than customary wages for the future. " — J. E. T.
Rogers, Hist, of Agriculture and Prices in Eng.,
V. 1, c7i. 15. See Black Death.
Also in : F. A. Gasquet, The Great Pestilence.
— W. Longman, Edward III., v. 1, ch. 16. — A,
Jessop, The Coming of the Friars, itc, ch. 4-5,
A. D. 1350-1400. — Chaucer and his relations
to English language and literature. — "At the
time when the conflict between church and state
was most violent, and when Wyclif was begin-
ning to_draw upon himself the eyes of patriots,
there was considerable talk at the English court
about a young man named Geoffrey Chaucer,
who belonged to the king's household, and who
both by his personality and his connections en-
joyed the favor of the royal family. . . . On
many occasions, even thus early, he had ap-
peared as a miracle of learning to those about
him — he read Latin as easily as French; he
spoke a more select English than others; and
it was known that he had composed, or, as the
expression then was, 'made,' many beautiful Eng-
lish verses. The young poet belonged to a well-
to-do middle-class family who had many far-
reaching connections, and even some influence
with the court. . . . Even as a boy he may have
heard his father, John Chaucer, the vintner of
Thames Street, London, telling of the marvelous
voyage he had made to Antwerp and Cologne in
the brilliant suite of Edward III. in 1338. "When
a youth of sixteen or seventeen, Geoffrey served
as a page or squire to Elizabeth, duchess of
Ulster, first wife of Lionel, duke of Clarence, and
daughter-in-law of the king. He bore arms
when about nineteen years of age, and went to
France in 1359, in the army commanded by
Edward III. . . . This epoch formed a sort of
' Indian summer ' to the age of chivalry, and its
spirit found expression in great deeds of war as
well as in the festivals and manners of the court.
The ideal which men strove to realize did not
quite correspond to the spirit of the former age.
On the whole, people had become more worldly
and practical, and were generally anxious to
protect the real interests of life from the un-
warranted interference of romantic aspirations.
The spirit of chivalry no longer formed a funda-
mental element, but only an ornament of life —
an ornament, indeed, which was made much of,
and which was looked upon with a sentiment
partaking of enthusiasm. ... In the midst of
this outside world of motley pomp and throbbing
life Geoffrey could observe the doings of high
and low in various situations. He was early
initiated into court intrigues, and even into many
political secrets, and found opportunities of
studying the human type in numerous indi-
viduals and according to the varieties developed
by rank in life, education, age, and sex. . . .
Nothing has been preserved from his early writ-
ings. . . . The fact is very remarkable that from
the first, or at least from a very early period,
Chaucer wrote in the English language — how-
ever natural this may seem to succeeding ages
in 'The Father of English Poetry.' The court
of Edward III. favored the language as well as
the literature of France ; a considerable number
of French poets and ' menestrels ' were in the
service and pay of the English king. Queen
Philippa, in particular, showing herself in this a
840
ENGLAND, 1350-1400.
Chaitcer.
ENGLAND, 1360-1414.
true daughter of her native Hainault, formed
the centre of a society cultivating the French
language and poetry. She had in her personal
service Jean Froissart, one of the most eminent
representatives of that language and poetry ; like
herself he belonged to one of the most northern
districts of the French-speaking territory; he
had made himself a great name, as a prolific and
clever writer of erotic and allegoric trifles, be-
fore he sketched out in his famous chronicle the
motley-colored, vivid picture of that eventful
age. We also see in this period young English-
men of rank and education trj'ing their flight on
the French Parnassus. . . . To these Anglo-
French poets there belonged also a Kentishman of
noble family, named John Gower. Though some
ten years the senior of Chaucer, he had probably
met him about this time. They were certainly
afterwards very intimately acquainted. Gower
. . . had received a very careful education, and
loved to devote the time he could spare from the
management of his estates to study and poetry.
His learning was in many respects greater than
Chaucer's. He had studied the Latin poets so
diligently that he could easily express himself in
their language, and he was equally good at
writing French verses, which were able to pass
muster, at least in England. . . . But Chaucer
did not let himself be led astray by examples
such as these. It is possible that he would have
found writing in French no easy task, even if he
had attempted it. At any rate his bourgeois
origin, and the seriousness of his vocation as
poet, threw a determining weight into the scale
and secured his fidelity to the English language
with a commendable consistency." — B. Ten
Brink, Hist, of English Literature, bk. 4, ch. 4
(». 2, pt. 1). — "English was not taught in the
schools, but French only, until after the acces-
sion of Richard II., or possibly the latter years
of Edward III., and Latin was always studied
through the French. Up to this period, then, as
there were no standards of literary authority,
and probably no written collections of estab-
lished forms, or other grammatical essays, the
language had no fixedness or uniformity, and
hardly deserved to be called a written speech.
. . . From this Babylonish confusion of speech,
the influence and example of Chaucer did more
to rescue his native tongue than any other single
cause ; and if we compare his dialect with that
of any writer of an earlier date, we shall find
that in compass, flexibility, expressiveness, grace,
and all the higher qualities of poetical diction,
he gave it at once the utmost perfection which
the materials at his hand would permit of. The
English writers of the fourteenth century had an
advantage which was altogether peculiar to their
age and country. At all previous periods, the
two languages had co-existed, in a great degree
independently of each other, with little tendency
to intermix ; but in the earlier part of that cen-
tury, they began to coalesce, and this process
was going on with a rapidity that threatened a
predominance of the French, if not a total ex-
tinction of the Saxon element. . . . When the
national spirit was aroused, and Impelled to the
creation of a national literature, the poet or prose
writer, in selecting his diction, had almost two
whole vocabularies before him. That the syntax
should be English, national feeling demanded ;
but French was so familiar and habitual to all
who were able to read, that probably the scholar-
ship of the day would scarcely have been able to
determine, with respect to a large proportion of
the words in common use, from which of the
two great wells of speech they had proceeded.
Happily, a great arbiter arose at the critical mo-
ment of severance of the two peoples and dia-
lects, to preside over the division of the common
property, and to determine what share of the
contributions of France should be permanently
annexed to the linguistic inheritance of English-
men. Chaucer did not introduce into the Eng-
lish language words which it had rejected as aliens
before, but out of those which had been already
received, he invested the better portion with the
rights of citizenship, and stamped them with
the mint-mark of English coinage. In this way,
he formed a vocabulary, which, with few ex-
ceptions, the taste and opinion of succeeding
generations has approved ; and a literary diction
was thus established, which, in all the qualities
required for the poetic art, had at that time no
superior in the languages of modern Europe
The soundness of Chaucer's judgment, the nicety
of his philological appreciation, and the delicacy
of his sense of adaptation to the actual wants of
the English people, are sufficiently proved by
the fact that, of the Romance words found in his
writings, not much above one hundred have been
suffered to become obsolete, while a much larger
number of Anglo-Saxon words employed by
him have passed altogether out of use. ... In
the three centuries which elapsed between the
Conquest and the noon-tide of Chaucer's life, a
large proportion of the Anglo-Saxon dialect of re-
ligion, of moral and Intellectual discourse, and of
taste, had become utterly obsolete, and unknown.
The place of the lost words had been partly sup-
plied by the importation of Continental terms;
but the new words came without the organic
power of composition and derivation which be-
longed to those they had supplanted. Conse-
quently, they were incapable of those modifica-
tions of form and extensions of meaning which
the Anglo-Saxon roots could so easily assume,
and which fitted them for the expression of the
new shades of thought and of sentiment born of
every hour in a mind and an age like those of
Chaucer." — G. P. Marsh, Origin and Hist, oftlie
Eng. Lang., lect. 9.
Also in : T. R. Lounsbury, Studies in Chaucer.
— A. W. Ward, Chaumr. — W. Godwin, Life of
Geoffrey Chaucer.
A. D. 1360-1414. — The Lollards. — "The Lol-
lards were the earliest ' Protestants ' of England.
They were the followers of John Wyclif, but be-
fore his time the nickname of Lollard had been
known on the continent. A little brotherhood of
pious people had sprung up in Holland, about
the year 1300, who lived in a half-monastic fashion
and devoted themselves to helping the poor in the
burial of their dead; and, from the low chants
they sang at the funerals — lollen being the old
word for such singing — they were called Lol-
lards. The priests and friars hated them and
accused them of heresy, and a Walter Lollard,
probably one of them, was burnt in 1323 at Co-
logne as a heretic, and gradually the name became
a nickname for such people. So when Wyclif 's
' simple priests ' were preaching the new doctrines,
the name already familiar in Holland and Ger-
many, was given to them, and gradually became
the name for that whole movement of religious
reformation which grew up from the seed Wyclif
841
ENGLAND, 1360-1414.
^^'!/cl^Jfe mid the
Lollards,
ENGLAND, 1360-1414.
sowed." — B. Herford, Story of Religion in Eiig.,ch.
16.— "A turning point arrived in the history of
the reforming party at tlie accession of the house
of Lancaster. King Henry the Fourth was not
only a devoted son of the Church, but he owed
his success in no slight measure to tlie assistance
of the Churchmen, and above all to that of Arch-
bishop Arundel. It was felt that the new dy-
nasty and the hierarchy stood or fell together.
A mixture of religious and political motives
led to tlie passing of the well-known statute
' De hseretico comburendo ' in 1401 and thencefor-
ward Lollardy was a capital offence." — R. L.
Poole, Wydiffeaiul Movements for Reform, ch. 8. —
"The abortive insurrection of the Lollards at the
commencement of Henry V.'s reign, under the
leadership of Sir John Oldcastle, had the effect
of adding to the penal laws already in existence
against the sect. " This gave to Lollardy a political
character and made the Lollards enemies against
the State, as is evident from the king's proclama-
tion in which it was asserted ' ' that the insurgents
intended to ' destroy him, his brothers and several
of the spiritual and temporal lords, to confiscate
the possessions of the Church, to .secularize the
religious orders, to divide the realm into confed-
erate districts, and to appoint Sir John Old-
castle president of the commonwealth.'" — T. P.
Taswell-Langmead, Eng. Const. Hist, {ith ed.),
ch. 11. — "The early life of Wycliffe is obscure.
... He emerges into distinct notice in 1360,
ten years subsequent to the passing of the first
Statute of Provisors, having then acquired a
great Oxford reputation as a lecturer in divinity.
. . . He was a man of most simple life; aus-
tere in appearance, with bare feet and russet
mantle. As a soldier of Christ, he saw In his
Great Master and his Apostles the patterns whom
he was bound to imitate. By the contagion of
example he gathered about him other men who
thought as he did; and gradually, under his cap-
taincy, these ' poor priests ' as they were called
— vowed to poverty because Christ was poor —
vowed to accept no benefice . . . spread out over
the country as an army of missionaries, to preach
the faith which they found in the Bible — lo
preach, not of relics and of indulgences, but of
repentance and of the grace of God. They car-
ried with them copies of the Bible which Wycliffe
had translated, . . . and they refused to recognize
the authority of the bishops, or their right to
silence them. If this had been all, and perhaps
if Edward III. had been succeeded by a prince
less miserably incapable than his grandson Rich-
ard, AVycliffe might have made good his ground ;
the movement of the parliament against the pope
might have united in a common stream with the
spiritual move against the church at home, and
the Reformation have been antedated by a cen-
tury. He was summoned to answer for himself
before the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1377.
Ho appeared in court supported by the presence
of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lanca.ster, the elilest
of Edward's surviving sous, and the authorities
were unable to strike him behind so powerful a
shield. But the ' poor ]3riests ' had other doc-
trines. . . . His [Wycliffe's] theory of property,
and his study of the character of Christ, had led
him to the near confines of Anabaptism." The
rebellion of Wat Tyler, which occurred in 1381,
east odium upon all such opinions. " So long as
Wycliffe lived, his own lofty character was a
guarantee for the conduct of his immediate dis-
ciples ; and although his favour had far declined,
a party in the state remained attached to him,
with sufficient influence to prevent the adoption
of extreme measures against the 'poor priests.'
. . . They were left \mmolested for the next
twenty years. . . . On the settlement of the coun-
try under Henry IV. they fell under the general
ban which struck down all parties who had shared
in the late disturbances." — J. A. Froude, Mist,
if Eng., ch. 6. — "Wycliffe's translation of the
Bible itself created a new era, and gave birth to
what may be said never to have existed till then
— a popular theology. ... It is difficult in our
day to imagine the impression such a book must
have produced in an age which lunl scarcely any-
thing in the way of popular literature, and which
had been accustomed to regard the Scriptures as
the special property of the learned. It was wel-
comed with an enthusiasm which could not be
restrained, and read with avidity both by priests
and laymen. . . . The homely wisdom, blended
with eternal truth, wliich has long since enriched
our vernacular speech with a multitude of prov-
erbs, could not thenceforth be restrained in its
circulation by mere pious awe or time-honoured
])rejudicc. Divinity was discussed in ale-houses.
Popular preachers made war upon old prejudices,
and did much to shock that sense of reverence
which belonged to an earlier generation. A new
school had arisen with a theology of its own, warn-
ing the people against the delusive preacliing of
the friars, and asserting loudly its own claims to
be true and evangelical, on the ground that it
possessed the gospel in the English tongue. Ap-
pealing to such an authority in their favour, the
eloquence of the new teachers made a marvellous
impression. Their followers increased with ex-
traordinary rapidity. By the estimate of an op-
ponent they soon numbered half the population,
and you could hardly see two persons in the street
but one of them was a Wycliffite. . . . They
were supported by the powerful influence of John
of Gaunt, who shielded not only AVycliffe him-
self, but even the most violent of the fanatics.
And, certainly, whatever might have been Wy-
cliffe's own view, doctrines were promulgated by
his reputed followers that were distinctly sub-
versive of authority. John Ball fomented the in-
surrection of Wat Tyler, by preaching the natural
equality of men. . . . But the popularity of Lol-
lardy was short-lived. The extravagance to
which it led soon alienated the sympathies of the
people, and the sect fell off in numbers almost as
rapidly as it had risen." — J. Gairdner, Studies in
Eng. JIisi.,t-2. — "Wyclif . . . was not without
numerous followers, and the Lollardism which
sprang out of his teaching was a living force in
England for some time to come. But it was weak
through its connection with suliversive social doc-
trines. He liimself stood aloof from such doc-
trines, but he could not prevent his followers
from mingling in the social fray. It was perhaps
their merit that they did so. The established con-
stitutional order was but another name for op-
pression and wrong to the lower classes. But as
yet the lower classes were not sufficiently ad-
vanced in moral and political training to make it
safe to entrust them with the task of righting
their own wrongs as they would have attempted
to right them if they hatl gained the mastery. It
had nevertheless become impossible to leave the
peasants to be once more goaded by suffering into
rebellion. The attempt, if it had been made, to
842
ENGLAND, 1360-1414.
Richard II. and
Wat Tijler.
ENGLAND, 1381.
enforce absolute labour-rents was tacitly aban-
doned, and gra<lually during the next century the
mass of the villeins passed into the position of
freemen. For the moment, nobles and prelates,
landowners and clergy, banded themselves to-
gether to form one great party of resistance. The
church came to be but an outwork of the baron-
age. " — S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger, /«J7W?.
to the Study of Eiuj. Hist., pt. 1, ch. 5, sect. 14-15.
Also in: L. Sergeant, John Wyclif. — G. Lech-
ler, John Wtclif and his English Precursors. — See,
also, BonEMiA; A. D. 1405-1415, and Begdines.
A. D. 1377. — Accession of King Richard II.
A. D. 1377-1399. — The character and reign
of Richard II. — " Richard II. was a far superior
man to many of the weaker kings of England ;
but being self-willed and unwarlike, he was un-
fitted for the work which the times required.
Yet, on a closer inspection than the traditional
view of the reign has generally encoin-aged, we
cannot but observe that the finer qualities which
came out in certain crises of his reign appear
to have frequently influenced his conduct: we
know tliat he was not an immoral man, that he
was an excellent husband to an excellent wife,
and that he had devoted friends, willing to lay
down their lives for him when there was nothing
whatever left for them to gain. . . . Richard,
who had been brought up in the purple quite as
much as Edward II., was kept under restraint
by his uncles, and not being judiciously guided
in the arts of government, fell, like his proto-
type, into the hands of favourites. His brilliant
behaviour in the insurrection of 1381 indicated
much more tlian mere possession of the Plantage-
net courage and presence of mind. He showed
a real sympathy with the villeins who had un-
deniable grievances. . . . His instincts were un-
doubtedly for freedom and forgiveness, and there
is no proof, nor even probability, that he in-
tended to use the villeins against his enemies.
His early and happy marriage with Anne of
Bohemia ought, one might think, to have saved
him from the vice of favouritism ; but he was at
least more fortunate than Edward II. in not being
cast under the spell of a Ga veston. When we con-
sider the effect of such a galling government as
that of his uncle Gloucester, and his cousin Derby,
afterwards Henry IV., who seems to have been
pushing Gloucester on from the first, we can
hardly be surprised that he should require some
friend to lean upon. The reign is, in short, from
one, and jjerliaps the truest, point of view, a long
duel between the son of the Black Prince and the
sou of John of Gaunt. One or other of them must
inevitably perish. A handsome and cultivated
youth, who showed himself at fifteen every inch
a king, who was married at sixteen, ami led his
own army to Scotland at eighteen, required a
diflercnt treatment from that which he received.
He was a man, and should have been dealt with
as such. His lavish and reprehensible grants to
his favourites were made the excuse for Glou-
cester's violent interference in 1380, but there is
good ground for believing that the movement
was encouraged by the anti-Wicliffite party,
which had taken alarm at the sympathy with the
Reformers shown at this time by Richard and
Anne. " — M. Burrows, Commentaries on the His-
tory of England, hk. 3, ch. 5.
Also in: J. R. Green, Hist, of tlis English
People, bk. 4, ch. 4 {v. 1). — C. H. Pearson, English
Hist, in the \i.th Cent'y, ch. 10-13.
A. D. 1381.— Wat Tyler's Rebellion.— '• In
June 1381 there broke out in England the for-
midable insurrection known as Wat Tyler's Re-
bellion. The movement seems to have begun
among the bondmen of Essex and of Kent ; but
it spread at once to the counties of Sussex,
Hertford, Cambridge, Suffolk and Norfolk
The peasantry, armed with bludgeons and rusty
swords, first occupied the roads by which pil-
grims went to Canterbury, and made every one
swear that he would be true to king Richard
and not accept a king named John. This, of
course, was aimed at the government of John of
Gaunt [Duke of Lancaster], ... to whom the
people attributed every grievance they had to
complain of. The principal, or at least the im-
mediate cause of offence arose out of a poll-tax
which had been voted in the preceding year. " —
J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and York, ch. 3.
— The leaders of the insurgents were Wat the
Tyler, who had been a soldier, John Ball, a priest
and preacher of democratic and socialistic doc-
trines, and one known as Jack Straw. They made
their way to Loudou. " It ought to have been
easy to keep them out of the city, as the only
approach to it was by London Bridge, and the
mayor and chief citizens proposed to defend it.
But the Londoners generally, and even three of
the aldermen, were well inclined to the rebels,
and declared that they would not let the gates be
shut against their friends and neighbours, and
would kill the mayor himself if he attempted to
do it. So on the evening of Wednesday, June
13, the insurgents began to stream in across the
bridge, and next morning marched their whole
body across the river, and proceeded at once to
the Savoy, the splendid palace of the Duke of
Lancaster. Proclamation was made that any
one found stealing the smallest article would be
beheaded ; and the place was then wrecked and
burned with all the formalities of a solemn act
of -justice. Gold and silver plate was shattered
with battle-axes and thrown into the Thames;
rings and smaller jewels were brayed in mortars;
silk and embroidered dresses were trampled un-
der feet and torn up. Then the Temple was
burned with all its muniments. The jjoet Gower
was among the lawyers who had to save their
lives by flight, and he passed several nights in
the woods of Essex, covered with grass and
leaves and living on acorns. Then the great
house of the Hospitallers at Clerkenwell was de-
stroyed, taking seven days to burn. " The young
king (Richard II.) and his court and council had
taken refuge in the Tower. The insurgents uow
threatened to storm their stronghold if the king
did not come out and speak to them. The king
consented and appointed a rendezvous at Mile
End. He kept the appointment and met his
turbulent subjects with so much courage and
tact and so many promises, that he persuaded a
great number to disperse to their homes. But
while this pacific interview took place, Wat
Tyler, John Ball, and some 400 of their followers
burst into the Tower, determined to find the
archbishop of Canterbur}' and the Lord Treas-
urer, Sir Robert de Hales, who were the most
obnoxious ministers. " So great was the general
consternation that the soldiers dared not raise a
hand while these ruffians searched the different
rooms, not sparing even the king's bedroom,
running spears into tlie beds, asked the king's
mother to kiss them, and played insolent jokes
843
ENGLAND, 1381.
Oppression of the
Peasantry.
ENGLAND, 1399-1471.
on the chief officers. Unhappily they were not
long in finding the archbishop, who had said
mass in the chapel, and was kneeling at the altar
in expectation of their approach." The Lord
Treasurer was also found, and both he and the
archbishop were summarily beheaded by the
mob. "Murder now became the order of the
day, and foreigners were among the chief vic-
tims; thirteen Flemings were dragged out of
one church and beheaded, seventeen out of
another, and altogether it is said 400 perished.
Many private enmities were revenged by the
London rabble on this day." On the next day,
June 15, the king, with an armed escort, went to
the camp of the insurgents, at Smithfield, and
opened negotiations with Tyler, offering suc-
cessively three forms of a new charter of popu-
lar rights and liberties, all of which were re-
jected. Finally, Tyler was invited to a personal
conference, and there, in the midst of the king's
party, on some provocation or pretended provo-
cation in his words or bearing, the popular
leader was struck from his horse and killed.
King Richard immediately rode out before the
ranks of the rebels, while they were still dazed
by the suddenness and audacity of the treacher-
ous blow, crying " I will be your leader; follow
me." The thoughtless mob followed and soon
found itself surrounded by bodies of troops
whose courage had revived. The king now
commanded the trembling peasants "to fall on
their knees, cut the strings of their bows, and
leave the city and its neighbourhood, under pain
of death, before nightfall. This command was
instantly obeyed." Meantime and afterwards
there were many lesser risings in various parts
of the country, all of which were suppressed,
with such rigorous prosecutions in the courts
that 1,500 persons are said to have suffered
judicially. — C. H. Pearson, Eng. Hist, in the
Fourteenth Century, ch. 10. — The AVat Tyler in-
surrection proved disastrous in its effect on the
work of Church reform which Wyclif was then
pursuing. "Not only was the power of the
Lancastrian party, on which Wyclif had re-
lied, for the moment annihilated, but the quarrel
between the Baronage and Church, on which his
action had hitherto been grounded, was hushed
in the presence of a common danger. Much of
the odium of the outbreak, too, fell on the Re-
former. . . . John Ball, who had figured in the
front rank of the revolt, was claimed as one of
his adherents. . . . Whatever belief such charges
might gain, it is certain that from this moment
all plans for the reorganization of the Church
were confounded in the general odium which at-
tached to the projects of the socialist peasant
leaders." — J. R. Green, Short Hist, of the Emj.
People, ch. 5, sect. 3. — "When Parliament as-
sembled it proved itself as hostile as the crown
to the conceding any of the demands of the
people ; both were faithful to all the records of
history in similar cases ; they would have belied
all experience if, being victorious, they had con-
sented to the least concession to the vanquished.
The upper classes I'epudiated the recognition of
the rights of the poor to a degree, which in our
time would be considered sheer insanity. The
king had annulled, by proclamatiou to the sher-
iffs, the charters of manumission which he had
granted to the insurgents, and this revocation
was warmly approved by both Lords and Com-
mons, who, not satisfied with saying that such
enfranchisement could not be made without their
consent, added, that they would never give that
consent, even to save themselves from perishing
altogether in one day. There was, it is true, a
vague rumour about the propriety and wisdom
of abolishing villanage; but the notion was
scouted, and the owners of serfs showed that
they neither doubted the right by which they
held their fellow -creatures in a state of slavery,
nor would hesitate to increase the severity of the
laws affecting them. They now passed a law
by which ' all riots and rumours, and other such
things were turned into high treason ' ; this law
was most vaguely expressed, and would proba-
bly involve those who made it in inextricable
difficulties. It was self-apparent, that this Par-
liament acted under the impulses of panic, and
of revenge for recent injuries. ... It might be
said that the citizens of the municipalities wrote
their charters of enfranchisement with the very
blood of their lords and bishops; j-et, during
the worst days of oppression, the serfs of the
cities had never suffered the cruel excesses of
tyranny endured by the country people till the
middle of the fifteenth century. And, neverthe.
less, the long struggles of the townships, despite
the bloodshed and cruelties of the citizens, are
ever considered and narrated as glorious revolu-
tions, whilst the brief efforts of the peasants for
vengeance, which were drowned in their own
blood, have remained as a stigma flung in the
face of the country populations whenever they
utter a word claiming some amelioration in their
condition. Whence the injustice? The bour-
geoisie was victorious and successful. The
rural populations were vanquished and trampled
upon. The bourgeoisie, therefore, has had its
poets, historians, and flatterers, whilst the poor
peasant, rude, untutored, and ignorant, never
had a lyre nor a voice to bewail his lamentable
sorrows and sufferings." — Prof. De Vericour,
Wat Tyler {Royal Hist. Soc, Transactions, n. «.,
II. 2).
Also in: G. Lechler, John Wiclif, ch. 9, sect.
3. — C. Knight, Pojnilar Hist, of England, v. 3,
ch. 1.
A. D. 1383. — The Bishop of Norwich's Cru-
sade in Flanders. See Flanders: A. D. 1383.
A. D. 1388. — The Merciless or Wonderful
Parliament. See Pakllament, The Wonder-
ful.
A. D. 1399. — Accession of King Henry IV.
A. D. 1399-1471. — House of Lancaster. —
This name is given in English history to the
family which became royal in the person of
Henry of Bolingbroke, Duke of Lancaster, who
deposed his cousin, Richard II., or forced him to
abdicate the throne, and who was crowned king
(Henry IV.), Oct. 11, 1399, with what seemed to be
the consent of the nation. He not only claimed
to be the next in succession to Richard, but he put
forward a claim of descent through his mother,
more direct than Richard's had been, from Henry
III. "In point of fact Henry was not the next
in succession. His father, John of Gaunt [or
John of Ghent, in which city he was born], was
the fourth son of Edward III., and there were
descendants of that king's third son, Lionel Duke
of Clarence, living. ... At one time Richard
himself had designated as his successor the noble-
man who really stood next to him in the line of
descent. This was Roger Mortimer, Earl of
March, the same who was killed by the rebels in
844
ENGLAND, 1399-1471.
Hotspur
and Henry V.
ENGLAND, 1431-1453.
Ireland. This Roger had left a son Edmund to
inherit his title, but Edmund was a mere child,
and the inconvenience of another minority could
not have been endured." — J. Gairdner, Houses of
Lancaster and York, ch. 2. — As for Henry's pre-
tensions through his mother, they were founded
upon what Mr. Gairdner calls an "idle story,"
that "the eldest son of Henry IH. was not king
Edward, but his brother Edmund Crouchback.
Earl of Lancaster, who was commonly reputed
the second son ; and that this Edmund had been
purposely set aside on account of his personal
deformity. The plain fact of the matter was
that Ednumd Crouchback was six years younger
than his brother Edward I. ; and that his sur-
name Crouchback had not the smallest reference
to personal deformity, but only implied that he
wore the cross upon his back as a crusader." Mr.
Wylie (Hist, of Eng. under Henry IV., v. 1, cli. 1)
represents that this latter claim was'put forward
under the advice of the leading jurists of the
time, to give the appearance of a legitimate suc-
cession ; whereas Henry took his real title from
the will and assent of the nation. Henry IV. was
succeeded by his vigorous son, Henry V. and he
in turn by a feeble son, Henry VI., during whose
reign England was torn by intrigues and fac-
tions, ending in the lamentable civil wars known
as the "Wars of the Roses," the deposition of
Henry VI. and the acquisition of the throne by
the " House of York," in the persons of Edward
IV. and Richard III. It was a branch of the
House of Lancaster that reappeared, after the
death of Richard III. in the royal family better
known as the Tudors.
A. D. 1400-1436. — Relations vyith Scotland.
See Scotland: A. D. 1400-143(1.
A. D. 1402-1413. — Owen Glendower's Rebel-
lion in Wales. See Wales: A. D. 1403-1413.
A. D. 1403. — Hotspur's Rebellion. — The earl
of Northumberland and his son, Henry Percy,
called " Hotspur," had performed great services
for Henry IV., in establishing and niaiutatning
him upon the throne. ' ' At the outset of his reign
their opposition would have been fatal to him ;
their adhesion ensured his victory. He had re-
warded them with territory and high offices of
trust, and they had by faithful services ever
since increased their claims to gratitude and con-
sideration. . . . Both father aud son were high-
spirited, passionate, suspicious men, who enter-
tained an exalted sense of their own services and
could not endure the shadow of a slight. Up to
this time [early in 1403] not a doubt had been
cast ou their fidelity. Northumberland was still
the king's chief agent in Parliament, his most
valued commander in the field, his Mattathias.
It has been thought that Hotspur's grudge against
the king began with the notion that the release
of his brother-in-law, Edmund Mortimer [taken
prisoner, the year before, by the Welsh], had
been neglected by the king, or was caused by
Henry's claim to deal with the prisoners taken
at Homildon; the defenders of the Percies al-
leged that they had been deceived by Henry in
the first instance, and only needed to be per-
suaded that Richard lived in order to desert the
king. It is more probable that they suspected
Henry's friendship, and were exasperated by his
compulsory economies. . . . Yet Henry seems
to have conceived no suspicion. . . . Northum-
berland and Hotspur were writing for increased
forces [for the war with Scotland]. ... On the
10th of July Henry had reached Northampton-
shfre on his way northwards; on the 17th he
heard that Hotspur with his uncle the earl of
Worcester were in arms in Shropshire. They
raised no cry of private wrongs, but proclaimed
themselves the vindicators of national right : their
object was to correct the evils of the adminis-
tration, to enforce the employment of wise coun-
sellors, and the proper expenditure of public
money. . . . The report ran like wildfire through
the west that Richard was alive, and at Chester.
Hotspur's army rose to 14,000 men, and not sus-
pecting the strength and promptness of the king,
he sat down with his uncle and his prisoner, the
carl of Douglas, before Shrewsbury. Henry
showed himself equal to the need. From Burton-
on-Trent, where on July 17 he summoned the
forces of the shires to join him, he marched into
Shropshire, and offered to parley with the In-
surgents. The earl of AVorcester went between
the camps, but he was either an impolitic or a
treacherous envoy, and the negotiations ended in
mutual exasperation. On the 21st the battle of
Shrewsbury was fought; Hotspur was slain;
Worcester was taken aud beheaded two days
after. The old earl, who may or may not have
been cognizant of his son's intentions from the
first, was now marching to his succour. The
carl of Westmoreland, his brother-in-law, met
him and drove him back to Warkworth. But all
danger was over. On the 11th of August he
met the king at York, and submitted to him."
— W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng., cli. 18, sect.
633.
Also in: J. H. Wylie, Hist, of Eng. under
Henry IV., 11. 1, ch. 35. — W. Shakespeare, King
Henry IV., pt. 1.
A. D. 1413. — Accession of King Henry V.
A. D. 1413-1422. — Parliamentary gains un-
der Henry V. — "What the sword had won the
sword should keep, said Henry V. on his acces-
sion ; but what was meant by the saying has its
comment In the fact that, in the year which wit-
nessed his victory at Agincourt, he yielded to the
House of Commons the most liberal measure of
legislation which until then it had obtained.
The dazzling splendour of his conquests In
Prance had for the time cast into the shade every
doubt or question of his title, but the very ex-
tent of those gains upon the'French soil estab-
lished more decisively the worse than uselessness
of such acquisitions to the English throne. The
distinction of Henry's reign in constitutional his-
tory will always be, that from it dates that power,
indispensable to a free and limited monarchy,
called Privilege of Parliament; the shield and
buckler under which all the battles of liberty
and good government were fought in the after
time. Not only were its leading safeguards now
obtained, but at once so firmly established, that
against the shock of incessant resistance in later
years they stood perfectly unmoved. Of the
awful right of impeachment, too, the same is to
be said. It was won in the same reign, and was
never afterwards lost." — J. Forster, Hist, and
Biog. Essays, r. 1, ^). 307.
A. D. 1415-1422. — Conquests of Henry V. in
France. See France: A. D. 1415; and 1417-
1432.
A. D. 1422.— Accession of King Henry 'VI.
A. D. 1431-1453.— Loss of English conquests
and possessions in France. See Fkauce : A. D.
1431-1453, and Aquitaine : A. D. 1360-1453.
845
ENGLAND, 1450.
Effects of
Wars in France.
ENGLAND, 1455.
A. D. 1450. — Cade's Rebellion. — A formida-
ble rebellion broke out iu Kent, luuler the leader-
ship of one Jack Cade, A. I). 1450. Overtaxation,
the bad management of the council, the extortion
of the subordinate officers, the injustice of the
king's bench, the abuse of the right of purvey-
ance, the "enquestes" and amercements, and the
illegitimate control of elections were the chief
causes of the rising of 1450, " The rising was
mainly political, only one complaint was econom-
ical, not a single one was religious. We find
not a single demand for new legislation. . . .
The movement was by no means of a distinctly
plebeian or disorderly character, but was a general
and organized rising of the people at large. It
was a political upheaval. We find no trace of
socialism or of democracy. . . . The commons in
1450 arose against Lancasterand in favor of York.
Their rising was the first great struggle in the
Wars of the Roses." — Kriehn, Rising in 1450,
Ch. IV., VII. — Cade and his rebels took pos-
session of London ; but they were beaten in a
battle and forced to quit the city. Cade and some
followers continued to be turbulent and soon
afterwards he was killed. — J. Gairdner, Houses of
Lancaster and York, ch. 1, sect. 6.
Also in: C. M. Yonge, Cameos from Eng. Hist.,
3d series, c. 7.
A. D. 1455. — Demoralized state of the nation.
— Effects of the wars in France. — " The whole
picture of the times is very depressing on the
moral if not on the material side. There are few
more pitiful episodes in history than the whole
tale of the reign of Henry VI. , the most unselfish
and well-intentioned king that ever sat upon the
English throne — a man of whom not even his
enemies and oppressors could find an evil word
to say ; the troubles came, as they confessed, ' all
because of his false lords, and never of him. ' We
feel that there must have been something wrong
with the heart of a nation that could see unmoved
the meek and holy king torn from wife and child,
sent to wander in disguise up and down the king-
dom for which he had done his poor best, and
finally doomed to pine for five years a prisoner
in the fortress where he had so long held his royal
Court. Nor is our first impression concerning
the demoralisation of England wrong. Every
line that we read bears home to us more and more
the fact that the nation had fallen on evil times.
First and foremost among the causes of its moral
deterioration was the wretched French War, a
war begun in the pure spirit of greed and ambi-
tion, — there was not even the poor excuse that
had existed in the time of Edward III. — carried
on by the aid of hordes of debauched foreign
mercenaries . . . and persisted in long after it
had become hopeless, partly from misplaced na-
tional pride, partly because of the personal in-
terests of the ruling classes. Thirty-five years
of a war that was as unjust as it was unfortunate
had both soured and demoralised the nation. . . .
When the final catastrophe came and the fights
of Formigny [or Fourmigny] and Chatillou [Cas-
tillon] ended the chapter of our disasters, the
nation began to cast about for a scapegoat on
whom to lay the burden of its failures. ... At
first the imfortunate Suffolk and Somerset had
the responsibility laid upon them, A little later
the outcry became more bold and fixed upon the
Lancastrian dynasty itself as being to blame not
only for disaster abroad, but for want of govern-
ance at home. If King Henry had understood
the charge, and possessed the wit to answer it, he
might fairly have replied that his subjects must
fit the burden upon their own backs, not upon
his. The war had been weakly conducted, it was
true ; but weakly because the men and money for
it were grudged. ... At home, the bulwarks of
social order seemed crumbling away. Private
wars, riot, open highway robbery, murder, abduc-
tion, armed resistance to the law, prevailed on a
scale that had been unknown since the troublous
times of Edward II. — we might almost say since
the evil days of Stephen. But it was not the
Crown alone that should have been blamed for
the state of the realm. The nation had chosen to
impose over-stringent constitutional checks on the
kingly power before it was ripe for self-govern-
ment, and the Lancastrian house sat on the throne
because it had agreed to submit to those checks.
If the result of the experiment was disastrous,
both parties to the contract had to bear their share
of the responsibility But a nation seldom allows
that it has been wrong ; and Henry of Windsor
had to serve as a scapegoat for all the mis-
fortunes of the realm, because Henry of Boling-
broke had committed his descendants to the
unhappy compact. Want of a strong central
government was undoubtedly the complaint under
which England was labouring in the middle of
the 15th century, and all the grievances against
which outcry was made were but symptoms of
one latent disease. . . . All these public troubles
would have been of comparatively small impor-
tance if the heart of the nation had been sound.
The phenomenon which makes the time so de-
pressing is the terrible decay in private morals
since the previous century. . . . There is no class
or caste in England which comes well out of the
scrutiny. The Church, which had served as the
conscience of the nation in better times, had be-
come dead to spiritual things. It no longer pro-
duced either men of .saintly life or learned theolo-
gians or patriotic statesmen. . . . The baronage
of England had often been unruly, but it had
never before developed the two vices which dis-
tinguished it in the times of the Two Roses — a
taste for indiscriminate bloodshed and a turn for
political apostacy. . . . Twenty years spent in
contact with French factions, and in command
of the godless mercenaries who formed the bulk
of the English armies, had taught our nobles
lessons of cruelty and faithlessness such as they
had not before imbibed. . . . The knights and
squires showed on a smaller scale all the vices of
the nobility. Instead of holding together and
maintaining a united loyalty to the Crown, they
bound themselves by solemn sealed bonds and the
reception of ' liveries ' each to the baron whom
he preferred. This fatal system, by which the
smaller landholder agreed on behalf of himself
and his tenants to follow his greater neighbour
in peace and war, had ruine'd the military system
of England, and was quite as dangerous as the
ancient feudalism. ... If the gentry constituted
themselves the voluntary followers of the baron-
age, and aided their employers to keep England
unhappy, the class of citizens and burgesses took
a very different line of conduct. If not actively
mischievous, they were _solidly inert. They re-
fused to entangle themselves in politics at all.
They submitted impassively to eaclijruler in turn,
when they had ascertained that their own persons
and property were not endangered by so doing.
A town, it has been remarked, seldom or never
846
ENGLAND, 1455.
Waisiif the Roses.
ENGLAND, 1455-1471.
stood a siege during the Wars of the Roses, for
no town ever refused to open its gates to any com-
mander with an adequate force who asked for
entrance." — C. W Oman, Witririck the Kiiig-
inaker, clt. 1.
A. D. 1455-1471. — The Wars of the Roses.
— Beginning with a battle fouglit at St. Albans
on the 23d of Ma}', 1455, England was kept in a
pitiable state of civil war, with short intervals of
troubled peace, during thirty years. The im-
mediate cause of trouble was in the feebleness of
King Henry VI., who succeeded to the throne
while an infant, and whose mind, never strong,
gave way under the trials of his position when
he came to manhood. The control of the gov-
ernment, thus weakly commanded, became a sub-
ject of strife between successive factions. The
final leaders in such contests were Queen Marga-
ret of Anjou, the energetic consort of the help-
less king (with the king himself sometimes in a
condition of mhid to cooperate with her), on one
side, and, on the other side, the Duke of York,
who traced his lineage to Edward III., and who
had strong claims to the throne if Henry should
leave no heir. The battle at St. Albans was a vic-
tory for the Yorkists and placed them in power
for the next two years, the Duke of York being
named Protector. In 1456 the king recovered so
far as to resume the reigns of government, and
in 1459 there was a new rupture between the
factions. The queen's adherents were beaten in
the battle of Bloreheath, Sept. 23d of that year ;
but defections in the ranks of the Yorkists soon
obliged the latter to disperse and their leaders,
York, Warwick and Salisbury, fled to Ireland
and to Calais. In June, 1460, the earls of War-
wick, Salisbury and JIarch (the latter being the
eldest son of the Duke of York) returned to Eng-
land and gathered an army speedily, the city of
London opening its gates to them. The king's
forces were defeated at Northampton (July 10)
and the king taken prisoner. A parliament was
summoned and assembled in October. Then the
Duke of York came over from Ireland, took pos-
session of the royal palace and laid before parlia-
ment a solemn claim to the crown. After much
discussion a compromise was agreed upon, under
which Henry YI. should reign undisturbed dur-
ing his life and the Duke of York should be his
undisputed successor. This was embodied in an
act of parliament and received the assent of the
king ; but queen Margaret who had retired into
the north, refused to surrender the rights of her
infant son, and a strong party sustained her.
The Duke of York attacked these Lancastrian
forces rashly, at Wakefield, Dec. 30, 1460, and
was slain on the field of a disastrous defeat. The
queen's army, then, marching towards London,
defeated the Earl of Warwick at St. Albans, Feb.
17, 1461 (the second battle of the war at that
place), and recovered possession of the person of
the king. But Edward, Earl of ^Nlarch (now be-
come Duke of York, by the death of his father),
who had just routed a Lancastrian force at Mor-
timer's Cross, in Wales, joined his forces with
those of Warwick and succeeded in occupying
London, which steadily favored his cause. Call-
ing together a council of lords, Edward persuaded
them to declare King Henry deposed, on the
ground that he had broken the agreement made
with the late Duke of York. The next step was
to elect Edward king, and he assumed the royal
title and state at once. The new king lost no
time in marching northwards against the army
of the deposed sovereign, wiiich lay near York.
On the 27th of March the advanced division of
the Lancastrians was defeated at Ferrybridge,
and, two days later, their main body was almost
destroyed in the fearful battle of Towton, — said
to have been the bloodiest encounter that ever
took place on English soil. King Henry took
refuge in Scotland and Queen Margaret repaired
to France. In 1464 Henry reappeared in the
north with a body of Scots and refugees and
there were risings in his favor in Northumber-
land, which the Yorkists crushed in the succes-
sive battles of Hedgeley Moor and Hexham.
The Yorkist king (Edward IV.) now reigned
without much disturbance until 1470, when he
quarreled with the powerful Earl of Warwick —
the "king-maker," whose strong hand had placed
him on the throne. Warwick then passed to the
other side, offering his services to Queen Marga-
ret and leading an expedition which sailed from
Ilartleur in September, convoyed by a French
fleet. Edward found himself unprepared to re-
sist the Yorkist risings which welcomed War-
wick and he fled to Holland, seeking aid from
his brother-in-law, the Duke of Burgundy. For
nearly six months, the kingdom was in the hands
of Warwick and the Lancastrians ; the unfor-
tunate Henry VI., released from captivity in
the Tower, was once more seated on the throne.
But on the 14th of March, 1471, Edward reap-
peared in England, landing at Ravenspur, pro-
fessing that he came only to recover his dukedom
of York. As he moved southwards he gathered
a large force of supporters and soon reassumed
the royal title and pretensions. London opened
its gates to him, and, on the 14th of April — ex-
actly one month after his landing — he defeated
his opponents at Barnet, where Warwick, "the
king-maker " — the last of the great feudal barons
— was slain. Henry, again a captive, was sent
back to the Tower. But Henry's dauntless queen,
who landed at Weymouth, with a body of French
allies on the very day of the disastrous Barnet
fight, refused to submit. Cornwall and Devon
were true to her cause and gave her an army
with which she fought the last battle of the war
at Tewksbury on the 4th of May. Defeated and
taken prisoner, her young son slain — whether in
the battle or after it is unknown — the long con-
tention of Margaret of Anjou ended on that
bloody field. A few days later, when the tri-
umphant Yorkist King Edward entered London,
his poor, demented Lancastrian rival died sud-
denly and suspiciously in the Tower. The two
parties in the long contention had each assumed
the badge of a rose — the Yorkists a white rose,
the Lancastrians a red one. Hence the name of
the AVars of the Roses. "As early as the time of
John of Ghent, the rose was used as an heraldic
emblem, and when he married Blanche, the
daughter of the Duke of Lancaster, he used the
red rose for a device. Edmund of Langley, his
brother, the fifth son of Edward HI., adopted
the white rose in opposition to him ; and their
followers afterwards maintained these distinc-
tions in the bloody wars of the fifteenth century.
There is, however, no authentic account of the
precise period when these badges were first
adopted." — Mrs. Hookham, Life and Times of
Margaret of Anjou, v. 2, ch. 1.
Also in: J. Gairdner, Houses of Lancaster and
York. — Sir J. Ramsay, Lancaster and York.
847
ENGLAND, 1455-1471.
Effects of the
Wars of the Roses.
ENGLAND, U61-1485.
— C. AV. Oman, Warwick, tlie King-maker, cU-
5-17. — See, also, Towton, Barnet, and Tbwks-
BURY.
The effects of the Wars of the Roses.— "It
Is astonishing to observe tlie rapidity with wliicli
it [the Englisli nation] had settled down to order
in the reign of Henry VII. after so many years
of civil dissension. It would lead us to infer that
those wars were the wars of a class, and not of
the nation ; and that the effects of them have been
greatly exaggerated. With the single exception
of Cade's rebellion, they had nothing in common
with the revolutions of later or earlier times.
They were not wars against classes, against forms
of government, against the order or the institu-
tions of the nation. It was the rivalry of two
aristocratic factions struggling for superiority,
neither of them hoping or desiring, whichever ob-
tained the upper hand, to introduce momentous
changes in the State or its administration. The
main body of the people took little interest in the
struggle ; in the towns at least there was no inter-
mission of epiployment. The war passed over
the nation, ruffling the surface, toppling down
higli cliffs Iiore and there, washing away ancient
landmarks, attracting the imagination of the spec-
tator by the mightiness of its waves, and the
noise of its thunders ; but the great body below
the surface remained unmoved. No famines,
no plagues, consequent on the intermittance of
labour caused by civil war, are recorded ; even
the prices of land and provisions scarcely varied
more than they have been known to do in times
of profoundest peace. But the indirect and silent
operation of these conflicts was much more re-
markable. It reft into fragments the confeder-
ated ranks of a powerful territorial aristocracy,
which had hitherto bid defiance to the King, how-
ever popular, however energetic. Henceforth
the position of the Sovereign in the time of the
Tudors, in relation to all classes of the people,
became very different from what it had been:
the royal supremacy was no longer a theory, but
a fact. Another class had sprung up on the de-
cay of the ancient nobility. The great towns
had enjoyed uninterrupted tranquility, and even
flourished, under the storm that was scourging
the aristocracy and the rural districts. Their
population had increased by numbers whom fear
or the horrors of war had induced to find shelter
behind stone walls. The diminution of agricul-
tural labourers converted into soldiers by the
folly of their lords had turned corn-lands into
pasture, requiring less skill, less capital, and less
labour." — J. S. Brewer, The Reiyn of Henry VIII. ,
V. 1, c/t. 2. — "Those who would estimate the
condition of England aright should remember
that the War of the Roses was only a repetition
on a large scale of those private wars which dis-
tracted almost every county, and, indeed, by
taking away all sense of security, disturbed al-
most every manor and every class of society
during tlie same century. . . . The lawless con-
dition of English society in the 15tli century re-
sembled that of Ireland in as recent a date as
the beginning of the 19th century. ... In both
countries women were carried off, sometimes at
night; tliey were first violated, then dragged to
the altar in their night-dress and compelled to
marry their captors. . . . Children were seized
and thrown into a dungeon until ransomed by
their parents." — W. Denton, Enyland in the 15<A
Century, ch. 3. — "The Wars of the Roses which
filled the second half of the 15th century fur-
nished the barons with an arena in which their
instincts of violence had freer play than ever; it
was they who, under the pretext of dynastic in-
terests which had ceased to exist, of their own
free choice prolonged the struggle. Altogether
unlike the Italian condottieri, tlie English barons
showed no mercy to their own order; they
massacred and exterminated each other freely,
wliile they were careful to spare the common-
alty. Whole families were extinguished or sub-
merged in the nameless mass of the nation, and
their estates by confiscation or escheat helped
to swell the royal domain. AVheu Henry VII.
liad stifled the last movements of rebellion and
had punished, through the Star Chamber, those
nobles who were still suspected of maintaining
armed bands, the baronage was reduced to a very
low ebb; not more than twenty-nine lay peers
were summoned by the king to his first Parlia-
ment. The old Norman feudal nobility existed
no longer ; the heroic barons of the great charter
barely survived in the persons of a few doubtful
descendants ; their estates were split up or had
been forfeited to the Crown. A new class came
forward to fill the gap, that rural middle class
which was formed ... by the fusion of the
knights with the free landowners. It had already
taken the lead in the House of Commons, and it
was from its ranks that Henry VII. chose nearly
all the new peers. A peerage renewed almost
throughout, ignorant of the habits and traditions
of the earlier nobility, created in large batches,
closely dependent on the monarch who had raised
it from little or nothing and who had endowed it
with his bounty — this is the phenomenon which
confronts us at the end of the fifteenth century. "
— E. Boutmy, The English Conistitution, eh-. 5.
A. D. 1461. — Accession of King Edward IV.
A. D. 1461-1485.— House of York.— The
House of York, which triumphed in the Wars of
the Roses, attaining the throne in the person of
Edward IV. (A. D. 1461), derived its claim to the
crown through descent, in the female line, from
Lionel, Duke of Clarence, the third son of Ed-
ward III. (the second son who lived to manhood
and left children) ; while the House of Lancaster
traced its lineage to John of Gaunt, a younger
son of the same king Edward III., but the line
of Lancastrian succession was through males.
"Had the crown followed the course of heredi-
tary succession, it would have devolved on the
posterity of Lionel. . . . By the decease of that
prince without male issue, his possessions and
pretensions fell to his daughter Philippa, who
by a singular combination of circumstances had
married Roger Mortimer earl of March, the male
rc]:iresentative of the powerful baron who was
attainted and executed for the murder of Ed-
ward II., the grandfather of the duke of Clar-
ence. Tlie son of that potent delinquent had
been restored to his honours and estates at an ad-
vanced period in the reign of Edward III. . . .
Edmund, his grandson, had espoused Philippa
of Clarence. Roger Mortimer, the fourtli in de-
scent from the regicide, was lord lieutenant of
Ireland and wils considered, or, according to
some writers, declared to be heir of tlie crown in
the early part of Richard's reign. Edmund Mor-
timer, earl of March, in whom the hereditary
claim to the crown was vested at the deposition
of Richard, was then only an infant of ten years
of age. . . . Dying without issue, the preten-
848
ENGLAND, 1461-1485.
Richard III.
ENGLAND, 1483-1485.
sioDS to the crown, which he inherited througli
the duke of Clarence, devolved on his sister Anne
Mortimer, who esjioused Richard of York earl
of Cambridge, the grandson of Edward III. by
his fourth [fifth] son Edmimd of Langley duke
of York. " Edward IV. was the grandson of this
Anne Mortimer and Richard of York. — Sir J.
Mackintosh, Hist. ofEng., v. l,pp. 338-339.— The
House of York occupied the throne but twenty -
four years. On the death of Edward IV., in
1483, tlie crown was secured by his brother,
Ricliard, duke of Gloucester, who caused Ed-
ward's two sons to be murdered in the Tower.
The elder of these murdered pi'inces is named in
the list of English kings as Edward V. ; but he
cannot be said to have reigned. Richard III.
was overthrown and slain on Bosworth field in
1485.
A. D. 1471-1485.— The New Monarchy. —
The rise of Absolutism and the decline of Par-
liamentary government. — "If we use the name
of the New Monarchy to express the character
of the English sovereignty from the time of
Edward IV. to the time of Elizabeth, it is because
the character of the monarchy during this period
was something wholly new in our history. There
is no kind of similarity between the kingship of
the Old Englisli, of the Norman, the Angevin,
or the Plautageuet sovereigns, and the kingship
of the Tudors. . . . Wliat the Great Rebellion in
its final result actually did was to wipe away
every trace of tlie New Monarchy, and to take
up again the thread of our political development
just where it had been snapped by the Wars of
the Roses. . . . The founder of the New Mon-
archy was Edward IV. . . . While jesting with
aldermen, or dallying with his mistresses, or
idling over the new pages from the printing
press [Caxton's] at Westminster, Edward was
silently laying the foundations of an absolute
rule which Henry VII. did little more than de-
velop and consolidate. The almost total discon-
tinuance of Parliamentary life was in itself a
revolution. Up to this moment the two Houses
had pla3'ed a part which became more and more
prominent in the government of the realm. . . .
Under Henry VI. an important step in constitu-
tional progress had been made by abandoning
the old form of presenting the requests of the
Parliament in the form of petitions which were
subsequently moulded into statutes by the Royal
Councils; the statute itself, in its final form, was
now presented for the royal assent, and the
Crown was deprived of its former privilege of
modifying it. Not only does this progress cease,
but the legislative activity of Parliament itself
comes abruptly to an end. . . . The necessity
for summoning the two Houses had, in fact, been
removed by the enormous tide of wealth which
the confiscation of the civil war poured into the
royal treasury. ... It was said that nearly a fifth
of the land had passed into the royal possession at
one period or another of the civil war. Edward
added to his resources by trading on a vast scale.
. . . The enterprises he had planned against
France . . . enabled Edward not only to increase
his hoard, but to deal a deadly blow at liberty.
Setting aside the usage of loans sanctioned by
the authority of Parliament, Edward called be-
fore him the merchants of the city and requested
from each a present or benevolence in propor-
tion to the need. Their compliance with his
prayer was probably aided by his popularity
^* 849
with the merchant class ; but the system of be-
nevolence was soon to he developed into the
forced loans of Wolsey and the ship-money of
Charles I." — J. R. Green, 8/iort Hist, of the Eng.
People, ch. 6, sect. 3.
Also in : W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng. , ch.
18, sect. 696.
A. D. 1474. — Treaty with the Hanseatic
League. See Hansa Towns.
A. D. 1476. — Introduction of Printing by
Caxton. See Printing, &c. : A. D. 1476-1491.
A. D. 1483-1485. — Murder of the young king,
Edward V. — Accession of Richard III. — The
battle of Bosworth and the fall of the House
of York.— On the death of Edward IV., in 1483,
his crafty and unscrupulous brother, Richard,
Duke of Gloucester, gathered quickly into his
hands the reins of power, proceeding with con-
summate audacity and ruthlessness to sweep
every strong rival out of his path. Contenting
himself for a few weeks, only, with the title of
Protector, he soon disputed the validity of his
brother Edward's marriage, caused an obsequi-
ous Parliament to set aside the young sons whom
the latter had left, declaring them to be illegiti-
mate, and placed the crown on his own head.
The little princes (King Edward V., and Rich-
ard, Duke of York), immured in the Tower,
were murdered presently at their uncle's com-
mand, and Richard III. appeared, for the time,
to have triumphed in his ambitious villainy.
But, popular as he made himself in many cun-
ning ways, his deeds excited a horror which
united Lancastrians with the party of York in a
common detestation. Friends of Henry, Earl of
Richmond, then in exile, were not slow to take
advantage of this feeling. Henry could claim
descent from the same John of Gaunt, son of
Edward III., to whom the House of Lancaster
traced its lineage; but his family- — the Beau-
forts — sprang from the mistress, not the wife,
of the great Duke of Lancaster, and had only
been legitimated by act of Parliament. The
Lancastrians, however, were satisfied with the
royalty of his blood, and the Yorkists were
made content by his promise to marry a daugh-
ter of Edward IV. On this understanding being
arranged, Henry came over from Brittany to
England, landing at Milford Haven on the 7th
or 8th of August, 1485, and advancing through
Wales, being joined by great numbers as he
moved. Richard, who had no lack of courage,
marched quickly to meet him, and the two
forces joined battle on Bosworth Field, in Leices-
tershire, on Sunday, Aug. 21. At the outset of
the fighting Richard was deserted by a large
division of his army and saw that his fate was
sealed. He plunged, with despairing rage, into
the thickest of the struggle and was slain. His
crowned helmet, which he had worn, was found
by Sir Reginald Bray, battered and broken, under
a hawthorn bush, and placed on the head of his
rival, who soon attained a more solemn corona-
tion, as Henry VII. — C. M. Yonge, Cameos from
Eng. Hist., 3d Series, c. 19-20. — "I must record
my impression that a minute study of the facts
of Richard's life has tended more and more to
convince me of the general fidelity of the por-
trait with which we have been made familiar by
Shakespeare and Sir Thomas More. I feel quite
ashamed, at this day, to think how I mused over
this subject long ago, wasting a great deal of
time, ink and paper, in fruitless efforts to satisfy
ENGLAND, 1483-1485.
The I'udors.
ENGLAND, 1487-1497.
even my own raind that traditional blacli was
real historical white, or at worst a kind of grey.
. . . Both the character and personal appearance
of Richard IIL have furnished matter of contro-
versy. But with regard to the former the day
has now gone by when it was possible to doubt
tlie evidence at least of his principal crime; and
that he was regarded as a tyrant by his subjects
seems almost equally indisputable. At the same
time he was not destitute of better qualities.
... As king he seems really to have studied
his country's welfare, passed good laws, endeav-
oured to put an end to extortion, declined the
free gifts offered to him by several towns, and
declared he would rather have the hearts of his
subjects than their money. His munificence
was especially shown in religious foundations.
. . . His hypocrisy was not of the vulgar kind
which seeks to screen habitual baseness of motive
by habitual affectation of virtue. His best and
his worst deeds were alike too well known to be
either concealed or magnified; at least, soon
after he became king, all doubt upon the subject
must have been removed. . . . His ingratiating
manners, together with the liberality of his dis-
position, seem really to have mitigated to a con-
siderable extent the alarms created by his fitful
deeds of violence. The reader will not require
to be reminded of Shakespeare's portrait of a
murderer who could cajole the woman whom he
had most exasperated and made a widow into
marrying himself. That Richard's ingenuity
was equal to this extraordinary feat we do not
venture to assert ; but that he had a wonderful
power of I'eassuring those whom he had most in-
timidated and deceiving those who knew him
best there can be veiy little doubt. . . . His
taste in building was magnificent and princely.
. . . There is scarcely any evidence of Richard's
[alleged] deformity to be derived from original
portraits. The number of portraits of Richard
which seem to be contemporary is greater than
might have been expected. . . . The face in all
the portraits is a remarkable one, full of energy
and decision, yet gentle and sad-looking, sug-
gesting the idea not so much of a tyrant as of a
mind accustomed to unpleasant thoughts. No-
where do we find depicted the warlike hard-
favoured visage attributed to him by Sir Thomas
More. . . . With such a one did the long reign of
the Plantagenets terminate. The fierce spirit
and the valour of the race never showed more
strongly than at the close. The Middle Ages,
too, as far as England was concerned, may be
said to have passed away with Richard III." —
J. Gairdner, Hist07-y of the Life and Reign of
Richard The Third, introd. and ch. 6.
A. D. 1485. — Accession of King Henry VII.
A. D. 1485-1528.— The Sweating Sickness.
See Sweating Sickness.
A. D. 1485-1603.— The Tudors.— The Tudor
family, which occupied the English throne from
the accession of Henry VII. , 1485, until the death
of Elizabeth, 1003, took its name, but not its
royal lineage, from Sir Owen Tudor, a handsome
Welsh chieftain, who won the heart and the
hand of the young widow of Henry V., Cather-
ine of France. The eldest son of that marriage,
made Earl of Richmond, married in his turn
Margaret Beaufort, great-granddaughter to John
of Gaunt, or Ghent, who was one of the sons of
Edward HI. From this latter union came Henry
of Richmond, as he was known, who disputed
the crown with Richard III. and made his claim
good on Bosworth Field, where the hated Rich-
ard was killed. Henry's pretensions were based
on the royal descent of his mother — derived,
however, through John of Gaunt's mistress —
and the dynasty which he founded was closely
related in origin to the Lancastrian line. Henry
of Richmond strengthened his hold upon the
crown, though not his title to it, by marrying
Elizabeth, daughter of Edward IV., thus join-
ing the white rose to the red. He ascended the
throne as Henry VII., A. D. 1485; was suc-
ceeded by his son, Henry VIII., in 1509, and the
latter by his three children, in order as follows:
Edward VL, 1547; Mary, 1553; Elizabeth, 1558.
The Tudor family became extinct on the death
of Queen Ehzabetii, inl603. "They [the Tudors]
reigned in England, without a successful rising
against them, for upwards of a hundred years;
but not more by a studied avoidance of what
might so provoke the country, than by the most
resolute repression of every effort, on the part of
what remained of the peerage and great families,
to make head against the throne. They gave
free indulgence to their tyranny only within the
circle of the court, while they unceasingly
watched and conciliated the temper of the people.
The work they had to do, and which by more
scrupulous means was not possible to be done,
was one of paramount necessity ; the dynasty
uninterruptedly endured for only so long as was
requisite to its thorough completion ; and to each
individual sovereign the particular task might
seem to have been specially assigned. It was
Henry's to spurn, renounce and utterly cast off,
the Pope's authority, without too suddenly re-
volting the people's usages and habits ; to arrive
at blessed results by ways that a better man
might have held to be accursed; during the
momentous change in progress to keep in neces-
sary check both the parties it affected ; to perse-
cute with an equal hand the Romanist and the
Lutheran ; to send the Protestant to the stake for
resisting Popery, and the Roman Catholic to the
scaffold for not admitting himself to be Pope;
while he meantime plundered the monasteries,
hunted down and rooted out the priests, alienated
the abbey lands, and glutted himself and his
creatures with that enormous spoil. It was
Edward's to become the ready and undoubting
instrument of Cranmer's design, and, with all
the inexperience and more than the obstinacy of
youth, so to force upon the people his compro-
mise of doctrine and observance, as to render
possible, even perhaps unavoidable, his elder
sister's reign, It was Mary's to undo the effect
of that precipitate eagerness of the Reformers,
by lighting the fires of Smithfield ; and oppor-
tunely to arrest the waverers from Protestantism,
by exhibiting in their excess the very worst vices,
the cruel bigotry, the hateful intolerance, the
spiritual slavery, of Rome. It was Elizabeth's
finally and forever to uproot that slavery from
amongst us, to champion all over the world a
new and nobler faith, and immovably to estab-
lish in England the Protestant religion." — J.
Forster, Ilist. and Biog. Essays, pp. 331-323.
Also in : S. R. Gardiner and J. B. Mullinger,
Introd. to the Study of Eng. Hist., ch. 6.— C. E.
Moberly, The Early tudors.
A. D. 1487-1497. — The Rebellions of Lam-
bert Simnel and Perkin Warbeck. — Although
Henry VII., soon after he attained the throne,
850
ENGLAND, 1487-1497.
ENGLAND, 15TH-16TH CENTURIES.
married Elizabeth of York, daughter of Edward
IV., and thus united the two rival houses, the
Yorkists were discontented with his rule. "With
the help of Margaret of Burgundy, Edward IV. 's
sister, and James IV. of Scotland, they actually
set up two impostors, one after the other, to
claim the throne. There was a real heir of the
House of York still alive — young Edward, Eai-1
of Warwick [son of the Duke of Clarence, brother
to Edward IV.], . . . and Henry had taken the
precaution to keep him in the Tower. But in
1487 a sham Earl of Warwick appeared in Ire-
land, and being supported by the Earl of Kildare,
was actually crowned in Dublin Cathedral.
Henry soon put down the imposture by showing
the real earl to the people of London, and defeat-
ing the army of the pretended earl at Stoke,
near Newark, June, 1487. He proved to be
a lad named Lambert Simnel, the son of a
joiner at Oxford, and he became a scullion in
the king's kitchen." In 1493 another pretender
of like character was brought forward. "A
young man, called Perkin Warbeck, who proved
afterwards to be a native of Tournay, pretended
that he was Richard, Duke of York, the younger
of the two little princes in the Tower, and that
he had escaped when his brother Edward V. was
murdered. He persuaded the king of France
and Margaret of Burgundy to acknowledge him,
and was not only received at the foreign courts,
but, after failing in Ireland, he went to Scotland,
where James IV. married him to his own cousin
Catharine Gordon, and helped him to invade
England in 1496. The invasion was defeated
however, by the Earl of Surrey, and then Perkin
went back to Ireland, where the people had re-
volted against the heavy taxes. There he raised
an army and marched to Exeter, but meeting the
king's troops at Taunton, he lost courage, aud
fled to the Abbey of Beaulieu, where he was
taken prisoner, and sent to the Tower in 1497. "
In 1501 both Perkin Warbeck and the young
Earl of Warwick were executed. — A. B. Buckley,
Hist, of Enfj. for Beginners, ch. 13.
Also in: J. Gairdner, Story of Perkin War-
beck (app. to Life of RieJiard III.). — C. M. Yonge,
Cameos from Eng. Hist., 3(? series, c. 21 and 24.
— J. Gairdner, Henry VII., ch. 4 and 7.
I5th-i6th Centuries. — The Renaissance. —
Life in "Merry England." — Preludes to the
Elizabethan Age of literature. — "Toward the
close of the fifteenth century . . . commerce and
the woollen trade made a sudden advance, and such
an enormous one that corn-fields were changed
into pasture-lands, ' whereby the inhabitants of
the said town (JIancliester) have gotten and come
into riches aud wealthy livings,' so that in 1553,
40,000 pieces of cloth were exported in English
ships. It was already the England which we see
to-day, a land of meadows, green, intersected by
hedgerows, crowded with cattle, abounding in
ships, a manufacturing, opulent land, with a
people of beef-eating toilers, who enrich it while
they enrich themselves. They improved agricul-
ture to such an extent, that iu half a century the
produce of an acre was doubled. They grew so
rich, that at the beginning of the reign of Charles
I. the Commons represented three times the
wealth of the Upper House. The ruin of Ant-
werp by the Duke of Parma sent to England
' the third part of the merchants and manufac-
turers, who made silk, damask, stockings, taf-
fetas, and serges.' The defeat of the Armada
and the decadence of Spain opened the seas to
their merchants. The toiling hive, who would
dare, attempt, explore, act in unison, and always
with profit, was about to reap its advantages
and set out on its voyages, buzzing over the
universe. At the base and on the summit of
society, in all ranks of life, in all grades of human
condition, this new welfare became visible. . . .
It is not when all is good, but when all is better,
that they see the bright side of life, and are
tempted to make a holiday of it. This is why at
this period they did make a holiday of it, a splen-
did show, so like a picture that it fostered paint-
ing in Italy, so like a representation, that it
produced the drama in England. Now that the
battle-axe and sword of the civil wars had beaten
down the independent nobility, and the abolition
of the law of maintenance had destroyed the petty
royalty of each great feudal baron, the lords
quitted their sombre castles, battlemented for-
tresses, surrounded by stagnant water, pierced
with narrow windows, a sort of stone breast-
plates of no use but to preserve the life of their
masters. They flock into new palaces, with
vaulted roofs and turrets, covered with fantastic
and manifold ornaments, adorned with terraces
and vast staircases, with gardens, fountains, stat-
ues, such as were the palaces of Henry VIII. and
Elizabeth, half Gothic and half Italian, whose
convenience, grandeur, and beauty announced
already habits of society and the taste for pleas-
ure. They came to court and abandoned their
old manners; the four meals which scarcely suf-
ficed their former voracity were reduced to two ;
gentlemen soon became refined, placing their
glory in the elegance and singularity of their
amusements and their clothes. . . . To vent the
feelings, to satisfy the heart and eyes, to set free
boldly on all the roads of existence the i)ack of
appetites and instincts, this was the craving
which the manners of the time betrayed. It was
' merry England,' as they called it then. It was
not yet stern and constrained. It expanded
widely, freely, and rejoiced to find itself so ex-
panded. No longer at court only was the drama
found but iu the village. Strolling companies be-
took themselves thither, and the country folk
supplied any deficiencies when necessary. Shak-
speare saw, before he depicted them, stupid fel-
lows, carpenters, joiners, bellow-menders, play
Pyramus and Thisbe, represent the lion roaring
as gently as possible, and the wall, by stretching
out their hands. Every holiday was a pageant, in
which townspeople, workmen, and children bore
their parts. ... A few sectarians, chiefly in the
towns and of the people, clung gloomily to the
Bible. But the court and the men of the world
sought their teachers and their heroes from pagan
Greece and Rome. About 1490 they began to
read the classics ; one after the other they trans-
lated them ; it was soon the fashion to read them
in the original. Elizabeth, Jane Grey, the Duch-
ess of Norfolk, the Countess of Arundel, many
other ladies, were conversant with Plato, Xeno-
phon, and Cicero in the original, and appreciated
them. Gradually, by an insensible change, men
were raised to the level of the great and liealthy
minds who had freely handled ideas of all kinds
fifteen centuries ago. They comprehended not
only their language, but their thought ; they did
not repeat lessons from, but held conversations
with them; they were their equals, aud found
iu them intellects as manly as their own. . . .
851
ENGLAND, 16TH CENTURY. Renaissance. ENGLAND, 16TH CENTURY.
Across the train of hooded schoolmen and sordid
cavillers the two adult and thinking ages were
united, and the moderns, silencing the infantine
or snuffling voices of the middle-age, conde-
scended only to converse with the noble ancients.
They accepted their gods, at least they understand
them, and keep them by their side. In poems,
festivals, tapestries, almost all ceremonies they
appear, not restored by pedantry merely, but
kept alive by sympathy, and glorified by the
arts of an age as flourishing and almost as pro-
found as that of their earliest birth. After the
terrible night of the middle-age, and the dolorous
legends of spirits and the damned, it was a de-
light to see again Olympus shining upon us from
Greece ; its heroic and beautiful deities once more
ravishing the heart of men, they raised and in-
structed this young world by speaking to it the
language of passion and genius ; and the age of
strong deeds, free sensuality, bold invention, had
only to follow its own bent, iu order to discover
in them the eternal promoters of liberty and
beauty. Nearer still was another paganism, that
of Italy ; the more seductive because more mod-
ern, and because it circulates fresh sap in an
ancient stock; the more attractive, because more
sensuous and present, with its worship of force
and genius, of pleasure and voluptuousness. . . .
At that time Italy clearly led in every thing, and
civilisation was to be drawn thence as from its
spring. What is this civilisation which is thus
imposed on the whole of Europe, whence every
science and every elegance comes, whose laws
are obeyed in every court, in which Surrey, Sid-
ney, Spenser, Shakspeare sought their models
and their materials ? It was pagan in its elements
and its birth; in its language, which is but
slightly different from Latin ; in its Latin tradi-
tions and recollections, which no gap has come
to interrupt; in its constitution, whose old munic-
ipal life first led and absorbed the feudal life ;
in the genius of its race, in which energy and en-
joyment always abounded." — H. A. Taine, Hist,
of English Literature, bk. 3, ch. 1 (v. 1). — "The
intellectual movement, to which we give the
name of Renaissance, expressed itself in England
mainly through the Drama. Other races in that
era of quickened activity, when modern man re-
gained the consciousness of his own strength and
goodliness after centuries of mental stagnation
and social depression, threw their energies into
the plastic arts and scholarship. The English
found a similar outlet for their pent-up forces iu
the Drama. The arts and literature of Greece
and Rome had been revealed by Italy to Europe.
Humanism had placed the present once more in
a vital relation to the past. The navies of Por-
tugal and Spain had discovered new continents
beyond the ocean ; the merchants of Venice and
Genoa had explored the farthest East. Coperni-
cus had revolutionised astronomy, and the tele-
scope was revealing fresh worlds beyond the sun.
The Bible had been rescued from the mortmain
of the Church ; scholars studied it in the language
of its authors, and the people read it in their own
tongue. In this rapid development of art, litera-
ture, science, and discovery, the English had
hitherto taken but little part. But they were
ready to reap what other men had sown. Unfa-
tigued by the labours of the pioneer, unsophisti-
cated by the pedantries and sophistries of the
schools, in the freshness of their youth and vig-
our, they surveyed the world unfolded to them.
For more than half a century they freely enjoyed
the splendour of this spectacle, until the struggle
for political and religious liberty replunged them
in the hard realities of life. During that event-
ful period of spiritual disengagement from ab-
sorbing cares, the race was fully conscious of its
national importance. It had shaken off the shack-
les of oppressive feudalism, the trammels of
ecclesiastical tyranny. It had not yet passed
under the Puritan yoke, or felt the encroachments
of despotic monarchy. It was justly proud of
the Virgin Queen, with whose idealised person-
ality the people identified their newly acquired
sense of greatness. . . . What iu those fifty years
they saw with the clairvoyant eyes of artists, the
poets wrote. And what they wrote, remains im-
perishable. It is the portrait of their age, the
portrait of an age in which humanity stood self-
revealed, a miracle and marvel to its own admir-
ing curiosity. England was iu a state of transi-
tion when the Drama came to perfection, That
was one of those rare periods when the past and
the future are both coloured by imagination, and
both shed a glory on the present. The medieval
order was in dissolution ; the modern order was
in process of formation. Yet the old state of
things had not faded from memory and usage ;
the new had not assumed despotic sway. Men
stood then, as it were, between two dreams — a
dream of the past, thronged with sinister and
splendid reminiscences; a dream of the future,
bright with unlimited aspirations and indefinite
hopes. Neither the retreating forces of the Mid-
dle Ages nor the advancing forces of the modern
era pressed upon them with the iron weight of
actuality. The brutalities of feudalism had been
softened ; but the chivalrous sentiment remained
to inspire the Surreys and the Sidneys of a milder
epoch. . . . What distinguished the English at
this epoch from the nations of the South was
not refinement of manners, sobriety, or self-con-
trol. On the contrary they retained an unenvi-
able character for more than common savagery.
. . . Erasmus describes the filth of their houses,
and the sicknesses engendered in their cities by
bad ventilation. What rendered the people
superior to Italians and Spaniards was the firm-
ness of their moral fibre, the sweetness of their
humanity, a more masculine temper, less vitiated
instincts and sophisticated intellects, a law-abid-
ing and religious conscience, contempt for treach-
ery and baseness, intolerance of political or
ecclesiastical despotism combined with fervent
love of home and country. They were coarse,
but not vicious; pleasure-loving, but not licen-
tious ; violent, but not cruel ; luxurious but not
effeminate. Machiavelli was a name of loathing
to them. Sidney, Essex, Raleigh. More, and
Drake were popular heroes ; and whatever may
be thought of these men, they certainly counted
no Marquis of Pescara, no Duke of Valentino, no
Malatesta Baglioni, no Cosimo de' Medici among
them. The Southern European type betrayed it-
self but faintly in politicians like Richard Crom-
well and Robert Dudley. . . . Affectations of
foreign vices were only a varnish on the surface
of society. The core of the nation remained
sound and wholesome. Nor was the culture
which the English borrowed from less unsophisti-
cated nations, more than superficial. The inci-
dents of Court gossip show how savage was the
life beneath. Queen Elizabeth spat, in the pres-
ence of her nobles, at a gentleman who had dis-
852
ENGLAND, 16TH CENTURY. Henry vil.
ENGLAND, 1513.
pleased her; struck Essex on the cheek; drove
Burleigh blubbering from her apartment. Laws
in merry England were executed with uncom-
promising severity. Every township had its
gallows ; every village its stocks, whipping-post
and pillory. Here and there, heretics were
burned upon the market-place; and the block
upon Tower Hill was seldom dry. . . . Men and
women who read Plato, or discussed the elegan-
cies of Petrarch, suffered brutal practical jokes,
relished the obscenities of jesters, used the gross-
est language of the people. Carrying farms
and acres on their backs in the shape of costly
silks and laces, they lay upon rushes filthy witli
the vomit of old banquets. Glittering in suits
of gilt and jewelled mail, they jostled with
town-porters in the stench of the bear-gardens,
or the bloody bull-pit. The church itself was
not respected. The nave of old S. Paul's became
a rendezvous for thieves and prostitutes. ... It
is ditficult, even bj' noting an infinity of such
characteristics, to paint the many-coloured incon-
gruities of England at that epoch. Yet in the
midst of this confusion rose cavaliers like Sid-
ney, philosophers like Bacon, poets like Spenser ;
men in whom all that is pure, elevated, subtle,
tender, strong, wise, delicate and learned in our
modern civilisation displayed itself. And the
masses of the people were still in harmony with
these high strains. Thej' formed the audience of
Shakspere. They wept for Desdemona, adored
Imogen, listened with Jessica to music in the
moon-light at Belmont, wandered with Rosalind
through woodland glades of Arden. Such was
the society of which our theatre became the mir-
ror. " — J. A. Symonds, Shakspere's Predecessors
in the English Dramd, ch. 3, sect. 1, 2, and 5.
A. D. 1497. — Cabot's discovery of the North
American Continent. See America: A. D.
1497.
A. D. 1498. — Voyage and discoveries of
Sebastian Cabot. — Ground of English claims
in the New World. See America; A. D. 1498.
A. D. 1502. — The marriage which brought
the Stuarts to the English throne. See Scot-
land: A. D. 1502.
A. D. 1509. — The character and reign of
Henry VII. — " As a king, Bacon tells us that he
was 'a wonder for wise men.' Few indeed were
the councillors that shared his confidence, but
the wise men, competent to form an estimate of
his statesmanship, had but one opinion of his
consummate wisdom. Foreigners were greatly
struck with the success that attended his policy.
Ambassadors were astouislied at the intimate
knowledge he displayed of the affairs of their
own countries. From the most unpropitious
beginnings, a proscribed man and an exile, he
had won his way in evil times to a throne beset
with dangers ; he had pacified his own country,
cherished commerce, formed strong alliances over
Europe, and made his personal influence felt by
the rulers of France, Spain, Italy, and tlie Nether-
lands as that of a man who could turn the scale
in matters of the highest importance to their own
domestic welfare. . . . From first to last his
policy was essentially his own ; for though he
knew well how to choose the ablest councillors, he
asked or took their advice only to such an extent
as he himself deemed expedient. . . . No one
can understand his reign, or that of his son, or,
we might add, of his granddaughter Queen
Elizabeth, without appreciating the fact that.
however well served with councillors, the sover-
eign was in those days always his own Prime
Minister. . . . Even the legislation of the reign
must be regarded as in large measure due to
Henry himself. We have no means, it is true,
of knowing how much of it originated in his own
mind ; but that it was all discussed with him in
Council and approved before it was passed we
have every reason to believe. For he never
appears to have put the royal veto upon any Bill,
as constitutional usage both before and after his
days allowed. He gave his assent to all the
enactments sent up to him for approval, though
he sometimes added to them provisos of his
own. And Bacon, who knew the traditions of
those times, distinctly attributes the good legis-
lation of his days to the king himself. ' In that
part, both of justice and policy, which is the most
durable part, and cut, as it were, in brass or
marble, the making of good laws, he did excel.'
This statement, with but slight variations in the
wording, appears again and again throughout
the Historj'; and elsewhere it is said that he
was the best lawgiver to this nation after Edward
I. . . . The parliaments, indeed, that Henry
summoned were only seven in number, and sel-
dom did any one of them last over a year, so that
during a reign of nearly twenty-four years many
years passed away without a Parliament at all.
But even in those scanty sittings many Acts
were passed to meet evils that were general sub-
jects of complaint. . . . He could scarcely be
called a learned man, yet he was a lover of learn-
ing, and gave his children an excellent educa-
tion. His Court was open to scholars. . . . He
was certainly religious after the fashion of his
day. . . . His religious foundations and bequests
perhaps do not necessarily imply anything more
than conventional feeling. But we must not
everlook the curious circumstance that he once
argued with a heretic at the stake at Canterbury
and got him to renounce his heresy. It is melan-
choly to add that he did not thereupon release
him from the punishment to which he had been
sentenced ; but the fact seems to show that he
was afraid of encouraging insincere conversions
by such leniency. During the last two or three
years of the 15th century there was a good deal
of procedure against heretics, but on the whole,
we are told, rather by penances than by fire.
Henry had no desire to see the old foundations
of the faith disturbed. His zeal for the Church
was recognised by no less than three Popes in his
time, who each sent him a sword and a cap of
maintenance. . . . To commerce and adventure
he was always a good friend. By his encourage-
ment Sebastian Cabot sailed from Bristol and dis-
covered Newfoundland — The New Isle, as it
at first was called. Four years earlier Columbus
had first set foot on the great western continent,
and had not his brother been taken by pirates at
sea, it is supposed that he too might have made
his great discovery under Henry's patronage." —
.las. Gairdner, Henry the Seventh, eh. 13.
Also IN: Lord Bacon, Hist, of the Reign of King
Henry VIL
A. D. 1509.— Accession of King Henry VIII.
A. D. 1511-1513.— Enlisted in the Holy
League of Pope Julius II. against France. See
Italy: A. D. 1511)- 1.513.
A. D. 1513. — Henry's invasion of France. —
The victory of the Battle of the Spurs. See
France- A. D. 1513-1515.
853
ENGLAND, 1513-1529.
Wolsey, Henry VIII.
and the Divorce.
ENGLAND, 1527-1534.
A. D. 1513-1529. — The ministry of Cardinal
Wolsey.— From 1513 to 1529, Thomas Wolsey,
who became Archbishop of York in 1514, and
Cardinal in 1515, was the minister who guided
the policy of Henry VIII., so far as that head-
strong and absolute monarch could be guided at
all. "England was going through a crisis po-
litically, socially, and intellectually, when Wol-
sey undertook the management of affairs. . . .
We must regret that he put foreign policy in the
first place, and reserved his constructive meas-
ures for domestic affairs. . . . Yet even here we
may doubt if the measures of the English Refor-
mation would have been possible if WoLsey's
mind had not inspired the king and the nation
with a heightened consciousness of England's
power and dignity. Wolsey's diplomacy at least
tore away all illusions about Pope and Emperor,
and the opinion of Europe, and taught Henry
VIII. the measure of his own strength. It was
impossible that Wolsey's i)owerful liand should
not leave its impression upon everything which
it touched. If Henry VIII. inherited a strong
monarchy, Wolsey made the basis of monarch-
ical power still stronger. . . . Wolsey saw in
the royal power the only possible means of hold-
ing England together and guiding it through the
dangers of impending change. . . . Wolsey was
in no sense a constitutional minister, nor did he
pa}' much heed to constitutional forms. Parlia-
ment was only summoned once during the time
that he was in office, and then he tried to brow-
beat Parliament and set aside its privileges. In
his view the only function of Parliament was to
grant money for the king's needs. The king-
should say how much he needed, and Parliament
ought only to advise how this sum might be
most conveniently raised. . . . He was unwise
in his attempt to force the king's will upon Par-
liament as an unchangeable law of its action.
Henry VIII. looked and learned from Wolsey's
failure, and when he took the management of
Parliament into his own hands he showed him-
self a consummate master of that craft. . . . He
was so skilful that Parliament at last gave him
even the power over the purse, and Hemy, with-
out raising a murmur, imposed taxes which
Wolsey would not have dared to suggest. . . .
Where Wolsey would have made the Crown in-
dependent of Parliament, Henry VIII. reduced
Parliament to be a willing instrument of the
royal will. . . . Henry . . . clothed his despot-
ism with the appearance of paternal solicitude.
He made the people think that he lived for them,
and that their interests were his, whereas Wolsey
endeavoured to convince the people that the king
alone could guard their interests, and that their
only course was to put entire confidence in him.
Henry saw that men were easier to cajole than
to convince. ... In spite of the disadvantage
of a royal education, Henry was a more thorough
Englishman than Wolsey, though Wolsey sprang
from the people. It was Wolsey's teaching,
however, that prepared Henry for liis task. The
king who could use a minister like Wolsey and
then throw him away when he was no longer
useful, felt that there was no limitation to his
self-sufficiency. . . . For politics in the largest
sense, comprising all the relations of the nation
at home and abroad, Wolsey had a capacity
which amounted to genius, and it is doubtful if
this can be said of any other Englishman. . . .
Taking England as he found her, he aimed at de-
veloping all her latent possibilities, and leading
Europe to follow in her train. ... He made
England for a time the centre of European poli-
tics, and gave her an influence far higher than
she could claim on material grounds. ... He
was indeed a political artist, who worked with a
free hand and a certain touch. ... He was,
though he knew it not, fitted to serve England,
but not to serve the English king. He had the
aims of a national statesman, not of a royal ser-
vant. Wolsey's misfortune was that his lot was
cast on days when the career of a statesman was
not distinct from that of a royal servant." — M.
Creighton, C'ln-diiml Wolsey, cfi. 8 and 11.
Also in : J. S. Brewer, T/ie Reign of Henry
VIII.— 3. A. Froude, Hist, of Eng. from the Fall
of Wolsey, ch. 1-3. — G. Cavendish, Life of Wolsey.
A. D. 1514. — Marriage of the king's sister
with Louis XII. of France. SeeFR.vNCE: A. D.
1513-1515.
A. D. 1516-1517. — Intrigues against France.
SeeFn.iNCE: A. D. l.jlG-1517.
A. D. 1519.— Candidacy of Henry 'VIII. for
the imperial crown. See Germany; A. D. 1519.
A. D. 1520-1521. — Rivalry of the Emperor
and the French King for the English alliance.
See France: A. I). 1520-1523.
A. D. 1525. — The king changes sides in
European politics and breaks his alliance with
the Emperor. See France: A. D. 1525-1520.
A. D. 1527. — New alliance with France and
Venice against Charles V. — Formal renuncia-
tion of the claim of the English kings to the
crown of France. See Italy: A. D. 1527-1529.
A. D. 1527-1534.— Henry Vlll. and the Di-
vorce question. — The rupture with Rome. —
Henry VIII. "owed his crown to the early death
of his brother Arthur, whose widow, Catharine
of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand, and con-
sequently the aunt of Charles V. [emperor],
Henry was enabled to marry through a dispen-
sation obtained by Henry VII. from Pope Julius
II. , — marriage with the wife of a deceased brother
being forbidden by the laws of the Chui-ch.
Henry was in his twelfth year when the marriage
was concluded, but it was not consummated until
the death of his father. . . . The question of
Henry's divorce from Catharine soon became a
subject of discussion, and the effort to procure
the anmdling of the marriage from the pope was
prosecuted for a number of years. Henry pro-
fessed, and perhaps with sincerity, that he had
long been troubled with doubts of the validity of
the marriage, as being contrary to the divine
law, and therefore not within the limit of the
pope's dispensing power. The death of a num-
ber of his children, leaving only a single daugh-
ter, Mary, had been interpreted by some as a
mark of tlie displeasure of God. At the same
time the English people, in the fresh recollection
of the long dynastic struggle, were anxious on
account of the lack of a male heir to the throne.
On the queen's side it was asserted that it was
competent for the pope to authorize a marriage
with a brother's widow, and that no doubt could
possibly exist in the present case, since, accord-
ing to her testimony, her marriage with Arthur
had never been completed. The eagerness of
Henry to procure the divorce increased with his
growing passion for Anne Boleyn. The negotia-
tions with Rome dragged slowly on. Catharine
was six years older than himself, and had lost
her charms. He was enamored of this young
854
ENGLAND, 1527-1534.
Sir Thomas More.
ENGLAND, 1539-1535.
English girl, fresh from the court of Prance. He
resolveci to break the marriage bond with the
Spanish princess wlio liad been his faithful wife
for nearly twenty years. It was not without
reason that the king became more and more in-
censed at the dilatory and vacillating course of
the pope. . . . Henry determined to lay the
question of the validity of his marriage before the
universities of Europe, and this he did, making
a free use of bribery abroad and of menaces at
home. Meantime, he took measures to cripple
the authority of the pope and of the clergy in
England. In these proceedings he was sustained
by a popular feeling, the growth of centuries,
against foreign ecclesiastical interference and
clerical control in civil affairs. The fall of "Wol-
sey was the effect of his failure to procure the
divorce, and of the enmity of Anne Boleyn and
her family. ... In order to convict of treason
this minister, whom he had raised to the highest
pinnacle of power, the king did not scruple to
avail himself of the ancient statute of prajmunire,
which Wolsey was accused of having trans-
gressed by acting as the pope's legate in England
— it was dishonestly alleged, without the royal
license. Early in 1531 the king charged the
whole body of the clergy with having incurred
the penalties of the same law by submitting to
"Wolsey in his legatine character. Assembled in
convocation, they were obliged to implore his
pardon, and obtained it only in return for a large
sum of money. In their petition he was styled.
In obedience to his dictation, ' The Protector and
Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of Eng-
land," to which was added, after long debate, at
the suggestion of Archbishop Warham — ' as far
as is permitted by the law of Christ.' The
Church, prostrate though it was at the feet of
the despotic king, showed some degree of self-
respect in inserting this amendment. Parliament
forbade the introduction of papal bulls into Eng-
land. The king was authorized if he saw fit, to
withdraw the annats — first-fruits of benefices — •
from the pope. Appeals to Rome were forbid-
den. The retaliatory measures of Henry did not
move the pope to recede from his position. On
or about January 35, 1533, the king was privately
married to Anne Boleyn. ... In 1534 Henry
was conditionally excommunicated by Clement
VII. The papal decree deposing him from the
throne, and absolving his subjects from their
allegiance, did not follow until 1538, and was
issued by Paul III. Clement's bull was sent
forth on the 33 of March. On the 33 of Novem-
ber Parliament passed the Act of Supremacy,
without the qualifying clause which the clergy
had attached to their vote. The king was, more-
over, clothed with full power and authority to
repress and amend all such errors, heresies, and
abuses as ' by any manner of spiritual authority
or jurisdiction ought or may lawfully be re-
formed.' Thus a visitatorial function of vast ex-
tent was recognized as belonging to him. In
1533 convocation was driven to engage not 'to
enact or promulge or put in execution ' any
measures without the royal license, and to promise
to change or to abrogate any of the ' provincial
constitutions ' which he should judge inconsistent
with his prerogative. The clergy were thus
stripped of all power to make laws. A mixed
commission, which Parliament ordained for the
revision of the whole canon law, was not ap-
pointed in this reign. The dissolution of the
king's marriage thus dissolved the union of Eng-
land with the papacy." — G. P. Fisher, History of
tlie Christian Church, period 8, cli. 6.
Also in: J. S. Brewer, The Reirjn of Henry
VIIL, V. 3, ch. 37-35.— J. A. Froude, Hist, of
Eiijj., V. 1, ch. 3.— S. H. Burke, Hist. Portraits
oft/ie Tudor Dynasty, v. 1, ch. 8-35. — J. Lingard,
Hi.'it. of Eng., -v. 6, ch. 3.— T. E. Bridgett, Life
and Writings of Sir T. More.
A. D. 1529-1535. — The execution of Sir
Thomas More.— On the 35th of October, 1539,
the king, by delivering the great seal to Sir
Thomas More, constituted him Lord Chancellor.
In making this appointment, Henry "hoped to
dispose his chancellor to lend his authority to the
projects of divorce and second marriage, which
now agitated the king's mind, and were the main
objects of his policy. . . . To pursue this subject
through the long negotiations and discussions
which it occasioned during six years, would be
to lead us far from the life of sir Thomas More.
. . . All these proceedings terminated in the sen-
tence of nullity in the case of Henry's marriage
with Catherine, pronounced by Craumer, the es-
pousal of Anne I5oleyn by the king, and the re ■
jection of the papal jurisdiction by the kingdom,
which still, however, adhered to the doctrines ot
the Roman catholic church. The situation of
More during a great part of these memorable
events was embarrassing. The great offices to
which he was raised by the king, the personal
favour hitherto constantly shown to him, and the
natural tendency of his gentle and quiet disposi-
tion, combined to disincline him to resistance
against the wishes of his friendly master. On
the other hand, his growing dread and horror of
heresy, with its train of disorders; his belief that
universal anarchy would be the inevitable result
of religious dissension, and the operation of seven
years' controversy for the Catholic church, in
heating his mind on all subjects involving the ex-
tent of her authority, made hira recoil from de-
signs which were visibly tending towards dis-
union with the Roman pontiff. . . . Henry used
every means of procuring an opinion favourable
to his wishes from his chancellor, who excused
himself as unmeet for such matters, having never
professed the study of divinity. . . . But when
the progress towards the marriage was so far ad-
vanced that he saw how soon the active co-opera-
tion of a chancellor must be required, he made
suit to 'his singular dear friend,' the duke of
Norfolk, to procure his discharge from this office.
The duke, often solicited by More, then obtained,
by importunate suit, a clear discharge for the
chancellor. . . . The liing directed Norfolk, when
he installed his successor, to declare publicly,
that his majesty had with pain yielded to the
prayers of sir 'Thomas More, by the removal of
such a magistrate. ... It must be owned that
Henry felt the weight of this great man's opinion,
and tried every possible means to obtain at least
the appearance of his spontaneous approbation.
. . . The king . . . sent the archbisliop of Can-
terbury, the chancellor, the duke of Norfolk, and
Cromwell, to attempt the conversion of More.
Audley reminded More of the king's special favour
and many benefits. More admitted them; but
modestly added, that his highness had most
graciously declared that on this matter More
should be molested no more. When in the end
they saw that no persuasion could move him, they
then said, ' that the king's highness had given
855
ENGLAND, 1529-1535.
Geneais of the
Church of England.
ENGLAND, 1531-1563.
them In commandment, if they could by no gen-
tleness win him, in the king's name witli ingrati-
tude to charge him, that never was servant to his
master so villainous, nor subject to his prince so
traitorous as he.' . . . By a tyrannical edict, mis-
called a law, in the same session of 1533-4, it
was made high treason, after the 1st of May, 1534,
by writing, print, deed, or act, to do or to pro-
cure, or cause to be done or procured, anything
to the prejudice, slander, disturbance, or deroga-
tion of the king's lawful matrimony with queen
Anne. If the same offences were committed by
words, they were only misprision. The same act
enjoined all persons to take an oath to maintain
the whole contents of the statute, and an obsti-
nate refusal to make such oath was subjected to
the penalties of misprision. . . . Sir T. More was
summoned to appear before these commissioners
at Lambeth, on Monday the 13th of April, 1534.
. . . After having read the statute and the form
of the oath, he declared his readiness to swear
that he would maintain and defend the order of
succession to the crown as established by parlia-
ment. He disclaimed all censure of those who
had imposed, or on those who had taken, the
oath, but declared it to be impossible that he
should swear to the whole contents of it, without
offending against his own conscience. . . . He
never more returned to his house, being commit-
ted to the custody of the abbot of Westminster,
in which he continued four days ; and at the end
of that time he was conveyed to the Tower on
Friday the 17th of April, 1534. ... On the 6th
of May, 1535, almost immediately after the defeat
of every attempt to practise on his firmness, More
was brought to trial at Westminster, and it will
scarcely be doubted, that no such culprit stood
at any European bar for a thousand years. . . .
It is lamentable that the records of the proceed-
ings against such a man should be scanty. We
do not certainly know the specific offence of
which he was convicted. ... On Tuesday, the
6th of July (St. Thomas's eve), 1535, sir Thomas
Pope, 'his singular good friend,' came to him
early with a message from the king and council,
to say that he should die before nine o'clock of
the same morning. . . . The lieutenant brought
him to the scaffold, which was so weak that it
was ready to fall, on which he said, merrily,
' Master lieutenant, I pray you see me safe up,
and for my coming down let me shift for myself. '
When he "laid his head on the block he desired
the executioner to wait till he had removed his
beard, for that had never offended his highness."
— Sir J. Mackintosh, Sir T/ws. More {Cabinet
Cyclop. : Eminent British Statesmen, v. 1).
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Historical Biogra-
phies, eh. 3. — T. E. Bridgett, Life and Writings
■ of Sir Thomas More, ch. 12-34.— S. H. Burke,
Hist. Portraits of the TucJor Dynasty, v. 1, ch. 29.
A. D. 1531-1563. — The genesis of the Church
of England. — "Henry VIII. attempted to con-
stitute an Anghcan Church differing from the
Roman Catholic Church on the point of the
supremacy, and on that point alone. His success
in this attempt was extraordinary. The force of
his character, the singularly favorable situation
in which he stood with respect to foreign powers,
the immense wealth which the spoliation of the
abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support of
that class which still halted between two opinions,
enabled him to bid defiance to both the extreme
parties, to burn as heretics those who avowed
the tenets of the Reformers, and to hang as
traitors those who owned the authority of the
Pope, But Henry's system died with him. Had
his life been prolonged, he woidd have found it
difficult to maintain a position assailed with equal
fury by all who were zealous either for the new
or for the old opinions. The ministers who held
the royal prerogatives in trust for his infant son
could not venture to persist in so hazardous a
policy ; nor could Elizabeth venture to return to
it. It was necessary to make a choice. The
government must either submit to Rome, or
must obtain the aid of the Protestants. The
government and the Protestants had only one
thing in common, hatred of the Papal power.
The English reformers were eager to go as far as
their brethren on the Continent. They unani-
mously condemned as Antichristian numerous
dogmas and practices to which Henry had stub-
bornly adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly
abandoned. Many felt a strong repugnance even
to things indifferent which had formed part
of the polity or ritual of the mystical Babylon.
Thus iSishop Hooper, who died manfully at
Gloucester for his religion, long refused to wear
the episcopal vestments. Bishop Ridley, a mar-
tyr of still greater renown, pulled down the
ancient altars of his diocese, and ordered the
Eucharist to be administered in the middle of
churches, at tables which the Papists irreverently
termed oyster boards. Bishop Jewel pronounced
the clerical garb to be a stage dress, a fool's coat,
a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he
would spare no labour to extirpate such degrad-
ing absurdities. Archbishop Grindal long liesi-
tated about accepting a mitre from dislike of
what he regarded as the mummery of consecra-
tion. Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer
that the Church of England would propose to
herself the Church of Zurich as the absolute
pattern of a Christian community. Bishop
Ponet was of opinion that the word Bishop should
be abandoned to the Papist, and that the chief
officers of the purified church should be called
Superintendents. When it is considered that
none of these prelates belonged to the extreme
section of the Protestant party, it cannot be
doubted that, if the general sense of that party
had been followed, the work of reform would
have been carried on as unsparingly in England
as in Scotland. But, as the government needed
the support of the Protestants, so the Protestants
needed the protection of the government. Much
was therefore given up on both sides: an union
was effected ; and the fruit of that union was the
Church of England." — Lord Macaulay, Hist, of
Eng., ch. 1. — "The Reformation in England was
singular amongst the great religious movements
of the sixteenth century. It was the least heroic
of them all — the least swayed by religious pas-
sion, or moulded and governed by spiritual and
theological necessities. From a general point of
view, it looks at first little more than a great
political change. The exigencies of royal pas-
sion, and the dubious impulses of statecraft,
seem its moving and really powerful springs.
But, regarded more closely, we recognise a sig-
nificant train both of religious and critical forces
at work. The lust and avarice of Henry, the
policy of Cromwell, and the vacillations of the
leading clergy, attract prominent notice; but
there may be traced beneath the surface a wide-
spread evangelical fervour amongst the people,
856
ENGLAND, 1531-1563.
Tfie Monasteries.
ENGLAND, 1535-1539.
and, above all, a genuine spiritual earnestness
and excitement of thought at the universities.
These higher influences preside at the first birth
of the movement. They are seen in active oper-
ation long before the reforming task was taken
up by the Court and the bishops." — J. Tulloch,
Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy in
Eng. in the Vith Century, v. 1, ch. 2. — "The
miserable fate of Anne Boleyn wins our com-
passion, and the greatness to which her daughter
attained has been in some degree reflected back
upon herself. Had she died a natural death, and
had she not been the mother of Queen Elizabeth,
we should have estimated her character at a very
low value indeed. Protestantism might still,
with its usual unhistorical partizanship, have
gilded over her immoralities ; but the Church of
England must ever look upon Anne Boleyn with
downcast eyes full of sorrow and shame. By
the influence of her charms, Henry was induced
to take those steps which ended in setting the
Church of England free from an uncatholic yoke :
but that such a result should be produced by
such an influence is a fact which must constrain
us to think that the land was guilty of many
sins, and that it was these national sins wliich
prevented better instruments from being raised
up for so righteous an object." — J. H. Blunt,
T?ie Reformation of the Church of England, pp.
197-198. — "Cranmer's work might never have
been carried out, there might have been no Eng-
lish Bible, no Ten Articles or 'Institution,' no
reforming Primers, nor Proclamations against
Ceremonies, had it not been for the tact, bold-
ness and skill of Thomas Crumwell, who influ-
enced the King more directly and constantly
than Cranmer, and who knew how to make his
influence acceptable by an unprincipled confisca-
tion and an absurd exaggeration of the royal
supremacy. Crumwell knew that in his master's
heart there was a dislike and contempt of the
clergy. . . . It is probable that Crumwell's policy
was simply irreligious, and only directed towards
preserving his Influence with the King; but as
the support of the reforming part of the nation
was a useful factor in it, he was thus led to push
forward religious information in conjunction
with Cranmer. It has been before said that
purity and disinterestedness are not to be looked
for in all the actors in the English Reformation.
To this it may be added that neither in the move-
ment itself nor in those who took part in it is to
• be found complete consistency. This, indeed, is
not to be wondered at. Men were feeling their
way along untrodden paths, without any very
clear perception of the end at which they were
aiming, or any perfect understanding of the
situation. The King had altogether misappre-
hended the meaning of his supremacy. A host
of divines whose views as to the distinction be-
tween the secular and the spiritual had been con-
fused by the action of the Popes, helped to mis-
lead him. The clergy, accustomed to be crushed
and humiliated by the Popes, submitted to be
crushed and humiliated by the King ; and as the
tide of his autocratic temper ebbed and flowed,
yielded to each change. Hence there was action
and reaction throughout the reign. But in this
there were obvious advantages for the Church.
The gradual process accustomed men's thoughts
to a reformation which should not be drastic or
iconoclastic, but rather conservative and deliber-
ate." — G. G Perry, Hist, of the Refm'mation in
Eng., ch. 5. — "With regard to the Church of
England, its foundations rest upon the rock of
Scripture, not upon the character of the King by
whom they were laid. This, however, must be
affirmed in justice to Henry, that mixed as the
motives were which first induced him to disclaim
the Pope's authority, in all the subsequent meas-
ures he acted sincerely, knowing the importance
of the work in which he had engaged, and prose-
cuting it sedulously and conscientiously, even
when most erroneous. That religion should
have had so little influence upon his moral con-
duct will not appear strange, if we consider
what the religion was wherein he was trained
up; — nor if we look at the generality of men
even now, under circumstances immeasurably
more fortunate than those in which he was placed.
Undeniable proofs remain of the learning, ability,
and diligence, with wliich he applied himself to
the great business of weeding out superstition,
and yet preserving what he believed to be the
essentials of Christianity untouched. This praise
(and it is no light one) is his due: and it is our
part to be thankful to that all-ruling Providence,
which rendered even his passions and his vices
subservient to tliis important end. " — R. Southey,
The Book of the Church, ch. 13,
A. D. 1535-1539. — The suppression of the
Monasteries. — "The enormous, and in a great
measure ill-gotten, opulence of the regular clergy
had long since excited jealousy in every part of
Europe. ... A writer much inclined to par-
tiality towards the monasteries says that tliey
held [in England] one-fifth part of the kingdom ;
no insignificant patrimony. ... As they were
in general exempted from episcopal visitation,
and intrusted with the care of their own disci-
pline, such abuses had gradually prevailed and
gained strength by connivance as we may natu-
rally expect in corporate bodies of men leading
almost of necessity useless and indolent lives,
and in whom very indistinct views of moral ob-
ligations were combined with a great facility of
violating them. The vices that for many ages
had been supposed to haunt the monasteries, had
certainly not left their precincts in that of Henry
VIII. Wolsey, as papal legate, at the instiga-
tion of Fox, bishop of Hereford, a favourer of
the Reformation, commenced a visitation of the
professed as well as secular clergy in 1523, in
consequence of the general complaint against
their manners. . . . Full of anxious zeal for
promoting education, the noblest part of his
character, he obtained bulls from Rome sup-
pressing many convents (among which was that
of St. Frideswide at Oxford), in order to erect
and endow a new college in that university, his
favourite work, which after his fall was more
completely established by tlie name of Christ
Church. A few more were afterwards extin-
guished through his instigation; and thus the
prejudice against interference with this species
of property was somewhat worn off, and men's
minds gradually prepared for the sweeping con-
fiscations of Cromwell [Thomas Cromwell, who
succeeded Wolsey as chief minister of Henry
VIII.]. The king indeed was abundantly willing
to replenish his exchequer by violent means,
and to avenge himself on those who gainsayed
his supremacy ; but it was this able statesman
who, prompted both by the natural appetite of
ministers for the subjects' money and by a secret
partiality towards the Reformation, devised and
857
ENGLAND, 1535-1539.
Anne Boleyn
and her Successors,
ENGLAND, 1536-1543.
carried on with complete success, if not with tlie
utmost prudence, a measure of no inconsiderable
hazard and difficulty. ... It was necessar}', by
exposing the gross corruptions of monasteries,
both to intimidate the regular clergy, and to
excite popular indignation against them. It
is not to be doubted that in the visitation of
these foundations, under the direction of Crom-
well, as lord vice-gerent of the king's ecclesias-
tical supremacy, many things were done in an
arbitrary manner, and much was unfairly repre-
sented. Yet the reports of these visitors are so
minute and specific that it is rather a prepos-
terous degree of incredulity to reject their testi-
mony whenever it bears hard on the regulars.
. . . The dread of these visitors soon induced a
number of abbots to make surrenders to "the
king ; a step of very questionable legality. But
in the next session the smaller convents, whose
revenues were less than £200 a j'ear, were sup-
pressed by act of parliament, to the number of
376, and their estates vested in the crown. This
summary spoliation led to the great northern re-
bellion soon afterwards," headed by Robert
Ask, a gentleman of Yorkshire, and assuming
the title of a Pilgrimage of Grace. — H. Hallam,
Const. Hist, of Eiig., ch. 2. — "Far from benefit-
ing the cause of the monastic houses, the im-
mediate effect of the Pilgrimage of Grace was to
bring ruin on those monasteries which had as
yet been spared. For their complicity or alleged
complicity in it, twelve abbots were hanged,
drawn and quartered, and their houses were
seized by the Crown. Every means was em-
ployed by a new set of Commissioners to bring
about the surrender of others of the greater ab-
beys. The houses were visited, and their pre-
tended relics and various tricks to encourage the
devotion of the people were exposed. Sur-
renders went rapidly on during the years 1537
and 1538, and it became necessary to obtain a
new Act of Parliament to vest the property of
the later surrenders in the Crown. . . . Nothing,
indeed, can be more tragical than the way in
which the greater abbej's were destroyed on
manufactured charges and for imaginary crimes.
These houses had been described in the first Act
of Parliament as ' great and honourable,' wherein
'religion was right well kept and observed.'
Yet now they were pitilessly destroyed. A reve-
nue of about £131,607 is computed to have
thus come to the Crown, while the movables are
valued at £400,000. How was this vast sum of
money expended? (1) By the Act for the sup-
pression of the greater monasteries the King was
empowered to erect six new sees, with their
deans and chapters, namely, Westminster, Ox-
ford, Chester, Gloucester, Bristol and Peterbor-
ough. ... (2) Some monasteries were turned
into collegiate cimrches, and many of the ab-
bey churches . . . were assigned as parish
churches. (3) Some grammar schools were
erected. (4) A considerable sum is said to have
been spent in making i-oads and in fortifying the
coasts of the Channel. (5) But by far the greater
part of the monastic i)roperty passed into the
hands of the nobility and gentry, either by pur-
chase at very easy rates, or by direct gift from
the Crown. . . . The monks and nuns ejected
from the monasteries had small jiensions assigned
to them, which are said to have been regularly
paid; but to many of them the sudden return
into a world with which they had become utterly
unacquainted, and in which they had no part to
play, was a terrible hardship, . . , greatly in-
creased by the Six Article Law, which ". . .
made the marriage of the secularized 'religious'
illegal under heavy penalties." — G. G. Perry,
Hist, of the Reformation in Eng., ch. 4. — "The
religious bodies, instead of uniting in their com-
mon defence, seem to have awaited singly their
fate with the apathy of despair. A few houses
only, through the agency of their friends, sought
to purchase the royal favour with offers of
money and lands; but the rapacity of the king
refused to accept a part when the wliole was at
his mercy." — J. Lingard, Hist, of Eng., •». 6,
ch. 4. — Some of the social results of the suppres-
sion " may be summed up in a few words. The
creation of a large class of poor to whose poverty
was attached the stigma of crime; the division
of class from class, the rich mounting up to
place and power, the poor sinking to lower
depths; destruction of custom as a check upon
the exactions of landlords ; the loss by the poor
of those foundations at schools and universities
intended for their children, and the passing away
of ecclesiastical tithes into the hands of lay
owners." — P. A. Gasquet, Henry VIIT. and the
English Mon/istcries, v. 2, p. 523.
A. D. 1536-1543. — Trial and execution of
Anne Boleyn. — Her successors, the later wives
of Henry VIII. — Anne Boleyn had been secretly
married to tlie king in January, 1533, and had
been crowned on Whitsunday of tliat year.
"The princess Elizabeth, the only surviving
child, was born on the 7th of September following.
. . . The death of Catherine, which happened at
Kimbolton on the 39th of January, 1536, seemed
to leave queen Anne in undisturbed possession
of her splendid seat. " But the fickle king had
now "cast his affections on Jane Seymour, the
daughter of Sir John Seymour, a young lady
then of the Queen's bed-chamber, as Anne her-
self had been in that of Catherine." Having
lost her charms in the eyes of the lustful despot
who had wedded her, her influence was gone —
and her safety. Charges were soon brought
against the unfortunate woman, a commission
(her own father included in it) appointed to in-
quire into her alleged misdeeds, and "on the
10th of May an indictment for high treason
was found by the grand jury of Westminster
against the Lady Anne, Queen of England ;
Henry Norris, groom of the stole; Sir Francis
Weston and William Brereton, gentlemen of
the privy chamber; and Mark Smeaton, a per-
former on musical instruments, and a person ' of
low degree,' promoted to be a groom of the cham-
ber for his skill in the fine art which he professed.
It charges the queen with having, by all sorts of
bribes, gifts, caresses, and impure blandishments,
which are described with unblushing coarseness
in the barbarous Latinity of the indictment,
allured these members of the ro3'al household
into a course of criminal connection with her,
which had been carried on for three years. It
included also George Boleyn viscount Rochford,
the brother of Anne, as enticed b}' the same lures
and snares with the rest of the accused, so as to
have become the accomplice of his sister, by
sharing her treachery and infidelity to the king.
It is hard to believe that Anne could have dared
to lead a life so unnaturally dissolute, without
such vices being more early and very generally
known in a watchful and adverse court. It Is
858
ENGLAND, 1536-1543.
The Six Articles.
ENGLAND, 1547-1553.
still more improbable that she should in every
instance be the seducer. . , . Norris, Weston,
Breretou, and Snieaton were tried before a com-
mission of oyer and terminer at Westminster,
on the 12th of May, two days after the bill
against tWm was found. They all, except Smea-
ton, firmly denied their guilt to the last moment.
On Smeaton's confession it must be observed that
we know not how it was obtained, how far it ex-
tended, or what were the conditions of it, . . .
On the 13th of May, the four commoners were
condemned to die. Their sentence was carried
into effect amidst the jilaiuts of the bystanders.
. . . On the 15th of May, queen Anne and her
brother Rochford were tried." The place of
trial was in the Tower, "which concealed from
the public eye whatever might be wanting in
justice." Condemnation duly followed, and the
unhappy queen was executed May 19, 1536. The
king lost little time in wedding Jane Seymour.
" She died in childbed of Edward VL on the 13th
of October, 1537. The next choice made by or
for Henry, who remained a widower for the
period of more than two years," was the " princess
Anne, sister of the duke of Cleves, a considerable
prince on the lower Rhine. . . . The pencil of
Ilolbein was employed to paint this lady for the
king, who, pleased by the execution, gave the
flattering artist credit for a faithful likeness. He
met her at Dover, and almost immediately be-
trayed his disappointment. Without descending
into disgusting particulars, it is necessary to state
that, though the marriage was solemnised, the
king treated the princess of Cleves as a friend."
At length, by common action of an obsequious
parliament and a more obsequious convocation
of the church, the marriage was declared to be
annulled, for reasons not specified. The consent
of the repudiated wife was "insured by a liberal
income of £3,000 a year, and she lived for 16
years in England with the title of princess Anne
of Cleves. . . . This annulment once more dis-
played the triumph of an English lady over a
foreign princess." The lady who now captivated
the brutally amorous monarch was lady Catherine
Howard, niece to the duke of Norfolk, who be-
came queen on the 8th of August, 1540. In the
following November, the king received such in-
formation of lady Catherine's dissolute life before
marriage "as immediately caused a rigid inquiry
into her behaviour. . . . The confessions of
Catherine and of lady Rochford, upon which
they were attainted in parliament, and executed
in the Tower on the 14th of February, are not
said to have been at any time questioned. . . .
On the 10th of July, 1543, Henry wedded Cathe-
rine Parr, the widow of Lord Latimer, a lady of
mature age," who survived him. — Sir J. Mackin-
tosh, Hist, of Eng. (L. C. C), v. 2, ch. 7-8.
Also in: P. Friedmann, Anne Boleyn. — H. W.
Herbert, 3{emoira of\ Henry VIII. and his Six
Wives.
A. D. 1539. — The Reformation checked. —
The Six Articles. — " Yielding to the pressure
of circumstances, he [Henry VIH.] had allowed
the Reformers to go further than he really ap-
proved. The separation from the Church of
Rome, the absorption by the Crown of the powers
of the Papacy, the unity of authority over both
Church and State centrad in himself, had been
his objects. In doctrinal matters he clung to the
Church of which he had once been the champion.
He had gained his objects because he had the
feeling of the nation with him. In his eagerness
he liad even countenanced some steps of doctrinal
reform. But circumstances had changed. . . .
Without detriment to his position he could follow
his natural inclinations. He listened, therefore,
to the advice of the reactionary party, of which
Norfolk was the head. They were full of bitter-
ness against the upstart Cromwell, and longed to
overthrow him as they had overthrown AVolsey.
The first step in their triumph was the bill of the
Six Articles, carried in the Parliament of 1539.
These laid down and fenced roimd with extra-
ordinary severity tlie chief points of the Catholic
religion at that time questioned by the Protest-
ants. The bill enacted, first, 'that the natural
body and blood of Jesus Christ were present in
the Blessed Sacrament, ' and that ' after consecra-
tion there remained no substance of bread and
wine, nor any other but the substance of Christ ' ;
whoever, by word or writing, denied this article
was a heretic, and to be burned. Secondly, the
Communion in both kinds was not necessary, both
body and blood being present in each element;
thirdly, priests might not marry ; fourthly, vows
of chastity by man or woman ought to be ob-
served; fifthly, private masses ought to be con-
tinued ; sixthly, auricular confession must be re-
tained. Whoever wrote or spoke against these
. . . Articles, on the first offence his property was
forfeited ; on the second offence he was a felon,
and was put to death. Under this ' whip with
six strings ' the kingdom continued for the rest
of the reign. The Bishops at first made wild
work with it. Five hundred persons are said to
have been arrested in a fortnight ; the king had
twice to interfere and grant pardons. It is be-
lieved that only twenty-eight persons actually
suffered death under it." — J. F. Briglit, Hist, of
Eiig., ■». 3, p. 411.
Also in: J. H. Blunt, Meformation of the Ch.
of Eng., V. 1, ch. 8-9. — S. H. Burke, Men and
Women of the Eng. Reformation, v. 2, pp. 17-34.
A. D. 1542-1547. — Alliance with Charles V.
against Francis I. — Capture and restoration of
Boulogne. — Treaty of Guines. See Fkance:
A. D. 1533-1547.
A. D. 1544-1548. — The wooing of Mary
Queen of Scots. See Scotland: A. D. 1544-
1548.
A. D. 1547. — Accession of King Edward VI.
A. D. 1547-1553. — The completing of the
Reformation. — Henry VIII., dying on the 38th
of January, 1547, was succeeded by his son Ed-
ward, — child of Jane Seymour, — then only nine
years old. By the will of his father, the young
king (Edward VI.) was to attain his majority at
eighteen, and the government of his kingdom, in
the meantime, was entrusted to a body of sixteen
executors, with a second body of twelve coun-
cillors to assist with their advice. "But the first
act of the executors and counsellors was to de-
part from the destination of the late king in a
material article. No sooner were tliey met, than
it was suggested that the government would lose
its dignity for want of some head who might
represent the royal majesty." The suggestion
was opposed by none except the chancellor,
Wriothesley, — soon afterwards raised to the
peerage as Earl of Southampton. "It being
therefore agreed to name a protector, the choice
fell of course on the Earl of Hertford [afterwards
Duke of Somerset], who, as he was the king's
maternal uncle, was strongly interested in his
859
ENGLAND, 1547-1553.
Edward VI. and
the Reformed Church.
ENGLAND, 1553.
safety." The protector soon manifested an am-
bition to exercise liis almost royal authority with-
out any constraint, and, having found means to
remove his principal opponent, Southampton,
from the chancellorship, and to send him into
disgrace, he procured a patent from the infant
king which gave him unbounded power. With
this power in his hand he speedily undertook to
carry the work of church reform far beyond the
intentions of Henry VIII. "The extensive au-
thority and imperious character of Henry had
retained the partisans of both religions in sub-
jection; but upon his demise, the hopes of the
Protestants, and the fears of the Catholics began
to revive, and the zeal of these parties produced
every where disputes and animosities, the usual
preludes to more fatal divisions. The protector
had long been regarded as a secret partisan of the
reformers; and being now freed from restraint,
he scrupled not to discover his intention of cor-
recting all abuses in the ancient religion, and of
adopting still more of the Protestant innovations.
He took care that all persons intrusted with the
king's education should be attached to the same
principles; and as the young prince discovered
a zeal for every kind of literature, especially the
theological, far beyond his tender j'ears, all men
foresaw, in the course of his reign, the total abo-
lition of the Catholic faith in England ; and they
early began to declare themselves in favour of
those tenets which were likely to become in the
end entirely prevalent. After Southliampton's
fall, few members of the council seemed to retain
any attachment to the Romish communion ; and
most of the counsellors appeared even sanguine
in forwarding the progress of the reformation.
The riches which most of them bad acquired
from the spoils of the clergy, induced them to
widen the breach between England and Rome ;
and by establishing a contrariety of speculative
tenets, as well as of discipline and worship, to
render a coalition with the mother church alto-
gether impracticable. Their rapacity, also, the
chief source of their reforming spirit, was excited
by the prospect of pillaging the secular, as they
had already done the regular clerg)-; and they
knew, that while any share of the old principles
remained, or any regard to the ecclesiastics, they
could never hope to succeed in that enterprise.
The numerous and burdensome superstitions
with which the Romish church was loaded had
thrown many of the reformers, by the spirit of
opposition, into an enthusiastic strain of devo-
tion ; and all rites, ceremonies, pomp, order, and
extreme observances were zealously proscribed
by them, as hindrances to their spiritual contem-
plations, and obstructions to their immediate con-
verse with heaven." — D. Hume, Hist, of Eng.,
V. 3, cA. 34.—" 'This year' [1547] says a con-
temporary, 'the Archbishop of Canterbury [Cran-
mer] did eat meat openly in Lent in the hall of
Lambeth, the like of which was never seen since
England was a Christian country. ' This signifi-
cant act was followed by a rapid succession of
sweeping changes. The legal prohibitions of
Lollardry were removed ; the Six Articles were
repealed; a royal injunction removed all pictures
and images from the churches; priests were per-
mitted to marry ; the new communion which had
taken the place of the mass was ordered to be
administered in both kinds, and in the English
tongue; an English Book of Common Prayer,
the Liturgy, which with slight alterations is still
used in the Church of England, replaced the
missal and breviary, from which its contents are
mainly drawn; a new catechism embodied the
doctrines of Cranmer and his friends ; and a Book
of Homilies compiled in the same sense was ap-
pointed to be read in churches. . . .The power of
preaching was restricted by the issue of licenses
only to the friends of the Primate. . . . The
assent of the nobles about the Court was won by
the suppression of chantries and religious guilds,
and by glutting their greed with the last spoils
of the Church. German and Italian mercenaries
were introduced to stamp out the wider popular
discontent which broke out in the East, in the
West, and in the Midland counties. . . . The
rule of the upstart nobles who formed the Coun-
cil of Regency became simply a rule of terror.
'The greater part of the people,' one of their
creatures, Cecil, avowed, ' is not in favour of
defending this cause, but of aiding its adversa-
ries, the greater part of the nobles who absent
themselves from court, all the bishops save three
or four, almost all the judges and lawyers,
almost all the justices of the peace, the priests
who can move their flocks any way; for the
whole of the commonalty is in such a state
of irritation that it will easily follow any stir
towards change. ' But with their triumph over
the revolt, Cranmer and his colleagues advanced
yet more boldly in the career of innovation. . . .
The Forty-two Articles of Religion, which were
now [1552] introduced, though since reduced by
omissions to thirty-nine, have remained to this
day the formal standard of doctrine in the
English Church." — J. R. Green, Short Hist, of
the Eng. People, ch. 7, sect. 1.
Also in : J. Strype, Memorials of Cranmer, bk.
2.-6. Burnet, Hist, of the Ref of Ch. of Eng., v.
2, bk. 1.— L. Von Ranke, Hist, of Eng., bk. 2,
ch. 6.
A. D. 1548. — First Act for encouragement
of Newfoundland fisheries. See Newfound-
land: A. D. 1501-1578.
A. D. 1553. — The right of succession to the
throne, on the death of Edward VI. — "If
Henry VII. be considered as the stock of a new
dynasty, it is clear that on mere principles of
hereditary right, the crown would descend, first,
to the issue of Henry VIII. ; secondly, to those
of [his elder sister] Margaret Tudor, queen of
Scots; thirdly, to those of [his younger sister]
Mary Tudor, queen of France. The title of Ed-
ward was on all principles equally undisputed;
but Mary and Elizabeth might be considered as
excluded by the sentence of nullity, which had
been pronounced in the case of Catharine and in
that of Anne Boleyn, both which sentences had
been confirmed in parliament. They had been
expressly pronounced to be illegitimate children.
Their hereditary right of succession seemed thus
to be taken away, and their pretensions rested
solely on the conditional settlement of the crown
on them, made by their father's will, in pursu-
ance of authority granted to him by act of par-
liament. After Elizabeth Henry had placed the
descendants of Mary, queen of France, passing
by the progeny of his eldest sister JIargaret.
Mary of Prance, by her second marriage with
Charles Brandon, duke of Suffolk, had two
daughters, — lady Prances, who wedded Henry
Grey, marquis of Dorset, created duke of Suf-
folk; and lady Elinor, who espoused Henry
Clifford, earl of Cumberland. Henry afterwards
860
ENGLAND, 1553.
Queen Mary.
ENGLAND, 1555-1558.
settled the crown by his will on the heirs of these
two ladies successively, passing over his nieces
themselves in silence. Northumberland obtained
the hand of lady Jane Grey, the eldest daughter
of Grey duke of Suffolk, by lady Frances Bran-
don, for lord Guilford Dudley, the admiral's son.
The marriage was solemnised in May, 1553, and
the fatal right of succession claimed by the
house of Suffolk devolved on the excellent and
unfortunate lady Jane." — ^Sir J. Mackintosh, His-
tory of England, v. 2, ch. 9.
A. D. 1553.— Accession of Queen Mary.
A. D. 1553. — The doubtful conflict of relig-
ions. — " Great as was the number of those whom
conviction or self interest enlisted under the Prot-
estant banner, it appears plain that the Refor-
mation moved on with too precipitate a step for
the majority. The new doctrines prevailed in
London, in many large towns, and in the eastern
counties. But in the north and west of Eng-
land, the body of the people were strictly Catho-
lics. The clergy, though not very scrupulous
about conforming to the innovations, were gen-
erally averse to most of them. And, in spite of
the church lands, I imagine that most of the
nobility, if not the gentry, inclined to the same
persuasion. . . . An historian, whose bias was
certainly not unfavourable to protestantism
[Burnet, iii. 190, 196] confesses that all endeav-
ours were too weak to overcome the aversion of
the people towards reformation, and even inti-
mates that German troops were sent for from
Calais on account of the bigotry with which the
bulk of the nation adhered to the old supersti-
tion. This is somewhat an humiliating admis-
sion, that the protestant faith was imposed upon
our ancestors by a foreign army. ... It is cer-
tain that the re-establishment of popery on
Mary's accession must have been acceptable to a
large part, or perhaps to the majority, of the na-
tion." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of Eng., v. 1, ch.
2. — "Eight weeks and upwards passed between
the proclaiming of Mary queen and the Parlia-
ment by her assembled ; during which time two
religions were together set on foot, Protestant-
ism and Popery ; the former hoping to be con-
tinued, the latter labouring to be restored. . . .
No small justling was there betwixt the zealous
promoters of these contrary religions. The Prot-
estants had possession on their side, and the pro-
tection of the laws lately made by King Edward,
and still standing in free and full force unrepealed.
. . . The Papists put their ceremonies in execu-
tion, presuming on the queen's private practice
and public countenance. . . . Many which were
neuters before, conceiving to which side the
queen inclined, would not expect, but prevent
her authority in alteration: so that superstition
generally got ground in the kingdom. Thus it
is in the evening twilight, wherein light and
darkness at first may seem very equally matched,
but the latter within little time doth solely pre-
vail." — T. Fuller, Church Hist, of Britain, bk. 8,
sect. 1, IT 5.
Also in : J. H. Blunt, Reformation of the Ch.
of Eng., V. 1, ch. 8-9.
A. D. 1554. — Wyat's Insurrection. — Queen
Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain was op-
posed with great bitterness of popular feeling,
especially in London and its neighborhood. Ris-
ings were undertaken in Kent, Devonshire, and
the Midland counties, intended for the frustra-
tion of the marriage scheme ; but they were ill-
planned and soon suppressed. That in Kent,
led by Sir Thomas Wyat, threatened to be for-
midable at first, and the Queen's troops retreated
before it. Wyat, however, lost his opportunity
for securing London, by delays, and his followers
dispersed. He was taken prisoner and executed.
"Four hundred persons are said to have suf-
fered for this rebellion." — D. Hume, Hist, of
Eng., ch. 36.
A. D. 1555-1558. — The restoration of Roman-
ism. — The persecution of Protestants by
Queen Mary. — "An attempt was made, by au-
thority of King Edward's will, to set aside both
his sisters from the succession, and raise Lady
Jane Grey to the throne, wlio had lately been
married to one of Northumberland's sons. This
was Northumberland's doing; he was actuated
by ambition, and the other members of the gov-
ernment assented to it, believing, like the late
young King, that it was necessary for the pre-
servation of the Protestant faith. Cranmer op-
liosed the measure, but yielded. . . . But the
principles of succession were in fact well ascer-
tained at that time, and, what was of more con-
sequence, they were established in public opinion.
Nor could the intended change be supported on
the ground of religion, for popular feeling was
decidedly against the Reformation. Queen Mary
obtained possession of her rightful throne with-
out the loss of a single life, so completely did the
nation acknowledge her claim ; and an after in-
surrection, rashly planned and worse conducted,
served only to hasten the destruction of the Lady
Jane and her husband. ... If any person may
be excused for hating the Reformation, it was
Mary. She regarded it as having arisen in this
country from her mother's wrongs, and enabled
the King to complete an iniquitous and cruel
divorce. It bad exposed her to inconvenience,
and even danger, under her father's reign, to
vexation and restraint under her brother; and,
after having been bastardized in consequence of
it, . . . an attempt had been made to deprive her
of the inheritance, because she continued to pro-
fess the Roman Catholic faith. . . . Had the re-
ligion of the country been settled, she might
have proved a good and beneficent, as well as
conscientious, queen. But she delivered her con-
science to the direction of cruel men; and, be-
lieving it her duty to act up to the worst prin-
ciples of a persecuting Church, boasted that she
was a virgin sent by God to ride and tame the
people of England. . . . The people did not
wait till the laws of King Edward were repealed ;
the Romish doctrines were preached, and in some
places the Romish clergy took possession of the
churches, turned out the incumbents, and per-
formed mass in jubilant anticipation of their ap-
proaching triumph. What course the new Queen
would pursue had never been doubtful ; and as
one of her first acts had been to make Gardiner
Chancellor, it was evident that a fiery persecu-
tion was at hand. Many who were obnoxious
withdrew in time, some into Scotland, and more
into Switzerland and the Protestant parts of
Germany. Cranmer advised others to fly; but
when his friends entreated him to preserve him-
self by the like precaution, he replied, that it was
not fitting for him to desert his post. . . . The
Protestant Bishops were soOn dispossessed of
their sees ; the marriages which the Clergy and
Religioners had contracted were declareil unlaw-
ful, and their children bastardized. The heads
861
ENGLAND, 1555-1558.
Queen Elizabeth.
ENGLAND, 1558-1588.
of the reformed Clergy, having been brought
forth to hold disputations, for the purpose rather
of intimidating than of convincing them, had
been committed to different prisons, and after
these preparatories the fiery process began." — R.
Southey, Book of the Church, ch. 14.—" The total
number of those who suffered in this persecution,
from the martyrdom of Rogers, in February,
1555, to September, 1558, vphen its last ravages
were felt, is variously related, in a manner suf-
ficiently different to assure us that the relaters
were Independent witnesses, who did not borrow
from each other, and yet sufficiently near to at-
test the general accuracy of their distinct state-
ments. By Cooper they are estimated at about
290. According to Burnet they were 284. Speed
calculates them at 274. The most accurate ac-
count is probably that of Lord Burleigh, who,
in his treatise called ' The Execution of Justice
in England,' reckons the number of those who
died in that reigu by imprisonment, torments,
famine and fire, to be near 400, of which those
who were burnt alive amounted to 290. From
Burnet's Tables of the separate years, it is ap-
parent that the persecution reached its full force
in its earliest year." — Sir J. Mackintosh, Hist, of
Eng., 1). 2, ch. 11. — "Though Pole and Mary
could have laid their hands on earl and baron,
linight and gentleman, whose heresy was no-
torious, although, in the queen's own guard,
there were many who never listened to a mass,
they durst not strike where there was danger that
they would be struck in return. . . . They took
the weaver from his loom, the carpenter from
his workshop, the husbandman from his plough ;
they laid hands on maidens and boys ' who had
never heard of any other religion than that which
they were called on to abjure'; old men totter-
ing into the grave, and children whose lips could
but just lisp the articles of their creed; and of
these they made their burnt-offerings ; with these
they crowded their prisons, and when filth and
famine killed them, they flung them out to rot."
— J. A. Froude, Hist, of Eng., ch. 34. — Queen
Mary's marriage with Philip of Spain and his
arbitrary disposition, " while it thoroughly alien-
ated the kingdom from Mary, created a prejudice
against the religion which the Spanish court so
steadily favoured. . . . Many are said to have
become Protestants under Mary who, at her
coming to the throne, had retained the contrary
persuasion." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of Eng.,
V. 1, ch. 3.
Also in : J. Collier, Ecclesiastical Hist, of 6t.
B., pt. 3, hk. 5. — J. Lingard, Hist, of Eng., o. 7,
ch. 3-3.— J. Fox, Book of Martyrs.— P. Heylyn,
Ecclesia Restaurata, v. 3. — J. Strype, Memorials
of Granmer, bk. 3.
A. D. 1557-1559. — Involved by the Spanish
husband of Queen Mary in vsrar with France.
— Loss of Calais. See France: A. D. 1547-
1559.
A. D. 1558. — Accession of Queen Elizabeth.
A. D. 1558-1588.— The Age of Elizabeth :
Recovery of Protestantism. — "The education
of Elizabeth, as well as her interest, led her to
favour the reformation; and she remained not
long in suspense with regard to the party which
she should embrace. But though determined In
her own mind, she resolved to proceed by gradual
and secure steps, and not to imitate the example
of Mary, in encouraging the bigots of her party
to make Immediately a violent invasion on the
established religion. She thought it requisite,
however, to discover such symptoms of her in-
tentions as might give encouragement to the
Protestants, so much depressed by the late violent
persecutions. She immediately recalled all the
exiles, and gave liberty to the prisoners wlio were
confined on account of religion. . . . Elizabeth
also proceeded to exert, in favour of the reform-
ers, some acts of power, which were authorized
by the extent of royal prerogative during that
age. Finding that the Protestant teachers, irri-
tated by persecution, broke out in a furious at-
tack on the ancient superstition, and that the
Romanists replied with no less zeal and acrimony,
she published a proclamation, by which she in-
hibited all preaching without a special licence;
and though she dispensed with these orders in
favour of some preachers of her own sect, she
took care that they should be the most calm and
moderate of the party. She also suspended the
laws, so far as to order a great part of the serv-
ice, the litany, the Lord's ])rayer, the creed, and
the gospels, to be read in English. And, having
first published injunctions that all churches
should conform themselves to the practice of her
own chapel, she forbad the host to be any more
elevated in her presence: an innovation which,
however frivolous it may appear, implied the
most material consequences. "These declarations
of her intentions, concurring with preceding sus-
picions, made the bishops foresee, with certainty,
a revolution in religion. They therefore refused
to officiate at her coronation; and it was with
some difficulty that the Bishop of Carlisle was at
last prevailed on to perform the ceremony. . . .
Elizabeth, though she threw out such hints as
encouraged the Protestants, delayed the entire
change of religion till the meeting of the Parlia-
ment, which was summoned to assemble. The
elections had gone entirely against the Catholics,
who seem not indeed to have made any great
struggle for the superiority; and the Houses
met, in a disposition of gratifying the queen in
every particular which she could desire of them.
. . . The first bill brought into Parliament, with
a view of trying their disposition on the head of
religion, was that for suppressing the monasteries
lately erected, and for restoring the tenths and
first-fruits to the queen. This point being gained
without much difficulty, a bill was next intro-
duced, annexing the supremacy to the crown;
and though the queen was there denominated
governess, not head, of the church, it conveyed
the same extensive power, which, under the
latter title, had been exercised by her father and
brother. . . . By this act, the crown, without the
concurrence either of the Parliament or even of
the convocation, was vested with the whole
spiritual power; might repress all heresies, might
establish or repeal all canons, might alter every
point of discipline, and might ordain or abolish
any religious rite or ceremony. ... A law was
passed, confirming all the statutes enacted in
King Edward's time with regard to religion ; the
nomination of bishops was given to the crown
without any election of the chapters. ... A
solemn and public disputation was held during
this session, in presence of Lord Keeper Bacon,
between the divines of the Protestant and those
of the Catholic communion. The champions ap-
pointed to defend the religion of the sovereign
were, as in all former instances, entirely tri-
umphant ; and the popish disputants, being pro-
862
ENGLAND, 1558-1588.
Qtieen Elizabeth.
ENGLAND, 1558-1603.
nounced refractory and obstinate, were even pun-
i.slR'd by imprisonment. Emboldened by tliis
victory, the Protestants ventured on the last and
most important step, and brought into Parlia-
ment a bill for abolishing the mass, and re-estab-
lishing the liturgy of King Edward. Penalties
were enacted as well against those who departed
from this mode of worship, as against those who
absented themselves from the church and the
sacraments. And thus, in one session, without
any violence, tumult, or clamour, was the whole
system of religion altered, on the very commence-
ment of a reign, and by the will of a young
woman, whose title to the crown was by many
thought liable to great objections." — D. Hume,
mst. of England, eh. 38, pp. 375-380 (v. 3).—
"Elizabeth ascended the throne much more in
the character of a Protestant champion than her
own convictions and inclinations would have dic-
tated. She was, indeed, the daughter of Ann
Boleyn, whom by this time the Protestants were
beginning to regard as a martyr of the faith ; but
she was also the child of Henry VHL , and the
heiress of his imperious will. Soon, however,
she found herself Protestant almost in her own
despite. The Papacy, in the first pride of suc-
cessful reaction, offered her only the alternative
of submission or excommunication, and she did
not for a moment hesitate to choose the latter.
Then commenced that long and close alliance be-
tween Catholicism and domestic treason which is
so differently judged as it is approached from
the religious or the political side. These semi-
nary priests, who in every various disguise come
to England, moving secretly about from manor-
house to manor-house, celebrating the rites of the
Church, confirming the wavering, consoling the
dying, winning back the lapsed to the fold, too
well acquainted with Elizabeth's prisons, and
often finding their way to her scaffolds, — what
are they but the intrepid missionaries, the self-
devoted heroes, of a proscribed faith ? On the
other hand, the Queen is excommunicate, an evil
woman, with whom it is not necessary to keep
faith, to depose whom would be the triumph of
the Church, whose death, however compassed,
its occasion : how easy to weave plots under the
cloak of religious intercourse, and to make the
unity of the faith a conspiracy of rebellion ! The
next heir to the throne, Mary of Scotland, was a
Catholic, and, as long as she lived, a perpetual
centre of domestic and European intrigue : plot
succeeded plot, in which the traitorous subtlety
was all Catholic — the keenness of discovery, the
watchfulness of defence, all Protestant. Then,
too, the shadow of Spanish supremacy began to
cast itself broadly over Europe: the unequal
struggle with Holland was still prolonged: it
was known that Philip's dearest wish was to re-
cover to his empire and the Church the island
kingdom which had once unwillingly accepted
his rule. It was thus the instinct of self-defence
which placed Elizabeth at the head of the Protest-
ant interest in Europe: she sent PhiUp Sidney
to die at Zutphen : her sailor buccaneers, whether
there were peace at home or not, bit and tore at
everything Spanish upon the southern main : till
at last, 1588, Philip gathered up all his naval
strength and hurled the Armada at our shores.
'Afflavit Dens, et dissipati sunt.' The valour
of England did much ; the storms of heaven the
rest. Mary of Scotland had gone to her death
the year before, and her son had been trained to
hate his mother's faith. There could be no ques-
tion any more of the fixed Protestantism of the
English people." — C. Beard, Hibbert Lectures,
1883 ; Tlie Reformation, lect. 9.
A. D. 1558-1598.— The Age of Elizabeth:
The Queen's chief councillors. — "Sir William
Cecil, afterwards Lord Burleigh, already officially
experienced during three reigns, though still
young, was the queen's chief adviser from first to
last — that is to say, till he died in 1598. Philip
n. , who also died in that year, was thus his
exact contemporary ; for he mounted the Span-
ish throne just when Elizabeth and her minister
began their work together. He was not long in
discovering that there was one man, possessed of
the most balanced judgment ever brought to
the head of English affairs, who was capable of
unwinding all his most secret intrigues ; and, in
fact, the two arch-enemies, the one in London
and the other in Madrid, were pitted against each
other for forty years. Elizabeth had also the
good sense to select the wisest and most learned
ecclesiastic of his day, Matthew Parker, for her
Primate and chief adviser in Church ailairs. It
should be noted that both of these sages, as well
as the queen herself, had been Conformists to the
Papal obedience under JIary — a position far from
heroic, but not for a moment to be confused with
that of men whose philosophical indifference to
the questions which exercised all the highest
minds enabled them to join in the persecution of
Romanists and Anglicans at different times with
a sublime Impartiality. ... It was under the
advice of Cecil and Parker that Elizabeth, on
coming to the throne, made her famous settle-
ment or Establishment of religion. " — M. Burrows,
Commentaries on the Hist, of England, bk. 2, ch. 17.
A. D. 1558-1603.— The Age of Elizabeth:
Parliament. — "The house of Commons, upon a
review of Elizabeth's reign, was very far, on the
one hand, from exercising those constitutional
rights wliich have long since belonged to it, or
even those which by ancient precedent they might
have claimed as their own; yet, on the other
hand, was not quite so servile and submissive an
assembly as an artful historian has represented
it. If many of its members were but creatures
of power, . . . there was still a considerable
party, sometimes carrying the house along with
them, who with patient resolution and inflexible
aim recurred in every session to the assertion of
that one great privilege which their sovereign
contested, the right of parliament to inquire into
and suggest a remedy for every public mischief
or danger. It may be remarked that the minis-
ters, such as Knollys, Hatton, and Robert Cecil,
not only sat among the commons, but took a very
leading part in their discussions ; a proof that the
influence of argument could no more be dispensed
with than that of power. This, as I conceive,
will never be the case in any kingdom where the
assembly of the estates is quite subservient to the
crown. Nor should we put out of consideration
the manner in which the commons were com-
posed. Sixty-two members were added at differ-
ent times by Elizabeth to the representation ; as
well from places which had in earlier times dis-
continued their franchise, as from those to which
it was first granted ; a very large proportion of
them petty boroughs, evidently under the in-
fluence of the crown or peerage. The ministry
took much pains with elections, of which many
proofs remain. The house accordingly was
863
ENGLAND, 1558-1603.
Tlie Elizabethan
Age in Literature.
ENGLAND, 1558-1603.
filled with placemen, civilians, and common law-
yers grasping at preferment. The slavish tone
of these persons, as we collect from the minutes
of D'Ewes, is strikingly contrasted by the man-
liness of independent gentlemen. And as the
house was by no means very fully attended, the
divisions, a few of which are recorded, running
from 200 to 350 in the aggregate, it may be per-
ceived that the court, whose followers were at
hand, would maintain a formidable influence.
But this influence, however pernicious to the in-
tegrity of parliament, is distinguishable from
that exertion of almost absolute prerogative
which Hume has assumed as the sole spring of
Elizabeth's government, and would never be em-
ployed till some deficiency of strength was ex-
perienced in the other." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist,
of Eng., cli. 5.
A. D. 1558-1603.— The Age of Elizabeth:
Literature. — "The age of Elizabeth was dis-
tinguished bej'ond, perhaps, any other in our
history by a number of great men, famous in
different ways, and whose names have come down
to us with unblemished honours: statesmen,
warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philoso-
phers; Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and — high
and more sounding still, and still more frequent
in our mouths — Shakespear, Spenser, Sidney,
Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont, and Fletcher, men
whom fame has eternised in her long and last-
ing scroll, and who, by their words and acts,
were benefactors of their country, and ornaments
of human nature. Their attainments of different
kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was
sterling; what they did had the mark of their
age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of
Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence
or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or
looked more like itself, than at this period. Our
writers and great men had something in them
that savoured of the soil from which they grew :
they were not French ; they were not Dutch, or
German, or Greek, or Latin; they were truly
English. They did not look out of themselves
to see what they should be; they sought for
truth and nature, and found it in themselves.
There was no tinsel, and but little art ; they were
not the spoilt children of affectation and refine-
ment, but a bold, vigorous, independent race of
thinkers, with prodigious strength and energy,
with none but natural grace, and heartfelt, un-
obtrusive delicacy. . . . For such an extraor-
dinary combination and development of fancy
and genius many causes may be assigned ; and
we may seek for the chief of them in religion,
in politics, in the circumstances of the time, the
recent difEusion of letters, in local situation, and
in the character of the men who adorned that
period, and availed themselves so nobly of the
advantages placed within their reach. . . . The
first cause I shall mention, as contributing to
this general effect, was the Reformation, which
had just then taken place. This event gave a
mighty impulse and increased activity to thought
and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of ac-
cumulated prejudices throughout Europe. . . .
The translation of the Bible was the chief engine
in the great work. It threw open, by a secret
spring, the rich treasures of religion and moral-
ity, which had been there locked up as in a shrine.
It revealed the visions of the prophets, and con-
veyed the lessons of inspired teachers (such they
were thought) to the meanest of the people. It
gave them a common interest in the common
cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they
read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving
them common subjects of thought and feeling.
. . . The immediate use or application that was
made of religion to subjects of imagination and
fiction was not (from an obvious ground of sep-
aration) so direct or frequent as that which was
made of the classical and romantic literature.
For much about the same time, the rich and fas-
cinating stores of the Greek and Roman mythol-
ogy, and those of the romantic poetry of Spain
and Italy, were eagerly explored by the curious,
and thrown open in translations to the admiring
gaze of the vulgar. . . . What also gave an un-
usual impetus to the mind of man at this period,
was the discovery of the New World, and the
reading of voyages and travels. Green islands
and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchant-
ment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and
invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination of
the dreaming speculator. Fairyland was realised
in new and unknown worlds. . . . Again, the
heroic and martial spirit which breathes in our
elder writers, was yet in considerable activity in
the reign of Elizabeth. The age of chivalry was
not then quite gone, nor the glory of Europe ex-
tinguished forever. . . . Lastly, to conclude this
account : What gave a unity and common direc-
tion to all these causes, was the natural genius
of the country, which was strong in these writers
in proportion to their strength. We are a nation
of islanders, and we cannot help it, nor mend
ourselves if we would. We are something in
ourselves, nothing when we try to ape others.
Music and painting are not our forte : for what
we have done in that way has been little, and
that borrowed from others with great difficulty.
But we may boast of our poets and philosophers.
That's something. We have had strong heads
and sound hearts among us. Thrown on one
side of the world, and left to bustle for ourselves,
we have fought out many a battle for truth and
freedom. That is our natural style ; and it were
to be wished we had in no instance departed
from it. Our situation has given us a certain
cast of thought and character; and our liberty
has enabled us to make the most of it. We are
of a stiff clay, not moulded into every fashion,
with stubborn joints not easily bent. We are
slow to think, and therefore impressions do not
work upon us till they act In masses. . . . We
may be accused of grossuess, but not of flimsi-
ness; of extravagance, but not of affectation; of
want of art and refinement, but not of a want of
truth and nature. Our literature, in a word, is
Gothic and grotesque; unequal and irregular;
not cast in a previous mould, nor of one uniform
texture, but of great weight in the whole, and of
incomparable value in the best parts. It aims
at an excess of beauty or power, hits or misses,
and is either very good indeed, or absolutely
good for nothing. This character applies in par-
ticular to our literature in the age of Elizabeth,
which is its best period, before the introduction
of a rage for French rules and French models." —
W. Hazlitt, Lectures on the Literature of tlie Age
of Elizabeth, led. 1. — "Humanism, before it
moulded the mind of the English, had already
permeated Italian and French literature. Classi-
cal erudition had been adapted to the needs of
modern thought. Antique authors had been col-
lected, printed, aimotated, and translated. They
864
i
ENGLAND, 1558-1603.
Supremacy
and Uniformity.
ENGLAND, 1559.
■were fairly mastered in the south, and assimilated
to the style of the vernacular. By these means
much of the learning popularised by our poets,
essayists, and dramatists came to us at second-
hand, and bore the stamp of contemporary
genius. In like manner, the best works of
Italian, French, Spanish, and German literature
were introduced into Great Britain together with
the classics. The age favoured translation, and
English readers before the close of the sixteenth
century, were in possession of a cosmopolitan
library in their mother tongue, including choice
specimens of ancient and modern masterpieces.
These circumstances sufficiently account for the
richness and variety of Elizabethan literature.
They also help to explain two points which must
strike every student of that literature — its native
freshness, and its marked unity of style. Eliza-
bethan literature was fresh and native, because it
was the utterance of a youthful race, aroused
to vigorous self-consciousness under conditions
which did not depress or exhaust its energies.
The English opened frank eyes upon the dis-
covery of the world and man, which had been
efEected by the Renaissance. They were not
wearied with collecting, collating, correcting,
transmitting to the press. All the hard work of
assimilating the humanities had been done for
them. They had only to survey and to enjoy, to
feel and to express, to lay themselves open to
delightful influences, to con the noble lessons of
the past, to thrill beneath the beauty and the
awe of an authentic revelation. Criticism had
not laid its cold, dry finger on the blossoms of
the fancy. The new learning was still young
enough to be a thing of wonder and entrancing
joy." — J. A. Symonds, A Comparison of Mliza-
bethan with, Victorian Poetry {Fortnightly Rev.,
1). 45, p. 56).
A. D. 1559. — The Act of Supremacy, the
Act of Uniformity, and the Court of High Com-
mission. — "When Elizabeth's first Parliament
met in January 1559, Convocation, of course,
met too. It at once claimed that the clergy alone
had authority In matters of faith, and proceeded
to pass resolutions in favour of Transubstantia-
tlon, the Mass, and the Papal Supremacy. The
bishops and the Universities signed a formal
agreement to this effect. That in the constitution
of the English Church, Convocation, as Convo-
cation, has no such power as this, was proved by
the steps now taken.' The Crown, advised by
the Council and Parliament, took the matter in
hand. As every element, except the Roman, had
been excluded from the clerical bodies, a consul-
tation was ordered between the representatives
of both sides, and all preaching was suspended
till a settlement had been arrived at between the
queen and the Three Estates of the realm. The
consultation broke up on the refusal of the Roman-
ist champions to keep to the terms agreed upon ;
but even before it took place Parliament restored
the Royal Supremacy, repealed the laws of Mary
affecting religion, and gave the queen by her
own desire, not the title of ' Supreme Head,' but
' Supreme Governor, ' of the Church of England. "
— M. Burrows, Commentaries onthe Hist, of Eng.,
Ik. 2, eh. 17. — This first Parliament of Elizabeth
passed two memorable acts of great importance
in English history, — the Act of Supremacy and
the Act of Uniformity of Common Prayer. ' ' The
former is entitled 'An act for restoring to the
crown the antient jurisdiction over the State
55
Ecclesiastical and Spiritual ; and for abolishing
foreign power.' It is the same for substance
with the 25th of Henry VIII. . . . but the com-
mons incorporated several other bills into it ; fur
besides the title of ' Supreme Governor in all
causes Ecclesiastical and Temporal,' which is
restored to the Queen, the act revives those laws
of King Henry VIII. and King Edward VI.
which had been repealed in the late reign. It
forbids all appeals to Rome, and exonerates the
subjects from all exactions and impositions here-
tofore paid to that court ; and as it revives King
Edward's laws, it repeals a severe act made in the
late reign for punishing heresy. . . . ' Moreover,
all persons in any public employs, whether civil
or ecclesiastical, are obliged to take an oath in
recognition of the Queen's right to the crown,
and of her supremacy in all causes ecclesiastical
and civil, on penalty of forfeiting all their pro-
motions in the church, and of being declared in-
capable of holding any public office.' . . . Fur-
ther, ' The act forbids all writing, printing,
teaching, or preaching, and all other deeds or
acts whereby any foreign jurisdiction over these
realms is defended, upon pain tliat they and their
abettors, being thereof convicted, shall for the
first offence forfeit their goods and chattels ; . . .
spiritual persons shall lose their benefices, and
all ecclesiastical preferments; for the second
offence they shall incur the penalties of a prtemu-
nire ; and the third offence shall be deemed high
treason.' There is a remarkable clause in this
act, which gave rise to a new court, called ' The
Court of High Commission. ' The words are these,
' The Queen and her successors shall have power,
by their letters patent under the great seal, to
assign, name, and authorize, as often as they
shall think meet, and for as long a time as they
shall please, persons being natural-born subjects,
to use, occupy, and exercise, under her and them,
all manner of jurisdiction, privileges, and pre-
eminences, touching any spiritual or ecclesias-
tical jurisdiction within the realms of England
and Ireland, &c., to visit, reform, redress, order,
correct and amend all errors, heresies, schisms,
abuses, contempts, offences and enormities what-
soever. Provided, that they have no power to
determine anything to be heresy, but what has
been adjudged to be so by the authority of the
canonical scripture, or by tlie first four general
councils, or any of them ; or by any other general
council wherein the same was declared heresy by
the express and plain words of canonical scrip-
ture ; or such as shall hereafter be declared to be
heresy by the high court of parliament, with the
assent of the clergy in convocation. ' Upon the
authority of this clause the Queen appointed a
certain number of ' Commissioners ' for ecclesi-
astical causes, who exercised the same power that
had been lodged in the hands of one vicegerent
in the reign of King Henry VIII. And how
sadly they abused their power in this and the
two next reigns will appear in the sequel of this
history. They did not trouble themselves much
with the express words of scripture, or the four
first general councils, but entangled their prison-
ers with oaths ex-offlcio, and the inextricable
mazes of the popish canon law. . . . The papists
being vanquished, the next point was to unite
the reformed among themselves. . . . Though all
the reformers were of one faith, yet they were far
from agreeing about discipline and ceremonies,
each party being for settling the church accord-
865
ENGLAND, 1559.
Rise of
Puritanism.
ENGLAND, 1559-1566.
ing to their own model. . . . The Queen . . .
therefore appointed a committee of divines to
review King Edward's liturgy, and to see if in
any particular it was fit to be changed; their
names were Dr. Parlier, Grindal, Cox, Pilkingtou,
May, Bill, Whitehead, and Sir Thomas Smitli,
doctor of the civil law. Their instructions were,
to strike out all offensive passages against the
pope, and to make people easy about the belief
of the corporal presence of Christ in the sacra-
ments; but not a word in favour of the stricter
protestants. Her Majesty was afraid of reform-
ing too far; she was desirous to retain images in
churches, crucifixes and crosses, vocal and instru-
mental music, with all the old popish garments ;
it is not therefore to be wondered, that in review-
ing the liturgy of King Edward, no alterations
were made in favour of those who now began to
be called Puritans, from their attempting a purer
form of worship and discipline than had yet been
established. . . . The book was presented to the
two houses and passed into a law. . . . The title
of the act is ' An act for the Uniformity of Com-
mon Prayer and Service in the Church, and ad-
ministration of the Sacraments. ' It was brought
into the House of Commons April 18th, and was
read a third time April 20th. It passed the
House of Lords April 28th, and took place from
the 24th of June 1559."— D. Neal, Hist, of the
Puritans, e. 1, ch. 4.
Also in : G. Burnet, Sist. of the Reformation
of the Ch. of Eng., v. 3, bk. 3.— P. Heylyn, Ecclesia
Bestaurata : Elizabeth, Anno 1.
A. D. 1559-1566. — Puritanism taking form.
— "The Church of England was a latitudinarian
experiment, a contrivance to enable men of op-
posing creeds to live together without shedding
each others' blood. It was not Intended, and it
was not possible, that Catholics or Protestants
should find in its formulas all that they required.
The services were deliberately made elastic;
comprehending in the form of positive statement
only what all Christians agreed in believing,
while opportunities were left open by the rubric
to vary the ceremonial according to the taste of
the congregations. The management lay with
the local authorities in town or parish : where the
people were Catholics the Catholic aspect could
be made prominent ; where Popery was a bug-
bear, the people were not disturbed by the ob-
trusion of doctrines which they had outgrown.
In itself it pleased no party or section. To the
heated controversialist its chief merit was its
chief defect. . . . Where the tendencies to Rome
were strongest, there the extreme Reformers con-
sidered themselves bound to exhibit in the most
marked contrast the unloveliness of the purer
creed. It was they who furnished the noble ele-
ment in the Church of England. It was they
who had been its martyrs; they who, in their
scorn of the world, in tlieir passionate desire to
consociate themselves in life and death to the
Almighty, were able to rival in self-devotion the
Catholic Saints. But they had not the wisdom
of the serpent, and certainly not the harmless-
ness of the dove. Had they been let alone —
had they been unharassed by perpetual threats
of revolution and a return of the persecutions —
they, too, were not disinclined to reason and
good sense. A remarkable specimen survives,
in an account of the Church of Northampton, of
what English Protestantism could become under
favouring conditions. . . . The fury of the times
unhappily forbade the maintenance of this wise
and prudent spirit. As the power of evil gath-
ered to destroy the Church of England, a fiercer
temper was required to combat with them, and
Protestantism became impatient, like David, of
the uniform in which it was sent to the battle.
It would have fared ill with England had there
been no hotter blood there than filtered in the
shiggish veins of the officials of the Establish-
ment. There needed an enthusiasm fiercer far to
encounter the revival of Catholic fanaticism ; and
if the young Puritans, in the heat and glow of
their convictions, snapped their traces and flung
off their harness, it was they, after all, who
saved the Church which attempted to disown
them, and with the Church saved also the stolid
mediocrity to which the fates then and ever com-
mitted and commit the government of it." — J.
A. Froude, Hist, of Eng., v. 10, ch. 20.— "The
compromise arranged by Cranmer had from the
first been considered by a large body of Protest-
ants as a scheme for serving two masters, as an
attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with
the worship of Baal. In the days of Edward
VI. the scruples of this party had repeatedly
thrown great difficulties in the way of the gov-
ernment. When Elizabeth came to the throne,
those difficulties were much increased. Violence
naturally engenders violence. The spirit of
Protestantism was therefore far fiercer and more
intolerant after the cruelties of Mary than before
them. Many persons who were warmly attached
to the new opinions had, during the evil days,
taken refuge in Switzerland and Germany.
Tliey had been hospitably received by their
brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the
great doctors of Strasburg, Zurich and Geneva,
and had been, during some years, accustomed to
a more simple worship, and to a more democrat-
ical form of church government, than England
had yet seen. These men returned to their coun-
try, convinced that the reform which had been
effected under King Edward had been far less
searching and extensive than the interests of
pure religion required. But it was in vain that
they attempted to obtain any concession from
Elizabeth. Indeed, her system, wherever it dif-
fered from her brother's, seemed to them to dif-
fer for the worse. They were little disposed to
submit, in matters of faith, to any human author-
ity. . . . Since these men could not be convinced,
it was determined that they should be persecuted.
Persecution produced its natural effect on them.
It found them a sect: it made them a faction.
. . . The power of the discontented sectaries was
great. They were found in every rank; but
they were strongest among the mercantile classes
in the towns, and among the small proprietors
in the country. Early in the reign of Elizabeth
they began to return a majority of the House of
Commons. And doubtless, had our ancestors
been then at liberty to fix their attention entirely
on domestic questions, the strife between the
crown and the Parliament would instantly have
commenced. But that was no season for inter-
nal dissensions. . . . Roman Catholic Europe and
reformed Europe were struggling for death or
life. . . . Whatever might be the faults of Eliza-
beth, it was plain that, to speak humanly, the
fate of the realm and of all reformed churches
was staked on the security of her person and on
the success of her administration. . . . The
Puritans, even in the depths of the prisons to
866
ENGLAND, 1559-1566.
Persecution
of the Catholics.
ENGLAND, 1573-1603.
which she had sent them, prayed, and with no
simulated fervour, that she might be kept from
the dagger of the assassin, that rebellion might
be put down under her feet, and that her arms
might be victorious by sea and land." — Lord
Macaulay, Hist. ofEng., v. 1, ch. 1. — "Two par-
ties quickly evolved themselves out of the
mass of Englishmen who held Calvinistic opin-
ions ; namely those who were willing to conform
to the requirements of the Queen, and those
who were not. To both is often given indis-
criminately by historians the name of Puritan ;
but it seems more correct, and certainly is more
convenient, to restrict the use of the name to
those who are sometimes called conforming Puri-
tans. ... To the other party fitly belongs the
name of Nonconformist. ... It was against the
Nonconformist organization that Elizabeth's ef-
forts were chiefly directed. . . . The war began
in the enforcement by Archbishop Parker in 1565
of the Advertisements as containing the mini-
mum of ceremonial that would be tolerated. In
1566 the clergy of London were required to make
the declaration of Conformity which was ap-
pended to the Advertisements, and thirty-seven
were suspended or deprived for refusal. Some
of the deprived ministers continued to conduct
services and preach in spite of their deprivation,
and so were formed the first bodies of Noncon-
formists, organized in England. "—H. O. Wake-
man, The Church and the Puritans, ch. 3.
Also in: J. TuUoch, Eng. Puritanism and its
Lenders, int. — D. Neal, Ilist. of the Puritans, v.
1, ch. 4 — D. Campbell, The Puritan in Holland,
Eng., ciTid Am., ch. 8-10 (b. 1).
A. D. 1562-1567. — Hawkins' slave-trading
voyages to America. — First English enter-
prise in the New World. See America ; A. D.
1563-1567.
A. D. 1564-1565 (?).— The first naming of the
Puritans. — "The English bishops, conceiving
themselves empowered by their canons, began to
show their authority in urging the clergy of their
dioceses to subscribe to the Liturgy, ceremonies
and discipline of the Church; and such as re-
fused the same were branded with the odious
name of Puritans. A name which in this notion
first began in this year [A. D. 1564]; and the
grief had not been great if it had ended in the
same. The philosopher banisheth the term,
(which is Polysaimon), that is subject to several
senses, out of the predicaments, as affording too
much covert for cavil by the latitude thereof.
On the same account could I wish that the word
Puritan were banished common discourse, because
so various in the acceptations thereof. We need
not speak of the ancient Cathari or primitive
Puritans, sufiiciently known by their heretical
opinions. Puritan here was taken for the opposers
of the hierarchy and church service, as resenting
of superstition. But profane mouths quickly
improved this nickname, therewith on every oc-
casion to abuse pious people ; some of them so far
from opposing the Liturgy, that they endeavoured
(according to the instructions thereof in the pre-
parative to the Confession) 'to accompany the
minister with a pure heart,' and laboured (as it
is in the Absolution) ' for a life pure and holy. '
We will, therefore, decline the word to prevent
exceptions ; which, if casually slipping from our
pen, the reader knoweth that only nonconformists
are thereby intended. "— T. Fidler, Church Hist,
of Britain, bk. 9, sect. 1. — "For in this year
[1565] it was that the Zuinglian or Calvinian
faction began to be first known by the name of
Puritans, if Genebrard, Gualter, and Spondauus
(being all of them right good chronologers) be
not mistaken in the time. Which name hath ever
since been appropriate to them, because of their
pretending to a greater purity in the service of
God than was lield forth unto them (as they gave
out) in the Common Prayer Book ; and to a greater
opposition to the rites and usages of the Churcli
of Rome than was agreeable to the constitution
of the Church of England." — P. Heylyn, Ecclesia
Restaurata: Elimbeih. Anno 7, sect. 6.
A. D. 1568. — Detention and imprisonment
of Mary Queen of Scots. See Scotland: A. D.
1501-1568.
A. D. 1569. — Quarrel with the Spanish gov-
ernor of the Netherlands. See Netherlands:
A. D. 1568-1573.
A. D. 1572-1580.— Drake's piratical warfare
with Spain and his famous voyage. See
America: A. D. 1572-1580.
A. D. 1572-1603.— Queen Elizabeth's treat-
ment of the Roman Catholics. — Persecution of
the Seminary Priests and the Jesuits. — "Cam-
den and many others have asserted that by sys-
tematic counivance the Roman Catholics enjoyed
a pretty free use of their religion for the first
fourteen years of Elizabeth's reign. But this is
not reconcilable to many passages in Strype's
collections. We find abundance of persons har-
assed for recusancy, that is, for not attending
the protestant church, and driven to insincere
promises of conformity. Others were dragged
l3efore ecclesiastical commissions for harbouring
priests, or for sending money to those who had
fled beyond sea. ... A great majority both
of clergy and laity yielded to the times ; and of
these temporizing conformists it cannot be
doubted that many lost by degrees all thought
of returning to their ancient fold. But others,
while they complied with exterior ceremonies,
retained in their private devotions their accus-
tomed mode of worship. . . . Priests . . . trav-
elled the country in various disguises, to keep
alive a flame which the practice of outward con-
formity was calculated to extinguish. There
was not a county throughout England, says a
Catholic historian, where several of Mary's clergy
did not reside, and were commonly called the
old priests. They served as chaplains in private
families. By stealth, at the dead of night, in
private chambers, in the secret lurking places of
an ill-peopled country, with all the mystery that
subdues the imagination, with all the mutual
trust that invigorates constancy, these proscribed
ecclesiastics celebrated their solemn rites, more
impressive in such concealment than if sur-
rounded by all their former splendour. ... It
is my thorough conviction that the persecution,
for it can obtain no better name, carried on
against the English Catholics, however it might
serve to delude the government by producing an
apparent conformity, could not but excite a
spirit of disloyalty in many adherents of that
faith. Nor would it be safe to assert that a more
conciliating policy would have altogether dis-
armed their hostility, much less laid at rest those
busy hopes of the future, which the peculiar cir-
cumstances of Elizabeth's reign had a tendency
to produce." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of Eng.,
ch. 3. — "The more vehement Catholics had with-
drawn from the country, on account of the dan-
867
ENGLAND. 157^1603.
Catholic
Conspiracies.
ENGLAND, 1585-1587.
gers which there beset them. They had taken
refuge in the Low Countries, and there Allen,
one of the chief among them, had established a
seminary at Douay, for the purpose of keeping
up a supply of priests in England. To Douay
numbers of young Englishmen from Oxford con-
tinually flocked. The establishment had been
broken up by Requescens, and removed to Rheims,
and a second college of the same description was
established at Rome. From these two centres of
intrigue numerous enthusiastic young men con-
stantly repaired to England, and in the disguise
of laymen carried on their priestly work and at-
tempted to revive the Romanist religion. But
abler and better disciplined workmen were now
wanted. Allen and his friends therefore opened
negotiations with Mercuriano, the head of the
Jesuit order, in which many Englishmen had en-
rolled themselves. In 1580, as part of a great
combined Catholic effort, a regular Jesuit mis-
sion, under two priests, Campion and Parsons,
was despatched to England. . . . The new mis-
sionaries were allowed.to say that that part of
the Bull [of excommunication issued against
Elizabeth] which pronounced censures upon
those who clung to their allegiance applied to
heretics only, that Catholics might profess them-
selves loyal until tlie time arrived for carrying
the Bull into execution ; in other words, they
were permitted to be traitors at heart while de-
claring themselves loyal subjects. This explana-
tion of the Bull was of itself sufficient to justify
severity on the part of the government. It was
impossible henceforward to separate Roman
Catholicism from disloyalty. Proclamations were
issued requiring English parents to summon
their cliildren from abroad, and declaring that
to harbour Jesuit priests was to support rebels.
. . . Early in December several priests were ap-
prehended and closely examined, torture being
occasionally used for the purpose. In view of
the danger which these examinations disclosed,
stringent measures were taken. Attendance at
church was rendered peremptorily necessary.
Parliament was summoned in the beginning of
1581 and laws passed against the action of the
Jesuits. . . . Had Elizabeth been conscious of
the full extent of the plot against her, had she
known the intention of the Guises [then dominant
in Prance] to make a descent upon England in
co-operation with Spain, and the many ramifica-
tions of the plot in her own country, it is reason-
able to suppose that she would have been forced
at length to take decided measures. But in
Ignorance of the abyss opening before her feet,
she continued for some time longer her old tem-
porizing policy. " At last, in November, 1583,
the discovery of a plot for the assassination of
the queen, and the arrest of one Throgmorton,
whose papers and whose confession were of start-
ling import, brought to light the whole plan and
extent of tlie conspiracy. "Some of her Council
urged her at once to take a straightforward step,
to make common cause with the Protestants of
Scotland and tlie Netherlands, and to bid defi-
ance to Spain. To this honest step, she as usual
could not bring herself, but strong measures
were taken in England. Great numbers of Jes-
uits and seminary priests were apprehended and
executed, suspected magistrates removed, and
those Catholic Lords whose treachery might have
been fatal to her ejected from their places of
authority and deprived of influence." — J. F.
Bright, Hist, of Eng., period 2, pp. 546-549. —
"That the conspiracy with which these men
were charged was a fiction cannot be doubted.
They had come to England under a prohibition
to take any part in secular concerns, and with
the sole view of exercising the spiritual functions
of the priesthood. ... At the same time it must
be owned that the answers which six of them
gave to the queries were far from satisfactory.
Their hesitation to deny the opposing power (a
power then indeed maintained by the greater
number of divines in Catholic kingdoms) rendered
their loyalty very problematical, in case of an
attempt to enforce the bull by any foreign prince.
It furnished sufficient reason to watch their con-
duct with an e3'e of jealousy . . . but could not
j ustif y their execution for an imaginary offence. "
— J. Lingard, Hist, of Eng., v. 8, ch. 3. — "It is
probable that not many more than 200 Catholics
were executed, as such, in Elizabeth's reign, and
this was ten score too many. . . . ' Dod reckons
them at 191 ; Milner has raised the list to 204.
Fifteen of these, according to him, suffered for
denying the Queen's supremacy, 126 for exercis-
ing their ministry, and the rest for being recon-
ciled to the Romish church. Many others died
of hardships in prison, and many were deprived
of their property. There seems, nevertheless
[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.'" — J. L.
Motley, Hist, of the United Netherlands, eh. 17,
loith foot-note.
Axso IN : J. Foley, Records of the Eng. Province
of the Snc. of Jesus.
A. D. 1574. — Emancipation of villeins on
the royal domains. — Practical end of serfdom.
See Slavery, Medl-eval: England.
A. D. 1575. — Sovereignty of Holland and
Zealand offered to Queen Elizabeth, and de-
clined. See Netherlands: A. D. 1.575-1577.
A. D. 1581. — Marriage proposals of the
Duke of Anjou declined by Queen Elizabeth.
See Netherl.vnds : A. D. 1581-1584.
A. D. 1583. — The expedition of Sir Hum-
phrey Gilbert. — Formal possession taken of
Newfoundland. See America: A. D. 1583.
A. D. 1584-1590. — Raleigh's colonizing at-
tempts in America. See America: A. D. 1584-
1586; and 1587-1590.
A. D. 1585-1586. — Leicester in the Low
Countries. — Queen Elizabeth's treacherous
dealing with the struggling Netherlanders.
See Netherlands: A. D. 1585-1586.
A. D. 1585-1587. — Mary Queen of Scots and
the Catholic conspiracies. — Her trial and exe-
cution. — "Maddened by persecution, by the hope-
lessness of rebellion within or deliverance from
without, the fiercer Catholics listened to schemes
of assassination, to which the murder of William
of Orange lent at the moment a terrible signifi-
cance. The detection of Somerville, a fanatic
who had received the host before setting out for
London ' to shoot the Queen with his dagg,' was
followed by measures of natural severity, by the
flight and arrest of Catholic gentry, by a vigour-
ous purification of the Inns of Court, where a
few Catholics lingered, and by the dispatch of
fresh batches of priests to the block. "The trial
and death of Parry, a member of the House of
Commons who had served in the Queen's house-
hold, on a similar charge, brought the Parlia-
868
ENGLAND, 1585-1587.
Mary Sttiart^
Queeii of Scots.
ENGLAND, 1588,
ment together in a transport of horror and loy-
alty. All Jesuits and seminary priests were
banished from the realm on pain of death. A
bill for the security of the Queen disqualified
any claimant of the succession who had insti-
gated subjects to rebellion or hurt to the Queen's
person from ever succeeding to the crown. The
threat was aimed at Mary Stuart. Weary of
her long restraint, of her failure to rouse Philip
or Scotland to aid her, of the baffled revolt of
the English Catholics and the baffled intrigues
of the Jesuits, she bent for a moment to submis-
sion. ' Let me go,' she wrote to Elizabeth ; ' let
me retire from this island to some solitude where
I may prepare my soul to die. Grant this and I
will sign away every right which either I or
mine can claim.' But the cry was useless, and
her despair found a new and more terrible hope
in the plots against Elizabeth's life. She knew
and approved the vow of Anthony Babington
and a band of young Catholics, for the most
part connected with the royal household, to kill
the Queen ; but plot and approval alike passed
through Walsingham's hands, and the seizure of
Mary's correspondence revealed her guilt. In
spite of her protests, a commission of peers sat
as her judges at Fotheringay Castle; and their
verdict of ' guilty ' annihilated, under the pro-
visions of the recent statute, her claim to the
crown. The streets of London blazed with bon-
fires, and peals rang out from steeple to steeple,
at the news of her condemnation ; but, in spite
of the prayer of Parliament for her execution,
and the pressure of the Council, Elizabeth
slirank from her death. The force of public
opinion, however, was now carrying all before
it, and the unanimous demand of her people
wrested at last a sullen consent from the Queen.
She flung the warrant signed upon the floor, and
the Council took on themselves the responsibility
of executing it. Mary died [Feb. 8, 1587] on a
scaffold which was erected in the castle hall at
Fotheringay, as dauntlessly as she had lived.
'Do not weep,' she said to her ladies, 'I have
given my word for you.' 'Tell my friends,' she
charged Melville, ' that I die a good Catholic. ' "
— J. R. Green, Short Hist, of the Eng. People, cli.
7, sect. 6. — " 'Who now doubts,' writes an elo-
quent modern writer, ' that it would have been
wiser in Elizabeth to spare her life?' Rather,
the political wisdom of a critical and difficult act
has never in the world's history been more sig-
nally justified. It cut away the only interest on
which the Scotch and English Catholics could
possibly have combined. It determined Philip
upon the undisguised pursuit of the English
throne, and it enlisted against him and his proj-
ects the passionate patriotism of the English
nobiUty."— J. A. Froude, Hist, of Eng., v. 1'2,
ch. 34.
Also in : A. De Lamartine, Mary Stuart, ch.
31-34. — L. S. F. Buckingham, Memoirs of Mary
Stuart, D. 2, ch. 5-6. — L. von Ranke, Hist, of
Eng., bk. 3, ch. 5. — J. D. Leader, Mary Queen of
Scots ill Captivity. — C. Nau, Hist, of Mary Stu-
art. — F. A. Mignet, Hist, of Mary Queen of Scots,
eh. 9-10.
A. D. 1587-1588.— The wrath of Catholic
Europe — Spanish vengeance and ambition
astir. — "The death of Mary [Queen of Scots]
may have preserved England from the religious
struggle which would have ensued upon her ac-
cession to the throne, but it delivered Elizabeth
from only one, and that the weakest of her ene
mies ; and it exposed her to a charge of injustice
and cruelty, which, being itself well founded,
obtained belief for any other accusation, however
extravagantly false. It was not Philip [of Spain]
alone who prepared for making war upon her with
a feeling of personal hatred: throughout Rom-
ish Chrtstendom she was represented as a monster
of iniquity ; that representation was assiduously
set forth, "not in ephemeral libels, but in histories,
in dramas, in poems, and in hawker's pamphlets;
and when the king of Spain equipped an arma-
ment for the invasion of England, volunteers en-
tered it with a passionate persuasion that they
were about to bear a part in a holy war against
the wickedest and most inhuman of tyrants. The
Pope exhorted Philip to engage in this great en-
terprize for the sake of the Roman Catholic and
apostolic church, which could not be more effect-
ually nor more meritoriously extended than by
the conquest of England. . . . And he promised,
as soon as his troops should have set foot in tlint
island, to supply him with a million of crowns
of gold towards the expenses of the expedition.
. . . Such exhortations accorded with the ambi-
tion, the passions, and the rooted principles of
the king of Spain. The undertaking was re-
solved." — R. Southey, Lives of the British Ad-
mirals, V. 2, p. 319. — "The succours which
Elizabeth had from time to time afforded to the
insurgents of the Netherlands was not the only
cause of Philip's resentment and of his desire for
revenge. She had fomented the disturbances in
Portugal, . . . and her captains, among whom
Sir Francis Drake was the most active, had^ for
many years committed unjustifiable depredations
on the Spanish possessions of South America,
and more than once on the coasts of the Penin-
sula itself. , . . By Spanish historians, these
hostilities are represented as unprovoked." — S.
A. Dunham, Hist, of Sjiain and Portugal, hk. 4,
sect. 1, ch. 1. — When the intentions of the Span-
iard were known, Drake's activity increased. In
the spring of 1587, he sailed into the harbor of
Cadiz, and destroyed 50 or 60 ships, which is said
to have delayed the expedition for a year. This
he called "singeing the king of Spain's beard."
Also in: J. A. Froude, Hist, of Eng., v. 12,
ch. 35.
A. D. 1588.— The Spanish Armada.— "Per-
haps in the history of mankind there has never
been a vast project of conquest conceived and
matured in so protracted and yet so desultory a
manner, as was this famous Spanish invasion.
... At last, on the 28th, 29th and 30th May,
1588, the fleet, which had been waiting at Lis-
bon more than a month for favourable weather,
set sail from that port, after having been duly
blessed by the Cardinal Archduke Albert, vice-
roy of Portugal. There were rather more than
130 ships in all, divided into 10 squadrons. . . .
The total tonnage of the fleet was 59,120: the
number of guns was 3,165. Of Spanish troops
there were 19,295 on board: there were 8,252
sailors and 2,088 galley-slaves. Besides these,
there was a force of noble volunteers, belonging
to the most illustrious houses of Spain, with
their attendants, amounting to nearly 2,000 in
all, . . . The size of the ships ranged from 1,200
tons to 300. The galleons, of which there were
about 60. were huge round-stemmed clumsy ves-
sels, with bulwarks three or four feet thick, and
built up at stem and stern, like castles. The
869
ENGLAND, 1588.
T}ie Spanish
Amiada.
ENGLAND, 1588.
galeasses — of which there were four — were a
third larger than tlie ordinary galley, and were
rowed each by 300 galley-slaves. They con-
sisted of an enormous towering fortress at the
stern, a castellated structure almost equally mas-
sive in front, with seats for the rowers amid-
ships. At stem and stern and between each of
the slaves' benches were heavy cannon. These
galeasses were floating edifices, very wonderful
to contemplate. They were gorgeously deco-
rated. There were splendid state-apartments,
cabins, chapels, and pulpits in each, and they
were amply provided with awnings, cushions,
streamers, standards, gilded saints and bands of
music. To take part in an ostentatious pageant,
nothing could be better devised. To fulfil the
great objects of a war- vessel — to sail and to
fight — they were the worst machines ever
launched upon the ocean. The four galleys
were similar to the galeasses in every respect
except that of size, in which they were by one-
third inferior. All the ships of the fleet — gal-
easses, galleys, galleons, and hulks — were so
encumbered with top-hamper, so over-weighted
In proportion to their draught of water, that
they could bear but little canvas, even with
smooth seas and light and favourable winds.
. . . Such was the machinery which Philip had
at last set afloat, for the purpose of dethroning
Elizabeth and establishing the Inquisition in
England. One hundred and forty ships, 11,000
Spanish veterans, as many more recruits, partly
Spanish, partly Portuguese, 3,000 grandees, as
many galley slaves, and 300 barefooted friars
and inquisitors. The plan was simple. Medina
Sidonia [the captain-general of the Armada] was
to proceed straight from Lisbon to Calais roads:
there he was to wait for the Duke of Parma
[Spanish commander in the Nethei'lands], who
was to come forth from Newport, Sluys, and
Dunkirk, bringing with him his 17,000 veter-
ans, and to assume the chief command of the
whole expedition. They were then to cross the
channel to Dover, land the army of Parma, rein-
forced with 6,000 Spaniards from the fleet, and
with these 23,000 men Alexander was to march
at once upon London. Medina Sidonia was to
seize and fortify the Isle of Wight, guard the en-
trance of the harbours against any interference
from the Dutch and English fleets, and — so soon
as the conquest of England had been effected —
he was to proceed to Ireland. ... A strange
omission had however been made in the plan
from first to last. The commander of the whole
expedition was the Duke of Parma: on his head
was the whole responsibility. Not a gun was to
be fired — if it could be avoided — until he had
come forth with his veterans to make his junc-
tion with the Invincible Armada off Calais. Yet
there was no arrangement whatever to enable
him to come forth — not the slightest provision
to effect that junction. . . . Medina could not
go to Farnese [Alexander Farnese, Duke of
Parma], nor could Farnese come to Medina.
The junction was likely to be diflicult, and yet
it had never once entered the heads of Philip or
his counsellors to provide for that difficulty.
. . . With as much sluggishness as might have
been expected from their clumsy architecture,
the ships of the Armada consumed nearly three
weeks in sailing from Lisbon to the neigh-
bourhood of Cape Finisterre. Here they were
overtaken by a tempest. ... Of the squadron
of galleys, one was already sunk in the sea, and
two of the others had been conquered by their
own slaves. The fourth rode out the gale with
difficulty, and joined the rest of the fleet, which
ultimately reassembled at Coruna; the ships
having, in distress, put in first at Vivera, Ri-
badeo, Qijon, and other northern ports of Spain.
At the Groyne — as the English of that day were
accustomed to call Coruna — they remained a
month, repairing damages and recruiting; and
on the 22d of July (N. S.) the Armada set sail.
Six days later, the Spaniards took soundings,
thirty leagues from the Scilly Islands, and on
Friday, the 29th of July, off the Lizard, they
had the first glimpse of the land of jjromise pre-
sented them by Sixtus V. of which they had at
last come to take possession. On the same day
and night the blaze and smoke of ten thousand
beacon-fires from the Land's End to Margate,
and from the Isle of Wight to Cumberland, gave
warning to every Englishman that the enemy
was at last upon them." — J. L. Motley, Hist, of
the United Netherlands, ch. 19.
Also en: J. A. Froude, Hist, of Eng., u. 12.
ch. 36. — The same. The Spanish Story of the
Armada. — R. Southe)', Lives of British Admirals,
V. 2, pp. 327-334.— C. M. Yonge, Cameos from
Eng. Hist., 5th series, c. 27.
A. D. 1588.— The Destruction of the Ar-
mada. — "The great number of the English, the
whole able-bodied population being drilled,
counterbalanced the advantage possessed, from
their universal use of firearms, by the invaders.
In all the towns there were trained bands (a civic
militia) ; and, either in regular service or as vol-
unteers, thousands of all ranks had received a
military training ou the continent. The musters
represented 100,000 men as ready to assemble at
their head-quarters at a day's notice. It was, as
nearly always, in its military administration that
the vulnerable point of England lay. The fitting-
out and victualling of the navy was disgraceful ;
and it is scarcely an excuse for the councillors
that they were powerless against the parsimony
of the Queen. The Government maintained its
hereditary character from the days of Ethelred
the Unready, and the arrangements for assembling
the defensive forces were not really completed by
them until after the Armada was destroyed.
The defeat of the invaders, if they had landed,
must have been accomplished by the people.
The flame of patriotism never burnt purer: all
Englishmen alike, Romanists, Protestant Episco-
palians, and Puritans, were banded together to
resist the invader. Every hamlet was on the
alert for the beacon-signal. Some 15,000 men
were already under arms in London ; the compact
Tilbury Fort was full, and a bridge of boats
from Tilbury to Gravesend blocked the Thames.
Philip's preparations had been commensurate
with the grandeur of his scheme. The dock-
yards in his ports in the Low Countries, the
rivers, the canals, and the harbours of Spain,
Portugal, Naples, and Italy, echoed the clang of
the shipwrights' hammers. A vast armament,
named, as if to provoke Nemesis, the ' Invincible
Armada,' on which for three years the treasures
of the American mines had been lavished, at
length rode the seas, blessed with Papal benedic-
tions and under the patronage of the saints. It
comprised 63 huge galleons, of from 700 to 1,300
tons, with sides of enormous thickness, and built
high like castles; four great galleys, each carry-
870
ENGLAND, 1588.
The Armada.
ENGLAND, 1588.
ing 50 guns and 450 men, and rowed by 300
slaves; 56 armed merchantmen, and 30 pinnaces.
These 129 vessels vpere armed with 2,430 brass
and iron guns of the best manufacture, but each
gun was furnished only with 50 rounds. They
carried 5,000 seamen; Parma's army amounted
to 80,000 men — Spaniards, Germans, Italians and
Walloons; and 19,000 Castiliansaud Portuguese,
with 1,000 gentlemen volunteers, were coming to
join him. To maintain this army after it had
effected a landing, a great store of provi-sions —
sufficient for 40,000 men for six months — was
placed on board. The overthrow of this arma-
ment was effected by the navy and the elements.
From the Queen's parsimony the State had only
36 ships in the fleet ; but the City of London fur-
nished 33 vessels ; 18 were supplied by the liber-
ality of private individuals; and nearly 100
smaller ships were obtained on hire ; so that the
fleet was eventually brought up to nearly 30,000
tons, carrying 16,000 men, and equipped with
837 guns. But there was sufficient ammunition
for only a single day's fighting. Fortunately for
Elizabeth's Government, the Spaniards, having
been long driven from the channel by privateers,
were now unacquainted with its currents; and
they could procure, as the Dutch were in revolt,
only two or three competent pilots. The Spanish
commander was the Duke of Medina-Sidonia,
an incapable man, but he had under him some of
the ablest of Philip's officers. When the ships
set out from the Tagus, on the 29th May, 1588, a
storm came on, and the Armada had to put into
Coruna to refit. From that port the Armada
set out at the beginning of July, in lovely
weather, with just enough wind to wave from
the mastheads the red crosses which they bore as
symbols of their crusade. The Duke of Medina
entered the Channel on the 18th July, and the
rear of his fleet was immediately harassed by a
cannonade from the puny ships of England, com-
manded by Lord Howard of Effingham (Lord
High Admiral), with Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher,
Winter, Fenner, and other famous captains.
With the loss of three galleons from fire or board-
ing, the Spanish commander, who was making
for Flanders to embark Parma's army, anchored
in Calais roads. In the night fire-ships — an an-
cient mode of warfare which had just been rein-
troduced by the Dutch — passed in among the
Armada, a fierce gale completed their work, and
morning revealed the remnant of the Invincible
Armada scattered along the coast from Calais to
Ostend. Eighty vessels remained to Medina, and
with these he sailed up the North Sea, to round
the British Isles. But the treacherous currents
of the Orkneys and the Hebrides were unknown
to his officers, and only a few ships escaped the
tempests of the late autumn. Jlore than two-
thirds of the expedition perished, and of the
remnant that again viewed the hills of Spain all
but a few hundreds returned only to die. " — H. R.
Clinton, B'rom Crecy to Assye, ch. 7. — In the fight-
ing on the 23d of July, "the Spaniards' shot
flew for the most part over the heads of the Eng-
lish, without doing execution. Cock being the
only Englishman that died bravely in the midst
of his enemies in a ship of his own. The reason
of this was, that the English ships, being far
less than the enemy's, made the attack with more
quickness and agility ; and when they had given
a broadside, they presently sheered off to a con-
venient distance, and levelled their shot so directly
at the bigger and more unwieldy ships of the
Spaniards, as seldom to miss their aim ; though
the Lord Admiral did not think it safe or proper
to grapple with them, as some advised, with
much more heat than discretion, because that the
enemy's fleet carried a considerable army within
their sides, whereas ours had no such advantage.
Besides their ships far exceeded ours in number
and bulk, and were much stronger and higher
built ; insomuch that their men, having the op-
portunity to ply us from such lofty hatches,
must inevitabLjr destroy those that were obliged,
as it were, to fight beneath them. . . . On the
24th day of the month there was a cessation on
both sides, and the Lord Admiral sent some of
his smaller vessels to the nearest of the English
harbours, to fetch a supply of powder and am-
munition; then he divided the fleet into four
squadrons, the first of wliich he commanded
himself, the second he committed to Drake, the
third to Hawkins, and the fourth to Frobisher.
He likewise singled out of the main fleet some
smaller vessels to begin the attack on all sides at
once, in the very dead of the night; but a calm
happening spoiled his design." On the 26th
" the Spanish fleet sailed forward with a fair and
soft gale at southwest and by south ; and the Eng-
lish chased them close at the heels; but so far
was this Invincible Armada from alarming the
sea-coasts with any frightful apprehensions, that
the English gentry of the younger sort entered
themselves volunteers, and taking leave of their
parents, wives, and children, did, with incredible
cheerfulness, hire ships at their own charge ; and,
in pure love to their country, joined the grand
fleet in vast numbers. . . . On the 27th of this
month the Spanish Fleet came to an anchor before
Calais, their pilots having acquainted them that
if they ventured any farther there was some dan-
ger that the force of the current might drive
them away into the Northern Channel. Not far
from them came likewise the English Admiral to
an anchor, and lay within shot of their ships.
The English fleet consisted by this time of 140
sail ; all of them ships of force, and very tight
and nimble sailors, and easily manageable upon
a tack. But, however, the main brunt of the en-
gagement lay not upon more than 15 or 16 of
them. . . . The Lord Admiral got ready eight
of his worst ships the very day after the Span-
iards came to an anchor; and having bestowed
upon them a good plenty of pitch, tar, and rosin,
and lined them well with brimstone and other
combustible matter, they sent them before the
wind, in the dead time of the night, under the con-
duct of Young and Prowse, into the midst of the
Spanish fleet. . . . The Sjianiards reported that
the duke, upon the approach of the fire-ships,
ordered the whole fleet to weigh anchor and stand
to sea. but that when the danger was over every
ship should return to her station. This is what
he did himself, and he likewise discharged a great
gun as a signal to the rest to do as he did ; the
report, however, was heard but by very few, by
reason their fears had dispersed them at that rate
that some of them ventured out of the main
ocean, and others sailed up the shallows of Flan-
ders. In the meantime Drake and Fenner played
briskly with their cannon upon the Spanish fleet,
as it was rendezvousing over against Graveling.
... On the last day of the month the wind blew
hard at north-west early in the morning, and the
Spanish fleet attempting to get back again to the
871
ENGLAND, 1588.
James I.
ENGLAND, 1604.
Straits of Calais, was driven toward Zealand.
The English then gave over the chase, because,
in the Spaniards' opinion, they perceived them
making haste enough to their own destruction.
For the wind, lying at the W. N. W. point, could
not choose but force them on the shoals and sands
on the coast of Zealand. But the wind happening
to come about in a little time to S. W. and by
W. they went before tlie wind. . . . Being now,
therefore, clear of danger in the main ocean, they
steered northward, and the English fleet renewed
the chase after them. . . . The Spaniards having
now laid aside all the thoughts and hopes of re-
turning to attempt the English, and perceiving
their main safety lay in their flight, made no
stay or stop at any port whatever. And thus
this mighty armada, which had been three whole
years fitting out, and at a vast expense, met in
one month's time with several attacks, and was
at last routed, with a vast slaughter on their side,
and but a very few of the English missing, and
not one ship lost, except tliat small vessel of
Cock's. . . . When, therefore, the Spanish fleet
had taken a large compass round Britain, by the
coasts of Scotland, the Orcades, and Ireland, and
had weathered many storms, and suffered as
many wrecks and blows, and all the inconven-
iences of war and weather, it made a shift to get
home again, laden with nothing but shame and
dishonour. . . . Certain it is that several of their
ships perished in their flight, being cast away
on the coasts of Scotland and Ireland, and that
above 700 soldiers were cast on shore in Scotland.
... As for those who had the ill fortune to be
drove upon the Irish shore, they met with the
most barbarous treatment ; for some of them were
butchered by the wild Irish, and the rest put to
the sword by the Lord Deputy." — W. Camden,
Hist, of Queen Elizabeth.
Also in ; 8. R. Gardiner, Bist. Biographies :
Drake. — E. S. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles,
eh. 10.— C. Kingsley, Westward Ho! ch. 31.— R.
Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, &e. (E. Oold-
S77iid's ed.), v. 7.
A. D. 1596. — Alliance with Henry IV. of
France against Spain. See France; A. D.
1593-1598.
A. D. 1596. — Dutch and English expedition
against Cadiz. See Spain: A. D. 1596.
i6th Century.^Commercial Progress. — Be-
ginnings of the East India Company. See
Trade, Modern; Hansa Towns; and India :
A. D. 1600-1702.
A. D. 1601. — The first Poor Law. See Poor
Laws, The English.
A. D. 1603. — Accession of King James I. —
The Stuart family. — On the death of Queen
Elizabeth, in 1603, James VI. of Scotland became
also the accepted king of England (under the
title of James I.), by virtue of his descent from
that daughter of Henry VII. and sister of Henry
VIII., Margaret Tudor, who married James IV.
king of Scots. His grandfather was James V. ;
his mother was Marie Stuart, or Mary, Queen of
Scots, born of her marriage with Lord Darnley.
He was the ninth in the line of the Scottish
dynasty of the Stuarts, or Stewarts, for an ac-
count of the origin of which see Scotland:
A. D. 1370. He had been carefully alienated
from the religion of his mother and reared in
Protestantism, to make him an acceptable heir to
the English throne. He came to it at a time
when the autocratic spirit of the Tudors, making
use of the peculiar circumstances of their time,
had raised the royal power and prerogative to
their most exalted pitch ; and he united the two
kingdoms of Scotland and England under one
sovereignty. "The noble inheritance fell to a
race who, comprehending not one of the con-
ditions by which alone it was possible to be re-
tained, profligately misused until they lost it
utterly. The calamity was in no respect fore-
seen by the statesman, Cecil, to whose exertion
it was mainly due that James was seated on the
throne: yet in regard to it he cannot be held
blameless. He was doubtless right in the course
he took, in so far as he thereby satisfied a national
desire, and brought under one crown two king-
doms that with advantage to either could not
separately exist; but it remains a reproach to his
name that he let slip the occasion of obtaining
for the people some ascertained and settled guar-
antees which could not then have been refused,
and which might have saved half a century of
bloodshed. None such were proposed to James.
He was allowed to seize a prerogative, which for
upwards of fifty years had been strained to a
higher pitch than at any previous period of the
English history ; and his clumsy grasp closed on
it without a sign of question or remonstrance
from the leading statesmen of England. ' Do I
mak the judges? Do I mak the bishops?' he
exclaimed, as the powers of his new dominion
dawned on his delighted sense: 'Then, God's
waunsi I mak what likes me, law and gospel ! '
It was even so. And this license to make gospel
and law was given, with other far more question-
able powers, to a man whose personal appearance
and qualities were as suggestive of contempt,
as his public acts were provocative of rebellion.
It is necessary to dwell upon this part of the sub-
ject; for it is only just to his not more culpable
but far less fortunate successor to say, that in it
lies the source and explanation of not a little for
which the penalty was paid by him. What is
called the Great Rebellion can have no comment
so pregnant as that which is suggested by the
character and previous career of the first of the
Stuart kings. " — J. Forster, Hist. andBiog. Essays,
p. 227.
A. D. 1604. — The Hampton Court Con-
ference. — James I. " was not long seated on the
English throne, when a conference was held at
Hampton Court, to hear the complaints of the
puritans, as those good men were called who
scrupled to conform to the ceremonies, and
sought a reformation of the abuses of the church
of England. On this occasion, surrounded with
his deans, bishops, and archbishops, who breathed
into his ears the music of flattery, and worshipped
him as an oracle, James, like king Solomon,
to whom he was fond of being compared, ap-
peared in all his glory, giving his judgment on
every question, and displaying before the aston-
ished prelates, who kneeled every time they ad-
dressed him, his polemic powers and theological
learning. Contrasting his present honours with
the scenes from which he had just escaped in his
native country, he began by congratulating him-
self that, ' by tlie blessing of Providence, he was
brought into the promised land, where religion
was professed in its purity ; where he sat among
grave, learned, and reverend men ; and that now
he was not, as formerly, a king without state
and honour, nor in a place where order was ban-
ished, and beardless boys would brave him to his
872
ENGLAND, 1604.
The Ounpowder
Plot.
ENGLAND, 1606.
face. ' After long conferences, during ■which the
Icing gave the most extraordinary exhibitions of
his learning, drollery, and profaneness, he was
completely thrown off his guard by the word
presbytery, which Dr. Reynolds, a representative
of the puritans, had unfortunately employed.
Thinking that he aimed at a ' Scotch presbytery,'
James rose into a towering passion, declaring that
presbytery agreed as well with monarchy as God
and the devil. ' Then,' said he, ' Jack and Tom,
and Will and Dick, shall meet, and at their pleas-
ures censure me and my council, and all our
proceedings. Then Will shall stand up and say,
It must be thus : Then Dick shall reply, and say,
Nay marry, but we will have it thus. And,
therefore, here I must once reiterate my former
speech, Le Roy s'avisera (the king will look after
it) Stay, I pray you, for one seven years before
you demand that of me ; and if you then find me
pursy and fat, and my wind-pipes stuffed, I will
perhaps hearken to you ; for let that government
be once up, I am sure I shall be kept in breath ;
then we shall all of us have work enough, both
our hands full. But, Dr. Reynolds, till you find
that I grow lazy, let that alone.' Then, puttmg
his hand to his hat, 'My lords the bishops,' said
his majesty, ' I may thank you that these mep
plead for my supremacy ; they think they can t
make their party good against you, but by ap-
pealing unto it. But if once you are out, and
they in place, I know what would become of my
supremacy ; for no bishop, no king, as I said be-
fore ' Then rising from his chair, he concluded
the conference with, ' If this be all they have to
say, I'll make them conform, or I'll harry them
out of this land, or else do worse.' The English
lords and prelates were so filled with admiration
at the quickness of apprehension and dexterity
in controversy shown by the king, that, as Dr.
Barlow infonns us, ' one of them said his majesty
spoke by the instinct of the Spirit of God ; and
the lord chancellor, as he went out, said to the
dean of Chester, I have often heard that Rex est
mixta persona cum sacerdote (that a king is
partly a priest), but I never saw the truth thereof
till this day ! ' In these circumstances, buoyed
up with flattery by his English clergy, and placed
beyond the reach of the faithful admonitions of
the Scottish ministry, we need not wonder to find
James prosecuting, with redoubled ardour, his
scheme of reducing the church of Scotland to
the English model."— T. McCrie, Sketches of Scot-
tish Church Hist. , ch. 5.
Also in : S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts
and the Puritan Revolution, ch. 1, sect. 3. — G. G.
Perry, Hist, of the Ch. of Eng., v. 1, ck. 2.— T.
Fuller, Church Hist, of Britain, bk. 10, sect. 1
(d. 3).
A. D. 1605.— The Gunpowder Plot.— "The
Roman Catholics had expected great favour and
indulgence on the accession of James, both as he
was descended from Mary, whose life they be-
lieved to have been sacrificed to their cause, and
as he himself, in his early youth, was imagined
to have shown some partiality towards them.
Very soon they discovered their mistake;
and were at once surprised and enraged to find
James, on all occasions, express his intention of
strictly executing the laws enacted against them,
and of persevering in all the rigorous measures of
Elizabeth. Catesby, a gentleman of good parts
and of an ancient family, first thought of a most
extraordinary method of revenge ; and he opened
his intention to Piercy, a descendant of the illus-
trious house of Northumberland. In vain, said
he, would you put an end to the king's life ; he
has children. ... To serve any good purpose,
we must destroy, at one blow, the king, the
royal family, the Lords, the Commons, and bury
all our enemies in one common ruin. Happily,
they are all assembled on the first meeting of
Parliament, and afford us the opportunity of
glorious and useful vengeance. Great prepara-
tions will not be requisite. A few of us, com-
bining, may run a mine below the hall in which
they meet, and choosing the very moment when
the king harangues both Houses, consign over
to destruction these determined foes to all piety
and religion. . . . Piercy was charmed with this
project of Catesby ; and they agreed to commu-
nicate the matter to a few more, and among the
rest to Thomas Winter, whom they sent over to
Flanders, in quest of Fawkes, an officer in the
Spanish service, with whose zeal and courage
they were all thoroughly acquainted. ... All
this passed In the spring and summer of the year
160-1; when the conspirators also hired a house
in Piercy 's name, adjoining to that in which the
Parliament was to assemble. Towards the end
of that year they began their operations. . . .
They soon pierced the wall, though three yards
in thickness ; but on approaching the other side
they were somewhat startled at hearing a noise
which they knew not how to account for. Upon
inquiry, they found that it came from the vault
below the House of Lords; that a magazine of
coals had been kept there ; and that, as the coals
were selling off, the vault would be let to the
highest bidder. The opportunity was immedi-
ately seized ; the place hired by Piercy ; thirty-
six barrels of powder lodged in it; the whole
covered up with faggots and billets ; the doors of
the cellar boldly flung open, and everybody ad-
mitted, as if it contained nothing dangerous. . . .
The day [November 5, 16051, so long wished for,
now approached, on which the Parliament was
appointed to assemble. The dreadful secret,
though communicated to above twenty persons,
had been religiously kept, during the space of
near a year and a half. No remorse, no pity, no
fear of punishment, no hope of reward, had as
yet induced any one conspirator, either to aban-
don the enterprise or make a discovery of it."
But the betrayal was unwittingly made, after
all, by one in the plot, who tried to deter Lord
IVIonteagle from attending the opening session of
Parliament, by sending him a mysterious mes-
sage of warning. Lord Monteagle showed the
letter to Lord Salisbury, secretary of state, who
attached little importance to it, but who laid it
before the king. The Scottish Solomon read it
with more anxiety and was shrewdly led by
some expressions in the missive to order an in-
spection of the vaults underneath the parlia-
mentary houses. The gunpowder was discov-
ered and Guy Fawkes was found in the place,
with matches for the firing of it on his person.
Being put to the rack he disclosed the names of
his accomplices. They were seized, tried and
executed, or killed while resisting arrest.- D.
Hume, Hist, if Eng., v. 4, ch. 46.
Also m: S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of Eng., ch. 6,
(i) 1).— J. Lingard, HiM. of Eng., v. 9. ch. 1.
A. D. 1606.— The chartering of the Virginia
Company, with its London and Plymouth
branches. See ViBomLi.: A. D. 1606-1607.
873
ENGLAND, 1620.
Charles I.
ENGLAND, 1635-1628.
A. D. 1620. — The Monopoly granted to the
Council for New England. See New Eng-
land: A. D. 1620-1623.
A. D. 1620. — The exodus of the Pilgrims
and the planting of their colony at New Ply-
mouth. See Massachusetts (Plymouth Col-
ony): A. D. 1620.
A. D. 1621. — Grant of Nova Scotia. See
New England : A. D. 1021-l(i31.
A. D. 1622. — First printed newspaper. See
Printing and Phess : A. D. 1622-1703.
A. D. 1623-1638. — The grants in Newfound-
land to Baltimore and Kirke. See Newpound-
lan-d: a. D. 1610-lG5."x
A. D. 1625. — The Protestant Alliance in the
Thirty Years War. See Germany : A. D. 1634-
1626.
A. D. 1625. — The gains of Parliament in the
reign of James I. — "The commons had now
been engaged [at the end of the reign of James
I.], for more than twenty years, in a struggle to
restore and to fortify their own and their fellow
subjects' liberties. They had obtained in this
period but one legislative measure of importance,
the late declaratory act against monopolies. But
they had rescued from disuse their ancient right
of impeachment. They had placed on record a
protestation of their claim to debate all matters
of public concern. They had remonstrated
against the usurped prerogatives of binding the
subject by proclamation, and of levying customs
at the out-ports. They had secured beyond con-
troversy their exclusive iirivilege of determining
contested elections of their members. They had
maintained, and carried indeed to an unwarrant-
able extent, their power of judging and inflict-
ing punishment, even for offences not committed
against their house. Of these advantages some
were evidently incomplete ; and it would require
the most vigorous exertions of future parliaments
to realize them. But sucii exertions the increased
energy of the nation gave abundant cause to an-
ticipate. A deep and lasting love of freedom
had taken hold of every class except perhaps the
clergy ; from which, when viewed together with
the rash pride of the court, and the uncertainty
of constitutional principles and precedents, col-
lected through our long and various history, a
calm by-stander might presage that the ensuing
reign would not pass without disturbance, nor
perhaps end without confusion." — H. Hallam,
Constitiitionitl Hist, of England, ch. 6.
A. D. 1625.— Marriage of Charles with
Henrietta Maria of France. See France:
A, D. 1624-1626.
A. D. 1625-1628.— The accession of Charles
I. — Beginning of the struggle of King and
Parliament. — " The political and religious schism
which had originated in the 16th century was,
during the first quarter of the 17th century, con-
stantly widening. Theories tending to Turkish
despotism were in fashion at Whitehall. Theories
tending to republicanism were in favour with a
large portion of the House of Commons. . . .
While the minds of men were in this state, the
country, after a peace of many years, at length
engaged in a war [with Spain, and with Austria
and the Emperor in the Palatinate] which re-
quired strenuous exertions. This war hastened
the approach of the great constitutional crisis.
It was necessary that the king should have a
large military force. He could not have such a
force without money. He could not legally raise
money without the consent of Parliament. It
followed, therefore, that he either must admin-
ister the government in conformity with the sense
of the House of Commons, or must venture on
such a violation of the fundamental laws of the
land as had been unknown during several cen-
turies. . . . Just at this conjuncture James died
[March 37, 1635]. Charles L succeeded to the
throne. He had received from nature a far bet-
ter understanding, a far stronger will, and a far
keener and firmer temper than his father's. He
had inherited his father's political theories, and
was much more disposed than his father to carry
them into practice. . . . His taste in literature
and art was excellent, his manner dignified though
not gracious, his domestic life without blemish.
Faithlessness was the chief cause of his disasters,
and is the chief stain on his memory. He was,
in truth, impelled by an incurable propensity to
dark and crooked ways. ... He seems to have
learned from the theologians whom he most
esteemed that between him and his subjects
there could be nothing of the nature of mutual
contract; that he could not, even if he would,
divest himself of his despotic authority ; and that,
in every promise which he made, there was an
implied reservation that such promise might be
broken in case of neces.sity, and that of the ne-
cessity he was the sole judge. And now began
that hazardous game on which were staked the
destinies of the English people. It was played
on the side of the House of Commons with keen-
ness, but with admirable dexterity, coolness and
perseverance. Great statesmen who looked far
behind them and far before them were at the
head of that assembly. They were resolved to
place the king in such a situation that he must
either conduct the administration in conformity
with the wishes of his Parliament, or make out-
rageous attacks on the most sacred principles of
the constitution. They accordingly doled out
supplies to him very sparingly. He found that
he must govern either in harmony with the
House of Commons, or in defiance of all law.
His choice was soon made. He dissolved his
first Parliament, and levied taxes by his own au-
thority. He convoked a second Parliament [1626]
and found it more intractable than the first. He
again resorted to the expedient of dissolution,
raised fresh taxes without any show of legal
right, and threw the chiefs of the opposition into
prison. At the same time a new grievance, which
the peculiar feelings and habits of the English
nation made insupportably painful, and which
seemed to all discerning men to be of fearful
augury, excited general discontent and alarm.
Companies of soldiers were billeted on the people ;
and martial law was, in some places, substituted
for the ancient jurisprudence of the realm. The
king called a third Parliament [1638], and soon
perceived that the opposition was stronger and
fiercer than ever. He now determined on a
change of tactics. Instead of opposing an in-
flexible resistance to the demands of the commons,
he, after much altercation and many evasions,
agreed to a compromise which, if he had faith-
fully adhered to it, would have averted a long
series of calamities. The Parliament granted an
ample supply. The King ratified, in the most
solemn manner, that celebrated law which is
known by the name of the Petition of Right, and
which is the second Great Charter of the liberties
of England." — Lord Macaulay, Hist. ofEng., ch. 1.
874
ENGLAND, 1625-1628.
Petition of Right.
ENGLAND, 1628.
Also in: J. R. Green. Hist. oftTie Eng. People,
Ik. 7, ch. 5 {v. 3).— F. P. Guizot, Hist. oftJwEng.
Revolution, bk. 1.
A. D. 1627-1628.— Buckingham's war with
France and expedition to La Rochelle. See
France: A. D. 1627-1628.
A. D. 1628.— The Petition of Right.—
"Charles had recourse to many subterfuges in
hopes to elude the passing of this law; rather
perhaps through wounded pride, as we may
judge from his subsequent conduct, than much
apprehension that it would create a serious im-
pediment to his despotic schemes. He tried to
persuade them to acquiesce in his royal promise
not to arrest any one without just cause, or in a
simple confirmation of the Great Charter and
other statutes in favour of liberty. The peers,
too pliant in this instance to his wishes, and half
receding from the patriot banner they had lately
joined, lent him their aid by proposing amend-
ments (insidious in those who suggested them,
though not in the body of the house) which the
commons firmly rejected. Even when tlie bill
was tendered to him for that assent which it had
been necessary, for the last two centuries, that
the king should grant or refuse in a word, he re-
turned a long and equivocal answer, from which
it could only be collected that he did not intend
to remit any portion of what he had claimed as
his prerogative. But on an address from both
houses for a more explicit answer, he thought fit
to consent to the bill in the usual form. The
commons, of whose harshness towards Charles
his advocates have said so much, immediately
passed a bill for granting five subsidies, about
£350,000; a sum not too great for the wealth of
the kingdom or for his exigencies, but consider-
able according to the precedents of fonner times,
to which men naturally look. . . . The Petition
of Right, . . . this statute Is still called, from
its not being drawn in the common form of an
act of parliament. " Although the king had been
defeated in his attempt to qualify his assent to
the Petition of Right, and had been forced to
accede to it unequivocally, yet "he had the
absurd and audacious insincerity (for we can use
no milder epithets), to circulate 1,500 copies of it
through the country, after the prorogation, with
his first answer annexed ; an attempt to deceive
without the possibility of success. But instances
of such ill-faith, accumulated as they are through
the life of Charles, render the assertion of his
sincerity a proof either of historical ignorance or
of a want of moral delicacy. "^H. Hallam, Const.
Hist, of Eng., v. 1, ch. 7. — The following is the
text of the Petition of Right: "To the King's
Most Excellent Majesty. Humbly show unto
our Sovereign Lord the King, the Lords Spiritual
and Temporal, and Commons in Parliament as-
sembled, that whereas it is declared and enacted
by a statute made in the time of the reigu of
King Edward the First, commonly called, ' Statu-
tum de Tallagio non concedendo,' that no tallage
or aid shall be laid or levied by the King or his
heirs in this realm, without the goodwill and
assent of the Archbishops, Bishops, Earls, Barons,
Knights, Burgesses, and other the freemen of the
commonalty of this realm : and by authority of
Parliament" holden in the five and twentieth year
of the reign of King Edward the Third, it is de-
clared and enacted, that from thenceforth no per-
son shall be compelled to make any loans to the
King against his will, because such loans were
against reason and the franchise of the land ; and
by other laws of this realm it is provided, that
none should be charged by any charge or impo-
sition, called a Benevolence, or by such like
charge, by which the statutes before-mentioned,
and other the good laws and statutes of this realm,
your subjects have inherited this freedom, that
they should not be compelled to contribute to any
tax, tallage, aid, or other like charge, not set by
common consent in Parliament : Yet nevertheless,
of late divers commissions directed to sundry
Commissioners in several counties with instruc-
tions have issued, by means whereof your people
have been in divers places assembled, and re-
quired to lend certain sums of money unto your
Majesty, and many of them upon their refusal so
to do, have had an oath administered unto them,
not warrantable by the laws or statutes of this
realm, and have been constrained to become
bound to make appearance and give attendance
before your Privy Council, and in other places,
and others of them have been therefore imprisoned,
confined, and sundry other ways molested and
disquieted : and divers other charges have been
laid and levied upon your people in several
counties, by Lords Lieutenants, Deputy Lieu-
tenants, Commissioners for Musters, Justices of
Peace and others, by command or direction from
your Majesty or your Privy Council, against the
laws and free customs of this realm : And where
also by the statute called, ' The Great Charter of
the Liberties of England,' it is declared and en-
acted, that no freeman may be taken or impris-
oned or be disseised of his freeholds or liberties,
or his free customs, or be outlawed or exiled ; or
in any manner destroyed, but by the lawful
judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land :
And in the eight and twentieth year of the
reign of King Edward the Third, it was declared
and enacted by authority of Parliament, that no
man of what estate or condition that he be,
should be put out of his lands or tenements, nor
taken, nor imprisoned, nor disherited, nor put to
death, without being brouglit to answer by due
process of law : Nevertheless, against the tenor
of the said statutes, and other the good laws and
statutes of your realm, to that end provided,
divers of your subjects have of late been im-
prisoned without any cause showed, and when
for their deliverance they were brought before
your Justices, by your Majesty's writs of Habeas
Corpus, there to undergo and receive as the Court
should order, and their keepers commanded to
certify the causes of their detainer; no cause was
certified, but that they were detained by your
Majesty's special command, signified Ijy the
Lords of your Privy Council, and yet were re-
turned back to several prisons, without being
charged with anything to which they might
make answer according to the law : And whereas
of late great companies of soldiers and mariners
have been dispersed into divers counties of the
realm, and the inhabitants against their wills
have been compelled to receive them into their
houses, and there to suffer them to sojourn,
against the laws and customs of this realm, and
to the great grievance and vexation of the peo-
ple: And whereas also by authority of Parlia-
ment, in the 25th year of the reign of King Ed-
ward the Third, it is declared and enacted, that
no man shall be forejudged of life or limb against
the form of the Great Charter, and the law of the
land : and by the said Great Charter and other
875
ENGLAND, 1638.
Assassination
of Bitckingham,
ENGLAND, 1628.
the laws and statutes of this your realm, no man
ought to be adjudged to death; but by the laws
established in this your realm, either by the cus-
toms of the same realm or by Acts of Parliament :
and whereas no oflfender of what kind soever is
exempted from the proceedings to be used, and
punishments to be inflicted by the laws and
statutes of this your realm : nevertheless of late
divers commissions under your Majesty's Great
Seal have issued forth, by which certain persons
have been assigned and appointed Commissioners
with power and authority to proceed within the
land, according to the justice of martial law
against such soldiers and mariners, or other dis-
solute persons joining with them, as should com-
mit any murder, robbery, felony, mutiny, or other
outrage or misdemeanour whatsoever, and by
such summary course and order, as is agreeable
to martial law, and is used in armies in time of
war, to proceed to the trial and condemnation of
such offenders, and them to cause to be executed
and put to death, according to the law martial :
By pretext whereof, some of your Majesty's sub-
jects have been by some of the said Commission-
ers put to death, when and where, if by the laws
and statutes of the laud they had deserved death,
by the same laws and statutes also they might,
and by no other ought to have been, adjudged
and executed : And also sundry grievous offend-
ers by colour thereof, claiming an exemption,
have escaped the punishments due to them by
the laws and statutes of this your realm, by
reason that divers of your officers and ministers
of justice have unjustly refused, or forborne to
proceed against such offenders according to the
same laws and statutes, upon pretence that the
said offenders were punisliable only by martial
law, and by authority of such commissions as
aforesaid, which commissions, and all other of
like nature, are wholly and directly contrary to
the said laws and statutes of this your realm:
They do therefore humbly pray your Most Ex-
cellent Majesty, that no man hereafter be com-
pelled to make or yield any gift, loan, benevo-
lence, tax, or such like charge, without common
consent by Act of Parliament; and that none be
called to make answer, or take such oath, or to
give attendance, or be confined, or otherwise
molested or disquieted concerning the same, or
for refusal thereof ; and that no freeman, in any
such manner as is before-mentioned, be impris-
oned or detained; and that your Majesty will be
pleased to remove the said soldiers and mariners,
and that your people may not be so burdened in
time to come ; and that the foresaid commissions
for proceeding by martial law, may be revoked
and annulled ; and that hereafter no commissions
of like nature may issue forth to any person or
persons whatsoever, to be executed as aforesaid,
lest by colour of them any of your Majesty's
subjects be destroyed or put to death, contrary
to the laws and franchise of the land. All which
they most humbly pray of your Most Excellent
Majesty, as their rights and liberties according to
the laws and statutes of this realm: and that
your Majesty would also vouchsafe to declare, that
the awards, doings, and proceedings to the preju-
dice of your people, in any of the premises,
shall not be drawn hereafter into consequence or
example: and that your Majesty would be also
graciously pleased, for the further comfort and
safety of your people, to declare your royal will
and pleasure, that in the things aforesaid all your
officers and ministers shall serve you, according
to the laws and statutes of this realm, as they
tender the honour of your Majesty, and the pros-
perity of this kingdom. [Which Petition being
read the 2nd of June 1628, the King's answer
was thus delivered unto it. The King willeth
that right be done according to the laws and cus-
toms of the realm ; and that the statutes be put
in due execution, that his subjects may have no
cause to complain of any wrong or oppressions,
contrary to their just rights and liberties, to the
preservation whereof he holds himself as well
obliged as of his prerogative. On June 7 the
answer was given in the accustomed form, ' Soit
droit fait comme 11 est desire.'] "
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Ilist. of Eng., ch. 63
(o. 6). — The same. Const. Doc's of the Puritan
Bev., p. 1. — J. L. De Lolme, The Eng. Constitu-
tion, ch. 7 (». 1).
A. D. 1628. — Assassination of Buckingham.
— "While the struggle [over the Petition of
Right] was going on, the popular hatred of
Buckingham [the King's favourite, whose influ-
ence at court was supreme] showed itself in a
brutal manner. In the streets of London, the
Duke's phj'sician, Dr. Lambe, was set upon by
the mob, called witch, devil, and the Duke's con-
juror, and absolutely beaten to death. The
Council set inquiries on foot, but no individual
was brought before it, and the rhyme went from
mouth to mouth — ' Let Charles and George do
what they can. The Duke shall die like Doctor
Larabe.'. . . Charles, shocked and grieved, took
his friend in his own coach through London to
see the ten ships which were being prepared
at Deptford for the relief of Rochelle. It was
reported that he was heard to say, ' George, there
are some that wish that both these and thou
might perish. But care not thou for them. We
will both perish together if thou dost.' There
must have been something strangely attractive
about the man who won and kept the hearts
of four personages so dissimilar as James and
Charles of England, Anne of Austria, and Wil-
liam Laud. ... In the meantime Rochelle held
out." One attempt to relieve the beleaguered
town had failed. Buckingham was to command
In person the armament now in preparation for
another attempt. ' ' The fleet was at Portsmouth,
and Buckingham went down thither in high
spirits to take the command. The King came
down to Sir Daniel Norton's house at Southwick.
On the 2iid of August Buckingham rose and ' cut
a caper or two ' before the barber dealt with his
moustache and lovelocks. Then he was about
to sit down to breakfast with a number of cap-
tains, and as he rose he received letters which
made him believe that Rochelle had been re-
lieved. He said he must tell the King instantly,
but Soubise and the other refugees did not believe
a word of it, and there was a good deal of dis-
puting and gesticulation between them. He
crossed a lobby, followed by the eager French-
men, and halted to take leave of an officer. Sir
Thomas Fryar. Over the shoulder of this gen-
tleman, as he bowed, a knife was thrust into
Buckingham's breast. There was an effort to
withdraw it ; a cry ' The Villain ! ' and the great
Duke, at 36 years old, was dead. The attend-
ants at first thought the blow came from one of
the noisy Frenchmen, and were falling on them. "
But a servant had seen the deed committed, and
ran after the assassin, who was arrested and
876
ENGLAND, 1628.
Toniiage and
Poundage,
ENGLAND, 1633-1640.
proved to be one John Felton, a soldier and a
man of good family. He had suffered wrongs
which apparently unhinged his mind. — C. M.
Yonge, Cameos from Eng. Hist., Qth series, c. 17.
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of Eng., 1608-
U)43. ch. 65.
A. D. 1628-1632. — Conquest and brief occu-
pation of Canada and Nova Scotia. See
Canada (New France) ; A. D. 10'3S-ie3.5.
A. D. 1629. — The royal charter granted to
the Governor and Company of Massachusetts
Bay. See Massachusktts: A. D. 1G33-1639.
A. D. 1629. — The King's Carolina grant to
Sir Robert Heath. See AirEiiiCA; A. D. 1629.
A. D. 1629. — Tonnage and Poundage. — The
tumult in Parliament and the dissolution. —
Cliarles' third Parliament, prorogued on the 36th
of June, 1628, reassembled on the 20th of Jan-
uar}', 1639. "The Parliament Session proved
very brief; but very energetic, very extraordi-
nary. Tonnage and Poundage, what we now
call Customhouse duties, a constant subject of
quarrel between Charles and his Parliaments
hitherto, had again been levied without Parlia-
mentary consent ; in the teeth of old ' Tallagio
non concedendo,' nay even of the late solemnly
confirmed Petition of Right ; and naturally gave
rise to Parliamentary consideration. Merchants
had been imprisoned for refusing to pay it;
Members of Parliament themselves had been ' su-
poena'd ' : there was a very ravelled coil to deal
with in regard to Tonnage and Poundage. Nay
the Petition of Right itself had been altered in
the Printing ; a very ugly business too. In re-
gard to Religion also, matters looked equally ill.
Sycophant Mainwaring, just censured in Par-
liament, had been promoted to a fatter living.
Sycophant Montague, in the like circumstances,
to a Bishopric: Laud was in the act of conse-
crating him at Croydon, when the news of Buck-
ingham's death came thither. There needed to
be a Committee of Religion. The House re-
solved itself into a Grand Committee of Religion ;
and did not want for matter. Bishop Neile of
Winchester, Bishop Laud now of London, were
a frightfully ceremonial pair of Bishops; the
fountain they of innumerable tendencies to Pa-
pistry and the old clothes of Babylon. It was
In this Committee of Religion, on the 11th day
of February, 1628-9, that Mr. Cromwell, Mem-
ber for Huntingdon, stood up and made his first
speech, a fragment of which has found its way
into History. ... A new Remonstrance behoves
to be resolved upon ; Bishops Neile and Laud are
even to be ' named ' there. Whereupon, before
they could get well ' named ' . . . the King has-
tily interfered. This Parliament, in a fortnight
more, was dissolved; and that under circum-
stances of the most unparalleled sort. For
Speaker Finch, as we have seen, was a Courtier,
in constant communication with the King : one
;lay, while these high matters were astir, Speaker
Finch refused to 'put the question' when or-
dered by the House ! He said he had orders to
the contrary; persisted in that; — and at last
took to weeping. What was the House to do ?
Adjourn for two days, and consider what to do!
On the second day, which was Wednesday,
Speaker Finch signified that by his Majesty's
command they were again adjourned till Mon-
day next. On Monday next. Speaker Finch,
still recusant, would not put the former nor in-
deed any question, having the King's order to
adjourn again instantly. He refused; was repri-
manded, menaced; once more took to weep-
ing ; then started up to go his ways. But young
Mr. Holies, Deuzil Holies, the Earl of Clare's
second son, he and certain other honourable
members were prepared for that movement : they
seized Speaker Finch, set him down in his chair,
and by main force held him there ! A scene of
such agitation as was never seen in Parliament
before. ' The House was much troubled.' 'Let
him go,' cried certain Privy Councillors, Maj-
esty's Ministers as we should now call them, who
in those days sat in front of the Speaker, ' Let
Jlr. Speaker go ! ' cried they imploringly. ' No ! '
answered Holies ; ' God's wounds, he shall sit
tliere till it please the House to rise ! ' The
House in a decisive though almost distracted
manner, with their Speaker thus held down for
them, locked their doors; redacted Three em-
phatic Resolutions, their Protest against Armin-
ianism, Papistry, and illegal Tonnage and
Poundage ; and passed the same by acclamation ;
letting no man out, refusing to let even the
King's Usher in ; then swiftly vanishing so soon
as the resolutions were passed, for they under-
stood the soldiery was coming. For which sur-
prising procedure, vindicated by Necessity the
mother of Invention, and supreme of Lawgivers,
certain honourable gentlemen, Denzil Holies,
Sir John Eliot, William Strode, John Selden,
and others less known to us, suffered fine, im-
prisonment, and much legal tribulation : nay Sir
John Eliot, refusing to submit, was kept in the
Tower till he died. This scene fell out on Mon-
day, 2d of March, 1639."— T. Carlyle, Int. to
Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, ch. 4.
Also in : J. Forster, Sir John Eliot: a Biog-
raphy, bk. 10, sect. 6-8 (». 2).
A. D. 1630. — Emigration of the Governor
and Company of Massachusetts Bay, virith
their royal charter. See Massachusetts : A. D.
1639-1630.
A. D. 1631. — Aid to Gustavus Adolphus in
Germany. See Germany: A. D. 1631-1633.
A. D. 1632. — CessionofAcadia(Nova Scotia)
to France. See Nova Scotli (Acadia) : A. D.
1621-1668.
A. D. 1632. — The Palatine grant of Mary-
land to Lord Baltimore. See Maryland: A. D.
1633. '^y
A. D. 1633-1640. — The Ecclesiastical des-
potism of Laud. — "When Charles, having quar-
reled with his parliament, stood alone in the
midst of his kingdom, seeking on all sides the
means of governing, the Anglican clergy believed
this day [for establishing the independent and
uncontrolled power of their church] was come.
They had again got immense wealth, and enjoyed
it without dispute. The papists no longer in-
spired them with alarm. The primate of the
church, Laud, possessed the entire confidence of
the king and alone directed all ecclesiastical
affairs. Among the other ministers, none pro-
fessed, like lord Burleigh under Elizabeth, to
fear and struggle against the encroachments of
the clergy. 'The courtiers were indifferent, or
secret papists. Learned men threw lustre over the
church. The universities, that of Oxford more
especially, were devoted to her maxims. Only
one adversary remained — the people, each day
more discontented with uncompleted reform, and
more eager fully to accomplish it. But this ad-
versary was also the adversary of the throne ; it
877
ENGLAND. 1633-1640.
Laud, Strafford,
Hampden.
ENGLAND, 1634-1637.
claimed at the same time, tlie one to secure tbe
other, evangeliciil faith and civil liberty. The
same peril threatened the sovereignty of the
crown and of episcopacy. The Idng, sincerely
pious, seemed disposed to believe that he was
not the only one who held his authority from
God, and that the power of the bishops was
neither of less high origin, nor of less sacred
character. Never had so many favourable cir-
cumstances seemed combined to enable the clergy
to achieve independence of the crown, dominion
over the people. Laud set himself to work with
his accustomed vehemence. First, it was essen-
tial that all dissensions in the bosom of the church
itself should cease, and that the strictest uni-
formity should infuse strength into its doctrines,
its discipline, its worship. He applied himself
to this task with the most unhesitating and un-
scrupulous resolution. Power was exclusively
concentrated into the hands of the bishops. The
court of high commission, where they took cog-
nizance of and decided everything relating to
religious matters, became day by day more arbi-
trary, more harsh in its jurisdiction, its forms
and its penalties. The complete adoption of the
Anglican canons, the minute observance of the
liturgy, and the rites enforced in cathedrals, were
rigorously exacted on the part of the whole eccle-
siastical body. A great many livings were in
the hands of nonconformists; they were with-
drawn from them. The people crowded to their
sermons; they were forbidden to preach. . . .
Persecution followed and reached them every-
where. . . . Meantime, the pomp of catholic
worship speedily took possession of the churches
deprived of their pastors; while persecution kept
away the faithful, magnificence adorned the walls.
They were consecrated amid great display, and
it was then necessary to employ force to collect
a congregation. Laud was fond of prescrib-
ing minutely the details of new ceremonies —
sometimes borrowed from Rome, sometimes the
production of his own imagination, at once osten-
tatious and austere. On the part of the noncon-
formists, every innovation, the least derogation
from the canons or the liturgy, was punished as
a crime ; yet Laud innovated without consulting
anybody, looking to nothing beyond the king's
consent, and sometimes acting entirely upon his
own authority. . . . And all these changes had.
If not the aim, at all events the result, of render-
ing the Anglican church more and more like that
of Rome. . . . Books were published to prove
that the doctrine of the English bishops miglit
very well adapt itself to that of Rome ; and these
books, though not regularly licensed, were dedi-
cated to the king or to Laud, and openly tolerated.
. . . The splendour and exclusive dominion of
episcopacy thus established, at least so he flat-
tered himself, Laud proceeded to secure its inde-
pendence. . . . The divine right of bishops be-
came, in a short time, the official doctrine, not
only of the upper clergy, but of the king him-
self. ... By the time things had come to this
pass, the people were not alone in their anger.
The high nobility, part of them at least, took the
alarm. They saw in the progress of tlie church
far more than mere tyranny ; it was a regular
revolution, which, not satisfied with crushing
popular reforms, disfigured and endangered the
first reformation; that which kings had made
and the aristocracy adopted." — P. P. Guizot,
Hist, of the Eng. Revolution of 1640, bk. 2.
Also in: D. Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, v. 2,
(•//. 4-6.— G. G. Perry, Hist, of the Ch. of Eng.,
ch. 13-16 (v. 1).— P. Bayne, T?ie Chief Actors of
the Puritan Revolution, ch. 3.
A. D. 1634-1637. — Hostile measures against
the Massachusetts Colony. See Massachu-
setts; A, D. 1684-1637.
A. D. 1634- 1637.— Ship-money. — "The as-
pect of public affairs grew darker and darker.
. . . All the promises of the king were violated
without scruple or shame. The Petition of
Right, to which he had, in consideration of mon-
eys duly numbered, given a solemn assent, was
set at naught. Taxes were raised by the royal
authority. Patents of monopoly were granted.
The old usages of feudal times were made pre-
texts for harassing the people with exactions un-
known during many years. The Puritans were
persecuted with cruelty worthy of the Holy
Office. They were forced to fly from the country.
They were imprisoned. They were whipped.
Their ears were cut off. Their noses were slit.
Their cheeks were branded with red-hot iron.
But the cruelty of the oppressor could not tire
out the foi'titude of the victims. . . . The hardy
sect grew up and flourished, in spite of every-
thing that seemed likely to stimt it, struck its
roots deep into a barren soil, and spread its
branches wide to an inclement sky. . . . For the
misgovemment of this disastrous period, Charles
himself is principally responsible. After the
death of Buckingham, he seemed to have been
his own prime minister. He had, however, two
counsellors who seconded him, or went beyond
him, in intolerance and lawless violence ; the one
a superstitious driveller, as honest as a vile tem-
per would suffer him to be ; the other a man of
great valour and capacity, but licentious, faith-
less, corrupt, and cruel. Never were faces more
strikingly characteristic of tlie individuals to
whom they belonged than those of Laud and
Strafford, as they still remain portrayed by the
most skilful hand of that age. The mean foie-
head, the pinched features, the peering eyes of
the prelate suit admirably with his disposition.
They mark him out as a lower kind of Saint
Dominic. . . . But Wentworth — who ever names
him without thinking of those harsh dark feat-
ures, ennobled by their expression into more than
the majesty of an antique Jupiter! . . . Among
the humbler tools of Charles were Chief -Justice
Finch, and Noy, the attorney-general. Noy had,
like Wentworth, supported the cause of liberty
in Parliament, and had, like Wentworth, aban-
doned that cause for the sake of office. He de-
vised, in conjunction with Finch, a scheme of
exaction which made the alienation of the people
from the throne complete. A writ was issued
by the king, commanding the city of London to
equip and man ships of war for his service. Simi-
lar writs were sent to the towns along the coast.
These measures, though they were direct viola-
tions of the Petition of Right, had at least some
show of precedent in their favour. But, after a
time, the government took a step for which no
precedent could be pleaded, and sent writs of
ship-money to the inland counties. This was a
stretch of power on which Elizabeth herself had
not ventured, even at a time when all laws might
with propriety have been made to bend to that
highest law, the safety of the state. The inland
counties had not been required to furnish ships,
or money in the room of ships, even when the
878
ENGLAND, 1634-1637.
Rise of
the Independents.
ENGLAND, 1640.
Armada was approaching our shores. It seemed
intolerable that a prince, who, by assenting to
the Petition of Right, had relinquished the power
of levying ship-money even in the outports,
should be the first to levy it on parts of the king-
dom where it had been unknown, under the most
absolute of bis predecessors. Clarendon distinctly
admits that this tax was intended, not only for
the support of the navy, but 'for a spring and
magazine that should have no bottom, and for an
everlasting supply on all occasions.' The nation
well understood this ; and from one end of Eng-
land to the other, the public mind was strongly
excited. Buckinghamshire was assessed at a
ship of 450 tons, or a sum of £4,500. The share
of the tax which tell to. Hampden was very
small [twenty shillings] ; so small, indeed, that
the sheriff was blamed for setting so wealthy a
man at so low a rate. But, though the sum de-
manded was a trifle, the principle of the demand
was despotism. Hampden, after consulting the
most eminent constitutional lawyers of the time,
refused to pay the few shillings at which be was
assessed ; and determined to incur all the certain
expense and the probable danger of bringing to
a solemn hearing this great controversy between
the people and the crown. . . . Towards the
close of the year 1636, this great cause came on
in the Exchequer Chamber before all the judges
of England. The leading counsel against the
writ was the celebrated Oliver St. John ; a man
whose temper was melancholy, whose manners
were reserved, and who was as yet little known
in Westminster Hall; but whose great talents
had not escaped the penetrating eye of Hampden,
The arguments of the counsel occupied many
days ; and the Exchequer Chamber took a con-
siderable time for deliberation. The opinion of
the bench was divided. So clearly was the law
in favour of Hampden, that though the judges
held their situations only during the royal pleas-
ure, the majority against him was the least pos-
sible. Four of the twelve pronounced decidedly
in his favour; a fifth took a middle course. The
remaining seven gave their voices in favour of
the writ. The only effect of this decision was to
make the public indignation stronger and deeper.
' The j udgment, ' says Clarendon, ' proved of more
advantage and credit to the gentleman con-
demned than to the king's service. ' The courage
which Hampden had shown on this occasion, as
the same historian tells us, ' raised his reputation
to a great height generally throughout the king-
dom.'" — Lord Macaulay, Essays, v. 2 {Wugent's
Memorials of Hampden).
Also nst : J. Forster, Statesman of the Comwwn-
icealth: Hampden. — S. R. Gardiner, Hist. ofEng.,
1603-1643, ch. 74 (». 7), and ch. 77 and 83 (v. 8) ;
also Const. Doc's of the Puritan Rev., pp. 37-53,
and 115.
A. D. 1638-1640. — Presbyterianism of the
Puritan party. — Rise of the Independents. —
" It is fhe artifice of the favourers of the Catholic
and of the prelatical party to call all who are
sticklers for the constitution in church or state,
or would square their actions by any rule, human
or divine, Puritans." — J. Rushworth, Hist. Coll.,
V. 2, 1355. — "These men [the Puritan party], at
the commencement of the civil war, were pres-
byterians: and such had at that time been the
great majority of the serious, the sober, and the
conscientious people of England. There was a
sort of imputation of laxness of principles, and of
a tendency to immorality of conduct^ upon the
adherents of the establishment, which was in-
finitely injurious to the episcopal church. But
these persons, whose hearts were in entire opposi-
tion to the hierarchy, had for the most part no
difference of opinion among themselves, and
therefore no thought of toleration for difference
of opinion in others. Their desire was to abolish
episcopacy and set up presbytery. They thought
and talked much of the unity of the church of
God, and of the cordial consent and agreement of
its members, and considered all sects and varie-
ties of sentiment as a blemish and scandal upon
their holy religion. They would put down
popery and episcopacy with the strong hand of
the law, and were disposed to employ the same
instrument to suppress all who should venture to
think the presbyterian church itself not yet suf-
ficientlj' spiritual and pure. Against this party,
which lorded it for a time almost without contra-
diction, gradually arose the party of the inde-
pendents. . . . Before the end of the civil war
they became almost as strong as the party of the
Presbyterians, and greatly surpassed them in
abilities, intellectual, military and civil." — W.
Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth, bk. 3, ch. 1
{v. 2). — See, also. Independents; ENGLAico:
A. D. 1643 (July) and (July — Septembek), A. D.
1646 (March), A. D. 1647 (April— Acgus'?), and
A. D. 1648 (November — December).
A. D. 1639.— The First Bishops' War in
Scotland. See Scotland: A. D. 1638-1640.
A. D. 1640. — The Short Parliament and the
Second Bishops' War. — The Scots Army in
England. — "His Majesty having burnt Scotch
paper Declarations ' by the hands of the common
hangman,' and almost cut the Scotch Chancel-
lor Loudon's head off, and being again resolute to
chastise the rebel Scots with an Army, decides
on summoning a Parliament for that end, there
being no money attainable otherwise. To the
great and glad astonishment of England ; which,
at one time, thought never to have seen another
Parliament ! Oliver Cromwell sat in this Parlia-
ment for Cambridge; recommended by Hamp-
den, say some ; not needing any recommendation
in those Fen-countries, think others. Oliver's
Colleague was a Thomas Meautys, Esq. This
Parliament met, 13th April, 1640: it was by no
means prompt enough with supplies against
the rebel Scots ; the king dismissed it in a huff,
5th May ; after a Session of three weeks : His-
torians call it the Short Parliament. His Majesty
decides on raising money and an Army ' by otljer
methods ' : to which end Wentworth, now Earl
Strafford and Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, who
had advised that course in the Council, did him-
self subscribe £30,000. Archbishop Laud had
long ago seen ' a cloud rising ' against the Four
surplices at Allhallowtide ; and now it is cover-
ing the whole sky in a most dismal and really
thundery -looking manner. HisMajesty by 'other
methods,' commission of array, benevolence,
forced loan, or how he could, got a kind of Army
on foot, and set it marching out of the several
Counties in the South towards the Scotch Bor-
der ; but it was a most hopeless Army. The sol-
diers called the affair a Bishops' War; they
mutinied against their officers, shot some of
their ofiBcers: in various Towns on their march,
if the Clergyman were reputed Puritan, they
went and gave him three cheers; if of Surplice-
tendency, they sometimes threw his furniture
879
ENGLAND, 1640.
The
Long Parliament.
ENGLAND, 1640-164L
out of the window. No fighting against poor
Scotch Gospellers was to be hoped for from
these men. Meanwhile the Scots, not to be be-
hindhand, had raised a good Army of their
own; and decided on going into England with
it, this time, ' to present their grievances to the
King's Majesty.' On the 20tli of August, 1G4U,
they cross the Tweed at Coldstream; Montrose
wading in the van of them all. They wore uni-
form of hodden gray, with blue caps; and each
man had a moderate haversack of oatmeal on his
back. August 28th, the Scots force their way
across the Tyne, at Newburn, some miles above
Newcastle ; the King's Army making small flght,
most of them no fight; hurrying from New-
castle, and all town and country quarters, to-
wards York again, where his Majesty and Straf-
ford were. The Bishops' War was at an end.
The Scots, striving to be gentle as doves in their
behaviour, and publishing boundless brotherly
Declarations to all the brethren that loved
Christ's Gospel and God's Justice in England, —
took possession of Newcastle next day ; took pos-
session gradually of all Northumberland and
Durham, — and stayed there, in various towns
and villages, about a year. The whole body of
English Puritans looked upon them as their
saviours. . . . His Majesty and Strafford, in a
fine frenzy at the turn of affairs, found no ref-
uge, except to summon a 'Council of Peers,' to
enter upon a ' Treaty ' with the Scots ; and alas,
at last, summon a New Parliament. Not to be
helped in any way. ... A Parliament was ap-
pointed for the 3d of November ne.xt; — where-
upon London cheerfully lent £200,000; and the
Treaty with the Scots at Ripon, 1st October,
1640, by and by transferred to London, went
peaceably on at a very leisurely pace. The
Scotch Army lay quartered at Newcastle, and
over Northumberland and Durham, on an allow-
ance of £850 a day ; an Army indispensable for
Puritan objects ; no haste in finishing its Treaty.
The English army lay across in Yorkshire ; with-
out allowance except from the casualties of the
King's Exchequer; in a dissatisfied manner, and
occasionally getting into 'Army-Plots.' This
Parliament, which met on the 3d of November,
1640, has become very celebrated in History by
the name of the 'Long Parliament.'" — T. Car-
lyle, Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, pt. 1: 1640.
Also in : J. Forster, Statesmen of the Common-
wealth: Strafford. — S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of Eng.,
1603-1643, ch. 91-94.— J. H. Burton, Hist, of
Scotland, ch. 73-73 {v. 7).
A. D. 1640. — Acquisition and settlement of
Madras. See India: A. D. 1600-1703.
A. D. 1640-1641.— The Long Parliament
and the beginning of its work. — Impeachment
and Execution of Strafford. — "The game of
tyranny was now up. Charles had risked and
lost his last stake. It is Impossible to trace the
mortifications and humiliations which this bad
man now had to endure without a feeling of vin-
dictive pleasure. His army was mutinous ; his
treasury was empty ; his people clamoured for a
Parliament ; addresses and petitions against the
government were presented. Strafford was for
shooting those who presented them by martial
law, but the king could not trust the soldiers.
A great council of Peers was called at York, but
the king would not trust even the Peers. He
struggled, he evaded, he hesitated, he tried every
shift rather than again face the representatives
of his injured people. At length no shift was
left. He made a truce with the Scots, and sum-
moned a Parliament. ... On tlie 3d of Novem-
ber, 1640 — a day to be long remembered — met
that great Parliament, destined to every extreme
of fortune — to empire and to servitude, to glory
and to contempt; — at one time the sovereign of
its sovereign, at another time the servant of its
servants, and the tool of its tools. From the
first day of its meeting the attendance was great,
and the aspect of the members was that of men
not disposed to do the work negligently. The
dissolution of the late Parliament had convinced
most of them that half measures would no
longer suffice. Clarendon tells us that ' the same
men who, six months before, were observed to
be of very moderate tempers, and to wish that
gentle remedies might be applied, talked now in
another dialect both of kings and persons ; and
said that they must now be of another temper
than they were the last Parliament. ' The debt
of vengeance was swollen by all the usury which
had been accumulating during many years; and
payment was made to the full. This memorable
crisis called forth parliamentary abilities, such as
England had never before seen. Among the
most distinguished members of the House of
Commons were Falkland, Hyde, Digby, Young,
Harry Vane, Oliver St. John, Denzil Hollis,
Nathaniel Fiennes. But two men exercised a
paramount influence over the legislature and the
country — Pym and Hampden ; and, by the uni-
versal consent of friends and enemies, the first
place belonged to Hampden." — Lord Macaulay,
Nugent's Memorials of Hampden (Critical and
Miscellaneous Essays, v. 3). — ■" The resolute looka
of the members as they gathered at Westminster
contrasted with the hesitating words of the king,
and each brought from borough or county a
petition of grievances. Fresh petitions were
brought every day by bands of citizens or far-
mers. Forty committees were appointed to ex-
amine and report on them, and their reports
formed the grounds on which the Commons
acted. One by one the illegal acts of the Tyranny
were annulled. Prynne and his fellow ' mar
tyrs ' recalled from their prisons, entered London
in triumph, amid the shouts of a great multi
tude who strewed laurel in their path. The civil
and criminal jurisdiction of the Privy Council,
the Star Chamber, the Court of High Commis-
sion, the irregular jurisdictions of the Council
of the North, of the Duchy of Lancaster, the
County of Chester, and a crowd of lesser tribunals,
were summarily abolished. Ship-money was de-
clared illegal, and the judgment in Hampden's
case annulled. A statute declaring ' the ancient
right of the subjects of this kingdom that no
subsidy, custom, impost, or any charge what-
soever, ought or may be laid or imposed upon any
merchandize exported or imported by subjects,
denizens or allies, without common consent of
Parliament,' put an end forever to all preten-
sions to a right of arbitrary taxation on uic part
of the crown. A Triennial Bill enforced the
Assembly of the Houses every three years, and
bound the sheriff and citizens to proceed to elec-
tion if the Royal writ failed to summon them.
Charles protested, but gave way. He was forced
to look helplessly on at the wreck of his Tyr-
anny, for the Scotch army was still encamped in
the north. . . . Meanwhile the Commons were
dealing roughly with the agents of the Royal
880
ENGLAND, 1640-1641.
Impeachment
of Lord Strafford.
ENGLAND, 1640-1641.
system. . . . Windebank, the Secretary of State,
with the Chancellor, Finch, fled in terror over
sea. Laud himself was flung into prison. . . .
But even Laud, hateful as he was to all but the
poor neighbours whose prayers his alms had won,
was not the centre of so great and universal a
hatred as the Earl of Strafford. Strafford's guilt
was more than the guilt of a servile instrument
of tyranny — it was the guilt of ' that grand apos-
tate to the Commonwealth who,' in the terrible
words which closed Lord Digby's invective,
'must not expect to be pardoned in this world
till he be dispatched to the other. ' He was con-
scious of his danger, but Charles forced him to
attend the Court." He came to London with the
solemn assurance of his master that, "while
there was a king in England, not a hair of Straf-
ford's head should be touched by the Parlia-
ment." Immediately impeached of high treason
by the Commons, and sent to the Tower, he re-
ceived from the king a second and more solemn
pledge, by letter, that, "upon the word of a
king, you shall not suffer in life, honour or for-
tune." But the "word of a king" like Charles
Stuart, had neither honor nor gratitude, nor a
decent self respect behind it. He could be false
to a friend as easily as to an enemy. When the
Commons, fearing failure on the trial of their
impeachment, resorted to a bill of attainder,
Charles signed it with a little resistance, and
Strafford went bravely and manfully to the
block. " As the axe fell, the silence of the great
multitude was broken by a universal shout of
joy. The streets blazed with bonfires. The
bells clashed out from every steeple." — J. R.
Green, Sho}-t Hist, of Eag., ch. 8, sect. 6. — The
king "was as deeply pledged to Strafford as one
man could be to another ; he was as vitally con-
cerned in saving the life and prolonging the ser-
vice of incomparably his ablest servant as was
ever any sovereign in the case of any minister ;
yet it is clear that for some days past, probably
ever since the first signs of popular tumult be-
gan to manifest themselves, he had been waver-
ing. Four days before the Bill passed the Lords,
Strafford as is well known, entreated the king to
assent to it. There is no reason to doubt the ab-
solute sincerity with which, at the moment of its
conception, the prisoner penned his famous let-
ter from the Tower. That passionate chivalry
of loyalty, which has never animated any hu-
man heart in equal intensity since Stratford's
ceased to beat, inspires every line. . . . Charles
turned distractedly from one adviser to another,
not so much for counsel as for excuse. He did
not want his judgment guided, but his con-
science quieted; and his counsellors knew it.
They had other reasons, too, for urging him to
his dishonour. Panic seems to have seized upon
them all. The only man who would not have
quailed before the fury of the populace was the
man himself whose life was trembling in the
balance. The judges were summoned to declare
their opinion, and replied, with an admirable
choice of non-committing terms, that ' upon all
that which their Lordships have voted to be
proved the Earl of Strafford doth deserve to un-
dergo the pains and forfeitures of high treason.'
Charles sent for the bishops, and the bishops,
with the honourable exception of Juxon, in-
formed him that he had two consciences, — a
public and a private conscience, — and that 'his
public conscience as a king might not only dis-
06
pense with, but oblige him to do, that which
was against his conscience as a man.' What
passed between these two tenants in common of
the royal breast during the whole of Sunday,
May 9tli, 1641, is within no earthly knowledge;
but at some time on that day Charles's public
conscience got the better of its private rival.
He signed a commission for giving the royal as-
sent to the Bill, and on Monday, May 10th, in
the presence of a House scarcely able to credit
the act of betrayal which was taking place be-
fore them, the Commissioners pronounced the
fatal Le roi le veult over the enactment which
condemned his Minister to the block. Charles,
of course, might still have reprieved him by an
exercise of the prerogative, but the fears which
made him acquiesce in the sentence availed to
prevent him from arresting its execution." — H.
D. Traill, Lord Strafford, pp. 195-198.— "It is a
sorry otfice to plant the foot on a worm so
crushed and writhing as the wretched king . . .
[who abandoned Strafford] for it was one of the
few crimes of which he was in the event thor-
oughly sensible, and friend has for once co-
operated with foe in the steady application to it
of the branding iron. There is in truth hardly
any way of relieving the ' damned spot ' of its
intensity of hue even by distributing the concen-
trated infamy over other portions of Charles's
character. . . . When we have convinced our-
selves that this ' unthankful king ' never really
loved Strafford ; that, as much as ia him lay, he
kept the dead Buckingham in his old privilege
of mischief, by adopting his aversions and abid-
ing by his spleenful purposes; that, in his re-
fusals to award those increased honours for which
his minister was a petitioner, on the avowed
ground of the royal interest, may be discerned
the petty triumph of one who dares not dispense
with the services thrust upon him, but revenges
himself by withholding their well-earned reward ;
— still does the blackness accumulate to baffle
our efforts. The paltry tears he is said to have
shed only burn that blackness in. If his after
conduct indeed had been different, he might have
availed himself of one excuse, — but that the man,
who, in a few short months, proved that he could
make so resolute a stand somewhere, should have
judged this event no occasion for attempting it,
is either a crowning infamy or an infinite consola-
tion, according as we may judge wickedness or
weakness to have preponderated in the constitu-
tion of Charles I. ... As to Strafford's death,
the remark that the people had no alternative, in-
cludes all that it is necessary to urge. The king's
assurances of his intention to afford him no further
opportunity of crime, could surely weigh nothing
with men who had observed how an infinitely more
disgusting minister of his will had only seemed
to rise the higher in his master's estimation for
the accumulated curses of the nation. Nothing
but the knife of Felton could sever in that case
the weak head and the wicked instrument, and it
is to the honour of the adversaries of Strafford
that they were earnest that their cause should
vindicate itself completely, and look for no ad-
ventitious redress. Strafford had outraged the
people — this was not denied. He was defended
on the ground of those outrages not amounting
to a treason against the king. For my own part,
this defence appears to me decisive, looking at it
in a technical view, and with our present settle-
ment of evidence and treason. But to concede
881
ENGLAND, 1640-1641.
Impeachment
of Lord Strafford.
-ENGLAND, 1G41.
that point, after the advances they had made,
■would have been in that day to concede all. It
was to be shown that anotlier power had claim
to the loyalty and the service of Strafford — and
if a claim, then a vengeance to exact for its neg-
lect. And this was done. . . . One momentary
emotion . . . esciiped . . . [StrafEord] when he
was told to prepare for death. He asked if the
king had indeed assented to the bill. Secretary
Carleton answered in the affirmative ; and Straf-
ford, laying his hand on his heart, and raising
his eyes to lieaven, uttered the memorable words,
— 'Putnotyour trust in princes, nor in the sons of
men, for in tliem there is no salvation.' Charles's
conduct was indeed incredibly monstrous." — R.
Browning, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Strafford
(Eminent British Statesmen, by John Forster, v. 2,
pp. 403-406).
Also lN : J. Forster, Statesmen of tJie Common-
wealth: Strafford; Pym. — Earl of Clarendon, Hist,
of the Bebellion, bk. 3(». 1). — Lord Nugent, Memo-
rials of Hampden, pt. 5-6 (v. 1-2). — Lady T.
Lewis, Life of Lord Falkland.
The following are the Articles of Impeachment
under which Strafford was tried and condemned :
" Articles of the Commons, assembled in Parlia-
ment, against Thomas Earl of Strafford, in Main-
tenance of their Accusation, whereby he stands
charged with High Treason. I. That he the said
Thomas earl of Strafford hath traiterously en-
deavoured to subvert the fundamental laws and
government of the realms of England and Ire-
land, and, instead thereof, to introduce an arbi-
trary and tyrannical government, against law,
which he hath declared by traiterous words,
counsels, and actions, and by giving his majesty
advice, by force of arms, to compel his loyal
subjects to submit thereunto. II. That he hath
traiterously assumed to himself regal power over
the lives, liberties of persons, lands, and goods of
his majesty's subjects, in England and Ireland,
and hath exercised the same tyrannically, to the
subversion and undoing of many, both peers and
others, of his majesty's liege people. III. The
better to inrich, and enable himself to go through
with his traiterous designs, he hath detained a
great part of his majesty's revenue, without giv-
ing any legal accounts ; and hath taken great sums
of money out of the exchequer, converting them
to his own use, when his majesty was necessitated
for his own urgent occasions, and Ms army had
been a long time unpaid. FV. That he hath
traiterously abused the power and authority of
his government, to the increasing, countenancing,
and encouraging of Papists, that so he might
settle a mutual dependence and confidence be-
twixt himself and that party, and by their help
prosecute and accomplish his malicious and
tyrannical designs. V. That he hath maliciously
endeavoured to stir up enmity and hostility be-
tween his majesty's subjects of England and
those of Scotland. VI. That he hath traiterously
broken the great trust reposed in him by his
majesty, of lieutenant general of his Army, by
wilfully betraying divers of his majesty's subjects
, to death, his majesty's Army to a dishonourable
defeat by the Scots at Newborne, and the town of
Newcastle into their hands, to the end that, by
effusion of blood, by dishonour, by so great a loss
as of Newcastle, his majesty's realm of England
might be engaged in a national and irreconcil-
able quarrel with the Scots. VII. That, to pre-
serve himself from being questioned for these
and other his traiterous courses, he laboured to
subvert the right of parliaments, and the ancient
course of parliamentary proceedings, and, by
false and malicious slanders, to incense his maj.
against parliaments. — By which words, counsels,
and actions, he hath traiterously, and contrary to
his allegiance, laboured to alienate the hearts of
the king's liege people from his maj. to set a
division between them, and to ruin and destroy
his majesty's kingdoms, for which they do im-
peach him of High Treason against our sov-
ereign lord the king, his crown and dignity.
And he the said earl of Strafford was lord deputy
of Ireland, or lord lieutenant of Ireland, and
lieut. general of the Army there, under his
majesty, and a sworn privy counsellor to his
maj. for his kingdoms both of England and Ire-
laud, and lord president of the North, during the
time that all and every of the crimes and offences
before set forth were done and committed ; and
he the said earl was lieut. general of his majesty's
Army in the North parts of England, during the
time that the crimes and offences in the 5th
and 6th Articles set forth were done and com-
mitted. — And the said commons, by protes-
tation, saving to themselves the liberty of
exhibiting at any time hereafter any other
Accusation or Impeacliment against the said
earl, and also of replying to the Answer that
he the said earl shall make unto the said
Articles, or to any of them, and of offering proof
also of the premises, or any of them, or of any
otiier Accusation or Impeachment that shall be
by them exhibited, as the case shall, according
to the course of parliaments, require; and do
pray that the said earl may be put to answer to
all and every the premises ; and that such pro-
ceedings, examination, trial, and judgment, may
be upon every of them had and used, as is agree-
able to law and justice." — Cobbett's Parliament-
ary Hist, of England, v. 2, pp. 737-739.
A. D. 1641 (March— May).— The Root and
Branch Bill. — "A bill was brought in [March,
1641], known as the Restraining Bill, to deprive
Bishops of their rights of voting in tlie House of
Lords. Tlie opposition it encountered in that
House Induced the Commons to folio* it up
[May 27] with a more vehement measure, ' for
the utter abolition of Archbishops, Bishops.
Deans, Archdeacons, Prebendaries and Canons, '
a measure known by the title of the Root and
Branch Bill. By the skill of the royal partisans,
this bill was long delayed in Committee." — J. F.
Bright, Eist. of Eng., period 2 (». 2), p. 650.
Also in: D. Masson, Life of John Milton, v. 2,
bk. 2, ch. 3.
A. D. 1641 (October). — Roundheads and
Cavaliers. — The birth of English parties. —
"After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses,
in September, 1641, adjourned for a short vaca-
tion and the king visited Scotland. He with
ditliculty pacified that kingdom, by consenting
not only to relinquish his plans of ecclesiastical
reform, but even to pass, with a very bad grace,
an act declaring that episcopacy was contrary to
the word of God. The recess of the English
IP'arliament lasted six weeks. The day on which
the houses met again is one of the most remark-
able epochs in our history. From that day dates
the corporate existence of the two great parties
which have ever since alternately governed the
country. . . . During the first months of the
Long Parliament, the indignation excited by
882
ENGLAND, 1641.
Roundheads
and Cavaliers.
ENGLAND, 1641.
many years of lawless oppression was so strong
and general tliat the House of Commons acted as
one man. Abuse after abuse disappeared with-
out a struggle. If a small minority of the repre-
sentative body wished to retain the Star Chamber
and the High Commission, that minority, over-
awed by the enthusiasm and by the numerical
superiority of the reformers, contented itself with
secretly regretting institutions which could not,
with any hope of success, be openly defended.
At a later period the Royalists found it con-
venient to antedate tlie separation between them-
selves and tiieir opponents, and to attribute the
Act which restrained the king from dissolving
or proroguing the Parliament, the Triennial Act,
the impeachment of the ministers, and the at-
tainder of Strafford, to the faction which after-
wards made war on the king. But no artifice
could be more disingenuous. Every one of those
strong measures was actively promoted by the
men who were afterwards foremost among the
Cavaliers. No republican spoke of the long mis-
government of Charles more severely than Cole-
pepper. The most remarkable speech in favour
of the Triennial Bill was made by Digby. The
impeachment of the Lord Keeper was moved by
Falkland. The demand that the Lord Lieuten-
ant should be kept close prisoner was made at
the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law
attainting Strafford was proposed did the signs of
serious disunion become visible. Even against
that law, a law which nothing but extreme ne-
cessity could justify, only about sixty members
of the House of Commons voted. It is certain
that Hyde was not in the minority, and that
Falkland not only voted with the majority, but
spoke strongly for the bill. Even the few who
entertained a scruple about inflicting death by a
retrospective enactment thought it necessary to
express the utmost abhorrence of Strafford's
character and administration. But under this
apparent concord a great schism was latent ; and
when, in October 1641, the Parliament reas-
sembled after a short recess, two hostile parties,
essentially the same with those which, under dif-
ferent names, have ever since contended, and
are still contending, for the direction of public
affairs, appeared confronting each other. Dur-
ing some years they were designated as Cavaliers
and Roundheads. They were subsequently called
Tories and Whigs; nor "does it seem that these
appellations are likely soon to become obsolete. "
— Lord Macaulay, Jlist. of England, ch. 1. — It
was not until some months later, however, that
the name of Roundheads was applied to the de-
fenders of popular rights by their royalist ad-
versaries. See Roundheads.
A. D. 1641 (November). — The Grand Remon-
strance. — Early in November, 1641, the king
being in Scotland, and news of the insurrection
in Ireland having just reached London, the party
of Pym, Hampden, and Cromwell " resolved on
a great pitched battle between them and the op-
position, which should try their relative strengths
before the king's return ; and they chose to fight
this battle over a vast document, which they en-
titled ' A Declaration and Remonstrance of the
State of the Kingdom, ' but which has come to be
known since as The Grand Remonstrance. . . .
The notion of a great general document which,
under the name of 'A Remonstrance,' should pre-
sent to the king in one view a survey of the prin-
cipal evils that had crept into the kingdom in his
own and preceding reigns, with a detection of
their causes, and a specification of the remedies,
had more than once been before the Commons.
It had been first mooted by Lord Digby while
the Parliament was not a week old. Again and
again set aside for more immediate work, it had
recurred to the leaders of the Movement party,
just before the king's departure for Scotland, as
likely to afford the broad battle-ground with the
opposition then becoming desirable. ' A Remon-
strance to be made, how we found the Kingdom
and the Church, and how the state of it now
stands,' such was the description of the then in-
tended document (Aug. 7). The document had
doubtless been in rehearsal through the Recess,
for on the 8th of November the rough draft of it
was presented to the House and read at the clerk's
table. When we say that the document in its
final form occupies thirteen folio pages of rather
close print in Rushworth, and consists of a pre-
amble followed by 206 articles or paragraphs duly
numbered, one can conceive what a task the read-
ing of even the first draft of it must have been,
and through what a storm of successive debates
over proposed amendments and additions it
reached completeness. There had been no such
debates yet in the Parliament," — D. Masson, Life
of John Milton, v. 3, bk. 2, ch. 6.— "It [The Grand
Remonstrance] embodies the case of the Parlia-
ment against the Ministers of the king. It is the
most authentic statement ever put forth of the
wrongs endured by all classes of the English
people, during the first fifteen years of the reign
of Charles I. ; and, for that reason, the most com-
plete justification upon record of the Great Re-
bellion." The debates on The Grand Remon-
strance were begun Nov. 9 and ended Nov. 32,
when the vote was taken : Ayes, 159. — Noes, 148.
— So evenly were the parties in the great strug-
gle then divided. — J. Forster, Hist, and Biog.
Essays, v. 1 .• Debates on the Grand Bemonstrance.
— The following is the text of "The Grand Re-
monstrance, " with that of the Petition preceding
it: " Most Gracious Sovereign: Your Majesty's
most humble and faithful subjects the Commons
in this present Parliament assembled, do with
much thankfulness and joy acknowledge the
great mercy and favour of God, in giving your
Slajesty a safe and peaceable return out of Scot-
land into your kingdom of England, where the
pressing dangers and distempers of the State
have caused us with much earnestness to desire
the comfort of your gracious presence, and like-
wise the unity and j ustice of your royal authority,
to give more life and power to the dutiful and
loyal counsels and endeavours of your Parliament,
for the prevention of that eminent ruin and de-
struction wherein your kingdoms of England and
Scotland are threatened. The duty which we
owe to your Majesty and our country, cannot but
make us very sensible and apprehensive, that the
multiplicity, sharpness and malignity of those
evils under which we have now many years suf-
fered, are fomented and cherished by a corru])t
and ill-affected party, who amongst other their
mischievous devices for the alteration of religion
and government, have sought by many false
scandals and imputations, cunningly insinuated
and dispersed amongst the people, to blemish and
disgrace our proceedings in this Parliament, and
to get themselves a party and faction amongst
your subjects, for the better strengthening them-
selves in their wicked courses, and hindering
88c
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Grand
Remonstrance.
ENGLAND, 1641.
those provisions and remedies whicli might, by
the wisdom of your Majesty and counsel of your
Parliament, be opposed against them. For pre-
venting whereof, and the better information of
your Majesty, your Peers and all other your loyal
subjects, we have been necessitated to make a dec-
laration of the state of the kingdom, both before
and since the assembly of this Parliament, unto
this time, which we do humbly present to your
Majesty, without the least intention to lay any
blemish upon your royal person, but only to rep-
resent how your royal authority and trust have
been abused, to the great prejudice and danger
of your Majesty, and of all your good subjects.
And because we have reason to believe that those
malignant parties, whose proceedings evidently
appear to be mainly for the advantage and in-
crease of Popery, is composed, set up, and acted
by the subtile practice of the Jesuits and other
engineers and factors for Rome, and to the great
danger of this kingdom, and most grievous afflic-
tion of your loyal subjects, have so far prevailed
as to corrupt divers of your Bishops and others in
prime places of the Church, and also to bring
divers of these instruments to be of your Privy
Council, and other employments of trust and
nearness about your Majesty, the Prince, and the
rest of your royal children. And by this means
have had such an operation in your counsel and
the most important affairs and proceedings of
your government, that a most dangerous division
and chargeable preparation for war betwixt your
kingdoms of England and Scotland, the increase
of jealousies betwixt your Majesty and your
most obedient subjects, the violent distraction
and interruption of this Parliament, the insurrec-
tion of the Papists in your kingdom of Ireland,
and bloody massacre of your people, have been
not only endeavoured and attempted, but in a
great measure compassed and effected. For pre-
venting the final accomplishment whereof, your
poor subjects are enforced to engage their per-
sons and estates to the maintaining of a very ex-
pensive and dangerous war, notwithstanding they
have already since the beginning of this Parlia-
ment undergone the charge of £150,000 sterling,
or thereabouts, for the necessary support and
supply of your Majesty in these present and peril-
ous designs. And because all our most faithful
endeavours and engagements will be ineffectual
for the peace, safety and preservation of your
Majesty and your people, if some present, real
and effectual course be not taken for suppressing
this wicked and malignant party: — We, your
most humble and obedient subjects, do with all
faithfulness and humility beseech your Majesty,
— 1. That you will be graciously pleased to con-
cur with the humble desires of your people in a
parliamentary way, for the preserving the peace
and safety of the kingdom from the malicious
designs of the Popish party : — For depriving the
Bishops of their votes in Parliament, and abridg-
ing their immoderate power usurped over the
Clergy, and other your good subjects, which they
have perniciously abused to the hazard of re-
ligion, and great prejudice and op])ression of the
laws of the kingdom, and just liberty of your
people : — For the taking away such oppressions
in religion, Church government and discipline,
as have been brought in and fomented by them:
— For uniting all such your loyal subjects to-
gether as join in the same fundamental truths
against the Papists, by removing some oppres-
sions and unnecessary ceremonies by which divers
weak consciences have been scrupled, and seem
to be divided from the rest, and for the due exe-
cution of those good laws which have been made
for securing the liberty of your subjects. 2.
That your Majesty will likewise be pleased to re-
move from your council all such as persist to
favour and promote any of those pressures and
corruptions wherewith your people have been
grieved, and that for the future your Majesty
will vouchsafe to employ such persons in your
great and public affairs, and to take such to be
near you in places of trust, as your Parliament
may have cause to confide in; that in your
princely goodness to your people you will reject
and refuse all mediation and solicitation to the
contrary, how powerful and near soever. 3.
That j'ou will be pleased to forbear to alienate
any of the forfeited and escheated lands in Ire-
land which shall accrue to your Crown by reason
of this rebellion, that out of them the Crown may
be the better supported, and some satisfaction
made to your subjects of this kingdom for the
great expenses they are like to undergo [in] this
war. Which humble desires of ours being gra-
ciously fulfilled by your Majesty, we will, by the
blessing and favour of God, most cheerfully un-
dergo the hazard and expenses of this war, and
apply ourselves to such other courses and coun-
sels as may support your real estate with honour
and plenty at home, with power and reputation
abroad, and by our loyal affections, obedience
and service, lay a sure and lasting foundation of
the greatness and prosperity of your Majesty,
and your royal prosperity in future times.
The Commons in this present Parliament as-
sembled, having with much earnestness and faith-
fulness of affection and zeal to the public good
of this kingdom, and His Majesty's honour and
service for the space of twelve months, wrestled
with great dangers and fears, the pressing miseries
and calamities, the various distempers and dis-
orders which had not only assaulted, but even
overwhelmed and extinguished the liberty, peace
and prosperity of this kingdom, the comfort and
hopes of all His Majesty's good subjects, and ex-
ceedingly weakened and undermined the founda-
tion and strength of his own royal throne, do yet
find an abounding malignity and opposition in
those parties and factions who have been the
cause of those evils, and do still labour to cast
aspersions upon that which hath been done, and
to raise many difficulties for the hindrance of that
which remains yet undone, and to foment jealous-
ies between the King and Parliament, that so they
may deprive him and his people of the fruit of
his own gracious intentions, and their humble
desires of procuring the public peace, safety and
happiness of this realm. For the preventing of
those miserable effects which such malicious en-
deavours may produce, we have thought good to
declare the root and the growth of these mis-
chievous designs: the maturity and ripeness to
which they have attained before the beginning
of the Parliament: the effectual means which
have been used for the extirpation of those dan-
gerous evils, and the progress which hath therein
been made by His Majesty's goodness and the
wisdom of the Parliament : the ways of obstruc-
tion and opposition by which that progress hath
been interrupted: the courses to be taken for the
removing those obstacles, and for the accomplish-
ing of our most dutiful and faithful intentions
884
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Orand
Remonstrance.
ENGLAND, 1641.
and endeavours of restoring and establishing the
ancient honour, greatness and security of this
Crown and nation. The root of all this mischief
we find to be a malignant and pernicious design
of subverting the fundamental laws and prin-
ciples of government, upon which the religion
and justice of this kingdom are firmly established.
The actors and promoters hereof have been: 1.
The Jesuited Papists, who hate the laws, as the
obstacles of that change and subversion of re-
ligion which they so much long for. 3. The
Bishops, and the corrupt part of the Clergy, who
cherish formality and superstition as the natural
effects and more probable supports of their own
ecclesiastical tyranny and usurpation. 3. Such
Councillors and Courtiers as for private ends have
engaged themselves to further the interests of
some foreign princes or states to the prejudice of
His Majesty and the State at home. The com-
mon principles by which they moulded and gov-
erned all their particular counsels and actions
were these : First, to maintain continual differ-
ences and discontents between the King and the
people, upon questions of prerogative and liberty,
that so they might have the advantage of siding
with him, and under the notions of men addicted
to his service, gain to themselves and their parties
the places of greatest trust and power in the king-
dom. A second, to suppress the purity and
power of religion, and such persons as were best
affected to it, as being contrary to their own ends,
and the greatest impediment to that change which
they thought to introduce. A third, to conjoin
those parties of the kingdom which were most
propitious to their own ends, and to divide those
who were most opposite, which consisted in many
particular observations. To cherish the Arminian
part in those points wherein they agree with the
Papists, to multiply and enlarge the difference
between the common Protestants and those whom
they call Puritans, to introduce and countenance
such opinions and ceremonies as are fittest for
accommodation with Popery, to increase and
maintain ignorance, looseness and profaneness in
the people ; that of those three parties. Papists,
Arminians and Libertines, they might compose a
body fit to act such counsels and resolutions as
were most conducible to their own ends. A
fourth, to disaffect the King to Parliaments by
slander and false imputations, and by putting
him upon other ways of supply, which in show
and appearance were fuller of advantage than
the ordinary course of subsidies, though in truth
they brought more loss than gain both to the
King and people, and have caused the great dis-
tractions under which we both suffer. As in all
compounded bodies the operations are qualified
according to Ute predominant element, so in this
mi.xed party, the Jesuited counsels, being most
active and prevailing, may easily be discovered
to have had the greatest sway in all their deter-
minations, and if they be not prevented, are
likely to devour the rest, or to turn them into
their own nature. In the beginning of His
Majesty's reign the party began to revive and
flourish again, having been somewhat damped
by the breach with Spain in the last year of King
James, and by His Majesty's marriage with
France ; the interests and counsels of that State
being not so contrary to the good of religion and
the prosperity of this kingdom as those of Spain ;
and the Papists of England, having been ever
more addicted to Spain than France, yet they
still retained a purpose and resolution to weaken
the Protestant parties in all parts, and even in
France, whereby to make way for the change of
religion which they intended at home.
1. The iirst effect and evidence of their re-
covery and strength was the dissolution of the
Parliament at Oxford, after there had been given
two subsidies to His Majesty, and before they
received relief in any one grievance many other
more miserable effects followed.
2. The loss of the Rochel fleet, by the help of
our shipping, set forth and delivered over to the
French in opposition to the advice of Parliament,
which left that town without defence by sea, and
made way, not only to the loss of that important
place, but likewise to the loss of all the strength
and security of the Protestant religion in France.
3. The diverting of His Majesty's course of
wars from the West Indies, which was the most
facile and hopeful way for this kingdom to pre-
vail against the Spaniard, to an expenseful and
successless attempt upon Cadiz, which was so
ordered as if it had rather been intended to make
us weary of war than to prosper in it.
4. The precipitate breach with France, by tak-
ing their ships to a great value without making
recompense to the English, whose goods were
thereupon imbarred and confiscated in that king-
dom.
5. The peace with Spain without consent of
Parliament, contrary to the promise of King James
to both Houses, whereby the Palatine's cause
was deserted and left to chargeable and hopeless
treaties, which for the most part were managed
by those who might justly be suspected to be no
friends to that cause.
6. The charging of the kingdom with billeted
soldiers in all parts of it, and the concomitant
design of German horse, that the land might
either submit with fear or be enforced with rigour
to such arbitrary contributions as should be re-
quired of them.
7. The dissolving of the Parliament in the
second year of His Majesty's reign, after a declara-
tion of their intent to grant five subsidies.
8. The exacting of the like proportion of five
subsidies, after the Parliament dissolved, by com-
mission of loan, and divers gentlemen and others
imprisoned for not yielding to pay that loan,
whereby many of them contracted such sicknesses
as cost them their lives.
9. Great sums of money required and raised
by privy seals.
10. An unjust and pernicious attempt to ex-
tort great payments from the subject by way of
excise, and a commission issued under the seal to
that purpose.
11. The Petition of Right, which was granted
in full Parliament, blasted, with an illegal dec-
laration to make it destructive to itself, to the
power of Parliament, to the liberty of the subject,
and to that purpose printed with it, and the
Petition made of no use but to show the bold
and presumptuous injustice of such ministers as
durst break the laws and suppress the liberties
of the kingdom, after they had been so solemnly
and evidently declared.
12. Another Parliament dissolved 4 Car., the
privilege of Parliament broken, by imprisoning
divers members of the House, detaining them
close prisoners for many months together, with-
out the liberty of using books, pen, inker paper;
denying them all the comforts of life, all means
885
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Grand
Bemonstrance.
ENGLAND, 1641.
of preservation of health, not permitting their
wives to come unto them even in the time of
their sickness.
13. And for the completing of that cruelty,
after years spent in such miserable durance, de-
priving them of the necessary means of spiritual
consolation, not suiiering tliem to go abroad to
enjoy God's ordinances in God's House, or God's
ministers to come to them to minister comfort to
them in their private chambers.
14. And to keep them still in this oppressed
condition, not admitting them to be bailed accord-
ing to law, yet vexing them with informations
in inferior courts, sentencing and fining some of
them for matters done in Parliament; and ex-
torting the payments of those fines from them,
^juforcing others to put in security of good be-
haviour before they could be released.
15. The imprisonment of the rest, which re-
fused to be bound, still continued, which might
have been perpetual if necessity had not the last
year brought another Parliament to relieve them,
of whom one died [Sir John Eliot] by the cruelty
and harsliness of his imprisonment, which would
admit of no relaxation, notwithstanding the im-
minent danger of his life, did sufficiently appear
by the declaration of his physician, and his re-
lease, or at least his refreshment, was sought
by many humble petitions, and his blood still
cries either for vengeance or repentance of those
Jlinisters of State, who have at once obstructed
the course both of His Ma j esty 's j ustice and mercy.
16. Upon the dissolution of both these Parlia-
ments, untrue and scandalous declarations were
published to asperse their proceedings, and some
of their members unjustly ; to make them odious,
and colour the violence which was used against
them ; proclamations set out to the same purpose ;
and to the great dejecting of the hearts of the
people, forbidding them even to speak of Parlia-
ments.
17. After the breach of the Parliament in the
fourth of His Majesty, injustice, oppression and
violence broke in upon us without any restraint
or moderation, and yet the first project was the
great sums exacted through the whole kingdom
for default of knighthood, which seemed to have
some colour and shadow of a law, yet if it be
rightly examined by that obsolete law which
was pretended for it, it will be found to be against
all the rules of justice, both in respect of the
persons charged, the proportion of the fines de-
manded, and the absurd and unreasonable man-
ner of their proceedings.
18. Tonnage and Poundage hath been received
without colour or pretence of law ; many other
heavy impositions continued against law, and
some so unreasonable that the sum of the charge
exceeds the value of the goods.
19. The Book of Rates lately enhanced to a
high proportion, and such merchants that would
not submit to their illegal and unreasonable pay-
ments, were vexed and oppressed above measure ;
and the ordinary course of justice, the common
birthright of the subject of England, wholly ob-
structed unto them.
20. And although all this was taken upon pre-
tence of guarding the seas, yet a new unheard-of
tax of ship-money was devised, and upon the
same pretence, by both wliich there was charged
upon the subject near £700,000 some years, and
yet the merchants have been left so naked to the
violence of the Turkish pirates, that many great
ships of value and thousands of His Majesty's
subjects have been taken by them, and do still
remain in miserable slavery.
21. The enlargements of forests, contrary to
' Carta de Foresta, ' and the composition there-
upon.
22. The exactions of coat and conduct money
and divers other military charges.
23. The taking away the arms of trained bands
of divers counties.
24. The desperate design of engrossing all the
gunpowder into one hand, keeping it in the Tower
of London, and setting so high a rate upon it that
the poorer sort were not able to buy it, nor could
any have it without licence, thereby to leave the
several parts of the kingdom destitute of their
necessary defence, and by selling so dear that
which was sold to make an unlawful advantage
of it, to the great charge and detriment of the
subject.
25. The general destruction of the King's tim-
ber, especially that in the Forest of Deane, sold
to Papists, which was the best store-house of this
kingdom for the maintenance of our shipping.
26. The taking away of men's right, under the
colour of tlie King's title to land, between high
and low water marks.
27. The monopolies of soap, salt, wine, leather,
sea-coal, and in a manner of all things of most
common and necessary use.
28. The restraint of the liberties of the sub-
jects in their habitation, trades and other in-
terests.
29. Their vexation and oppression by pur-
vej'ors, clerks of the market and saltpetre men.
30. The sale of pretended nuisances, as build-
ing in and about London.
31. Conversion of arable into pasture, con-
tinuance of pasture, under the name of depopu-
lation, have driven many millions out of the
subjects' purses, without any considerable profit
to His Majesty.
32. Large quantities of common and several
grounds hath been taken from the subject by
colour of the Statute of Improvement, and by
abuse of the Commission of Sewers, without
their consent, and against it.
33. And not only private interest, but also
public faith, have been broken in seizing of the
money and bullion in the mint, and the whole
kingdom like to be robbed at once in that abom-
inable project of brass money.
34. Great numbers of His Majesty's subjects
for refusing those unlawful charges, have been
vexed with long and expensive suits, some fined
and censured, others committed to long and hard
imprisonments and confinements, to the loss of
health in many, of life in some, and others have
had their houses broken up, their goods seized,
some have been restrained from their lawful
callings.
35. Ships have been interrupted in their voy-
ages, surprised at sea in a hostile manner by pro-
jectors, as by a common enemy.
36. Merchants prohibited to unlade their goods
in such ports as were for their own advantage,
and forced to bring them to those places which
were much for the advantage of the monopolisers
and projectors.
37. The Court of Star Chamber hath abounded
in extravagant censures, not only for the mainte-
nance and improvement of monopolies and other
unlawful taxes, but for divers other causes where
886
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Grand
Remonstrance,
ENGLAND, 1641.
there hath been no offence, or very small ; where-
by His Majesty's subjects have been oppressed
by grievous fines. Imprisonments, stigmatisings,
mutilations, whippings, pillories, gags, confine-
ments, banishments ; after so rigid a manner as
hath not only deprived men of the society of
their friends, exercise of their professions, com-
fort of books, use of paper or ink, but even vio-
lated that near union which God hath established
between men and their wives, by forced and con-
strained separation, whereby they have been be-
reaved of the comfort and conversation one of
another for many years together, without hope
of relief, if God had not by His overruling provi-
dence given some interruption to the prevailing
power, and counsel of those who were the authors
and promoters of such peremptory and heady
courses.
38. Judges have been put out of their places
for refusing to do against their oaths and con-
sciences; others have been so awed that they
durst not do their duties, and the better to hold
a rod over them, the clause ' Quam diu se bene
gesserit ' was left out of their patents, and a new
clause ' Durante bene placito ' inserted.
39. Lawyers have been checked for being faith-
ful to their clients ; solicitors and attorneys have
been threatened, and some punished, for follow-
ing lawful suits. And by this means all the
approaches to justice were interrupted and fore-
eluded.
40. New oaths have been forced upon the
subject against law.
41. New judicatories erected without law.
The Council Table have by their orders offered
to bind the subjects in their freeholds, estates,
suits and actions.
42. The pretended Court of the Earl Marshal
was arbitrary and illegal in its being and proceed-
ings.
43. The Chancery, Exchequer Chamber, Court
of Wards, and other English Courts, have been
grievous in exceeding their jurisdiction.
44. The estate of many families weakened, and
some ruined by excessive fines, exacted from
them for compositions of wardships.
45. All leases of above a hundred years made
to draw on wardship contrary to law.
46. Undue proceedings used in the finding of
ofl5ces to make the jury find for the King.
47. The Common Law Courts, feeling all men
more inclined to seek justice there, where It may
be fitted to their own desire, are known frequently
to forsake the rules of the Common Law, and
straying beyond their bounds, under pretence of
equity, to do injustice.
48. Titles of honour, judicial places, sergeant-
ships at law, and other offices have been sold for
great sums of money, whereby the common
justice of the kingdom hath been much en-
dangered, not only by opening a way of employ-
ment in places of great trust, and advantage to
men of weak parts, but also by giving occasion
to bribery, extortion, partiality, it seldom hap-
pening that places ill-gotton are well used.
49. Commissions have been granted for ex-
amining the excess of fees, and when great exac-
tions have been discovered, compositions have
been made with delinquents, not only for the
time past, but likewise for immunity and security
in offending for the time to come, which under
colour of remedy hath but confirmed and in-
creased the grievance to the subject.
50. The usual course of pricking Sheriffs not
observed, but many times Sheriffs made in an
extraordinary way, sometimes as a punishment
and charge unto them; sometimes such were
pricked out as would be instruments to execute
whatsoever they would have to be done.
51. The Bishops and the rest of the Clergy did
triumph in the suspensions, ex-communications,
deprivations, and degradations of divers painful,
learned and pious ministers, in the vexation and
grievous oppression of great numbers of His
Slajesty's good subjects.
52. The High Commission grew to such excess
of sharpness and severity as was not much less
than the Romish Inquisition, and yet in many
cases by the Archbishop's power was made much
more heavy, being assisted and strengthened by
authority of the Council Table.
53. The Bishops and their Courts were as eager
in the country; although their jurisdiction could
not reach so high in rigour and extremity of
punishment, yet were they no less grievous in
respect of the generality and multiplicity of
vexations, which lighting upon the meaner sort
of tradesmen and artificers did impoverish many
thousands.
54. And so afflict and trouble others, that
great numbers to avoid their miseries departed
out of the kingdom, some into New England and
other parts of America, others into Holland.
55. Where they have transported their manu-
factures of cloth, which is not only a loss by
diminishing the present stock of the kingdom,
but a great mischief by impairing and endanger-
ing the loss of that particular trade of clothing,
which hath been a plentiful fountain of wealth
and honour to this nation.
56. Those were fittest for ecclesiastical prefer-
ment, and soonest obtained it, who were most
officious in promoting superstition, most virulent
in railing against godliness and honesty.
57. The most public and solemn sermons be-
fore His Majesty were either to advance prerog-
ative above law, and decry the property of the
subject, or full of such kind of invectives.
58. Whereby they might make those odious
who sought to maintain the religion, laws and
liberties of the kingdom, and such men were
sure to be weeded out of the commission of the
peace, and out of all other employments of
power in the government of the country.
59. Many noble personages were councillors
in name, but the power and authority remained
in a few of such as were most addicted to this
party, whose resolutions and determinations were
brought to the table for countenance and execu-
tion, and not for debate and deliberation, and no
man could offer to oppose them without disgrace
and hazard to himself.
60. Nay, all those that did not wholly concur
and actively contribute to the furtherance of
their designs, though otherwise persons of never
so great honour and abilities, were so far from
being employed in any place of trust and power,
that they were neglected, discountenanced, and
upon all occasions injured and oppressed.
61. This faction was grown to that height and
entireness of power, that now they began to
think of finishing their work, which consisted of
these three parts.
62. I. The government must be set free from
all restraint of laws concerning our persons and
estates.
887
ENGLAND, 1641.
The G^-and
Remonstrance.
ENGLAND, 1641.
63. 11. There must be a conjunction between
Papists and Protestants in doctrine, discipline
and ceremonies; only it must not yet be called
Popery.
64. IIL Tlie Puritans, under which name they
include all those that desire to preserve the laws
and liberties of the kingdom, and to maintain
religion in the power of it, must be either rooted
out of the kingdom with force, or driven out
with fear.
65. For the effecting of this it was thought
necessary to reduce Scotland to such Popish
superstitions and innovations as might make them
apt to join with England in that great change
which was intended.
66. Whereupon new canons and a new liturgy
were pressed upon them, and when they refused
to admit of them, an army was raised to force
them to it, towards which the Clergy and the
Papists were very forward in their contribution.
67. The Scots likewise raised an army for their
defence.
68. And when both armies were come together,
and ready for a bloody encounter. His Majesty's
own gracious disposition, and the counsel of the
English nobility and dutiful submission of the
Scots, did so far prevail against the evil counsel
of others, that a pacification was made, and His
Majesty returned with peace and much honour
to London.
69. The unexpected reconciliation was most
acceptable to all the kingdom, except to the
malignant party ; whereof the Archbishop and
the Earl of Strafford being heads, they and their
faction begun to inveigh against the peace, and
to aggravate the proceedings of the states, which
so increased [incensed?] His Majesty, that he
forthwith prepared again for war.
70. And such was their confidence, that having
corrupted and distempered the whole frame and
government of the kingdom, they did now hope
to corrupt that which was the only means to re-
store all to a right frame and temper again.
71. To which end they persuaded His Majesty
to call a Parliament, not to seek counsel and
advice of them, but to draw countenance and
supply from them, and to engage the whole king-
dom in their quarrel.
72. And In the meantime continued all their un-
i'ust levies of money, resolving either to make the
'arliament pliant to their will, and to establish
mischief by a law, or else to break it, and with
more colour to go on by violence to take wliat
they could not obtain by consent. The ground
alleged for the justification of this war was
this,
73. That the undutiful demands of the Parlia-
ments in Scotland was a sufficient reason for His
Majesty to take arms against them, without hear-
ing the reason of those demands, and thereupon
a new army was prepared against them, their
ships were seized in all ports both of England
and Ireland, and at sea, their petitions rejected,
their commissioners refused audience.
74. The whole kingdom most miserably dis-
tempered with levies of men and money, and
Imprisonments of those who denied to submit to
those levies.
75. The Earl of Strafford passed into Ireland,
caused the Parliament there to declare against
the Scots, to give four subsidies towards that
war, and to engage themselves, their lives and
fortunes, for tlic prosecution of it, and gave
directions for an army of eight thousand foot
and one thousand horse to be levied there, which
were for the most part Papists.
76. The Parliament met upon the 13th of April,
1640. The Earl of Strafford and Archbishop of
Canterbury, with their party, so prevailed with
His Majesty, that the House of Commons was
pressed to yield a supply for maintenance of the
war with Scotland, before they had provided any
relief for the great and pressing grievances of the
people, which being against the fundamental
privilege and proceeding of Parliament, was yet
in humble respect to His Majesty, so far admitted
as that they agreed to take the matter of supply
into consideration, and two several days it was
debated.
77. Twelve subsidies were demanded for the
release of ship-money alone, a third day was ap-
pointed for conclusion, when the heads of that
party begun to fear the people might close with
the King, in falsifying his desires of money ; but
that withal they were like to blast their mali-
cious designs against Scotland, finding them
very much indisposed to give any countenance
to that war.
78. Thereupon they wickedly advised the King
to break off the Parliament and to return to the
ways of confusion, in which their own evil in-
tentions were most likely to prosper and succeed.
79. After the Parliament ended the 5th of May,
1640, this party grew so bold as to counsel the
King to supply himself out of his subjects' estates
by his own power, at his own will, without their
consent.
80. The very next day some members of both
Houses had their studies and cabinets, yea, their
pockets searched : another of them not long after
was committed close prisoner for not delivering
some petitions which he received by authority of
that House.
81. And if harsher courses were intended (as
was reported) it is very probable that the sick-
ness of the Earl of Strafford, and the tumultu-
ous rising in Southwark and about Lambeth were
the causes that such violent intentions were not
brought to execution.
82. A false and scandalous Declaration against
the House of Commons was published in His
Slajesty's name, which yet wrought little effect
with the people^ but only to manifest the impu-
dence of those who were authors of it.
83. A forced loan of money was attempted in
the City of London.
84. 'The Lord Mayor and Aldermen in their
several wards, enjoined to bring in a list of the
names of such persons as they judged fit to lend,
and of the sums they should lend. And such
Aldermen as refused to do so were committed to
prison.
85. The Archbishop and the other Bishops and
Clergy continued the Convocation, and by a new
commission turned it into a provincial Synod, in
which, by an unheard-of presumption, they made
canons that contain in them many matters con-
trary to the King's prerogative, to the funda-
mental laws and statutes of the realm, to the
right of Parliaments, to the property and liberty
of the subject, and matters tending to sedition
and of dangerous consequence, thereby establish-
ing their own usurpations, justifying their altar-
worship, and those other superstitious innova-
tions which they formerly introduced without
warrant of law.
888
ENGLAND, 1641.
Tlte Grand
Remonstrance.
ENGLAND, 1641.
86. They imposed a new oath upon divers of
His Majesty's subjects, both ecclesiastical and
lay, for maintenance of their own tyranny, and
laid a great tax on the Clergy, for supply of His
Majesty, and generally they showed themselves
very affectionate to the war with Scotland, which
was by some of them styled ' Bellum Episcopale,'
and a prayer composed and enjoined to lie read
in all churches, calling the Scots rebels, to put
the two nations in blood and make them irrecon-
cileable.
87. All those pretended canons and constitu-
tions were armed with the several censures of
suspension, excommunication, deprivation, by
which they would have thrust out all the good
ministers, and most of the well-afiected people
of the kingdom, and left an easy passage to their
own design of reconciliation with Rome.
88. The Popish party enjoyed such exemp-
tions from penal laws as amounted to a toleration,
besides many other encouragements and Court
favours.
89. They had a Secretary of State, Sir Francis
"Windebanck, a powerful agent for speeding all
their desires.
90. A Pope's Nuncio residing here, to act and
govern them according to such influences as he
received from Rome, and to intercede for them
with the most powerful concurrence of the
foreign princes of that religion.
91. By his authority the Papists of all sorts,
nobility, gentry, and clergy were convocated
after the manner of a Parliament.
92. New jurisdictions were erected of Romish
Archbishops, taxes levied, another state moulded
within this state independent iu government,
contrary In interest and affection, secretly cor-
rupting the ignorant or negligent professors of
our religion, and closely uniting and combining
themselves against such as were found in this
posture, waiting for an opportunity by force to
destroy those whom they could not hope to seduce.
93. For the effecting whereof they were
strengthened with arms and munitions, encour-
aged by superstitious prayers, enjoined by the
Nuncio to be weekly made for the prosperity of
some great design.
94. And such power had they at Court, that
secretly a commission was issued out, or intended
to be issued to some great men of that profession,
for the levying of soldiers, and to command and
employ them according to private instructions,
which we doubt were framed for the advantage
of those who were the contrivers of them.
95. His Majesty's treasure was consumed, his
revenue anticipated.
96. His servants and officers compelled to lend
great sums of money.
97. Multitudes were called to the Council
Table, who were tired with long attendances there
for refusing illegal payments.
98. The prisons were filled with their com-
mitments; many of the Sheriffs summoned into
the Star Chamber, and some imprisoned for not
being quick enough in levying the ship-money ;
the people languished under grief and fear, no
visible hope being left but in desperation.
99. The nobility began to weary of their
silence and patience, and sensible of the duty and
trust which belongs to them: and thereupon
some of the most ancient of them did petition
His Majesty at such a time, when evil counsels
were so strong, that they had occasion to ex-
pect more hazard to themselves, than redress of
those public evils for which they interceded.
100. Whilst the kingdom was in this agitation
and distemper, the Scots, restrained in their trades,
impoverished by the loss of many of their ships,
bereaved of all possibility of satisfying His
Majesty by any naked supplication, entered with
a powerful army into the kingdom, and without
any hostile act or spoil iu the country they passed,
more than forcing a passage over the "Tyne at
Newburn, near Newcastle, possessed themselves
of Newcastle, and had a fair opportunity to press
on further upon the King's army.
loi. But duty and reverence to His Majesty,
and brotherly love to the English nation, made
them stay there, whereby the King had leisure
to entertain better counsels.
102. Wherein God so blessed and directed him
that he summoned the Great Council of Peers to
meet at York upon the 24th of September, and
there declared a Parliament to begin the 3d of
November then following.
103. The Scots, the first day of the Great
Council, presented an humble Petition to His
Majesty, whereupon the Treaty was appointed
at Ripon.
104. A present cessation of arms agreed upon,
and the full conclusion of all differences referred
to the wisdom and care of the Parliament.
105. At our first meeting, all oppositions
seemed to vanish, the mischiefs were so evident
which those evil counsellors produced, that no
man durst stand up to defend them : yet the work
itself afforded difliculty enough.
106. The multiplied evils and corruption of
fifteen years, strengthened bj' custom and au-
thority, and the concurrent interest of many
powerful delinquents, were now to be brought
to judgment and reformation.
107. The King's household was to be provided
for: — they had brought him to that want, that
he could not supply his ordinary and necessary
expenses without the assistance of his people.
108. Two armies were to be paid, which
amounted very near to eighty thousand pounds
a month.
109. The people were to be tenderly charged,
having been formerly exhausted with many
burdensome projects.
no. The difficulties seemed to be insuperable,
which by the Divine Providence we have over-
come. The contrarieties incompatible, which
yet in a great measure we have reconciled.
111. Six subsidies have been granted and a
Bill of poll-money, which if it be duly levied,
may equal six subsidies more, in all £600,000.
112. Besides we have contracted a debt to the
Scots of £330,000, yet God hath so blessed the
endeavours of this Parliament, that the kingdom
is a great gainer by all these charges.
113. The ship-money is abolished, which cost
the kingdom about £300,000 a year.
114. The coat and conduct-money, and other
military charges are taken away, which in .many
countries amounted to little less than the ship-
money.
1 15. The monopolies are all suppressed, whereof
some few did prejudice the subject, above
£1.000,000 yearly.
116. The soap £100,000.
117. The wine £300,000.
118. The leather must needs exceed both, and
salt could be no less than that.
889
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Grand
Remonstrance.
ENGLAND. 1641.
119. Besides the inferior monopolies, wliich, if
they could be exactly computed, would make up
a great sum.
120. That which is more beneficial than all
this is, that the root of these evils is taken away,
which was the arbitrary power pretended to be in
His Majesty of taxing the subject, or charging
their estates without consent in Parliament,
which is now declared to be against law by the
judgment of both Houses, and likewise by an Act
of Parliament.
121. Another step of great advantage is this,
the living grievances, the evil counsellors and
actors of these mischiefs have been so quelled.
122. By the justice done upon the Earl of
Strafford, the flight of the Lord Finch and Secre-
tary Windebank.
123. The accusation and imprisonment of the
Archbishop of Canterbury, of Judge Berkelej' ;
and
124. The impeachment of divers other Bishops
and Judges, that it is like not only to be an ease to
the present times, but a preservation to the future.
125. The discontinuance of Parliaments ii pre-
vented by the Bill for a triennial Parliament, and
the abrupt dissolution of tliis Parliament by
another Bill, by which it is provided it shall not
be dissolved or adjourned without the consent of
both Houses.
126. Which two laws well considered may be
thought more advantageous than all the former,
because they secure a full operation of the present
remedy, and afford a perpetual spring of reme-
dies for the future.
127. The Star Chamber.
128. The High Commission.
129. The Courts of the President and Council
in the North were so many forges of misery,
oppression and violence, and are all taken away,
whereby men are more secured in their persons,
liberties and estates, than they could be by any
law or example for the regulation of those Courts
or terror of the Judges.
130. The immoderate power of the Council
Table, and the excessive abuse of that power is
so ordered and restrained, that we may well
hope that no such things as were frequently
done by them, to the prejudice of the public lib-
erty, will appear in future times but only in
stories, to give us and our posterity more occa-
sion to praise God for His Majesty's goodness,
and the faithful endeavours of this Parliament.
131. The canons and power of canon-making
are blasted by the votes of both Houses.
132. The exorbitant power of Bishops and
their courts are much abated, by some provisions
in the Bill against the High Commission Court,
the authors of the many innovations in doctrine
and ceremonies.
133. The ministers that have been scandalous
in their lives, have been so terrified in just com-
plaints and accusations, that we may well hope
they will be more modest for the time to come ;
either inwardly convicted by the sight of their
own folly, or outwardly restrained by the fear
of punishment.
134. The forests are by a good law reduced to
their right bounds.
135. The encroachments and oppressions of
the Stannary Courts, the extortions of the clerk
of the market.
136. And the compulsion of the subject to re-
ceive the Order of Knighthood against his will,
paying of fines for not receiving it, and the vexa-
tious proceedings thereupon for levying of those
fines, are by other beneficial laws reformed and
prevented.
137. Many excellent laws and provisions are
in preparation for removing the inordinate power,
vexation and usurpation of Bishops, for reform-
ing the pride and idleness of many of the clergy,
for easing the people of unnecessary ceremonies
in religion, for censuring and removing un-
worthy and unprofitable ministers, and for main-
taining godly and diligent preachers through
the kingdom.
138. Other things of main importance for the
good of this kingdom are in proposition, though
little could hitherto be done in regard of the
many other more pressing businesses, which yet
before the end of this Session we hope may re-
ceive some progress and perfection.
139. The establishing and ordering the King's
revenue, that so the abuse of officers and super-
fluity of expenses may be cut off, and the neces-
sary disbursements for His Majesty's honour,
the defence and government of the kingdom,
mny be more certainly provided for.
140. The regulating of courts of justice, and
abridging both the delays and charges of law-
suits.
141. The settling of some good courses for
preventing the exportation of gold and silver,
and the inequality of exchanges between us and
other nations, for the advancing of native com-
modities, increase of our manufactures, and well
balancing of trade, whereby the stock of the
kingdom may be increased, or at least kept from
impairing, as through neglect hereof it hath
done for many years last past.
142. Improving the herring-fishing upon our
coasts, which will be of mighty use in the em-
ployment of the poor, and a plentiful nursery of
mariners for enabling the kingdom in any great
action.
143. The oppositions, obstructions and other
difficulties wherewith we have been encountered,
and which still lie in our way with some strength
and much obstinacy, are these: the malignant
party whom we have formerly described to be
the actors and promoters of all our misery, they
have taken heart again.
144. Tliey liave been able to prefer some of
their own factors and agents to degrees of hon-
our, to places of trust and employment, even
during the Parliament.
145. Tliey have endeavoured to work In His
Majesty ill impressions and opinions of our pro-
ceedings, as if we had altogether done our own
work, and not his ; and had obtained from him
many things very prejudicial to the Crown, both
in respect of prerogative and profit.
146. To wipe out this slander we think good
only to say thus much : that all that we have done
is for His Majesty, his greatness, honour and sup-
port, when we yield to give £25, 000 a month for
the relief of the Northern Counties; this was
given to the King, for he was bound to protect
his subjects.
147. They were His Majesty's evil counsellors,
and their ill instruments that were actors in those
grievances wliich brought in the Scots.
148. And if His Majesty please to force those
who were the authors of this war to make satis-
faction, as he might justly and easily do, it seems
very reasonable that the people might well be
890
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Grand
Remonstrance.
ENGLAND, 1641.
excused from taking upon them this burden,
being altogether innocent and free from being
any cause of it.
149. When we undertook the charge of the
army, which cost above £50,000 a month, was
not this given to the King ? Was it not His
Majesty's army ? Were not all the commanders
under contract with His Majesty, at higher rates
and greater wages than ordinary ?
150. And have not we taken upon us to dis-
charge all the brotherly assistance of £300,000,
which we gave the Scots ? Was it not toward
repair of those damages and losses which they re-
ceived from the King's ships and from his min-
isters ?
151. These three particulars amount to above
£1,100,000.
152. Besides, His Majesty hath received by
impositions upon merchandise at least £400,000.
153. So that His Majesty hath had out of the
subjects' purse since the Parliament began, £1,-
500,000, and yet these men can be so impudent
as to tell His Majesty that we have done nothing
for him.
154. As to the second branch of this slander,
we acknowledge with much thankfulness that His
Majesty hath passed more good Bills to the advan-
tage of the subjects than have been in many ages.
155. But withal we cannot forget that these
venomous councils did manifest themselves in
some endeavours to hinder these good acts.
156. And for both Houses of Parliament we
may with truth and modesty say thus much : that
we have ever been careful not to desire anything
that should weaken the Crown either in just
profit or useful power.
157. The triennial Parliament for the matter
of it, doth not extend to so much as by law we
ought to have required (there being two statutes
still in force for a Parliament to be once a year),
and for the manner of it, it is in the King's power
that it shall never take effect, if he by a timely
summons shall prevent any other way of assem-
bling.
158. In the Bill for continuance of this present
Parliament, there seems to be some restraint of
the royal power in dissolving of Parliaments, not
to take it out of the Crown, but to suspend the
execution of it for this time and occasion only :
which was so necessary for the King's own
security and the public peace, that without it we
could not have undertaken any of these great
charges, but must have left both the armies to
disorder and confusion, and the whole kingdom
to blood and rapine.
159. The Star Chamber was much more fruit-
ful in oppression than in profit, the great fines
being for the most part given away, and the rest
stalled at long times.
160. The fines of the High Commission were
in themselves unjust, and seldom or never came
into the King's purse. These four Bills are par-
ticularly and more specially instanced.
161. In the rest there will not be found so
much as a shadow of prejudice to the Crown.
162. They have sought to diminish our repu-
tation with the people, and to bring them out of
love with Parliaments.
163. The aspersions which they have attempted
this way have been sucli as these :
164. That we have spent much time and done
little, especially in those grievances which con-
cern religion.
165. That the Parliament is a burden lo the
kingdom by the abundance of protections which
hinder justice and trade; and by many subsidies
granted much more heavy than any formerly en
dured,
166. To which there is a ready answer; if the
time spent in this Parliament be considered in re-
lation backward to the long growth and deep
root of those grievances, which we have removed,
to the powerful supports of those delinquents,
which we have pursued, to the great necessities
and other charges of the commonwealth for which
we have provided.
167. Or if it be considered in relation forward
to many advantages, which not only the present
but future ages are like to reap by the good laws
and other proceedings in this Parliament, we
doubt not but it will be thought by all indifferent
judgments, that our time hath been much better
employed than in a far greater proportion of time
in many former Parliaments put together ; and
the charges which have been laid upon the sub-
ject, and the other inconveniences which they
have borne, will seem very light in respect of
the benefit they have and may receive.
168. And for the matter of protections, the
Parliament is so sensible of it that therein they
intended to give them whatsoever ease may stand
with honour and justice, and are in a way of
passing a Bill to give them satisfaction.
169. They have sought by many subtle prac-
tices to cause jealousies and divisions betwixt us
and our brethren of Scotland, by slandering their
proceedings and intentions towards us, and by
secret endeavours to instigate and incense them
and us one against another.
170. They have had such a party of Bishops
and Popish lords in the House of Peers, as hath
caused much opposition and delay in the prose-
cution of delinquents, hindered the proceedings
of divers good Bills passed in the Commons'
House, concerning the reformation of sundry
great abuses and corruptions both in Church and
State.
171. They have laboured to seduce and cor-
rupt some of the Commons' House to draw them
into conspiracies and combinations against the
liberty of the Parliament.
172. And by their instruments and agents they
have attempted to disaffect and discontent His
Majesty's army, and to engage it for the mainte-
nance of their wicked and traitorous designs ; the
keeping up of Bishops in votes and functions,
and by force to compel the Parliament to order,
limit and dispose their proceedings in such man-
ner as might best concur with the intentions of
this dangerous and potent faction.
173. And when one mischievous design and
attempt of theirs to bring on the army against
the Parliament and the City of London, hath
been discovered and prevented ;
174. They presently tmdertook another of the
same damnable nature, with this addition to it,
to endeavour to make the Scottish army neutral,
whilst the English army, which they had la-
boured to corrupt and envenom against us by
their false and slanderous suggestions, should
execute their malice to the subversion of our re-
ligion and the dissolution of our government.
175. Thus they have been continually practis-
ing to disturb the peace, and plotting the de-
struction even of all the King's dominions ; and
have employed their emissaries and agents in
891
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Grand
Bevionstrance.
ENGLAND, 1641.
them, all for the promoting their devilish designs,
which the vigilancy of those who were well af-
fected hath still discovered and defeated before
they were ripe for execution in England and
Scotland.
176. Only in Ireland, which was farther off,
they have had time and opportunity to mould
and prepare their work, and had brought it to
that perfection that they had possessed them-
selves of that whole kingdom, totally subverted
the government of it, routed out religion, and
destroyed all the Protestants whom the conscience
of their duty to God, their King and country,
would not have permitted to join with them, if
by God's wonderful providence their main enter-
prise upon the city and castle of Dublin, had
not been detected and prevented upon the very
eve before it should have been executed.
177. Notwithstanding they have in other parts
of that kingdom broken out into open rebellion,
surprising towns and castles, committed murders,
rapes and other villainies, and shaken off all
bonds of obedience to His Majesty and the laws
of the realm.
178. And in general have kindled such a fire,
as nothing but God's intinite blessing upon the
wisdom and endeavours of this State will be able
to quench it.
179. And certainly had not God in His great
mercy unto this land discovered and confounded
their former designs, we had been the prologue to
this tragedy in Ireland, and had by this been made
the lamentable spectacle of misery and confusion.
180. And now what hope have we but in God,
when as the only means of our subsistence and
power of reformation is under Him in the Par-
liament ?
181. But what can we the Commons, without
the conjunction of the House of Lords, and what
conjunction can we expect there, when the
Bishops and recusant lords are so numerous and
prevalent that they are able to cross and interrupt
our best endeavours for reformation, and by that
means give advantage to this malignant party
to traduce our proceedings ?
182. They infuse into the people that we
mean to abolish all Church government, and
leave every man to his own fancy for the service
and worship of God, absolving him of that obedi-
ence which he owes under God unto His Majesty,
whom we know to be entrusted with the ecclesi-
astical law as well as with the temporal, to regu-
late all the members of the Church of England,
by such rules of order and discipline as are es-
tablished by Parliament, which is his great coun-
cil in all affairs both in Church and State.
183. We confess our intention is, and our en-
deavours have been, to reduce within bounds
that exorbitant power which the prelates have
assumed unto themselves, so contrary both to
the Word of God and to the laws of the land, to
which end we passed the Bill for the removing
them from their temporal power and employ-
ments, that so the better they might with meek-
ness apply themselves to the discharge of their
functions, which Bill themselves opposed, and
were the principal instruments of crossing it.
184. And we do here declare that it is far from
our purpose or desire to let loose the golden
reins of discipline and government in the Church,
to leave private persons or particular congrega-
tions to take up what form of Divine Service
they please, for we hold it requisite that there
should be throughout the whole realm a con-
formity to that order which the laws enjoin ac-
cording to the Word of God. And we desire to
unburden the consciences of men of needless and
superstitious ceremonies, suppress innovations,
and take away the monuments of idolatry.
185. And the better to effect the intended ref-
ormation, we desire there may be a general synod
of the most grave, pious, learned and judicious
divines of this island; assisted with some from
foreign parts, professing the same religion with
us, who may consider of all things necessary for
the peace and good government of the Church,
and represent the results of their consultations
unto the Parliament, to be there allowed of and
confirmed, and receive the stamp of authority,
thereby to find passage and obedience throughout
the kingdom.
186. They have maliciously charged us that
we intend to destroy and discourage learning,
whereas it is our chief est care and desire to advance
it, and to provide a competent maintenance for
conscionable and preaching ministers throughout
the kingdom, which will be a great encourage-
ment to scholars, and a certain means whereby
the want, meanness and ignorance, to which a
great part of the clergy is now subject, will be
prevented.
187. And we intended likewise to reform and
purge the fountains of learning, the two Univer-
sities, that the streams flowing from thence may
be clear and pure, and an honour and comfort to
the whole land.
188. They have strained to blast our proceed-
ings in Parliament, by wresting the interpreta-
tions of our orders from their genuine intention.
189. They tell the people that our meddling
with the power of episcopacy hath caused sectaries
and conventicles, when idolatrous and Popish
ceremonies, introduced into the Church by the
command of the Bishops have not only debarred
the people from thence, but expelled them from
the kingdom.
190. Thus with Elijah, we are called by this
malignant party the troublers of the State, and
still, while we endeavour to reform their abuses,
they make us the authors of those mischiefs we
study to prevent.
191. For the perfecting of the work begun,
and removing all future impediments, we con-
ceive these courses will be very effectual, seeing
the religion of the Papists hath such principles
as do certainly tend to the destruction and extir-
pation of all Protestants, when they shall have
opportunity to effect it.
192. It is necessary in the first place to keep
them in such condition as that they may not be
able to do us any hurt, and for avoiding of such
connivance and favour as hath heretofore been
shown unto them.
193. That His Majesty be pleased to grant a
standing Commission to some choice men named
in Parliament, who may take notice of their in-
crease, their counsels and proceedings, and use
all due means by execution of the laws to pre-
vent all mischievous designs against the peace
and safety of this kingdom.
194. Thus some good course be taken to dis-
cover the counterfeit and false conformity of
Papists to the Church, by colour whereof persons
very much disaffected to the true religion have
been admitted into place of greatest authority
and trust in the kingdom.
892
ENGLAND, 1641.
The Grand
Remonstrance.
ENGLAND. 1642.
195. For the better preservation of the laws
and liberties of the kingdom, that all illegal
grievances and exactions be presented and pun-
ished at the sessions and assizes.
196. And that Judges and Justices be very
careful to give this in charge to the grand jury,
and both the Sheriff and Justices to be sworn to
the due execution of the Petition of Right and
other laws.
197. That His Majesty be humbly petitioned
by both Houses to employ such counsellors, am-
bassadors and other ministers, in managing his
business at home and abroad as the Parliament
may have cause to confide in, without which we
cannot give His Majesty such supplies for sup-
port of his own estate, nor such assistance to the
Protestant party beyond the sea, as is desired.
198. It may often fall out that the Commons
may have just cause to take exceptions at some
men for being councillors, and yet not charge
those men with crimes, for there be grounds of
diffidence which lie not in proof.
199. There are others, which though they may
be proved, yet are not legally criminal.
200. To be a known favourer of Papists, or to
have been very forward in defending or counte-
nancing some great offenders questioned in Par-
liament; or to speak contemptuously of either
Houses of Parliament or Parliamentary proceed-
ings.
201. Or such as are factors or agents for any
foreign prince of another religion ; such are justly
suspected to get councillors' places, or any other
of trust concerning public employment for
money ; for all these and divers otliers we may
have great reason to be earnest with His Majesty,
not to put bis great affairs into such hands, though
we may be unwilling to proceed against them in
any legal way of charge or impeachment.
202. That all Councillors of State may be
sworn to observe those laws which concern the
subject in his liberty, that they may likewise take
an oath not to receive or give reward or pension
from any foreign prince, but such as they shall
within some reasonable time discover to the Lords
of His Majesty's Council.
203. And although they should wickedly for-
swear themselves, 3'et it may herein do good to
make them known to be false and perjured to
those who employ them, and thereby bring them
into as little credit with them as with us.
204. That His Majesty may have cause to be in
love with good counsel and good men, by shewing
him in an humble and dutiful manner how full
of advantage it would be to himself, to see his
own estate settled in a plentiful condition to sup-
port his honour ; to see his people united in ways
of duty to him, and endeavours of the public
good ; to see happiness, wealth, peace and safety
derived to his own kingdom, and procured to his
allies by the influence of his own power and gov-
ernment."
A. D. 1642 (January). — ^The King's attempt
against the Five Members. — On the 3d of
January, "the king was betrayed into ... an
indiscretion to which all the ensuing disorders
and civil wars ought immediately and directly to
be ascribed. This was the impeachment of Lord
Kimbolton and the five members. . . . Herbert,
attorney-general, appeared in the House of Peers,
and, in his majesty's name, entered an accusa-
tion of high treason against Lord Kimbolton and
five commoners, Hollis, Sir Arthur Hazlerig,
Hambden, Pym, and Strode. The articles were,
That they had traitorously endeavoured to sub-
vert the fundamental laws and government of
the kingdom, to deprive the king of his regal
power, and to impose on his subjects an arbi-
trary and tyrannical authority; that they had
endeavoured, by many foul aspersions ou his
majesty and his government, to alienate the affec-
tions of his people, and make him odious to them ;
that they had attempted to draw his late army
to disobedience of his royal commands, and to
side with them in their traitorous designs; that
they had invited and encouraged a foreign power
to invade the kingdom ; that they had aimed at
subverting the rights and very being of Parlia-
ment ; that, in order to complete their traitorous
designs, they had endeavoured, as far as in them
lay, by force and terror, to compel the Parlia-
ment to join with them, and to that end had
actually raised and countenanced tumults against
the king and Parliament; and that they had
traitorously conspired to levy, and actually had
levied, war against the king. The whole world
stood amazed at this important accusation, so
suddenly entered upon, without concert, delibera-
tion or reflection. . . . But men had not leisure to
wonder at the indiscretion of this measure : their
astonishment was excited by new attempts, still
more precipitate and imprudent. A sergeant at
arms, in the king's name, demanded of the House
the five members, and was sent back without any
positive answer. Messengers were employed to
search for them and arrest them. Their trunks,
chambers, and studies, were sealed and locked.
The House voted all these acts of violence to be
breaches of privilege, and commanded every one
to defend the liberty of the members. The king,
irritated by all this opposition, resolved next day
to come in person to the House, with an Intention
to demand, perhaps seize, in their presence, the
persons whom he had accused. This resolution
was discovered to the Countess of Carlisle, sister
to Northumberland, a lady of spirit, wit, and
intrigue. She privately sent Intelligence to the
five members ; and they had time to withdraw, a
moment before the king entered. He was accom-
panied by his ordinary retinue, to the number of
above two hundred, armed as usual, some with
halberts, some with walking swords. The king
left them at the door, and he himself advanced
alone through the hall, while all the members
rose to receive him. The speaker withdrew from
his chair, and the king took possession of it.
The speech which he made was as follows:
' Gentlemen, I am sorry for this occasion of com-
ing to you. Yesterday, I sent a sergeant at
arms, to demand some, who, by my order, were
accused of high treason. Instead of obedience, I
received a message. . . . Therefore am I come
to tell you, that I must have these men whereso-
ever I can find them. Well, since I see all the
birds are flown, I do expect that you will send
them to me as soon as they return. But I assure
you, on the word of a king, I never did intend
any force, but shall proceed against them in a
fair and legal way, for I never meant any other.'
. . . When the king was looking around for the
accused members, he asked the speaker, who
stood below, whether any of these persons were
in the House ? The speaker, falling on his knee,
prudently replied : ' I have, sir, neither eyes to
see, nor tongue to speak, in this place, but as the
House is pleased to direct me, whose servant I
893
ENGLAND, 1643.
Preparing for
War.
ENGLAND, 1642.
am. And I humbly ask pardon, that I cannot
give any other answer to what your majesty is
pleased to demand of me.' The Commons were
in the utmost disorder ; and when the liing was
departing, some members cried aloud so as he
might hear them. Privilege! Privilege! and the
House immediately adjourned till next day.
That evening, the accused members, to show the
greaterapprehension, removed into the city.whicli
was their fortress. The citizens were the whole
night in arms. . . When the House of Com-
mons met, they affected the greatest dismay ; and
adjourning themselves for some days, ordered a
committee to sit in Merchant-Tailors' hall in the
city. . . . The House again met, and after con-
firming the votes of their committee, instantly
adjourned, as if exposed to the most imminent
perils from the violence of their enemies. This
practice they continued for some time. When
the people, by these affected panics, were wrought
up to a sufficient degree of rage and terror, it
was thought proper, that the accused members
should, with a triumphant and military proces-
sion, take their seats in the House. The river
was covered with boats, and other vessels, laden
with small pieces of ordnance, and prepared for
tight. Skippon, whom the Parliament had ap-
pointed, by their own authority, major-general
of the city militia, conducted the members, at the
head of this tumultuary army, to Westminster-
hall. And when the populace, by land and by
water, passed Whitehall, they still asked, with
insulting shouts, What has become of the king
and his cavaliers ? And whither are they fled ?
The king, apprehensive of danger from the en-
raged multitude, had retired to Hampton-court,
deserted by all the world, and overwhelmed with
grief, shame, and remorse for the fatal measures
Into which he hud been hurried." — D. Hume,
Hist, of England, v. 5, ch. 55, pp. 85-91.
Also in ; S. R. Gardiner, The First Two Stuarts
and the Puritan Revolution, ch. 6, sect. 5, — The
same, Hist, of Eng., 1603-1643, eh. 103 (». 10).—
J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth : Pym;
Hampden.- — L. von Ranke, Hist: of Eng., 1.7th
Cent., bk. 8, eh. 10 (?). 3).
A. D. 1642 (January — August). — Prepara-
tions for war. — The marshalling of forces. —
The raising of the King's standard. — "Janu-
ary 10th. The King with his Court quits White-
hall ; the Five Members and Parliament proposing
to return tomorrow, with the whole City in arms
round them. He left Whitehall ; never saw it
again till he came to lay down his head there.
March 9th. The King has sent away his Queen
from Dover, 'to be in a place of safety,' — and
also to pawn the Crown-jewels in Holland, and
get him arms. He returns Northward again,
avoiding London. Many messages between the
Houses of Parliament and him: 'Will your
Majesty grant us Power of the Militia ; accept
this list of Lord-Lieutenants ? ' On the 9th of
March, still advancing Northward without af-
firmative response, he has got to Newmarket;
where another Message overtakes him, earnestly
urges itself upon him; ' Could not your Majesty
please to grant us Power of the Militia for a lim-
ited time ?' ' No, by God I' answers his Majesty,
'not for an hour.' — On the 19th of March he
is at York; where his Hull Magazine, gathered
for service against the Scots, is lying near; where
a great Earl of Newcastle, and other Northern
potentates, will help him ; where at least London
and its Puritanism, now grown so fierce, is far
off. There we will leave him ; attempting Hull
Magazine, in vain ; exchanging messages with
his Parliament; messages, missives, printed and
written Papers without limit; Law-pleadings
of both parties before the great tribunal of tiie
English Nation, each party striving to prove
itself right and within the verge of Law; pre-
served still in acres of typography, once thrill-
ingly alive in every fibre of them ; now a mere
torpor, readable by few creatures, not remem-
berable by any." — T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's
Letters and Speeches, pt. 3, preliminary. — "As
early as June 3 a ship had arrived on the North-
English coast, bringing the King arms and am-
munition from Holland, purchased by the sale of
the crown-jewels which the Queen had taken
abroad. On the 33d of the same month more
than forty of the nobles and others in attendance
on the King at York had put down tlicir names
for the numbers of armed horse they would fur-
nish respectively for Iiis service. Requisitions in
the King's name were also out for supplies of
money; and the two Universities, and the Col-
leges in each, were invited to send in their plate.
On the other hand, the Parliament had not been
more negligent. There had been contributions
or promises from all the chief Parliamentarian
nobles and others ; there was a large loan from
the city ; and hundreds of thousands, on a smaller
scale, were willing to subscribe. And already,
through all the shires, the two opposed powers
were grappling and jostling with each other in
raising levies. On the King's side there were
what were called Commissions of Array, or pow-
ers granted to certain nobles and others by name
to raise troops for the King. On the side of
Parliament, in addition to the Volunteering
which had been going on in many places (as, for
example, in Cambridgeshire, where Oliver Crom-
well was forming a troop of Volunteer horse
. . . ), there was the Militia Ordinance available
wherever the persons named in that ordinance
were really zealous for Parliament, and able to
act personally in the districts assigned them.
And so on the 13th of July the Parliament had
passed the necessary vote for supplying an army,
and had appointed the Earl of Essex to be its
commander-in-chief, and the Earl of Bedford to
be its second in command as general of horse. It
was known, on the other side, that the Earl of
Lindsey, in consideration of his past experience
of service both on sea and land, was to have the
command of the King's army, and that his master
of horse was to be the King's nephew, young
Prince Rupert, who was expected from the Con-
tinent on purpose. Despite all these prepara-
tions, however, it was probably not till August
had begun that the certainty of Civil War was
universally acknowledged. It was on the 9th of
that month tliat the King issued his proclamation
' for suppressing the present Rebellion under the
command of Robert, Earl of Essex,' offering
pardon to him and others if within six days
they made their submission. The Parliamentary
answer to this was on the 11th; on which day
the Commons resolved, each man separately ris-
ing in his place and giving his word, that they
would stand by the Earl of Essex with their
lives and fortunes to the end. Still, even after
that, there were trembling souls here and there
who hoped for a reconciliation. Monday the
23d of August put an end to all such fluttering :
894
ENGLAND, 1642.
War beguji.
ENGLAND, 1642.
— On that day, the King, who had meanwhile
left York, and come about a hundred miles far-
ther south, into the very heart of England, . . .
made a backward movement as far as the town
of Nottingham, wliere preparations had been
made for the great scene that was to follow. . . .
This consisted in bringing out the royal standard
and setting it up in due form. It was about si-\
o'clock in the evening when it was done. ... A
herald read a proclamation, declaring the cause
why the standard had been set up, and summon-
ing all the lieges to assist his Majesty. Those
who were present cheered and tlirew up their
hats, and, with a beating of drums and a sound-
ing of trumpets, the ceremony ended. . . . From
that evening of the 22d of August, 1643, tlie
Civil War had begun." — D. Masson, Life of John
Milton, bk. 2, ch. 8 (». 2).
Also in: John Forster, Statesmen of the Com-
monwealth: Pym ; Hampden. — S. R. Gardiner,
Hist. ofEng., 1603-1642, ch. 104-105 {v. 10).
A. D. 1642 (August— September).— The na-
tion choosing sides. — "In wealth, in numbers,
and in cohesion tlie Parliament was stronger than
the king. To him there liad rallied most of the
greater nobles, many of the lesser gentry, some
proportion of tlie richer citizens, the townsmen
of the west, and tlie rural population generally
of the west and north of England. For the
Parliament stood a strong section of the peers
and greater gentry, the great bulk of the lesser
gentry, the townsmen of the richer parts of Eng-
land, the whole eastern and liome counties, and
lastly, the city of London. But as the Civil War
did not sharply divide classes, so neither did it
geographically bisect England. Roughly speak-
ing, aristocracy and peasantry, the Church, uni-
versities, the world of culture, fasliion, and
pleasure were loyal : the gentry, the yeomanry,
trade, commerce, morality, and law inclined to
the Parliament. Broadly divided, the north and
west went for the king ; the soutli and east for
the Houses; but the lianes of demarcation were
never exact: cities, castles, and manor-houses
long held out in an enemy's county. There is
only one permanent limitation. Draw a line
from the Wash to tlie Solent. East of that line
the country never yielded to the king ; from first
to' last it never failed the Parliament. Within
it are enclosed Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Cam-
bridge, Huntingdon, Bedford, Bucks, Herts, Jlid-
dlesex, Surrey, Kent, Sussex. Tliis was the
wealthiest, the most populous, and the most ad-
vanced portion of England. AVith Gloucester,
Reading, Bristol, Leicester, and Northampton,
it formed the natural home of Puritanism." — P.
Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, ch. 4.
A. D. 1642 (October — -December). — Edgehill
^the opening battle of the war. — The Eastern
Association. — Immediately after the raising of
his standard at Nottingham, the King, "aware
at last that he could not rely on the inhabitants
of Yorkshire, moved to Shrewsbury, at once to
collect the Catholic gentry of Lancashire and
Cheshire, to receive the Royalist levies of Wales,
and to secure the valley of the Severn. The
movement was successful. In a few days his
little army was increased fourfold, and he felt
himself strong enough to make a direct march
towards the capital. Essex had garrisoned
Northampton, Coventry and Warwick, and lay
himself at Worcester ; but the King, waiting for
no sieges, left the garrisoned towns unmolested
and passed on towards London, and Essex re-
ceived peremptory orders to pursue and interpose
if possible between the King and London. On
the 22nd of October he was close upon the King's
rear at Keynton, between Stratford and Ban-
bury. But his army was by no means at its full
strength ; some regiments had been left to garri-
son the West, others, under Hampden had not
yet joined him. But delay was impossible, and
the first battle of the war was fought on the
plain at the foot of the north-west slope of
Edgehill, over which the royal army descended,
turning back on its course to meet Essex. Both
partij:s claimed the victory. In fact it was with
the King. The Parliamentary cavalry found
themselves wholly unable to withstand the charge
of Rupert's cavaliers. Wliole regiments turned
and fled without striking a blow; but, as usual,
want of discipline ruined the royal cause.
Rupert's men fell to plundering tlie Parliament-
ary baggage, and returned to tlie field only in
time to find that the infantry, under the personal
leading of Essex, had reestablished the fight.
Night closed the battle [which is sometimes
named from Edgehill and sometimes from Keyn-
ton]. The King's army withdrew to the vantage-
ground of the hills, and Essex, reinforced by
Hampden, passed the night upon the field. But
the Royalist army was neither beaten nor checked
in its advance, wliile the rottenness of the Par-
liamentary troops had been disclosed." Some
attempts at peace-making followed this doubtful
first collision ; but their only effect was to em-
bitter the passions on botli sides. The King ad-
vanced, threatening London, but the citizens
of the capital turned out valiantly to oppose
him, and he "fell back upon Oxford, which
henceforward became the centre of their opera-
tions. . . . War was again the only resource, and
speedily became universal. . . . There was local
fighting over the whole of England. . . . The
headquarters of the King were constantly at Ox-
ford, from which, as from a centre, Rupert would
suddenly make rapid raids, now in one direction,
now in another. Between him and London,
about Reading, Aylesbury, and Thame, lay what
may be spoken of as the main army of Parlia-
ment, under the command of Lord-General Essex.
. . . The other two chief scenes of the war were
Yorkshire and the West. In Yorkshire the Fair-
faxes, Ferdinando Lord Fairfax and his son Sir
Thomas, made what head they could against
what was known as the Popish army under the
command of the Earl, subsequently Marquis of
Newcastle, which consisted mainly of the troops
of the Northern counties, which had become
associated under Newcastle in favour of Charles.
Newark, in Nottinghamshire, was early made
a royal garrison, and formed the link of connec-
tion between the operations in Yorkshire and at
Oxford. In the extreme South-west, Lord Stam-
ford, the Parliamentary General, was making a
somewhat unsuccessful resistance against Sir
Ralph, afterwards Lord Hopton. AVales was
wholly Royalist, and one of the chief objects of
Charles's generals was to secure the Severn val-
ley, and thus connect the war in Devonshire with
the central operations at Oxford. In the Eastern
counties matters assumed rather a different form.
The principle of forming several counties into an
association . . . was adopted by the Parliament,
and several such associations were formed, but
none of these came to much except that of the
895
ENGLAND, 1642.
CromiCKll
and his Ironsides.
ENGLAND, 1043.
Eastern counties, which was known by way of
preeminence as 'The Association.' Its object
was to Ijeep the war entirely beyond the borders
of the counties of which it consisted. The reason
of its success was the genius and energy of Crom-
well." — J. F. Bright, Hist. ofEng., period 2, p.
659. — "This winter there arise among certain
Counties ' Associations ' for mutual defence,
against Royalism and plunderous Rupertism; a
measure clierished by tlie Parliament, condemned
as treasonable by the King. Of wliich ' Associa-
tions,' countable to the number of five or six, we
name only one, that of Norfolli, Suffolk, Esses,
Cambridge, Herts ; with Lord Gray of Warli for
Commander; where and under whom Oliver was
now serving. This ' Eastern Association ' is alone
worth naming. All the other Associations, no
man of emphasis being in the midst of them,
fell in a few months to pieces; only tliis of
Cromwell subsisted, enlarged itself , grew famous;
— and kept its own borders clear of invasion dur-
ing the whole course of the War." — T. Carlyle,
Oliwr Cromwell's Letters and Speeches, pt. 2, pre-
liminary.
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of the Great
Cinl War, ch. 2-4 (v. 1).— W. Godwin, Eist. of
the Commonwealth, ch. 2 (». 1),
A. D. 1643 (May). — Cromwell's Ironsides. —
" It was . . . probably, a little before Edgehill,
that there took place between Cromwell and
Hampden the memorable conversation which fif-
teen years afterwards the Protector related in a
speech to his second Parliament. It is a piece of
autobiography so instructive and pathetic that it
must be set forth in full in the words of Crom-
well himself; — 'I was a person who, from my
first employment, was suddenly preferred and
lifted up from lesser trusts to greater; from my
first being Captain of a Troop of Horse. ... I
had a very worthy friend then ; and he was a very
noble person, and I know his memory was very
grateful to all, — Mr. John Hampden. At my
first going out into this engagement, I saw our
men were beaten at every hand. . . . Your troops,
said I, are most of them old decayed serving-men,
and tapsters, and such kind of fellows; and, said
I, their troops are gentlemen's sons, younger sons
and persons of quality: do you think that the
spirits of such base mean fellows will ever be
able to encounter gentlemen, that have honour
and courage and resolution in them ? Truly I
did represent to him in this manner conscien-
tiously ; and truly I did tell him : You must get
men of a spirit: and take it not ill what I say, —
I know you will not, — of a spirit that is likely to
go on as far as gentlemen will go: or else you
will be beaten still. I told him so; I did truly.
He was a wise and worthy person ; and he did
think that I talked a good notion, but an imprac-
ticable one. ... I raised such men as had the
fear of God before them, as made some conscience
of what they did ; and from that day forward, I
must say to you, they were never beaten, and
wherever they were engaged against the enemy
they beat continually. ' . . . "The issue of the
whole war lay in that word. It lay with ' such
men as had some conscience in what they did. '
' From that day forward they were never beaten. '
. . . ' As for Colonel Cromwell,' writes a news-
letter of May, 1643, 'he hath 2,000 brave men,
well disciplined ; no man swears but he pays his
twelve-pence; if he be drunk, he is set in the
stocks, or worse; if one calls the other round-
head he is cashiered : insomuch that the countries
where they come leap for joy of them, and come
in and join with them. How happy were it
it all the forces were thus disciplined ! ' These
were the men who ultimately decided the war,
and established the Commonwealth. On the field
of jNIarston, Rupert gave Cromwell the name of
Ironside, and from thence this famous name
passed to his troopers. There are two features
in their history which we need to note. They
were indeed ' such men as had some conscience
in their work ' ; but they were also much more.
They were disciplined and trained soldiers. They
were the only body of ' regulars ' on either side.
The instinctive genius of Cromwell from the very
first created the strong nucleus of a regular army,
which at last in discipline, in skill, in valour,
reached the liighest perfection ever attained by
soldiers either in ancient or modern times. The
fervour of Cromwell is continually pressing
towards the extension of this ' regular ' force.
Through all the early disasters, this body of Iron-
sides kept the cause alive : at Marston it over-
whelmed the king : as soon as, by the New Model,
this system was extended to the whole army, the
Civil War was at an end."— F. Harrison, Oliver
Cromwell, ch. 4.
Also in : J. Forster, Statesmen of the Common-
wealth : Cromwell.
A. D. 1643 (June — September). — The King
calls in the Irish. — "To balance the accession
of power which the alliance with Scotland brought
to the Parliament, Charles was so unwise, men
then said so guilty, as to conclude a peace with
the Irish rebels, with the intent that thus those
of his forces which had been employed against
them, might be set free to join his army in Eng-
land. No act of the King, not the levying of
ship-money, not the crowd of monopolies which
enriched the court and impoverished the people,
neither the extravagance of Buckingham, the
tyranny of Strafford nor the prelacy of Laud,
not even the attempted arrest of the five mem-
bers, raised such a storm of indignation and
hatred throughout the kingdom, as did this de-
termination of the King to withdraw (as men
said), for the purpose of subduing his subjects,
the force which had been raised to avenge the
blood of 100,000 Protestant martyrs. . . . To the
England of the time this act was nauseous, was
exasperating to the highest degree, while to the
cause of the King it was fatal; for, from this
moment, the condition of the Parliamentary party
began to mend." — N. L. Walford, Parliament-
ary Generals of the Great Civil War, ch. 2. —
"None of the king's schemes proved so fatal to
his cause as these. On their discovery, ofiicer
after oflicer in his own army flung down their
commissions, the peers who had fled to Oxford
fled back again to London, and the Royalist re-
action in the Parliament itself came utterly to an
end."— J. R. Green, Short Eist. of Eng., ch. 8,
sect. 7.
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Eist. of the Great
Civil War, ch. 11 (v. 1).
A. D. 1643 (July). — Meeting of the West-
minster Assembly of Divines. — At the begin-
ning of July, 1643, "London was astir with a
new event of great consequence in the course of
the national revolution. This was the meeting
of the famous Westminster Assembly. The neces-
sity of an ecclesiastical Synod or Convocation, to
cooperate with the Parliament, had been long
896
ENGLAND, 1643.
^^'estminster
Assembly.
ENGLAND, 1643.
felt. Among the articles of the Grand Remon-
strance of Dec. 1641 had been one desiring a con-
vention of ' a General Synod of the most grave,
pious, learned, and judicious divines of this
island, assisted by some from foreign parts,' to
consider of all things relating to the Church and
report thereon tu Parliament. It is clear from
the wording of this article that it was contem-
plated that the Synod should contain representa-
tives from the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Indeed, by that time, the establishment of a uni-
formity of Doctrine, Discipline, and Worship be-
tween the Churches of England and Scotland
was the fixed idea of those who chiefly desired a
Synod. ... In April, 1643 ... it was ordered
by the House, in pursuance of previous resolu-
tions on the subject, 'that the names of such
divines as shall be thought fit to be consulted
with concerning the matter of the Church be
brought in tomorrow morning,' the understood
rule being that the knights and burgesses of each
English county should name to the House two
divines, and those of each Welsh county one di-
vine, for approval. Accordingly, on the 20th,
the names were given in. . . . By the stress of
the war the Assembly was postponed. At last,
hopeless of a bill that should pass in the regular
way by the King's consent, the Houses resorted,
in this as in other things, to their peremptory
plan of Ordinance bj' tlicir own authority. On
the 13th of May, 1643, an Ordinance for calling'
an Assembly was introduced in the Commons;
which Ordinance, after due going and coming
between the two Houses, came to maturity June
13, wlien it was entered at full length in the
Lords' Journals. ' Whereas, amongst the infinite
blessings of Almighty God upon this nation,' —
so runs the preamble of the Ordinance, — ' none
is, or can be, more dear to us than the purity of
our religion; and for as much as many things
yet remain in the discipline, liturgy and govern-
ment of the Church which necessarily require a
more perfect reformation: and whereas it has
been declared and resolved, by the Lords and
Commons assembled in Parliament, that the pres-
ent Church Government by Archbishops, Bishops,
their Chancellors, Commissaries, Deans, Deans
and Chapters, Archdeacons, and other ecclesias-
tical officers depending on the hierarchy, is evil
and justly offensive and burdensome to the king-
dom, and a great impediment to reformation and
growth of religion, and very prejudicial to the
state and government of this kingdom, and that
therefore they are resolved the same shall be
taken away, and that such a government shall
be settled in the Church as may be agreeable to
God's Holy Word, and most apt to procure and
preserve the peace of the Church at home, and
nearer agreement with the Church of Scotland,
and other reformed Churches abroad. ... Be it
therefore ordained, &c.' What is ordained is that
149 persons, enumerated by name in the Ordi-
nance . . . shall meet on the 1st of July next in
King Henry VII. 's Chapel at Westminster; . . .
' to confer and treat among themselves of such
matters and things, concerning the liturgy, disci-
pline and government of the Church of England
... as shall be proposed by either or both Houses
(if Parliament, and no other. ' . . . Notwithstand-
ing a Royal Proclamation from Oxford, dated
June 22, forbidding the Assembly and threaten-
ing consequences, the first meeting duly took
place on the day appointed — Saturday, July 1,
57
1643 ; and from that day till the 22d of February,
1648-9, or for more than five years and a half,
the Westminster Assembly is to be borne in mind
as a power or institution in the English realm,
existing side by side with the Long Parliament,
and in constant conference and cooperation with
it. The number of its sittings during these five
3'ears and a half was 1,163 in all; which is at the
rate of about four sittings every week for the
whole time. The earliest years of the Assembly
were the most important." — D. Masson, Life of
John Milton, bk. 3, ch. 3 (v. 2).
Also in: A. F. Mitchell, Tlie Westminster Aa-
semUy, led. 4-5. — D. Neal, Hist, of the Puritans,
V. 3, ch. 3 and 4. — See, also. Independents.
A. D. 1643 (July — September). — The Solemn
League and Covenant with the Scottish
nation. — " Scotland had been hitherto kept aloof
from the English quarrel. ... Up to this time
the pride and delicacy of the English patriots
withheld them, for obvious reasons, from claiming
her assistance. Had it been possible, they would
still have desired to engage no distant party in this
great domestic struggle; but when the present
unexpected crisis arrived . . . these considera-
tions were laid aside, and the chief leaders of the
Parliament resolved upon an embassy to the
North, to bring the Scottish nation into the field.
The conduct of this embassy was a matter of the
highest difficulty and danger. The Scots were
known to be bigoted to their own persuasions of
narrow and exclusive church government, whUe
the greatest men of the English Parliament had
proclaimed the sacred maxim that every man
who worshipped God according to the dictates of
his conscience was entitled to the protection of the
State. But these men. Vane, Cromwell, Marten
and St. John, though the difficulties of the com-
mon cause had brought them into the acknowl-
edged position of leaders and directors of affairs,
were in a minority in the House of Commons,
and the party who were their superiors in num-
bers were as bigoted to the most exclusive prin-
ciples of Presbyterianism as the Scots themselves.
Denzil Holies stood at the head of this inferior
class of patriots. . . . The most eminent of the
Parliamentary nobility, particularly Northiimber-
land, Essex and Manchester belonged also to
this body; while the London clergy, and the
metropolis itself, were almost entirely Presby-
terian. These things considered, there was indeed
great reason to apprehend that this party, backed
by the Scots, and supported with a Scottish army,
would be strong enough to overpower the advo-
cates of free conscience, and ' set up a tyranny
not less to be deplored than that of Laud and his
hierarchy, which had proved one of the main
occasions of bringing on the war. ' Yet, oppos-
ing to all this danger only their own high pur-
poses and dauntless courage, the smaller party
of more consummate statesmen were the first to
propose the embassy to Scotland. ... On the
30th of July, 1643, the commissioners set out
from London. They were four; and the man
principally confided in among them was Vane
[Sir Henry, the younger]. He, indeed, was the
individual best qualified to succeed Hampden as
a counsellor in the arduous struggle in which the
nation was at this time engaged. . . . Immedi-
ately on his arrival in Edinburgh the negotia-
tion commenced, and what Vane seems to have
anticipated at once occurred. The Scots offered
their assistance heartily on the sole condition of
897
ENGLAND, 1643.
Solemn
League and Covenant.
ENGLAND, 1643.
an adhesion to the Scottish religious sj'stcni on
the part of England. After many long and very
warm debates, in which Vane held to one firm
policy from the first, a solemn covenant was pro-
posed, which Vane insisted should be named a
solemn league and covenant, wliile certain words
were inserted in it on his subsequent motion, to
which he also adhered with immovable constancy,
and which had the effect of leaving open to the
great party in England, to whose interests he
was devoted, that last liberty of conscience which
man should never surrender. . . . The famous
article respecting religion ran in these words:
'That we shall sincerely, really, and constantly,
through the grace of God, endeavour, in our
several places and callings, the preservation of
the Reformed religion in the Church of Scotland,
in doctrine, worship, discipline and government,
against our common enemies ; the reformation of
religion in the kingdoms of England and Ire-
land, in doctrine, worship, discipline, and govern-
ment, according to the Word of God, and the
example of the best Reformed churches; and
we shall endeavour to bring the churches of God
In the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction
and uniformity in religion, confessing of faith,
form of church government directory for wor-
ship and catechizing ; that we and our posterity
after us, may as brethren live in faith and love,
and the Lord may delight to dwell in the midst
of us. That we shall in like manner, without
respect of persons, endeavour the extirpation of
popery, prelacy (that Is, church government by
archbishops, bishops, their chancellors and com-
missaries, deans, deans and chapters, archdea-
cons, and all other ecclesiastical officers depend-
ing on that hierarchy). ' Vane, by this introduction
of ' according to tlie Word of God,' left the in-
terpretation of that word to the free conscience
of every man. On the 17th of August, the
solemn league and covenant was voted by the
Legislature and the Assembly of the Church at
Edinburgh. The king in desperate alarm, sent
his commands to the Scotch people not to take
such a covenant. In reply, they ' humbly ad-
vised his majesty to take the covenant himself.'
The surpassing service rendered by Vane on this
great occasion to the Parliamentary cause, ex-
posed him to a more violent hatred from the
Royalists than he had yet experienced, and
Clarendon has used every artifice to depreciate his
motives and his sincerity. . . . The solemn league
and covenant remained to be adopted in England.
The Scottish form of giving it authority was
followed as far as possible. It was referred by
the two Houses to the Assembly of Divines,
which had commenced its sittings on the 1st of
the preceding July, being called together to be
consulted with by the Parliament for the purpose
of settling the government and form of worship
of the Church of England. This assembly al-
ready referred to, consisted of 121 of the clergy ;
iuid a number of lay assessors were joined with
thera, consisting of ten peers, and twenty mem-
bers of the House of Commons. All these per-
sons were named by the ordinance of the two
Houses of Parliament whicli gave birth to the
assembly. The public taking of the Covenant
was solemnized on the 25th of September, each
member of either House attesting his adherence
by oath first, and then by subscribing his name.
The name of Vane, subscribed immediately on
his return, appears upon the list next to that of
Cromwell." — J. Forster, Statesmen of the Common-
wealtli : Vane.
Also in; J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir
Henry VaTie, ch. 8.— A. P. Mitchell, The West-
minster Assembly, lect. 5-6. — D. Neal, Bist. of the
Puritans, v. 3, ch. 2. — S. R. Gardiner, Const.
Doe's of the Puritan Sev., p. 187.
The following is the text of the Solemn League
and Covenant:
" A solemn league and covenant for Reforma-
tion and defence of religion, the honour and
ha])piness of tlie King, and the peace and safety
of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and
Ireland. We noblemen, barons, knights, gentle-
men, citizens, burgesses, ministers of the Gospel,
and commons of all sorts in the kingdoms of Eng-
land, Scotland and Ireland, by the providence of
God living under one King, and being of one re-
formed religion ; having before our eyes the glory
of God, and the advancement of the kingdom of
our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, the honour
and happiness of the King's Majesty and his pos-
terity, and the true public liberty, safety and
peace of the kingdoms, wherein every one's pri-
vate condition is included ; and calling to mind
the treacherous and bloody plots, conspiracies,
attempts and practices of the enemies of God
against the true religion and professors thereof
in all places, especially in these three kingdoms,
ever since the reformation of religion ; and how
. much their rage, power and presumption are of
late, and at this time increased and exercised,
whereof the deplorable estate of the Church and
kingdom of Ireland, the distressed estate of the
Church and kingdom of England, and the dan-
gerous estate of the Church and kingdom of
Scotland, are present and public testimonies: we
have (now at last) after other means of supplica-
tion, remonstrance, protestations and sufferings,
for the preservation of ourselves and our religion
from utter ruin and destruction, according to the
commendable practice of these kingdoms in former
times, and the example of God's people in other
nations, after mature deliberation, resolved and
determined to enter into a mutual and solemn
league and covenant, wherein we all subscribe,
and each one of us for himself, with our hands
lifted up to the most high God, do swear, I.
That we shall sincerely, really and constantly,
through the grace of God, endeavour in our sev-
eral places and callings, the preservation of the
reformed religion in the Church of Scotland, in
doctrine, worship, discipline and government,
against our common enemies; the reformation of
religion in the kingdoms of England and Ireland,
in doctrine, worship, discipline and government,
according to the Word of God, and the example
of the best reformed Churches ; and we shall en-
deavour to bring the Churches of God in the
three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and
uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form
of Church government, directory for worship and
catechising, that we, and our posterity after us,
maj', as bretliren, live in faith and love, and the
Lord may deliglit to dwell in the midst of us.
n. That we shall in like manner, without respect
of persons, endeavour the extirpation of Popery,
prelacy (that is. Church government by Arch-
bishops, BisLiops, their Chancellors and Commis-
saries, Deans, Deans and Chapters, Archdeacons,
and ail other ecclesiastical officers depending on
that hierarchy), superstition, heresy, schism, pro-
faneness and whatsoever shall be found to be
898
ENGLAND, 1643.
Siege of
Gloucestef.
ENGLAND, 1643.
contrary to sound doctrine and the power of god-
liness lest we partake in other men's sins, and
thereby be in danger to receive of their plagues ;
and that the Lord may be one, and His name one
in the three kingdoms. IIL AVe shall with the
same sincerity, reality and constancy, in our sev-
eral vocations, endeavour with our estates and
lives mutually to preserve the rights and privi-
leges of the Parliaments, and the liberties of the
kingdoms, and to preserve and defend the King's
Majesty's person and authority, in the preserva-
tion and defence of the true religion and liberties
of the kingdoms, that the world may bear wit-
ness with our consciences of our loyalty, and that
we have no thoughts or intentions to diminish
His Majesty's just power and greatness. IV.
We shall also with all faithfulness endeavour the
discovery of all such as have been or shall be in-
cendiaries, malignants or evil instruments, by
hindering the reformation of religion, dividing
the King from his people, or one of the kingdoms
from another, or making any faction or parties
amongst the people, contrary to the league and
covenant, that they may be brought to public
trial and receive condign punishment, as the de-
gree of their offences shall require or deserve,
or the supreme judicatories of both kingdoms
respectively, or others having power from them
for that effect, shall judge convenient. V. And
whereas the happiness of a blessed peace between
these kingdoms, denied in former times to our
progenitors, is by the good providence of God
granted to us, and hath been lately concluded
and settled by both Parliaments: we shall each
one of us, according to our places and interest,
endeavour that they may remain conjoined in a
firm peace and union to all posterity, and that
justice may be done upon the wilful opposers
thereof, in manner expressed in the precedent
articles. VL We shall also, according to our
places and callings, in this common cause of re-
ligion, liberty and peace of the kingdom, assist
and defend all those that enter into this league
and covenant, in the maintaining and pursuing
thereof; and shall not suffer ourselves, directly
or indirectly, by whatsoever combination, per-
suasion or terror, to be divided and withdrawn
from this blessed union and conjunction, whether
to make defection to the contrary part, or give
ourselves to a detestable indifferency or neutral-
ity in this cause, which so much concerneth the
glory of God, the good of the kingdoms, and the
honour of the King ; but shall all the days of our
lives zealously and constantly continue therein,
against all opposition, and promote the same ac-
cording to our power, against all lets and impedi-
ments whatsoever; and what we are not able
ourselves to suppress or overcome we shall reveal
and make known, that it may be timely prevented
or removed : all which we shall do as in the sight
of God. And because these kingdoms are guilty
of many sins and provocations against God, and
His Son Jesus Christ, as is too manifest by our
present distresses and dangers, the fruits thereof :
we profess and declare, before God and the world,
our unfeigned desire to be humbled for our own
sins, and for the sins of these kingdoms ; especially
that we have not as we ought valued the inesti-
mable benefit of the Gospel ; that we have not
laboured for the purity and power thereof ; and
that we have not endeavoured to receive Christ
in our hearts, nor to walk worthy of Him in our
lives, which are the causes of other sins and trans-
gressions so much abounding amongst us, and
our true and unfeigned purpose, desire and en-
deavour, for ourselves and all others under our
power and charge, both in public and in private,
in all duties we owe to God and man, to amend
our lives, and each one to go before another in
the example of a real reformation, that the Lord
may turn away His wrath and heavy indignation,
and establish these Churches and kingdoms in
truth and peace. And this covenant we make
in the presence of Almighty God, the Searcher
of all hearts, with a true intention to perform
the same, as we shall answer at that Great Day
when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed :
most humbly beseeching the Lord to strengthen
us by His Holy Spirit for this end, and to bless
our desires and proceedings with such success as
may be a deliverance and safety to His people,
and encouragement to the Christian Cliurches
groaning under or in danger of the yoke of Anti-
christian tyranny, to join in the same or like as-
sociation and covenant, to the glory of God, the
enlargement of the kingdom of Jesus Christ, and
the peace and tranquility of Christian kingdoms
and commonwealths. "
A. D. 1643 (August — September). — Siege of
Gloucester and first Battle of Newbury. —
"When the war had lasted a year, the advan-
tage was decidedly with the Royalists. Tney were
victorious, both in the western and in the north-
ern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the
second city in the kingdom, from the Parlia-
ment. They had won several battles, and had
not sustained a single serious or ignominious de-
feat. Among the Roundheads, adversity had
begun to produce dissension and discontent.
The Parliament was kept in alarm, sometimes
by plots and sometimes by riots. It was thought
necessary to fortify London against the royal
army, and to hang some disaffected citizens at
their own doors. Several of the most distin-
guished peers who had hitherto remained at
Westminster fled to the court a*. Oxford ; nor can
it be doubted that, if the operations of the Cava-
liers had, at this season, been directed by a saga-
cious and powerful mind, Charles would soon
have marched in triumph to Whitehall. But
the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass
away ; and it never returned. In August, 1643,
he sate down before the city of Gloucester. That
city was defended by the inhabitants and by the
garrison, with a determination such as had not,
since the commencement of the war, been shown
by the adherents of the Parliament. The emu-
lation of London was excited. The trainbands
of the City volunteered to march wherever their
services might be required. A great force was
speedily collected, and began to move westward.
The siege of Gloucester was raised. The Royal-
ists in every part of the kingdom were disheart-
ened ; the spirit of the parliamentary party re-
vived; and the apostate Lords, who had lately
fled from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back
from Oxford to Westminster. "—Lord Macaulay,
Ilist. of Encj., ch. 1. — After accomplishing the
relief of Gloucester, the Parliamentary army,
marching back to London, was intercepted at
Newbury by the army of the king, and forced to
fight a battle, Sect. 20, 1643, in which both par-
ties, as at Edgehill, claimed the victory. The
Royalists, however, failed to bar the road to
London, as they had undertaken to do, and Essex
resumed his march on the following morning.
899
ENGLAND, 1643.
Kewbin-y. Lathoni House
aiid Marston Moor.
ENGLAND, 1644.
—"In this unhappy battle was slain the lord
viscount Falkland ; a person of such prodig-
ious parts of learning and knowledge, of that
inimitable sweetness and delight in conversation,
of so flowing and obliging a humanity and good-
ness to mankind, and of that primitive sincerity
and integrity of life, that if there were no other
brand upon this odious and accursed war than
that single loss, it must be most infamous and
execrable to all posterity. " — Earl of Clarendon,
Hist, of tlie Rebellion, bk. 7, sect. 217. — This
lamented death on the royal side nearly evened, so
to speak, the great, unmeasured calamity which
had befallen the better cause three months be-
fore, when the high-souled patriot Hampden was
slain in a paltry skirmish with Rupert's horse, at
Chalgrove Field, not far from the borders of Ox-
fordshire. Soon after the fight at Newbury,
Charles, having occupied Reading, withdrew his
army to Oxford and went into winter quarters.
— N. L. Walford, Parliamentary Generals of the
Great Civil War, ch. 2.
Also in : Sir E. Cust, Lives of tlie Warriors of
tlie Ciiiil Wars, pt. 2. — S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of
the Great Ciril War, ch. 10 (». 1).
A. D. 1644 (January). — Battle of Nantv^ich
and siege of Lathom House.— The Irish army
brought over by King Charles and landed in
Flintshire, in November, 1643, under the com-
mand of Lord Byron, invaded Cheshire and laid
siege to Nantwich, which was the headquarters
of the Parliamentary cause in that region.
Young Sir Thomas Fairfax was ordered to col-
lect forces and relieve the town. With great
difficulty he succeeded, near the end of January,
1644, in leading 2,500 foot-soldiers and twenty-
eight troops of horse, against the besieging
army, which numbered 3,000 foot and 1,800
horse. On the 28th of January he attacked and
routed the Irish ro3'alists completely. "All the
Royalist Colonels, including the subsequently
notorious Monk, 1,500 soldiers, six pieces of
ordnance, and quantities of arms, were cap-
tured." Having accomplished this most im-
portant service. Sir Thomas, "to his great an-
noyance," received orders to lay siege to Lathom
House, one of the country seats of the Earl of
Derby, which had been fortified and secretly
garrisoned, with 300 soldiers. It was held by
the high-spirited and dauntless Countess of
Derby, in the absence of her husband, who was
in the Isle of Man. Sir Thomas Fairfax soon
escaped from this ignoble enterprise and left it
to be carried on, first, by his cousin, Sir William
Fairfax, and afterwards by Col. Rigby. The
Countess defended her house for three months,
until the approach of Prince Rupert forced the
raising of the siege in the following spring.
Lathom House was not finally surrendered to
the Roundheads until Dec. 6, 1645, when it was
demolished. — C. R. Markham, Life of the Cheat
Lord Fairfax, ch. 13.
Also in : >Irs. Thompson, Becollections of Lit-
erary Characters and Celebrated Places, v. 2, ch. 2.
— E. Warburton, Memmrs of I'rince Bvpert and
tlie Cavaliers, v. 2, ch. 4.
A. D. 1644 (January— July). — The Scots in
England.— The Battle of Marston Moor. —
"On the 19th of January, 1644, the Scottish
army entered England. Lesley, now earl of
Leven, commanded them. ... In the mean-
time, the parliament at Westminster formed a
council under the title of ' The Committee of
the Two Kingdoms,' consisting of seven Lords,
fourteen members of the Commons, and four
Scottish Commissioners. Whatever belongs to
the executive power as distinguished from the
legislative devolved upon this Committee. In
the spring of 1644 the parliament had five armies
in the field, paid by general or local taxation,
and by voluntary contributions. Including the
Scottish army there were altogether 50,000 men
under arms; the English forces being com-
manded, as separate armies, by Essex, Waller,
Manchester, and Fairfax. Essex and Waller ad-
vanced to blockade Oxford. The queen went to
Exeter in April, and never saw Charles again.
The blockading forces around Oxford had be-
come so strong that resistance appeared to be
hopeless. On the night of the 3d of June the
king secretly left the city and passed safely be-
tween the two hostile armies. There had again
been jealousies and disagreements between Essex
and Waller. Essex, supported by the council
of war, but in opposition to the committee of
the two kingdoms, had marched to the west.
Waller, meanwhile, went in pursuit of the king
into AVorcestershire. Charles suddenly returned
to Oxford; and then at Copredy Bridge, near
Banbury, defeated Waller, who had hastened
back to encounter him. Essex was before the
walls of Exeter, in which city the queen had
given birth to a princess. The king hastened to
the west. He was strong enough to meet either
of the parliamentary armies thus separated.
Meanwhile the combined English and Scottish
armies were besieging York. Rupert had just
accomplished the relief of Lathom House, which
had been defended by the heroic countess of
Derby for eighteen weeks, against a detachment
of the army of Fairfax. He then marched to-
wards York with 20,000 men. The allied Eng-
lish and Scots retired from Hessey Moor, near
York, to Tadcaster. Rupert entered York with
3,000 cavalry. The Earl of Newcastle was in
command there. He counselled a prudent delay.
The impetuous Rupert said he had the orders of
the king for his guidance, and he was resolved
to fight. On the 2nd of July, having rested two
daj's in and near York, and enabled the city to
be newly provisioned, the royalist army went
forth to engage. They met their enemy on
Marston Moor. The issue of the encounter
would have been more than doubtful, but for
Cromwell, who for the first time had headed his
Ironsides in a great pitched battle. The right
wing of the parliamentary army was scattered.
Rupert was chasing and slaying the Scottish
cavalry. . . . The charges of Fairfax and Crom-
well decided the day. The victory of the par-
liamentary forces was so complete that the Earl
of Newcastle left York, and embarked at Scar-
borough for the continent. Rupert marched
away also, with the wreck of his army, to Ches-
ter. Fifteen hundred prisoners, all the artillery,
more than 100 banners, remained with the vic-
tors; 4,150 bodies lay dead on the plain." — C.
Knight, Crown Hist, of Eng., ch. 25.
Also in : T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters
and Speec/ies, pt. 2, letter 8. — B. M. Cordery and
J. S. Phillpotts, Jiinff and Commonwealth, ch. 7.
— W. Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth, ch. 13
(«. 1). — E. Warburton, Memmrs of Prince Rupert
and the Cavaliers, v. 2, ch. 4.
A. D. 1644 (August — September^.— Essex's
surrender. — The second Battle of Newbury. —
900
ENGLAND, 1644.
Self-denying
Ordinance.
ENGLAND, 1645.
"The great success at Marston, which had given
the north to the Parliament, was all undone in
the south and west through feebleness and jeal-
ousies in the leaders and the wretclied policy
that directed the war. Detached armies, consist-
ing of a local militia, were aimlessly ordered
about by a committee of civilians in London.
Disaster followed on disaster. Essex, Waller,
and Manchester would neither agree amongst
themselves nor obey orders. Essex and Waller
had parted before Marston was fought; Man-
chester had returned from York to protect his
own eastern counties. Waller, after his defeat
at Copredy, did nothing, and naturally found his
army melting away. Essex, perversely advanc-
ing into the west, was out-manceu vred by Charles,
and ended a campaign of blunders by the sur-
render of all his infantry [at Fowey, in Cornwall,
Sept. 2, 1644]. By September 1644 throughout
the whole south-west the Parliament had not an
army in the iield. But the Committee of the
Houses still toiled on with honourable spirit, and
at last brought together near Newliury a united
army nearly double the strength of the King's.
On Sunday, the 29th of October, was fought the
second battle of Newbury, as usual in these ill-
ordered campaigns, late in the afternoon. An
arduous day ended without victory, in spite of the
greater numbers of the Parliament's army, though
the men fought well, and their officers led them
with skill and energy. At night the King was
suffered to withdraw his army without loss, and
later to carry off his guns and train. The urgent
appeals of Cromwell and his officers could not
infuse into Manchester energy to win the day, or
spirit to pursue the retreating foe. " — F. Harrison,
Oliver- Cromwell, ch. 5.
Also in : B. M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts,
King and Commonwealth, ch. 7. — S. R. Gardiner,
Hist, of the Great Civil War, ch. 19 and'lX.
A. D. 1644-1645. — The Self-denying Ordi-
nance. — "Cromwell had shown his capacity for
organization in the creation of the Ironsides ; his
military genius had displayed itself at Marston
Moor. Newbury first raised him into a political
leader. ' Without a more speedy, vigorous and
effective prosecution of the war,' he said to the
Commons after his quarrel with Manchester,
' casting off all lingering proceedings, like those
of soldiers of fortune beyond sea to spin out a
war, we shall make the kingdom weary of us,
and hate the name of a Parliament. ' But under
the leaders who at present conducted it a vigor-
ous conduct of the war was hopeless. They were,
in Cromwell's plain words, ' afraid to conquer. '
They desired not to crush Charles, but to force
him back, with as much of his old strength re-
maining as might be, to the position of a con-
stitutional King. . . . The army, too, as he long
ago urged at Edgehill, was not an army to con-
quer with. Now, as then, he urged that till the
whole force was new modeled, and placed under
a stricter discipline, ' they must not expect any
notable success in anything they went about.'
But the first step in such a reorganization must
be a change of officers. The army was led and
officered by members of the two Houses, and the
Self-renouncing [or Self-denying] Ordinance,
which was introduced by Cromwell and Vane,
declared the tenure of civil or military offices in-
compatible with a seat in either. In spite of a
long and bitter resistance, which was justified at
a later time by the political results which fol-
lowed this rupture of the tie which had hitherto
lioiuid the array to the Parliament, the drift of
public opinion was too strong to be withstood.
Tlie passage of the Ordinance brought about the
retirement of Essex, Manchester, and Waller;
and the new organization of the army went
rapidly on under a new commander-in-chief, Sir
Thomas Fairfax, the hero of the long contest in
Yorkshire, and who had been raised into fame by
his victory at Nantwich and his bravery at Mars-
ton Moor." — J. R. Green, Sho^-t Hist, of Eng., ch.
8, sect. 7.
Also m: AV. Godwin. Hist, of the Common-
irralth, ch. 15 (». 1). — J. K. Hosmer, Life of
Young Sir Henry Vane, ch. 11. — J. A. Picton,
Oliver Cromwell, ch. 10. — J. Forster, Statesmen of
the Commonwealth: Vane.
A. D. 1645 (January — February). — The at-
tempted Treaty of Uxbridge. — A futile negotia-
tion between the king and Parliament was opened
at Uxbridge in January, 1645. "But neither
the king nor his advisers entered on it with minds
sincerely bent on peace ; they, on the one hand,
resolute not to swerve from the utmost rigour of
a conqueror's terms, without having conquered ;
and he though more secretly, cherishing illusive
hopes of a more triumphant restoration to power
than any treaty could be expected to effect. The
three leading topics of discussion among the nego-
tiators at Uxbridge were, the church, the militia,
and the state of Ireland. Bound by their un-
happy covenant, and watched by their Scots col-
leagues, the English commissioners on the parlia-
ment's side demanded the complete establishment
of a presbyterian polity, and the substitution of
what was called the directory for the Anglican
liturgy. Upou this head there was little pros-
pect of a union." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of
Eng., ch. 10, pt. 1.
Also in: Earl of Clarendon, Hist, of the Re-
hellion, bk. 8, sect. 209-252 (v. 3).
A. D. 164s (January— April).— The New
Model of the army. — The passage of the Self-
denying Ordinance was followed, or accompanied,
by the adoption of the scheme for the so-called
New Model of the army. ' ' The New Model was
organised as follows : 10 Regiments of Cavalry of
600 men, 6,000; 10 Companies of Dragoons of
100 men, 1,000; 10 Regiments of Infantry of
1,400 men, 14,000: Total, 31,000 men. All offi-
cers were to be nominated by Sir Thomas Fair-
fax, the new General, and (as was insisted upon
by the Lords, with the object of excluding the
more fanatical Independents) every officer was to
sign the covenant within twenty days of his ap-
pointment. The cost of this force was estimated
at £539,460 per annum, about £1,600,000 of our
money. . . . Sir Thomas Fairfax having been
appointed Commander-in-Cliief by a vote of both
Houses on the 1st of April [A. D. 1645], Essex,
Manchester and others of the Lords resigned
their commissions on the 2nd. . . . The name of
Cromwell was of course, with those of other
members of the Commons, omitted from the
original list of the New Model army ; but with
a significance which could not have escaped re-
mark, the appointment of lieutenant-general was
left vacant, while none doubted by whom that
vacancy would be filled." — N. L. Walford, The
Parliamentary Oenerals of the Oreat Civil War,
ch. 4.
Also rcr : Sir E. Oust, Lives of the Warriors of
the Civil Wars, pt. 2 .• Fairfax.
901
ENGLAND, 1645.
Xaseby Pight.
ENGLAND, 1645.
A. D. 1645 (June).— The Battle of Naseby.
— " Early in April, Fairfax with his new army
advanced westward to raise the siege of Taunton,
which city Goring was besieging. Before tliat
task was completed lie received orders to enter
on the siege of Oxford. This did not suit his
own views or those of the Independents. They
had ioined their new army upon the implied
condition that decisive battles should be fought.
It was tlierefore witli great joy that Fairfax
received orders to proceed in pursuit of the royal
forces, wliich, having left Worcester, were
marching apparently against the Eastern Asso-
ciation, and had j ust taken Leicester on their way.
Before entering on this active service, Fairfax
demanded and obtained leave for Cromwell to
serve at least for one battle more in the capacity of
Lieutenant-General. He came up with the king
in the neighbourhood of Ilarborough. Charles
turned back to meet him, and just by the village
of Naseby the great battle known by that name
was fought. Cromwell had joined the army,
amid the rejoicing shouts of the troops, two days
before, with the Association horse. Again the
victory seems to have been chiefl}- due to his
skill. In detail it is almost a repetition of the bat-
tle of Marston Moor." — J. F. Bright, Hist, of
England, period 3, p. 675. — "The old Hamlet of
Naseby stands 3'et, on its old hill-top, very much
as it did in Saxon days, on the Northwestern
border of Northamptonshire ; nearly on a line,
and nearly midway, between that Town and
Daventry. A peaceable old Hamlet, of perhaps
five hundred souls; clay cottages for laborers,
but neatly thatched and swept; smith's shop,
saddler's shop, beer-shop all in order; forming a
kind of square, which leads off. North and South,
into two long streets; the old Church with its
graves, stands in the centre, the truncated spii'e
finishing itself with a strange old Ball, held up
by rods ; a ' hollow copper Ball, which came
from Boulogne in Henry the Eighth's time,' —
which has, like Hudibras's breeches, ' been at the
Siege of Bullen.' The ground is upland, moor-
land, though now growing corn; was not en-
closed till the last generation, and is still some-
what bare of wood. It stands nearly in the heart
of England; gentle Dullness, taking a turn at
etymology, sometimes derives it from 'Navel';
' Navesby, quasi Navelsby, from being, &c.' . . .
It was on this high moor-ground, in the centre of
England, that King Charles, on the 14th of June,
1645, fought his last Battle; dashed fiercely
against the New-Model Army which he had de-
spised till then : and saw himself shivered utterly to
ruin thereby. ' Prince Rupert, on tlie King's right
wing, charged up the hill, and carried all before
him ' ; but Lieutenant-General Cromwell charged
down hill on the other wing, likewise carrying
all before hira, — and did not gallop off the field
to plunder, he. Cromwell, ordered thither by the
Parliament, had arrived from the Association
two days before, ' amid shouts from the whole
Army ' : he had the ordering of the Horse this
morning. Prince Rupert, on returning from his
[ilunder, finds the King's Infantry a ruin; pre-
jiares to charge again with the rallied Cavalry;
but the Cavalry too, when it came to the point,
' broke all asunder,' — never to reassemble more.
. . . There were taken here a good few 'ladies
of quality in carriages'; — and above a hundred
Irish ladies not of quality, tattery camp-fol-
owers ■ with long skean-knives about a foot in
length,' which they well knew how to use ; upon-
whom I fear the Ordinance against Papists pressed
Imrd this day. The King's Carriage was also
taken, with a Cabinet and many Royal Auto-
graphs in it, which when printed made a sad im-
pression against his Majesty, — gave in fact a
most melancholy view of the veracity of his
Majesty, 'On the word of a King.' All was
lost!" — T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's Letters and
Speeches, pt. 2, Utter 29.
Also in : Earl of Clarendon, Hist, of the Mebel-
lion, bk. 9, sect. 30-42 {c. 4).— E. Warburton,
Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the Cavaliers, v. 3,
ch. 1.
A. D. 1645 (June — December). — Glamorgan's
Commissions, and other perfidies of the King
disclosed. — "At the battle of Naseby, copies of
some letters to the queen, chiefly written about
the time of the treaty of Uxbridge, and strangely
preserved, fell into the hands of the enemy and
were instantly published. No other losses of
that fatal day were more injurious to [the
king's] cause. ... He gave her [the queen]
power to treat with the English catholics, prom-
ising to take away all penal laws against them
as soon as God sliould enable him to do so, in
consideration of such powerful assistance as
might deserve so great a favour, and enable him
to affect it. . . . Suspicions were much aggra-
vated by a second discovery that took place soon
afterwards, of a secret treaty between the earl of
Glamorgan and the confederate Irish catholics,
not merely promising the repeal of the penal
laws, but the establishment of their religion in
far the greater part of Ireland. The marquis of
Ormond, as well as lord Digby, who happened to
be at Dublin, loudly exclaimed against Glamor-
gan's presumption in concluding such a treaty,
and committed him to prison on a charge of
treason. He produced two commissions from
the king, secretly granted without any seal or
the knowledge of any minister, containing the
fullest powers to treat with the Irish, and prom-
ising to fulfil any conditions into which he should
enter. The king, informed of this, disavowed
Glamorgan. . . . Glamorgan, however, was soon
released, and lost no portion of the king's or his
family's favour. This transaction has been the
subject of much historical controversy. The
enemies of Charles, both in his own and later
ages, have considered it as a proof of his indif-
ference, at least, to the protestant religion, and
of his readiness to accept the assistance of Irish
rebels on any conditions. His advocates for a
long time denied the authenticity of Glamorgan's
commissions. But Dr. Birch demonstrated tliat
they were genuine; and, if his dissertation could
have left any doubt, later evidence might be .id-
duced in confirmation." — H. Hallam, Const. IL'st.
ofEng.,ch. 10 (». 2).
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of the Great
Cinl War, ch. 39 and4A(v. 3).— T. Carte, Life (f
James, Duke of Ormond, bk. 4 {r. 3). — J. Lingard,
Hist, of Eng., v. 10, ch. 3.
A. D. 1645 (July— August).— The Clubmen.
— "When Fairfax and Cromwell marched into
the west [after Naseby fight], they found that in
these counties the countrj'-people had begun to
assemble in bodies, sometimes 5,000 strong, to
resist their oppressors, whether they fought in
the name of King or Parliament. They were
called clubmen from their arms, and carried ban-
ners, with the motto — ' If you offer to plunder
902
ENGLAND, lU-io
Preshyterianism.
ENGLAND, 1646-1647.
our cattle. Be assured we will give you battle.'
The clubmen, however, could not hope to con-
trol the movements of the disciplined troops who
now appeared against them. After a few fruit-
less attempts at resistance they dispersed." — B.
M. Cordery and J. S. Phillpotts, King and Com-
monwealth, cli. 8. — " The inexpugnable Sir Lewis
Dives (a thrasonical person knowu to the readers
of Evelyn), after due battering, was now soon
stormed ; whereupon, by Letters found on him
it became apparent how deeply Royalist this
scheme of Clubmen had been: ' Commissions for
raising Regiments of Clubmen '; the design to be
extended over England at large, 'yea into the
Associated Counties ' : however, it has now come
to nothing." — T. Carlyle, Olimr GromweWs Let-
ters and Speeches, pt. 2, letter 14.
A. D. 1645 (July— September). — The storm-
ing of Bridgewater and Bristol. — " The con-
tinuance of the civil war for a whole year after
the decisive battle of Naseby is a proof of the
King's selfishness, and of his utter indiffer-
ence to the sufferings of the people. All ra-
tional hope was gone, and even Rupert advised
his uncle to make terms with the Parliament.
Yet Charles, while incessantly vacillating as to
his plans, persisted in retaining his garrisons,
and required his adherents to sacrifice all they
possessed in order to prolong a useless struggle
for a few months. Bristol, therefore, was to
stand a siege, and Charles expected the garri-
son to hold out, without an object, to the last
extremity, entailing misery and ruin on the
second commercial city in the kingdom. Rupert
was sent to take the command there, and when
the army of Sir Thomas Fairfax approached,
towards the end of August, he had completed his
preparations." Fairfax had marched promptly
and rapidly westward, after the battle of Naseby.
He had driven Goring from the siege of Taunton,
had defeated him in a sharp battle at Langport,
taking 1,400 prisoners, and had carried Bridge-
water by storm, July 21, capturing 3,000 pris-
oners, with 36 pieces of artillery and 5.000 stand
of arms. On the 21st of August he arrived be-
fore Bristol, which Prince Rupert had strongly
fortified, and which he held with an effective
garrison of 3.300 men. On the morning of the
10th of September it was entered by storm, and
on the following day Rupert, who still occupied
the most defensiljle forts, surrendered the whole
place. This surrender so enraged the King that
he deprived his nephew of all his commissions
and sent him a pass to quit the kingdom. But
Rupert understood, as the King would not, that
fighting was useless — that the royal cause was
lost. — C. R. Markham, Life of the Oreat Lord
Fairfax, ch. 21-23.
Also in : Earl of Clarendon, Hist, of the Re-
bellion, bk. 9. — W. Hunt, Bristol, c!i. 7. — E.
Warburton, Memoirs of Prince Rupert and the
Caraliers, v. 3, ch. 1.
A. D. 1645 (September). — Defeat of Mont-
rose at Philiphaugh. See Scotland: A. D.
1644-1645.
A. D. 1646 (March). — Adoption of Preshy-
terianism by Parliament. — " For the last three
years the Assembly of Divines had been sitting
almost daily in the Jerusalem Chamber of West-
minster Abbey. . . . They were preparing a
new Prayer-book, a form of Church Government,
a Confession of Faith, and a Catechism ; but the
real questions at issue were the establishment of
903
the Presbyterian Church and the toleration of
sectarians. The Presbyterians, as we know, de-
sired to establish their own form of Church gov-
ernment by assemblies and synods, without any
toleration for uon-conformists, whether Catholics,
Episcopalians, or sectarians. But though they
formed a large majority in the assembly, there
was a well-organized opposition of Independents
and Erastians, whose union made it no easy mat-
ter for the Presbyterians to carry every vote
their own way. . . . After the Assembly had
sat a year and a half, the Parliament passed an
ordinance for putting a directory, prepared by
the divines, into force, and taking away the
Common Prayer-book (3rd Jan. , 1645). The sign
of the cross in baptism, the ring in marriage, the
wearing of vestments, the keeping of saints'
days, were discontinued. The communion table
was ordered to be set in the body of the church,
about which the people were to stand or sit ; the
passages of Scripture to be read were left to the
minister's choice ; no forms of prayer were pre-
scribed. The same year a new directory for or-
dination of ministers was passed into an ordinance.
The Presbyterian assemblies, called presbyteries,
were empowered to ordain, and none were al-
lowed to enter the ministry without first taking
the covenant (8th Nov., 1645). This was fol-
lowed by a third ordinance for establishing the
Presbyterian system of Church government in
England by way of trial for three years. As
originally introduced into the House, this ordi-
nance met with great opposition, because it gave
power to ministers of refusing the sacrament and
turning men out of the Church for scandalous
offences. Now, in what, argued the Erastians,
did scandalous offences consist ? . . . A modified
ordinance accordingly was passed ; scandalous
offences, for which ministers might refuse the
sacrament and excommunicate, were specified ;
assemblies were declared subject to Parliament,
and leave was granted to those who thought
themselves unjustly sentenced, to appeal right
up from one Church assembly after another to
the civil power — the Parliament (16th JIarch,
1646). Presbyterians, both in England and Scot-
laud, felt deeply mortified. After all these years'
contending, then, just when they thought they
were entering on the fruits of their labours, to
see the Church still left under the povver of the
State — the disappointment was intense to a de-
gree we cannot estimate. They looked on the
Independents as the enemies of God : this ' lame
Erastian Presbytery ' as hardly worth the having.
. . . The Assembly of Divines practically came
to an end in 1649, when it was changed into a
committee for examining candidates for the
Presbyterian ministry. It finally broke up with-
out any formal dismissal on the dispersion of the
Rump Parliament in March, 1653." — B. M. Cor-
dery and J. S: Phillpotts, King aud Common-
wealth, ch. 9.
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Sist. of the Great
Ciml War, ch. 40 (v. 3). — A. F. Mitchell, The
Westminster Assembly, lects. 7, 9, 13. — Minutes of
the Sessions of the Westminster Assembly. — See,
also, Independents.
A. D. 1646-1647. — The King in the hands of
the Scots. — His duplicity and his intrigues. —
The Scots surrender hira. — "On the morning
of May 6th authentic news came that the King
had ridden into the Scottish army, and had en-
trusted to his northern .subjects the guardianship
ENGLAND, 1646-1647.
The King and
the Scots.
ENGLAND, 1647.
of his royal person. Thereupon the English
Parliament at once asserted their right to dis-
pose of their King so long as he was on English
soil ; and for the present ordered that he be sent
to Warwick Castle, an order, however, which
had no effect. Newark, impregnable even to
Ironsides, was surrendered at last by royal order ;
and the Scots retreated northwards to Newcastle,
carr3-ing their sovereign with them. . . . Mean-
time the City Presbyterians were petitioning the
House to quicken the establishment of the godly
and thorough reformation so long promised ; and
they were supported by letters from the Scottish
Parliament, which, in the month of February,
1646, almost peremptorily required that the
Solemn League and Covenant should be carried
out in the Scottish sense of it. . . . The question
as to the disposal of the King's person became
accidentally involved in the issues between Pres-
byterianism and the sects. For if the King had
been a man to be trusted, and if he had frankly
accepted the army programme of free religion,
a free Parliament, and responsible advisers, there
is little doubt that he might have kept his crown
and his Anglican ritual — at least for his own
worship — and might yet have concluded his
reign prosperously as the first constitutional
King of England. Instead of this, he angered
the army by making their most sacred purposes
mere cards in a game, to be played or held as he
thought most to his own advantage in dealing
with the Presbyterian Parliament. On July 11th,
1646, Commissioners from both Houses were ap-
pointed to lay certain propositions for peace be-
fore the King at Newcastle. These of course
involved everything for which the Parliament
had contended, and in a form developed and ex-
aggerated by the altered position of affairs. All
armed forces were to be absolutely under the
control of Parliament for a period of 20 years.
Speaking generally, all public acts done by Par-
liament, or by its authority, were to be con-
firmed ; and all public acts done by the King or
his Oxford anti-Parliament, without due authori-
sation from Westminster, were to be void. . . .
On August 10th the Commissioners who had
been sent to the King returned to Westminster.
. . . The King had given no distinct answer. It
was a suspicious circumstance that the Duke of
Hamilton had gone into Scotland, especially as
Cromwell learned that, in spite of an ostensible
order from the King, Montrose's force had not
been disbanded. The labyrinthine web of royal
intrigue in Ireland was beginning to be discov-
ered. . . . The death of the Earl of Essex on
September 14th increased the growing danger of
a fatal schism in the victorious party. The Pres-
byterians had hoped to restore him to the head
of the army, and so sheathe or blunt the terrible
weapon they had forged and could not wield.
They were now left without a man to rival in
military authority the commanders whose exploits
overwhelmed their employers with a too com-
plete success. Not only were the political and
religious opinions of the soldiers a cause of
anxiety, but the burden of their sustenance and
pay was pressing hea\>ily on the country. . . .
No wonder that the City of London, always
sensitive as to public security, began to urge
upon the Parliament the necessity for diminish-
ing or disbanding the army in England. . . .
The I'arliameut, however, could not deal with
the army, for two reasons . First, the negotia-
tions with the Scotch lingered ; and next, they
could not pay the men. The first difficulty was
overcome, at least for the time, by the middle of
January, 1647. when a train of wagons carried
£200,000 to Newcastle in discharge of the Eng-
lish debt to the Scottish army. But the success-
ful accomplishment of this only increased the re-
maining difficulty of the Parliament — that of
paying their own soldiers. We need not notice
the charge made against the Scotch of selling
their King further than to say, that it is unfairly
based upon only one subordinate feature of a
very complicated negotiation. If the King would
have taken the Covenant, and guaranteed to them
their precious Presbyterian system, his Scottish
subjects would have fought for him almost to
the last man. The firmness of Charles in declin-
ing the Covenant for himself is, no doubt, the
most creditable point in his resistance. But his
obstinacy in disputing the right of two nations,
in their political establishment of religion, to
override his convictions by their own, illustrates
his entire incapacity to comprehend the new
light dawning on the relations of sovereign and
people. The Scots did their best for him. They
petitioned him, they knelt to him, they preached
to him. . . . But to have carried with theiu an
intractable man to form a wedge of division
amongst themselves, at the same time that he
brought against them the whole power of Eng-
land, would have been sheer insanity. Accord-
ingly, they made the best bargain they could
both for him and themselves; and, taking their
wages, they left him with his English subjects,
who conducted him to Holdenby House, in North-
amptonshire, on the 6th of February, 1647." —
J. A. Picton, Oliver Cromwell, ch. 13.
Also in : S. R. Gardiner, The First two Stuarts
and the Puritan Revolution, ch. 7, sect. 4. — The
same. Hist, of the Great Civil War, ch. 38-45 (».
2). — W. Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth, bk.
1, ch. 24-27, and bk. 2, ch. 1-6 (». 2).— Earl of
Clarendon, Hist, of the Rebellion, bk, 9, sect. 161-
178, and bk. 10 (o. 8).
A. D. 1647 (April — August). — The Army
takes things in hand. — " The King was surren-
dered to Parliament, and all now looking toward
peace, the Presbyterians were uppermost, dis-
credit falling upon the Army and its favorers.
Many of the Recruiters [i. e., the new members,
elected to fill vacancies in the Parliament], who at
first had acted with the Independents, inclined now
to their opponents. The Presbyterians, feeling
that none would dare to question the authority
of Parliament, pushed energetically their policy
as regards the Army, of sending to Ireland, dis-
banding, neglecting the payment of arrears, and
displacing the old officers. But suddenly there
came for them a rude awakening. On April 30,
1647, Skippon, whom all liked, whom the Pres-
byterians indeed claimed, but who at the same
time kept on good terms with the Army and In-
dependents, rose in his place in St. Stephens and
produced a letter, brought to him the day before
by three private soldiers, in which eight regi-
ments of horse expressly refused to serve in Ire-
land, declaring that it was a perfidious design to
separate the soldiers from the officers whom tliey
loved, — framed by men who, having tasted of
power, were degenerating into tyrants. Holies
and the Presbyterians were thunder-struck, and
laying aside all other business summoned the
three soldiers to appear at once. ... A violent
904
ENGLAND, 1647.
The King, Cromwell
and the Army.
ENGLAND, 1647.
tumult arose in tbe House. The Presbyterians
declared that the three sturdy Ironsides standing
there, with their buff stained from their corselets,
ought to be at once committed; to which it was
answered, that if there were to be commitment,
it should be to the best London tavern, and sack
and sugar provided, Cromwell, leaning over
toward Ludlow, who sat next to him, and point-
ing to the Presbyterians, said that those fellows
would never leave till the Army pulled them out
by the ears. That day it became known that
there existed an organization, a sort of Parlia-
ment, in the Army, the officers forming an upper
council and the representatives of the rank and
file a lower council. Two such representatives
stood in the lower council for each squadron or
troop, known as 'Adjutators,' aiders, or 'Agita-
tors.' This organization had taken upon itself
to see that the Army had its rights. ... At the
end of a month, there was still greater occasion
for astonishment. Seven hundred horse suddenly
left the camp, and appearing without warning,
June 3, at Holmby House, where Charles was
kept, in charge of Parliamentary commissioners,
proposed to assume tbe custody of the King. A
cool, quiet fellow, of rank no higher than that of
cornet, led them and was their spokesman,
Joyce. ' What is your authority ? ' asked the
King. The comet simply pointed to the mass
of troopers at his back. ... So bold a step as
the seizure of the King made necessary other
bold steps on the part of the Army. Scarcely a
fortnight had passed, when a demand was made
for the exclusion from Parliament of eleven
Presbyterians, the men most conspicuous for ex-
treme views. The Army meanwhile hovered,
ever ominously, close at hand, to the north and
east of the city, paying slight regard to the
Parliamentary prohibition to remain at a distance.
The eleven members withdrew. . . . But if
Parliament was willing to yield, Presbyterian
London and the country round about were not,
and in July broke out into sheer rebellion. . . .
The Speakers of the Lords and Commons, at the
head of the strength of the Parliament, fourteen
Peers and one hundred Commoners, betook them-
selves to Fairfax, and on August 3 they threw
themselves into the protection of the Army at
Hounslow Heath, ten miles distant. A grand
review took place. The consummate soldier,
Fairfax, had his troops in perfect condition, and
they were drawn out 30,000 strong to receive the
seceding Parliament. The soldiers rent the air
with shouts in their behalf, and all was made
ready for a most impressive demonstration. On
the 6th of August, Fairfax marched his troops in
full array through the city, from Hammersmith
to Westminster. Each man had in his hat a
wreath of laurel. The Lords and Commons who
had taken flight were escorted in the midst of
the column ; the city officials joined the train. At
Westminster the Speakers were ceremoniously
reinstalled, and the Houses again put to work,
the first business being to thank the General and
the veterans who had reconstituted them. The
next day, with Skippon in the centre and Crom-
well in the rear, the Army marched through the
city itself, a heavy tramp of battle-seasoned
platoons, at the mere sound of which the war-
like ardor of the turbulent youths of the work-
shops and the rough watermen was completely
squelched. Yet the soldiers looked neither to
the right nor left ; nor by act, word, or gesture
was any offence given." — J. K. Hosmer, Life of
Young Sir Henry Vane, ch. 13.
Also IN: C. R. Markham, Life of the Gtreai
Lord Fairfax, ch. 34. — T. Carlyle, Oliver Crom-
well's Letters and Speeches, pt. 3, letter 36. — W.
Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth, bk. 3, ch. 7-
11.
A. D. 1647 (August — December). — The
King's " Game " with Cromwell and the army,
and the ending of it. — After reinstating the
Parliament at Westminster, "the army leaders
resumed negotiations with the King. The in-
dignation of the soldiers at his delays and in-
trigues made the task hourly more difficult ; but
Cromwell . . . clung to the hope of accommoda-
tion with a passionate tenacity. His mind, con-
servative by tradition, and above all practical in
temper, saw the political difficulties which would
follow on the abolition of Royalty, and in spite
of the King's evasions, he persisted in negotiat-
ing with liim. But Cromwell stood almost alone ;
the Parliament refused to accept Ireton's pro-
posals as a basis of peace, Charles still evaded,
and the army then grew restless and suspicious.
There were cries for a wide reform, for the aboli-
tion of the House of Peers, for a new House of
Commons, and the Adjutators called on the Coun-
cil of Officers to discuss the question of abolish-
ing Royalty itself. Cromwell was never braver
than when he faced the gathering storm, forbade
the discussion, adjourned the Council, and sent
the officers to their regiments. But the strain
was too great to last long, and Charles was still
resolute to ' play his game.' He was, in fact, so
far from being in earnest in his negotiations with
Cromwell and Ireton, that at the moment they
were risking their lives for him he was conducting
another and equally delusive negotiation with the
Parliament. ... In the midst of his hopes of an
accommodation, Cromwell found with astonish-
ment that he had been duped throughout, and
that the King had fled [Nov. 11, 1647]. . . .
Even Cromwell was powerless to break the spirit
which now pervaded the soldiers, and the King's
perfidy left him without resource. 'The King
is a man of great parts and great understanding,'
he said at last, ' but so great a dissembler and so
false a man that he is not to be trusted. ' By a
strange error, Charles had made his way from
Hampton Court to the Isle of Wight, perhaps
with some hope from the sympathy of Colonel
Hammond, the Governor of Carisbrooke Castle,
and again found himself a prisoner. Foiled in
his effort to put himself at the head of the new
civil war, he set himself to organize it from his
prison ; and while again opening delusive negotia-
tions with the Parliament, he signed a secret treaty
with the Scots for the invasion of the realm.
The rise of Independency, and the practical sus-
pension of the Covenant, had produced a violent
reaction in his favour north of the Tweed. . . .
In England the whole of the conservative party,
with many of the most conspicuous members of
the Long Parliament at its head, was drifting, in
its horror of the religious and political changes
which seemed impending, toward the King ; and
the news from Scotland gave the signal for fitful
insurrections in almost every quarter." — J. R.
Green, Short Hist, of Eng. , ch. 8, sect. 8.
Also in : F. P. Guizot, Hist, of the Eng. Rev.
of 1040, bk. 7-8.— L. von Ranke, Hist, of Eng.
nth Century, bk. 10, ch. 4.— W. God*in, Hist,
of the Commonwealth.— Q. Hillier, Narrative of
905
ENGLAND, 1647.
Treat:/
of Newport.
ENGLAND, 1648.
attempted Escapes of Charles I. from Carishrooke
Castle. &c.
A. D. 1648 (April— August).— The Second
Civil War.— Defeat of the Scots at Preston.
—"The Second Civil War broke out in April,
and proved to be a short but formidable affair.
The whole of "Wales was speedily in insurrec-
tion ; a strong force of cavaliers were mustering
in the north of England; in Essex, Surrey, and
the southern counties various outbreaks arose;
Berwick, Carlisle, Chester, Pembroke, Colches-
ter, were held for the king ; the fleet revolted ; and
40,000 men were ordered by the Parliament of
Scotland to invade England. Lambert was sent
to the north; Fairfax to take Colchester; and
Cromwell into Wales, and thence to join Lambert
and meet the Scotch. On the 24th of May Crom-
well reached Pembroke, but being short of guns,
he did not take it till 11th July. The rising in
Wales crushed, Cromwell turned northwards,
where the northwest was already in revolt, and
20,000 Scots, under the Duke of Hamilton, were
advancing into the country. Want of supplies
and shoes, and sickness, detained him with his
army, some 7,000 strong, 'so extremely harassed
with hard service and long marches, that they
seemed rather fit for a hospital than a battle. '
Having joined Lambert in Yorkshire he fought
the battle of Preston on 17th of August. The
battle of Preston was one of the most decisive
and important victories ever gained by Crom-
well, over the most numerous enemy he ever
encountered, and the first in which he was in
supreme command. . . . Early on the morning
of the 17th August, Cromwell, with some 9,000
men, fell upon the army of the Duke of Hamil-
ton unawares, as it proceeded southwards in a
long, straggling, unprotected line. The in-
vaders consisted of 17,000 Scots and 7,000 good
men from northern counties. The long ill-or-
dered line was cut in half and rolled back north-
ward and southward, before they even knew
that Cromwell was upon them. The great host,
cut Into sections, fought with desperation from
town to town. But for three days it was one
long chase and carnage, which ended only with
the exhaustion of the victors and their horses.
Ten thousand prisoners were taken. ' We have
killed we know not what,' writes Cromwell,
' but a very great number ; having done execu-
tion upon them above thirty miles together, be-
sides what we killed in the two great fights.'
His own loss was small, and but one superior
officer. . . . The Scottish invaders dispersed,
Cromwell hastened to recover Berwick and Car-
lisle, and to restore the Presbyterian or Whig
party in Scotland." — F. Harrison, Oliver Crom-
well, ch. 7.
Also in: J. H. Burton, Sist. of Scotland, ch.
74 (*. 7).— Earl of Clarendon, Sist. of the Rebel-
lion, bk. 11 (0. 4).
A. D. 1648 (September— November).— The
Treaty at Newport. — "The unfortunate issue
of the Scots expedition under the duke of Hamil-
ton, and of the various insurrections throughout
England, quelled by the vigilance and good con-
duct of Fairfax and Cromwell, is well known.
But these formidable manifestations of the public
sentiment in favour of peace with the king on
honourable conditions, wherein the city of Lon-
don, ruled by the presbyterian ministers, took a
share, compelled the house of commons to retract
its measures. They came to a vote, by 165 to
99, that they would not alter the fundamental
government by king, lords, and commons; they
abandoned their impeachment against seven peers,
the most moderate of the upper house and the
most obnoxious to the army : they restored the
eleven members to their seats ; they revoked their
resolutions against a personal treaty with the
king, and even that which required his assent by
certain preliminary articles. In a word the party
for distinction's sake called presbyterian, but
now rather to be denominated constitutional, re-
gained its ascendancy. This change in the coun-
sels of parliament brought on the treaty of New-
port. The treaty of Newport was set on foot
and managed by those politicians of the house of
lords, who, having long suspected no danger to
themselves but from the power of the king, had
discovered, somewhat of the latest, that the crown
itself was at stake, and that their own privileges
were set on the same cast. Nothing was more
remote from the intentions of the earl of Nor-
thumberland, or lord Say, than to see themselves
pushed from their seats by such upstarts as Ireton
and Harrison ; and their present mortification af-
forded a proof how men reckoned wise in their
generation become the dupes of their own selfish,
crafty, and pusillanimous policy. They now
grew an.\ious to see a treaty concluded with the
king. Sensible that it was necessary to antici-
pate, if possible, the return of Cromwell from
the north, they implored him to comply at once
with all the propositions of parliament, or at least
to yield in the first instance as far as he meant to
go. They had not, however, mitigated in any
degree the rigorous conditions so often jiroposed;
nor did the king during this treaty obtain any
reciprocal concession worth mentioning in return
for his surrender of almost all that could be de-
manded." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of Eng., ch.
10, pt. 2, — The utter faithlessness with which
Charles carried on these negotiations, as on all
former occasions, was shown at a later day when
his correspondence came to light. " After hav-
ing solemnly promised that all hostilities in Ire-
land should cease, he secretly wrote to Ormond
(Oct. 10) : ' Obey my wife's orders, not mine, until
I shall let you know I am free from all restraint ;
nor trouble yourself about my concessions as to
Ireland ; they will not lead to anything ;' and the
day on which he had consented to transfer to
parliament for twenty years the command of the
army (Oct. 9), he wrote to sir William Hopkins:
' To tell you the truth, my great concession this
morning was made only with a view to facilitate
my approaching escape; without that hope, I
should never have yielded in this manner. If I
had refused, I could, without much sorrow, have
returned to my prison; but as it is, I own it would
break my heart, for I have done that which ray
escape alone can justify. ' The parliament, though
without any exact information, suspected all this
perfidy ; even the friends of peace, the men most
affected by the king's condition, and most earnest
to save him, replied but hesitatingly to the charges
of the independents. " — F. P. Guizot, Hist, of the
Eng. Rev. of 1640, bk. 8.
Also in : Earl of Clarendon, Hist, of the Re-
bellion, bk. 11, sect. 153-190 (v. 4).— I. Disraeli,
Commentaries on the Life and Reign of Charles I. ,
V. 2, ch. 39-40.
A. D. 1648 (November — December). — The
Grand Army Remonstrance and Pride's Purge.
— The Long Parliament cut down to the
906
ENGLAND, 1648.
Pride^s Purge.
ENGLAND, 1649.
Rump.— On the 20th of November, 1648, Colonel
Ewer and other officers presented to the house of
commons a remonstrance from the Army against
the negotiations and proposed treaty with the
king. This was accompanied by a letter from
Fairfax, stating that it had been voted unani-
mously in the council of officers, and entreating
for it the consideration of parliament. The re-
monstrance recommended an immediate ending
of the treaty conferences at Newport, demanded
that the king be brought to justice, as the capital
source of all grievances, and called upon parlia-
ment to enact its own dissolution, with provision
for the electing and convening of future annual
or biennial parliaments. Ten days passed with-
out attention being given to this army manifesto,
the house having twice adjourned its considera-
tion of the document. On the first of December
there appeared at Newport a party of horse
which quietly took possession of the person of
the king, and conveyed him to Hurst Castle, "a
fortress in Hampshire, situated at the extreme
point of a neck of land, which shoots into the sea
towards the Isle of Wight. " The same day on
which this was done, "the commissioners who
had treated with the king at Newport made their
appearance in the two houses of parliament ; and
the two following days were occupied by the
house of commons in an earnest debate as to the
state of the negociation. Vane was one of the prin-
cipal speakers against the treaty ; and Fiennes,
who had hitherto ranked among the independ-
ents, spoke for it. At length, after the house
had sat all night, it was put and carried, at
five in the morning of the 5th, by a majority
of 130 to 83, that the king's answers to the propo-
sitions of both houses were a ground for them
to proceed upon, to the settlement of the peace
of the kingdom. On the same day this vote
received the concurrence of the house of lords."
Meantime, on the 30th of November, the council
of the army had voted a second declaration more
fully expressive of its views and announcing its
intention to draw near to London, for the accom-
plishment of the purposes of the remonstrance.
"On the 2d of December Fairfax marched to
London, and quartered his army at Whitehall,
St. James's, the Mews, and the villages near the
metropolis. . . . On the 5th of December three
officers of the army held a meeting with three
members of parliament, to arrange the plan by
which the sound members might best be separated
from those by whom their measures were thwarted,
and might peaceably be put in possession of the
legislative authority. The next morning a regi-
ment of horse, and another of foot were placed
as a guard upon the two houses, Skippon, who
commanded the city-militia, having agreed with
the council of the army to keep back the guard
under his authority which usually performed
that duty. A part of the foot were ranged in
the Court of Requests, upon the stairs, and in
the lobby leading to the house of commons.
Colonel Pride was stationed near the door, with
a list in his hand of the persons lie was com-
missioned to arrest; and sometimes one of the
door-keepers, and at others Lord Grey of Groby,
pointed them out to him, as they came up with
an intention of passing into the house. Forty-
one members were thus arrested. ... On the
following day more members were secured, or
denied entrance, amounting, with those of the
day before, to about one hundred. At the same
time Cromwel took his seat ; and Henry Martea
moved that the speaker should return him thanks
for his great and eminent services performed in
the course of the campaign. The day after, the
two houses adjourned to the 12th. During the
adjournment many of the members who had been
taken into custody by the military were liberated.
. . . Besides those who were absolutely secured,
or shut out from their seats by the power of the
army, there were other members that looked
with dislike on the present proceedings, or that
considered parliament as being under force, and
not free in their deliberations, who voluntarily
abstained from being present at their sittings and
debates." — W. Godwin, Hist, of the Common-
icealth, bk. 2, ch. 23-24 (v. 2).— "The famous
Pride's Purge was accomplished. By military
force the Long Parliament was cut down to a
fraction of its number, and the career begins of
the mighty 'Rump,' so called in the coarse wit
of the time because it was 'the sitting part.'" —
J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir Heni-yVane, ch.
13. — ■" This name [the Rump] was first given to
them by Walker, the author of the History of
Independency, by way of derision, in allusion to
a fowl all devoured but the rump. " — D. Neal,
Hist, of the Puritans, v. 4, ch. \, foot-note.
Alsoln: C. R. Markham, Life of the Great Lord
Faitfa.v, ch. 28. — D. Massou, Life of John Milton,
bk. 4, ch. 1 and 3 (». 3).
A. D. 1649 (January). — The trial and execu-
tion of the King. — "During the month in which
Charles had remained at Windsor [whither he
had been brought from Hurst Castle on the 17th
of December], there had been proceedings in Par-
liament of which he was imperfectly informed.
On the day he arrived there, it was resolved by
the Commons that he should be brought to trial.
On the 2nd of January, 1649, it was voted that,
in making war against the Parliament, he had
been guilty of treason ; and a High Court was
appointed to try him. One hundred and fifty
commissioners were to compose the Court, —
peers, members of the Commons, aldermen of
London. The ordinance was sent to the Upper
House, and was rejected. On the 6th, a fresh
ordinance, declaring that the people being, after
God, the source of all just power, the representa-
tives of the people are the supreme power in the
nation; and that whatsoever is enacted or de-
clared for law by the Commons in Parliament
hath the force of a law, and the people are con-
cluded thereby, though the consent of King or
Peers be not had thereto. Asserting this power,
so utterly opposed either to the ancient constitu-
tion of the monarchy, or to the possible working
of a republic, there was no hesitation in constitut-
ing the High Court of Justice in the name of the
Commons alone. The number of members of the
Court was now reduced to 135. They had seven
preparatory meetings, at which only 58 members
attended. 'All men,' says Mrs. Hutchinson,
' were left to their free liberty of acting, neither
persuaded nor compelled ; and as there were some
nominated in the commission who never sat, and
others who sat at first but durst not hold on, so-
all the rest might have declined it if they would,
when it is apparent they should have suffered
nothing by so doing. ' . . . On the 19th of Janu-
ary, major Harrison appeared ... at Windsor
with his troop. There was a coach with six
horses in the court-yard, in which the King took
his seat ; and, once more, he entered London, an(J
907
ENGLAND. 1649.
Trial and Execution
of the King.
ENGLAND, 1649.
was lodged at St. James's palace. The next day,
the High Court of Justice was opened in West-
minster-hall. . . . After the names of the mem-
bers of the court had been called, 69 being
present, Bradshaw, the president, ordered the Ser-
jeant to bring in the prisoner. Silently the King
sat down in the chair prepared for him. He
moved not his hat, as he looked sternly and con-
temptuously around. The sixty-nine rose not
from their seats, and remained covered. . . . The
clerk reads the charge, and when he is accused
therein of being tyrant and traitor, he laughs
in the face of the Court. ' Though bis tongue
usually hesitated, yet it was very free at this time,
for he was never discomposed In mind,' writes
Warwick. . . . Again and again contending
against the authority of the Court, the King was
removed, and the sitting was adjourned to the
22nd. On that day the same scene was renewed ;
and again on the 23rd. A growing sympathy
for the monarch became apparent. The cries of
' Justice, justice,' which were heard at first, were
now mingled with ' God save the King. ' He had
refused to plead ; but the Court nevertheless em-
ployed the 24th and 25th of January in collecting
evidence to prove the charge of his levying war
against the Parliament. Coke, the solicitor-gen-
eral, then demanded whether the Court would
proceed to pronouncing sentence ; and the mem-
bers adjourned to the Painted Chamber. On the
S7th the public sitting was resumed. . . . The
Court, Bradshaw then stated, had agreed upon
the sentence. Ludlow records that the King ' de-
sired to make one proposition before tliey pro-
ceeded to sentence ; which he earnestly pressing,
as that which he thought would lead to the rec-
onciling of all parties, and to the peace of the
three kingdoms, they permitted him to offer it:
the effect of which was, that he might meet the
two Houses in the Painted Chamber, to whom he
doubted not to offer that which should satisfy
and secure all interests. ' Ludlow goes on to say,
' Designing, as I have since been informed, to
propose his own resignation, and the admission
of his sou to the throne upon such terms as should
have been agreed upon.' The commissioners re-
tired to deliberate, ' and being satisfied, upon de-
bate, that nothing but loss of time would be the
consequence of it, they returned into the Court
with a negative to his demand.' Bradshaw then
delivered a solemn speech to the King. . . . The
clerk was lastly commanded to read the sentence,
that his head should be severed from his body ;
' and the commissioners, ' says Ludlow, ' testified
their unanimous assent by standing up.' The
King attempted to speak; 'but being accounted
dead in law, was not permitted.' On the 29th of
January, the Court met to sign the sentence of
execution, addressed to ' colonel Francis Hacker,
colonel Huncks, and lieutenant-colonel Phayr,
and to every one of them.' . . . There were some
attempts to save him. The Dutch ambassador
made vigorous efforts to procure a reprieve,
whilst tlie French and Spanish ambassadors were
inert. The ambassadors from the States never-
theless persevered ; and early in the day of the
30th obtained some glimmering of hope from
Fairfax. 'But we found,' they say in their des-
patch, ' in front of the house In which we had
just spoken with the general, about 200 horse-
men ; and we learned, as well as on our way as
on reaching home, that all the streets, passages,
and squares of London were occupied by troops,
so that no one could pass, and that the approaches
of the city were covered with cavalry, so as to
prevent any one from coming in or going out.
. . . The same day, between two and three
o'clock, the King was taken to a scaffold covered
with black, erected before Whitehall.' To that
scaffold before Whitehall, Charles walked, sur-
rounded by soldiers, through the leafless avenues
of St. James's Park. It was a bitterly cold morn-
ing. . . . His purposed address to the people was
delivered only to the hearing of those upon the
scaffold, but its purport was that the people mis-
took the nature of government; for people are
free under a government, not by being sharers
in it, but by due administration of the laws of
it. ' His theory of government was a consistent
one. He had the misfortune not to understand
that the time had been fast passing away for Its
assertion. The headsman did his office; and a
deep groan went up from the surrounding multi-
tude." — Charles Knight, Popular Hist, of Eng-
land, V. 4, ch. 7.- — "In the death-warrant of 29th
January 1649, next after the President and Lord
Grey, stands the name of Oliver Cromwell. He
accepted the responsibility of it, justified, de-
fended it to his dying day. No man in England
was more entirely answerable for the deed than
he. 'I tell you,' he said to Algernon Sidney,
' we will cut off his head with the crown upon
it. ' . . . Slowly he had come to know — not only
that the man, Charles Stuart, was incurably
treacherous, but that any settlement of Parlia-
ment with the old Feudal Monarchy was impos-
sible. As the head of the king rolled on the scaf-
fold the old Feudal Monarchy expired for ever.
In January 1649 a great mark was set in the
course of the national life — the Old Rule behind
it, the New Rule before it. Parliamentary govern-
ment, the consent of the nation, equality of
lights, and equity in the law — all date from this
great New Departure. The Stuarts indeed re-
turned for one generation, but with the sting of
the Old Monarchy gone, and only to disappear
almost without a blow. The Church of England
returned; but not the Church of Laud or of
Charles. The peers returned, but as a meek
House of Lords, with their castles razed, their
feudal rights and their political power extinct.
It is said that the regicides killed Charles I. only
to make Charles II. king. It is not so. They
killed the Old Monarchy ; and the restored mon-
arch was by no means its heir, but a royal Stadt-
holder or Hereditary President." — F. Harrison,
Oliver Cromwell, ch. 7. — "Respecting the death
of Charles it has been pronounced by Fox, that
' it is much to be doubted whether his trial and
execution have not, as much as any other circum-
stance, served to raise the character of the Eng-
lish nation in the opinion of Europe ki general. '
And he goes on to speak with considerable favour
of the authors of that event. One of the great
authorities of the age having so pronounced,
an hundred and flft}' years after the deed, it may
be proper to consider for a little the real merits
of the actors, and the act. It is not easy to im-
agine a greater criminal than the individual
against whom the sentence was awarded. . . .
Liberty is one of the greatest negative advantages
that can fall to the lot of a man ; without it we
cannot possess any high degree of happiness, or
exercise any considerable virtue. Now Charles,
to a degree which can scarcely be exceeded, con-
spired against the liberty of his country. To
908
ENGLAND, 1649.
Charles I. Adjudged.
ENGLAND, 1649.
assert his own authority without limitation, was
the object of all his desires and all his actions, so
far as the public was concerned. To accomplish
this object he laid aside the use of a parliament.
When he was compelled once more to have re-
course to this assembly, and found it retrograde
to his purposes, he determined to bring up the
array, and by that means to put an end to its sit-
tings. Both in Scotland and England, the scheme
that he formed for setting aside all opposition,
was by force of arms. For that purpose he
commenced war against the English parliament,
and continued it by every expedient in his power
for four years. Conquered, and driven out of
the field, he did not for that, for a moment lose
sight of his object and his resolution. He sought
in every quarter for the materials of a new war ;
and, after an interval of twenty months, and from
the depths of his prison, he found them. To this
must be added the most consummate insincerity
and duplicity. He could never be reconciled ; he
could never be disarmed ; he could never be con-
vinced. His was a war to the death, and there-
fore had the utmost aggravation that can belong
to a war against the liberty of a nation. . . . The
proper lesson taught by the act of the thirtieth
of January, was that no person, however high in
station, however protected by the prejudices of
his contemporaries, must expect to be criminal
against the welfare of the state and community,
without retribution and punishment. The event
however sufficiently proved that the condemna-
tion and execution of Charles did not answer the
purposes intended by its authors. It did not
conciliate the English nation to republican ideas.
It shocked all those persons in the country who
did not adhere to the ruling party. This was in
some degree owing to the decency with which
Charles met his fate. He had always been in
manners, formal, sober and specious. . . . The
notion was every where prevalent, that a sov-
ereign could not be called to account, could not
be arraigned at the bar of his subjects. And the
violation of this prejudice, instead of breaking
down the wall which separated him from others,
gave to his person a sacredness which never be-
fore appertained to it. Among his own partisans
the death of Charles was treated, and was spoken
of, as a sort of deicide. And it may be admitted
for a universal rule, that the abrupt violation of
a deep-rooted maxim and persuasion of the human
mind, produces a reaction, and urges men to hug
the maxim closer than ever. I am afraid, that
the day that saw Charles perish on the scaffold,
rendered the restoration of his family certain. " —
W. Godwin, Hist, of the Commonwealth of Eng-
land to the Bestoration of Charles II., bk. 2, ch.
26 (v. 2). — "The situation, complicated enough
already, had been still further complicated by
Charles's duplicity. Men who would have been
willing to come to terms with him, despaired of
any constitutional arrangement in which he was
to be a factor ; and men who had long been alien-
ated from him were irritated into active hos-
tility. By these he was regarded with increasing
intensity as the one disturbing force with which
no understanding was possible and no settled
order consistent. To remove him out of the way
appeared, even to those who had no thought of
punishing him for past offences, to be the only
possible road to peace for the troubled nation.
It seemed that so long as Charles lived deluded
nations and deluded parties would be stirred up,
by promises never intended to be fulfilled, to flint;
themselves, as they had flung themselves in the
Second Civil War, against the new order of things
which was struggling to establish itself in Eng-
land. " — S. R. Gardiner, Hist, of the Great Civil
War, 1642-1649, ch. 71 (v. 3).
Also in : John Forster, Statesmen of the Com-
monwealth : Henry Marten. — S. R. Gardiner,
Const. Doc's of the Puritan Rev., pp. 868-290.
The following is the text of the Act which
arraigned the King and constituted the Court by
which he was tried: " Whereas it is notorious
that Charles Stuart, the now king of England,
not content with the many encroachments which
his predecessors had made upon the people in
their rights and freedom, hath had a wicked de-
sign totally to subvert the antient and funda-
mental laws and liberties of this nation, and in
their place to introduce an arbitrary and tyran-
nical government ; and that, besides all other evil
ways and means to bring his design to pass, he
hath prosecuted it with fire and sword, levied
and maintained a civil war in the land, against
the parliament and kingdom ; whereby this coun-
try hath been miserably wasted, the public treas-
ure exhausted, trade decayed, thousands of people
nuirdered, and infinite other mischiefs committed ;
for all which high and treasonable offences the
said Charles Stuart might long since have justly
been brought to exemplary and condign punish-
ment : whereas also the parliament, well hoping
that the restraint and imprisonment of his per-
son after it had pleased God to deliver him into
their hands, would have quieted the distem-
pers of the kingdom, did forbear to proceed
judicially against him; but found, by sad ex-
perience, that such their remissness served only
to encourage him and his accomplices in the con-
tinuance of their evil practices and in raising
new commotions, rebellions, and invasions : for
prevention therefore of the like or greater incon-
veniences, and to the end no other chief officer
or magistrate whatsoever may hereafter pre-
sume, traiterously and maliciously, to imagine
or contrive the enslaving or destroying of the
English nation, and to expect impunity for so
doing ; be it enacted and ordained by the [Lords]
and commons in Parliament assembled, and it is
hereby enacted and ordained by the authority
thereof. That the earls of Kent, Nottingham,
Pembroke, Denbigh, and Mulgrave; the lord
Grey of Warke; lord chief justice Rolle of the
king's bench, lord chief justice St. John of the
common Pleas, and lord chief baron Wylde ; the
lord Fairfax, lieut. general Cromwell, &c. [in
all about 150,] shall be, and are hereby appointed
and required to be Commissioners and Judges, for
the Hearing, Trying, and Judging of the said
Charles Stuart; and the said Commissioners, or
any 20 or more of them, shall be, and are hereby
authorized and constituted an High Court of Jus-
tice, to meet and sit at such convenient times and
place as by the said commissioners, or the major
part, or 20 or more of them, under their hands and
seals, shall be appointed and notified by public
Proclamation in the Great Hall, or Palace Yard
of Westminster; and to adjourn from time to
time, and from place to place, as the said High
Court, or the major part thereof, at meeting,
shall hold fit ; and to take order for the charging
of him, the said Charles Stuart, with the Crimes
and Treasons above-mentioned, and for receiv-
ing his personal Answer thereunto, and for
909
ENGLAND, 1649.
The Commonwealth.
ENGLAND, 1649.
examination of witnesses upon oath, (which the
court hath hereby authority to administer) or
otherwise, and taking any other Evidence con-
cerning the same ; and thereupon, or in default
of such Answer, to proceed to final Sentence
according to justice and the merit of the cause;
and such final Sentence to execute, or cause to
he executed, speedily and impartially. — And the
said court is hereby" authorized and required to
chuse and appoint all such officers, attendants,
and other circumstances as they, or the major
part of them, shall in any sort judge necessary
or useful for the orderly and good managing of
the premises; and Thomas lord Fairfax the Gen-
eral, and all officers and soldiers, under his
command, and all officers of justice, and other
well-affected persons, are hereby authorized and
required to be aiding and assisting unto the said
court in the due execution of the trust hereby
committed unto them ; provided that this act,
and the authority hereby granted, do continue in
force for the space of one month from the date
of the making hereof, and no longer." — Cobbett's
Parliamentary Uist. of England, v. 3, pp. 1254-
1255,
A. D. 1649 (February). — The Commonwealth
established. — "England was now a Republic.
The change had been virtually made on Thurs-
day, January 4, 1648-9, when the Commons
passed their three great Resolutions, declaring
(1) that the People of England were, under God,
the original of all just power in the State, (3)
that the Commons, in Parliament assembled,
having been chosen by the People, and repre-
senting the People, possessed the supreme power
In their name, and (3) that whatever the Com-
mons enacted should have the force of a law,
without needing the consent of either King or
House of Peers. On Tuesday, the 30th of Janu-
ary, the theory of these Resolutions became more
visibly a fact. On the afternoon of that day,
while the crowd that had seen the execution in
front of Whitehall were still lingering round the
scaffold, the Commons passed an Act ' prohibit-
ing the proclaiming of any person to be King of
England or Ireland, or the dominions thereof.'
It was thus declared that Kingship in England
had died with Charles. But what of the House
of Peers ? It was significant that on the same
fatal day the Commons revived their three theo-
retical resolutions of the 4th, and ordered them
to be printed. The wretched little rag of a
House might then have known its doom. But
it took a week more to convince them." On the
6th of February it was resolved by the House of
Commons, ' ' ' That the House of Peers in Par-
liament is useless and dangerous, and ought to
be abolished, and that an Act be brought in to
that purpose.' Next da}', Feb. 7, after another
long debate, it was further resolved ' That it
hath been found by experience, and this House
doth declare, that the office of a King in this
realm, and to have the power thereof in any sin-
gle person, is unnecessary, burdensome, and dan-
gerous to the liberty, safety, and public interest
of the People of this nation, and therefore ought
to be abolished, and that an Act be brought in to
that purpose.' Not till after some weeks were
these Acts deliberately passed after the custom-
ary three readings. The delay, however, was
matter of mere Parliamentary form. Theoreti-
cally a Republic since Jan. 4, 1648-9, and visi-
bly a Republic from the day of Charles's death.
England was a Republic absolutely and in every
sense from Feb. 7, 1648-9." For the adminis-
tration of the government of the republican
Commonwealth, the Commons resolved, on the
7th of February, that a Council of State be
erected, to consist of not more than forty per-
sons. On the 13th, Instructions to the intended
Council of State were reported and agreed to,
' ' these Instructions conferring almost plenary
powers, but limiting the duration of the Council
to one year." On the 14th and 15th forty -one
persons were appointed to be members of the
Council, Fairfax, Cromwell, Vane, St. John,
Whitlocke, Henry Marten, and Colonels Hutch-
inson and Ludlow being in the number; nine to
constitute a quorum, and no permanent Presi-
dent to be chosen. — D. Masson, Life of John Hil-
ton, 11. 4, bk. 1, ch. 1.
Also in: J. Lingard, Hist, of Eng., ■i\ 10, ch.
5. — A. Bisset, Omitted Chapters of Hist, of JEfng. .
ch. 1.
A. D. 1649 (February). — The Ejkon Basilike.
— "A book, published with great secrecy, and in
very mysterious circumstances, Feb. 9, 1648-9,
exactly ten days after the late King's death, had
done much to increase the Royalist enthusiasm.
'Eikon Basilike: The True Portraicture of His
Sacred Majestic in his Solitudes and Sufferings.
— Rom. viii. More than conquerour, &c. — -Bona
agere et mala pati Regium est. MDCXLVIII ' :
such was the title-page of this volume (of 369
pages of text, in small octavo), destined by fate,
rather than by merit, to be one of the most
famous books of the world. . . . The book, so
elaborately prepared and heralded, consists of
twenty-eight successive chapters, purporting to
have been written by the late King, and to be
the essence of his spiritual autobiography in the
last years of his life. Each chapter, with scarcely
an exception, begins with a little narrative, or
generally rather with reflections and meditations
on some passage of the King's life the narrative
of which is supposed to be unnecessary, and
ends with a prayer in italics appropriate to the
circumstances remembered. . . . Save for a few
. . . passages . . . , the pathos of which lies in
the situation they represent, the Eikon Basilike
is a rather dull performance, in third-rate rhetoric,
modulated after the Liturgy, and without in-
cision, point, or the least shred of real informa-
tion as to facts. But O what a reception it had I
Copies of it ran about instantaneously, and were
read with sobs and tears. It was in vain that
Parliament, March 16, gave orders for seizing
the book. It was reprinted at once in various
forms, to supply the constant demand — which
was not satisfied, it is said, with less than fifty
editions within a single year; it became a very
Bible in English Royalist households. . . . By
means of this book, in fact, acting on the state
of sentiment which it fitted, there was estab-
lished, within a few weeks after the death of
Charles I. , that marvellous worship of his mem-
ory, that passionate recollection of him as the
perfect man and the perfect king, the saint, the
martyr, the all but Christ on earth again, which
persisted till the other day as a positive religious
cultus of the English mind, and still lingers in
certain quarters." — D. Masson, Life and Times of
John Milton, v. 4, hk. 1, ch. 1. — "I struggled
through the Eikon Basilike yesterday ; one of the
paltriest pieces of vapid, shovel-hatted, clear-
starched, immaculate falsity and cant I have
910
ENGLAND, 1649.
War with, the
Dutch.
ENGLAND, 1652-1654.
ever read. It is to me an amazement how any
mortal could ever have taken tliat for a genuine
book of King Charles's. Nothing but a sur-
pliced Pharisee, sitting at his ease afar off, could
have got up such a set of meditations. It got
Parson Gauden [John Gauden, Bishop of Exeter
and Worcester, successively, after the Restora-
tion, and who is believed to have been the author
of the Eikon Basilike] a bishopric." — T. Carlyle,
in Hist, of his Life in London, by Froude, v. 1,
ch. 7, Nov. 26, 1840.
A. D. 1649 (April — May). — Mutiny of the
Levellers. See Levellers.
A. D. 1649-1650. — Cromwell's campaign in
Ireland. See Ireland: A. D. 1649-1650.
A. D. 1650 (July). — Charles II. proclaimed
King in Scotland. See Scotland: A. D. 1650
(March — .Idly).
A. D. 1650 (September).— War with the
Scots and Cromwell's victory at Dunbar. See
Scotland: A. D. 1650 (September).
A. D. 1651 (September).— The Scots and
Charles II. overthrown at Worcester. See
Scotland: A. D. 1651.
A. D. 1651-1653. — The Army and the Rump.
— " ' Now that the King is dead and his son de-
feated,' Cromwell said gravely to the Parliament,
'I think it necessarj' to come to a settlement. '
But the settlement which had been promised
after Naseby was still as distant as ever after
Worcester. The bill for dissolving the present
Parliament, though Cromwell pressed it in per-
son, was only passed, after bitter opposition, by
a majority of two; and even this success had
been purchased by a compromise which per-
mitted the House to sit for three years more.
Internal affairs were simply at a dead lock. . . .
The one remedy for all this was, as the army
saw, the assembly of a new and complete Par-
liament in place of the mere ' rump ' of the old ;
but this was the one measure which tlie House
was resolute to avert. Vane spurred it to a new
activity. . . . But it was necessary for Vane's
purposes not only to show the energy of the Par-
liament, but to free it from the control of the
army. His aim was to raise in the navy a force
devoted to the House, and to eclipse the glories
of Dunbar and Worcester by yet greater triumphs
at sea. With this view the quarrel with Hollantl
had been carefully nursed. . . . The army hardly
needed the warning conveyed by the introduc-
tion of a bill for its disbanding to understand the
new policy of the Parliament. . . . The army
petitioned not only for reform in Church and
State, but for an explicit declaration that the
House would bring its proceedings to a close.
The Petition forced the House to discuss a bill
for 'a New Representative,' but the discussion
soon brought out the resolve of the sitting mem-
bers to continue as a part of the coming Parlia-
ment without re-election. The officers, irritated
by such a claim, demanded in conference after
conference an immediate dissolution, and the
House as resolutely refused. In ominous words
Cromwell supported the demands of the army.
' As for the members of this Parliament, the
army begins to take them in disgust. I would
it did so with less reason. "... Not only were
the existing members to continue as members of
the New Parliament, depriving the places they
represented of their right of choosing representa-
tives, but they were to constitute a Committee
of Revision, to determine the validity of each
election, and the fitness of the members returned.
A conference took place [April 19, 1653] between
the leaders of the Commons and the officers of
the army. . . . The conference was adjourned
till the next morning, on an understanding that
no decisive step should be taken ; but it had no
sooner reassembled, than the absence of the lead-
ing members confirmed the news that Vane was
fast pressing the bill for a new Representative
through the House. ' It is contrary to common
honesty,' Cromwell angrily broke out; and,
quitting Whitehall, he summoned a company of
musketeers to follow him as far as the door of
the House of Commons." — J. R. Green, Sho7-t
Hist, of Eng., ch. 8, sect. 9.
Also in : J. Forster, Statesmen of the Common-
wealth: Cromwell. — J. A. Picton, Oliver Crom-
well, ch. 23.
A. D. 1651-1672. — The Navigation Acts and
the American colonies. See United States op
Am. : A. D. 1651-1672 ; also. Navigation Laws.
A. D. 1652-1654.— War with the Dutch Re-
public. — "After the deatli of William, Prince of
Orange, which was attended ■^^'ith the depression
of his party and the triumph of the Dutch re-
publicans [see Netherlands : A. D. 1647-1650],
the Parliament thought that the time was now
favourable for cementing a closer confederacy
with the states. St. John, chief justice, who
was sent over to the Hague, had entertained the
idea of forming a kind of coalition between the
two republics, which would have rendered their
interests totally inseparable; . . . but the states,
who were unwilling to form a nearer confederacy
with a government whose measures were so ob-
noxious, and whose situation seemed so precari-
ous, offered only to renew the former alliances
with England; and tlie haughty St. John, dis-
gusted with tills disappointment, as well as in-
censed at many affronts which had been offered
him, with impunity, by the retainers of the Pala-
tine and Orange families, and indeed by the popu-
lace in general, returned into England and en-
deavoured to foment a quarrel between the
republics. . . . There were several motives which
at this time induced the English Parliament to
embrace hostile measures. Many of the members
thought that a foreign war would serve as a pre-
tence for continuing tlie same Parliament, and de-
laying the new model of a representative, with
which the nation had so long been flattered.
Others hoped that the war would furnish a reason
for maintaining, some time longer, that numerous
standing army which was so much complained
of. On the otlier hand, some, who dreaded the
increasing power of Cromwell, expected that the
great expense of naval armaments would prove
a motive for diminishing the military establish-
ment. To divert the attention of the public from
domestic quarrels towards foreign transactions,
seemed, in the present disposition of men's minds,
to be good policy. . . . All these views, enforced
by the violent spirit of St. John, who had great
influence over Cromwell, determined the Parlia-
ment to change the purposed alliance into a furi-
ous war against the United Provinces. To cover
these hostile intentions, the Parliament, under
pretence of providing for the interests of com-
merce, embraced such measures as they knew
would give disgust to the states. They framed
the famous act of navigation, which prohibited
all nations from importing into England in their
bottoms any commodity which was not the growth
911
ENGLAND, 1652-1654.
Expulsion of
ther
I Bump.
ENGLAND, 1653.
and manufacture of their own country. . . . The
minds of men in both states were every day more
irritated against each other ; and it was not long
before these humours broke forth into action. " —
D. Hume, Hist, of Eng., ch. 60 {». 5).— "The ne-
gotiations . . . were still pending when Blalte,
meeting Van Tromp's fleet in the Downs, in vain
summoned the Dutch Admiral to lower his flag.
A battle was the consequence, which led to a
declaration of war on the 8th of July (1653). The
maritime success of England was chiefly due to
the genius of Blake, who having hitherto served
upon shore, now turned his whole attention to
the navy. A series of bloody fights took place
between the two nations. For some time the
fortunes of the war seemed undecided. Van
Tromp, defeated by Blake, had to yield the com-
mand to De Ruyter. De Ruyter in his turn was
displaced to give way again to his greater rival.
Van Tromp was reinstated in command. A vic-
tory over Blake off the Naze (Nov. 38) enabled
him to cruise in the Cliannel with a broom at his
mast-head, implying that he had swept the Eng-
lish from the seas. But the year 1653 again saw
Blake able to fight a drawn battle of two days'
duration between Portland and La Hogue ; while
at length, on the 3d and 3d of June, a decisive
engagement was fought off the North Foreland,
in which Monk and l3eane, supported by Bluke,
completely defeated the Dutch Admiral, who,
as a last resource, tried in vain to blow up his own
ship, and tlieu retreated to the Dutch coast, leav-
ing eleven ships in the hands of the English. In
the next month, another victory on the part of
Blake, accompanied by the death of the great
Dutch Admiral, completed the ruin of the naval
power of Holland. The States were driven to
treat. In 1654 the treaty was signed, in which
IDenmark, the Hanseatic towns, and the Swiss
provinces were included. . . . The Dutch ac-
knowledged the supremacy of the English flag in
the British seas ; tliey consented to the Naviga-
tion Act. " — J. F. Bright, Hist, of Eng. , period 2,
p. 701.
Also in : W. H. Dixon, Robert BlaJce, Admiral
and General at Sea, ch. 6-7. — D. Hannay, Admiral
Blake, ch. 6-7.— J. Campbell, Naval Hist, of Ot.
B., ch. 15 (i). 2). — 6. Peun, Memorials of Sir Wm.
Penn. ch. 4. — J. Corbett, Monk, ch. 7. — J. Geddes,
Hist, of the Administration of John De Witt, v. 1,
hk. 4-5. — See, also. Navigation Laws, English:
A. D. 1651.
A. D. 1653 (April). — Cromwell's expulsion
of the Rump. — "In plain black clothes and gray
worsted stockings, the Lord-General came in
quietly and took his seat [April 20], as Vane
was pressing the House to pass the dissolution
Bill without delay and without the customary
forms. He beckoned to Harrison and told him
that the Parliament was ripe for dissolution, and
he must do it. 'Sir,' said Harrison, ' the work
Is very great and dangerous.' — 'You say well,'
said the general, and thereupon sat still for about
a quarter of an hour. Vane sat down, and the
Speaker was putting the question for passing
the Bill. Then said Cromwell to Harrison again,
' This is the time ; I must do it. ' He rose up,
put off his hat, and spoke. Beginning moder-
ately and respectfully, he presently changed his
style, told them of their injustice, delays of jus-
tice, self interest, and other faults ; charging
them not to have a heart to do anything for tlie
public good, to have espoused the corrupt inter-
est of Presbytery and the lawyers, who were the
supporters of tyranny and oppression, accus-
ing them of an intention to perpetuate them-
selves in power. And rising into passion, ' as if
he were distracted,' he told tliem tiiat the Lord
had done with them, and had chosen other in-
struments for the carrying on His work that
were worthy. Sir Peter Wentworth rose to
complain of sucli language in Parliament, com-
ing from their own trusted servant. Roused to
fury by the interruption, Cromwell left his seat,
clapped on his hat, walked up and down the
floor of the House, stamping with his feet, and
cried out, ' You are no Parliament, I say you are
no Parliament. Come, come, we have had
enough of this ; I will put an end to your prat-
ing. Call them in ! ' Twenty or thirty muske-
teers under Colonel Worsley marched in onto the
floor of the House. The rest of the guard were
placed at the door and in the lobby. Vane from
his place cried out, ' This is not honest, yea, it is
against morality and common honesty.' Crom-
well, who evidently regai'ded Vane as the breaker
of the supposed agreement, turned on him with
a loud voice, crying, ' O Sir Henry Vane. Sir
Henry Vane, the Lord deliver me from Sir Henry
Vane. ' Then looking upon one of the members,
he said, 'There sits a drunkard ;' to another he
said, ' Some of you are unjust, corrupt persons,
and scandalous to the profession of the Gospel.'
' Some are whoremasters, ' he said, looking at
Wentworth and Marten. Going up to the table,
he said, ' What shall we do with this Bauble ?
Here, take it away I ' and gave it to a musketeer,
' Fetch him down, ' he cried to Harrison, point-
ing to the Speaker. Lenthall sat still, and re-
fused to come down unless by force. ' Sir, ' said
Harrison, 'I will lend you my hand,' and put-
ting his liand within his, the Speaker came down.
Algernon Sidney sat still in his place. ' Put him
out,' said Cromwell. And Harrison and Wors-
ley put their hands on his shoulders, and he rose
and went out. The mejnbers went out, fifty-
three in all, Cromwell still calling aloud. 'To
Vane he said that he might have prevented tliis ;
but that he was a juggler and had not common
honesty. 'It is you,' he said, as they passed
him, ' that have forced me to do this, for I have
sought the Lord night and day, that He would
rather slay me than put me on the doing of this
work.' He snatched the Bill of dissolution from
the hand of the clerk, put it under his cloak,
seized on the records, ordered the guard to clear
the House of all members, and to have tlie door
locked, and went away to Whitehall. Such is
one of the most famous scenes in our history,
that which of all other things has most heavily
weighed on the fame of Cromwell. In truth it
is a matter of no small complexity, which neither
constitutional eloquence nor boisterous sarcasm
has quite adequately unravelled. ... In strict
constitutional right tlie House was no more the
Parliament than Cromwell was the king. A
House of Commons, which had executed the
king, abolished tlic Lords, approved the 'coup
d'etat ' of Pride, and by successive proscriptions
had reduced itself to a few score of extreme par-
tisans, had no legal title to the name of Parlia-
ment. The junto which held to Vane was not
more numerous than the junto which held to
Cromwell; they had far less public support; nor
had their services to the Cause been so great.
In closing tlie House, the Lord-General had used
912
ENGLAND, 1653.
The Protectorate.
ENGLAND, 1653.
his office of Commander-in-Chief to anticipate
one ' coup d'etat ' by anotlier. Had he been ten
minutes late. Vane would himself liave dissolved
the House ; snapping a vote which would give
his faction a legal ascendancy. Yet, after all,
the fact remains that Vane and the remnant of
the famous Long Parliament had that ' scintilla
juris,' as lawyers call it, that semblance of legal
right, which counts for so much in things polit-
ical." — F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, ch. 10.
Also in : J. K. Hosmer, Life of Young Sir Henri/ j
Vane, pt. 3, ch. 17.— F. P. Guizot, Hist, of Oliver I
Cromwell, bk. 4 {v. 1). — L. von Ranke, Hist, of
Eng., nth century, bk. 11, ch. 5 {i\ 3).— W. God- |
win, ffist. of the Commonwealth. ■». 3, ch. 27-39. j
A. D. 1653 (June — December). — The Bare- !
bones, or Little Parliament. — Six weeks after
the expulsion of the Rump, Cromwell, in his
own name, and upon his own authority, as "Cap-
tain-General and Commander-in-Chief," issued
(June 6) a summons to one hundred and forty
" persons fearing God and of approved fidelity
and honesty," chosen and " nominated " by him-
self, with the advice of his council of officers, re-
quiring them to be and appear at the Council
Chamber of Whitehall on the following fourth
day of July, to take upon themselves "the great
charge and trust" of providing for "the peace,
safety, and good government " of the Common-
wealth, and to serve, each, "as a Member for the
county" from which he was called. "Of all
the Parties so summoned, ' only two ' did not at-
tend. Disconsolate Bulstrode says: 'Many of
this Assembly being persons of fortune and
knowledge, it was much wondered by some that
they would at this summons, and from such hands,
take upon them the Supreme Authority of this
Nation; considering how little right Cromwell
and his Officers had to give it, or those Gentle-
men to take it. ' My disconsolate friend, it is a
sign that Puritan England in general accepts this
action of Cromwell and his Officers, and thanks
them for it, in such a case of extremity ; saying
as audibly as the means permitted : Yea, we did
wish it so. Rather mournful to the disconsolate
official mind. . . . The undeniable fact is, these
men were, as Whitlocke intimates, a quite re-
putable Assembly ; got together by anxious ' con-
sultation of the godly Clergy ' and chief Puritan
lights in their respective Counties ; not without
much earnest revision, and solemn consideration
in all kinds, on the part of men adequate enough
for such a work, and desirous enough to do it
well. The List of the Assembly exists ; not 3'et
entirely gone dark for mankind. A fair pro-
portion of them still recognizable to mankind.
Actual Peers one or two: founders of Peerage
Families, two or three, which still exist among
us, — Colonel Edward Montague, Colonel Charles
Howard, Anthony Ashley Cooper. And better
than King's Peers, certain Peers of Nature ;
whom if not the King and his pasteboard Nor-
roys have had the luck to make Peers of, the liv-
ing heart of England has since raised to the Peer-
age and means to keep there, — Colonel Robert
Blake the Sea-King, for one. ' Known persons,'
I do think ; ' of approved integrity, men fearing
Gtod ' ; and perhaps not entirely destitute of sense
any one of them ! Truly it seems rather a dis-
tinguished Parliament, — even though Mr. Praise-
god Barbone, ' the Leather merchant in Fleet-
street,' be, as all mortals must admit, a member
of it. The fault, I hope, is forgivable. Praise-
91
god, though he deals in leather, and has a name
which can be misspelt, one discerns to be the son
of pious parents ; to be himself a man of piety, of
under.standing and weight, — -and even of consid-
erable private capital, my witty flunkey friends !
We will leave Praisegod to do the best he can,
I think. ... In fact, a real Assembly of the
Notables in Puritan England; a Parliament,
Parliamentum, or Speaking- Apparatus for the
now dominant Interest in England, as exact as
could well be got, — much more exact, I suppose,
than any ballot-box, free hustings or ale-barrel
election usually yields. Such is the Assembly
called the Little Parliament, and wittily Bare-
bone's Parliament; which meets on the 4th of
July. Their witty name survives ; but their his-
tory is gone all dark." — -T. Carlyle, Oliver Crom-
ivell's Letters and Speeches, pt. 7, speech 1. — The
" assembly of godly persons" proved, however,
to be quite an unmanageable body, containing so
large a number of erratic and impracticable re-
formers that everything substantial among Eng-
lish institutions was threatened with overthrow
at their hands. After five months of busy session,
Cromwell was happily able to bring about a dis-
solution of his parliament, by the action of a
majority, surrendering back their powers into
his hands, — which was done on the 10th of De-
cember, 1653. — P. P. Guizot, Hist, of Oliver Crom-
well, bk. 5 (V. 3).
Also nst : J. A. Picton, Oliver Cromtoell, ch. 23.
A. D. 1653 (December). — The Establishment
and Constitution of the Protectorate. — The
Instrument of Government. — "What followed
the dissolution of the Little Parliament is soon
told. The Council of Officers having been sum-
moned by Cromwell as the only power de facto,
there were dialogues and deliberations, ending in
the clear conclusion that the method of headship
in a ' Single Person ' for his whole life must now
be tried in the Government of the Common-
wealth, and that Cromwell must be that ' Single
Person.' The title of King was actually pro-
posed; but, as there were objections to that,
Protector was chosen as a title familiar in Eng-
lish History and of venerable associations. Ac-
cordingly, Cromwell having consented, and all
preparations having been made, he was, on Fri-
day, Dec. 16, in a great a.ssembly of civic, judic-
ial and military dignities, solemnly sworn and
installed in the Chancery Court, Westminster
Hall, as Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of
England, Scotland and Ireland. There were
some of his adherents hitherto who did not like
this new elevation of their hero, and forsook him
in consequence, regarding any experiment of
the Single Person method in Government as a
treason to true Republicanism, and Cromwell's
assent to it as unworthy of him. Among these
was Harrison. Lambert, on the other hand, had
been the main agent in the change, and took a
conspicuous part in the installation-ceremony.
In fact, pretty generally throughout the country
and even among the Presbyterians, the elevation
of Cromwell to some kind of sovereignty had
come to be regarded as an inevitable necessity of
the time, the only possible salvation of the Com-
monwealth from the anarchy, or wild and ex-
perimental idealism, in matters civil and re-
ligious, which had been the visible drift at last
of the Barebones or Daft Little Parliament. . . .
The powers and duties of the Protectorate had
been defined, rather elaborately, in a Constitu-
ENGLAND. 1653.
Instruinenf
of Government.
ENGLAND, 1G.53.
donal Instrument of forty-two Articles, called
' The Government of the Commonwealth' [more
commonly known as The Instrument of Govern-
ment] to which Cromwell had sworn fidelity at
his installation. " — D. Masson, Life of John Mil-
ton, x>. 4. bk. 4, ch. 1 and 3.
Also m : J. Forster, Statesmen of the Common-
wealth: Cromwell. — L. von Ranke, Hist, of Eng.,
nth Century, bk. 13, ch. 1 {v. 3).— S. R. Gardiner,
Const. Doc's of tlie Puritan Bev., inti'od., sect. 4
and pp. 314-324. — Cobhett's Parliamentary Hist.
of England, ». i, pp. 1417-1426.
The following is the text of the Instrument of
Government:
The government of the Commonwealth of
England, Scotland, and Ireland, and the domin-
ions thereunto belonging.
I. That the supreme legislative authority of
the Commonwealth of England, Scotland, and
Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging,
shall be and reside in one person, and the people
assembled in Parliament ; the style of which per-
son shall be the Lord Protector of the Common-
wealth of England, Scotland, and Ireland.
II. That the exercise of the chief magistracy
and the administration of the government over
the said countries and dominions, and the people
thereof, shall be in the Lord Protector, assisted
with a council, the number whereof shall not
exceed twenty-one, nor be less than thirteen. ,
III. That all writs, processes, commissions,
patents, grants, and other things, which now
run in the name and style of the keepers of the
liberty of England by authority of Parliament,
shall run in the name and style of the Lord Pro-
tector, from whom, for the future, shall be de-
rived all magistracy and honours in these tlii?e
nations ; and have the power of pardons (except
in case of murders and treason) and benefit of all
forfeitures for the public use; and shall govern
the said countries and dominions in all things by
the advice of the council, and according to these
presents and the laws.
IV. That the Lord Protector, the Parliament
sitting, shall dispose and order the militia and
forces, both by sea and land, for the peace and
good of the three nations, by consent of Parlia-
ment ; and that the Lord Protector, with the ad-
vice and consent of the major part of the council,
shall dispose and order the militia for the ends
aforesaid in the intervals of Parliament.
V. That the Lord Protector, by the advice
aforesaid, shall direct in all things concerning the
keeping and holding of a good correspondency
with foreign kings, princes, and states; and also,
with the consent of the major part of the council,
have the power of war and peace.
VI. That the laws shall not be altered, sus-
pended, abrogated, or repealed, nor any new law
made, nor any tax, charge, or imposition laid
U]ion the people, but by common consent in Par-
liament, save only as is expressed in the thirtieth
article.
VII. That there shall be a Parliament sum-
moned to meet at Westminster upon the third
day of September, 1654, and that successively
a Parliament shall be summoned once in every
third year, to be accounted from the dissolution
of the present Parliament.
VIII. That neither the Parliament to be next
summoned, nor any successive Parliaments, shall,
during the time of five months, to be accounted
from the day of their first meeting, be adjourned,
prorogued, or dissolved, without their own con-
sent.
IX. That as well the next as all other succes-
sive Parliaments, shall be summoned and elected
in manner hereafter expressed ; that is to say,
the persons to be chosen within England, Wales,
the Isles of Jersey, Guernsey, and the town of
Berwick-upon-Tweed, to sit and serve in Parlia-
ment, shall be, and not exceed, the number of
four hundred. The persons to be chosen within
Scotland, to sit and serve in Parliament, shall be,
and not exceed, the number of thirty ; and the
persons to be chosen to sit in Parliament for
Ireland shall be, and not exceed, the number of
thirty.
X. That the persons to be elected to sit in
Parliament from time to time, for the several
coimties of England, Wales, the Isles of Jersey
and Guernsey, and the town of Berwick-upon-
Tweed, and all places within the same respec-
tively, shall be according to the proportions and
numbers hereafter expressed: that is to say,
Bedfordshire, 5; Bedford Town, 1; Berkshire,
5 ; Abingdon, 1 ; Reading, 1 ; Buckinghamshire,
5; Buckingham Town, 1; Aylesbury, 1; Wy-
comb, 1; Cambridgeshire. 4; Cambridge Town,
1 ; Cambridge University, 1 ; Isle of Ely, 2 ;
Cheshire, 4 ; Chester, 1 ; Cornwall, 8 ; Launces-
ton, 1 ; Truro, 1 ; Penryn, 1 ; East Looe and
West Looe, 1; Cumberland, 2; Carlisle, 1; Der-
byshire, 4; Derby Town, 1; Devonshire, 11;
Exeter, 2; Plymouth, 2; Clifton, Dartmouth,
Hardness, 1 ; Totnes, 1 ; Barnstable, 1 ; Tiverton,
1 ; Honiton, 1 ; Dorsetshire, 6 ; Dorchester, 1 ;
Weymouth and Melcomb-Regis, 1 ; Lyme-Regis,
1 ; Poole, 1 ; Durham, 2 ; City of Durham, 1 ;
Essex, 13; Maiden, 1; Colchester, 2; Gloucester-
shire, 5; Gloucester, 2; Tewkesbury, 1; Ciren-
cester, 1; Herefordshire. 4; Hereford, 1; Leo-
minster, 1 ; Hertfordshire. 5 ; St. Alban's, 1 ;
Hertford, 1 ; Huntingdonshire, 3 ; Huntingdon, 1 ;
Kent, 11; Canterbury, 2; Rochester, 1; Maid-
stone, 1 ; Dover, 1 ; Sandwich, 1 ; Queenborough,
1 ; Lancashire, 4 ; Preston, 1 ; Lancaster, 1 ; Liv-
erpool, 1 ; Manchester, 1 ; Leicestershire, 4 ; Lei-
cester, 2; Lincolnshire, 10; Lincoln, 2; Boston,
1 ; Grantham, 1 ; Stamford, 1 ; Great Grimsby,
1; Middlesex, 4; London, 6; Westminster, 2;
Monmouthshire, 3; Norfolk 10; Norwich, 2;
Lynn-Regis, 2; Great Yarmouth, 2; Northamp-
tonshire, 6 ; Peterborough, 1 ; Northampton, 1 ;
Nottinghamshire, 4; Nottingham, 2; Northum-
berland, 3; Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1; Berwick,
1; Oxfordshire, 5; Oxford City, 1; Oxford Uni-
versity, 1 ; Woodstock, 1 ; Rutlandshire, 2 ; Shrop-
shire, 4 ; Shrewsbury, 2 ; Bridgnorth, 1 ; Ludlow,
1; Staffordshire, 3; Lichfield, 1; Stafford, 1;
Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1 ; Somersetshire, 11 ;
Bristol, 2; Taunton, 2; Bath, 1 ; Wells, 1 ; Bridg-
water, 1 ; Southamptonshire, 8 ; Winchester, 1 ;
Southampton, 1 ; Portsmouth, 1 ; Isle of Wight,
2; Andover, 1; Suffolk, 10; Ipswich, 2; Bury
St. Edmunds, 2 ; Dunwich, 1 ; Sudbury, 1 ; Sur-
rey, 6 ; Soutliwark, 2 ; Guildford, 1 ; Reigate, 1 ;
Sussex, 9; Chichester, 1; Lewes, 1; East Grin-
stead, 1; Arundel, 1; Rye, 1; Westmoreland, 2;
Warwickshire, 4; Coventry, 2; Warwick, 1;
AViltshire, 10; New Sarum, 2; Marlborough, 1;
Devizes, 1; Worcestershire, 5; Worcester, 2.
Yorkshire. — West Riding, 6; East Riding, 4;
North Riding, 4 ; City of York, 2 ; Kingston-upon-
Hull, 1 ; Beverley, 1 ; Scarborough, 1 ; Richmond,
1; Leeds, 1; Halifax, 1. Wales. — Anglesey, 2:
914
ENGLAND, 1653.
Inst'mment
of Government.
ENGLAND, 1653.
Brecknockshire, 2; Cardiganshire. 3; Carmar-
thenshire, 2; Carnarvonsliire, 2; Denbighshire,
2 : Flintsliire, 3 ; Glamorganshire, 3 ; Cardiff, 1 ;
Merionethshire, 1; Montgomeryshire, 3; Pem-
brokeshire, 2: Plaverfordwest, 1; Radnorshire,
2. The distribution of the persons to be chosen
for Scotland and Ireland, and the several coun-
ties, cities, and places therein, shall be according
to such proportions and number as shall be
agreed upon and declared by the Lord Protector
and the major part of the council, before the
sending forth writs of summons for the next
Parliament.
XI. That the summons to Parliament shall be
by writ under the Great Seal of England, directed
to the sheriffs of the several and respective
counties, with such alteration as may suit with
the present government to be made by the Lord
Protector and his council, which the Chancellor,
Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal shall
seal, issue, and send abroad by warrant from the
Lord Protector. If the Lord Protector shall not
give warrant for issuing of writs of summons for
the next Parliament, before the first of June,
1654, or for the Triennial Parliaments, before the
first day of August in every third year, to be
accounted as aforesaid ; that then the Chancellor,
Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal for
the time being, shall, without any warrant or
direction, within seven days after the said first day
of June, 1654, seal, issue, and send abroad writs of
summons (changing therein what is to be changed
as aforesaid) to the several and respective sheriffs
of England, Scotland, and Ireland, for summoning
the Parliament to meet at Westminster, the third
day of September next ; and shall likewise, within
seven days after the said first day of August, in
every third year, to be accounted from the dis-
solution of the precedent Parliament, seal, issue,
and send forth abroad several writs of summons
(changing therein what is to be changed) as
aforesaid, for summoning the Parliament to meet
at Westminster the sixth of November in that
third year. That the said several and respective
sheriffs, shall, within ten days after the receipt of
such writ as aforesaid, cause the same to be pro-
claimed and published in every market-town
within his county upon the market-days thereof,
between twelve and three of the clock ; and shall
then also publish and declare the certain d.ay of
the week and month, for choosing members to
serve in Parliament for the body of the said
county, according to the tenor of the said writ,
which shall be upon Wednesday five weeks after
the date of the writ ; and shall likewise declare
the place where the election shall be made : for
which purpose he shall appoint the most con-
venient place for the whole county to meet in ;
and shall send precepts for elections to be made
in all and every city, town, borough, or place
within his county, where elections are to be made
by virtue of these presents, to the Mayor, Sheriff,
or other head oflicer of such city, town, borough,
or place, within three days after the receipt of
such writ and writs; which the said Mayors,
Sheriffs, and oflicers respectively are to make
publication of, and of the certain day for such
elections to be made in the said city, town, or
place aforesaid, and to cause elections to be made
accordingly.
Xn. That at the day and place of elections,
the Sheriff of each county, and the said Mayors,
Sheriffs, Bailiffs, and other head officers within
their cities, towns, boroughs, and places respec-
tively, shall take view of the said elections, anil
shall make return into the chancery within
twenty days after tlie said elections, of the per-
sons elected by the greater number of electors,
under their hands and seals, between him on the
one part, and the electors on the other part;
wherein shall be contained, that the persons
elected shall not have power to alter the govern-
ment as it is hereby settled in one single person
and a Parliament.
XIII. That the Sheriff, who shall wittingly
and willingly make any false return, or neglect
his duty, shall incur the penalty of 3,000 marks
of lawful English money ; the one moiety to the
Lord Protector, and the other moiety to such per-
son as will sue for the same.
XIV. That all and every person and persons,
who have aided, advised, assisted, or abetted in
any war against the Parliament, since the first
day of January 1641 (unless they have been since
in the service of the Parliament, and given signal
testimony of their good affection thereunto) shall
be disabled and incapable to be elected, or to give
any vote in the election of any members to serve
in the next Parliament, or in the three succeeding
Triennial Parliaments.
XV. That all such, who have advised, assisted,
or abetted the rebellion of Ireland, shall be dis-
abled and incapable for ever to be elected, or give
any vote in the election of any member to serve
in Parliament ; as also all such who do or shall
profess the Roman Catholic religion.
XVI. That all votes and elections given or
made contrary, or not according to these qualifi -
cations, shall be null and void; and if any per-
son, who is hereby made incapable, shall give
his vote for election of members to serve in Par-
liament, such person shall lose and forfeit one
full year's value of his real estate, and one full
third part of his personal estate; one moiety
thereof to the Lord Protector, and the other
moiety to him or them who shall sue for the same.
XVII. That the persons who shall be elected
to serve in Parliament, shall be such (and no
other than such) as are persons of known integ-
rity, fearing God, and of good conversation, and
being of the age of twenty-one years.
XVIII. That all and every person and persons
seised or possessed to his own use, of any estate,
real or personal, to the value of £300, and not
within the aforesaid exceptions, shall be capable
to elect members to serve in Parliament for
counties
XIX. That the Chancellor, Keeper, or Com-
missioners of the Great Seal, shall be sworn be-
fore they enter into their offices, truly and faith-
fully to issue forth, and send abroad, writs of
summons to Parliament, at the times and in the
manner before expressed : and in case of neglect
or failure to issue and send abroad writs accord-
ingly, he or they shall for every such offence be
guilty of high treason, and suffer the pains and
penalties thereof.
XX. That in case writs be not issued out, as
is before expressed, but that there be a neglect
therein, fifteen days after the time wherein the
same ought to be issued out by the Chancellor,
Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal;
that then the Parliament shall, as often as such
failure shall happen, assemble and be held at
Westminster, in the usual place, at the times
prefixed, in manner and by the means hereafter
915
ENGLAND, 1653.
Instrument
of Government.
ENGLAND, 1653.
expressed ; that is to say, that the sheriffs of the
several and respective counties, sheriffdoms,
cities, boroughs, and places aforesaid, within
England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland, the Chan-
cellor, Masters, and Scholars of the Universities
of Oxford and Cambridge, and the JIayor and
Bailiffs of the borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed,
and other places aforesaid respectively, shall
at the several courts and places to be appointed
as aforesaid, within thirty days after the said
fifteen days, cause such members to be chosen
for their said several and respective counties,
sheriffdoms, universities, cities, boroughs, and
places aforesaid, by such persons, and in such
manner, as if several and respective writs of
summons to Parliament under the Great Seal
had issued and been awarded according to the
tenor aforesaid : that if the sheriff, or other per-
sons authorized, shall neglect his or their duty
herein, that all and every such sheriff and person
authorized as aforesaid, so neglecting his or their
duty, shall, for every such offence, be guilty of
high treason, and shall suffer the pains and pen-
alties thereof.
XXI. That the clerk, called the clerk of the
Commonwealth in Chancery for the time being,
and all others, who shall afterwards execute that
office, to whom the returns shall be made, shall
for the next Parliament, and the two succeeding
Triennial Parliaments, the next day after such
return, certify the names of the several persons so
returned, and of the places for which he and they
were chosen respectively, unto the CouncU; who
shall peruse the said returns, and examine
■whether the persons so elected and returned be
such as is agreeable to the qualifications, and not
disabled to be elected : and that every person and
persons being so duly elected, and being ap-
proved of by the major part of the Council to be
persons not disabled, but qualified as aforesaid,
shall be esteemed a member of Parliament, and be
admitted to sit in Parliament, and not otherwise.
XXII. That the persons so chosen and assem-
bled in manner aforesaid, or any sixty of them,
shall be, and be deemed the Parliament of Eng-
land, Scotland, and Ireland; and the supreme
legislative power to be and reside in the Lord
Protector and such Parliament, in manner herein
expressed.
XXIII. That the Lord Protector, with the ad-
vice of the major part of the Council, shall at
any other time than is before expressed, when
the necessities of the State shall require it, sum-
mon Parliaments in manner before expressed,
■which shall not be adjourned, prorogued, or dis-
solved without their own consent, during the first
three months of their sitting. And in case of
future war with any foreign State, a Parliament
shall be forthwith summoned for their advice
concerning the same.
XXIV. That all Bills agreed unto by the Par-
liament, shall be presented to the Lord Protector
for his consent ; and in case he shall not give his
consent thereto ■svithin twenty days after they
shall be presented to him, or give satisfaction
to the Parliament within the time limited, that
then, upon declaration of the Parliament that
the Lord Protector hath not consented nor given
satisfaction, such BiUs shall pass into and be-
come laws, although he shall not give his consent
thereunto; provided such Bills contain nothing
in them contrary to the matters contained in these
presents.
XXV. That [Henry Lawrence, esq. ; Philip
lord vise. Lisle; the majors general Lambert,
Desborough, and Skippon ; lieut. general Fleet-
wood ; the colonels Edw. Montagu, Philip Jones,
and Wm. Sydenham ; sir Gilbert Pickering, sir
Ch. Wolseley, and sir Anth. Ashley Cooper,
Barts., Francis Rouse, esq.. Speaker of the late
Convention, Walter Strickland, and Rd. Major,
esqrs.] — or any seven of them, shall be a Council
for the purposes expressed in this writing ; and
upon the death or other removal of any of them,
tlie Parliament shall nominate six persons of
ability, integrity, and fearing God, for every one
that is dead or removed ; out of which the major
part of the Council shall elect two, and present
them to the Lord Protector, of which he shall
elect one ; and in case the Parliament shall not
nominate within twenty days after notice given
unto them thereof, the major part of the Council
shall nominate three as aforesaid to the Lord
Protector, who out of them shall supply the
vacancy ; and until this choice be made, the re-
maining part of the Council shall execute as fully
in all things, as if tlieir number were full. And
in case of corruption, or other miscarriage in any
of the Council in their trust, the Parliament shall
appoint seven of their number, and the Council
six, who, together with the Lord Chancellor,
Lord Keeper, or Commissioners of the Great Seal
for the time laeing, shall have power to hear and
determine such corruption and miscarriage, and
to award and inflict punishment, as the nature of
the offence shall deserve, which punishment shall
not be pardoned or remitted bj' tlie Lord Protec-
tor; and, in the interval of Parliaments, the
major part of the Council, with the consent of
the Lord Protector, may, for corruption or other
miscarriage as aforesaid, suspend any of their
number from the exercise of their trust, if they
shall find it just, until the matter shall be heard
and examined as aforesaid.
XXVI. That the Lord Protector and the major
part of the Council aforesaid may, at any time
before the meeting of the next Parliament, add
to the Council such persons as they shall think
fit, provided the number of the Council be not
made thereby to exceed twent)'-one, and the
quorum to be proportioned accordingly by the
Lord Protector and the major part of the Coun-
cil.
XXVII. That a constant yearly revenue shall
be raised, settled, and established for maintain-
ing of 10,000 horse and dragoons, and 20,000
foot, in England, Scotland and Ireland, for the
defence and security thereof, and also for a con-
venient number of ships for guarding of the seas ;
besides £300,000 per annum for defraying the
other necessary charges of administration of jus-
tice, and other expenses of the Government,
which revenue shall be raised by the customs,
and such other ways and means as shall be agreed
upon by the Lord Protector and the Council, and
shall not be taken away or diminished, nor the
way agreed upon for raising the same altered,
but by the consent of tlie Lord Protector and the
Parliament.
XXVIII. That the said yearly revenue shall
be paid into the public treasury, and shall be
issued out for the uses aforesaid,
XXIX. That in case there shall not be cause
hereafter to keep up so great a defence both at
land or sea, but that there be an abatement made
thereof, the money which will be saved thereby
916
ENGLAND, 1653.
Instrument
of Government.
ENGLAND, 1653.
shall remain in bank for the public service, and
not be employed to any other use but by con-
sent of Parliament, or, in the intervals of Parlia-
ment, by the Lord Protector and major part of
the Council.
XXX. That the raising of money for defray-
ing the charge of the present extraordinary forces,
both at sea and land, in respect of the present
•n-ars, shall be by consent of Parliament, and not
otherwise: save only that the Lord Protector,
with the consent of the major part of the Coun-
cil, for preventing the disorders and dangers
which might otherwise fall out both by sea and
land, shall have power, until the meeting of the
first Parliament, to raise money for the purposes
aforesaid ; and also to make laws and ordinances
for the peace and welfare of these nations where
it shall be necessary, which shall be binding and
in force, until order shall be taken in Parliament
concerning the same.
XXXL That the lands, tenements, rents, roy-
alties, jurisdictions and hereditaments which re-
main yet unsold or undisposed of, by Act or
Ordinance of Parliament, belonging to the Com-
monwealth (except the forests and chases, and
the honours and manors belonging to the same ;
the lands of the rebels in Ireland, lying in the
four counties of Dublin, Cork, Kildare, and Car-
low ; the lands forfeited by the people of Scot-
land in the late wars, and also the lands of Pa-
pists and delinquents in England who have not
yet compounded), shall be vested in the Lord
Protector, to hold, to him and his successors.
Lords Protectors of these nations, and shall not
be alienated but by consent in Parliament. And
all debts, tines, issues, amercements, penalties and
profits, certain and casual, due to the Keepers of
the liberties of England by authority of Parlia-
ment, shall be due to the Lord Protector, and be
payable into his public receipt, and shall be re-
covered and prosecuted in his name.
XXXn. That the office of Lord Protector over
these nations shall be elective and not heredi-
tary ; and upon the death of the Lord Protector,
another fit person shall be forthwith elected to
succeed him in the Government ; which election
shall be by the Council, who, immediately upon
the death of the Lord Protector, shall assemble
in the Chamber where they usually sit in Coun-
cil ; and, having given notice to all their members
of the cause of their assembling, shall, being
thirteen at least present, proceed to the election ;
and, before they depart the said Chamber, shall
elect a fit person to succeed in the Government,
and forthwith cause proclamation thereof to be
made in all the three nations as shall be requisite ;
and the person that they, or the major part of
them, shall elect as aforesaid, shall be, and shall
be taken to be. Lord Protector over these nations
of England, Scotland and Ireland, and the do-
minions thereto belonging. Provided that none
of the children of the late King, nor any of bis
line or family, be elected to be Lord Protector or
other Chief Magistrate over these nations, or any
the dominions thereto belonging. And until the
aforesaid election be past, the Council shall take
care of the Government, and administer in all
things as fully as the Lord Protector, or the
Lord Protector and Council are enabled to do.
XXXIII. That Oliver Cromwell, Captain-Gen-
eral of the forces of England, Scotland and Ire-
laud, shall be, and is "hereby declared to be,
Lord Protector of the Commonwealth of Eng-
land, Scotland and Ireland, and the dominions
thereto belonging, for his life.
XXXIV. That the Chancellor, Keeper or Com-
missioners of the Great Seal, the Treasurer, Ad-
miral, Chief Governors of Ireland and Scotland,
and the Chief Justices of both the Benches, shall
be chosen by the approbation of Parliament;
and, in the intervals of Parliament, by the ap-
probation of the major part of the Council, to be
afterwards approved by the Parliament.
XXXV. That the Christian religion, as con-
tained in the Scriptures, be held forth and rec-
ommended as the public profession of these
nations; and that, as soon as may be, a, provis-
ion, less subject to scruple and contention, and
more certain than the present, be made for the
encouragement and maintenance of able and
painful teachers, for the instructing the people,
and for discovery and confutation of error, here-
by, and whatever is contrary to sound doctrine ;
and until such provision be made, the present
maintenance shall not be taken away or im-
peached.
XXXVI. That to the public profession held
forth none shall be compelled by penalties or
otherwise ; but that endeavours be used to win
them by sound doctrine and the example of a
good conversation.
XXXVII. That such as profess faith in God
by Jesus Christ (though differing in judgment
from the doctrine, worship or discipline publicly
held forth) shall not be restrained from, but shall
be protected in, the profession of the faith and
exercise of their religion; so as they abuse
not this liberty to the civil injury of others and
to the actual disturbance of the public peace on
their parts ; provided this liberty be not extended
to Popery or Prelacy, nor to such as, under the
profession of Christ, hold forth and practice
licentiousness.
XXXVIII. That all laws, statutes and ordi-
nances, and clauses in any law, statute or ordi-
nance to the contrary of the aforesaid liberty,
shall be esteemed as null and void.
XXXIX. That the Acts and Ordinances of
Parliament made for the sale or other disposition
of the lands, rents and hereditaments of the late
King, Queen, and Prince, of Archbishops and
Bishops, &c.. Deans and Chapters, the lands of
delinquents and forest-lands, or any of them, or
of any other lauds, tenements, rents and heredita-
ments belonging to the Commonwealth, shall
nowise be impeached or made invalid, but shall
remain good and firm; and that the securities
given by Act and Ordinance of Parliament for
any sum or sums of money, by any of the said
lands, the excise, or any other public revenue ;
and also the securities given by the public faith
of the nation, and the engagement of the public
faith for satisfaction of debts and damages, shall
remain firm and good, and not be made void and
invalid upon any pretence whatsoever.
XL. That the Articles given to or made with
the enemy, and afterwards confirmed by Parlia-
ment, shall be performed and made good to the
persons concerned therein ; and that such appeals
as were depending in the last Parliament for re-
lief concerning bills of sale of delinquent's estates,
may be heard and determined the next Parlia-
ment, anything in this writing or otherwise to
the contrary notwithstanding.
XLI. That every successive Lord Protector
over these nations shall take and subscribe a
917
ENGLAND, 1653.
The py-otector's
Government.
ENGLAND, 1654-1658.
solemn oath, in the presence of the Council, and
such others as they shall call to them, that he
will seek the peace, quiet and welfare of these
nations, cause law and justice to be equally ad-
ministered; and that he will not violate or in-
fringe the matters and things contained in this
writing, and in all other things will, to his power
and to the best of his understanding, govern
these nations according to the laws, statutes and
customs thereof.
XLII. That each person of the Council shall,
before they enter upon their trust, take and sub-
scribe an oath, that they will be true and faith-
ful in their trust, according to the best of their
knowledge ; and that in the election of every
successive Lord Protector they shall proceed
therein impartially, and do nothing therein for
any promise, fear, favour or reward.
A. D. 1654. — Re-conquest of Acadia (Nova
Scotia). See Nova Scotia: A. D. 1621-1668.
A. D. 1654 (April). — Incorporation of Scot-
land with the Commonwealth. See Scotlakd:
A. D. 1654.
A. D. 1654-1658.— The Protector, his Parlia-
ments and his Major-Generals. — The Humble
Petition and Advice. — Differing views of the
Cromwellian autocracy. — " Oliver addressed his
first Protectorate Parliament on Sunday, the 3d
of September. . . . Immediately, under the leader-
ship of old Parliamentarians, Haslerig, Scott,
Bradshaw, and many other republicans, the House
proceeded to debate the Instrument of Govern-
ment, the constitutional basis of the existing sys-
tem. By five votes, it decided to discuss ' whether
the House should approve of government by a
Single Person and a Parliament.' This was of
course to set up the principle of making tlie Ex-
ecutive dependent on the House ; a principle, in
Oliver's mind, fatal to settlement and order. He
acted at once. Calling on the Lord Mayor to se-
cure the city, and disposing his own guard round
Westminster Hall, he summoned the House again
on the 9th day. . . . Members were called on to
sign a declaration, ' not to alter the government
as settled in a Single Person and a Parliament.'
Some 300 signed ; the minority — about a fourth
— refused and retired. . . . The Parliament, in
spite of the declaration, set itself from the first
to discuss the constitution, to punish heretics,
suppress blasphemy, revise the Ordinances of the
Council ; and they deliberately withheld all sup-
plies for the services and the government. At
last they passed an Act for revising the constitu-
tion de novo. Not a single bill had been sent up
to the Protector for his assent. Oliver, as usual,
acted at once. On the expiration of their five
lunar months, 22d January 1655, he summoned
the House and dissolved it, with a speech full of
reproaches." — F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, ch.
11. — " In 1656, the Protector called asecond Par-
liament. By excluding from it about a hundred
members whom he judged to be hostile to his
government, he found himself on amicable terms
with the new assembly. It presented to him a
Humble Petition and Advice, asking that certain
changes of the Constitution might be agreed to
by mutual consent, and that he should assume
the title of King. This title he rejected, and the
Humble Petition and Advice was passed in an
amended form on May 25, 1657, and at once re-
ceived the assent of the Protector. On June 26,
it was modified in some details by the Additional
Petition and Advice. Taking the two together,
the result was to enlarge the power of Parliament
and to diminish that of tlie Council. The Pro-
tector, in turn, received the right of appointing
his successor, and to name the life-members of
'the other House,' which was now to take the
place of the House of Lords. ... In accordance
with the Additional Petition and Advice, the
Protector summoned ' certain persons to sit in the
other House. ' A quarrel between the two Houses
broke out, and the Protector [Feb. 4, 1658] dis-
solved the Parliament in anger. " — S. R. Gardiner,
Const. Doc's of the Puritan Revolution, pp. Ixiii-
Ixiv., and 384-350. — "To govern according to
law may sometimes be an usurper's wish, but can
seldom be in his power. The protector [in 1655]
abandoned all thought of it. Dividing the king-
dom into districts, he placed at the head of each
a major-general as a sort of militarj^ magistrate,
responsible for the subjection of his prefecture.
These were eleven in number, men bitterly hos-
tile to the royalist party, and insolent towards
all civil authority. They were employed to se-
cure the payment of a tax of 10 per cent., im-
posed by Cromwell's arbitrary will on those who
had ever sided with the king during the late
wars, where their estates exceeded £100 per an-
num. The major-generals, in their correspon-
dence printed among Thurloe's papers, display a
rapacity and oppression beyond their master's.
. . . All illusion was now gone as to tlie pre-
tended benelits of the civil war. It had ended
iu a despotism, compared to which all the illegal
practices of former kings, all that had cost Charles
his life and crown, appeared as dust in the
balance. For what was ship-money, a general
burthen, by the side of the present decimation of
a single class, whose ofEence had long been ex-
piated by a composition and effaced by an act of
indemnity ? or were the excessive punishments
of the star-chamber so odious as the capital exe-
cutions inflicted without trial by peers, whenever
it suited the usurper to erect liis high court of
justice ? . . . I cannot . . . agree in the praises
which liave been showered upon Cromwell for
the just administration of the laws under his do-
minion. That, between party and party, the or-
dinary civil rights of men were fairly dealt with,
is no extraordinary praise; and it may be ad-
mitted that he filled the benches of justice with
able lawyers, though not so considerable as those
of the reign of Charles II. ; but it is manifest
that, so far as his own authority was concerned,
no hereditary despot, proud in the crimes of a
hundred ancestors, could more have spurned at
every limitation than this soldier of a common-
wealth." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of Eng., ch. 10,
pt. 3. — " Cromwell was, and felt himself to be, a
dictator called in by the winning cause iu a revo-
lution to restore confidence and secure peace. He
was, as he said frequently, ' the Constable set to
keep order in the Parish.' Nor was he in any
sense a militarj' despot. . . . Never did a ruler
invested with absolute power and overwhelming
military force more obstinately strive to surround
his authority with legal limits and Parliamentary
control." — F. Harrison, Oliver Cromwell, ch. 11.
• — "To this condition, then, England was now
reduced. After the gallantest fight for liberty
that had ever been fought by any nation in the
world, she found herself trampled under foot by
a military despot. All the vices of old kingly
rule were nothing to what was now imposed upon
her." — J. Forster, Statesmen of the Commonwealth:
918
ENGLAND, 1654-1658.
Restoration of the
Stuarts,
ENGLAND, 1658-1660.
Cromwell. — "His [Cromwell's] wish seems to
have been to govern constitutionally, and to sub-
stitute the empire of the laws for that of the
sword. But he soon found that, hated as he
was, both by Roj'alists and Presbyterians, he
could be safe only by being absolute. . . . Those
soldiers who would not suffer him to assume the
kingly title, stood by him when he ventured on
acts of power as high as any English king has
ever attempted. The government, therefore,
though in form a republic, was in truth a des-
potism, moderated only by the wisdom, the so-
briety and the magnanimity of the despot." —
Lord Macaulay, Hist, of Eng., ch. 1.
A. D. 1655-1658. — War with Spain, alli-
ance with France. — Acquisition of Dunkirk. —
"Though the German war ['the Thirty Years'
"War,' concluded in 1648 by the Treaty of West-
phalia] was over, the struggle between France
and Spain was continued with great animosity,
each country striving to crush her rival and be-
come the first power in Europe. Both Louis
XIV. and Philip IV. of Spain were bidding for
the protector's support. Spain offered the pos-
session of Calais, when taken from France;
France the possession of Dunkirk when taken
from Spain (1655). Cromwell determined to ally
himself with France against Spain. ... It was
in the West Indies that the obstructive policy of
Spain came most into collision with the interests
of England. Her kings based their claims to the
possession of two continents on the bull of Pope
Alexander VI., who in 1493 had granted them all
lands they should discover from pole to pole, at
the distance of 100 leagues west from the Azores
and Cape Verd Islands. On the strength of this
bull they held that the discovery of an island
gave them the right to the group, the discovery
of a headland the right to a continent. Though
this monstrous claim had quite broken do wn as far
as the North American continent was concerned,
the Spaniards, still recognizing ' no peace beyond
the line,' endeavoured to shut all Europeans
but themselves out of any share in the trade or
colonization of at least the southern half of the
New World. . . . While war was now pro-
claimed with Spain, a treaty of peace was signed
between France and England, Louis XIV. agree-
ing to banish Charles Stuart and his brothers
from French territory (Oct. 24, 1655). This
treaty was afterwards changed into a league,
offensive and defensive (March 33, 1657), Crom-
well undertaking to assist Louis with 6,000 men
in besieging Gravelines, Mardyke, and Dunkirk,
on condition of receiving the two latter towns
when reduced by the allied armies. By the occu-
pation of these towns Cromwell intended to con-
trol the trade of the Channel, to hold the Dutch
in check, who were then but unwilling friends,
and to lessen the danger of invasion from any
union of Royalists and Spaniards. The war
opened in the year 1657 [Jamaica, however, had
already been taken from the Spaniards and St.
Domingo attacked], with another triumph by
sea." 'This was Blake's last exploit. He attacked
and destroyed the Spanish bullion fleet, from
Mexico, in the harbor of Santa Cruz, island of
Tenerilie, and silenced the forts which guarded
it. The great sea-captain died on his voyage
home, after striking this blow. The next spring
' ' the siege of Dunkirk was commenced (May,
1658). The Spaniards tried to relieve the town,
but were completely defeated in an engagement
called the Battle of the Dunes from the sand hills
among which it was fought ; the defeat was mainly
owing to the courage and discipline of Oliver's
troops, who won for themselves the name of 'the
Immortal Six Thousand.' . . . Ten days after
the battle Dunkirk surrendered, and the French
had no choice but to give over to the English
ambassador the keys of a town they thought ' un
si bon morceau ' (June 35). "— B. M. Cordery and
J. S. Phillpotts, King and Commonwealth, ch. 15.
Also in.- T. Carlyle, Oliver CromicelVs Letters
and Speeches, hk. 9, speech 5 and bk. 10, letters
153-157.— J. Campbell, Naval Hist, of Gt. B.,
eh. 15 (». 3). — J. Waylen, The House of Cromwell
and the Story of Dunkirk, pp. 173-273.— W. H.
Dixon, Robert Blake, ch. 9-10. — D. Hannay,
Admiral Blake, ch. 9-11. — See, also, France:
A. D. 1655-1658.
A. D. 1658-1660.- The fall of the Protector-
ate and Restoration of the Stuarts. — King
Charles II. — When Oliver Cromwell died, on
the 3d day of September, 1658 — the anniversary
of his victories at Dunbar and at Worcester — his
eldest son Richard, whom he had nominated, it
was said, on his death-bed, was proclaimed Pro-
tector, and succeeded him "as quietly as any
King had ever been succeeded by any Prince of
Wales. During five months, the administration
of Richard Cromwell went on so tranquilly and
regularly that all Europe believed him to be
firmly established on the chair of state." But
Richard had none of his father's genius or per-
sonal power, and the discontents and jealousies
which the former had rigorously suppressed soon
tossed the latter from his unstable throne by their
fierce upheaval. He summoned a new Parliament
(Jan. 27, 1659), which recognized and confirmed
his authority, though containing a powerful op-
position, of uncompromising republicans and
secret royalists. But the army, which the great
Protector had tamed to submissive obedience,
was now stirred into mischievous action once
more as a political power in the state, subservient
to the ambition of Fleetwood and other com-
manders. Richard Cromwell could not make
himself the master of his father's battalions.
' ' He was used by the army as an instrument for
the purpose of dissolving the Parliament [April
2'3], and was then contemptuously thrown aside.
The officers gratified their republican allies by
declaring that the expulsion of the Rump had
been illegal, and by inviting that assembly to re-
sume its functions. The old Speaker and a
quorum of the old members came together [May
9] and were proclaimed, amidst the scarcely
stifled derision and execration of the whole na-
tion, the supreme power in the Commonwealth.
It was at the same time expressly declared that
there should be no first magistrate and no House
of Lords. But this state of things could not last.
On the day on which the Long Parliament re-
vived, revived also its old quarrel with the army.
Again the Rump forgot that it owed its existence
to the pleasure of the soldiers, and began to treat
them as subjects. Again the doors of the House
of Commons were closed by military violence
[Oct. 13] ; and a provisional government, named
by the officers, assumed the direction of affairs. "
The troops stationed in Scotland, under Monk,
had not been consulted, however, in these trans-
actions, and were evidently out of sympathy
with their comrades in England. Monk, who
had never meddled with politics before, was now
919
ENGLAND, 1658-1660.
Charles II .
" the Merry Monarch.^
ENGLAND, 1660-1685.
Induced to interfere. He refused to acknowledge
the military provisional government, declared
himself the champion of the civil power, and
marched into England at the head of his 7,000
veterans. His movement was everywhere wel-
comed and encouraged by popular demonstra-
tions of delight. The army in England lost
courage and lost unity, awed and paralyzed by
the public feeling at last set free. Monk reached
London without opposition, and was the recog-
nized master of the realm. Nobody knew his
intentions — himself, perhaps, as little as any —
and it was not until after a period of protracted
suspense that he declared himself for the conven-
ing of a new and free Parliament, in the place of
the Rump — -which had again resumed its sit-
tings — for the settlement of the state. "The
result of the elections was such as might have
been expected from the temper of the nation.
The new House of Commons consisted, with few
exceptions, of persons friendly to the royal family.
The Presbyterians formed the majority. . . .
The new Parliament, which, having been called
without the royal writ, is more accurately de-
scribed as a Convention, met at "Westminster
[April 26, 1660]. The Lords repaired to the hall,
from which they had, during more than eleven
years, been excluded by force. Both Houses in-
stantly invited the King to return to his country.
He was proclaimed with pomp never before
known. A gallant fleet convoyed him from Hol-
land to the coast of Kent. "When he landed [May
25, 1660], the cliffs of Dover were covered by
thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one
could be found who was not weeping with de-
light. The journey to London was a continued
triumph." — Lord Macaulay, Hist, of Eng., ch. 1.
— The only guarantee with which the careless
nation took back their ejected kings of the faith-
less race of Stuarts was embodied in a Declara-
tion which Charles sent over from "Our Court
at Breda " in April, and which was read in
Parliament with an effusive display of respect and
thankfulness. In this Declaration from Breda,
"a general amnesty and liberty of conscience
were promised, with such exceptions and limita-
tions only as the Parliament should think fit to
make. AH delicate questions, among others the
proprietorship of confiscated estates, were in like
manner referred to the decision of Parliament,
thus leaving the King his liberty while diminish-
ing his responsibility ; and though fully asserting
the ancient rights of the Crown, he announced
his intention to associate the two Houses with
himself in all great affairs of State." — F. P.
Guizot, Hist, of Bich'd Cromwell and tlie Restoi-a-
tion, hie. 4 («. 2).
Also ik : G. Burnet, Hut. of My Own Time, bk.
2, 1660-61.— Earl of Clarendon, Hist, of the Re-
hellion, hk. 16 (o. 6). — D. ]\Iasson, Life of Milton,
V. 5, hk. 3.— J. Corbett, Monk. cli. 9-14.
A. D. 1660-1685. — The Merry Monarch. —
' ' There never were such profligate times in Eng-
land as under Charles the Second. Whenever
you see his portrait, with his swarthy ill-looking
face and great nose, you may fancy him in his
Court at "Whitehall, surrounded by some of the
very worst vagabonds in the kingdom (though
they were lords and ladies), drinking, gambling,
indulging in vicious conversation, and committing
every kind of profligate excess. It has been a
fashion to call Charles the Second ' The Merry
Monarch. ' Let me try to give you a general
idea of some of the merry things that were done,
in the merry days when this merry gentleman sat
upon his merry throne, in merry England. The
first merry proceeding was — of course — to de-
clare that he was one of the greatest, the wisest,
and the noblest kings that ever shone, like the
blessed sun itself, on this benighted earth. The
next merry and pleasant piece of business was,
for the Parliament, in the humblest manner, to
give him one million two hundred thousand
pounds a year, and to settle upon him for life
that old disputed ' tonnage and poundage ' which
had been so bravely fought for. Then, General
Monk, being made Earl of Albemarle, and a few
other Royalists similarly rewarded, the law went
to work to see what was to be done to those per-
sons (they were called Regicides) who had "been
concerned in making a martyr of the late King.
Ten of these were merrily executed ; that is to
say, six of the judges, one of the council, Colonel
Hacker and another oflicer who had commanded
the Guards, and Hugh Peters, a preacher who
had preached against the martyr with all his
heart. These executions were so extremely
merry, that every horrible circumstance which
Cromwell had abandoned was revived with ap-
palling cruelty. . . . Sir Harry Vane, who had
furnished the evidence against Strafford, and was
one of the most staunch of the Republicans, was
also tried, found guilty, and ordered for execu-
tion. . . . These merry scenes were succeeded by
another, perhaps even merrier. On the anni-
versary of the late King's death, the bodies of
Oliver Cromwell, Ireton, and Bradshaw, were
torn out of their graves in Westminster Abbey,
dragged to Tyburn, hanged there on a gallows
all day long, and then beheaded. Imagine the
head of Oliver Cromwell set upon a pole to be
stared at by a brutal crowd, not one of whom
would have dared to look the living Oliver in
the face for half a moment ! Think, after you
have read this reign, what England was under
Oliver Cromwell who was torn out of his grave,
and what it was under this merry monarch who
sold it, like a merry Judas, over and over again.
Of course, the remains of Oliver's wife and
daughter were not to be spared, either, though
they had been most excellent women. The base
clergy of that time gave up their bodies, which
had been buried in the Abbey, and — to the
eternal disgrace of England — they were thrown
into a pit, together with the mouldering bones of
Pym, and of the brave and bold old Admiral
Blake. . . . The whole Court was a great flaunt-
ing crowd of debauched men and shameless
women; and Catherine's merry husband insulted
and outraged her in every possible way, until
she consented to receive those worthless creatures
as her very good friends, and to degrade herself
by their companionship. A Mrs. Palmer, whom
the King made Lady Castlemaine. and afterwards
Duchess of Cleveland, was one of the most pow-
erful of the bad women about the Court, and had
great influence with the King nearly all through
his reign. Another merry lady named Moll
Davies, a dancer at the theatre, was afterwards
her rival. So was Nell Gwyn, first an orange
girl and then an actress, who really had good in
her, and of whom one of the worst things I
know is, that actuallv she does seem to have been
fond of the King, the first Duke of St. Albans
was this orange girl's child. In like manner the
son of a merry waiting-lady, whom the King
920
ENGLAND, 1660-1685.
Savoy
Conference.
ENGLAND, 1662-1665.
created Duchess of Portsmouth, became the
Duke of Richmond. Upon the whole it is not so
bad a thing to be a commoner. The Merry
Monarch was so exceedingly merry among these
merry ladies, and some equally merry (and equally
infamous) lords and gentlemen, that he soon got
through his hundred thousand pounds, and then,
by way of raising a little pocket-money, made a
merry bargain. He sold Dunkirk to the French
King for five millions of livres. When I think
of the dignity to which Oliver Cromwell raised
England in the eyes of foreign powers, and when
I think of the manner in which he gained for
England this very Dunkirk, I am much inclined
to consider that if the Merry Monarch had been
made to follow his father for this action, he
would have received his just deserts." — C.
Dickens, Child's Hist, of Eng. , ch. 35.
A. D. i66i. — Acquisition of Bombay. See
India: A. D. 1G00-1T(«.
A. D. i66i. — The Savoy Conference. — "The
Restoration had been the joint work of Episco-
palian and Presbj'terian ; would it be possible
to reconcile them on this question too [i. e., of
the settlement of Church government] ? The
Presbyterian indeed was willing enough for a
compromise, for he had an uneasy feeling that
the ground was slipping from beneath his feet.
Of Charles's intentions he was still in doubt; but
he knew tliat Clarendon was the sworn friend
of the Church. The Churchman on the other
hand was eagerly expecting the approaching
hour of triumph. It soon appeared that as King
and Parliament, so King and Church were in-
separable in the English mind ; that indeed the
return of the King was the restoration of the
Church even more than it was the restoration of
Parliament. In the face of the present Presby-
terian majority however it was necessary to tem-
porise. The former incumbents of Church liv-
ings were restored, and the Commons took the
Communion according to the rites of the Churcli ;
but in other respects the Presbyterians were care-
fully kept in play ; Charles taking his part in the
elaborate farce by appointing ten of their leading
ministers royal chaplains, and even attending
their sermons." In October, 1660, Charles "took
the matter more completely into his own hands
by issuing a Declaration. Refusing, on the
ground of constraint, to admit tlie validity of the
oaths imposed upon him in Scotland, by which
he was bound to uphold the Covenant, and not
concealing his preference for the Anglican Church,
as ' the best fence God hath yet raised against
popery in the world,' he asserted that neverthe-
less, to his own knowledge, the Presbyterians
were not enemies to Episcopacy or a set liturgy,
and were opposed to tlie alienation of Church
revenues. The Declaration then went on to limit
the power of bishops and archdeacons in a degree
sufficient to satisfy many of the leading Presbyte-
rians, one of whom, Reynolds, accepted a bishop-
ric. Charles then proposed to choose an equal
number of learned divines of both persuasions to
discuss alterations in the liturgy ; meanwhile no
one was to be troubled regarding differences of
practice. The majority in the Commons at first
welcomed the Declaration, . . . and a bill was
accordingly introduced by Sir Matthew Hale to
turn the Declaration into a law. But Clarendon
at any rate had no intention of thus baulking the
Church of her revenge. Anticipating Hale's
action, he had in the interval been busy in se-
curing a majority against any compromise. The
Declaration had done its work in gaining time,
and when the bill was brought in it was rejected
by 183 to 157 votes. Parliament was at once (De-
cember 24) dissolved. The way was now open for
the riot of the Anglican triumph. Even before
the new House met the masic was thrown off by
the issuing of an order to the justices to restore
the full liturgy. The conference indeed took
place in the Savoy Palace. It failed, like the
Hampton Court Conference of James I., because
it was intended to fail. Upon the two important
points, the authority of bishops and the liturgy,
the Anglicans would not give way an inch.
Both parties informed the King that, anxious as
they were for agreement, they saw no chance of
it. This last attempt at union having fallen
through, the Government had their hands free ;
and their intentions were speedily made plain."
— O. Airy, The Eng. Bestoration and Louis XIV.,
ch. 7. — "'The Royal Commission [for the Savoy
Conference] bore date the 25th of March. It
gave the Commissioners authority to review the
Book of Common Prayer, to compare it with the
most ancient Liturgies, to take into consideration
all things which it contained, to consult respect-
ing the exceptions against it, and by agreement
to make such necessary alterations as should
afford satisfaction to tender consciences, and re-
store to the Church unity and peace ; the instru-
ment appointed ' the Master's lodgings in the
Savoy ' as the place of meeting. . . . The Com-
missioners were summoned to meet upon the 15th
of April. . . . The Bill of Uniformity, hereafter to
be described, actually passed the House of Com-
mons on the 9th of July, about a fortnight before
the Conference broke up. The proceedings of a
Royal Commission to review the Prayer Book,
and make alterations for the satisfaction of tender
consciences were, by this premature act, really
treated with mockery, a circumstance which
could not but exceedingly offend and annoy the
Puritan members, and serve to embitter the
language of Baxter as the end of these fruitless
sittings approached." — J. Stoughton, Hist, of
Religion in Eng., v. 3, ch. 5.
Also in: E. Calamy, Nonconformists' Memo-
rial, introd., sect. 3. — W. Orme, Life and Times
of Richard Baxter, ch. 7.
A. D. 1662. — The sale of Dunkirk. — "Unable
to confine himself within the narrow limits of his
civil list, with his favorites and mistresses, he
[Charles II.] would have sought even in the in-
fernal regions the gold which his subjects meas-
ured out to him with too parsimonious a hand.
. . . [He] proposed to sell to France Dunkirk
and its dependencies, which, he said, cost him
too much to keep up. He asked twelve million
francs ; he fell at last to five millions, and the
treaty was signed Oct. 27, 1663. It was time ;
the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London, In-
formed of the negotiation, had determined to
offer Charles II. whatever he wished in behalf
of their city not to alienate Dunkirk. Charles
dared not retract his word, which would have
been, as D'Estrades told him, to break forever
with Louis XIV., and on the 2d of December
Louis joyfully made his entry into his good city,
reconquered by gold instead of the sword." — H.
JIartin, Hist, of France : Age of Louis XIV. ,
trans, by M. L. Booth, ch. 4 (». 1).
A. D. 1662-1665. — The Act of Uniformity
and persecution of the Nonconformists. — The
921
ENGLAND, 1663-1665
Act of Uniformity.
ENGLAND, 1668-1670.
failure of the Savoy Conference "was the con-
clusion which had been expected and desired.
Chai'les had already summoned the Convocation,
and to that assembly was assigned the task which
had failed in the hands of the commissioners at
the Savoy. . . . The act of uniformity followed
[passed by the Commons July 9, 1661 ; by the
Lords May 8, 1662; receiving the royal assent
May 19, 1662], by which it was enacted that the
revised Book of Common Prayer, and of Ordi-
nation of Jlinisters, and no other, should be used
in all places of public worship; and that all
beneficed clergymen should read the service from
it within a given time, and, at the close, profess
in a set form of words, their ' unfeigned assent
and consent to everythmg contained and pre-
scribed in it. ' . . . The act of uniformity may
have been necessary for the restoration of the
church to its former discipline and doctrine ; but
if such was the intention of those who framed
the declaration from Breda, they were guilty of
infidelity to the king and of fraud to the people,
by putting into his mouth language which, with
the aid of equivocation, they might explain
away, and by raising in them expectations which
it was never meant to fulfil." — J. Lingard, Hist,
of Eng., V. 11, ch. 4. — "This rigorous act when
it passed, gave the ministers, who could not con-
form, no longer time than till Bartholomewday,
August 24th, 1662, when they were all cast out.
. . . This was an action without a precedent:
The like to this the Reformed church, nay the
Christian world, never saw before. Historians
relate, with tragical excl.iraations, that between
three and four score bishops were driven at once
into the island of Sardinia by the African van-
dals ; tliat 200 ministers were banished by Fer-
dinand, king of Bohemia; and that great havock
was, a few years after, made among the ministers
of Germany by the Imperial Interim. But these
all together fall short of the number ejected by
the act of uniformity, which was not less than
2,000. The succeeding hardships of the latter
were also by far the greatest. They were not
only silenced, liut )iad no room left for any sort
of usefulness, and were in a manner buried alive.
Far greater tenderness was used towards the
Popish clergy ejected at the Reformation. They
were suffered to live quietly; but these were
oppressed to the utmost, and that even by their
brethren who professed the same faith them-
selves: not only excluded preferments, but
turned out into the wide world without any visi-
ble way of subsistence. Not so much as a poor
vicarage, not an obscure chapel, not a school was
left them. Nay, though they offered, as some of
them did, to preach gratis, it must not be allowed
them. . . . The ejected ministers continued for
ten years in a state of silence and obscurity. . . .
The act of uniformity took place August the
24th, 1662. On the 26th of December following,
the king published a Declaration, expressing his
purpose to grant some indulgence or liberty in
religion. Some of the Nonconformists were
hereupon much encouraged, and waiting pri-
vately on the king, had their hopes confirmed,
and would have persuaded their brethren to have
thanked him for his declaration; but they re-
fused, lest they should make way for the tolera-
I ion of the Papists, whom they understood the
lung intended to include in it. . . . Instead of
indulgence or comprehension, on the 30th of
June, an act against private meetings, called the
Conventicle Act, passed the House of Commons,
and soon after was made a law, viz. : 'That every
person above sixteen years of age, present at any
meeting, under pretence of any exercise of re-
ligion, in other manner than is the practice of the
church of England, where there are five persons
more than the household, shall for the first of-
fence, by a justice of peace be recorded, and
sent to gaol three months, till he pay £.5, and for
the second offence six months, till he pay £10,
and the third time being convicted by a jury,
shall be banished to some of the American plan-
tations, excepting New England or Virginia.'
. . . In the year 1665 the plague broke out" —
and the ejected ministers boldly took possession
for the time of the deserted London pulpits.
"While God was consuming the people by this
judgment, and the Nonconformists were labour-
ing to save their souls, the parliament, which sat
at Oxford, was busy in making an act [called
the Five Mile Act] to render their case incompara-
bly harder than it was before, by putting upon
them a certain oath [' that it is not lawful, upon
any pretence whatsoever, to take arms against
the king.'&c], which, if they refused, they must
not come (unless upon the road) within five miles
of any city or corporation, any place that sent
burgesses to parliament, any place where they
had been ministers, or had preached after the act
of oblivion. . . . When this act came out, those
ministers who had any maintenance of their own,
found out some place of residence in obscure
villages, or market-towns, that were not corpora-
tions. " — E. Calamy, The Nonconformist's Me-
morial, in trod., sect. 4-6.
Also in : J. Stoughton, Hist, of Religion in
Eng., V. 3, ch. 6-9.— D. Neal, Hist, of the Puri-
tans, V. 4, ch. 6-7.
A. D. 1663. — The grant of the Carolinas to
Monk, Clarendon, Shaftesbury, and others.
See North Carolina: A. D. 1663-1670.
A. D. 1663. — The King's charter to Rhode
Island. See Rhode Island: A. D. 1660-1663.
A. D. 1664. — The conquest of New Nether-
land (Nev7 York). See New York: A. D, 1664.
A. D. 1664-1665. — The first refractory symp-
toms in Massachusetts. See Massachusetts:
A. D. 1660-1665.
A. D. 1665. — The grant of New Jersey to
Carteret and Berkeley. See New Jebset:
A. D. 1664-1667.
A. D. 1665-1666.— War with Holland re-
newred. — The Dutch fleet in the Thames. See
Netherl.\nds (Holland): A. D. 166.5-1666.
A. D. 1668.— The Triple Alliance with Hol-
land and Sweden against Louis XIV. See
Netherlands (Holl.^nd) : A. D. 1668.
A. D. 1668. — Cession of Acadia (Nova Sco-
tia) to France. See Nova Scotia: A. D. 1621-
1668.
A. D. 1668-1670.— The secret Catholicism
and the perfidy of the King. — His begging of
bribes from Louis XIV. — His betrayal of Hol-
land. — His breaking of the Triple Alliance. —
In 1668, the royal treasury being greatly embar-
rassed by the king's extravagances, an attempt
was made "to reduce the annual expenditure
below the amount of the royal income. . . . But
this plan of economy accorded not with the royal
disposition, nor did it offer any prospect of ex-
tinguishing the debt. Charles remembered the
promise of pecuniary assistance from France in
the beginning of his reign ; and, though his pre-
922
ENGLAND, 1668-1670.
TIte King
in French Bay.
ENGLAND 1672-1673.
vious efforts to cultivate the friendship of Louis
had been defeated by an unpropitious course of
events, he resolved to renew the experiment.
Immediately after the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle,
Buckingham opened a negotiation with the
duchess of Orleans, the king's sister, in France,
and Charles, in his conversations with the French
resident, apologised for his conduct in forming
the triple alliance, and openly expressed his
wish to enter into a closer union, a more intimate
friendship, with Louis. . . . About the end of
the year the communications between the two
[irinces became more open and confidential;
French money, or the promise of French money,
was received by the English ministers ; the nego-
tiation began to assume a more regular form,
and the most solemn assurances of secrecy were
given, that their real object might be withheld
from the knowledge, or even the suspicion, of
the States. In this stage of the proceedings
Charles received an important communication
from his brother James. Hitherto that prince
had been an obedient and zealous son of the
Church of England ; but Dr. Heylin's History of
the Reformation had shaken his religious cre-
dulity, and the result of the inquiry was a con-
viction that it became his duty to reconcile him-
self with the Church of Rome. He was not
blind to the dangers to which such a change
would expose him ; and he therefore purposed to
continue outwardly in communion with the es-
tablished church, while he attended at the Catho-
lic service in private. But, to his surprise, he
learned from Symonds, a Jesuit missionary, that
no dispensation could authorise such duplicity
of conduct : a similar answer was returned to the
same question from the pope ; and James imme-
diately took his resolution. He communicated
to the king in private that he was determined to
embrace the Catholic faith ; and Charles without
hesitation replied that he was of the same mind,
and would consult with the duke on the subject
in the presence of lord Arundell, lord Arlington,
and Arlington's confidential friend, sir Thomas
Clifford. . . . The meeting was held in the duke's
closet. Charles, with tears in his eyes, lamented
the hardship of being compelled to profess a re-
ligion which he did not approve, declared his
determination to emancipate himself from this
restraint, and requested the opinion of those
present, as to the most eligible means of effecting
his purpose with safety and success. They ad-
vised him to communicate his intention to Louis,
and to solicit the powerful aid of that monarch.
Here occurs a very interesting question, — was
Charles sincere or not? . . . He was the most
accomplished dissembler in his dominions; nor
will it be any injustice to his character to sus-
pect that his real object was to deceive both his
brother and the king of France. . . . Now, how-
ever, the secret negotiation proceeded with
greater activity ; and lord Arundell, accompanied
by sir Richard Bellings, hastened to the French
court. He solicited from Louis the present of a
considerable sum, to enable the king to suppress
any insurrection which might be provoked by
his intended conversion, and offered the co-cp-
cration of England in the projected invasion of
Holland, on the condition of an annual subsidy
during the continuation of hostilities. " On the
advice of Louis, Charles postponed, for the time
being, his intention to enter publicly the Romish
church and thtis provoke a national revolt; but
his proposals were otherwise accepted, and a
secret treaty was concluded at Dover, in May,
1670, through the agency of Charles' sister, Hen-
rietta, the duchess of Orleans, who came over
for that purpose. " Of this treaty, . . . though
much was afterwards said, little was certainly
known. All the parties concerned, both the
sovereigns and the negotiators, observed an im-
penetrable secrecy. AVhat became of the copy
transmitted to France is unknown ; its counter-
part was confided to the custody of sir Thomas
Clifford, and is still in the keeping of his descen-
dant, the lord Clifford of Chudleigh. The prin-
cipal articles were : 1. That the king of England
should publicly profess himself a Catholic at such
time as should appear to him most expedient, and
subsequently to that profession should join with
Louis in a war against the Dutch republic at such
time as the most Christian king should judge
proper. 3. That to enable the king of England
to suppress any insurrection which might be oc-
casioned by his conversion, the king of France
should grant him an aid of 2,000,000 of livres,
by two payments, one at the expiration of three
months, the other of six months, after the ratifi-
cation of the treaty, and should also assist him
with an armed force of 6,000 men, if . . . neces-
sary. ... 4. That if, eventually, any new rights
on the Spanish monarchy should accrue to the
king of France, the king of England should aid
nira with all his power in the acquisition of those
rights. 5. That both princes should make war
on the united provinces, and that neither should
conclude peace or truce with them without the
advice and consent of his ally. " — J. Lingard, Hist.
of Eng., ». 11, ch. 6.
Also in : H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of Eng. , ch.
11. — O. Airy, Tlie Eng. ReMoration and Louis
XIV., ch. 16.— G. Burnet, Hist, of My Own Time,
bk. 3 (d. 1).
A. D. 1671. — The Cabal. — "It was remarked
that the committee of council, established for
foreign affairs, was entirely changed ; and that
Prince Rupert, the Duke of Ormond, Secretary
Trevor, and Lord-keeper Bridgeman, men in
whose honour the nation had great confidence,
were never called to any deliberations. The
whole secret was intrusted to five persons, Clif-
ford, Ashley [afterwards Earl of Shaftesburj'],
Buckingham, Arlington, and Lauderdale. These
men were known by the appellation of the Cabal,
a word which the initial letters of their names
happened to compose. Never was there a more
dangerous ministry in England, nor one more
noted for pernicious counsels." — D. Hume, Hist.
of Eng., ch. 65 («. 6). — See, also, Cabinet, The
English.
A. D. 1672-1673. — The Declaration of In-
dulgence and the Test Act. — " It would have
been impossible to obtain the consent of the
party in the Royal Council which represented
the old- Presbyterians, of Ashley or Lauderdale
or the Duke of Buckingham, to the Treaty of
Dover. But it was possible to trick them into
approval of a war with Holland by playing on
their desire for a toleration of the Nonconform-
ists. The announcement of the King's Catholi-
cism was therefore deferred. . . . His ministers
outwitted, it only remained for Charles to out-
wit his Parliament. A large subsidy was de-
manded for the fleet, under the pretext of up-
holding the Triple Alliance, and the subsidy was
no sooner granted than the two Houses were
923
ENGLAND, 1673-1673.
DecCaration
of Indulgence,
ENGLAND, 1678-1679.
adjourned. Fresh supplies were obtained by clos-
ing the Exchequer, and suspending — under
Clifford's advice — the payment of either prin-
cipal or interest on loans advanced to the public
treasury. The measure spread bankruptcy among
half the goldsmiths of London ; but it was fol-
lowed in 1672 by one yet more startling — the
Declaration of indulgence. By virtue of his
ecclesiastical powers, the King ordered ' that all
manner of penal laws on matters ecclesiastical
against whatever sort of Nonconformists or rec-
usants should be from that day suspended,' and
gave liberty of public worsliip to all dissidents
save Catholics, who were allowed to practice
their religion only in private houses. . . . The
Declaration of Indulgence was at once followed
by a declaration of war against the Dutch on the
part of both England and France. ... It was
necessary in 1673 to appeal to the Commons [for
war supplies], but the Commons met in a mood
of angry distrust. . . . There was a general sus-
picion that a plot was on foot for the establisli-
ment of Catholicism and despotism, and that the
war and the Indulgence were parts of the plot.
The change of temper in the Commons was
marked by the appearance of what was from that
time called the Country party, with Lords Russell
and Cavendish and Sir William Coventry at its
head — a party which sympathized with the Non-
conformists, but looked on it as its first duty to
guard against the designs of the Court. As to
the Declaration of Indulgence, however, all
parties in the House were at one. The Commons
resolved ' that penal statutes in matters ecclesi-
astical cannot be suspended but by consent of
Parliament,' and refused supplies till tlie Declara-
tion was recalled. The King yielded ; but the
Declaration was no sooner recalled than a Test
Act was passed through both Houses without
opposition, wliich required from every one in the
civil and military employment of the State the
oaths of allegiance and supremacy, a declaration
against transubstantiation, and a reception of the
sacrament according to tlie rites of the Church
of England. Clifford at once counseled resis-
tance, and Buckingham talked fliglitily about
bringing the army to London, l5ut Arlington saw
that all hope of carrying the ' great plan ' through
was at an end, and pressed Cliarles to yield. . . .
Charles sullenly gave way. No measure has
ever brought about more startling results. The
Duke of York owned himself a Catholic, and re-
signed his office as Lord High Admiral. . . .
Clifford, too, . . . owned to being a Catholic,
and . . . laid down his staff of office. Tlieir
resignation was followed by that of hundreds of
others in the army and the civil service of the
Crown. . . . The resignations were lield to have
proved the existence of the dangers which the
Test Act had been passed to meet. From this
moment all trust in Charles was at an end." — J.
R. Green, Short Hist, of Eng., ch. 9, sect. 3. — "It
is very true that the [Test Act] pointed only at
Catholics, that it really proposed an anti-Popish
test, yet the construction of it, although it did
not exclude from office such Dissenters as could
occasionally conform, did effectually exclude all
who scrupled to do so. Aimed at the Romanists,
it struck the Presbyterians. It is clear that, had
the Nonconformists and the Catholics joined
their forces with those of the Court, in opposing
the measure, they might have defeated it; but
the first of tliese classes for the present submitted
to the inconvenience, from tbe horror which they
entertained of Popery, hoping, at the same time,
that some relief would be afforded for this per-
sonal sacrifice in the cause of a common Protes-
tantism. Thus the passing of an Act, which,
until a late period, inflicted a social wrong upon
two large sections of the community, is to be at-
tributed to the course pursued by the very parties
whose successors became the sufferers." — J.
Stoughton, Hist, of Religion in Eng., «. 3, ch. 11.
Also in: D. Neal, ITist. of the Puritans, v. 4,
ch. 8, and v. 5, ch. 1. — J. Collier, Ecclesiastical
Hist, of Gt. Britain, pt. 2, bk. 9 (». 8).
A. D. 1672-1674.— Alliance with Louis XIV.
of France in war with Holland. Sec Nethek-
LAKDS (HoLLAl^D) : A. D. 1672-1674.
A. D. 1673. — Loss of New York, retaken by
the Dutch. See New York: A. D. 1673.
A. D. 1674.— Peace with the Dutch.— Treaty
of Westminster.— Recovery of New York.
See Netherlands (Holland) : A. D. 1674.
A. D. 1675-1688. — Concessions to France in
Newfoundland. See Newfoundland: A. D.
1660-1688.
A. D. 1678-1679.— The Popish Plot.— "There
was an uneasy feeling in the nation that it was
being betrayed, and just then [August, 1678] a
strange story caused a panic throughout all Eng-
land. A preacher of low character, named Titus
Gates, who had gone over to the Jesuits, declared
that he knew of a plot among the Catholics to
kill the king and set up a Catholic Government.
He brought his tale to a magistrate, named Sir
Edmund Bury Godfrey, and shortly afterwards
[Oct. 17] Godfrey was found murdered in a ditch
near St. Pancras Church. The people thought
that the Catholics had murdered him to hush up
the 'Popish plot,' and wlien Parliament met a
committee was appointed to examine into the
matter. Some papers belonging to a Jesuit
named Coleman alarmed them, and so great was
the panic that an Act was passed shutting out all
Catholics, except the Duke of York, from Parlia-
ment. After this no Catholic sat in either House
for a hundred and fifty 3'ears. But worse fol-
lowed. Gates became popular, and finding tale-
bearing successful, he and other informers went
on to swear away the lives of a great number of
innocent Catholics. The most noted of these was
Lord Stafford, an upright and honest peer, who
was executed in 1681, declaring his innocence.
Charles laughed among his friends at the whole
matter, but let it go on, and Shaftesbury, who
wished to turn out Lord Dauby, did all he could
to fan the flame." — A. B. Buckle}', Hist, of Eng.
for Beginners, ch. 19.— "The capital and the
whole nation went mad witli hatred and fear.
The penal laws, which had begun to lose some-
thing of their edge, were sharpened anew.
Everj'where justices were busied in searching
houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were
filled with Papists. London had the aspect of a
city in a state of siege. The trainbands were
vmder arms aU night. Preparations were made
for barricading the great thoroughfares. Patroles
marched up and down the streets. Cannon were
planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought
himself safe unless he carried under his coat a
small flail loaded with lead to brain the Popish
assassins." — Lord Macaulay, Hist, of Eng., ch. 3
(?i. 1). — "It being expected that printed Bibles
would soon become rare, or locked up in an un-
Isnown tongue, many honest people, struck with
924
ENGLAND, 1678-1679.
The Popish Plot.
ENGLAND, 1679.
the alarm, employed themselves in copying the
Bible into short-hand that they might not be des-
titute of its consolations in the hour of calamity.
... It was about the year 1679 that the famous
King's Head Club was formed, so named from
its being held at the King's Head Tavern in Fleet
Street. . . . They were terrorists and spread
alarm with great effect. It was at this club that
silk armour, pistol proof, was recommended as a
security against assassination at the hands of the
Papists ; and the particular kind of life-preserver
of that day, called a Protestant flail, was intro-
duced." — G. Roberts, Life of Monnmuth, ch. 5
(v. 1), — "And now commenced, before the courts
of justice and the upper house, a sombre prose-
cution of the catholic lords Arundel, Petre, Staf-
ford, Powis, Bellasis, the Jesuits Coleman, Ire-
land, Grieve, Pickering, and, in succession, all
who were implicated by the indefatigable de-
nunciations of Titus Gates and Bedloe. Un-
happily, these courts of justice, desiring, in
common with the whole nation, to condemn
rather than to examine, wanted neither elements
which might, if strictly acted upon, establish
legal proof of conspiracy against some of the
accused, nor terrible laws to destroy them when
found guilty. And it was here that a spectacle,
at first imposing, became horrible. No friendly
voice arose to save those men who were guilty
only of impracticable wishes, of extravagant
conceptions. The king, the duke of York, the
Frencli ambassador, thoroughly acquainted as
they were with the real nature of these imputed
crimes, remained silent ; they were thoroughly
cowed." — A. Carrel, Hist, of the Counter-Devolu-
tion in Eng.,pt.\,ch. A. — "Although, . . . upon
a review of this truly shocking transaction, we
may be fairly justified ... in imputing to the
greater part of those concerned in it, rather an
extraordinary degree of blind credulity than the
deliberate wickedness of planning and assisting
in the perpetration of legal murders; yet the pro-
ceedings on the popish plot must always be con-
sidered as an indelible disgrace upon the English
nation, in which king, parliament, judges, juries,
witnesses, prosecutors, have all their respective,
though certainly not equal, shares." — C. J. Pox,
Hist, of tlie Early Part of the Reign of James II.,
introd. ch. — "In this dreadful scene of wicked-
ness, it is difiicult not to assign the pre-eminence
of guilt to Anthony Ashley Cooper, earl of
Shaftesbury. If he did not first contrive, he
certainly availed himself of the revelations of
Gates, to work up the nation to the fury which
produced the subsequent horrors. ... In ex-
tenuation of the delusion of the populace, some-
thing may be offered. The defamation of half a
century had made the catholics the objects of
protestant odium and distrust: and these had
been increased by the accusation, artfully and
assiduously fomented, of their having been the
authors of the fire of the city of London. The
publication, too, of Coleman's letters, certainly
announced a considerable activity in the catholics
to promote the catholic religion ; and contained
expressions, easily distorted to the sense, in whicli
the favourers of the belief of the plot wished
them to be understood. Danby's correspondence,
likewise, which had long been generally known,
and was about this time made public, had dis-
covered that Charles was in the pay of France.
These, with several other circumstances, had in-
flamed the imaginations of the public to the very
highest pitch. A dreadful sometliing (and not
the less dreadful because its precise nature was
altogether unknown), was generally apprehended.
. . . For their supposed part in the plot, ten lay-
men and seven priests, one of whom was seventy,
another eighty, years of age, were executed.
Seventeen others were condemned, but not exe-
cuted. Some died in prison, and some were par-
doned. On the whole body of catholics the laws
were executed with horrible severity. " — C. Butler,
Hist. Memmrs of the Eng. Catholics, ch. 33, sect.
3 (V. 2).
Also in: Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord
Chancellors, ch. 89 (». 3).
A. D. 1679 (May).— The Habeas Corpus Act.
— " Arbitrary imprisonment is a grievance which,
in some degree, has place in almost every gov-
ernment, except in that of Great Britain ; and our
absolute security from it we owe chiefly to the
present Parliament ; a merit which makes some
atonement for the faction and violence into which
their prejudices had, in other particulars, be-
trayed them. The great charter had laid the
foundation of this valuable part of liberty ; the
petition of right had renewed and extended it ;
but some provisions were still wanting to render
it complete, and prevent all evasion or delay from
ministers and judges. The act of habeas corpus,
which passed this session, served these purposes.
By this act it was prohibited to send any one to
a prison beyond sea. No judge, under severe
penalties, must refuse to any prisoner a writ of
habeas corpus, by which the gaoler was directed
to produce in court the body of the prisoner
(whence the writ has its name), and to certify
the cause of his detainer and imprisonment. If
the gaol lie within twenty miles of the judge,
the writ must be obeyed in three days ; and so
proportionably for greater distances ; every pris-
oner must be indicted the first term after his
commitment, and brought to trial in the subse-
quent term. And no man, after being enlarged
by order of court, can be recommitted for the
same offence." — D. Hume, Hist, of Eng., ch. 67
(». 6). — "The older remedies serving as a safe-
guard against unlawful imprisonment, were —
1. The writ of Mainprise, ensuring the delivery
of the accused to a friend of the same, who gave
security to answer for his appearance before the
court when required, and in token of such under-
taking he held him by the hand (' le prit par le
main'). 2. The writ ' De odio et atia,' i. e., of
hatred and malice, which, though not abolished,
has long since been antiquated. ... It directed
the sheriff to make inquisition in the county
court whether the imprisonment proceeded from
malice or not. ... 3. The writ ' De horaine
rcplegiando,'orreplevying aman, that is, deliver-
ing him out on security to answer what may be
objected against him. A writ is, originally, a
royal writing, either an open patent addressed to
all to whom it may come, and issued under the
great seal; or, 'litteroe clausse,' a sealed letter ad-
dressed to a particular person ; such writs were
prepared in the royal courts or in the Court of
Chancery. The most usual instrument of pro-
tection, however, against arbitrary imprison-
ment is the writ of 'Habeas corpus,' so called
from its beginning with the words, ' Habeas cor-
pus ad subjiciendum,' which, on account of its
universal application and the security it affords,
has, insensibly, taken precedence of all others.
This is an old writ of the common law, and must
925
ENGLAND, 1679.
Habeas
Corpus Act,
ENGLAND, 1679.
be prayed for in any of the Superior courts of
common law. . . . But this ■writ . . . proved
but a feeble, or rather wholly ineffectual protec-
tion against the arbitrary power of the sovereign.
The right of an English subject to a writ of
habeas corpus, and to a release from Imprison-
ment unless suflScient cause be shown for his de-
tention, was fuUy canvassed in the first years of
the reign of Charles I. . . . The parliament en-
deavoured to prevent such arbitrary imprison-
ment by passing the 'Petition of Right,' which
enacted that no freeman, in any such manner
. . . should be imprisoned or detained. Even
this act was found unavailing against the malevo-
lent interpretations put by the judges; hence the
16 Charles I., c. 10, was passed, which enacts,
that when any person is restrained of his liberty
by the king in person, or by the Privy Council,
or any member thereof, he shall, on demand of
his counsel, have a writ of habeas corpus, and,
three days after the writ, shall be brought before
the court to determine whether there is ground
for further imprisonment, for bail, or for his re-
lease. Notwithstanding these provisions, the
immunity of English subjects from arbitrary de-
tention was not ultimately established in full
practical efficiency until the passing of the statute
of Charles II. , commonly called the ' Habeas
Corpus Act. ' " — E. Pischel, The English CoTutitu-
tion, bk. 1, ch. 9.
Also in : Sir W. Blackstone, Commentaries on
the Laws of Eng., bk. 3, ch. 8. — H. J. Stephen,
Commentaries, bk. 5, ch. 13, sect. 5 (v. 4).
The following is the text of the Habeas Corpus
Act of 1679:
Whereas great Delays have been used by Sher-
iffs, Gaolers and other Officers, to whose Custody
any of the King's Subjects have been committed,
for criminal or supposed criminal Matters, in mak-
ing Returns of Writs of Habeas Corpus to them
directed, by standing out an Alias and Pluries
Habeas Corpus, and sometimes more, and by other
Shifts, to avoid their yielding Obedience to such
Writs, contrary to their Duty, and the known
Laws of the Land, whereby many of the King's
Subjects have been, and hereafter may be long
detained in Prison, in such cases where by Law
they are bailable, to their great Charges and
Vexation.
II. For the Prevention whereof, and the more
speedy Relief of all Persons imprisoned for any
such Criminal, or supposed Criminal Matters:
(2.) Be it Enacted by the King's most Excellent
Majesty, by and with the Advice and Consent of
the Lords Spiritual and Temporal and Commons
in this present Parliament assembled, and by the
Authority thereof, that whensoever any Person
or Persons shall bring any Habeas Corpus di-
rected unto any Sheriff, or Sheriffs, Gaoler, IMinis-
ter, or other Person whatsoever, for any Person
in his or their Custody, and the said Writ shall
be served upon the said Officer, or left at the
Gaol or Prison, with any of the imdor Officers,
under Keepers, or Deputy of the said Officers or
Keepers; that the said Officer or Officers, his or
their Under Officers, Under Keepers or Deputies,
shall within three Days after the Service thereof,
as aforesaid (unless the Commitment aforesaid
were for Treason or Felony, plainly and specially
expressed in the Warrant of Commitment), upon
Payment or Tender of the Charges of bringing
the said Prisoner, to be ascertained by the Judge
or Court that awarded the same, and endorsed
upon the said Writ, not exceeding Twelve- pence
per Mile, and upon Security given by his own
Bond, to pay the Charges of carrying back the
Prisoner, if he shall be remanded by the Court
or Judge, to which he shall be brought, accord-
ing to the true Intent of this present Act, and
that he will not make any Escape by the way,
make Return of such Writ. (3.) And bring or
cause to be brought the Body of the Party so
committed or restrained, unto or before the Lord
Chancellor, or Lord Keeper of the Great Seal of
England for the time being, or the Judges or
Barons of the said Court from whence the said
Writ shall Issue, or unto and before such other
Person or Persons before whom the said Writ is
made returnable, according to the Command
thereof. (4.) And shall then likewise certifie the
true causes of his Detainer, or Imprisonment, un-
less the commitment of the said party be in any
place beyond the Distance of twenty Miles from
the Place or Places where such Court or Person
is, or shall be residing ; and if beyond the Distance
of twenty Miles, and not above One Hundred
Miles, then within the Space of Ten Days, and
if beyond the Distance of One Hundred Miles,
then within the space of Twenty Days, after such
Delivery aforesaid, and not longer.
III. And to the Intent that no Sheriff, Gaoler
or other Officer may pretend Ignorance of the
Import of any such Writ, (2.) Be it enacted by
the Authority aforesaid, That all such Writs
shall be marked in this manner. Per Statutum
Tricesimo Primo Caroli Secundi Regis, and shall
be signed by the Person that awards the same.
(3.) And if any Person or Persons shall be or
stand committed or detained, as aforesaid, for
any Crime, unless for Felony or Treason, plainly
expressed in the Warrant of Commitment, in the
Vacation-time, and out of Term, it shall and may
be lawful to and for the Person or Persons so
committed or detained (other than Persons con-
vict, or in Execution by legal Process) or any one
on his or their Behalf, to appeal, or complain to
the Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or any one
of His Majesty's Justices, either of the one Bench,
or of the other, or the Barons of the Exchequer
of the Degree of the Coif. (4.) And the said
Lord Chancellor, Lord Keeper, Justices, or
Barons, or any of them, upon View of the Copy
or Copies of the Warrant or Warrants of Com-
mitment and Detainer, or otherwise upon Oath
made, that such Copy or Copies were denied to
be given by such Person or Persons in whose
custody the Prisoner or Prisoners is or are de-
tained, are hereby authorized and required, upon
Request made in Writing by such Person or
Persons, or any on his, her, or their Behalf, at-
tested and subscribed by two Witnesses, who were
present at the Delivery of the same, to award and
grant an Habeas Corpus under the Seal of such
Court, whereof he shall then be one of the Judges,
(5.) to be directed to the Officer or Officers in
whose Custody the Party so committed or detained
shall be, returnable immediate before the said
Lord Chancellor, or Lord Keeper, or such Justice,
Baron, or any other Justice or Baron, of the
Degree of the Coif, of any of the said Courts.
(6.) And upon Service thereof as aforesaid, the
OlBcer or Officers, his or their under Officer or
under Officers, under Keeper or under Keepers,
or their Deputy, in whose Custody the Party is
so committed or detained, shall within the times
respectively before limited, bring such Prisoner
926
ENGLAND, 1679.
Habeas
Corpus Act.
ENGLAND, 1679.
or Prisoners before the said Lord Chancellor or
Lord Keeper, or such Justices, Barons, or one of
them, before whom the said Writ is made return-
able, and in case of his Absence, before any of
[hem, with the Return of such Writ, and the true
Causes of the Commitment and Detainer. (7.)
And thereupon within two Days after the Party
shall be brought before them the said Lord Chan-
cellor, or Lord Keeper, or such Justice or Baron,
before whom the Prisoner shall be brought as
aforesaid, shall discharge the said Prisoner from
his Imprisonment, taking his or their Recogni-
zance, with one or more Surety or Sureties, in any
Sum, according to their Discretions, having regard
to the Quality of the Prisoner, and Nature of the
Offence, for his or their Appearance iu the Court of
King's Bench the Term following, or at the next
Assizes, Sessions, or genera! Gaol-Delivery, of and
for such County, City or Place, where the Com-
mitment was, or where the Offence was com-
mitted, or in such other Court where the said
Offence is properly cognizable, as the Case shall
require, and then shall certify the said "Writ with
the Return thereof, and the said Recognizance or
Recognizances into the said Court, where such
Appearance is to be made. (8.) Unless it shall
appear unto the said Lord Chancellor, or Lord
Keeper, or Justice, or Justices, or Baron or Barons,
that the Party so committed is detained upon a
legal Process, Order, or Warrant out of some
Court that hath Jurisdiction of Criminal Matters,
or by some Warrant signed and sealed with the
Hand and Seal of any of the said Justices or
Barons, or some Justice or Justices of the Peace,
for such Matters or Offences, for the which by
the Law, the Prisoner is not bailable.
IV. Provided always, and be it enacted. That
if any Person shall have wilfully neglected by
the Space of two whole Terms after his Imprison-
ment to pray a Habeas Corpus for his Enlarge-
ment, such Person so wilfully neglecting, shall
not have any Habeas Corpus to be granted in
Vacation-time in Pursuance of this Act.
V. And be it further enacted by the Authority
aforesaid, That if any Officer or Officers, his or
their under Officer, or under Officers, under
Keeper or under Keepers, or Deputy, shall neglect
or refuse to make the Returns aforesaid, or to bring
the Body or Bodies of the Prisoner or Prisoners, ac-
cording to the Command of the said Writ, within
the respective times aforesaid, or upon Demand
made by the Prisoner, or Person in his Behalf,
shall refuse to deliver, or within the Space of six
Hours after Demand shall not deliver, to the Per-
son so demanding, a true Copy of the Warrant
or Warrants of Commitment and Detainer of such
Prisoner, which he and they are hereby required
to deliver accordingly; all and every the Head
Gaolers and Keepers of such Prisons, and such
other Person, in whose Custody the Prisoner shall
be detained, shall for the first Offence, forfeit to
the Prisoner, or Party grieved, the Sum of One
Hundred Pounds. (3.) And for the second Of-
fence, the Sum of Two Hundred Pounds, and
shall and is hereby made incapable to hold or
execute his said Office. (3.) The said Penalties
to be recovered by the Prisoner or Party grieved,
his Executors or Administrators, against such
Offender, his Executors or Administrators, by any
Action of Debt, Suit, Bill, Plaint or Information,
in any of the King's Courts at Westminster,
wherein no Essoin, Protection, Priviledge, Injunc-
tion, Wager of Law, or stay of Prosecution, by
Non vult ulterius prosequi, or otherwise, shall be
admitted or allowed, or any more than one Impar-
lance. (4.) And any Recovery or Judgment at
the Suit of any Party grieved, shall be a sufficient
Conviction for the first Offence; and any after
Recovery or Judgment at the Suit of a Party
grieved, for any Offence after the first Judgment,
shall be a sufficient Conviction to bring tlie Offi-
cers or Person within the said Penalty for the
Second Offence.
VI. And for the Prevention of unjust Vexation,
by reiterated Commitments for the same offence ;
(3.) Be it enacted by the Authority aforesaid.
That no Person or Persons, whicli shall be de-
livered or set at large upon any Habeas Corpus,
shall at any time hereafter be again imprisoned
or committed for the same Offence, by any Per-
son or Persons whatsoever, other tlian by the
legal Order and Process of such Court wherein
he or they shall be bound by Recognizance to ap-
pear, or other Court having Jurisdiction of the
Cause. (3.) And if any other Person or Persons
shall knowingly, contrary to this Act, recommit
or imprison, or knowingly procure or cause to be
recommitted or imprisoned for the same Offence,
or pretended Offence, any Person or Persons de-
livered or set at large as aforesaid, or be know-
ingly aiding or assisting therein, then he or they
shall forfeit to the Prisoner or Party grieved, the
Sum of Five Hundred Pounds; any colourable
Pretence or Variation in the Warrant or War-
rants of Commitment notwithstanding, to be re-
covered as aforesaid.
VII. Provided always, and be it further en-
acted, That if any Person or Persons shall be
committed for High Treason or Felony, plainly
and specially expressed iu the Warrant of Com-
rnitment, upon his Prayer or Petition in open
Court the first Week of the Term, or first Day
of the Sessions of Oyer and Terminer, or general
Gaol Delivery, to be brought to his Tryal, shall
not be indicted sometime in the next Term, Ses-
sions of Oyer and Terminer, or general Gaol-De-
livery after such Commitment, it shall and may
be lawful to and for the Judges of the Court of
King's Bench, and Justices of Oyer and Termi-
ner, or general Gaol-Delivery, and they are
hereby required, upon Motion to them made in
open Court the last Day of the Term, Sessions or
Gaol-Delivery, either by the Prisoner, or any one
iu his Behalf, to set at Liberty the Prisoner upon
Bail, unless it appear to the Judges and Justices
upon Oath made, that the Witnesses for the King
could not be produced the same Term, Sessions,
or general Gaol-Delivery. (3.) And if any Per-
son or Persons committed as aforesaid, upon his
Prayer or Petition in open Court, the first Week
of the Term, or first Day of the Sessions of Oyer
and Terminer, and general Gaol-Delivery, to be
brought to his Tryal, shall not be indicted and
tryed the second Term, Sessions of Oyer and
Terminer, or general Gaol-Delivery, after his
Commitment, or upon his Tryal shall be ac-
quitted, he shall be discharged from his Imprison-
ment.
VIII. Provided always, that nothing in this
Act shall extend to discharge out of Prison, any
Person charged in Debt, or other Action, or
with Process in any Civil Cause, but that after
he shall be discharged of his Imprisonment for
such his criminal Offence, he shall be kept in
Custody, according to the Law for such other
Suit.
927
ENGLAND, 1679.
Habeas
Corpus Act.
ENGLAND, 1679.
IX. Provided always, and be it enacted by the
Authority aforesaid. That if any Person or Per-
sons, Subjects of this Realm, shall be committed
to any Prison, or in Custody of any Officer or
Officers whatsoever, for any Criminal or sup-
posed Criminal Matter, that the said Person shall
not be removed from the said Prison and Custod}',
into the Custody of any other Officer or Officers.
(2.) Unless it be by Habeas Corpus, or some
other legal Writ; or where the Prisoner is de-
livered to the Constable or other inferiour Officer,
to carry such Prisoner to some common Gaol.
(3.) Or where any Person is sent by Order of any
Judge of Assize, or Justice of the Peace, to any
common Workhouse, or House of Correction.
(4. ) Or where the Prisoner is removed from one
Prison or Place to another within the same
County, in order to his or her Tryal or Dis-
charge in due Course of Law. (5.) Or in case of
sudden Fire, or Infection, or other Necessity. (6. )
And if any Person or Persons shall after such
Commitment aforesaid, make out and sign, or
countersign, any Warrant or Warrants for such
Removal aforesaid, contrary to this Act, as well
he that makes or signs, or countersigns, such
Warrant or AVarrants, as the Officer or Officers,
that obey or execute the same, shall suffer & in-
cur the Pains & Forfeitures in this Act before-
mentioned, both for the 1st & 2nd Offence, re-
spectively, to be recover'd in manner aforesaid,
by the Party grieved.
X. Provided also, and be it further enacted by
the Authority aforesaid. That it shall and may
be lawful to and for any Prisoner & Prisoners as
aforesaid, to move, and obtain his or their Habeas
Corpus, as well out of the High Court of Chan-
cery, or Court of Exchequer, as out of the Courts
of King's Bench, or Common Pleas, or either of
them. (2.) And if the said Lord Chancellor or
Lord Keeper, or any Judge or Judges, Baron or
Barons for the time being, of the Degree of the
Coif, of any of the Courts aforesaid, in the Va-
cation time, upon view of the Copy or Copies of
the Warrant or Warrants of Commitment or De-
tainer, or upon Oath made that such Copy or
Copies were denied as aforesaid, shall deny any
Writ of Habeas Corpus by this Act required to
be granted, being moved for as aforesaid, they
shall severally forfeit to the Prisoner or Party
grieved, the Sum of Five Hundred Pounds, to
be recovered in manner aforesaid.
XI. And be it declared and enacted by the
Authority aforesaid, That an Habeas Corpus ac-
cording to the true Intent and meaning of this
Act, may be directed, and run into any County
Palatine, the Cinque Ports, or other priviledged
Places, within the Kingdom of England, Do-
minion of Wales, or Town of Berwick upon
Tweed, and the Isles of Jersey or Guernsey, any
Law or Usage to the contrary notwithstanding.
XII. And for preventing illegal Imprisonments
in Prisons beyond the Seas; (2.) Be it further
enacted by the Authority aforesaid. That no
Subject of this Realm that now is, or hereafter
shall be, an Inhabitant or Resiant of this King-
dom of England, Dominion of Wales, or Town of
Berwick upon Tweed, shall or may be sent Pris-
oner into Scotland, Ireland, Jersey, Guernsey,
Tangier, or into Parts, Garrisons, Islands, or
Places beyond the Seas, which are, or at any time
hereafter shall be within or without the Domin-
ions of his Majesty, his Heirs or Successors. (3.)
And that every such Imprisonment is hereby
enacted and adjudged to be illegal. (4.) And
that if any of the said Subjects now is, or here-
after shall be so imprisoned, every such Person
and Persons so imprisoned, shall and may for
every such Imprisonment, maintain by Virtue
of this Act, an Action or Actions of False Im-
prisonment, in any of his Majesty's Courts of
Record, against the Person or Persons by whom
he or she shall be so committed, detained, im-
prisoned, sent Prisoner or transported, contrary
to the true meaning of this Act, and against all
or any Person or Persons, that shall frame, con-
trive, write, seal or countersign any Warrant or
Writing for such Commitment, Detainer, Im-
prisonment or Transportation, or shall be advis-
ing, aiding or assisting in the same, or any of
them. (5. ) And the Plaintiff in every such Ac-
tion, shall have judgment to recover his treble
Costs, besides Damages; which Damages so to
be given, shall not be le.ss than Five Hundred
Pounds. (6.) In which Action, no Delay, Stay,
or Stop of Proceeding, by Rule, Order or Com-
mand, nor no Injunction, Protection, or Privi-
ledge whatsoever, nor any more than one Impar-
lance shall be allowed, excepting such Rule of
tlie Court wherein the Action shall depend, made
in open Court, as shall be thought in justice nec-
essary, for special Cause to be expressed in the
said Rule. (7.) And the Person or Persons who
shall knowingly frame, contrive, write, seal or
countersign any Warrant for such Commitment,
Detainer, or Transportation, or shall so commit,
detain, imprison, or transport any Person or Per-
sons contrary to this Act, or be any ways advis-
ing, aiding or assisting therein, being lawfully
convicted thereof, shall be disabled from thence-
forth to bear any Office of Trust or Profit within
the said Realm of England, Dominion of Wales,
or Town of Berwick upon Tweed, or any of the
Islands, Territories or Dominions thereunto be-
longing. (8.) And shall incur and sustain the
Pains, Penalties, and Forfeitures, limited, or-
dained, and Provided in and by the Statute of
Provision and Premunire made in the Sixteenth
Year of King Richard the Second. (9.) And be
incapable of any Pardon from the King, his Heirs
or Successors, of the said Forfeitures, Losses, oi
Disabilities, or any of them.
XIII. Provided always, That nothing in this
Act shall extend to give Benefit to any Person
who shall by Contract in Writing, agree with
any Merchant or Owner, of any Plantation, or
other Person whatsoever, to be transported to any
part beyond the Seas, and receive Earnest upon
such Agreement, altho' that afterwards such
Person shall renounce such Contract.
XIV. Provided always, and be it enacted,
That if any Person or Persons, lawfully convicted
of any Felony, shall in open Court pray to be
transported beyond the Seas, and the Court shall
think fit to leave him or them in Prison for that
Purpose, such Person or Persons may be trans-
ported into any Parts beyond the Seas ; This
Act, or any thing therein contained to the con-
trary notwithstanding.
XV. Provided also, and be it enacted, That
nothing heroin contained, shall be deemed, con-
strued, or taken to extend to the Imprisonment
ot any Person before the first Day of June, One
Tliousand Six Hundred Seventy and Nine, or to
any thing advised, procured, or otherwise done,
rehiting to such Imprisonment; Any thing herein
contained to the contrary notwithstanding.
928
ENGLAND, 1679.
Exclusion
Bill.
ENGLAND, 1679-1681.
XVI. Provided also. That if any Person or
Persons, at any time resiant in this Realm, shall
have committed any Capital Offence in Scotland
or Ireland, or any of the Islands, or foreign Plan-
tations of the King, his Heirs or Successors, where
he or she ought to be tryed for such Offence,
such Person or Persons may be sent to such
Place, there to receive such Tryal, in such man-
ner as the same might Iiave been used before the
making this Act ; Any thing herein contained to
the contrary notwithstanding.
XVII. Provided also, and be it enacted. That
no Person or Persons, shall be sued, impleaded,
molested or troubled for any Offence against this
Act, unless the Party offending be sued or im-
pleaded for the same within two Years at the
most after such time wherein the Offence shall
be committed, in Case the Party grieved shall
not be then in Prison ; and if he shall be in
Prison, then within the space of two Years after
the Decease of the Person imprisoned, or his, or
her Delivery out of Prison, which shall first
happen.
XVIII. And to the Intent no Person may
avoid his Tryal at the Assizes, or general Gaol
Delivery, by procuring his Removal before the
Assizes at such time as he cannot be brought
back to receive his Tryal there; (3.) Be it en-
acted. That after the Assizes proclaimed for that
Coimty where the Prisoner is detained, no Per-
son shall be removed from the Common Gaol
upon any Habeas Corpus granted in pursuance
of this Act, but upon any such Habeas Corpus
shall be brought before the Judge of Assize in
open Court, who is thereupon to do wliat to
Justice shall appertain.
XIX. Provided nevertheless. That after the
Assizes are ended, any Personor Persons detained
may have his or her Habeas Corpus, according
to the Direction and Intention of this Act.
XX. And be it also enacted by the Authority
aforesaid. That if any Information, Suit or Action,
shall be brought or exhibited against any Person
or Persons, for any Offence committed or to be
committed against the Form of this Law, it shall
be lawful for such Defendants to plead the gen-
eral Issue, that they are not guilty, or that they
owe nothing, and to give such special Matter in
Evidence to the Jury, that shall try the same,
which ]\Iatter being pleaded, had been good and
sufficient matter in Law to have discharged the
said Defendant or Defendants against the said
Information, Suit or Action, and the said Matter
shall be then as available to him or them, to all
Intents and Purposes, as if he or they had suf-
ficiently pleaded, set forth, or alleged the same
Matter in Bar, or Discharge of such Information,
Suit or Action.
XXI. And because many times Persons charged
with Petty -Treason or Felony, or as Accessaries
thereunto, are committed upon Suspicion only,
whereupon they are bailable or not, according as
the Circumstances making out that Suspicion are
more or less weighty, which are best known to
the Justices of Peace that committed the Persons,
and have the E.xaminations before them, or to
other Justices of the Peace in the County ; (2.) Be
it therefore enacted, That where any Person shall
appear to be committed by any Judge, or Justice
of the Peace, and charged as accessary before the
Fact, to any Petty-Treason or Felony, or upon
Suspicion thereof, or with Suspicion of Petty-
Treason or Felony, which Petty-Treason or
^^ 929
Felony, shall be plainly and specially expressed
in the Warrant of Commitment, that such Per-
son shall not be removed or bailed by Virtue of
this Act, or in any other manner than they might
have been before the making of this Act.
A. D. 1679 (June).— The Meal-tub Plot.—
"Dangerfleld, a subtle and dexterous man, who
had gone through all the shapes and practices of
roguery, and in particular was a false coiner,
undertook now to coin a plot for the ends of the
papists. He . . . got into all companies, and
mixed with the hottest men of the town, and
studied to engage others with himself to swear
that they had been invited to accept of commis-
sions, and that a new form of government was to
be set up, and that the king and the royal family
were to be sent away. He was carried with this
story, first to the duke, and then to the king,
and had a weekly allowance of money, and was
very kindly used by many of that side ; so that
a whisper run about town, that some extraor-
dinary thing would quicldy break out: and he
having some coiTespondence with one colonel
Mansel, he made up a bundle of seditious but
ill contrived letters, and laid them in a dark
comer of his room : and then some searchers were
sent from the custom house to look for some for-
bidden goods, which they heard were in Mansel's
chamber. There were no goods found: but as
it was laid, they found that bundle of letters:
and upon that a great noise was made of a dis-
covery : but upon inquiry it appeared the letters
were counterfeited, and the forger of them was
suspected ; so they searched into all Dangerfield's
haunts, and in one of them they found a paper
that contained the scheme of this whole fiction,
which, because it was found in a meal-tub, came
to be called the meal-tub plot. . . . This was a
great disgrace to the popish party, and the king
suffered much by the countenance he had given
him." — G. Burnet, Hist, of My Own Time, bk. 3,
1679.
A. D. 1679-1681.— The Exclusion Bill.—
' ' Though the duke of York was not charged with
participation in the darkest schemes of the popish
conspirators, it was evident that his succession
was the great aim of their endeavours, and evi-
dent also that he had been engaged in the more
real and undeniable intrigues of Coleman. His
accession to the throne, long viewed with just
apprehension, now seemed to threaten such perils
to every part of the constitution as ought not
supinely to be waited for, if any means could be
devised to obviate them. This gave rise to the
bold measure of the exclusion bill, too bold, in-
deed, for the spirit of the country, and the rock
on which English liberty was nearly ship-
wrecked. In the long parliament, full as it was
of pensioners and creatures of court influence,
nothing so vigorous would have been successful.
. . . But the zeal they showed against Danby
induced the king to put an end [Jan. 34, 1679] to
this parliament of seventeen years' duration ; an
event long ardently desired by the popular party,
who foresaw their ascendancy in the new elections.
The next house of commons accordingly came
together with an ardour not yet quenched by
corruption; and after reviving the impeach-
ments commenced by their predecessors, and car-
rying a measure long in agitation, a test which
shut the catholic peers out of parliament, went
upon the exclusion bill [the second reading of
which was carried, May 31, 1679, by 307 to 128].
ENGLAND, 1679-1681.
Whigs and
Tories.
ENGLAND, 1681-1683.
Their dissolution put a stop to this ; and in the
next parliament the lords rejected it [after the
commons had passed the bill, without a division,
Oct., 1680]. . . . The bill of exclusion . . .
provided that the imperial crown of England
should descend to and be enjoyed by such per-
son or persons successively during the life of the
duke of York as would have inherited or en-
joyed the same in case he were naturally dead.
. . . But a large part of the opposition had un-
fortunately other objects in view." Under the
contaminating influence of the earl of Shaftes-
bury, "they broke away more and more from
the line of national opinion, till a fatal reaction
Involved themselves in ruin, and exposed the
cause of public liberty to its most imminent
peril. The countenance and support of Shaftes-
bury brought forward that unconstitutional and
most impolitic scheme of the duke of Mon-
mouth's succession [James, duke of Monmouth,
was the acknowledged natural son of king
Charles, by Lucy Walters, his mistress while in
exile at the Hague.] There could hardly be a
greater insult to a nation used to respect its
hereditary line of kings, than to set up the
bastard of a prostitute, without the least pre-
tence of personal excellence or public services,
against a princess of known virtue and attachment
to the protestant religion. And the effrontery of
this attempt was aggravated by the libels eagerly
circulated to dupe the credulous populace into a
belief of Monmouth's legitimacy." — H. Hallam,
Co7ist. Hist, of Eng., ch. 13.
Also m: A.. C&\'k\, Hist, of the Counter-Rem-
lution in Eng., pt. 2, ch. 1. — G. Roberts, Life of
Monmouth, ch. 4-8 (v. 1). — G. Mwvnet, Hist, of My
Own Time, bk. 3., 1679-81.— Sir W. Temple,
Memoirs, pt. 3 {Works, v. 2).
A. D. i68o. — Whigs and Tories acquire
their respective names. — "Factions indeed
were at this time [A. D. 1680] extremely ani-
mated against each other. The very names by
which each party denominated its antagonist
discover the virulence and rancour which jsre-
vailed. For besides petitioner and abhorrer, ap-
pellations which were soon forgotten, this year
is remarkable for being the epoch of the well-
known epithets of Whig and Tory, by which,
and sometimes without any material difference,
this island has been so long divided. The court
party reproached their antagonists with their
affinity to the fanatical conventiclers in Scotland,
who were known by tlie name of Whigs: the
country party found a resemblance between the
courtiers and the popish banditti in Ireland, to
whom the appellation of Tory was affixed : and
after this manner these foolish terms of reproach
came into public and general use." — D. Hume,
Hist, of Eng., ch. 68 (». 6).— "The definition of
the nickname Tory, as it originally arose, is
given in ' A New Ballad ' (Narcissus Luttrell's
Collection) ; —
The word Tory's of Irish Extraction,
'Tis a Legacy that they have left here
The)' came here in their brogues,
And have acted like Rogues,
In endeavouring to learn us to swear."
— J. Grego, Hist, of Parliamentary Elections, p.
36.
Also in: G. W. Cooke, Hist, of Party, v. 1, ch.
2. — Lord Macaulay, Hist, of Eng., ch. 2. — For
the origin of the name of the Whig party, see
Whigs (Whiqgamoks) ; also, R.\.pp.uiees.
A. D. 1681-1683.— The Tory reaction and the
downfall of the Whigs. — The Rye-house Plot.
— " Shaftesbury's course rested wholly on the
belief that the penury of the Treasury left Charles
at his mercy, and that a refusal of supplies must
wring from the King his assent to the exclusion.
But the gold of France had freed the King from
his thraldom. He had used the Parliament [of
1681] simply to exhibit himself as a sovereign
whose patience and conciliatory temper was re-
warded with insult and violence ; and now that
he saw his end accomplished, he suddenlj' dis-
solved the Houses in April, and appealed in a
Royal declaration to the justice of the nation at
large. The appeal was met by an almost uni-
versal burst of loyalty. The Church rallied to
the King ; his declaration was read from every
pulpit; and the Universities solemnly decided
that ' no religion, no law, no fault, no forfeiture '
could avail to bar the sacred right of hereditary
succession. . . . The Duke of York returned in
triumph to St. James's. . . . Monmouth, who had
resumed his progresses through the country as a
means of checking the tide of reaction, was at
once arrested. . . . Shaftesbury, alive to the new
danger, plunged desperately into conspiracies
with a handful of adventurers as desperate as
himself, hid himself in the City, where he boasted
that ten thousand ' brisk boys ' were ready to ap-
pear at his call, and urged his friends to rise in
arms. But tlieir delays drove him to flight. . . .
The flight of Shaftesbury proclaimed the tri-
umph of the King. His wonderful sagacity had
told him when the struggle was over and further
resistance useless. But the Whig leaders, who
had delayed to answer the Earl's call, still nursed
projects of rising in arms, and the more des-
perate spirits who had clustered around him as
he lay hidden in the City took refuge in plots
of assassination, and in a plan for murdering
Charles and his brother as they passed the Rye-
house [a Hertfordshire farm house, so-called] on
their road from London to Newmarket. Both
the conspiracies were betrayed, and, though they
were wholly distinct from one another, the cruel
ingenuity of the Crown lawyers blended them
into one. Lord Essex, the last of an ill-fated
race, saved himself from a traitor's death by sui-
cide in the Tower. Lord Russell, convicted on
a charge of sharing in the Rye-house Plot, was
beheaded in Lincoln Inn Fields. The same fate
awaited Algernon Sidney. Monmouth fled in
terror over sea, and his flight was followed by a
series of prosecutions for sedition directed against
his followers. In 1683 the Constitutional oppo-
sition which had held Charles so long in check
lay crushed at his feet. ... On the very day
when the crowd around Russell's scaffold were
dipping their handkerchiefs in his blood, as in
the blood of a martyr, the University of Oxford
solemnly declared that the doctrine of passive
obedience, even to the worst of rulers, was a
part of religion." During the brief remainder
of his reign Charles was a prudently absolute
monarch, governing without a Parliament, coolly
ignoring the Triennial Act, and treating on
occasions the Test Act, as well as other laws
obnoxious to him, with contempt. He died un-
expectedly, early in February, 1685, and his
brother, the Duke of York, succeeded to the
tliroue, as James II., with no resistance, but with
much feeling opposed to him. — J. R. Green,
Short Hist, of Eng., ch. 9, sect. 5-6.
930
ENGLAND, 1681-1683.
Monmouth^s
Rebellion.
ENGLAND, 1685.
Also in : G. Roberts, Life of Monmouth, eh.
8-10 (j). 1).— D. Hume, Hist, of Eng., eh. 68-69
(v. 6).— G. W. Cooke, Hist, of Party, v. 1, eh.
6-11.
A. D. 1685. — Accession of James II.
A. D. 1685 (February). — The new King pro-
claims his religion. — "The King [James II.]
early put the loyalty of his Protestant friends to
the proof. While he was a subject, he had been
in the habit of hearing mass with closed doors in
a small oratory which had been fitted up for his
wife. He now ordered the doors to be thrown
open, in order that all who came to pay their
duty to him might see the ceremony. When the
liost was elevated there was a strange confusion
in the antechamber. The Roman Catholics fell
on their knees : the Protestants hurried out of
the room. Soon a new pulpit was erected in the
palace , and, during Lent, a series of sermons
was preached there by Popish divines." — Lord
Macaulay, Hist, if Eng. , ch. 4 (». 2).
A. D. 1685 (May— July).— Monmouth's Re-
bellion. — "The Parliament which assembled on
the 22nd of May . . . was almost entirely Tory.
The failure of the Rye-House Plot had produced a
reaction, which for a time entirely annihilated
the Whig influence. . . . The apparent tri\imph
of the King and the Tory party was completed
by the disastrous failure of the insurrection
planned by their adversaries. A knot of exiled
malcontents, some Scotch, some English, had
collected in Holland. Among them was Mon-
mouth and the Earl of Argyle, son of that Mar-
quis of Argyle who had taken so prominent a
part on the Presbyterian side in the Scotch
troubles of Charles I. 's reign. Monmouth had
kept aloof from politics till, on the accession of
James, he was induced to join the exiles at Am-
sterdam, whither Argyle, a strong Presbyterian,
but a man of lofty and moderate views, also re-
paired. National jealousy prevented any union
between the exiles, and two expeditions were
determined on, — the one under Argyle, who
hoped to find an array ready to his hand among
his clansmen in the West of Scotland, the other
under Monmouth in the West of England. Ar-
gyle's expedition set sail on the 2nd of May
[1685]. . . . Argyle's invasion was ruined by
the limited authority intrusted to him, and by
the jealousy and insubordination of his fellow
leaders. . . . His army disbanded. He was him-
self taken in Renfrewshire, and, after an exhibi-
tion of admirable constancy, was beheaded. . . .
A week before the final dispersion of Argyle's
troops, Monmouth had landed in England [at
Lyme, June 11], He was well received in the
West. He had not been twenty-four hours in
England before he found himself at the head of
1,500 men; but though popular among the com-
mon people, he received no support from the
upper classes. Even the strongest Whigs dis-
believed the story of his legitimacy, and thought
his attempt ill-timed and fraught with danger.
. . . Meanwhile Monmouth had advanced to
Taunton, had been there received with enthusi-
asm, and, vainly thinking to attract the nobility,
had assumed the title of King. Nor was his re-
ception at Bridgewater less flattering. But diffi-
culties already began to gather round him; he
was in such want of arms, that, although rustic
implements were converted into pikes, he was
still obliged to send away many volunteers ; the
militia were closing in upon him in all directions ;
Bristol had been seized by the Duke of Beau-
fort, and the regular army under Feversham and
Churchill were approaching." After feebly at-
tempting several movements, against Bristol and
into Wiltshire, Monmouth lost heart and fell back
to Bridgewater. " The Royalist army was close
behind him, and on the fifth of July encamped
about three miles from Bridgewater, on the plain
of Sedgemoor. " Monmouth was advised to under-
take a night surprise, and did so in the early
morning of the 6th. "The night was not unfit-
ting for such an enterprise, for the mist was so
thick that at a few paces nothing could be seen.
Three great ditches by which the moor was drained
lay between the armies; of the third of these,
strangely enough, Monmouth knew nothing."
The unexpected discovery of this third ditch,
known as "the Sussex Rhine," which his cav-
alry could not cross, and behind which the enemy
rallied, was the ruin of the enterprise. "Mon-
mouth saw that the day was lost, and with the
love of life which was one of the characteristics of
his soft nature, he turned and fled. Even after
his flight the battle was kept up bravely. At
length the arrival of the King's artillery put an
end to any further struggle. The defeat was
followed by all the terrible scenes which mark
a suppressed insurrection. . . . Monmouth and
Grey pursued their flight into the New Forest,
and were there apprehended in the neighbour-
hood of Ringwood. " Monmouth petitioned ab-
jectly for his life, but in vain. He was executed
on the 15th of July. "The failure of this insur-
rection was followed by the most terrible cruel-
ties. Feversham returned to London, to be flat-
tered by the King and laughed at by the Court
for his military exploits. He left Colonel Kirke
in command at Bridgewater. This man had
learned, as commander at Tangier, all the worst
arts of cruel despotism. His soldiery in bitter
pleasantry were called Kirke 's ' Lambs, ' from the
emblem of their regiment. It is impossible to
say how many suffered at the hands of this man
and his brutal troops; 100 captives are said by
some to have been put to death the week after
the battle. But this military revenge did not
satisfy the Court." — J. F. Bright, Hist, of Eng.,
period 2, pp. 764-768. — "The number of Mon-
mouth's men killed is computed by some at 2,000,
by others at 300; a disparity, however, which
may be easily reconciled by supposing that the
one account takes in those who were killed in
battle, while the other comprehends the wretched
fugitives who were massacred In ditches, corn-
fields, and other hiding places, the following
day."— C. J. Fox, Hist, of the Early Part of the
Reign of James II. , ch. 3.
Also in: G. Roberts, Life of Monmouth, ch.
13-28 {V. 1-2).
A. D. 1685 (September).— The Bloody As-
sizes. — "Early in September, Jeffreys [Sir
George Jeffreys, Chief Justice of the Court of
King's Bench], accompanied by four other
judges, set out on that circuit of which the
memory will last as long as our race and lan-
guage. ... At Winchester the Chief Justice
first opened his commission. Hampshire had not
been the theatre of war; but many of the van-
quished rebels had, like their leader, fled thither. "
Two among these had been found concealed in the
house of Lady Alice Lisle, a widow of eminent
nobility of character, and Jeffreys' first proceed-
ing was to arraign Lady Alice for the technical
931
ENGLAND, 1685.
The Bloody
Assizes.
ENGLAND, 1687.
treason of the concealment. She was tried with
extraordinary brutality of manner on the part of
the judge ; the jury was bullied into a verdict of
guilty, and the innocent woman was condemned
by tlie liend on the bench to be burned alive. By
great exertion of many people, the sentence was
commuted from burning to beheading. No
mercy beyond this could be obtained from Jef-
freys or his fit master, the king. "In Hamp-
shire Alice Lisle was the only victim: but, on
the day following her execution, Jeffreys reached
Dorchester, the principal town of the county in
which Monmouth had landed, and the judicial
massacre began. The court was hung, by order
of the Chief Justice, with scarlet ; and this inno-
vation seemed to the multitude to indicate a
bloody purpose. . . . More than 300 prisoners
were to be tried. The work seemed heavy ; but
Jeffreys had a contrivance for making it light.
He let it be understood that the only chance of
obtaining pardon or respite was to plead guilty.
Twenty-nine persons, who put tliemselves on
their country and were convicted, were ordered
to be tied up without delay. The remaining
prisoners pleaded guilty by scores. Two hundred
and ninety-two received sentence of death. The
whole number hanged in Dorsetshire amounted
to seventy-four. From Dorchester Jeffreys pro-
ceeded to Exeter. The civil war had barely grazed
the frontier of Devonshire. Here, therefore, com-
paratively few persons were capitally punished.
Somersetshire, the chief seat of the rebellion, had
been reserved for the last and most fearful ven-
geance. In this county two hundred and thirty-
three prisoners were in a few days hanged, drawn
and quartered. At every spot where two roads
met, on every market place, on the green of
every large village which had furnished Mon-
mouth with soldiers, ironed corpses clattering in
the wind, or Iieads and quarters stuck on poles,
poisoned the air, and made the traveller sick with
horror. . . . The Chief Justice was all himself.
His spirits rose higher and higher as the work
went on. He laughed, shouted, joked, and
swore in such a way that many thought him
drunk from morning to night. . . . Jeffreys
boasted that he had hanged more traitors than all
his predecessors together since the Conquest.
. . . Yet those rebels who were doomed to death
were less to be pitied than some of the survi-
vors. Several prisoners to whom Jeffreys was
unable to bring home the cliarge of high treason
were convicted of misdemeanours and were
sentenced to scourging not less terrible than that
which Oates had undergone. . . . The number
of prisoners whom Jeffreys transported was
eight hundred and forty-one. These men, more
wretched than their associates who suffered death,
were distributed into gangs, and bestowed on
persons who enjoyed favour at court. The con-
ditions of the gift were that the convicts should
be carried beyond sea as slaves, that they should
not be emancipated for ten years, and that the
place of their banishment should be some West
Indian island. ... It was estimated by Jeffreys
that, on an average, each of them, after all
charges were paid, would be worth from ten to
fifteen pounds. There was therefore much angry
competition for grants. . . . And now Jeffreys
had done his work, and returned to claim his
reward. He arrived at Windsor from the West,
leaving carnage, mourning and terror behind him.
The hatred with which he was regarded by the
people of Somersetshire has no parallel in our
history. . . . But at the court Jeffreys was cor-
dially welcomed. He was a judge after his
master's own heart. James had watched the cir-
cuit with interest and delight. ... At a later
period, when all men of all parties spoke with
horror of the Bloody Assizes, the wicked Judge
and the wicked King attempted to vindicate them-
selves by throwing the blame on each other." —
Lord Macaulay, Bist. of Eng., ch. 5.
Also dj: Sir James Mackintosh, Hist, of the
B£iwlution in Eng., ch. 1. — Lord Campbell, Lives
of the Lord Chancellors, ch. 100 (». 3). — G. Roberts,
Life of Monmouth, ch. 29-81 («. 2). — See, also,
Taunton: A. D. 1685.
A. D. 1685-1686. — Faithless and tyrannical
measures against the New England colonies.
See Connecticut: A. D. 1685-1687; and Massa-
chusetts: A. D. 1671-1686.
A. D. 1685-1689. — The Despotism of James
II. in Scotland. See Scotland: A. D. 1681-
1689.
A. D. 1686.— The Court of High Commis-
sion revived. — "James conceived the design of
employing his authority as head of the Church
of England as a means of subjecting that church
to his pleasure, if not of finally destroying it.
It is hard to conceive how he could reconcile to
his religion the exercise of supremacy in an
heretical sect, and thus sanction by his example
the usurpations of the Tudors on the rights of
the Catholic Church. . . . He, indeed, consid-
ered the ecclesiastical supremacy as placed in his
hands by Providence to enable him to betray the
Protestant establishment. 'God,' said he to
Barillon, ' has permitted that all the laws made
to establish Protestantism now serve as a foun-
dation for my measures to re-establish true re-
ligion, and give me a right to exercise a more
extensive power than other Catholic princes pos-
sess in the ecclesiastical affairs of their domin-
ions.' He found legal advisers ready with paltry
expedients for evading the two statutes of 1641
and 1660 [abolishing, and re-affirming the aboli-
tion of the Court of High Commission], under
the futile pretext that they forbade only a court
vested with such powers of corporal punishment
as had been exercised by the old Court of High
Commission; and in conformity to their perni-
cious counsel, he issued, in July, a commission
to certain ministers, prelates, and judges, to act
as a Court of Commissioners in Ecclesiastical
Causes. The first purpose of this court was to
enforce directions to preachers, issued by the
King, enjoining them to abstain from preaching
on controverted questions." — Sir James Mackin-
tosh, Hist, of the Revolution in Eng., ch. 3.
Also ln: D. Neal, Hist, of the Puritans, v. 5,
ch. 3.
A. D. 1686. — The consolidation of New
England under a royal Governor-General.
See New England: A. D. 1686.
A. D. 1687.— Riddance of the Test Act by
royal dispensing power. — " The abolition of the
tests was a thing resolved upon in the catholic
council, and for this a sanction of some kind or
other was rcijuired, as they dared not yet pro-
ceed upon the royal will alone. Chance, or the
machinations of the catholics, created an affair
which brought the question of the tests under
another form before the court of king's bench.
This court had not the power to abolish the
Test Act, but it might consider whether the
932
ENGLAND, 1687.
Trial of
the Seven Bishops,
ENGLAND, 1687-1688.
king had the right of exempting particular sub-
jects from the formalities. . . . The king . . .
closeted himself with the judges one hy one, dis-
missed some, and got those who replaced them,
'ignorant men,' sa_ys an historian, 'and scandal-
ously incompetent, ' to acknowledge his dispens-
ing power. . . . The judges of the king's bench,
after a trial, . . . declared, almost in the very
language used by the crown counsel : — 1. That
the kings of England are sovereign princes ; 2.
That the laws of England are the king's laws ;
3. That therefore it is an inseparable preroga-
tive in the kings of England to dispense with
penal laws in particular cases, and upon particu-
lar necessary reasons ; 4. That of those reasons,
and those necessities, the king himself is sole
judge; and finally, which is consequent upon
all, 5. That this is not a trust invested in, or
granted to the king by the people, but the an-
cient remains of thj sovereign power and pre-
rogative of the kings of England, which never
yet was taken from them, nor can be. The case
thus decided, the king thought he might rely
upon the respect always felt by the English peo-
ple for the decisions of the higher courts, to ex-
empt all his catholic subjects from the obliga-
tions of the test. And upon this, it became no
longer a question merely of preserving in their
commissions and ofBces those whose dismissal
had been demanded by parliament. ... To ob-
tain or to retain certain employments, it was nec-
essary to be of the same religion with the king.
Papists replaced in the army and in the admin-
istration all those who had pronounced at all
energetically for the maintenance of the tests.
Abjurations, somewhat out of credit during the
last session of parliament, again resumed fa-
vour." — A. Carrel, Hist, of the Counter- Jievolutio7i
ill Eng. , ch. 3.
Also en: J. Stoughton, Hist, of Religion in
Eng., V. 4, ch. 4.
A. D. 1687-1688.— Declarations of Indul-
gence. — Trial of the Seven Bishops. — "Under
pretence of toleration for Dissenters, James en-
deavoured, under another form, to remove ob-
stacles from Romanists. He announced an In-
dulgence. He began in Scotland by issuing on
the 12th of February, 1687, in Edinburgh, a Proc-
lamation granting relief to scrupulous con-
sciences. Hereby he professed to relieve the
Presbyterians, but the relief of them amounted
to nothing ; to the Romanists it was complete.
... On the 18th of March, 1687, he announced
to the English Privy Council his intention to pro-
rogue Parliament, and to grant upon his own
authority entire liberty of conscience to all his
subjects. Accordingly on the 4th of April he
published his Indulgence, declaring his desire to
see all his subjects become members of the Church
of Rome, and his resolution (since that was im-
practicable) to protect them in the free exercise
of their religion ; also promising to protect the
Established Church : then he annulled a number
of Acts of Parliament, suspended all penal laws
against Nonconformists, authorised Roman Catho-
lics and Protestant Dissenters to perform worship
publicly, and abrogated all Acts of Parliament
imposing any religious test for civil or military
ofBces. This declaration was then notoriously
illegal and unconstitutional. James now issued
a second and third declaration for Scotland, and
courted the Dissenters in England, but with small
encouragement. ... On the 37th of April, 1688,
James issued a second Declaration of Indulgence
for England. . . . On the 4th of May, by an
order in Council, he directed his Declaration of
the 27th of April to be publicly read during divine
service in all Churches and Chapels, by the offici-
ating ministers, on two successive Sundays —
namely, on the 20th and 27th of May in London,
and on the 3d and 10th of June in the country ;
and desired the Bishops to circulate this Declara-
tion through their dioceses. Hitherto tlie Bishops
and Clergy had held the doctrine of passive obedi-
ence to the sovereign, however bad in character
or in his measures — now they were placed by
the King himself in a dilemma. Here was a vio-
lation of existing law, and an intentional injury
to their Church, if not a plan for the substitution
of another. The Nonconformists, whom James
pretended to serve, coincided with and supported
the Church. A decided course must be taken.
The London Clergy met and resolved not to read
the Declaration. On the 12th of May, at Lam-
beth Palace, the Archbishop of Canterbury and
other Prelates assembled. They resolved that
the Declaration ought not to be read. On Fri-
day, the 18th of May, a second meeting of the
Prelates and eminent divines was held at Lam-
beth Palace. A petition to the King was drawn
up by the Archbishop of Canterbury in his own
handwriting, disclaiming all disloyalty and all
intolerance, . . . but stating that Parliament had
decided that the King could not dispense with
Statutes in matters ecclesiastical — that the Decla-
ration was therefore illegal — and could not be
solemnly published by the petitioners in the
House of God and during divine service. This
paper was signed by Bancroft, Archbishop of
Canterbury, Lloyd, Bishop of St. Asaph, Turner
of Ely, Lake of Chichester, Ken of Bath and
Wells, White of Peterborough, and Trelawny
of Bristol. It was approved by Compton, Bishop
of London, but not signed, because he was under
suspension. The Archbishop had long been for-
bidden to appear at Court, therefore could not
present it. On Friday evening the six Bishops
who had signed were introduced by Sunderland
to the King, who read the document and pro-
nounced it libellous [and seditious and rebellious],
and the Bishops retired. On Sunday, the 20tli
of May, the first day appointed, the Declaration
was read in London only in four Churches out of
one hundred. The Dissenters and Church Lay-
men sided with the Clergy. On the following
Sunday the Declaration was treated in the same
manner in London, and on Sunday, the 3d of
June, was disregarded by Bishops and Clergy in
all parts of England. James, by the advice of
Jeffreys, ordered the Archbishop and Bishops to
be indicted for a seditious libel. They were,
on the 8th of June, conveyed to the Tower amidst
the most enthusiastic demonstrations of respect
and affection from all classes. The same night
the Queen was said to have given birth to a son ;
but the national opinion was that some trick had
been played. On the 29th of June the trial of
the seven Bishops came on before the Court of
King's Bench. . . . The Jury, who, after remain-
ing together all night (one being stubborn) pro-
nounced a verdict of not guilty on the morning
of the 30th June, 1688."— W. H, Torriano, Wil-
liam tlie Third, ch. 2. — "The court met at nine
o'clock. The nobility and gentry covered the
benches, and an immense concourse of people
fiUed the Hall, and blocked up the adjoining
933
ENGLAND, 1687-1688.
William of
Orange invited.
ENGfLAND, 1688.
streets. Sir Robert Langley , the foreman of the
jury, being, according to established form, aslied
whether the accused were guilty or not guilty,
pronounced the verdict ' Not guilty. ' No sooner
were these words uttered than a loud huzza arose
from the audience in the court. It was instantly
echoed from without by a shout of joy, which
sounded like a crack of the ancient and- massy
roof of Westminster Hall. It passed with elec-
trical rapidity from voice to voice along the in-
finite multitude who waited in the streets. It
reached the Temple in a few minutes. . . . ' The
acclamations,' says Sir John Reresby, 'were a
very rebellion in noise.' In no long time they
ran to the camp at Hounslow, and were repeated
with an ominous voice by the soldiers iu the hear-
ing of the King, who, on being told that they
were for the acquittal of the bishops, said, with
an ambiguity probably arising from confusion,
'So much the worse for them.'" — Sir J. Mack-
intosh, Hist, of the Kemlution in Eng. in 1688,
ch. 9.
Also in : A. Strickland, Lives of the Seven Bish-
ops. — R. Southey, Bk. of the Church, ch. 18. —
G. G. Perry, Hist, of the Ch. of Eng., ch. 30 (b. 3).
A. D. i"688 (July).— William and Mary of
Orange the hope of the nation. — "The wiser
among English statesmen had fixed their hopes
steadily on the succession of Mary, the elder
daughter and heiress of James. The tyranny of
her father's reign made this succession the hope
of the people at large. But to Europe the im-
portance of the change, whenever it should come
about, lay not so much in the succession of Mary
as in the new power which such an event would
give to her husband, William, Prince of Orange.
We have come, in fact, to a moment when the
struggle of England against the aggression of its
King blends with the larger struggle of Europe
against the aggression of Lewis XIV." — J. R.
Green, Short Hist, of Eng., ch. 9, sect. 7.— "Wil-
liam of Nassau, Prince of Orange, Stadtholder of
the republic of the United Provinces, was, before
the birth of the Prince of Wales, first prince of
the blood royal of England [as son of Princess
Mary, daughter of Charles I., and, therefore,
nephew as well as son-in-law of James II.] ; and
his consort, the Lady Mary, the eldest daughter
of the King, was, at that period, presumptive
heiress to the crown." — Sir J. Mackintosh, Hist,
of the Revolution in Eng., ch. 10.
A. D. i688 (July — November).— Invitation to
William of Orange and his acceptance of it. —
' ' In July, in almost exact coincidence of time with
the Queen's accouchement [generally doubted
and suspected], came the memorable trial of the
Seven Bishops, which gave the first demonstra-
tion of the full force of that popular animosity
which James's rule had provoked. Some months
before, however, Edward Russell, nephew of the
Earl of Bedford, and cousin of Algernon Sidney's
fellow-victim, had sought the Hague with pro-
posals to William [Prince of Orange] to make an
armed descent upon England, as vindicator of
English liberties and the Protestant religion.
AVilliam had cautiously required a signed in-
vitation from at least a few representative states-
men before committing himself to such an enter-
prise, and on the day of the acquittal of the
Seven Bishops a paper, signed in cipher by Lords
Shrewsbury, Devonshire, Danby, andLumley, by
Compton, Bishop of Northampton, by Edward
Russell, and by Henry Sidney, brother of Alger-
non, was conveyed by Admiral Herbert to the
Hague. William was now furnished with the
required security for English assistance in the
projected undertaking, but the task before him
was still one of extreme difficulty. ... On the
10th of October, matters now being ripe for such
a step, William, in conjunction with some of his
English advisers, put forth his famous declara-
tion. Starting with a preamble to the effect
that the observance of laws is necessary to the
happiness of states, the instrument proceeds to
enumerate fifteen particulars in which the laws
of England had been set at naught. The most
important of these were — (1) the exercise of the
dispensing power; (3) the corruption, coercion,
and packing of the judicial bench; (3) the viola-
tion of the test laws by the appointment of papists
to offices (particularly judicial and military of-
fices, and the administration of Ireland), and
generally the arbitrary and illegal measures re-
sorted to by James for the propagation of the
Catholic religion ; (4) the establishment and action
of the Court of High Commission; (5) the in-
fringement of some municipal charters, and the
procuring of the surrender of others ; (6) inter-
ference with elections by turning out of all em-
ployment such as refused to vote as they were
required ; and (7) the grave suspicion which had
arisen that the Prince of Wales was not born of
the Queen, which as yet nothing had been done
to remove. Having set forth these grievances,
the Prince's manifesto went on to recite the
close interest which he and his consort had in
this matter as next in succession to the crown,
and the earnest solicitations which had been
made to him by many lords spiritual and tem-
poral, and other English subjects of all ranks, to
interpose, and concluded by affirming in a very
distinct and solemn manner that the sole object
of the expedition then preparing was to obtain
the assembling of a free and lawful Parliament,
to which the Prince pledged himself to refer all
questions concerning the due execution of the
laws, and the maintenance of the Protestant re-
ligion, and the conclusion of an agreement be-
tween the Church of England and the Dissenters,
as also the inquiry into the birth of the ' pre-
tended Prince of Wales ' ; and that this object
being attained, the Prince would, as soon as the
state of the nation should permit of it, send home
his foreign forces. About a week after, on the
16th of October, all things being now in readi-
ness, the Prince took solemn leave of the States-
General. . . . On the 19th William and his arma-
ment set sail from Helvoetsluys, but was met on
the following day by a violent storm which
forced him to put back on the 21st. On the 1st of
November the fleet jiiut to sea a second time. . . .
By noon of the 5th of November, the Prince's
fleet was wafted safely into Torbay." — H. D.
Traill, William the Third, ch. 3.
Also in : G. Burnet, Hist, of My Own Time,
1688 (41. 3).— L. von Ranke, Hist, of Eng., 17th
Gent., bk. 18, ch. 1-i {v. 4). — Lord Campbell,
Lives of the Lord Gliancellors, ch. 106-107." Somers
(». 4). — T. P. Courtenay, Life of Danby (Lard-
ner's Cab. Cyclop.), pp. 315-334.
A. D. i688 (November— December). — The
Revolution. — Ignominious flight of James. —
"The declaration published by the prince [on
landing] consisted of sixteen articles. It enu-
merated those proceedings of the government
since the accession of the king, which were
934
ENGLAND, 1688.
The Revolution.
Might of James.
ENGLAKD, 1689.
regarded as in the greatest degree opposed to the
liberty of the subject and to the safety of the
Protestant religion. ... To provide some ef-
fectual remedy against these and similar evils,
was the only design of the enterprise in which
the prince, in comijliance with earnest solicita-
tions from many lords, both spiritual and tem-
poral, from numbers among the gentry and all
ranks of people, had now embarked. . . . Ad-
dresses were also published to the army and navy.
. . . The immediate effect of these apjieals did
not correspond with the expectations of William
and his followers. On the 8th of November the
people of Exeter received the prince with quiet
submission. The memory of i\Ionmouth's expe-
dition was still fresh and terrible through the
west. On the 12th, lord Cornbury, son of the
earl of Clarendon, went over, with some ofHcers,
and about a hundred of his regiment, to the
prince; and most of the officers, with a larger
body of the privates belonging to the regiment
commanded by the duke of St. Alban's, followed
their example. Of three regiments, however,
quartered near Salisbury, the majority could not
be induced to desert the service of the king. . . .
Every day now brought with it new accessions
to the standard of the prince, and tidings of
movements in different parts of the kingdom in
his favour ; while James was as constantly re-
minded, by one desertion after another, that he
lived in an atmosphere of treachery, with scarcely
a man or woman about him to be trusted. The
defection of the lords Churchill and Drumlaneric,
and of the dukes of Grafton and Ormond, was
followed by that of prince George and the princess
Anne. Prince George joined the invader at Sher-
burne ; the princess made her escape from White-
hall at night, under the guardianship of the
bishop of London, and found an asylum among
the adherents of the prince of Orange who were
in arms in Northamptonshire. By this time
Bristol and Plymouth, Hull, York, and New-
castle, were among the places of strength which
had been seized by the partisans of the prince.
His standard had also been unfurled with success
in the counties of Derby, Nottingham, York,
and Cheshire. . . . Even in Oxford, several of
the heads of colleges concurred in sending Dr.
Finch, warden of All Souls' College, to invite
the prince from Dorsetshire to their city, assuring
him of their willingness to receive him, and to
melt down their plate for his service, if it should
be needed. So desperate had the affairs of
James now become, that some of his advisers
urged his leaving the kingdom, and negotiating
with safety to his person from a distance ; but
from that course he was dissuaded by Halifax
and Godolphin. In compliance with the advice
of an assembly of peers, James issued a procla-
mation on the 13th of November, stating that
writs had been signed to convene a parliament on
the loth of January ; that a pardon of all offences
should previously pass the great seal ; and that
commissioners should proceed immediately to
the head-quarters of the prince of Orange, to
negotiate on the present state of affairs. The
commissioners chosen by the king were Halifax,
Nottingham, and Godolphin ; but William evaded
for some days the conference which they solicited.
In the meantime a forged proclamation in the
name of the prince was made public in London,
denouncing the Catholics of the metropolis as
plotting the destruction of life and property on
the largest possible scale. . . . No one doubted
the authenticity of this document, and the fer-
ment and disorder which it spread through the
city filled the king with the greatest apprehension
for the safety of himself and family. On the
morning of the 9th of December, the queen and
the infant prince of Wales were lodged on board
a yacht at Gravesend, and commenced a safe voy-
age to Calais. James pledged himself to follow
within 24 hours. In the course of that day the
royal commissioners sent a report of their pro-
ceedings to Whitehall. The demands of the
prince were, that a parliament should be assem-
bled; that all persons holding public trusts in
violation of the Test-laws should relinquish them ;
that the city should have command of the Tower;
that the fleet, and the places of strength through
the kingdom should be placed in the hands of
Protestants ; that the expense of the Dutch arma-
ment should be defrayed, in part, from the Eng-
lish Treasury ; and that the king and the prince,
and their respective forces, should remain at an
equal distance from London during the sitting of
parliament. James read these articles with some
surprise, observing that they were much more
moderate than he had expected. But his pledge
had been given to the queen ; the city was still
in great agitation ; and private letters. Intimating
that his person was not beyond the reach of dan-
ger, suggested that his interests might possibly be
better served by his absence than by his presence.
Hence his purpose to leave the kingdom remained
unaltered. At three o'clock on the following
morning the king left Whitehall with sir Edward
Hales, disguising himself as an attendant. The
vessel provided to convey him to France was a
miserable fishing-boat. It descended the river
without interruption until it came near to Fevers-
ham, where some fishermen, suspecting Hales
and the king to be Catholics, probably priests
endeavouring to make their escape in disguise,
took them from the vessel. . . . The arrest of tht
monarch at Feversham on Wednesday was fol
lowed by an order of the privy council, command-
ing that his carriage and the royal guards should
be sent to reconduct him to the capital. . . .
After some consultation the king was informed
that the public interests required his Immediate
withdrawment to some distance fi'om Westmin-
ster, and Hampton Court was named. James ex-
pressed a preference for Rochester, and his wishes
in that respect were complied with. The day on
which the king withdrew to Rochester William
took up his residence in St. James's. The king
chose his retreat, deeming it probable that it
might be expedient for him to make a second
effort to reach the continent. . . . His guards
left him so much at liberty, that no impediment
to his departure was likely to arise ; and on the
last day of this memorable year — only a week
after his removal from Whitehall, James em-
barked secretly at Rochester, and with a favoura-
ble breeze safely reached the French coast." —
R. Vaughan, Hist, of England under the House of
Stuart, V. 2, pp. 914-918.
Aiso IN : Lord Macaulay, Bist. of Eng. , ch. 9-
10 (b. 2).— H. D. Traill, William tJie Third, ch. 4.
— Continuation of Sir J. Mackintosh's Hist, oftlie
Rev. in 1688, ch. 16-17.— Sir J. Dalrymple, Mem-
oirs of Gt. Britain and Ireland, pt. 1, bk. 6-7 (o. 2).
A. D. 1689 (January— February).— The set-
tlement of the Crowrn on William and Mary.—
The Declaration of Rights.— "The convention
935
ENGLAND, 1689.
Willia7n and
Mary,
ENGLAND, 1689.
met on the 22nd of January. Their first care was
to address the prince to take the administration
of affairs and disposal of the revenue into his
hands, in order to give a kind of parliamentary
sanction to the power he already exercised.
On the 28tli of January tlie commons, after a
debate in which the friends of tlie late king made
but a faint opposition, came to their great vote:
That king James II., having endeavoured to SHb-
vert the constitution of this kingdom, by break-
ing the original contract between king and peo-
ple, and by the advice of Jesuits and other
wicked persons having violated the fundamental
laws, and having withdrawn liimself out of the
kingdom, has abdicated the government, and
that the throne is thereby vacant. They resolved
unanimously the next day. That it hath been
found by experience inconsistent with the safety
and welfare of this protestant kingdom to be
governed by a popisli prince. This vote was a
remarkable triumph of the whig party, who had
contended for the exclusion bill. . . . The lords
agreed with equal unanimity to this vote ; which,
thougli It was expressed only as an abstract
proposition, led by a practical" inference to the
whole change that the whigs had in view. But
upon the former resolution several important
divisions took place." The lords were unwilling
to commit themselves to the two propositions,
that James had "abdicated " the government by
his desertion of it, and that the throne had there-
by become "vacant." They yielded at length,
however, and adopted the resolution as the com-
mons had passed it. They "followed this up by
a resolution, that the prince and princess of
Orange shall be declared king and queen of Eng-
land, and all tlie dominions thereunto belonging.
But the commons, with a noble patriotism, de-
layed to concur in this hasty settlement of the
crown, till they should have completed the
declaration of those fundamental rights and lib-
erties for the sake of which alone they had gone
forward with this great revolution. That decla-
ration, being at once an exposition of the mis-
government which had compelled them to de-
throne the late king, and of the conditions upon
which they elected his successors, was incorpo-
rated in the final resolution to which both houses
came on the 13th of February, extending the
limitation of the crown as far as the state of
affairs required : That William and Mary, prince
and princess of Orange, be, and be declared, king
and queen of England, France and Ireland, and
the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the
crown and dignity of the said kingdoms and
dominions to them, the said prince and princess,
during their lives, and the life of the survivor of
them ; and that the sole and full exercise of the
regal power be only in, and executed by, the
said prince of Orange, in the names of the said
prince and princess, during their joint lives; and
after their decease the said crown and royal dig-
nity of the said kingdoms and dominions to be
to the lieirs of the body of the said princess ; for
default of such issue, to the princess Anne of
Denmark [younger daughter of James II.], and
the heirs of her body ; and for default of such
issue, to the heirs of the body of the said prince
of Orange. . . . The Declaration of Rights pre-
sented to the prince of Orange by the marquis of
Halifax, as speaker of the lords, in the presence
of both houses, on the 18th of February, consists
of three parts: a recital of the illegal and arbi-
trary acts committed by the late king, and of
their consequent vote of abdication; a declara-
tion, nearly following the words of the former
part, that such enumerated acts are illegal ; and
a resolution, that the throne shall be tilled by the
prince and princess of Orange, according to the
limitations mentioned. . . . This declaration was,
some months afterwards [in October], confirmed
by a regular act of the legislature in the bill of
rights [see below: 1689 (October)]." — H. Hal-
lam, Const. Hist, of Eng., ch. 14-15 (o. 3).
Also in: Lord Macaulay, Hist, of Eng., ch.
10 (j). 2).— L. von Ranke, Hist, of Eng., nth
Cent., bk. 19, c7i. 2-3 (». 4).— R. Gneist, Hist, of
Eng. Const. , ch. 42 (v. 2).
A. D. 1689 (April— August).— The Church
and the Revolution. — The Toleration Act.—
The Non-Jurors. — "The men who had been
most helpful in bringing about the late changes
were not all of the same way of thinking in re-
ligion ; many of them belonged to the Church of
England; many were Dissenters. It seemed,
therefore, a fitting time to grant the Dissenters
some relief from the harsh laws passed against
them in Charles II. 's reign. Protestant Dissent-
ers, save those who denied the Trinity, were no
longer forbidden to have places of worship and
services of their own, if they would only swear
to be loyal to the king, and that his power was
as lawful in Church as in State matters. The
law that gave them this is called the Toleration
Act. Men's notions were still, however, very
narrow ; care was taken that the Roman Catholics
should get no benefit from this law. Even a
Protestant Dissenter might not yet lawfully be a
member of either House of Parliament, or take
a post in the king's service; for the Test Acts
were left untouched. King "William, who was a
Presbyterian in his own laud, wanted very much
to see the Dissenters won back to the Church of
England. To bring this about, he wished the
Church to alter those things in the Prayer Book
which kept Dissenters from joining with her.
But most of the clergy would not have any
change; and because these were the stronger
party in Convocation — as the Parliament of the
Church is called — William could get nothing
done. At the same time a rent, which at first
seemed likely to be serious, was made in the
Church itself. There was a strong feeling among
the clergy in favour of the banished king. So
a law was made by which every rnan who held
a preferment in the Church, or either of the
Universities, had to swear to be true to King Wil-
liam and Queen JIary, or had to give up his pre-
ferment. Most of the clergy were very unwill-
ing to obey this law ; but only 400 were found
stout-hearted enough to give up their livings
rather than do what they thought to be a wicked
thing. These were called 'non- jurors,' or men
who would not swear. Among them were five
out of the seven Bishops who had withstood
James II. only a year before. The sect of non-
jurors, who looked upon themselves as the only
true Churchmen, did not spread. But it did not
die out altogether until seventy years ago [i. e.,
early in the 19th century]. It was at this time
that the names High-Church and Low-Church
first came into use." — J. Rowley, Tlie Settlement
of the Constitution, ch. 1.
Also in: J. Stoughton. Hist, of Reliyion in
Eng., V. 5, ch. 4-11.— T. Lathbury, Hist, of the
Non-jurors.
93a
ENGLAND, 1689.
Bill of Rights.
ENGLAND, 1689.
A. D. 1689 (May).— War declared against
France. — The Grand Alliance. See Prance:
A. D. 1689-1690.
A. D. 1689 (October).— The Bill of Rights.—
The following is tlie text of the Bill of Rights,
passed by Parliament at its sitting in October,
1689: Whereas the Lords Spiritual and Tem-
poral, and Commons, assembled at Westminster,
lawfully, fully, and freely representing all the
estates of the people of this realm, did upon the
Thirteenth day of February, in the year of our
Lord One Thousand Six Hundred Eighty-eight
[0. s.], present unto their Majesties, then called
and known by the names and style of William
and Mary, Prince and Princess of Orange, being
present in their proper persons, a certain Declara-
tion in writing, made by the said Lords and Com-
mons, in the words following, viz. : " Whereas
the late King James IL, by the assistance of
divers evil counsellors, judges, and ministers em-
ployed by him, did endeavour to subvert and ex-
tirpate the Protestant religion, and the laws and
liberties of this kingdom: i. By assuming and
exercising a power of dispensing with and sus-
pending of laws, and the execution of laws,
without consent of Parliament. 2. By commit-
ting and prosecuting divers worthy prelates for
humbly petitioning to be excused from concur
ring to the said assumed power. 3. By issuing
and causing to be executed a commission under
the Great Seal for erecting a court, called the
Court of Commissioners for Ecclesiastical Causes.
4. By levying money for and to the use of the
Crown by pretence of prerogative, for other time
and in other manner than the same was granted
by Parliament. 5. By raising and keeping a
standing army within this kingdom in time of
peace, without consent of Parliament, and quar-
tering soldiers contrary to law. 6. IBy causing
several good subjects, being Protestants, to be
disarmed, at the same time when Papists were
both armed and employed contrary to law. 7.
By violating the freedom of election of members
to serve in Parliament. 8. By prosecutions in
the Court of King's Bench for matters and causes
cognisable only in Parliament, and by divers
other arbitrary and illegal causes. 9. And where-
as of late years, partial, corrupt, and unqualified
persons have been returned, and served on juries
in trials, and particularly divers jurors in trials
for high treason, which were not freeholders.
ID. And excessive bail hath been required of
persons committed in criminal cases, to elude the
benefit of the laws made for the liberty of the
subjects. II. And excessive fines have been im-
posed ; and illegal and cruel punishments inflicted.
12. And several grants and promises made of
fines and forfeitures before any conviction or
judgment against the persons upon whom the
same were to be levied. All which are utterly
and directly contrary to the known laws and
statutes, and freedom of this realm. And whereas
the said late King James IL having abdicated
the government, and the throne being thereby
vacant, his Highness the Prince of Orange (whom
it hath pleased Almighty God to make the glori-
ous instrument of delivering this kingdom from
Popery and arbitrary power) did (by the advice
of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and divers
principal persons of the Commons) cause letters
to be written to the Lords Spiritual and Tem-
poral, being Protestants, and other letters to the
several counties, cities, universities, boroughs,
and cinque ports, for the choosing of such persons
to represent them as were of right to be sent to
Parliament, to meet and sit at Westminster upon
the two-and-twentieth day of January, in this
year One Thousand Six Hundred Eighty and
Eight, in order to such an establishment, as that
their religion, laws, and liberties might not again
be in danger of being subverted ; upon which
letters elections have been accordingly made.
And thereupon the said Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons, pursuant to their re-
spective letters and elections, being now assem-
bled in a full and free representation of this na-
tion, taking into their most serious consideration
the best means for attaining the ends aforesaid,
do in the first place (as their ancestors in like
case have usually done) for the vindicating and
asserting their ancient rights and liberties, de-
clare: I. That the pretended power of suspend-
ing of laws, or the execution of laws, by regal
authority, without consent of Parliament, is ille-
gal. 2. That the pretended power of dispens-
ing with laws, or the execution of laws by regal
authority, as it hath been assumed and exercised
of late, is illegal. 3. That the commission for
erecting the late Court of Commissioners for Ec-
clesiastical Causes, and all other commissions and
courts of like nature, are illegal and pernicious.
4. That levying money for or to the use of the
Crown by pretence and prerogative, without
grant of Parliament, for longer time or in other
manner than the same is or shall be granted, is
illegal. 5. That it is the right of the subjects
to petition the King, and all commitments and
prosecutions for such petitioning are illegal. 6.
That the raising or keeping a standing army
within the kingdom in time of peace, unless it
be with consent of Parliament, is against law.
7. Tliat the subjects which are Protestants may
have arms for their defence suitable to their con-
ditions, and as allowed by law. 8. That election
of members of Parliament ought to be free. 9.
That the freedom of speech, and debates or pro-
ceedings in Parliament, ought not to be impeached
or questioned in any court or place out of Parlia-
ment. 10. That excessive bail ought not to be
required, nor excessive fines Imposed ; nor cruel
and unusual punishments inflicted. 11. That
jurors ought to be duly impanelled and returned,
and jurors which pass upon men in trials for high
treason ought to be freeholders. 12. That all
grants and promises of fines and forfeitures of
particular persons before conviction are illegal
and void. 13. And that for redress of all grie-
vances, and for the amending, strengthening, and
preserving of the laws. Parliament ought to be
lield frequently. And they do claim, demand,
and insist upon all and singular the premises, as
their undoubted rights and liberties ; and that no
declarations, judgments, doings or proceedings,
to the prejudice of the people in any of the said
premises, ought in any wise to be drawn here-
after into consequence or example. To which
demand of their rights they are particularly en-
couraged by the declaration of his Highness the
Prince of Orange, as being the only means for
obtaining a full redress and remedy therein.
Having therefore an entire confidence that his
said Highness the Prince of Orange will perfect
the deliverance so far advanced by him, and will
still preserve them from the violation of their
rights, which they have here asserted, and from
all other attempts upon their religion, rights, and
937
ENGLAND, 1689.
Bill of Rights.
ENGLAND, 1689.
liberties : II. The said Lords Spiritual and Tem-
poral, and Commons, assembled at Westminster,
do resolve, that William and Mary, Prince and
Princess of Orange, be, and be declared, King
and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, and
the dominions thereunto belonging, to hold the
crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms
and dominions to them the said Prince and
Princess during their lives, and the life of the
survivor of them ; and that the sole and full ex-
ercise of the regal power be only in, and exe-
cuted by, the said Prince of Orange, in the names
of the said Prince and Princess, during their
joint lives; and after their deceases, the said
crown and royal dignity of the said kingdoms
and dominions to be to the heirs of the body of
the said Princess; and for default of such issue
to the Princess Anne of Denmark, and the heirs
of her body ; and for default of such issue to the
heirs of the body of the said Prince of Orange.
And the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Com-
mons, do pray the said Prince and Princess to ac-
cept the same accordingly. III. And that the
oaths hereafter mentioned be taken by all persons
of whom the oaths of allegiance and supremacy
might be required by law instead of them ; and
that the said oaths of allegiance and supremacy
be abrogated. 'I, A. B., do sincerely promise
and swear. That I will be faithful and bear true
allegiance to their Majesties King William and
Queen Mary: So help me God.' 'I, A. B.,
do swear. That I do from my heart abhor, detest,
and abjure as impious and heretical that damna-
ble doctrine and position, that princes excom-
municated or deprived by the Pope, or any au-
thority of the See of Rome, may be deposed or
murdered by their subjects, or any other what-
soever. And I do declare, that no foreign prince,
person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought
to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-
eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual,
within this realm: So help me God.'" IV.
Upon which their said Majesties did accept the
crown and royal dignity of the kingdoms of Eng-
land, France, and Ireland, and the dominions
thereunto belonging, according to the resolution
and desire of the said Lords and Commons con-
tained in the said declaration. V. And thereupon
their Majesties were pleased, that the said Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, being
the two Houses of Parliament, should continue
to sit, and with their Majesties' royal concurrence
make effectual provision for the settlement of the
religion, laws and liberties of this kingdom, so
that the same for the future might not be in dan-
ger again of being subverted ; to which the said
Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,
did agree and proceed to act accordingly. VI.
Now in pursuance of the premises, the said Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in Par-
liament assembled, for the ratifying, confirming,
and establishing the said declaration, and the ar-
ticles, clauses, matters, and things therein con-
tained, by the force of a law made in due form
by authority of Parliament, do pray that it may
be declared and enacted, 'That all and singular
the rights and liberties asserted and claimed in
the said declaration are the true, ancient, and in-
dubitable rights and liberties of the people of
this kingdom, and so shall be esteemed, allowed,
adjudged, deemed, and taken to be, and that all
and every the particulars aforesaid shall be firmly
and strictly holden and observed, as they are ex-
pressed in the said declaration; and all officers
and ministers whatsoever shall serve their Majes-
ties and their successors according to the same in
all times to come. VII. And the said Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, seriously
considering how it hath pleased Almighty God,
in his marvellous providence, and merciful good-
ness to this nation, to provide and preserve their
said ^Majesties' royal persons most happily to
reign over us upon the throne of their ancestors,
for which they render unto Him from the bottom
of their hearts their humblest thanks and praises,
do truly, firmly, assuredly, and in the sincerity
of their hearts, think, and do hereby recognise,
acknowledge, and declare, that King James II.
having abdicated the Government, and their Maj-
esties having accepted the Crown and royal dig-
nity as aforesaid, their said Majesties did become,
were, are, and of right ought to be, by the laws
of this realm, our sovereign liege Lord and Lady,
King and Queen of England, France, and Ire-
land, and the dominions thereunto belonging, in
and to whose princely persons the royal state,
crown, and dignity of the said realms, with all
honours, styles, titles, regalities, prerogatives,
powers, jurisdictions, and authorities to the same
belonging and appertaining, are most fully, right-
fully, and entirely invested and incorporated,
united, and annexed. VIII. And for preventing
all questions and divisions in this realm, by rea-
son of any pretended titles to the Crown, and for
preserving a certainty in the succession thereof,
in and upon which the unity, peace, tranquillity,
and safety of this nation doth, under God, wholly
consist and depend, the said Lords Spiritual and
Temporal, and Commons, do beseech their Maj-
esties that it may be enacted, established, and
declared, that the Crown and regal government
of the said kingdoms and dominions, with all
and singular the premises thereunto belonging
and appertaining, shall be and continue to their
said Majesties, and the survivor of them, during
their lives, and the life of the survivor of them.
And that the entire, perfect, and full exercise of
the regal power and government be only in, and
executed by, his Majesty, in the names of both
their Majesties, during their joint lives; and after
their deceases the said Crown and premises shall
be and remain to the heirs of the body of her
Majesty: and for default of such issue, to her
Royal Highness the Princess Anne of Denmark,
and the heirs of her body ; and for default of such
issue, to the heirs of the body of his said Majesty :
And thereunto the said Lords Spiritual and Tem-
poral, and Commons, do, in the name of all the
people aforesaid, most humbly and faithfully
submit themselves, their heirs and posterities,
for ever: and do faithfully promise, that they
will stand to, maintain, and defend their said
Majesties, and also the limitation and succession
of the Crown herein specified and contained, to
the utmost of their powers, with their lives and
estates, against all persons whatsoever that shall
attempt anything to the contrary. IX. And
whereas it hath been found by experience, that
it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of
this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a
Popish prince, or by any king or queen marry-
ing a Papist, the said Lords Spiritual and Tem-
poral, and Commons, do further pray that it may
be enacted. That all and every person and per-
sons that is, are, or shall be reconciled to, or shall
hold communion with, the See or Church of
938
ENGLAND, 1689.
Battle of
Beachy Head.
ENGLAND, 1693.
Rome, or shall profess the Popish religion, or
shall marry a Papist, shall be excluded, and be
for ever Incapable to inherit, possess, or enjoy
the Crown and Government of this realm, and
Ireland, and the dominions thereunto belonging,
or any part of the same, or to have, use, or exer-
cise, any regal power, authority, or jurisdiction
within the same ; and in all and every such case
or cases the people of these realms shall be and
are hereby absolved of their allegiance, and the
said Crown and government shall from time to
time descend to, and be enjoyed by, such person
or persons, being Protestants, as should have in-
herited and enjoyed the same, in case the said
person or persons so reconciled, holding com-
munion, or professing, or marrying, as aforesaid,
were naturally dead. X. And that every King
and Queen of this realm, who at any time here-
after shall come to and succeed in the Imperial
Crown of this kingdom, shall, on the first day of
the meeting of the first Parliament, next after
his or her coming to the Crown, sitting in his or
her throne in the House of Peers, in the presence
of the Lords and Commons therein assembled, or
at his or her coronation, before such person or
persons who shall administer the coronation oath
to him or her, at the time of his or her taking the
said oath (which shall first happen), make, sub-
scribe, and audibly repeat the declaration men-
tioned in the statute made in the thirteenth year
of the reign of King Charles II., Intituled " An
Act for the more efEectual preserving the King's
person and Government, by disabling Papists
from sitting in either House of Parliament. " But
if it shall happen that such King or Queen, upon
his or her succession to the Crown of this realm,
shall be under the age of twelve years, then every
such King or Queen shall make, subscribe, and
audibly repeat the said declaration at his or her
coronation, or the first day of meeting of the
first Parliament as aforesaid, which shall first
happen after such King or Queen shall have at-
tained the said age of twelve years. XI. All
which their Majesties are contented and pleased
shall be declared, enacted, and established by au-
thority of this present Parliament, and shall
stand, remain, and be the law of this realm for
ever; and the same are by their said Majesties,
by and with the advice and consent of the Lords
Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in Par-
liament assembled, and by the authority of the
same, declared, enacted, or established accord-
ingly. XII. And be it further declared and en-
acted by the authority aforesaid. That from and
after this present session of Parliament, no dispen-
sation by "non obstante" of or to any statute,
or any part thereof, shall be allowed, but that
the same shall be held void and of no effect, ex-
cept a dispensation be allowed of in such statute,
and except in such cases as shall be specially
provided for by one or more bill or bills to be
passed during this present session of Parliament.
XIII. Provided that no charter, or grant, or par-
don granted before the thi-ee-and-twentieth day
of October, in the year of our Lord One thousand
six hundred eighty -nine, shall be any ways im-
peached or invalidated by this Act, but that the
same shall be and remain of the same force and
effect in law, and no other, than as if this Act
had never been made.
A. D. 1689-1696. — The war of the League
of Augsburg, or the Grand Alliance against
Louis XIV. (called in American history " King
William's War "). See France: A. D. 1689-
1690; 1689-1691; 1693; 1693 (July) ; 1694 ; 1695-
1696.— Also, Canada: A. D. 1689-1690; 1693-
1697; and Newfoundland: A. D. 1691^1697.
A. D. 1690 (June).— The Battle of Beachy
Head. — The great peril of the kingdom. —
"In June, 1690, whilst William was in Ireland,
the French sent a fleet, under Tourville, to
threaten England. He left Brest and entered
the British Channel. Herbert (then Earl of Tor-
rington) commanded the English fleet lying in
the Downs, and sailed to Saint Helens, where he
was joined by the Dutch fleet under Evertsen.
On the 36th of June the English and French
fleets were close to each other, and an important
engagement was expected, when unexpectedly
Torrington abandoned the Isle of Wight and re-
treated towards the Straits of Dover. . . . The
Queen and her Council, receiving this intelligence,
sent to Torrington peremptory orders to fight.
Torrington received these orders on the 39th
June. Next day he bore down on the French
fleet in order of battle. He had less than 60 ships
of the line, whilst the French had 80. He placed
the Dutch in the van, and during the whole fight
rendered them little or no assistance. He gave
the signal to engage, which was immediately
obeyed by Evertsen, who fought with the most
splendid courage, but at length, being unsup-
ported, his second in command and many other
officers of high rank having fallen, and his ships
being fearfully shattered, Evertsen was obliged
to draw off his contingent from the unequal
battle. Torrington destroyed some of these in-
jured ships, took the remainder in tow, and sailed
along the coast of Kent for the Thames. When
in that river he pulled up all the buoys to pre-
vent pursuit. . . . Upon his return to London
he was sent to the Tower, and in December was
tried at Sheerness by court-martial, and on the
third day was acquitted ; but William refused to
see him, and ordered him to be dismissed from
the navy." — W. H. Torriano, William tlie Third,
ch. 34. — "There has scarcely ever been so sad a
day in London as that on which the news of the
Battle of Beachy Head arrived. The shame was
insupportable ; the peril was imminent. ... At
any moment London might be appalled by news
that 30,000 French veterans were in Kent. It
was notorious that, in every part of the kingdom,
the Jacobites had been, during some months,
making preparations for a rising. All the regu-
lar troops who could be assembled for the defence
of the island did not amount to more than 10,000
men. It may be doubted whether our country
has ever passed through a more alarming crisis
than that of the first week of July 1690." — Lord
Macaulay, Hist, of Eng., ch. 15 (». 3).
Also rpf : J. Campbell, Naval Hist, of Gt. Brit. ,
cfi. 18 (1). 2).
A. D. 1690-1691. — Defeat of James and the
Jacobites in Ireland. See Ireland: A. D.
1689-1691.
A. D. 1692. — The new charter to Massachu-
setts as a royal province. See Massachxisetts :
A. D. 1689-1693.
A. D. 1692. — Attempted invasion from
France. — Battle of La Hogue. — " The diversion
in Ireland having failed, Louis wished to make
an effort to attack England without and within.
James II., who had turned to so little advantage
the first aid granted by the King of France saw
therefore in preparation a much more powerful
939
ENGLAND, 1692.
Battle
of La Hogue.
ENGLAND. 1701.
assistance, and obtained what bad been refused
him after the days of tlie Boyne and Beachy-
Head, — an army to invade England. News re-
ceived from that country explained this change
in the conduct of Louis. The opinion of James
at Versailles was no better than in the past ; but
England was believed to be on the eve of counter-
revolution, which it would be sufficient to aid with
a vigorous and sudden blow. . . . Many eminent
personages, among the Whigs as well as among
the Tories, among others the Duke of SLirlborough
(Churchill), had opened a secret correspondence
with the royal exile at Saint-Germain. James
had secret adherents in the English fleet whieli
he had so long commanded before reigning, and
believed himself able to count on Rear-Admiral
Carter, and even on Admiral Russell. Louis
gave himself up to excessive confidence in the
result of these plots, and arranged his plan of
naval operations accordingly. Aii army of 30, 000
men, with 500 transports, was assembled on the
coast of Normandy, the greater part at La Hogue
and Cherbourg, the rest at Havre : this was com-
posed of all the Irisli troops, a number of Anglo-
Scotch refugees, and a corps of French troops.
Marslial de Bellefonds commanded under King
James. Tourville was to set out from Brest in the
middle of April with fifty ships of the line, enter
the Channel, attack the English fleet before it
could be reinforced by the Dutch, and thus secure
the invasion. Express orders were sent to him
to engage the enemy ' whatever might be his
numbers. ' It was believed that half of the English
fleet would go over to the side of the allies of its
king. The landing effected, Tourville was to
return to Brest, to rally there the squadron of
Toulon, sixteen vessels strong, and the rest of
our large ships, then to hold the Channel during
the whole campaign. They had reckoned with-
out the elements, which, hitherto hostile to the
enemies of France, this time turned against her. "
The French fleets were detained by contrary
winds and by incomplete preparations. Tourville
was not reinforced, as he expected to be, by the
squadrons of Toulon and Rochefort. Before he
found it possible to sail from Brest, tlie Jacobite
plot had been discovered in England, the govern-
ment was on its guard, and the Dutch and Eng-
lish fleets had made their junction. Still, the
French admiral was under orders which left him
no discretion, and he went out to seek the enemy.
"May 29, at daybreak, between the Capes of
La Hogue and Barfleur, Tourville found himself
in presence of the allied fleet, the most powerful
that had ever appeared on the sea. He had been
joined by seven ships from the squadron of
Rochefort, and numbered 44 vessels against 99,
78 of which carried over 50 guns, and, for the
most part, were much larger than a majority
of the French. The English had 63 ships and
[4,540] guns; the Dutch, 36 ships and 2,614 guns;
in all, 7,154 guns; the French counted only 3,114.
The allied fleet numbered nearly 42,000 men ; the
French fleet less than 20,000." Notwithstanding
this great inferiority of numbers and strength, it
was the French fleet which made the attack, bear-
ing down under full sail ' ' on the immense mass of
the enemy. " The attempt was almost hopeless ;
and yet, when night fell, after a day of tremendous
battle, Tourville had not yet lost a ship ; but his
line of battle had been broken, and no chance of
success remained. "May 30, at break of day,
Tourville rallied around him 35 vessels. The other
nine had strayed, five towards La Hogue, four
towards the English coast, whence they regained
Brest. If there had been a naval port at La
Hogue or at Cherbourg, as Colbert and Vauban
had desired, the French fleet would have pre-
served its laurels! There was no place of retreat
on all that coast. The fleet of the enemy advanced
in full force. It was impossible to renew the
prodigious effort of the day before." In this
emergency, Tourville made a daring attempt to
escape with his fleet through the dangerous chan-
nel called the Race of Aldernej', which separates
the Channel Islands from the Normandy coast.
Twenty-two vessels made the passage safely and
found a place of refuge at St. Malo; thirteen
were too late for the tide and failed. Most of
these were destroyed, during the next few days,
by the English and Dutch at Cherbourg and in
the bay of La Hogue, — in the presence and under
the guns of King James' army of invasion.
"James II. had reason to say that 'his unlucky
star ' everywhere shed a malign influence around
him; but this influence was only that of his
blindness and incapacity. Such was that dis-
aster of La Hogue, which has left among us such
a fatal renown, and the name of which resounds
in our history like another Agincourt or Cressy.
Historians have gone so far as to ascribe to this
the destruction of the French navy. ... La
Hogue was only a reprisal for Beachy-Head. The
French did not lose in it a vessel more than the
allies had lost two years before, and the 15 ves-
sels destro3'ed were soon replaced." — H. Martin,
Hist, of France : Age of Louis XIV. (tr. by M. L.
Booth), V. 2, ck. 2.
Also in : Lord Macaulay, Hist, of Eng. , ch. 18
(i\ 4). — L. vou Ranke, Hist, of Eng. , llth Century,
hk. 20, ch. 4 (i). 5). — Sir J. Dairy mple. Memoirs of
Gt. Britain and Ireland, pt. 2, hk. 7 (b. 3).
A. D. 1695. — Expiration of censorship la^w.
— Appearance of first newspapers. See Print-
ing AND THE Press: A. D. 1695.
A. D. 1696-1749. — Measures of commercial
and industrial restriction in the American col-
onies. See United States op Am. : A. D. 1696-
1749 ; and Trade, Modern.
A. D. 1697. — The Peace of Ryswick. — Rec-
ognition of William III. by France. See
France : A. D. 1697.
A. D. 1698. — The founding of Calcutta. See
India : A. D. 1600-1702.
A. D. 1698-1700. — The question of the Span-
ish Succession. See Spain : A. I). 1698-170(1,
17th Century.— Commercial Progress. See
Trade, Modern.
A. D. 1701.— The Act of Settlement.— The
source of the sovereignty of the House of Han-
over or Brunswick. — 'William and Mary had
no children; and in 1700 the J'oung Duke of
Gloucester, the only child of Anne that lived
beyond infancy, died. There was now no hope
of "there being anyone to inherit the crown bj^ the
Bill of Rights after the death of William and of
Anne. In 1701, therefore. Parliament settled the
crown on the Electress Sophia of Hanover, and
her heirs. Sophia was one of the children of that
Elizabeth, daughter of James I., who in 1613
had married the Palsgrave Frederick. She was
chosen to come after William and Anne because
she was the nearest to the Stuart line who was a
Protestant. The law tliat did this is called the
Act of Settlement ; it gives Queen Victoria her
title to the throne. Parliament in passing it tried
940
ENGLAND, 1701.
Act of
Settlement.
ENGLAND, 1702-1714.
to make the nation's liberties still safer. It was
now made impossible (1) for any foreigner to sit
in Parliament or to hold an office under the
Crown ; (3) for the king to go to war in defence
of countries that did not belong to England, un-
less Parliament gave him leave ; or (3) to pardon
anyone so that the Commons might not be able
to impeach him." — .1. Rowley, 2'he Settlement of
the Coiutitiitioii, bk. 1, ch. 5. — "Though the
choice was truly free in the hands of parliament,
and no pretext of absolute right could be advanced
on any side, there was no question that the
princess Sophia was the fittest object of the na-
tion's preference. She was indeed very far re-
moved from any hereditary title. Besides the
pretended prince of Wales, and his sister, whose
legitimacy no one disputed, there stood in her
way the duchess of Savoy, daughter of Henrietta
duchess of Orleans, and several of the Palatine
family. These last had abjured the reformed
faith, of which their ancestors had been the strenu-
ous assertors ; but it seemed not improbable that
some one might return to it. . . . According to
the tenor and intention of the act of settlement,
all prior claims of inheritance, save that of the
issue of king William and the princess Anne, be-
ing set aside and annulled, the princess Sophia
became the source of a new royal line. The
throne of England and Ireland, by virtue of the
paramount will of parliament, stands entailed
upon the heirs of her body, being protestants.
In them the right is as truly hereditary as it ever
was in the Plantagenets or the Tudors. But
they derive it not from those ancient families.
The blood indeed of Cerdic and of the Conqueror
flows in the veins of his present majesty [George
IV.]. Our Edwards and Henries illustrate the
almost unrivalled splendour and antiquity of
the house of Brunswic. But they have trans-
mitted no more right to the allegiance of Eng-
land than Boniface of Este or Henry the Lion.
That rests wholly on the act of settlement, and
resolves itself into the sovereignty of the legis-
lature." — H. Hallam, Const. Hist, of Eng., ch. 15
{0. 3).
Also m : Sir A. Halliday, Annals of the House
of Hanover, bk. 10 (». 2). — See, also, England:
A. D. 1714.
A. D. 1701-1702. — The rousing of the nation
to war with France. — When Louis XIV. pro-
cured and accepted for his grandson the bequest
of the Spanish crown, throwing over the Parti-
tion Treaty, " William had the intolerable cha-
grin of discovering not only that he had been
befooled, but that his English subjects had no
sympathy with him or animosity against the royal
swindler who had tricked him. ' The blindness
of the people here,' he writes sadly to the Pen-
sionary Heinsius, ' is incredible. For though
the affair is not public, yet it was no sooner said
that the King of Spain's will was in favour of the
Duke of Anjou, that it was the general opinion
that it was better for England that France should
accept the will than fulfil the Treaty of Parti-
tion.'. . . William dreaded the idea of a Bour-
bon reigning at Madrid, but he saw no very
grave objection, as the two treaties showed, to
Naples and Sicily passing into French hands.
With his English subjects the exact converse was
the case. They strongly deprecated the assign-
ment of the Mediterranean possessions of the
Spaniard to the Dauphin ; but they were undis-
turbed by the sight of the Duke of Anjou seating
himself on the Spanish throne. . . . But just as,
under a discharge from an electric battery, two
repugnant chemical compounds will sometimes
rush into sudden combination, so at this juncture
the King and the nation were instantaneously
imited by the shock of a gross affront. The hand
that liberated the uniting fluid was that of the
Christian king. On the 16th of September 1701
James II. breathed his last at St. Germains, and,
obedient to one of those impulses, half -chivalrous,
half-arrogant, which so often determined hi.-i
policy, Louis XIV. declared his recognition of
the Prince of Wales as de jure King of England.
No more timely and effective assistance to the
[lolicy of its de facto king could possibly have
been rendered. Its effect upon English public
opinion was instantaneous; and when William
returned from Holland on the 4tli of November,
he found the country in the temper in which he
could most have wished it to be. " Dissolving the
Parliament in which his plans had long been
factiously opposed, he summoned a new one,
which met on the last day of the year 1701.
"Opposition in Parliament — in the country it
was already inaudible — ^was completely silenced.
The two Houses sent up addresses assuring the
King of their firm resolve to defend the suc-
cession against the pretended Prince of Wales
and all other pretenders whatsoever. . . . Nor
did the goodwill of Parliament expend itself in
words. The Commons accepted without a word
of protest the four treaties constituting the new
Grand Alliance. . . . The votes of supply were
passed unanimously. " But scarcely had the nation
and the King arrived at this agreement with one
another than the latter was snatched from his
labors. On the 21st of February, 1703, William
received an injury, through the stumbling of his
horse, which liis frail and diseased body could
not bear. His death would not have been long
delayed in any event, but it was hastened by this
accident, and occurred on the 8th of March fol-
lowing. He was succeeded by Anne, the sister
of his deceased queen, Mary, and second daughter
of the deposed Stuart king, James II. — H. D.
Traill, William the Third, ch. 14-15.
Also in : L. von Ranke, Hist, of Eng. , Vlth
Century, bk. 31, ch. 7-10 {v. 5). — See, also, Spain:
A. D. 1701-1703.
A. D. 1702. — Accession of Queen Anne.
A. D. 1702. — Union of rival East India
Companies. See India: A. D, 1600-1703.
A. D. 1702.— The War of the Spanish Suc-
cession. See Spain : A. D. 1703 ; and Nether-
lands : A. D. 1703-1704.
A. D. 1702. — First daily newspaper. See
PniNTiNG AND PiiESS : A. I). 1623-17U3.
A. D. 1702-1711. — The War of the Spanish
Succession in America (called " Queen Anne's
War"). See New Engl.s.nd: A. D. 1703-1710;
Canada: A. D. 1711-1713.
A. D. 1702-1714. — The Age of Anne in lit-
erature. — "That which was once called the
Augustan age of English literature was specially
marked by the growing development of a distinct
literary class. It was a period of transition from
the early system of the patronage of authors to
the later system of their professional indepen-
dence. Patronage was being changed into influ-
ence. The system of subscription, by which
Pope made his fortune, was a kind of joint-stock
patronage. The noble did not support the poet,
but induced his friends to subscribe. The noble
941
ENGLAND, 1702-1714.
Age of Anne in
Literature.
ENGLAND, 1703.
moreover, made another discovery. He found
that he could dispense a cheaper and more effect-
ive patronage than of old by patronising at the
public expense. During the reign of Queen Anne,
the author of a successful poem or an effective
pamphlet might look forward to a comfortable
place. The author had not to wear the livery,
but to become the political follower, of the great
man. Gradually a separation took place. The
minister found it better to have a regular corps
of politicians and scribblers in his pay than occa-
sionally to recruit his ranks by enlisting men of
literary taste. And, on the other hand, authors,
by slow degrees, struggled into a more indepen-
dent position as their public increased. In the
earlier part of the century, however, we find a
class of fairly cultivated people, sufficiently nu-
merous to form a literary audience, and yet not
so numerous as to split into entirely distinct frac-
tions. The old religious and political warfare
has softened ; the statesman loses his place, but
not his head ; and though there is plenty of bit-
terness, there is little violence. "We have thus a
brilliant society of statesmen, authors, clergy-
men, and lawyers, forming social clubs, meeting
at coffee-houses, talking scandal and politics, and
intensely interested in the new social phenomena
which emerge as the old order decays ; more excit-
able, perhaps, than their fathers, but less des-
perately in earnest, and waging a constant pam-
phleteering warfare upon politics, literature, and
theology, which is yet consistent with a certain
degree of friendly intercourse. The essayist, the
critic, and the novelist appear for the first time in
their modern shape; and the journalist is slowly
gaining some authority as the wielder of a polit-
ical force. The whole character of contemporary
literature, in short, is moulded by the social con-
ditions of the class for which and by which it
was written, still more distinctly than by the
ideas current in contemporary speculation. . . .
Pope is the typical representative of the poetical
spirit of the day. He may or may not be regarded
as the intellectual superior of Swift or Addison ;
and the most widely differing opinions may be
formed of the intrinsic merits of his poetry. The
mere fact, however, that his poetical dynasty was
supreme to the end of the century proved that,
in some sense, he is a most characteristic prod-
uct. Nor is it hard to see the main sources of
his power. Pope had at least two great poetical
qualities. He was amongst the most keenly
sensitive of men, and he had an almost unique
felicity of expression, which has enabled him to
coin more proverbs than any writer since Shake-
speare. Sensitive, it may be said, is a polite word
for morbid, and his felicity of phrase was more
adapted to coin epigrams than poetry. The con-
troversy is here irrelevant. Pope, whether, as I
should say, a true poet, or, as some have said,
only the most sparkling of rhymesters, reflects
the thoughts of his day with a curious complete-
ness. . . . There is, however, another wide prov-
ince of literature in which writers of the eigh-
teenth century did work original in character
and of permanent value. If the seventeenth cen-
tury is the great age of di-amatists and theolo-
gians, the eighteenth century was the age in
which the critic, the essayist, the satirist, the nov-
elist, and the moralist first appeared, or reached
the highest mark. Criticism, though still in its
infancy, first became an independent art with
Addison. Addison and his various colleagues
set the first example of that kind of social essay
which is still popular. Satire had been practised
in the preceding centur}', and in the hands
of Dryden had become a formidable political
weapon ; but the social satire of which Pope was,
and remains, the chief master, began with the
century, and may be said to have expired with
it, in spite of the efforts of Byron and Gifford.
De Foe, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett de-
veloped the modern novel out of very crude rudi-
ments ; and two of the greatest men of the cen-
tury. Swift and Johnson, may be best described
as practical moralists in a vein peculiar to the
time. . . . The English novel, as the word is
now understood, begins with De Foe. Though,
like all other products of mind or body, it was
developed out of previously existing material,
and is related to the great family of stories with
which men have amused themselves in all ages,
it is, perhaps, as nearly an original creation as
anything can be. The legends of saints which
amused the middle ages, or the chivalrous
romances which were popular throughout the
seventeenth century, had become too unreal to
amuse living human beings. De Foe made the
discovery that a history might be equally interest-
ing if the recorded events had never happened."
— L. Stephen, Hist, of Eng. Tlwiiglit in the Eigh-
teenth Century, ch. 12, sect. 23-56 (». 2).— "This
so-called classic age of ours has long ceased to be
regarded with that complacency which led the
most flourishing part of it to adopt the epithet
' Augustan. ' It will scarcely be denied by its
greatest admirer, if he be a man of wide reading,
that it cannot be ranked with the poorest of the
five great ages of literature. Deficient in the
highest intellectual beauty, in the qualities which
awaken the fullest critical enthusiasm, the eigh-
teenth century will be enjoyed more thoroughly
by those who make it their special study than by
those who skim the entire surface of literature.
It has, although on the grand scale condemned
as second-rate, a remarkable fulness and sus-
tained richness which endear it to specialists. If
it be compared, for instance, with the real Augus-
tan age in Rome, or with the Spanish period of
literary supremacy, it may claim to hold its own
against these rivals in spite of their superior rank,
because of its more copious interest. If it has
neither a Horace nor a Calderon, it has a great
extent and variety of writers just below these in
merit, and far more numerous than what Rome
or Spain can show during those blossoming
periods. It is, moreover, fertile at far more
points than either of these schools. This sus-
tained and variegated success, at a comparatively
low level of effort, strikes one as characteristic
of an age more remarkable for persistent vitality
than for rapid and brilliant growth. The Eliza-
bethan vivida vis is absent, the Georgian glow has
not yet dawned, but there is a suffused prosaic
light of intelligence, of cultivated form, over the
whole picture, and during the first half of the
period, at least, this is bright enough to be very
attractive. Perhaps, in closing, the distinguish-
ing mark of eighteenth-century literature may be
indicated as its masterj' of prose as a vehicle for
general thought." — E. Gosse, The Study of Eigh-
teenth-Century Literature {New Princeton Rev.,
July, 1888, p. 21).
A. D. 1703. — The Methuen Treaty with
Portugal. See Portugal: A. D. 1703; and
Spain: A. D. 1703-1704.
942
ENGLAND, 1703.
Fall of the
Whigs.
ENGLAND, 1710-1713.
A. D. 1703. — The Aylesbury election case.
— "Ashby, a burgess of Aylesbury, sued the
returning officer for maliciously refusing his
vote. Three judges of the King's Bench decided,
against the opinion of Chief Justice Holt, that
the verdict which a jury had given in favor of
Ashby must be set aside, as the action was not
maintainable. The plaintiff went to the House
of Lords upon a writ of error, and there the
judgment was reversed by a large majority of
Peers. The Lower House maintained that ' the
qualification of an elector is not cognizable else-
where than before the Commons of England ' ;
that Ashby was guilty of a breach of privilege ;
and that all persons who should in future com-
mence such an action, and all attorneys and
counsel conducting the same, are also guilty of
a high breach of privilege. The Lords, led by
Soniers, then came to counter-resolutions. . . .
The prorogation of Parliament put an end to the
quarrel in that Session ; but in the next it was
renewed with increased violence. The judgment
against the Returning Officer was followed up
by Ashby levying his damages. Other Ayles-
bury men brought new actions. The Commons
imprisoned the Aylesbury electors. The Lords
took strong measures that affected, or appeared
to affect, the privileges of the Commons. The
Queen finally stopped the contest by a proroga-
tion ; and the quarrel expired when the Parlia-
ment expired under the Triennial Act. Lord
Somers ' established the doctrine which has been
acted on ever since, that an action lies against a
Returning Officer for maliciously refusing the
vote of an elector. '" — C. Knight, Popular Hist,
of Emj., ■!). 5, ch. 17.
Also in: Lord Campbell, Lives of the Lord
Cluinccllors : Somer.i. ch. 110 (p. 4).
A. D. 1704-1707. — Marlborough's campaigns
in the War of the Spanish Succession. — Cam-
paigns in Spain. See Germany: A. D. 1704;
Spain: A. D. 1703-1704, to 1707; Netherlands:
A. D. 1705, and 1706-1707.
A. D. 1707. — The Union with Scotland.
See Scotland : A. D. 1707.
A. D. 1707-1708. — Hostility to the Union in
Scotland. — Spread of Jacobitism. See Scot-
land: A. D. 1707-1708.
A. D. 1708-1709.— The War of the Spanish
Succession : Oudenarde and Malplaquet. See
Netherlands: A. D. 1708-1709; and Spain:
A. D. 1707-1710.
A. D. 1709. — The Barrier Treaty with Hol-
land. — " The influence of the Whig party in the
alfairs of government in England, always irk-
some to the Queen, had now began visibly to
decline ; and the partiality she was suspected of
entertaining for her brother, with her known dis-
like of the house of Hanover, inspired them
with alarm, lest the Tories might seek still fur-
ther to propitiate her favour, by altering, in his
favour, the line of succession, as at present es-
tablished. They had, accordingly, made it one
of the preliminaries of the proposed treaty of
peace, that the Protestant succession, in Eng-
land, should be secured by a general guarantee,
and now sought to repair, as far as possible, the
failure caused by the unsuccessful termination
of the conferences, by entering into a treaty to
that efEect with the States. The Marquis Towns-
hend, accordingly, repaired for this purpose to
the Hague, when the States consented to enter
into an engagement to maintain the present suc-
cession to the crown, with their whole force, and
to make the recognition of that succession, and
the expulsion of the Pretender from France, an
indispensable preliminary to any peace with that
kingdom. In return for this important guar-
antee, England was to secure to the States a bar-
rier, formed of the towns of Nieuport, Furnes
and the fort of Knokke, Menin, Lille, Ryssel,
Tournay, Conde, and Valenciennes, Maubeuge,
Charleroi, Namur, Lier, Halle, and some forts,
besides the citadels of Ghent and Dendermonde.
]t was afterwards asserted, in excuse for the
dereliction from that treaty on the part of Eng-
land, that Townshend had gone beyond his in-
structions; but it is quite certain that it was
I'atifled without hesitation by the queen, what-
ever may have been her secret feelings regarding
it." — C. M. Da vies. Hist, of Holland, pt. 3, ch.
11 (». 8 ).
A. D. 1710-1712. — Opposition to the war. —
Trial of Sacheverell. — Fall of the Whigs and
Marlborough. — "A 'deluge of blood' such as
that of Malplaquet increased the growing weari-
ness of the war, and the rejection of the French
offers was unjustly attributed to a desire on the
part of Marlborough of lengthening out a con-
test which brought him profit and power. The
expulsion of Harley and St. John [Bolingbroke]
from the JNIinistry had given the Tories leaders
of a more vigorous stamp, and St. John brought
into play a new engine of political attack whose
powers soon made themselves felt. In the Ex-
aminer, and in a crowd of pamphlets and period-
icals which followed in its train, the humor of
Prior, the bitter irony of Swift, and St. John's
own brilliant sophistry spent themselves on the
abuse of the war and of its general. ... A sud-
den storm of popular passion showed the way in
which public opinion responded to these efforts.
A High-Church divine. Dr. Sacheverell, main-
tained the doctrine of non-resistance [the doc-
trine, that is, of passive obedience and non-resis-
tance to government, implying a condemnation of
the Revolution of 1688 and of the Revolution
settlement], in a sermon at St. Paul's, with a
boldness which deserved prosecution; but in
spite of the warning of Marlborough and of
Somers the Whig Ministers resolved on his im-
peachment. His trial in 1710 at once widened
into a great party struggle, and the popular
enthusiasm in Sacheverell's favor showed the
gathering hatred of the Whigs and the war. . . .
A small majority of the peers found him guilty,
but the light sentence they inflicted was in effect
an acquittal, and bonfires and illuminations over
the whole country welcomed it as a Tory triumph.
The turn of popular feeling freed Anne at once
from the pressure beneath which she had bent;
and the skill of Harley, whose cousin, Mrs.
Mashara, had succeeded fhe Duchess of Marlbor-
ough in the Queen's favor, was employed in
bringing about the fall both of Marlborough and
the Whig Ministers. . . . The return of a Tory
House of Commons sealed his [Marlborough's]
fate. His wife was dismissed from court. A
masterly plan for a march .into the heart of
France in the opening of 1711 was foiled by the
withdrawal of a part of his forces, and the nego-
tiations which had for some time been conducted
between the French and English Ministers with-
out his knowledge marched rapidly to a close.
... At the opening of 1713 the Whig majority
of the House of Lords was swamped by the
943
ENGLAND, 1710-1712.
Queen Anne^s
later Ministers.
ENGLAND, 1711-1714.
creation of twelve Tory peers. Marlborougli
was dismissed from his command, charged with
peculation, and condemned as guilty by a vote
of the House of Commons. He at once with-
drew from England, and with his withdrawal all
opposition to the peace was at an end." — J. R.
Green, Short Hist, of the Eng. People, sett. 9, ch.
9. — Added to other reasons for opposition to the
war, the death of the Emperor Joseph I. , which
occurred In April, 1711, had entirely reversed
the situation iu Europe out of which the war
proceeded. The Archduke Charles, whom the
allies had been striving to place on the Spanish
throne, was now certain to be elected Emperor.
He received the imperial crown, in fact, in De-
cember, 1711. By this change of fortune, there-
fore, he became a more objectionable claimant
(if the Spanish crown than Louis XIV. 's grand-
son had been. See Austria: A. D. 1711. — Earl
Stanhope, Hist, of Eng., Reir/n of Anne, ch. IS-
IS. — "Round the fall of Marlborough has gath-
ered the interest attaching to the earliest political
crisis at all resembling those of quite recent
times. It is at this moment that Party Govern-
ment in the modern sense actually commenced.
William the Third -nath military instinct had
always been reluctant to govern by means of a
party. Bound as he was, closely, to the Whigs,
he employed Tory Ministers. . . . The new idea
of a homogeneous government was working
itself into shape under the mild direction of Lord
Somers; but the form finally taken under Sir
Robert Walpole, which has continued to the
present time, was as yet some way off. Marl-
borough's notions were those of tlie late King.
Both abroad and at home lie carried out the
policy of William. He refused to rely wholly
upon the Whigs, and the extreme Tories were
not given employment. The Ministry of Godol-
phin was a composite administration, containing
at one time, in 1705, Tories like Harley and St.
John as well as Whigs such as Sunderland and
Halifax. . . . Lord Somers was a type of states-
man of a novel order at that time. ... In the
beginning of the eighteenth century it was rare
to find a man attaining the highest political rank
who was unconnected by birth or training or
marriage with any of the great ' governing fami-
lies,' as they have been called. Lord Somers
■was the son of a Worcester attorney. ... It
was fortunate for England that Lord Somers
should have been the foremost man of the Whig
party at the time when constitutional govern-
ment, as we now call it, was in course of con-
struction. By his prudent counsel the Whigs
were guided through the difficult years at the
end of Queen Anne's reign ; and from the ordeal
of seeing their rivals in power they certainly
managed, as a party, to emerge on the whole
with credit. Although he was not nominally
their leader, the paramount influence in the Tory
party was Bolingbroke's ; and that the Tories
suffered from the defects of his great qualities,
no unprejudiced critic can doubt. Between the
two parties, and at the head of the Treasury
through the earlier years of the reign, stood Go-
dolphin, without whose masterly knowledge of
finance and careful attention to the details of
administration Marlborough's policy would have
been baffled and his campaigns remained un-
fought. To Godolphin, more than to any other
one man, is due the preponderance of the Treas-
ury control in public affairs. It was his admin-
istration, during the absence of Marlborough on
the Continent, which created for the oflice of
Lord Treasurer its paramount importance, and
paved the way for Sir Robert Walpole's govern-
ment of England under the title of First Lord of
the Treasury. . . . Marlborough saw and always
admitted that his victories were due in large
measure to the financial skill of Godolphin. To
this statesman's lasting credit it must be remem-
bered that iu a venal age, when the standards of
public honesty were so different from those which
now prevail, Godolphin died a poor man. . . .
Bolingbroke is interesting to us as the most strik-
ing figure among the originators of the new par-
liamentary system. With Marlborough disap-
peared the type of Tudor statesmen modified by
contact with the Stuarts. He was the last of the
Imperial Chancellors. Bolingbroke and his suc-
cessor Walpole were the earlier types of consti-
tutional statesmen among whom Mr. Pitt and,
later, Mr. Gladstone stand pre-eminent. ... He
and his friends, opponents of Marlborough, and
contributors to his fall, are Interesting to us
mainly as furnishing the first examples of ' Her
Majesty's Opposition,' as the authors of party
government and the prototypes of cabinet minis-
ters of to-day. Their ways of thought, their
style of speech and of writing, may be dissimilar
to those now in vogue, but they show greater
resemblance to those of modern politicians than
to those of the Ministers of William or of the
Stuarts. Bolingbroke may have appeared a
strange product of the eighteenth century to his
contemporaries, but he would not have appeared
peculiarly misplaced among the colleagues of
Lord Randolph Churchill or Mr. Chamberlain."
— R. B. Brett, Footprints of Statesmen, ch. 3.
Also in: W. Coxe, Memoirs of 3Iarlbnrough,
ch. 89-107. — The same. Memoirs of Walpole, v. 1.
ch. 5-6. — G. Saintsbury, Marlborough. — G. W.
Cooke, Memoirs of Bolingbroke, v. 1, ch. 6-13. —
J. C. Collins, Bolingbroke. — A. Hassall, Life of
Bolingbroke, ch. 3.
A. D. 1711-1714. — The Occasional Confor-
mity Bill and the Schism Act.— "The Test Act,
making the reception of the Anglican Sacrament
a necessary qualification for becoming a member
of corporations, and for the enjoyment of most
civil offices, was very eflicacious in excluding
Catholics, but was altogether insufficient to ex-
clude moderate Dissenters. . . . Such men,
while habitually attending their own places of
worship, had no scruple about occasionally enter-
ing an Anglican church, or receiving the sacra-
ment from an Anglican clergyman. The Inde-
pendents, it is true, and some of the Baptists,
censured this practice, and Defoe wrote vehe-
mently against it, but it was very general, and was
supported by a long list of imposing authorities.
... In 1703, in 1703, and in 1704, measures for
suppressing occasional conformity were carried
through the Commons, but on each occasion they
were defeated by the Whig preponderance in the
Lords." In 1711, the Whigs formed a coalition
with one section of the Tories to defeat the
negotiations which led to the Peace of Utrecht ;
but the Tories "made it the condition of alliance
that the Occasional Conformity Bill should be ac-
cepted by the Whigs. The bargain was made;
the Dissenters were abandoned, and, on the
motion of Nottingham, a measure was carried
providing that all persons in places of profit or
trust, and all common council men in corpora-
944
ENGLAND, 1711-1714.
Coining of
the Hanoverians,
ENGLAND, 1714.
tions, who, while holding office, were proved to
have attended any Nonconformist place of wor-
ship, should forfeit the place, and should con-
tinue incapable of public employment till they
should depose that for a whole year they had not
attended a conventicle. The House of Com-
mons added a fine of £40, which was to be paid
to the informer, and with this addition the Bill
became a law. Its effects during the few years
it continued in force were very inconsiderable,
for the gi'eat majority of conspicuous Dissenters
remained in office, abstaining from public wor-
ship in conventicles, but having Dissenting min-
isters as private chaplains in their houses. . . .
The object of the Occasional Conformity Bill
was to exclude the Dissenters from all Govern-
ment positions of power, dignity or profit. It
was followed in 1714 by the Schism Act, which
was intended to crush their seminaries and de-
prive them of the means of educating their
children in their faith. ... As carried through
the House of Commons, it provided that no one,
under pain of three months' imprisonment, should
keep either a public or a private school, or
should even act as tutor or usher, unless he had
obtained a licence from the Bishop, had engaged
to conform to the Anglican liturgy, and had re-
ceived the sacrament in some Anglican church
within the year. In order to prevent occasional
conformity it was further provided that if a
teacher so qualified were present at any other
form of worship he should at once become liable
to three months' imprisonment, and should be
incapacitated for the rest of his life from acting
as schoolmaster or tutor. . . . Some important
clauses, however, were introduced by the Whig
party qualifying its severity. They provided
that Dissenters might have school-mistresses to
teach their children to read ; that the Act should
not extend to any person instructing youth in
reading, writing, or arithmetic, in any part of
mathematics relating to navigation, or in any
mechanical art only. . . . The facility with which
this atrocious Act was carried, abundantly shows
the danger in which religious liberty was placed
in the latter years of the reign of Queen Anne. " —
W. E. H. Lecky, Hist, of Eng., 18th Centunj,
ch. 1. — The Schism Act was repealed in 1719,
during the administration of Lord Stanhope. —
Cobbett's Parliamentary History, v. 7, pp. 567-587.
Axso IN: J. Stoughton, Hist, of ReUyion in
Eng., V. 5, ch. 14-16.
A. D. 1713.— Ending of the War of the
Spanish Succession. — The Peace of Utrecht.
— Acquisitions from Spain and France. See
Utrecht: A. D. 1712-1714; C.^ada: A. D.
1711-1713; also, Newfoundland: A. D. 1713;
and Slavery, Negro: A. D. 1698-1776.
A. D. 1713.— Second Barrier Treaty with
the Dutch. See Netherlands (Holland):
A. D. 1713-1715.
A. D. 1713-1714. — The desertion of the
Catalans. See Spain: A. D. 1713-1714.
A. D. 1714. — The end of the Stuart line and
the beginning of the Hanoverians. — Queen
Anne died, after a short illness, on the morning
of August 1, 1714. The Tories, who had just
gained control of the ministry, were wholly un-
prepared for this emergency. They assembled
in Privy Council, on the 29th of July, when the
probably fatal issue of the Queen's illness became
apparent, and ' ' a strange scene is said to have
occurred. Argyle and Somerset, though they
945
had contributed largely by their defection to the
downfall of the Whig ministry of Godolphin,
wei'c now again in opposition to the Tories, and
had recently been dismissed from their posts.
Availing themselves of their rank of Privy Coun-
cillors, they appeared uusummoned in the coun-
cil room, pleading the greatness of the emergency.
Shrewsbury, who had probably concocted the
scene, rose and warmly thanked them for their
offer of assistance ; and these three men appear
to have guided the course of events. . . . Shrews-
bury, who was already Chamberlain and Lord
Lieutenant of Ireland, became Lord Treasurer,
and assumed the authority of Prime Minister.
Summons were at once sent to all Privy Coun-
cillors, irrespective of party, to attend ; and
Somers and several other of the Whig leaders
were speedily at their post. They had the great
advantage of knowing clearly the policy they
should pursue, and their measures were taken
with admirable promptitude and energy. The
guards of the Tower were at once doubled. Four
regiments were ordered to march from the country
to London, and all seamen to repair to their vessels.
An embargo was laid on all shipping. The fleet
was equipped, and speedy measures were taken
to jjrotect the seaports and to secure tranquility
in Scotland and Ireland. At the same time des-
patches were sent to the Netherlands ordering
seven of the ten British battalions to embark
without delay ; to Lord Strafford, the ambassador
at the Hague, desiring the States-General to ful-
fil their guarantee of the Protestant succession
in England ; to the Elector, urging him to hasten
to Holland, where, on the death of the Queen, he
would be met by a British squadron, and escorted
to his new kingdom. " When the Queen's death
occurred, " the new King was at once proclaimed,
and it is a striking proof of the danger of the
crisis that the funds, which had fallen on a false
rumour of the Queen's recovery, rose at once
when she died. Atterbury is said to have urged
Bolingbroke to proclaim James III. at Charing
Cross, and to have offered to head the processinn
in his lawn sleeves, but the counsel was mere
madness, and Bolingbroke saw clearly that any
attempt to overthrow the Act of Settlement
would be now worse than useless. . . . The more
violent spirits among the Jacobites now looked
eagerly for a French invasion, but the calmer mem-
bers of the party perceived that such an invasion
was impossible. . . . The Regency Act of 1705
came at once into operation. The Hanoverian
minister produced the sealed list of the names of
those to whom the Elector entrusted the govern-
ment before his arrival, and it was found to con-
sist of eighteen names taken from the leaders of
the Whig party. . . . Parliament, in accordance
with the provisions of the Bill, was at once sum-
moned, and it was soon evident that there was
nothing to fear. The moment for a restoration
was passed." — W. E. H. Lecky, Hist, of Eng.,
18th Cent., ch. 1 (». 1). — "George I., whom cir-
cumstances and the Act of Settlement had thus
called to be King of Great Britain and Ireland,
had been a sovereign prince for sixteen years,
during which time he had been Elector of Bruns-
wick-Lilneburg. He was the second who ever
bore that title. By right of his father he was
Elector ; it was by right of his mother that he now
became ruler of the United Kingdom. The father
was Ernest Augustus, Sovereign Bishop of Osna-
burg, who, by the death of his elder brothers, had
ENGLAND, 1714.
XValpole and Parlia-
mentary Government.
ENGLAND, 1714-1721.
become Duke of Hanover, and then Duke of
Brunswick and Luneburg. In 1692 he was raised
by the Emperor to the dignity of Elector. . . .The
niother of George I. was Sophia, usually known
as the Electress Sophia. The title was merely
one of honour, and only meant wife of an Elector.
. . . The Electress Sophia was the daughter of
Elizabeth, daughter of King James I., and
Frederick, the Elector Palatine [whose election
to the throne of Bohemia and subsequent expul-
sion from that kingdom and from his Palatine
dominions were the first acts in the Thirty Years'
"War]. . . . The new royal house in England is
sometimes called the House of Hanover, some-
times the House of Brunswick. It will be found
that the latter name is more generally used in
histories written during the last centurj', the for-
mer in books written in the present day. If the
names were equallj' applicable, the modern use
is the more convenient, because there is another,
and in some respects well known, branch of the
House of Brunswick ; but no other has a right to
the name of Hanover. It is, however, quite certain
that, whatever the English use may be, Hanover
Is properly the name of a town and of a duchy,
but that the electorate was Brunswick-Liineburg.
. . . The House of Brunswick was of noble ori-
gin, tracing itself back to a certain Guelph
d'Este, nicknamed ' the Robust,' son of an Italian
nobleman, who had been seeking his fortunes in
Germany. Guelph married Judith, widow of the
English King, Harold, who fell on the hill of
Senlac. . . . One of Guelph's descendants, later,
married Maud, the daughter of King Henry II.,
probably the most powerful king in Europe of
his day, at whose persuasion the Emperor con-
ferred on the Guelphs the duchy of Brunswick."
— E. E. Morris, The Early HaTwverians, bk. 1,
ch. 2.
Also in : P. M. Thornton, T?ie Brunswick Ac-
cession, ch. 1-10. — Sir A. HaUiday, Annals of the
Houseof Hanover, bk. 10(». 2). — J. McCarthy, Hist,
of the Four Oeorges, ch. 1-4. — W. M. Thackeray,
The Four Georges, lect. 1.— A. W. Ward, The
Electress Sophia and the Hanoverian Succession
(Eng. Hist. Rev., v. 1). — See, also, England: A. D.
1701, The Act of Settlement.
A. D. 1714-1721. — First years of George I.
— The rise of Walpole to power and the found-
ing of Parliamentary Government. — "The ac-
cession of the house of Hanover in the person of
the great-grandson of James I. was once called
by a Whig of this generation the greatest miracle
in our history. It took place without domestic
or foreign disturbance. . . . Within our own
borders a short lull followed the sharp agitations
of the last six months. The new king appointed
an exclusively Whig Ministry. The office of
Lord Treasurer was not revived, and the title
disappears from political history. Lord Towns-
hend was made principal Secretary of State, and
assumed the part of first Minister. Mr. Walpole
[Sir Robert] took the subaltern office of paymaster
of the forces, holding along with it the paymaster-
ship of Chelsea Hospital. Although he had at
first no seat in the inner Council or Cabinet, which
seems to have consisted of eight members, only
one of them a commoner, it is evident that from
the outset his influence was hardly second to that
of Townshend himself. In little more than a
year (October 1715) he had made himself so
prominent and valuable in the House of Com-
mons, that the opportunity of a vacancy was
taken to appoint him to be First Commissioner
of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer.
. . . Besides excluding their opponents from
power, the Whigs instantly took more positive
measures. The new Parliament was strongly
Whig. A secret committee was at once appointed
to inquire into the negotiations for the Peace.
Walpole was chairman, took the lead in its pro-
ceedings, and drew the report." On Walpole's
report, the House "directed the impeachment of
Oxford, Bolingbroke, and Ormond for high
treason, and other high crimes and misdemeanours
mainly relating to the Peace of Utrecht. . . .
The proceedings against Oxford and Bolingbroke
are the last instance in our history of a political
impeachment. They are the last ministers who
were ever made personally responsible for giving
bad advice and pursuing a discredited policy, and
since then a political mistake has ceased to be a
crime. . . . The affair came to an abortive end.
. . . The opening years of the new reign mark
one of the least attractive periods in political
history. George I. . . . cared very little for his
new kingdom, and knew very little about its
people or its institutions. . . . His expeditions
to Hanover threw the management of all domes-
tic affairs almost without control into the hands
of his English ministers. If the two first Hano-
verian kings had been Englishmen instead of
Germans, if they had been men of talent and
ambition, or even men of strong and command-
ing will without much talent, Walpole would
never have been able to lay the foundations of
government by the House of Commons and by
Cabinet so firmly that even the obdurate will of
George III. was unable to overthrow it [see
Cabinet, The English]. Happily for the sys-
tem now established, circumstances compelled
the first two sovereigns of the Hanoverian line
to strike a bargain with the English Whigs, and
it was faithfully kept until the accession of the
third George. The king was to manage the af-
fairs of Hanover, and the Whigs were to govern
England. It was an excellent bargain for Eng-
land. Smooth as this operation may seem in his-
toric description, Walpole found its early stages
rough and thorny. " The king was not easily
brought to understand that England would not
make war for Hanoverian objects, nor allow her
foreign policy to be shaped by the ambitions of
the Electorate. Differences arose which drove
Townshend from the Cabinet, and divided the
Whig party. Walpole retired from the govern-
ment with Townshend, and was in opposition for
three years, while Lord Stanhope and the Earl of
Sunderland controlled the administration. The
Whig schism came to an end in 1720, and Towns-
hend and Walpole rejoined the administratnon,
the latter as Paymaster of the Forces without a
seat in the Cabinet. " His opposition was at an
end, but he took no part in the active work of
government. . . . Before many months had
passed the country was overtaken by the memora-
ble disasters of the South Sea Bubble [see South
Sea Bubble]. . . . All eyes were turned to
Walpole. Though he had privately dabbled in
South Sea stock on his own account, his public
predictions came back to men's minds ; they re-
membered that he had been called the best man
for figures in the House, and the disgrace of his
most important colleagues only made his sagacity
the more prominent. ... He returned to his old
posts, and once more became First Lord of the
946
ENGLAND. 1714-1721.
Walpole
and George II.
ENGLAND, 1727-1741.
Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer (April
1721), while Townshend was again Secretary of
State. "Walpole held his offices practically with-
out a break for twenty-one years. The younger
Pitt had an almost equal span of unbroken su-
premacy, but with that exception there is no
parallel to Walpole's long tenure of power. To
estimate aright the vast significance of this ex-
traordinary stability, we must remember that the
country had just passed through eighty years of
revolution. A man of 80 in 1721 could recall
the execution of Charles I., the protectorate of
Oliver, the fall of Richard Cromwell, the restora-
tion of Charles II., the exile of James II., the
change of the order of succession to "William of
Orange, the reactionary ministry of Anne, and
finally the second change to the House of Hano-
ver. The interposition, after so long a series of
violent perturbations as this, of twenty years of
settled system and continuous order under one
man, makes Walpole's government of capital
and decisive importance in our history, and con-
stitutes not an artificial division like the reign of
a king, but a true and definite period, with a be-
ginning, an end, a significance, and a unity of its
own." — J. Morley, Walpole, ch. 3—4.
Also in : W. Coxe, Memoirs of Sir Robert Wal-
pole, ch. 9-31 {V. 1).
A. D. 1715. — The Jacobite rising. See Scot-
land: A. D. 1715.
A. D. 1716. — The Septennial Act. — The easy
suppression of the Jacobite rebellion was far
from putting an end to the fears of the loyal
supporters of the Hanoverian dynasty. They
regarded with especial anxiety the approaching
Parliamentary elections. "As, by the existing
statute of 6 "William and Mary [the Triennial Act,
of 1694], Parliament would be dissolved at the
close of the year, and a new election held in the
spring of 1717, there seemed great probability of
a renewal of the contest, or at least of very seri-
ous riots during the election time. "With this in
view, the ministers proposed that the existing
Parliament should be continued for a term of
seven instead of three years. This, which was
meant for a temporary measure, has never been
repealed, and is still the law under which Par-
liaments are held. It has been often objected to
this action of Parliament, that it was acting arbi-
trarily in thus increasing its own duration. ' It
was a direct usurpation,' it has been said, 'of
the rights of the people, analogous to the act of
the Long Parliament in declaring itself inde-
structible.' It has been regarded rather as a
party measure than as a forward step in liberal
government. We must seek its vindication in
the peculiar conditions of the time. It was use-
less to look to the constituencies for the support
of the popular liberty. The return of members
in the smaller boroughs was in the hands of cor-
rupt or corruptible freemen ; in the counties, of
great landowners ; in the larger towns, of small
place-holders under Government. A general
election in fact only gave fresh occasion for the
exercise of the influence of the Crown and of the
House of Lords — freedom and independence in
the presence of these two permanent powers
could be secured only by the greater permanence
of the third element of the Legislature, the
House of Commons. It was thus that, though
no doubt in some degree a party measure for
securing a more lengthened tenure of office to
the Whigs, the Septennial Act received, upon
good constitutional grounds, the support and
approbation of the best statesmen of the time. "
—J. F. Bright, mst. ofEng., period 3, p. 938.
Also in: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), Hist.
of Eng., 1713-1783, v. 1, ch. 6.
A. D. 1717-1719. — The Triple Alliance. —
The Quadruple Alliance. — War with Spain.
See Spain: A. D. 1713-1725; also, Italy: A. D.
1715-1735.
A. D. 1720.— The South Sea Bubble. See
South Sea Bubble.
A. D. 1721-1742. — Development of the Cabi-
net System of ministerial government. See
Cabinet, The English.
A. D. 1725. — The Alliance of Hanover. See
Spain: A. D. 1713-1735.
A. D. 1726-1731. — Fresh differences vyith
Spain. — Gibraltar besieged. — The Treaty of
Seville. — The Second Treaty of Vienna. See
Spain: A. D. 1736-1731.
A. D. 1727. — Accession of King George II.
A. D. 1727-1741. — Walpole's administra-
tion under George II. — "The management of
public affairs during the six j'ears of George the
First's reign in which Walpole was Prime Min-
ister, was easy. . . . His political fortunes seemed
to be ruined by George the First's death [1737].
That King's successor had ransacked a very co-
pious vocabulary of abuse, in order to stigmatise
the minister and his associates. Rogue and rascal,
scoundrel and fool, were his commonest utterances
when Robert Walpole's name was mentioned.
. . . Walpole bowed meekly to the coming
storm," and an attempt was made to put Sir
Spencer Compton in his place. But Compton
himself, as well as the king and his sagacious
queen, soon saw the futility of it, and the old
ministry was retained. "At first, Walpole was
associated with his brother-in-law, Townsend.
But they soon disagreed, and the rupture was
total after the death of "Walpole's sister. Towns-
end's wife. . . . After Townsend's dismissal,
Walpole reigned alone, if, indeed, he could be
said to exercise sole functions while Newcastle
was tied to him. Long before he was betraj'ed
by this person, of whom he justly said that his
name was perfidy, he knew how dangerous was
the association. But Newcastle was the largest
proprietor of rotten boroughs in the kingdom,
and, fool and knave as he was, he had wit enough
to guess at his own importance, and knavery
enough to make his market. AValpole's chief
business lay in managing the King, the Queen,
the Church, the House of Commons, and perhaps
the people. I have already said, that before his
accession George hated Walpole. But there are
hatreds and hatreds, equal in fervency while they
last, but different in duration. The King hated
Walpole because he had served his father well.
But one George was gone, and another George was
in possession. Then came before the man in pos-
session the clear vision of Walpole's consummate
usefulness. The vision was made clearer by the
sagacious hints of the Queen. It became clear as
noonday when Walpole contrived to add £115,000
to the civil list. . . . Besides, Walpole was sin-
cerely determined to support the Hanoverian
succession. He constantly insisted to George
that the final settlement of his House on the
throne would be fought out in England. . . .
Hence he was able to check one of the King's
ruling passions, a longing to engage in war. . . .
It is generally understood that Walpole managed
947
ENGLAND, 1727-1741.
Walpole'^s
sta fesmansh ip.
ENGLAND, 1727-1741.
the House of Commons by bribery ; that the se-
cret service money was thus employed : and that
this minister was the father of that corruption
which was reported to have disgraced the House
during the first half of the last century. I sus-
pect that these influences have been exaggerated.
It is a stock story that Walpole said he knew
every man's price. It might have been generally
true, but the foundation of this apothegm is, in
all likelihood, a recorded saying of his about cer-
tain members of the opposition. . . . Walpole
has been designated, and with justice, as em-
phatically a peace minister. He held ' that the
most pernicious circumstances in which this coun-
try can be, are those of war, as we must be great
losers while the war lasts, and cannot be great
gainers when it ends.' He kept George the
Second at peace, as well as he could, by insisting
on it that the safety of his dynasty lay in avoid-
ing foreign embroilments. He strove in vain
against the war which broke out in 1739. ... I
do not intend to disparage Walpole's administra-
tive ability when I say that the country pros-
pered independently of any financial policy
which he adopted or carried out. . . . Walpole
let matters take their course, for he understood
that the highest merit of a minister consists in
his doing no mischief. But Walpole's praise
lies in the fact, that, with this evident growth
of material prosperity, he steadily set his face
against gambling with it. He resolved, as far
as lay in his power, to keep the peace of Europe ;
and he was seconded in his efforts by Cardinal
Fleury. He contrived to smooth away the diffi-
culties which arose in 1727 ; and on January 13,
1730, negotiated the treaty of Seville [see Spain:
A. D. 1726-1731], the benefits of which lasted
through ten years of peace, and under which he
reduced the army to 5,000 men." But the oppo-
sition to Walpole's peace policy became a grow-
ing passion, which overcame him in 1741 and
forced him to resign. On his resignation he was
raised to the peerage, with the title of Earl of
Orford, and defeated, though with great difli-
culty, the determination of his enemies to im-
peach him. — J. E. T. Rogers, Historical Glean-
ings, V. 1, ch. 3. — "It is impossible, I think, to
consider his [Walpole's] career with adequate
attention without recognising in him a great
minister, although the merits of his administra-
tion were often rather negative than positive,
and although it exhibits few of those dramatic
incidents, and is but little susceptible of that
rhetorical colouring, on which the reputation of
statesmen largely depends. ... He was emi-
nently true to the character of his countrymen.
He discerned with a rare sagacity the lines of
policy most suited to their genius and to their
needs, and he had a sufficient ascendancy in
English politics to form its traditions, to give a
character and a bias to its institutions. The
Whig party, under his guidance, retained, though
with diminished energy, its old love of civil and
of religious liberty, but it lost its foreign sym-
pathies, its tendency to extravagance, its military
restlessness. The landed gentry, and in a great
degree the Church, were reconciled to the new
dynasty. The dangerous fissures which divided
the English nation were filled up. Parliamentary
government lost its old violence, it entered into
a period of normal and pacific action, and the
habits of compromise, of moderation, and of
practical good sense, which are most essential to
its success, were greatly strengthened. These
were the great merits of Walpole. His faults
were very manifest, and are to be attributed in
part to his own character, but in a great degree
to the moral atmosphere of his time. He was
an honest man in the sense of desiring sincerely
the welfare of his country and serving his sove-
reign with fidelity ; but he was intensely wedded
to power, exceedingly unscrupulous about the
means of grasping or retaining it, and entirely
destitute of that delicacy of honour which marks
a high-minded man. . . . His estimate of political
integrity was very similar to his estimate of female
virtue. He governed by means of an assembly
which was saturated with corruption, and he
fully acquiesced in its conditions and resisted
every attempt to improve it. . . . It is necessary
to speak with much caution on this matter, re-
membering that no statesman can emancipate
himself from the conditions of his time. . . .
The systematic corruption of Members of Par-
liament is said to have begun under Charles II.,
in whose reign it was practised to the largest
extent. It was continued under his successor,
and the number of scandals rather increased than
diminished after the Revolution. . . . And if cor-
ruption did not begin with Walpole, it is equally
certain that it did not end with him. His ex-
penditure of secret service money, large as it
was, never equalled in an equal space of time
the expenditure of Bute. . . . The real charge
against him is that in a period of profound peace,
when he exercised an almost unexampled ascen-
dancy in politics, and when public opinion was
strongly in favour of the diminution of corrupt
influence in Parliament, he steadily and success-
fully resisted every attempt at reform. ... It
was his settled policy to maintain his Parlia-
mentary majority, not by attracting to his min-
istry great orators, great writers, great financiers,
or great statesmen, . . . but simply by engross-
ing borough influence and extending tlae patron-
age of the Crown."— W. E. H. Lecky, Hist, of
Eng. in the 18th Century, ch. 3 (». 1). — "But for
Sir Robert Walpole, we should have had the Pre-
tender back again. But for his obstinate love of
peace, we should have had wars, which the
nation was not strong enough nor united enough
to endure. But for his resolute counsels and
good-humoured resistance, we might have had
German despots attempting a Hanoverian regi-
men over us : we should have had revolt, com-
motion, want, and tyrannous misrule, in place of
a quarter of a century of peace, freedom and
material prosperity, such as the country never
enjoyed, until that corrupter of parliaments,
that dissolute tipsy cynic, that courageous lover
of peace and liberty, that great citizen, patriot
and statesman governed it. . . . In private life
the old pagan revelled in the lowest pleasures:
he passed his Sundays tippling at Richmond;
and his holidays bawling after dogs, or boozing
at Houghton with Boors over beef and punch.
He cared for letters no more than his master did :
he judged luunan nature so meanly that one is
ashamed to have to own that he was right, and
that men could be corrupted by means so base.
But, with his hireling House of Commons, he de-
fended liberty for us ; with his incredulity he kept
Church-craft down. ... He gave Englishmen
no conquests, but he gave them peace, and ease,
and freedom ; the Three per Cents, nearly at par;
and wheat at five and six and twenty shillings a
948
ENGLAND. 1727-1741.
War of
Jenkins'' Ear.
ENGLAND, 1739-1741.
quarter."— W. M. Thackeray, The Four Georges,
eh. 2.
Also m ; W. Coxe, Memoirs of Sir R. Walpole,
eh. 31-59 (v. 1).— Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope),
Hist, of Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 15-23 (s. 2-3).—
Lord Hervey, Memoirs of the Reign of Oeorge II.
A. D. 1731-1740. — The question of the Aus-
trian Succession. — Guarantee of the Prag-
matic Sanction. See Austria: A. D. 1718-
1738, and 1740.
A. D. 1732. — The grant of Georgia to Gen-
eral Oglethorpe. See Georgia; A. D. 1783-
1739.
A. D. 1733.— The first Bourbon Family Com-
pact. — Its hostility to Great Britain. See
France, A. D. 1733.
A. D. 1733-1787. — The great inventions
which built up the Cotton Manufacture. See
Cotton JIanupacture.
A. D. 1739-1741. — The War of Jenkins' Ear.
— "In spite of Walpole's love of peace, and de-
termined efforts to preserve it, in the year 1739
a war broke out with Spain, which is an illu-st ra-
tion of the saying that the occasion of a war may
be trifling, though its real cause be very serious.
The war is often called the War of Jenkins' Ear.
The story ran that eight years before (1731) a
certain Captain Jenkins, skipper of the ship
' Rebecca, ' of London, had been maltreated by the
Spaniards. His ship was sailing from Jamaica,
and hanging about the entrance of the Gulf of
Florida, when it was boarded by the Spanish
coastguard. The Spaniards could find no proof
that .Jenkins was smuggling, though they search-
ed narrowly, and being angry at their ill-success
they hanged him to the yardarm, lowering him
just in time to save his life. At length they
pulled off his ear and told him to take it to his
king. . . . Seven 3'ear8 later Captain Jenkins
was examined by the House of Commons, on
which occasion some member asked him how he
felt when being maltreated, and Jenkins an-
swered, ' I recommended my soul to God and
my cause to my country.' The answer, whether
made at the time or prepared for use in the House
of Commons, touched a chord of sympathy, and
soon was circulated through the country. ' No
need of allies now,' said one politician ; ' the story
of Jenkins will raise us volunteers.' The truth
of the matter is that this story from its some-
what ridiculous aspect has remained in tlie minds
of men, but that it is only a specimen of many
stories then afloat, all pointing to insolence of
Spaniards in insisting upon what was after all
strictly within their rights. But the legal treaty
rights of Spain were growing intolerable to Eng-
lishmen, though not necessarily to the English
Government ; and traders and sailors were break-
ing the international laws which practically
stopped the expansion of England in the New
World. The war arose out of a question of
trade, in this as in so many other cases the Eng-
lish being prepared to fight in order to force an
entrance for their trade, which the Spaniards
wished to shut out from Spanish America. This
question found a place amongst the other matters
arranged by the treaty of Utrecht, when the
English obtained almost as their sole return for
their victories what was known as the Assiento.
This is a Spanish word meaning contract, but its
use had been for some time confined to the dis-
graceful privilege of providing Spanish America
with negroes kidnapped from their homes in
Africa. The Flemings, the Genoese, the Portu-
guese, and the French Guinea Company received
in turn from Spanish kings the monopoly in this
shameful traffic, which at the treaty of Utrecht
was passed on for a period of thirty years to
England, now becoming mistress of the seas,
and with her numerous merchant ships better
able than others to carry on the business. The
English Government committed the contract to
the South Sea Company, and the number of
negroes to be supplied annually was no less than
4,800 'sound, healthy, merchantable negroes,
two-thirds to be male, none under ten or over
forty years old. ' In the Assiento Treaty there
was also a provision for the trading of one Eng-
lish ship each year with Spanish America; but in
order to prevent too great advantage therefrom
it was carefully stipulated that the ship should
not exceed 600 tons burden. There is no doubt
that this stipulation was regularly violated by
the English sending a ship of the required num-
ber of tons, but with it numerous tenders and
smaller craft. Moreover smuggling, being very
profitable, became common ; it was of this smug-
gling that Captain Jenkins was accused. . . .
Walpole, always anxious for peace, by argu-
ment, by negotiation, by delays, resisted the
growing desire for war ; at length he could resist
no longer. For the sake of his reputation he
should have resigned office, but he had enjoyed
power too long to be ready to yield it, and most
unwisely he allowed himself to be forced into a
declaration of war October 19, 1739. The news
was received throughout England with a perfect
frenzy of delight. ... A year and a day after
this declaration of war an event occurred — the
death of the Emperor — which helped to swell
the volume of this war until it was merged into
the European war, called the War of the Austrian
Succession, which includes within itself the First
and Second Silesian Wars, between Austria and
Frederick the Great of Prussia. The European
war went on until the general pacification in the
treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, 1748. Within another
ten years war broke out again on somewhat
similar grounds, but on a much wider scale and
with the combatants differently arranged, under
the title ' Seven Years' War. ' The events of this-
year, whilst the war was only between Spain and
England, were the attacks on Spanish settle-
ments in America, the capture of Porto Bello,
and the failure before Cartagena, which led to
Anson's famous voyage." — E. E. Morris, The
Early Hanoverians, bk. 2, cli. 3. — "Admiral Ver-
non, setting sail with the English fleet from
Jamaica, captured Porto Bello, on the Isthmus
of Darien, Dec. 1st — an exploit for which he
received the thanks of both Houses of Parliament.
His attempt on Carthagena, in the spring of 1741,
proved, however, a complete failure through his
dissensions, it is said, with General Wentworth,
the commander of the land forces. A squadron,
under Commodore Anson, despatched to the
South Sea for the purpose of annoying the
Spanish colonies of Peru and Chili, destroyed the
Peruvian town of Paita, and made several prizes ;
the most important of which was one of the
great Spanish galleons trading between Acapulco
and Manilla, having a large treasure on board.
It was on this occasion that Anson circumnavi-
gated the globe, having sailed from England in
1740 and returned to Spithead in 1744." — T. H.
Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 6, eh. 3.
949
ENGLAND, 1739-1741.
Rise of
Chatham.
ENGLAND, 1744-1745.
Also in : R. Walter, Voyage around the World
of George Anson. — Sir J. Barrow, Life of Lord
Oeorge Anson, ch. 1-2. — W. Coxe, Memoirs of the
Bourbon Kings of Spain, ch. 43 (v. 3). — See, also,
France, A. D. 1733, and Georgia: A. D. 1738-
1743.
A. D. 1740-1741. — Beginning of the 'War of
the Austrian Succession. See Austria; A. D.
1740-1741.
A. D. 1742. — Naval operations in the Medi-
terranean. See Italy: A. D. 1741-1743.
A. D. 1742-1745. — Ministries of Carteret
and the Pelhams. — Pitt's admission to the
Cabinet. — " Walpole resigned in the beginning
of February, 1743; but his retirement did not
bring Pitt into office. The King had conceived a
violent prejudice against him, not only on ac-
count of the prominent and effective part he had
taken in the general assault upon the late admin-
istration, but more especially in consequence of
the strong opinions he had expressed on the sub-
ject of Hanover, and respecting the public mis-
chiefs arising from George the Second's partiality
to the interests of the Electorate. Lord Wilming-
ton was the nominal head of the new administra-
tion, which was looked on as little more than a
weak continuation of Walpole's. The same char-
acter was generally given to PeUiam's ministry,
(Pelham succeeded Wilmington as Premier, on
the death of the latter in 1743,) and Pitt soon ap-
peared in renewed opposition to the Court. It
was about this time that he received a creditable
and convenient addition to his private fortune,
which also attested his celebrity. In 1744, the
celebrated Duchess of Marlborough died, leaving
him a legacy ' of 10,000 1. on account of his merit
in the noble defence he has made of the laws of
England, to prevent the ruin of his country.'
Pitt was now at the head of a small but deter-
mined band of Opposition statesmen, with whom
he was also connected by intermarriages between
members of their respective families and his own.
These were Lord Cobham, the Grenvilles, and his
schoolfellow Lord Lyttelton. The genius of
Pitt had made the opposition of this party so em-
barrassing to the minister, that Mr. Pelham, the
leader of the House of Commons, and his brother,
the Duke of Newcastle, found it necessary to get
rid of Lord Carteret, who was personally most
obnoxious to the attacks of Pitt, on account of
his supposed zeal in favour of the King's Hano-
verian policy. Pitt's friends, Lyttelton and
GrenviUe, were taken into the ministry [called the
Broad-bottomed Administration], and the un-
doubted wish of the Pelhams was to enlist Pitt
also among their colleagues. But ' The great
Mr. Pitt,' says old Horace Walpole — using in
derision an epithet soon confirmed by the serious
voice of 'the country — ' the great Mr. Pitt insisted
on being Secretary at War ' ; — but it was found
that the King's aversion to him was insurmount-
able; and after much reluctance and difficulty,
his friends were persuaded to accept office with-
out him, under an assurance from the Duke of
Newcastle that ' he should at no distant day be
able to remove this prejudice from his Majesty's
mind.' Pitt concurred in the new arrangement,
and promised to give his support to the remodelled
administration. . . . On the breaking out of the
rebellion of 1745, Pitt energetically supported
the ministry in their measures to protect the estab-
lished government. George the Second's preju-
dices against him, were, however, as strong as
ever. At last a sort of compromise was effected.
Pitt waived for a time his demand of the War
Secretaryship, and on the 22nd of Februarj',
1746, he was appointed one of the joint Vice-
treasurers for Ireland ; and on the 6th of May fol-
lowing he was promoted to the more lucrative
office of Paymaster-General of the Forces. . . .
In his office of Paymaster of the Forces Pitt set
an example then rare among statesmen, of per-
sonal disinterestedness. He held what had hith-
erto been an exceedingly lucrative situation: for
the Paymaster seldom had less than 100,000 1. in
his hands, and was allowed to appropriate the in-
terest of what funds he held to his own use. In
addition to this it had been customary for foreign
princes in the pay of England to allow the Pay-
master of the Forces a per-centage on their sub-
sidies. Pitt nobly declined to avail himself of
these advantages, and would accept of nothing be-
yond his legal salary. " — Sir E. Creasy, Memoirs
of Eminent Etonians, ch. 4. — " From Walpole's
death in 1745, when the star of the Stuarts set
for ever among the clouds of Culloden, to 1754,
when Henry Pelham followed his old chief, pub-
lic life in England was singular])' calm and lan-
guid. The temperate and peaceful disposition
of the Minister seemed to pervade Parliament.
At his death the King exclaimed : ' Now I shall
have no more peace ' ; and the words proved to be
prophetic. Both in Parliament and in the coun-
try, as well as beyond its shores, the elements of
discord were swiftly at war. Out of conflicting
ambitions and widely divergent interests a new
type of statesman, very different from Walpole,
or from Bolingbroke, or from Pelham, or from
the 'hubble-bubble Newcastle,' was destined to
arise. And along with the new statesman a new
force, of which he was in part the representative,
in part the creator, was to be introduced into
political life. This new force was the unrepre-
sented voice of the people. The new statesman
was an ex-cornet of horse, William Pitt, better
known as Lord Chatham. The characteristics of
William Pitt which mainly influenced his career
were his ambition and his ill-health. Power, and
that conspicuous form of egotism called personal
glory, were the objects of his life. He pursued
them with all the ardour of a strong-willed pur-
pose ; but the flesh was in his case painfully weak.
Gout had declared itself his foe while he was still
an Eton boy. His failures, and prolonged with-
drawal at intervals from public affairs, were due
to the inroads of this fatal enemy, from whom
he was destined to receive his death-blow. Wal-
pole had not been slow to recognise the quality
of this 'terrible cornet of horse,' as he called
him." — R. B. Brett, Footprints of Statesmen,
ch. 7.
Also en: Lord !Mahon (Earl Stanhope), Hist,
of Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 24-28 (». 3).
A. D. 1743. — The British Pragmatic Army.
— Battle of Dettingen. See Austria: A. D.
1743.
A. D. 1743 (October). — The second Bourbon
Family Compact. See France: A. D. 1743
(October).
A. D. 1743-1752. — Struggle of French and
English for supremacy in India. — The founding
of British empire by Clive. See India : A. D.
1743-1752.
A. D. 1744-1745. — War of the Austrian Suc-
cession: Hostilities in America. See New
England: A. D. 1744; and 1745.
950
ENGLAND, 1745.
TJie Seven
Years War.
ENGLAND, 1754-1755.
A. D. 174s (May). — War of the Austrian Suc-
cession in the Netherlands. — Fontenoy. See
Netherlands (The Austrian Provinces):
A. D. 1745.
A. D. 1745-1746. — The Young Pretender's
invasion. — Last rising of the Jacobites. See
8coTL;iND: A. D. 1745-1746.
A. D. 1745-1747. — War of the Austrian Suc-
cession. — British incapacity. — Final successes
at Sea. — "The extraordinary incapacity of Eng-
lish commanders, both by land and sea, is one of
the most striking facts in the war Tve are consid-
ering. . . . Mismanagement and languor were
general. The battle of Dettingen was truly de-
scribed as a happy escape rather than a great vic-
tory ; the army in Flanders can hardly be said to
have exhibited any military quality except cour-
age, and the British navy, though it gained some
successes, added little to its reputation. The one
brilliant exception was the expedition of Anson
round Cape Horn, for the purpose of plundering
the Spanish mereliandise and settlements in the
Pacific. It lasted for nearly four years. . . .
The overwhelming superiority of England upon
the sea began, however, gradually to influence
the war. The island of Cape Breton, which com-
manded the mouth of Gulf St. Lawrence, and
protected the Newfoundland fisheries, was cap-
tured in the June of 1745. In 1747 a French
squadron was destroyed by a very superior Eng-
lish fleet off Cape Finisterre. Another was de-
feated near Belleisle, and in the same year as
many as 644 prizes were taken. The war on the
part of the English, however, was most efficiently
conducted by means of subsidies, which were
enormously multiplied." — W. E. H. Lecky, Hist,
of En;/., ISth Century, ch. 3 (». 1),
A. D. 1746-1747. — War of the Austrian Suc-
cession in Italy. — Siege of Genoa. See Italy:
A. D. 1T46-1T47.
A. D. 1748 (October).— End and results of
the War of the Austrian Succession. See Aix-
LA-CiiAPELLE : A. D. 1748; and New England:
A. D. 1745-1748.
A. D. 1748-1754. — First movements to dis-
pute possession of the Ohio Valley with the
French. See Ohio (Valley): A. D. 1748-1754.
A. D. 1749-1755. — Unsettled boundary dis-
putes vyith France in America. — Preludes of
the final contest. See Nova Scotia: A. D.
1749-1755; Canada: A. D. 1750-1753; and Ohio
(Valley): A. D. 1754.
A. D. 1751. — Reformation of the Calendar.
See Calendar, Gregorian.
A. D. 1753. — The Jewish Naturalization
Bill. See Jews: A. D. 1663-1753.
A. D. 1754. — Collision with the French in
the Ohio Valley. See Ohio (Valley): A. D.
1754.
A. D. 1754-1755.— The Seven Years War.
— Its causes and provocations. — " The seven
years that succeeded the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle
are described by Voltaire as among the happiest
that Europe ever enjoyed. Commerce revived,
the fine arts flourished, and the European nations
resembled, it is said, one large family that had
been reunited after its dissensions. Unfortu-
nately, however, the peace had not exterminated
all the elements of discord. Scarcely had Europe
begun to breathe again when new disputes arose,
and the seven years of peace and prosperity were
succeeded by another seven of misery and war.
The ancient rivalry between France and Eng-
land, which had formerly vented itself in conti-
nental struggles, had, by the progress of mari-
time discovery and colonisation, been extended to
all the quarters of the globe. The interests of
the two nations came into collision in India, Africa
and America, and a dispute about boundaries in
this last quarter again plunged them into a war.
By the 9th article of the Treaty of Aix-la-Cha-
pelle, France and England were mutually to re-
store their conquests in such state as they were
before the war. This clause became a copious
source of quarrel. The principal dispute re-
garded the limits of Acadia, or Nova Scotia,
which province had, by the 12th article of the
Treaty of Utrecht, been ceded to England ' con-
formably to its ancient boundaries ' ; but what
these were had never been accurately determined,
and each Power fixed thon according to its con-
venience. Thus, while the French pretended
that Nova Scotia embraced on\j the peninsula
extending from Cape St. Mary to Cape Canseau,
the English further included in it that part of the
American continent which extends to Pentagoet
on the west, and to the river St. Lawrence on the
north, comprising all the province of New Bruns-
wick. Another dispute regarded the western
limits of the British North American settlements.
The English claimed the banks of the Ohio as
belonging to Virginia, the French as forming part
of Louisiana ; and they attempted to confine the
British colonies by a chain of forts stretching from
Louisiana to Canada. Commissaries were ap-
pointed to settle these questions, who held their
conferences at Paris between the years 1750 and
1755. Disputes also arose respecting the occupa-
tion by the French of the islands of St. Lucia,
Dominica, St. Vincent, and Tobago, which had
been declared neutral by former treaties. Before
the Commissaries could terminate their labours,
mutual aggressions had rendered a war inevitable.
As is usual in such cases, it is difficult to say who
was the first aggressor. Each nation laid the
blame on the other. Some French writers assert
that the English resorted to hostilities out of
jealousy at the increase of the French navy. Ac-
cording to the plans of Rouille, the Fi-ench Min-
ister of Marine, 111 ships of the line, 54 frigates,
and smaller vessels in proportion, were to be built
in the course of ten years. The question of
boundaries was, however, undoubtedly the occa-
sion, if not also the true cause, of the war. A
series of desultory conflicts had taken place along
the Ohio, and on the frontiers of Nova Scotia, in
1754, without being avowed by the mother coun-
tries. A French writer, who flourished about
this time, the Abbe Raynal, ascribes this clan-
destine warfare to the policy of the Court of
Versailles, which was seeking gradually to re-
cover what it had lost by treaties. Orders were
now issued to the English fleet to attack French
vessels wherever found. ... It being known
that a considerable French fleet was preparing to
sail from Brest and Rochefort for America, Ad-
miral Boscawen was despatched thither, and cap-
tured two French men-of-war off Cape Race in
Newfoundland, June 1755. Hostilities were also
transferred to the shores of Europe. ... A naval
war between England and France was now un-
avoidable; but, as in the case of the Austrian
Succession, this was also to be mixed up with a
European war. The complicated relations of the
European system again caused these two wars to
run into one, though their origin had nothing in
951
ENGLAND, 1754-1755.
Chatham's
Adni in istra Hon.
ENGLAND, 1757-1760.
common. France and England, whose quarrel
hy in the New World, appeared as the leading
Powers in a European contest in which they
had only a secondary interest, and decided the
fate of Canada on tlie plains of Germany. ^ The
war in Europe, commonly called the Seven Years'
AVar, was chiefly caused by the pride of one
Empress [Maria Theresa], the vanity of another
[Elizabeth of Russia], and tlie subserviency of
a royal courtezan [JIadame Pompadour], who
liecame the tool of these passions." — T. H. Dyer,
Hist, of Modern. Europe, hk. 6, ch. 5 (». 3).— "The
Seven Years' War was in its origin not an Euro-
pean war at all ; it was a w'ar between England
and France on Colonial questions with which the
restof Europe had nothing todo; but the alliances
and enmities of England and France in Europe,
joined with the fact that the King of England
was also Elector of Hanover, made it almost cer-
tain that a war between England and France must
spread to the Continent. I am far from charging
on the English Goverament of the time — for it
was they, and not the French, who forced on the
war — as Macaulay might do, the blood of the
Austrians who perished at Leuthen, of the Rus-
sians sabred at Zorndorf, and the Prussians mown
down at Kunersdorf . The States of the Continent
had many old enmities not either appeased or
fought out to a result ; and these would probably
have given rise to a war some da)', even if no
black men, to adapt Macaulay again, had been
previously fighting on the coast of Coromandel,
nor red men scalping each other by the great
lakes of North America. Still, it is to be re-
membered that it was the work of England that
the war took place then and on those lines; and
in view of the enormous suffering and slaughter
of that war, and of the violent and arbitrary pro-
ceedings by which it was forced on, we may well
question whether English writers have any right
to reprobate Frederick's seizure of Silesia as
something specially immoral in itself and disas-
trous to the world. If the Prussians were high-
way robbers, the English were pirates. . . . The
origin of the war between England and France,
if a struggle which had hardly been interrupted
since the nominal peace could be said to have an
origin, was the struggle for America." — A. R.
Ropes, Tlie Cmucs of the Seven Tears' War (Royal
Hist. Soc, Traiuaetions, new series, v. 4).
Also in : Lord JIahon (Earl Stanhope), Hist, of
Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 31-32 (v. 4).— F. Parkman,
Montcalm and Wolfe, ch. 1-7. — See, also, Gek-
mant: a. D. 1755-1756; Canada: A. D. 1750-
1753; and Onio (Valley): A. D. 1748-1754.
A. D. 175s (April). — Demand of the royal
governors in America for taxation of the colo-
nies by act of Parliament. See United States
OP Am. : A. D. 175o.
A. D. 1755 (June). — Boscawen's naval vic-
tory over the French. See Canada: A. D.
1755 (June).
A. D. 1755 (July).— Braddock's defeat in
America. See Ohio (Valley) : A. D. 1755.
A. D. 1755 (September).— Victory at Lake
George. See Can.s.d.\: A. I). 1755 (September).
A. D. 1756. — Loss of Minorca and reverses
in America. See Minorca: A. D. 1756; and
Canada: A. D. 1756-1757.
A. D. 1757-1759.- Campaigns on the Conti-
nent. — Defence of Hanover. See Gebm.any:
A D 1757 (.July — December), to 1759 (April
—August).
A. D. 1757-1760. — The great administration
of the elder Pitt.—" In 17.54 Henry Pclham died.
The important consequence of his death was the
fact that it gave Pitt at last an opportunity of
coming to the front. The Duke of Newcastle,
Henry Pelham's brother, became leader of the
administration, with Henry Fo.x for Secretary at
War, Pitt for Paymaster-general of the Forces,
and Jlurray, afterwards to be famous as Lord
JIansfleld, for Attorney-general. There was
some difficulty about the leadership of the House
of Commons. Pitt was still too much disliked
by tlie King to be available for the position.
Fox for a while refused to accept it. and Murray
was unwilling to do anything which might be
likely to withdraw him from the professional
path along which he was to move to such dis-
tinction. An attempt was made to get on with
a Sir Thomas Robinson, a man of no capacity
for such a position, and the attempt was soon an
evident failure. Then Fox consented to take the
position on Newcastle's own terms, which were
those of absolute submission to the dictates of
Newcastle. Later still he was content to descend
to a subordinate office which did not even give
him a place in the Cabinet. Fox never recov-
ered the damage which his reputation and his
influence suffered by this amazing act. . . . The
Duke of Newcastle's IMinistry soon fell. New-
castle was not a man who had the slightest ca-
pacity for controlling or directing a policy of
war; and the great struggle known as the Seven
Years' War had now broken out. One lamenta-
ble event in the war has to be recorded, although
it was but of minor importance. This was the
capture of ]\Iinorca by the French under the ro-
mantic, gallant, and profligate Due de Richelieu.
The event is memorable chiefly, or only, because
it was followed by the trial and execution [March
14, 1757] of the unfortunate Admiral Byng
[see Mlnorca: A. D. 1756]. . . . The Duke of
Newcastle resigned office, and for a short time
the Duke of Devonshire was at the head of a
coalition Ministry which included Pitt. The
King, however, did not stand this long, and one
day suddenly turned them all out of office.
Then a coalition of another kind was formed,
which included Newcastle and Pitt, with Henry
Fox in the subordinate position of paymaster.
Pitt now for the first time had it all his own way.
He ruled everything in the House of Commons.
He flung himself with passionate and patriotic
energy into the alliance with that great Frede-
rick whose genius and daring were like his own. "
— Justin McCarthy, Hist, of the Four Oeorges, v.
2, ch. 41. — "Newcastle took the Treasury. Pitt
was Secretary of State, with the lead in the
House of Commons, and with the supreme direc-
tion of the war and of foreign affairs. Fox, the
only man who could have given much annoy-
ance to the new Government, was silenced with
the office of Paymaster, which, during the con-
tinuance of that war, was probably the most
lucrative place in the whole Government. He
was poor, and the situation was tempting. . . .
The first acts of the new administration were
characterized rather by vigour than by judg-
ment. Expeditions were sent against different
parts of the French coast with little success. . . .
But soon conquests of a very different kind filled
the kingdom with pride and rejoicing. A succes-
sion of victories imdoubtedly brilliant, and, as it
was thought, not barren, raised to the highest
952
ENGLAND, 1757-1760.
Chatliavi's
Administration.
ENGLAND, 1758.
point the fame of the minister to whom the con-
duct of the war had been intrusted. In July,
1758, Louisburg fell. The whole island of Cape
Breton was reduced. The fleet to which the
Court of Versailles had confided the defence of
French America was destroyed. The captured
standards were borne in triumph from Kensing-
ton Palace to the city, and were suspended in
St. Paul's Church, amidst the roar of guns and
kettle-drums, and the shouts of an immense mul-
titude. Addresses of congratulation came in
from all the great towns of England. Parlia-
ment met only to decree thanks and monuments,
and to bestow, without one murmur, supplies
more than double of those which had been given
during the war of the Grand Alliance. The year
1759 opened with the conquest of Goree. Next
fell Guadaloupe ; then Ticonderoga ; then Niag-
ara. The Toulon squadron was completely de-
feated by Boscawen off Cape Lagos. But the
greatest exploit of the year was the achievement
of Wolfe on the heights of Abraham. The news
of his glorious death and of the fall of Quebec
reached London in the very week in which the
Houses met. All was joy and triumph. 'Envy
and faction wei-e forced to join in the general
applause. Whigs and Tories vied with each
other in extolling the genius and energy of Pitt.
His colleagues were never talked of or thought
of. The House of Commons, the nation, the
colonies, our allies, our enemies, had their eyes
fixed on him alone. Scarcely had Parliament
voted a monument to Wolfe when another great
event called for fresh rejoicings. The Brest
fleet, under the command of Conflans, had put
out to sea. It was overtaken by an English
squadron under Hawke. Conflans attempted to
take shelter close under the French coast. The
shore was rocky : the night was black : the wind
was furious : the waves of the Bay of Biscay ran
high. But Pitt had infused into every branch
of the service a spirit which had long been un-
known. No British seaman was disposed to err
on the same side with Byng. The pilot told
Hawke that the attack could not be made with-
out the greatest danger. ' You have done your
duty in remonstrating,' answered Hawke; 'I
will answer for everything. I command you to
lay me alongside the French admiral.' Two
French ships of the line struck. Four were de-
stroyed. The rest hid themselves in the rivers
of Brittany. The year 1760 came; and still tri-
umph followed triumph. Montreal was taken ;
the whole Province of Canada was subjugated;
the French fleets underwent a succession of dis-
asters in the seas of Europe and America. In
the meantime conquests equalling in rapidity,
and far surpassing in magnitude, those of Cortes
and Pizarro, had been achieved in the East. In
the space of three years the English had founded
a mighty empire. The French had been de-
feated in every part of India. Chandernagore
had surrendered to Clive, Pondicherry to Coote.
Throughout Bengal, Bahar, Orissa and the Car-
natic, the authority of the East India Company
was more absolute than that of Acbar or Aurung-
zebe had ever been. On the continent of Europe
the odds were against England. We had but
one important all}', the King of Prussia ; and he
was attacked, not only by France, but also by
Russia and Austria. Yet even on the Continent,
the energy of Pitt triumphed over all dilficulties.
Vehemently as he had condemned the practice of
subsidising foreign princes, he now carried that
practice farther than Carteret himself would
have ventured to do. The active and able Sov-
ereign of Prussia received such pecuniary assis-
tance as enabled him to maintain the conflict on
equal terms against his powerful enemies. On
no subject had Pitt ever spoken with so much
eloquence and ardour as on the mischiefs of the
Hanoverian connection. He now declared, not
without much show of reason, that it would be
tmworthy of the English people to suffer their
King to be deprived of his electoral dominions
in an English quarrel. He assured his country-
men that they should be no losers, and that he
would conquer America for them in Germany.
By taking this line he conciliated the King, and
lost no part of his influence with the nation. In
Parliament, such was the ascendency which his
eloquence, his success, his high situation, his
pride, and his intrepidity had obtained for him,
that he took liberties with the House of which
there had been no example, and which have never
since been imitated. . . . The face of affairs was
speedily changed. The invaders [of Hanover]
were driven out. ... In the meantime, the nation
exhibited all the signs of wealth and prosperity.
. . . The success of our arms was perhaps
(jwing less to the skill of his [Pitt's] dispo-
sitions than to the national resources and the
national spirit. But that the national spirit rose
to the emergency, that the national re.sources
were contributed with unexampled cheerfulness,
this was undoubtedly his work. The ardour of
his soul had set the whole kingdom on fire. . . .
The situation which Pitt occupied at the close of
the reign of George the Second was the most
enviable ever occupied by any public man in
English history. He had conciliated the King ;
he domineered over the House of Commons;
he was adored by the people ; he was admired
by all Europe. He was the first Englishman of
his time; and he had made England the first
country in the world. The Great Commoner,
the name by which he was often designated,
might look down with scorn on coronets and
garters. The nation was drunk with joy and
pride." — Lord Macaulay, First Essay on William
Pitt, Earl of Chatham {Essays, v. 3).
Also in: Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), Hist.
of Eric/., 1713-1783, ch. 33-36 {v. 4).— SirE. Creasy,
Memoirs of Eminent Etonians, ch. 4.
A. D. 1758 (June— August).— The Seven
Years War. — Abortive expeditions against
the coast of France. — Earlj* in 1758 there was
sent out "one of those joint military and naval
expeditions which Pitt seems at first to have
thought the proper means by which England
should assist in a continental war. Like all such
isolated expeditions, it was of little value. St.
JIalo, against which it was directed, was found
too strong to be taken, but a large quantity of
shipping and naval stores was destroyed. The
fleet also approached Cherbourg, but although
the troops were actually in their boats ready to
laud, they were ordered to re-embark, and the
fleet came home. Another somewhat similar ex-
pedition was sent out later in the year. In July
General Bligh and Commodore Howe took and
destroyed Cherbourg, but on attempting a simi-
lar assault on St. Malo they found it too strong
for them. The army had been landed in the Bay
of St. Cast, and, while engaged in re-embarka-
tion, it was attacked by some French troops
953
ENGLAND, 1758.
NavaC
Victories.
ENGLAND, 1760-1763.
which had been hastily collected, and severely-
handled."— J. P. Bright, Hist, of Eng., period 3,
p. 1037.
A. D. 1758 (July — November). — The Seven
Years War in America: Final capture of
Louisbourg and recovery of Fort Duquesne. —
Bloody defeat at Ticonderoga. See Cakada:
A. D. IT08; and Cape Breton Island: A. D.
1758-1760.
A. D. 1758-1761. — Breaking of French power
in India. See India: A. D. 1758-1761.
A. D. 1759. — Great victories in America. —
Niagara, Ticonderoga, Crown Point, Quebec.
See Canada: A. D. 1759.
A. D. 1759 (August — November). — British
naval supremacy established. — Victories off
Lagos and in Quib^ron Bay. — "Early in the
year [1759] the French had begun to make prepa-
rations for an invasion of the British Isles on a large
scale. Flat-bottomed boats were built at Havre
and other places along the coasts of Normandy
and Brittany, and large fleets were collected
at Brest and Toulon, besides a small squad-
ron at Dunkirk. A considerable force was as-
sembled at Vannes in the south of Brittany,
under the command of the Due d'Aiguillon,
which was to be convoyed to the Irish coasts by
the combined fleets of Brest and Toulon, while
the flat-bottomed boats transported a second
army across the channel under cover of a dark
night. The Dunkirk squadron, under Admiral
Thurot, a celebrated privateer, was to create a
diversion by attacking some part of the Scotch
coast. The design was bold and well contrived,
and would not improbably have succeeded three
or even two yeai-s before, but the opportunity
was gone. England was no longer in ' that ener-
vate state in which 20,000 men from France could
shake her.' Had a landing been effected, the
regular troops in the country, with the support
of the newly created militia, would probably
have been equal to the emergency ; but a more
effectual bulwark was found in the fleet, which
watched the whole French coast, ready to engage
the enemy as soon as he ventured out of his
ports. The first attempt to break through the
cordon was made by M. de la Clue from Toulon.
The English Mediterranean fleet, under Admiral
Boscawen, cruising before that port, was com-
pelled early in July to retire to Gibraltar to take
in water and provisions and to refit some of the
ships. Hereupon TNI. de la Clue put to sea, and
hugging the African coast, passed the straits with-
out molestation. Boscawen, however, though his
ships were not yet refitted, at once gave chase,
and came up with the enemy off [Lagos, on] the
coast of Portugal, where an engagement took
place [Aug. 18], in which three French ships
were taken and two driven on shore and burnt.
The remainder took refuge in Cadiz, where they
were blockaded till the winter, when, the English
fleet being driven off the coast by a storm, they
managed to get back to Toulon. The discom-
fiture of the Brest fleet, under M. de Conflans,
was even more complete. On November 9 Ad-
miral Sir Edward Hawke, who had blockaded
Brest all the summer and autumn, was driven
from his post by a violent gale, and on the 14th,
Conflans put to sea with 31 sail of the line and 4
frigates. On the same day, Hawke, with 23
sail of the line, stood out from Torbay, where he
had taken shelter, and made sail for Quiberon
Bay, judging that Conflans would steer thither
to liberate a fleet of transports which were
blocked up in the river Morbihan, by a small
squadron of frigates under Commodore Duff.
On the morning of the 20th, he sighted the
French fleet chasing Duff in Quiberon Bay.
Conflans, when he discerned the English, recalled
his chasing ships and prepared for action ; but
on their nearer approach clianged his mind, and
ran for shelter among the shoals and rocks of the
coast. The sea was running mountains high and
the coast was very dangerous and little known
to the English, who had no pilots ; but Hawke.
whom no peril could daunt, never hesitated a
moment, but crowded all sail after them. With-
out regard to lines of battle, every ship was
directed to make the best of her way towards the
enemy, the admiral telling his officers he was for
the old way of fighting, to make downright
work with them. In consequence many of the
English ships never got into action at all ; but
the short winter day was wearing away, and
all haste was needed if the enemy were not to
escape. ... As long as daylight lasted the
battle raged with great fury, so near the coast
that '10,000 persons on the shore were the sad
spectators of the white flag's disgrace. ' ... By
nightfall two French ships, the Thesee 74, and
Superb 70, were sunk, and two, the Formidable
80, and the Heros 74, had struck. The Soleil
Royal afterwards went aground, but her crew
escaped, as did that of the Heros, whose captain
dishonourably ran her ashore in the night. Of
the remainder, seven ships of the line and four
frigates threw their guns overboard, and escaped
up the river Vilaine, where most of them bumped
their bottoms out in the shallow water ; the rest
got away and took shelter in the Charente, all
but one, which was wrecked, but very few ever
got out again. With two hours more of day-
light Hawke thought he could liave taken or de-
stroyed all, as he was almost up with the French
van when night overtook him. Two English
ships, the Esse.x 64, and the Resolution 74, went
ashore in the night and could not be got off, but
the crews were saved, and the victory was won
with the loss of 40 killed and 200 wounded. The
great invasion scheme was completely wrecked.
Thurot had succeeded in getting out from Dun-
kirk, and for some montlis was a terror to the
northern coast-towns, but early in the following
year an end was put to his career. Por the rest
of the war the French never ventured to meet
the English in battle on the high seas, and could
only look on helplessly while their colonies and
commerce fell into the hands of their rivals.
From the day of the fight in Quiberon Bay, the
naval and commercial supremacy of England
was assured." — F. W. Longman, Frederick the
Qreat and tlie Seven Tears War, cIl. 12, sect. 3.
Also in: C. D. Yonge, Hist, of the British
Navy, V. 1, ch. 13.— .1. Eutick, Hist, of tlie late
War, 11. 4, pp. 241-290.
A. D. 1760. — Completed conquest of Canada.
— Successes of the Prussians and their allies.
See Canada: A. D. 1760; andGEKM.^NT: A. D.
1760.
A. D. 1760-1763. — Accession of George III.
— His ignorance and his despotic notions of
kingship. — Retirement of the elder Pitt. —
Rise and fall of Bute. — The Grenville Ministry.
— "When George III. came to the throne, in
1760, England had been governed for more than
half a century by the great ^Vhig families which
954
ENGLAND, 1760-1763.
Beginning of the
reign of George III.
ENGLAND, 1760-1763.
liad been brought iuto the foreground by the
revolution of 1688. . . . Under Walpole's wise
and powerful sway, the first two Georges had
possessed scarcely more than the shadow of
sovereignty. It was the third George's ambition
to become a real king, like the king of France or
the king of Spain. From earliest babyhood, his
mother had forever been impressing upon him
the precept, 'George be king!' and this simple
lesson had constituted pretty much tlie whole of his
education. Popular tradition regards him as the
most ignorant king that ever sat upon the Eng-
lish throne : and so far as general culture is con-
cerned, this opinion is undoubtedly correct. . . .
Nevertheless . . . George III. was not destitute of
a certain kind of ability, which often gets highly
rated in this not too clear-sighted world. He
could see an immediate end very distinctly, and
acquired considerable power from the dogged in-
dustry with which he pursued it. In an age where
some of the noblest English statesmen drank their
gallon of strong wine daily, or sat late at the
gambling-table, or lived in scarcely hidden con-
cubinage, George III. was decorous in personal
habits and pure in domestic relations, and no
banker's clerk in London applied himself to the
details of business more industriously than he.
He had a genuine talent for administration, and
he devoted this talent most assiduously to selfish
ends. Scantily endowed with human sympathy,
and almost boorishly stiff in his ordinary unstudied
manner, he could be smooth as oil whenever he
liked. He was an adept in gaining men's confi-
dence by a show of interest, and securing their aid
by dint of fair promises ; and when he found them
of no further use, he could turn them adrift with
wanton insult. Any one who dared to disagree
with him upon even the slightest point of policy
he straightway regarded as a natural enemy, and
pursued him ever afterward with vindictive
hatred. As a natural consequence, he surrounded
himself with weak and short-sighted advisers, and
toward all statesmen of broad views and inde-
pendent character he nursed the bitterest ran-
cour. . . . Such was the man who, on coming
to the throne in 1760, had it for his first and chief-
est thought to break down the growing system
of cabinet government in England." — J. Fiske,
The American Revolution, ch. 1 (». 1). — "The dis-
solution of Parliament, shortly after his accession,
afforded an opportunity of strengthening the par-
liamentary connection of the king's friends. Par-
liament was kept sitting while the king and Lord
Bute were making out lists of the court candi-
dates, and using every e.vertion to secure their
return. The king not only wrested government
boroughs from the ministers, in order to nomi-
nate his own friends, but even encouraged opposi-
tion to such ministers as he conceived not to be
in his interest. . . . Lord Bute, the originator of
the new policy, was not personally well qualified
for its successful promotion. He was not con-
nected with the great families who had acquired
a preponderance of political influence ; he was no
parliamentary debater: his manners were un-
popular: he was a courtier rather than a poli-
tician: his intimate relations with the Princess of
Wales were an object of scandal; and, above all,
he was a Scotchman. . . . Immediately after the
king's accession he had been made a privy coun-
cillor, and admitted into the cabinet. An ar-
rangement was soon afterwards concerted, by
which Lord Holdemesse retired from office with
a pension, and Lortl Bute succeeded him as Sec-
retary of State. It was now the object of the
court to break up the existing ministry, and to
replace it with another, formed from among the
king's friends. Had the ministry been united,
and had the chiefs reposed confidence in one
another, it would have been difiicult to over-
throw tliem. But there were already jealousies
amongst them, which the court lost no opportunity
of fomenting. A breach soon arose between Mr.
Pitt, the most powerful and popular of the min-
isters, and his colleagues. He desired to strike a
sudden blow against Spain, which had concluded
a secret treaty of alliance with France, then at
war with this country [see France: A. D. 1761
(August)]. Though war minister he was op-
posed by all his colleagues except Lord Tem-
ple. He bore himself haughtily at the council,
— declared that he had been called to the min-
istry by the voice of the people, and that he could
not be responsible for measures which he was no
longer allowed to guide. Being met with equal
loftiness in the cabinet, he was forced to tender
his resignation. The king overpowered the re-
tiring minister with kindness and condescension.
He offered the barony of Chatham to his wife,
and to himself an annuity of £3,000 a year for
three lives. The minister had deserved these
royal favours, and he accepted them, but at the
cost of his popularity. . . . The same Gazette
which announced his resignation, also trumpeted
forth the peerage and the pension, and was the
signal for clamors against the public favourite.
On the retirement of Mr. Pitt, Lord Bute be-
came the most influential of the ministers. He
undertook the chief management of public affairs
in the cabinet, and the sole direction of the House
of Lords. . . . His ascendency provoked the
jealousy and resentment of the king's veteran min-
ister, the Duke of Newcastle : who had hitherto
distributed all the patronage of the Crown, but
now was never consulted, ... At length, in
May 1763, his grace, after frequent disagree-
ments in the cabinet and numerous affronts, was
obliged to resign. And now, the object of the
court being at length attained, Lord Bute was
immediately placed at the head of affairs, as
First Lord of the Treasury. . . . The king and
his minister were resolved to carry matters with
a high hand, and their arbitrary attempts to
coerce and intimidate opponents disclosed their
imperious views of the prerogative. Prelimi-
naries of a treaty of peace with Prance having
been agreed upon, against which a strong popu-
lar feeling was aroused, the king's vengeance
was directed against all who ventured to disap-
prove them. The Duke of Devonshire having
declined to attend the council summoned to de-
cide upon the peace, was insulted by the king,
and forced to resign his office of Lord Chamber-
lain. A few days afterwards the king, with his
own hand, struck his grace's name from the list
of privy councillors. ... No sooner had Lord
Rockingham heard of the treatment of the Duke
of Devonshire than he . . . resigned his place in
the household. A more general proscription of
the "Whig nobles soon followed. The Dukes of
Newcastle and Grafton, and the Marquess of
Rockingham, having presumed, as peers of Par-
liament, to express their disapprobation of the
peace, were dismissed from the lord-lieutenancies
of their counties. . . . Nor was the vengeance
of the court confined to the heads of the Whig
955
ENGLAND, 1760-1763.
Wilkes and
• The North Briton."
ENGLAND, 1762-1764.
party. All placemen, who had voted against the
preliminaries of peace, were dismissed. . . . The
preliminaries of peace were approved by Parlia-
ment; and the Princess of Wales, exulting in
the success of the court, exclaimed, ' Now my
son is king of England.' But her exultation was
premature. . . . "These stretches of prerogative
served to unite the Whigs into an organised op-
position. . . . The fall of the king's favoured
minister was even more sudden than his rise.
. . . Afraid, as he confessed, ' not only of falling
himself, but of involving his royal master in his
ruin,' he resigned suddenly [April 7, 1763], — to
the surprise of all parties, and even of the king
himself, — before he had held ofBce for eleven
months. . . . He retreated to the interior cabi-
net, whence he could direct more securely the
measures of the court; having previously ne-
gotiated the appointment of Mr. George Gren-
ville as his successor, and arranged with him the
nomination of the cabinet. The ministry of Mr.
Gren ville was constituted in a manner favourable
to the king's personal views, and was expected to
be under the control of himself and his favour-
ite."— T.E. May, Const. Eist.ofEiig., 1760-1860,
ch. 1.
Also in : J. H. Jesse, Memoirs of tlie Life and
Reign of Oeorge III., ch. 1-10 (v. 1). — The Oren-
iiille Papers, v. 1-3. — W. Massey, Hist, of Eng.:
Reign of George III., ch. 2-3 (». 1).— G. O. Tre-
velyan. Early Hist, of Charles James Fox, cli. 4.
A. D. 1760-1775. — Crown, Parliament and
Colonies. — The conflicting theories of their re-
lations. See United States op Am. ; A. D.
1760-177.5.
A. D. 1761-1762.— The third Family Com-
pact of the Bourbon kings. — War with Spain.
See Fb.\nce : A. D. 1761 (August).
A. D. 1761-1762. — The Seven Years 'War*
Last Campaigns in Germany. See Germany :
A. D. 1761-1703.
A. D. 1762. — Capture of Havana. See Cuba;
A. D. 1.51-1-18.51.
A. D. 1762-1764.— "The North Briton," No.
45, and the prosecution of Wilkes. — " The pop-
ular dislike to the new system of Government by
courtiers had found vent in a scurrilous press,
the annoyance of which continued unabated by
the sham retirement of the minister whose as-
cendancy had provoked this grievous kind of op-
position. The leader of the host of libellers was
John Wilkes, a man of that audacity and self-
possession which are indispensable to success in
the most disreputable line of political adventure.
But Wilkes had qualities which placed him far
above the level of a vulgar demagogue. Great
sense and shrewdness, brilliant wit, extensive
knowledge of the world, with the manners of a
gentleman, were among the accomplishments
which he brought to a vocation, but rarely illus-
trated by the talents of a Catiline. Long before
he engaged in public life, Wilkes had become in-
famous for his debaucheries, and, with a few
other men of fashion, had tested the toleration of
public opinion by a series of outrages upon re-
ligion and decency. Profligacy of morals, how-
ever, has not in any age or country proved a bar
to the character of a patriot. . . . Wilkes' jour-
nal, which originated with the administration of
Lord Bute [first issued June 5, 1762], was hap-
pily entitled 'The North Briton,' and from its
boldness and personality soon obtained a large
circulation. It is surpassed in ability though not
often equalled in virulence by the politital press
of the present day ; but at a time when the char-
acters of public men deservedly stood lowest in
public estimation, they were protected, not un-
advisedly perhaps, from the assaults of the press
by a stringent law of libel. ... It had been the
practice since the Revolution, and it is now ac-
knowledged as an important constitutional right,
to treat the Speech from the Throne, on the open-
ing of Parliament, as the manifesto of the minis-
ter ; and in that point of view, it had from time
to time been censured by Pitt, and other leaders
of party, with the ordinary license of debate.
But when Wilkes presvimed to use this freedom
in his paper, though in a degree which would
have seemed temper-ate and even tame had he
spoken to the same purport in his place in Parlia-
ment, it was thought necessary to repress such
insolence with the whole weight of the law. A
warrant was issued from the office of the Secre-
tary of State to seize — not any person named —
but ' the authors, printers, and publishers of the
seditious libel, entitled the North Briton, No. 45.'
Under this warrant, forty-nine persons were ar-
rested and detained in custody for several days;
but as it was found that none of them could be
brought within the description in the warrant,
they were discharged. Several of the individuals
who had been so seized, brought actions for false
imprisonment against the messengers ; and in one
of these actions, in which a verdict was entered
for the plaintiff under the direction of the Lord
Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, the two Im-
portant questions as to the claim of a Secretary
of State to the protection given by statute to jus-
tices of the peace acting in that capacity, and as
to the legality of a warrant which did not speci-
fy any individual by name, were raised by a Bill
of Exceptions to the ruling of the presiding
judge, and thus came upon appeal before the
Court of King's Bench. . . . The Court of King's
Bench . . . intimated a strong opinion against
the Crown upon the Important constitutional
questions which had been raised, and directed
the case to stand over for further argument ; but
when the case came on again, the Attorney-Gen-
eral Yorke prudently declined any further agita-
tion of the questions. . . . These proceedings
were not brought to a close until the end of the
year 1765, long after the administration under
which they were instituted had ceased to exist.
. . . The prosecution of Wilkes himself was
pressed with the like indiscreet vigour. The
privilege of Parliament, which extends to every
case except treason, felony, and breach of the
peace, presented an obstacle to the vengeance of
the Court. But the Crown lawyers, with a ser-
vility which belonged to the worst times of pre-
rogative, advised that a libel came within the
purview of the exception, as having a tendency
to a breach of the peace ; and upon this perver-
sion of plain law, Wilkes was arrested, and
brought before Lord Halifax for examination.
The cool and wary demagogue, however, was
more than a match for the Secretary of State ; but
his authorship of the alleged libel having been
proved by the printer, he was committed close
prisoner to the Tower. In a few days, having
sued out writs of habeas, he was brought up be-
fore the Court of Common Pleas. . . . The ar-
gument which would confound the commission
of a crime with conduct which had no more than
a tendency to provoke it, was at once rejected
956
ENGLAND, 1762-1764.
Repeal of the
Stamp Act.
ENGLAND, 1765-1768.
by an independent court of justice; and the re-
sult was the liberation of Wilkes from custody.
Cut the vengeance of the Court was not turned
aside by this disappointment. An ex-officio prose-
cution for libel was immediately instituted
against tlie member for Aylesbury; he was de-
prived of his commission as colonel of the Buck-
inghamshire militia; his patron, Earl Temple,
who provided the funds for his defence, was at
the same time dismissed from the lord-lieuten-
ancy of the same county, and from the Privy
Council. When Parliament assembled in the au-
tumn, the first business brought forward by the
Government was this contemptible aft'air — a pro-
ceeding not merely foolish and undignified, but
a flagrant violation of common justice and de-
cency. Having elected to prosecute Wilkes for
this alleged libel before the ordinary tribunals of
the country, it is manifest that the Government
should have left the law to take its course un-
prejudiced. But the House of Commons was
now required to pronounce upon the very subject-
matter of inquiry which had been referred to the
decision of a court of law ; and this degenerate
assembly, at the bidding of the minister, readily
condemned the indicted paper in terms of extrava-
gant and fulsome censure, and ordered that it
should be burned by the hands of the common
hangman. Lord North, on the part of the Gov-
ernment, then pressed for an immediate decision
on the question of privilege; but Pitt, in his
most solemn manner, insisting on an adjournment,
the House yielded this point. On the following
day, Wilkes, being dangerously wounded in a
duel with Martin, one of the joint Secretaries
to the Treasury, who had grossly insulted him
in the House, for the purpose of provoking a
quarrel, was disabled from attending In his
place; but the House, nevertheless, refused to
postpone the question of privilege beyond the
24th of the month. On that day, they resolved
' that the privilege of Parliament does not extend
to the case of writing and publishing seditious
libels, nor ought to be allowed to obstruct the or-
dinary course of the laws in the speedy and ef-
fectual prosecution of so heinous and dangerous
an offence.' Whatever may be thought of the
public spirit or prudence of a House of Commons
which could thus officiously define its privilege,
the vote was practically futile, since a court of
justice had already decided in this very case, as
a matter of strict law, that the person of a mem-
ber of Parliament was protected from arrest on
a charge of this description. The conduct of
Pitt on this occasion was consistent with the lofti-
ness of his character. . . . The conduct of the
Lords was in harmony with that of the Lower
House. . . . The session was principally occu-
pied by the i^roceedings against this worthless
demagogue, whom the unworthy hostility of the
Crown and both Houses of Parliament had ele-
vated into a person of the first importance. His
name was coupled with that of Liberty ; and
when the executioner appeared to carry into ef-
fect the sentence of Parliament upon ' The North
Briton,' he was driven away by the populace,
who rescued the obnoxious paper from the flames,
and evinced their hatred and contempt for the
Court faction by burning in its stead the jack-
boot and the petticoat, the vulgar emblems which
they employed to designate John Earl of Bute
and his supposed royal patroness. . . . Wilkes
himself, however, was forced to yield to the
storm. Beset by the spies of Government, and
harassed by its prosecutions, which he had not
the means of resisting, he withdrew to Paris.
Failing to attend in his place in the House of
Commons on the first day after the Christmas re-
cess, according to order, his excuse was eagerly
declared invalid ; a vote of expulsion immediately
followed [January 19, 1764], and a new writ was
ordered for Aylesbury." — W. Massey, Sist. of
Eng. : Beign of George III. , ch. 4 {v, 1).
Also in : J. E. T. Rogers, HUtm'ical OUanings,
V. 2, ch. 3. — Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), Sist.
of Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 41-43 (v. 5).
A. D. 1763. — The end and results of the
Seven Years War : The Peace of Paris and
Peace of Hubertsburg. — America to be Eng-
lish, not French. See Seven Years War.
A. D. 1763-1764. — Determination to tax the
American colonies. — The Sugar (or Molasses)
Act. See United States op Am. : A. D. 1763-
1764.
A. D. 1764. — The climax of the mercantile
colonial policy and its consequences. See
United States op Am. : A. D. 1704.
A. D. 1765. — Passage of the Stamp Act for
the colonies. See United States op Am. :
A. D. 1765.
A. D. 1765-1768. — Grenville dismissed. —
The Rockingham and the Grafton-Chatham
Ministries. — Repeal of the Stamp Act. — Fresh
trouble in the American colonies. — "Hitherto
the Ministry had only excited the indignation of
the people and the colonies. Not satisfied with
the number of their enemies, they now proceeded
to quarrel openly with the king. In 1765 the
first signs of the illness, to which George after-
wards fell a victim, appeared; and as soon as he
recovered he projiosed, with wonderful firmness,
that a Regency Bill should be brought in, limit-
ing the king's choice of a Regent to the members
of the Royal Family. The Ministers, however,
in alarm at the prospect of a new Bute Ministry,
persuaded the king that there was no hope of
the Princess's name being accepted, and that it
had better be left out of the Bill. The king
unwisely consented to this unparalleled insult on
his parent, apparently through lack of considera-
tion. Parliament, however, insisted on inserting
the Princess's name by a large majority, and thus
exposed the trick of his Ministers. This the
king never forgave. They had been for some
time obnoxious to him, and now he determined
to get rid of them. AVith this view he induced
the Duke of Cumberland to make overtures to
Chatham [Pitt, not yet titled], -offering almost
any terms." But no arrangement was practica-
ble, and the king was left quite at the mercy of
the Ministers he detested. "He was obliged to
consent to dismiss Bute and all Bute's following.
He was obliged to promise that he would use no
underhand influence for the future. Life, in fact,
became a burden to him under George Gren-
ville's domination, and he determined to dismiss
him, even at the cost of accepting the Whig
Houses, whom he had pledged himself never
to employ again. Pitt and Temple still prov-
ing obdurate, Cumberland opened negotiations
with the Rockingham Whigs, and the Grenville
Ministry was at an end [July, 1765]. . . . The
new Ministry was composed as follows: Rock-
ingham became First Lord of the Treasury;
Dowdeswell, Chancellor of the Exchequer; New-
castle, Privj' Seal; Northington, Lord Chancellor.
957
ENGLAND. 1765-1768.
TAc Middlesex
Eltctioyis.
ENGLAND, 1768-1774.
. . . Their leader Rockingham was a man of
sound sense, but no power of language or gov-
ernment. . . . He was totally free from any sus-
picion of corruption. In fact there was more
honesty than talent in the Ministry altogether.
. . . The back-bone of the party was removed
by the refusal of Pitt to co-operate. Burke was
undoubtedly the ablest man among them, but his
time was not yet come. Such a Ministry, it was
recognized even by its own members, could not
last long. However, it had come in to effect cer-
tain necessary legislation, and it certainly so far
accomplished the end of its being. It repealed
the Stamp Act [see United States op Am. :
A. D. 1766], which had caused so much indig-
nation among the Americans ; and at the same
time passed a law securing the dependence of the
colonies. . . . The king, however, made no secret
of his hostility to his Ministers. . . . The con-
duct of Pitt in refusing to join them was a de-
cided mistake, and more. He was really at one
with them on most points. Most of their acts
were in accordance with his views. But he was
determined not to join a purely party Ministry,
though he could have done so practically on
whatever terms he pleased. In 1766, however,
he consented to form a coalition, in which were
included men of the most opposite views —
"King's Friends,' Rockingham Whigs, and the
few personal followers of Pitt. Rockingham re-
fused to take any office, and retired to the more
congenial occupation of following the hounds.
The nominal Prime Minister of this Cabinet was
the Duke of Grafton, for Pitt refused the leader-
ship, and retired to the House of Lords as Lord
Chatham. Charles Townshend became Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, and Lord North, the
leader of the ' King's Friends,' was Pay-master.
The Ministry included Shelburne, Barre, Con-
way, Northington, Barrington, Camden, Granby
— all men of the most opposite views. . . . Tliis
second Ministry of Pitt was a mistake from the
very first. He lost all his popularity by taking
a peerage. ... As a peer and Lord Privy Seal
he found himself in an uncongenial atmosphere.
. . . His name, too, had lost a great deal of its
power abroad. 'Pitt' had, indeed, been a word
to conjure with; but there were no associations
of defeat and humiliation connected with the
name of 'Chatham.'. . . There were other dif-
ficulties, however, as well. His arrogance had
increased, and it was so much intensified by ins-
tating gout, that it became almost impossible to
serve with him. His disease later almost ap-
proached madiless. . . . The Ministry drifted
helplessly about at the mercy of each wind and
_ wave of opinion like a water-logged ship ; and
' it was only the utter want of union among the
Opposition which prevented its sinking entirely.
As it was, they contrived to renew the breach
with America, which had been almost entirely
healed by Rockingham's repeal of the Stamp
Act. Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the
Exchequer, was by far the ablest man left in the
Cabinet, and he rapidly assumed the most promi-
nent position. He had always been in favour of
taxing America. He now brought forward a
plan for raising a revenue from tea, glass, and
paper [see United States op Am. : A. D. 1766-
1767, and 1767-1768], by way of import duty at
the American ports. . . . This wild measure was
followed shortly by the death of its author, in
September ; and then the weakness of the Minis-
try became so obvious that, as Chatham still con-
tinued incapable, some fresh reinforcement was
absolutely necessary. A coalition was effected
with the Bloomsbury Gang; and, in consequence.
Lords Gower, Weymouth, and Sandwicli joined
the Ministry. Lord Northington and General
Conway retired. North succeeded Townshend
at the Exchequer. Lord Hillsborough became
the first Secretary of State for the Colonies, thus
raising the number of Secretaries to three. This
Ministry was probably the worst that had gov-
erned England since the days of the Cabal ; and
the short period of its existence was marked by
a succession of arbitrary and foolish acts. On
every important question that it had to deal
with, it pursued a course diametrically opposed
to Chatliam's views ; and yet with singular irony
his nominal connection with it was not severed
for some time " — that is, not until the following
year, 1768. — B. C. Skottowe, Our Hanoverian
Kings, pp. 234-239.
Also m: The Grenville Papers, v. 3-4. — C. W.
Dilke, Papers of a Critic, d. 2. — E. Lodge, Por-
traits, V. 8, c7t. 3.
A. D. 1767-1769. — The first war with Hyder
AH, of Mysore. See India: A. D, 1707-1769.
A. D. 1768-1770. — The quartering of troops
in Boston and its ill consequences. See Bos-
ton: A. D. 1768; and 1770.
A. D. 1768-1774.— John Wilkes and the
King and Parliament again. — The Middlesex
elections. — In March, 1768, AVilkes, though out-
lawed by the court, returned to London from
Paris and solicited a pardon from the king ; but
his petition was unnoticed. Parliament being
then dissolved and writs issued for a new elec-
tion, he offered himself as a candidate to represent
the City of London. "He polled 1,347 votes,
but was unsuccessful. On the day following
this decision he issued an address to the freehold-
ers of Middlesex. The election took place at
Brentford, on the 38th of March. At the close
of the poll the numbers were — Mr. Wilkes, 1,393 ;
Mr. Cooke, 827; Sir W. B. Proctor, 807. This
was a victory which astonished the public and
terrified the ministry . The mob was in ecstasies.
The citizens of London were compelled to illu-
minate their houses and to shout for ' Wilkes and
liberty. ' It was the earnest desire of the ministry
to pardon the man whom they had persecuted,
but the king remained inexorable. ... A month
after the election he wrote to Lord North :
' Though relying entirely on your attachment to
my person as well as in your hatred of any law-
less proceeding, yet I think it highly expedient
to apprise you that the expulsion of Mr. Wilkes
appears to be very essential, and must be effected. '
What the sovereign counselled was duly accom-
plished. Before his expulsion, Wilkes was a
prisoner in the King's Bench. Having surren-
dered, it was determined that his outlawry was
informal ; consequently it was reversed, and sen-
tence was passed for the offences whereof he had
been convicted. He was fined £1,000, and im-
prisoned for twenty-two months. On his way
to prison he was rescued by the mob ; but as
soon as he could escape out of the hands of his
boisterous friends he went and gave himself into
the custody of the Marshal of the lijng's Bench.
Parliament met on the 10th of April, and it was
thought that he would be released in order to
take his seat. A dense multitude assembled be-
fore the prison, but, balked in its purpose of
958
ENGLAND, 1768-1774.
Letters of
Junius,
ENGLAND, 1769-1772.
escorting the popular favourite to the House,
became furious, and commenced a riot. Soldiers
■were at hand prepared for this outbreak. They
fired, -wounding and slauglitering several per-
sons ; among others, they butchered a young man
whom they found in a neighbouring house, and
■who was mistaken for a rioter they liad pursued.
At the inquest the jury brought in a verdict of
wilful murder against the magistrate viho ordered
the firing, and the soldier who did the deed.
The magistrate was tried and acquitted. The
soldier was dismissed the service, but received in
compensation, as a reward for his services, a pen-
sion of one shilling a day. A general order sent
from the War Office by Lord Barrington con-
veyed his Majesty's express thanks to the troops
employed, assuring them ' that every possible re-
gard shall be shown to them ; their zeal and good
behaviour on this occasion deserve it; and in case
any disagreeable circumstance should liappen in
the execution of their duty, they shall have every
defence and protection that the law can author-
ise and this office can give. ' This approbation of
what the troops had done was the necessary sup-
plement to a despatch from Lord Weymouth sent
before the riot, and intimating that force was to
he used without scruple. Wilkes commented on
both documents. His observations on tlie latter
drew a complaint from Lord Weymouth of breach
of privilege. This was made an additional pre-
text for his expulsion from tlie House of Com-
mons. Ten days afterwards he was re-elected,
his opponent receiving five votes only. On the
following day the House resolved ' that John
Wilkes, Esquire, having been in this session of
Parliament expelled tliis House, was and is in-
capable of being elected a member to serve in
this present Parliament ' ; and his election was de-
clared void. Again the freeholders of Middle-
sex returned him, and the House re-affirmed the
above resolution. At another election he was
opposed by Colonel Luttrell, a Court tool, when
he polled 1,143 votes against 296 cast for Lut-
trell. It was declared, however, that the latter
had been elected. Now began a struggle between
the country, which had been outraged in the
persons of tlie Middlesex electors, and a subservi-
ent majority in the House of Commons tliat did
not hesitate to become instrumental in gratifying
tlie personal resentment of a revengeful and ob-
stinate king. The cry of ' Wilkes and liberty '
was raised in quarters where the very name of
the popular idol had been proscribed. It was
evident that not the law only liad been violated
in his person, but that the Constitution itself had
sustained a deadly wound. Wilkes was over-
whelmed with suijstantial marks of sympathy.
In the cour.se of a few weeks £20,000 were sub-
scribed to pay his debts. He could boast, too,
that the courts of law had at length done what
was right between him and one of the Secretaries
of State who had signed the General Warrant,
the other having been removed by death beyond
the reach of j ustice. Lord Halifax was sentenced
to pay £4,000 damages. These damages, and the
costs of the proceedings, were defrayed out of
the public purse. Lord North admitted that the
outlay had exceeded £100,000. Thus the nation
was doubly insulted by the ministers, who first
violated the law, and then paid the costs of the
proceedings out of the national taxes. On the
17th of April, 1770, Wilkes left the prison, to be
elected in rapid succession to the offices — then
much sought after, because held in high honour
— of Alderman, Sheriff, and Lord Mayor of Lon-
don. In 1774 he was permitted to take his seat
as Member for Middlesex. After several failures,
he succeeded in getting the resolutions of his in-
capacity to sit in the House formally expunged
from its journals. He was elected Chamberlain
of the City in 1779, and filled that lucrative and
responsible post till his death, in 1797, at the age
of seventy. Although tlie latter portion of his
career as Member of Parliament has generally
been considered a blank, yet it was marked by
several incidents worthy of attention. He was a
consistent and energetic opponent of the war with
America." — W. F. Rae, Jo/i7i Wilkes (Fortnightly
Rev., Sept., 1868, v. 10).
Also in : The same, Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox, pt.
1.— G. O. Trevelyan, Early Hist, of Charles
James Fox, ch. 5-6, and 8.
A. D. 1769-1772. — The Letters of Junius. —
"One of the newspapers in London at this
period was the 'Public Advertiser,' printed and
directed by Mr. Henry Sampson Woodfall. His
politics were those of the Opposition of the day ;
and he readily received any contributions of a
like tendency from unknown correspondents.
Among others was a writer whose letters begin-
ning at the latest in April, 1767, continued fre-
quent through that and the ensuing year. It
was the pleasure of this writer to assume a great
variety of signatures in his communications, as
Mnemon, Atticus, and Brutus. It does not ap-
pear, however, that these letters (excepting only
some with the signature of Lucius which were
published in the autumn of 1768) attracted the
public attention to any unusual extent, though
by no means wanting in ability, or still less in
acrimony. . . . Such was the state of these pub-
lications, not much rising in interest above the
common level of many such at other times, when
on the 31st of January 1769 there came forth
another letter from the same hand with the novel
signature of Junius. It did not differ greatly
from its predecessors either in superior merit or
superior moderation ; it contained, on the con-
trary, a fierce and indiscriminate attack on most
men in high places, including the Commander-
in-Chief, Lord Granby. But, unlike its prede-
cessors, it roused to controversy a well-known
and respectable opponent. Sir William Drajjer,
General in the army and Knight of the Bath,
undertook to meet and parry the blows which it
had aimed at his Noble friend. In an evil hour
for himself he sent to the Public Advertiser a
letter subscribed with his own name, and de-
fending the character and conduct of Lord Gran-
by. An answer from Junius soon appeared,
urging anew his original charge, and adding
some thrusts at Sir William himself on the sale
of a regiment, and on the nonpayment of the
Manilla ransom. Wincing at the blow. Sir Wil-
liam more than once replied ; more than once did
the keen pen of Junius lay him prostrate in the
dust. The discomfiture of poor Sir William was
indeed complete. Even his most partial friends
could not deny that so far as wit and eloquence
were concerned the man in the mask had far,
very far, the better in the controversy. . . .
These victories over a man of rank and station
such as Draper's gave Importance to the name of
Junius. Henceforth letters with that signature
were eagerly expected by the public, and care-
fully prepared by the author. He did not indeed
959
ENGLAND, 1769-1772.
Lord North.
ENGLAND, 1770.
altogether cease to write under other names;
sometimes especially adopting tlie part of a by-
stander, and the signature of Philo-Junius ; but
it was as Junius that his main and most elabo-
rate attacks were made. Nor was it long before
he swooped at far higher game than Sir William.
First came a series of most bitter pasquinades
against the Duke of Grafton. Dr. Blackstone
was then assailed for the unpopular vote which
he gave in the case of Wilkes. In September
was published a false and malignant attack upon
the Duke of Bedford, — an attack, however, of
which the sting is felt b}' his descendants to this
day. In December the acme of audacity was
reached by the celebrated letter to the King.
All this while conjecture was busy as to the
secret author. Names of well-known statesmen
or well-known writers — Burke or Dunning,
Boyd or Dyer, George Sackville or Gerard Ham-
ilton — flew from mouth to mouth. Such guesses
were for the most part made at mere hap-hazard,
and destitute of any plausible ground. Never-
theless the stir and talk which they created
added not a little to the natural effects of the
writer's wit and eloquence. ' The most impor-
tant secret of our times 1' cries Wilkes. Junius
himself took care to enhance his own importance
by arrogant, nay even impious, boasts of it. In
one letter of August 1771 he goes so far as to
declare that ' the Bible and Junius will be read
when the commentaries of the Jesuits are for-
gotten ! ' Mystery, as I have said, was one in-
gredient to the popularity of Junius. Another
not less efficacious was supplied by persecution.
In the course of 1770 Mr. Woodfall was indicted
for publishing, and Mr. Almon with several
others for reprinting, the letter from Junius to
the King. The verdict in Woodfall's case was;
Guilty of printing and publishing only. It led
to repeated discussions and to ulterior proceed-
ings. But in the temper of the public at that
period such measures could end only in virtual
defeat to the Government, in augmented reputa-
tion to the libeller. During the years 1770 and
1771 the letters of Junius were continued with
little abatement of spirit. He renewed invec-
tives against the Duke of Grafton; he began
them against Lord Mansfield, who had presided at
the trials of the printers ; he plunged into the
full tide of City politics ; and he engaged in a
keen controversy with the Rev. John Home,
afterwards Home Tooke. The whole series of
letters from January 1769, when it commences,
until January 1773, when it terminates, amounts
to 69, including those with the signature of
Philo-Junius, those of Sir William Draper, and
those of Mr. Home. . . . Besides the letters
which Junius designed for the press, there were
many others which he wrote and sent to various
persons, intending them for those persons only.
Two addressed to Lord Chatham appear in Lord
Chatham's correspondence. Three addressed to
Mr George Grenville have until now remained
in manuscript among the papers at Wotton, or
Stowe ; all three were written in the same year,
1768, and the two first signed with the same
initial C. Several others addressed to Wilkes
were first made known through the son of Mr.
Woodfall. But the most important of all, per-
haps, are tlie private notes addressed to Mr.
Woodfall himself. Of these there are upwards
of sixty, signed in general with the letter C. ;
6orae only a few lines in length ; but many of
great value towards deciding the question of
authorship. It seems that the packets contain-
ing the letters of Junius for Mr. Woodfall or the
Public Advertiser were sometimes brought to
the office-door, and thrown in, by an unknown
gentleman, probably Junius himself ; more com-
monly they were conveyed by a porter or other
messenger hired in the streets. When some com-
munication from Mr. Woodfall in reply was
deemed desirable, Junius directed it to be ad-
dressed to him under some feigned name, and to
be left till called for at the bar of some coflfee-
house ... It may be doubted whether Junius
had any confidant or trusted friend. . . . When
dedicating his collected letters to the English
people, he declares: 'I am the sole depository
of my own secret, and it shall perish with me.' "
— Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), Hist, of Eng.,
1713-1783, ch. 47 (». 5).— The following list of
fifty -one names of persons to whom the letters of
Junius have been attributed at different times by
different writers is given in Cushing's "Initials
and Pseudonyms " : James Adair, M. P. ; Cap-
tain Allen ; Lieut. -Col. Isaac Barre, M. P. ; Wil-
liam Henry Cavendish Bentinck ; Mr. Bickerton ;
Hugh M'Aulay Boyd ; Edmund Burke ; AVilliam
Burke ; John Butler, Bishop of Hereford ; Lord
Camden ; John Lewis De Lolme ; John Dunning,
afterwards Lord Ashburton; Samuel Dyer;
Henry Flood ; Sir Philip Francis ; George III. ;
Edward Gibbon; Richard Glover; Henry Grat-
tan ; William Greatrakes ; George Grenville ;
James Grenville; William Gerard Hamilton;
James Hollis ; Thomas Hollis ; Sir George Jack-
son; Sir William Jones; John Kent; Major-
General Charles Lee; Charles Lloyd; Thomas
Lyttleton; Laughlin Maclean; Rev. Edmund
Marshall ; Thomas Paine ; William Pitt, Earl of
Chatham ; the Duke of Portland ; Thomas Pow-
nall; Lieut. -Col. Sir Robert Rich ; John Roberts;
Rev. Philip Rosenhagen; George, Viscount'
Sackville ; the Earl of Shelburne ; Philip Dormer
Stanhope, Earl of Chesterfield; Richard Suett;
Earl Temple ; John Home Tooke ; Horace Wal-
pole; Alexander Wedderburn, Lord Loughbor-
ough; John Wilkes; James Wilmot, D. D. ;
Daniel Wray.
Also in: G. W. Cooke, Hist, of Party, v. 3,
ch. 6.— C. W. Dilke, Papers of a Critic, v. 2.—
Lord Macaulay, Warroi Hastings (Essays, v. 5).
— A. Bisset, Sho?'t Hist, of the English Parlia-
ment, ch. 7.
A. D. 1770.— Fall of the Grafton Ministry. —
Beginning of the administration of Lord
North. — " The incompetency of the ministry was
. . . becoming obvious. In the first place it was
divided within itself. The Prime Minister, with
the Chancellor and some others, were remnants of
the Chatham ministry and admirers of Chatham's
policy. The rest of the Cabinet were either men
who represented Bedford's party, or members of
that class whose views are sufficiently explained
by their name, 'the King's friends.' Grafton,
fonder of hunting and the turf than of ])olitics,
had by his indolence suffered himself to fall under
the influence of the last-named party, and uncon-
stitutional action had been the result which had
brought discontent in England to the verge of
open outbreak. Hillsborough, under the same
influence, was hurrying along the road which led
to the loss of America. On this point the Prime
Minister had found himself in a minority in his
own Cabinet. Prance too, under Choiseul, in
960
ENGLAND, 1770.
Parliament and
the Press.
ENGLAND, 1771.
alliance with Spain, was beginning to think of re-
venge for the losses of the Seven Years' "War. A
crisis was evidently approaching, and the Oppo-
sition began toclo.se their ranks. Chatham, yield-
ing again to the necessities of party, made a
public profession of friendship with Temple and
George Grenville ; and though there was no cor-
dial connection, there was external alliance be-
tween the brothers and the old Whigs under
Rockingham. In the first session of 1770 the
storm broke. Notwithstanding the state of pub-
lic affairs, the chief topic of the King's speech
was the murrain among 'horned beasts,' — a
speech not of a king, but, said Junius, of ' a
ruined grazier.' Chatham at once moved an
amendment when the address in answer to this
speech was proposed. He deplored the want of
all European alliances, the fruit of our desertion
of our allies at the Peace of Paris ; he blamed the
conduct of the ministry with regard to America,
which, he thought, needed much gentle handling,
inveighed strongly against the action of the
Lower House in the case of Wilkes, and ended
by moving that that action should at once be
taken into consideration. At the sound of their
old leader's voice his followers in the Cabinet
could no longer be silent. Camden declared he
had been a most unwilling party to the persecu-
tion of Wilkes, and though retaining the Seals,
attacked and voted against the ministry. In the
Lower House, Granby, one of the most popular
men in England, followed the same course.
James Grenville and Dunning, the Solicitor-Gen-
eral, also resigned. Chatham's motion was lost,
but was followed up by Rockingham, who asked
for a night to consider the state of the nation.
. . . Grafton thus found himself in no state to
meet the Opposition, and in his heart still admir-
ing Chatham, and much disliking business, ho
suddenly and unexpectedly gave in his resigna-
tion the very day fixed for Rockingham's motion.
The Opposition seemed to have everything in
their own hands, but there was no real cordiality
between tlie two sections. . . . The King with
much quickness and decision, took advantage of
this disunion. To him it was of paramount im-
portance to retain his friends in oflSce, and to
avoid a new Parliament elected in the present
excited state of the nation. There was only one
of the late ministry capable of assuming the po-
sition of Prime Minister. This was Lord North,
Chancellor of the Exchequer, and to him the
King immediately and successfully applied, so
that while the difEerent sections of the Opposition
were still unable to decide on any united action,
they were astonished to find the old ministry re-
constituted and their opportunity gone. The
new Prime Minister . . . had great capacity for
business and administration, and much sound
sense ; he was a first-rate debater, and gifted with
a wonderful sweetness of temper, which enabled
him to listen unmoved, or even to sleep, during
the most violent attacks upon himself, and to
turn aside tlie bitterest invectives with a happy
joke. With his accession to the Premiership the
unstable character of the Government ceased.
Resting on the King, making himself no more
than an instrument of the King's will, and thus
commanding the support of all royal influence,
from whatever source derived. North was able to
bid defiance to all enemies, till the ill effects of
such a system of government, and of the King's
policy, became so evident that the clamour for a
961
really responsible minister grew too loud to be
disregarded. Thus is closed the great constitu-
tional struggle of the early part of the reign —
the struggle of the King, supported by the un
represented masses, and the more liberal and in-
dependent of those who were represented, against
the domination of the House of Commons. It
was an attempt to break those trammels which,
under the guise of liberty, the upper classes, the
great lords and landed aristocracy, had succeeded
after the Revolution in laying on both Crown and
people. In that struggle the King had been vic-
torious. But he did not recognize the alliance
which had enabled him to succeed. He did not
understand that the people had other objects
much beyond his own." — J. F. Bright, Sist. of
Eng., period 3, pp. 1057-1060.
Also in : Cor. of Oeorge III. with Lord North, v.
1. — W. Massey, Hist, of Eng. : Reign of Oeorge III. ,
ch. 10-13 (». 1). — J. Adolphus, Hist, of Eng. :
Reign of George III, ch. 17 (v. 1). — E. Burke,
Thoughts on the Present Discontents (Works, v. 1).
A. D. 1770-1773. — Repeal of the Tovynshend
duties, except on tea. — The tea-ships and the
Boston Tea-party. See United States of Am. :
A. D. 1770, and 177S-1773; and Boston: A. D.
1773.
A. D. 1771.— Last contention of Parliament
against the Press. — Freedom of reporting se-
cured.— "The session of 1771 commenced with a
new quarrel between the House of Commons and
the country. The standing order for the exclu-
sion of strangers, which had long existed (and
which still exists), was seldom enforced, except
when it was thought desirable that a question
should be debated with closed doors. It was now
attempted, by means of this order, to prevent the
publication of the debates and proceedings of the
House. It had long been the practice of the
newspapers, and other periodical journals, to pub-
lish the debates of Parliament, under various thin
disguises, and with more or less fulness and ac-
curacy, from speeches furnished at length by the
speakers themselves, to loose and meagre notes of
more or less authenticity. One of the most attrac-
tive features of the 'Gentleman's Magazine,' a
monthly publication of respectability, which has
survived to the present day, was an article which
purported to be a report of the debates in Parlia-
ment. This report was, for nearly three years,
prepared by Dr. Johnson, who never attended the
galleries himself, and derived his information from
persons who could seldom give him more than the
names of the speakers, and the side which each
of them took in the debate. The speeches were,
therefore, the composition of Johnson himself;
and some of the most admired oratory of the
period was avowedly the product of his genius.
Attempts were made from time to time, both
within and without the walls of Parliament, to
abolish, or at least to modify, the standing order
for the exclusion of strangers, by means of which
the license of reporting had been restricted ; for
there was no order of either House specifically
prohibiting the publication of its debates. But
such proposals had always been resisted by the
leaders of parties, who thought that the privilege
was one which might be evaded, but could not
safely be formally relinquished. The practice
of reporting, therefore, was tolerated on the
understanding, that a decent disguise should be
observed; and that no publication of the pro-
ceedings of Parliament should take place during
ENGLAND, 1771.
Revolt of the
American Colonies.
ENGLAND, 1776-1778.
the session. There can be little doubt, however,
that the public journals would have gone on,
with the tacit conuivauce of tlie parliamentary
chiefs, until they had practically established a
right of reporting regularly the proceedings of
both Houses, had not the presumptuous folly of
inferior members provoked a conflict with the
press upon this ground of privilege, and, in the
result, driven Parliament reluctantly to yield
what they would otherwise have quietly con-
ceded. It was Colonel Onslow, member for
Guildford, who rudely agitated a question which
wiser men had been content to leave unvexed;
and by his rash meddling, precipitated the very
result which he thought he could prevent. He
complained that the proceedings of the House
had been inaccurately reported; and that the
newspapers had even presumed to reflect on the
public conduct of honourable members." — Wm.
Massey, Hist, of England, v. 3, ch. 15.- — " Certain
printers were in consequence ordered to attend
the bar of the House. Some appeared and were
discharged, after receiving, on their knees, a
reprimand from the Speaker. Others evaded
compliance ; and one of them, John Miller, who
failed to appear, was arrested by its messenger,
but instead of submitting, sent for a constable
and gave the messenger into custody for an as-
sault and false imprisonment. They were both
taken before the Lord Mayor (Mr. Brass Crosby),
Mr. Alderman Oliver, and the notorious Johu
Wilkes, who had recently been invested with the
aldermanic gown. These civic magistrates, on
the ground that the messenger was neither a
peace-officer nor a constable, and that his warrant
was not backed by a city magistrate, discharged
the printer from custody, and committed the mes-
senger to prison for an unlawful arrest. Two
other printers, for whose apprehension a reward
had been offered by a Government proclamation,
were collusively apprehended by friends, and
taken before Aldermen Wilkes and Oliver, who
discharged the prisoners as 'not being accused
of having committed any crime.' These pro-
ceedings at once brought the House into conflict
with the Lord Mayor and Aldermen of London.
The Lord Mayor and Alderman Oliver, who were
both members of Parliament, were ordered by
the House to attend in their places, and were
subsequently committed to the Tower. Their
imprisonment, instead of being a punishment,
was one long-continued popular ovation, and
from the date of their release, at the prorogation
of Parliament shortly afterwards, the publication
of debates has been pursued without any inter-
ference or restraint. Though still in theory a
breach of privilege, reporting is now encouraged
by Parliament as one of the main sources of its
influence — its censure being reserved for wilful
misrepresentation only. But reporters long con-
tinued beset with many difliculties. The taking
of notes was prohibited, no places were reserved
for reporters, and the power of a single member
of either House to require the exclusion of
strangers was frequently and caj^riciously em-
ployed. By the ancient usage of the House
of Commons [until 1875] any one member by
merely ' spying ' strangers present could compel
the Speaker to order their withdrawal." — T. P.
Taswell-Langmead, Eng. Const. Hist., ch. 17.
Also in: R. F. D. Palgrave, The House of Com-
mons, lect. 2. — T. E. May, Const. Hist, of Eng.,
ch. 7 (i). 1).
A. D. 1772. — The ending of Negro slavery
in the British Islands. See Slavery, Negro:
A. D. 1685-1772.
A. D. 1773. — Reconstitution of the Govern-
ment of British India. See India: A. D. 1770-
1773.
A. D. 1774. — The Boston Port Bill, the
Massachusetts Act and the Quebec Act. —
The First Continental Congress in America.
See United States of Am. : A. D. 1774.
A. D. 1774. — Advent in English industries
of the Steam-Engine as made efficient by
James Watt. See Steam Engine: A. D. 1765-
1785.
A. D. 1775.— The beginning of the War of
the American Revolution. — Lexington. —
Concord. — The colonies in arms and Boston
beleaguered. — Ticonderoga. — Bunker Hill. —
The Second Continental Congress. See
United States op Am. : A. D. 1775.
A. D. 1775-1776. — Successful defence of
Canada against American invasion. See
Canada: A. D. 1775-1776.
A. D. 1776. — War measures against the col-
onies. — The drift toward American independ-
ence. See United States of Am. : A. D. 1776
(January — June).
A. D. 1776-1778.— The People, the Parties,
the King, and Lord North, in their relations to
the American War. — "The undoubted popu-
larity of the war [in America] in its first stage
had for some time continued to increase, and in
the latter part of 1776 and 1777 it had probably
attained its maximum. . . . The Whigs at this
time very fully admitted that the genuine opinion
of the country was with the Government and
with the King. . . . The Declaration of Inde-
l^endence, and the known overtures of the Ameri-
cans to France, were deemed the climax of in-
solence and ingratitude. The damage done to
English commerce, not only in the West Indies
but even around the English and Irish coast,
excited a widespread bitterness. ... In every
stage of the contest the influence of the Opposi-
tion was employed to trammel the Government.
. . . The statement of Wraxall that the Whig
colours of buff and blue were first adopted by
Fox in imitation of the uniform of Washing-
ton's troops, is, I believe, corroborated by no
other writer ; but there is no reason to question
his assertion that the members of the Whig party
in society and in both Houses of Parliament dur-
ing the whole course of the war wished success to
the American cause and rejoiced in the American
triumphs. . . . While the Opposition needlessly
and heedlessly intensified the national feeling
against them, the King, on his side, did the ut-
most in his power to embitter the contest. It is
only by examining his correspondence with Lord
North that we fully realise how completely at
this time he assumed the position not only of a
jirime minister but of a Cabinet, superintending,
directing, and prescribing, in all its parts, the
policy of the Government. . . . 'Every means
of distressing America,' wrote the King, 'must
meet with my concurrence.' He strongly sup-
ported the employment of Indians. ... It was
the King's friends who were most active in pro-
moting all measures of violence. . . . The war
was commonly called the ' King's war, ' and its
opponents were looked upon as opponents of the
King. The person, however, who in the eye of
history appears most culpable in this matter, was
962
ENGLAND, 1776-1778.
War
i7i America.
ENGLAND, 1778-1780.
Lord North. . . . The publication of the corre-
spondence of George III. . . . supplies one of
the most striking and melancholy examples of
the relation of the King to his Tory ministers.
It appears from this correspondence that for the
space of about live years North, at the entreaty
of the King, carried on a bloody, costly, and dis-
astrous war in direct opposition to his own
judgment and to liis own wishes. . . . Again
and again he entreated that his resignation might
be accepted, but again and again he yielded to
the request of the King, who threatened, if his
minister resigned, to abdicate the throne. . . .
The King was determined, under no circum-
stances, to treat with the Americans on the basis of
the recognition of their independence; but he ac-
knowledged, after the surrender of Burgoyne, and
as soon as the French war had become inevitable,
that unconditional submission could no longer
be hoped for. ... He consented, too, though
apparently with extreme reluctance, and in con-
sequence of the unanimous vote of the Cabinet,
that new propositions should be m&de to the
Americans." These overtures, conveyed to Amer-
ica by three Commissioners, were rejected, and
the colonies concluded, in the spring of 1778,
their alliance with France. "The moment was
one of the most terrible in English history. Eng-
land had not an ally in the world. . . . Eng-
land, already exhausted by a war which its dis-
tance made peculiarly terrible, had to confront
the whole force of France, and was certain in a
few months to have to encounter the whole force
of Spain. . . . There was one man to whom, in
this hour of panic and consternation, the eyes of
all jjatriotic Englishmen were turned. ... If
any statesman could, at the last moment, con-
ciliate [the Americans], dissolve the new alli-
ance, and kindle into a flame the loyalist feeling
which undoubtedly existed largely in America, it
was Chatham. If, on the other hand, conciliation
proved impossible, no statesman could for a
moment be compared to him in the management
of a war. Lord North implored the King to ac-
cept his resignation, and to send for Chatham.
Bute, tlie old Tory favourite, breaking his long
silence, spoke of Chatham as now indispensable.
Lord Manstield, the bitterest and ablest rival of
Chatham, said, with tears in liis eyes, tliat unless
the King sent for Chatham the ship would as-
suredly go down. . . . The King was unmoved.
He consented indeed — and he actually author-
ised Lord North to make the astounding propo-
sition — -to receive Chatham as a subordinate
minister to North. . . . This episode appears to
me the most criminal in the whole reign of
George III., and in my own judgment it is as
criminal as any of those acts which led Charles I.
to the scaffold." — W. E. H. Lecky, Hist, of Eng. in
the ISth Century, ch. 14 (». 4). — "George III. and
Lord North have been made scapegoats for sins
which were not exclusively their own. The min-
ister, indeed, was only the vizier, who hated his
work, but still did not shrink from it, out of a
sentiment that is sometimes admired under the
name of loyalty, but which in such a case it is
difficult to distinguish from base servility. The
impenetrable mind of the King was, in the case
of the American war, the natural organ and rep-
resentative of all the lurking ignorance and
arbitrary humours of the entire community. It
is totally unjust and inadequate to lay upon
him the entire burden." — J. Morley, Edmund
Burke: a Historical Study, p. 135. — "No sane
person in Great Britain now approves of the
attempt to tax the colonies. No sane person does
otherwise than rejoice that the colonies became
free and independent. But let us in common
fairness say a word for King George. In all
that he did he was backed by the great mass of
the British nation. And let us even say a word-
for the British nation also. Had the King and
the nation been really wise, they would have let
the colonies go without striking a blow. But then
no king and no nation ever was really wise after
that fashion. King George and the British nation
were simply not wiser than other people. I be-
lieve that you may turn the pages of history from
the earliest to the latest times, without finding a
time when any king or any commonwealth, fi'eely
and willingly, without compulsion or equivalent,
gave up power or dominion, or even mere extent
of territory on the map, when there was no real
power or dominion. Remember that seventeen
years after the acknowledgment of American
independence. King George still called himself
King of Prance. Remember that, when the
title was given up, some people thought it un-
wise to give it up. Remember that some people
in our own day regretted the separation between
the crowns of Great Britain and Hanover. If
they lived to see the year 1866, perhaps they
grew wiser." — E. A. Freeman, Tlie English People
in its Three Homes {Lectures to American Au-
diences), pp. 183-184.
Also ln: Correspondence of George III. with
Lord North.— LotA. Brougham, Hist. Sketches of
Statesmen in the Reign of Oeorge III. — T. Mac-
knight, Hist, of the Life and Times of Edmund
Burke, ch. 22-26 (v. 2).
A. D. 1778. — Warwrith France. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1778 (Feisruart).
A. D. 1778-1780.— Repeal of Catholic penal
laws. — The Gordon No-Popery Riots. — "The
Quebec Act of 1774 [see Canada: A. D. 1763-
1774], establishing Catholicism in Canada, would
a generation earlier have been impossible, and it
was justly considered a remarkable sign of the
altered condition of opinion that such a law
should be enacted by a British Parliament, and
should have created no serious disturbances in
the country. . . . The success of the Quebec Act
led Parliament, a few years later, to undertake
the relief of the Catholics at home from some
part of the atrocious penal laws to which they
were still subject. . . . The Act still subsisted
which gave a reward of £100 to any informer
who iirocured the conviction of a Catholic priest
performing his functions in England, and there
were occasional prosecutions, though the judges
strained the law to the utmost in order to defeat
them. . . . The worst part of the persecution of
Catholics was based upon a law of William III,,
and in 1778 Sir George Savile introduced a bill
to repeal those portions of this Act which related
to the apprehending of Popish bishops, priests,
and Jesuits, which subjected these and also Pa-
pists keeping a school to perpetual imprisonment,
and which disabled all Papists from inheriting
or purchasing land. . . . It is an honourable fact
that this Relief Bill was carried witnout a divi-
sion in either House, without any serious opposi-
tion from the bench of bishops, and with the
concurrence of both parties in the State. The
law applied to England only, but the Lord Ad-
vocate promised, in the ensuing session, to intro-
963
ENGLAND, 1778-1780.
Oordon
No-Popery Riots.
ENGLAND, 1778-1780.
duce a similar measure for Scotland. It was
hoped tliat a measure which was so manifestly
moderate and equitable, and which was carried
with such unanimity through Parliament, would
have passed almost unnoticed in the country;
but fiercer elements of fanaticism than politicians
perceived were still smouldering in the nation.
The first signs of the coming storm were seen
among the Presbyterians of Scotland. The Gen-
eral Assembly of the Scotch Established Church
was sitting when the English Relief Bill was
pending, and it rejected by a large majority a
motion for a remonstrance to Parliament against
it. But in a few months an agitation of the most
dangerous description spread swiftly through
the Lowlands. It was stimulated by many in-
cendiary resolutions of provincial synods, by
pamphlets, hand-bills, newspapers, and sermons,
and a ' Committee for the Protestant Interests '
was formed at Edinburgh to direct it. . . . Furi-
ous riots broke out In January, 1779, both in
Edinburgh and Glasgow. Several houses in
which Catholics lived, or the Catholic worship
was celebrated, were burnt to the ground. The
shops of Catholic tradesmen were wrecked, and
their goods scattered, plundered, or destroyed.
Catholic ladies were compelled to take refuge in
Edinburgh Castle. The houses of many Protes-
tants who were believed to sympathise with the
Relief Bill were attacked, and among the num-
ber was that of Robertson the historian. The
troops were called out to suppress the riot, but
they were resisted and pelted, and not suffered
to fire in their defence. . . . The flame soon
spread southwards. For some years letters on
the increase of Popery had been frequently ap-
pearing in the London newspapers. Many mur-
murs had been heard at the enactment of the
Quebec Act, and many striking instances in the
last ten years had shown how easily the spirit of
riot could be aroused, and how impotent the or-
dinary watchmen were to cope with it. . . . The
fanatical party had unfortunately acquired an
unscrupulous leader in the person of Lord George
Gordon, whose name now attained a melancholy
celebrity. He was a young man of thirty, of
very ordinary talents, and with nothing to rec-
ommend him but his connection with the ducal
house of Gordon. . . . A ' Protestant Associa-
tion,' consisting of the worst agitators and fanat-
ics, was formed, and at a great meeting held on
May 29, 1780, and presided over by Lord George
Gordon, It was determined that 20,000 men
should march to the Parliament House to present
a petition for the repeal of the Relief Act. It
was about half-past two on the afternoon of Fri-
day, June 2, that three great bodies, consisting
of many thousands of men, wearing blue cock-
ades, and carrying a petition which was said to
have been signed by near 120,000 persons, ar-
rived by different roads at the Parliament House.
Their first design appears to have been only to in-
timidate, but they very soon proceeded to actual
violence. The two Houses were just meeting,
and the scene that ensued resembled on a large
scale and in an aggravated form the great riot
which had taken place around the Parliament
House in Dublin during the administration
of the Duke of Bedford. The members were
seized, insulted, compelled to put blue cockades
in their hats, to shout ' No Popery I ' and to
swear that they would vote for the repeal ; and
many of them, but especially the members of
the House of Lords, were exposed to the grossest
indignities. ... In the Commons Lord George
Gordon presented the petition, and demanded its
instant consideration. The House behaved with
much courage, and after a hurried debate it was
decided by 192 to 7 to adjourn its considera-
tion till the 6th. Lord George Gordon several
times appeared on the stairs of the gallery,
and addressed the crowd, denouncing by name
those who opposed him, and especially Burke
and North; but Conway rebuked him in the
sight and hearing of the mob, and Colonel Gor-
don, one of his own relatives, declared that the
moment the first man of the mob entered the
House he would plunge his sword into the body
of Lord George. The doors were locked. The
strangers' gallery was empty, but only a few
doorkeepers and a few other ordinary oflUcials
protected the House, while the mob is said at
first to have numbered not less than 60,000 men.
Lord North succeeded in sending a messenger
for the guards, but many anxious hours passed
before they arrived. Twice attempts were made
to force the doors. ... At last about nine
o'clock the troops appeared, and the crowd,
without resisting, agreed to disperse. A great
part of them, however, were bent on further
outrages. They attacked the Sardinian Jlinis-
ter's chapel in Duke Street, Lincoln's Inn Fields.
They broke it open, carried away the silver
lamps and other furniture, burnt the benches in
the street, and flung the burning brands into the
chapel. The Bavarian Minister's chapel in "War-
wick Street Golden Square was next attacked,
plundered, and burnt before the soldiers could
intervene. They at last appeared upon the
scene, and some slight scuflling ensued, and thir-
teen of the rioters were captured. It was hoped
that the riot had expended its force, for Satur-
day and the greater part of Sunday passed with
little disturbance, but on Sunday afternoon new
outrages began in Moorflelds, where a considera-
ble Catholic population resided. Several houses
were attacked and plundered, and the chapels
utterly ruined." — W. E. H. Lecky, HUt. of Eng.
in the 18th Century, ch. 13 (». 3). — "On Monday
the rioters continued their outrages. . . . Not-
withstanding, however, that the town might
now be said to have been in the possession of the
rioters for more than three da3'S, it does not
appear that any more decided measures were
adopted to put them down. Their audacity and
violence, as might have been expected, increased
under this treatment. On Tuesday afternoon
and evening the most terrible excesses were per-
petrated. Notwithstanding that a considerable
military force was stationed around and on the
way to the Houses of Parliament, several of the
members were again insulted and maltreated in
the grossest manner. Indeed, the mob by this
time seem to have got over all apprehensions of
the interference of the soldiers." The principal
event of the day was the attack on Newgate
prison, which was destroyed and the prisoners
released. "The New Prison, Clerkenwell, was
also broken open . . . and all the prisoners set
at large. Attacks were likewise made upon sev-
eral . . . private houses. . . . But the most la-
mentable of all the acts of destruction yet per-
petrated by these infuriated ruffians was that
with which they closed the day of madness and
crime — the entire demolition of the residence of
Lord Mansfield, the venerable Lord Chief Jus-
9G4
ENGLAND, 1778-1780.
Rodney's
Victory,
ENGLAND, 1780-1782.
tice, ia Bloomsbury Square. . . . The scenes
that took place on Wednesday were still more
dreadful than those by which Tuesday had been
marked. The town indeed was now in a state of
complete insurrection : and it was felt by all that
the mob must be put down at any cost, if it was
intended to save the metropolis of the kingdom
from utter destruction. This day, accordingly,
the military were out in all quarters, and were
everywhere employed against the infuriated
multitudes who braved their power. . . . The
King's Bench Prison, the New Gaol, the Bor-
ough Clink, the Surrey Bridewell, were all
burned today. . . . The Mansion House, the 3Iu-
seum, the Exchange, the Tower, and the Bank,
were all, it is understood, marked for destruc-
tion. Lists of these and the other buildings
which it was intended to attack were circulated
among the mob. The bank was actually twice
assaulted; but a powerful body of soldiers by
whom it was guarded on both occasions drove off
the crowd, though not without great slaughter.
At some places the rioters returned the fire of
the military. . . . Among other houses which
were set on fire in Holborn were the extensive
premises of Mr. Langdale, the distiller, who was
a Catholic. . . . The worst consequence of this
outrage, however, was the additional excitement
which the frenzy of the mob received from the
quantities of spirits with which they were here
supplied. Many indeed drank themselves literally
dead ; and many more, who had rendered them-
selves unable to move, perished in the midst of
the flames. Six and thirty fires, it is stated, were
this night to be seen, from one spot, blazing at
the same time in different quarters of the town.
. . . By Thursday morning . . . the exertions
of Government, now thoroughly alarmed, had
succeeded in bringing up from different parts so
large a force of regular troops and of militia as
to make it certain that the rioters would be
speedily overpowered. . . . The soldiers attacked
the mob in various places, and everywhere with
complete success. ... On Friday the courts of
justice were again opened for business, and the
House of Commons met in the evening. . . .
On this first day after the close of the riots, ' the
metropolis, ' says the Annual Register, ' presented
in many places the image of a city recently
stormed and sacked.'. . . Of the persons ap-
prehended and brought to trial, 59 were capitally
convicted ; and of these more than 20 were exe-
cuted; the others were sent to expiate their
offences by passing the remainder of their days
in hard labour and bondage in a distant land.
. . . Lord George Gordon, in consequence of the
part he had borne in the measures which led to
these riots, was sent to the Tower, and some
time afterwards brought to trial on a charge of
high treason," but was acquitted. — Sketches of
Poptilar Tumults, sect. 1, ch. 3.
Also in : J. H. Jesse, Memoirs of the Life and
Reign of George III., ch. 34 (». 2).— H. Walpole,
Journal of the Reign of Qeorge III., v. 2, pp. 403-
i^i,L— Annual Register, 1780, pp. 254-287.— C.
Dickens, Barnahj Rudge. — -W. J. Amherst, Hist,
of Catholic Emancipation, v. 1, eh. 1-5.
A. D. 1780-1782. — Declining strength of the
government. — Rodney's great naval victory. —
The siege of Gibraltar. — "The fall of Lord
North's ministry, and with it the overthrow of
the personal government of George III., was now
close at hand. For a long time the government
had been losing favour. In the summer of 1780,
the British victories in South Carolina had done
something to strengthen, yet when, in the autumn
of that year. Parliament was dissolved, although
the king complained that his expenses for pur-
poses of corruption had been twice as great as
ever before, the new Parliament was scarcely
more favourable to the ministry than the old
one. Misfortunes and perplexities crowded in the
path of Lord North and his colleagues. The ex-
ample of American resistance had told upon Ire-
laud. . . . For more than a year there had been
war in India, where Hyder Ali, for the moment,
was carrying everything before him. France,
eager to regain her lost foothold upon Hindustan,
sent a strong armament thither, and insisted that
England must give up all her Indian conquests
except Bengal. For a moment England's great
Eastern empire tottered, and was saved only by
the superhuman efforts of Warren Hastings, aided
by the wonderful military genius of Sir Eyre
Coote. In Jlay, 1781, the Spaniards had taken
Pensacola, thus driving the British from their
last position in Florida. In February, 1782, the
Spanish fleet captured Minorca, and the siege of
Gibraltar, which had been kept up for nearly
three years, was pressed with redoubled energy.
During the winter the French recaptured St.
Eustatius, and handed it over to Holland; and
Grasse's great fleet swept away all the British
possessions in the West Indies, except Jamaica,
Barbadoes, and Antigua. All this time the
Northern League kept up its jealous watch upon
British cruisers in the narrow seas, and among
all the powers of Europe the government of
George could not find a single friend. The mari-
time supremacy of England was, however, im-
paired but for a moment. Rodney was sent back
to the West Indies, and on the 12th of April,
1782, his fleet of 36 ships encountered the French
near the island of Sainte-Marie-Galante. The
battle of eleven hours which ensued, and in which
5,000 men were killed or wounded, was one of
the most tremendous contests ever witnessed
upon the ocean before the time of Nelson. The
French were totally defeated, and Grasse was
taken prisoner, — the first French commander-in-
chief, by sea or land, who had fallen into an
enemy's hands since Marshal Tallard gave up
his sword to Marlborough, on the terrible day of
Blenheim. France could do nothing to repair
this crushing disaster. Her naval power was
eliminated from the situation at a single blow ;
and in the course of the summer the English
achieved another great success by overthrowing
the Spaniards at Gibraltar, after a struggle which,
for dogged tenacity, is scarcely paralleled in
modern warfare. By the autumn of 1782, Eng-
land, defeated in the United States, remained vic-
torious and defiant as regarded the other parties
to the war." — J. Fiske, American Revolution . ch.
15 (ii. 2). — " Gibraltar . . . had been closely in-
vested for nearly three years. At first, the
Spanish had endeavoured to starve the place ; but
their blockade having been on two occasions
forced by the British fleet, they relinquished that
plan, and commenced a regular siege. During
the spring and summer of 1781, the fortress was
bombarded, but with little success ; in the month
of November, the enemy were driven from their
approaches, and the works themselves were al-
most destroyed by a sally from the garrison.
Early in the year, however, the fall of Minorca
965
ENGLAND, 1780-1782.
Siege
of Gibraltar.
ENGLAND, 1782-1783.
enabled the Spanish to reform the siege of Gib-
raltar. De Grillou himself, the hero of Minorca,
superseding Alvarez, assumed the chief com-
mand. . . . The garrison of Gibraltar comprised
no more than 7,000 men; while the force of the
allied monarchies amounted to 33,000 soldiers,
with an immense train of artillery. De Grillon,
however, who was well acquainted with the for-
tress, had little hope of taking it from the land
side, but relied with confidence on the formidable
preparations which he had made for bombarding
it from the sea. Huge floating batteries, bomb-
proof and shot-proof, were constructed; and it
was calculated that the action of these tremen-
dous engines alone would be sufficient to destroy
the works. Besides the battering ships, of which
ten were provided, a large armament of vessels
of all rates was equipped; and a grand attack
was to take place, both from sea and land, with
400 pieces of artillery. Six months were con-
sumed in these formidable preparations; and it
was not until September that they were com-
pleted. A partial cannonade took place on the
9th and three following days; but the great at-
tack, which was to decide the fate of the be-
leaguered fortress, was commenced on the 18th of
September. On that day, the combined fleets of
France and Spain, consisting of 47 sail of the
line, besides numerous ships of inferior rate, were
drawn out in order of battle before Gibraltar.
Numerous bomb ketches, gun and mortar boats,
dropped their anchors within close range ; while
the ten floating batteries were moored with strong
iron chains within half gun-shot of the walls.
On the laud 170 guns were prepared to open fii-e
simultaneously with the ships; and 40,000 troops
were held in readiness to rush in at the first prac-
ticable breach. . . . The grand attack was com-
menced at ten o'clock in the forenoon, by the fire
of 400 pieces of artillery. The great floating bat-
teries, securely anchored within 600 yards of the
walls, poured in an incessant storm, from 143
guns. Elliot had less than 100 guns to reply to
the cannonade both from sea and land ; and of
these he made the most judicious use. Disre-
garding the attack from every other quarter, he
concentrated the whole of his ordnance on the
floating batteries in front of him ; for unless these
were silenced, their force would prove irresisti-
ble. But for a long time the thunder of 80
guns made no impression on the enormous masses
of wood and iron. The largest shells glanced
harmless from their sloping roofs; the heaviest
shot could not penetrate their hulls seven feet in
thickness. Nevertheless, the artillery of the gar-
rison was still unceasingly directed against these
terrible engines of destruction. A storm of red-
hot balls was poured down upon them; and
about midday it was observed that the combus-
tion caused by these missiles, which had hitherto
been promptly extinguished, was beginning to
take effect. Soon after, the partial cessation
of the guns from the battering ships, and the
volumes of smoke which issued from their decks,
made it manifest they were on fire, and that all
the efEorts of the crews were required to subdue
the conflagration. Towards evening, their guns
became silent; and before midnight, the flames
burst forth from the principal floating battery,
which carried the Admiral's flag. . . . Eight of
the 10 floating batteries were on fire during the
night; ;ind the only care of the besieged was to
save from the flames and from the waters, the
wretched survivors of that terrible flotilla, which
had so recently menaced them with annihilation.
. . . The loss of the enemy was computed at
2,000 ; that of the garrison, in killed and wounded,
amounted to no more than 84. The labour of a few
hours sufficed to repair the damage sustained by
the works. The French and Spanish fleets re-
mained in the Straits, expecting the appearance
of the British squadron under Lord Howe ; and
relying on their superiority in ships and weight
of metal, they still hoped that the result of an
action at sea might enable them to resume the
siege of Gibraltar. Howe, having been delayed
by contrary winds, did not reach the Straits until
the 9th of October; and, notwithstanding the
superior array which the enetny presented, he
was prepared to risk an engagement. But at
this juncture, a storm having scattered the com-
bined fleet, the British Admiral was enabled to
land his stores and reinforcements without op-
position. Having performed this duty, he set
sail for England ; nor did the Spanisli Admiral,
though still superior by eight sail of the line, ven-
ture to dispute his passage. Such was the close
of the great siege of Gibraltar; an undertaking
which had been regarded by Spain as the chief
object of the war, which she had prosecuted for
three years, and which, at the last, had been
pressed by the whole force of the allied mon-
archies. After this event, the war Itself was
virtually at an end." — W. Massey, Hist, of Eng.,
Reign of Oem-(je III. , cli. 37 («. 3).
Also ik : Lord Mahon (Earl Stanhope), Hist,
of Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 63-66 (». 7).— J. Drink-
water, Hist, of the Siege of 0-ibraltar.
A. D. 1780-1783. — Second war with Hyder
AH, or Second Mysore War. See India; A. D.
1780-1783.
A. D. 1781-1783.— War with Holland. See
Netherlands (Holland) : A. D. 1746-1787.
A. D. 1782. — Legislative independence con-
ceded to Ireland. See Ireland: A. D. 1778-
1794.
A. D. 1782-1783.— Fall of Lord North.— The
second Rockingham Ministry. — Fox, Shel-
burne, and the American peace negotiations.
— The Shelburne Ministry. — Coalition of Fox
and North. — "There comes a point when even
tlie most servile majority of an unrepresentative
Parliament finds the strain of party allegiance
too severe, and that point was reached when the
surrender of Cornwallis at Yorktown became
known in November, 1781. ' O God, it is all
overl' cried Lord North, wringing his hands,
when he heard of it. . . . On February 7, a vote
of censure, moved by Pox, upon Lord Sandwich,
was negatived by a majority of only twenty-two.
On the 22nd, General Conway lost a motion in
favour of putting an end to the war by only one
vote. On the 27th, the motion was renewed in
the form of a resolution and carried by a major-
ity of nineteen [see United States op Am. :
A. D. 1782 (February— jVL\y)]. Still theKing
would not give his consent to Lord North's res-
ignation. Rather than commit himself to the op-
position, he seriously thought of abdicating his
crown and retiring to Hanover. . . . Indeed, if
it had not been for his lai'ge family, and the
character of the Prince of Wales, already too well
known, it is far from improbable that he would
have carried this idea into execution, and retired
from a Government of which he was no longer
master. By the SOth [of March], however, even
966
ENGLAND, 1782-1783.
Fall of
Lord North.
ENGLAND, 1782-1783.
George IIL saw that the game could not be kept
up any longer. He gave permission to Lord
North to announce his resignation, and parted
with him with the characteristic words : ' Re-
member, my Lord, it is you who desert me, not
I who desert you.' . . . Even when the long-de-
ferred blow fell, and Lord North's Ministry was
no more, the King refused to send for Lord
Rockingham. He still flattered himself that he
might get together a jMinlstry from among the
followers of Chatham and of Lord North, which
would be able to restore peace without granting
independence, and Shelburue was the politician
whom he fixed upon to aid him in this scheme.
. . . Shelburne, however, was too clever to fall
into the trap. A Ministry which had against it
the influence of the Rockingham connection and
the talents of Charles Fox, and would not receive
the hearty support of Lord North's phalanx of
placemen, was foredoomed to failure. The pear
was not yet ripe. He saw clearly enough that
his best chance of permanent success lay in be-
coming the successor, not the supplanter, of
Rockingham. . . . His game was to wait. He
respectfully declined to act without Rockingham.
. . . Before Rockingham consented to take office,
he procured a distinct pledge from the King that
he would not put a veto upon American inde-
pendence, if the Ministers recommended it ; and
on the i27th of jMarch the triumph of the Opposi-
tion was completed by the formation of a Minis-
try, mainly representative of the old Whig fami-
lies, pledged to a policy of economical reform,
and of peace with America on the basis of the
acknowledgment of independence. Fox received
the reward of his services by being appointed
Foreign Secretary, and Lord Shelburne took
charge of the Home and Colonial Department.
Rockingham himself went to the Treasury, Lord
John Cavendish became Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, Lord Keppel First Lord of the Ad-
miralty, Lord Camden President of the Council.
Burke was made Paymaster of the Forces, and
Sheridan Under-Secretary to his friend Fox. At
the King's special request, Thurlow was allowed
to remain as Chancellor. . . . The Cabinet no
sooner met than it divided into the parties of
Shelburne and of Fox, while Rockingham, Con-
way, and Cavendish tried to hold the balance be-
tween them, and Thurlow artfully fomented the
dissensions. . . . Few Administrations have done
30 much in a short time as did the Rockingham
Ministry during the three months of its existence,
and it so happened that the, lion's share of the
work fell to Pox. Upon his appointment to of-
fice his friends noticed a change in habits and
manner of life, as complete as that ascribed to
Henry V. on his accession to the throne. He is
said never to have touched a card during either
of his three short terms of office. . . . By the di-
vision of work among the two Secretaries of State,
all matters which related to the colonies were
under the control of Shelburne, while those re-
lating to foreign Governments belonged to the
department of Fox. Consequently it became
exceedingly important to these two Ministers
whether independence was to be granted to the
American colonies by the Crown of its own ac-
cord, or should be reserved in order to form part
of the general treat)' of peace. According to
Fox's plan, independence was to be offered at
once fully and freely to the Americans. They
would thus gain at a blow all that they wanted.
Their jealousy of French and Spanish interests
in America would at once assert itself, and Eng-
land would have no difficulty in bringing them
over to her side in the negotiations with France.
Such was Fox's scheme, but unfortunately, di-
rectly America became independent, she ceased
to be in any way subject to Shelburne's manage-
ment, and the negotiations for peace would pass
wholly out of his control into the hands of Fox.
. . . Shelburne at once threw his whole weight
into the opposite scale. He urged with great ef-
fect that to give independence at once was to
throw away the trump card. It was the chief
concession which England would be required to
make, the only one which she was prepared to
make ; and to make it at once, before she was
even asked, was wilfully to deprive herself of
her best weapon. The King and the Cabinet
adopted Shelburne's view. Fox's scheme for the
isolation of France failed, and a double negotia-
tion for peace was set on foot. Shelburue and
Franklin took charge of the treaty with America
[see United States of Am. : A. D. 1783 (Sep-
tember)], Fox and M. de Vergennes that with
France and Spain and Holland. An arrangement
of this sort could hardly have succeeded had the
two Secretaries been the firmest of friends ; since
they were rivals and enemies it was foredoomed
to failure." Fox found occasion very soon to
complain that important matters in Shelburne's
negotiation with Franklin were kept from his
knowledge, and once more he proposed to the
Cabinet an immediate concession of independence
to the Americans. Again he was outvoted, and,
"defeated and despairing, only refrained from
resigning there and then because he would not em-
bitter Rockingham's last moments upon earth. "
This was on the 30th of June. "On the 1st of
July Rockingham died, and on the 2nd Shelburne
accepted from the King the task of forming a
Ministry." Fox, of course, declined to enter it,
and suffered in influence because he could not
make public the reasons for his inability to act
with Lord Shelburne. " Only Lord Cavendish,
Burke, and the Solicitor-General, Lee, left office
with Portland and Fox, and the gap was more
than supplied by the entrance of William Pitt
[Lord Chatham's son, who had entered Parlia-
ment in 1780] into the Cabinet as Chancellor of
the Exchequer. Fortune seemed to smile on
Shelburne. He . . . might well look forward
to a long and unclouded tenure of political
power. His Administration lasted not quite seven
months. " It was weakened by distrust and dis-
satisfaction among its members, and overturned
iu February, 1783, by a vote of censure on the
peace which it had concluded with France, Spain
and the American States. It was succeeded in
the Government by the famous Coalition Minis-
try formed under Fox and Lord North. "The
Duke of Portland succeeded Shelburne at the
Treasury. Lord North and Fox became the Sec-
retaries of State. Lord John Cavendish returned
to the Exchequer, Keppel to the Admiralty, and
Burke to the Paymastership, the followers of
Lord North . . . were rewarded with the lower
offices. Few combinations in the history of polit-
ical parties have been received by historians and
posterity with more unqualified condemnation
than the coalition of 1783. . . . There is no evi-
dence to show that at the time it struck politicians
iu general as being specially heinous." — H. O.
Wakeman, Life of Charles Janied Fox, ch. 3—5.
967
ENGLAND, 1782-1783.
The Younger
Pitt.
ENGLAND, 1783-1787.
Also in: Lord J. Eussell, Life of Fox, ch. 16-
17 (v. 1).— W. P. Rae, Wilkes, Sheridan, Fox,
pp. 307-317.— Lord E. Fitzmaurice, Life of Wil-
liam, Earl of Shelburne, i\ 3, c!i. 3-6.
A. D. 1783. — The definitive Treaty of Peace
with the United States of America signed at
Paris. See United States of Am. : A. D. 1783
(Septe.mbek).
A. D. 1783-1787. — Fall of the Coalition. —
Ascendancy of the younger Pitt. — His extra-
ordinary grasp of power. — His attempted
measures of reform. — "Parliament met on the
11th of November; on the 18th Fox asked for
leave to introduce a Bill for the Better Govern-
ment of India. That day month the Government
had ceased to exist. Into the merits of the Bill
it is not now necessary to enter. . . . It was clear
that it furnished an admirable weapon against
an unpopular Coalition which had resisted eco-
nomical reform, demanded a great income for a
debauched prince, and now aimed at securing a
monopoly of the vast patronage of India, — pat-
ronage which, genially exercised by Dundas,
was soon to secure Scotland for Pitt. In the
House of Commons the majority for the Bill was
over 100; the loftiest eloquence of Burke was
exerted in its favour; and Fox was, as ever,
dauntless and crushing in debate. But outside
Parliament the King schemed, and controversy
raged. . . . When tlie Bill arrived at the House
of Lords, the undertakers were ready. The King
had seen Temple, and empowered him to com-
municate to all whom it might concern his august
disapprobation. The uneasy whisper circulated,
and the joints of the lords became as water. The
peers who yearned for lieutenancies or regiments,
for stars or strawberry leaves ; the prelates, who
sought a larger sphere of usefulness ; the minions
of the bedchamber and the janissaries of the
closet; all, temporal or spiritual, whose convic-
tions were unequal to their appetite, rallied to
the royal nod. . . . The result was overwhelm-
ing. The triumphant Coalition was paralysed by
the rejection of their Bill. They rightly refused
to resign, but the King could not sleep until he
had resumed the seals. Late at night he sent
for them. The messenger found North and Fox
gaily seated at supper with their followers. At
first he was not believed. ' The King would not
dare do it,' exclaimed Fox. But the under Sec-
retary charged with the message soon convinced
them of its authenticity, and the seals were de-
livered with a light heart. In such dramatic
fashion, and the springtide of its youth, fell that
famous government, unhonoured and unwept.
' England,' once said Mr. Disraeli, ' does not love
coalitions.' She certainly did not love this one.
On this occasion there was neither hesitation nor
delay ; the moment had come, and the man.
Within 13 hours of the King's receiving the seals,
Pitt had accepted the First Lordship of the Treas-
ury and the Chancellorship of the Exchequer.
That afternoon his writ was moved amid univer-
sal derision. And so commenced a supreme and
unbroken Ministry of 17 years. Those who
laughed were hardly blamable, for the difficulties
were tremendous. . . . The composition of the
Government was . . . the least of Pitt's embar-
rassments. The majority against him in the
House of Commons was not less than 40 or 50,
containing, with the exception of Pitt himself
and Dundas, every debater of eminence; while
he had, before the meeting of Parliament, to pre-
pare and to obtain the approval of the East India
Company to a scheme which should take the place
of Burke's. The Coalition JNIinisters were only
dismissed on the 18th of December, 1783; but,
when the House of Commons met on the 12th of
January, 1784, all this had been done. The nar-
rative of the next three months is stirring to
read, but would require too much detail for our
limits. . . . On the day of the meeting of Par-
liament, Pitt was defeated in two pitched divi-
sions, the majorities against him being 39 and 54.
His government seemed still-born. His col-
leagues were dismayed. The King came up from
Windsor to support him. But in truth he needed
no support. He had inherited from his father
that confidence which made Chatham once say,
' I am sure that I can save this country, and that
nobody else can ' ; which made himself say later,
' I place much dependence on my new colleagues;
I place still more dependence on myself.' He
had refused, in spite of the King's insistance, to
dissolve; for he felt that the country required
time. . . . The Clerkship of the Pells, a sinecure
office worth not less than £3,000 a year, fell va-
cant the very day that Parliament met. It was
universally expected that Pitt would take it as
of right, and so acquire an independence, which
woukl enable him to devote his life to politics,
without care for the morrow. He had not £300
a year ; bis position was to the last degree pre-
carious. . . . Pitt disappointed his friends and
amazed his enemies. He gave the place to Barre.
... To a nation Inured to jobs this came as a
revelation. . . . Above and beyond all was the
fact that Pitt, young, unaided, and alone, held
his own with the great leaders allied against him.
... In face of so resolute a resistance, the assail-
ants began to melt away. Their divisions,
though they always showed a superiority to the
Government, betrayed notable diminution. . . .
On the 35th of March Parliament was dissolved,
the announcement being retarded by the unex-
plained theft of the Great Seal. When the elec-
tions were over, the party of Fox, it was found,
had shared the fate of the host of Sennacherib.
The number of Fox's martyrs — of Fox's follow-
ers who had earned that nickname by losing their
seats — was 160. . . . The King and Pitt were
supported on the tidal wave of one of those great
convulsions of feeling, which in Great Britain
relieve and express pent-up national sentiment,
and which in other nations produce revolutions."
— Lord Rosebery, Pitt, ch. 3.^" Three subjects
then needed the attention of a great statesman,
though none of them were so pressing as to force
themselves on the attention of a little statesman.
These were, our economical and financial legisla-
tion, the imperfection of our parliamentary rep-
resentation, and the unhappy condition of Ire-
land. Pitt dealt with all three. ... He brought
in a series of resolutions consolidating our cus-
toms laws, of which the inevitable complexity
may be estimated by their number. They
amounted to 133, and the number of Acts of
Parliament which they restrained or completed
was much greater. He attempted, and success-
fully, to apply the principles of Free Trade, the
principles wliich he was the first of English
statesmen to learn from Adam Smith, to the ac-
tual commerce of the country. . . . Tlie financial
reputation of Pitt has greatly suffered from the
absurd praise which was once lavished on the
worst part of it. The dread of national ruin
968
ENGLAND, 1783-1787.
The French
Revolittio7i.
ENGLAND, 1793-1796.
from the augmentation of the national debt was
a sort of nightmare in that age. . . . Mr. Pitt
sympathised with the general apprehension and
created the well-known 'Sinking Fund.' He
proposed to apply annually a certain fixed sura
to the payment of the debt, which was in itself
excellent, but he omitted to provide real money
to be so paid. . . . He proposed to borrow the
money to pay off the debt, and fancied that he
thus diminished it. . . . The exposure of this
financial juggle, for though not intended to be
so, such in fact it was, has reacted very unfavour-
ably upon Mr. Pitt's deserved fame. . . . The
subject of parliamentary reform is the one with
which, in Mr. Pitt's early days, the public most
connected his name, and is also that with which
we are now least apt to connect it. . . . He pro-
posed the abolition of the worst of the rotten
boroughs fifty years before Lord Grey accom-
plished it. . . . If the strong counteracting in-
fluence of the French Revolution had not changed
the national opinion, he would unquestionably
have amended our parliamentary representation.
. . . The state of Ireland was a more pressing
difficulty than our financial confusion, our eco-
nomical errors, or our parliamentary corruption.
. . . He proposed at once to remedy the national
danger of having two Parliaments, and to remove
the incredible corruption of the old Irish Parlia-
ment, by uniting the three kingdoms in a single
representative system, of which the Parliament
should sit in England. ... Of these great re-
forms he was only permitted to carry a few into
execution. His power, as we have described it,
was great when his reign commenced, and very
great it continued to be for very many years ; but
the time became unfavourable for all forward-
looking statesmanship." — W. Bagehot, Biograph-
ical Studies: William Pitt.
Also in: Earl Stanhope, Life of William Pitt,
ch. 4-9 {v. 1).— G. Tomline, Ufe of William Pitt,
ch. 8-9 (v. 1-2).— Lord Rosebery, Pitt, ch. 3^.
A. D. 1788 (February). — Opening of the Trial
of Warren Hastings. See India: A. D.1785-
1795.
A. D. 1788-1789. — The King's second de-
rangement. — The king's second derangement,
which began to show itself in the summer of
1788, was more serious and of longer duration
than the first. "He was able ... to sign a
warrant for the further prorogation of Parlia-
ment by conunission, from the 25th September
to the 20th November. But, in the interval,
the king's malady increased : he was wholly de-
prived of reason, and placed under restraint ; and
for several days his life was in danger. As no
authority could be obtained from him for a fur-
ther prorogation, both Houses assembled on the
20th November. . . . According to long estab-
lished law. Parliament, without being opened by
the Crown, had no authority to proceed to any
business whatever: but the necessity of an
occasion, for which the law had made no provi-
sion, was now superior to the law ; and Parlia-
ment accordingly proceeded to deliberate upon
the momentous questions to which the king's ill-
ness had given rise. " By Mr. Fox it was main-
tained that ' ' the Prince of Wales had as clear a
right to exercise the power of sovereignty dur-
ing the king's incapacity as if the king were
actually dead ; and that it was merely for the
two Houses of Parliament to pronounce at what
time he should commence the exercise of his
right. . . . Mr. Pitt, on the other hand, main
tained that as no legal provision had been made
for carrying on the government, it belonged to
the Houses of Parliament to make such provi-
sion." The discussion to which these differences,
and many obstructing circumstances in the situa-
tion of affairs, gave rise, was so prolonged, that
the king recovered his faculties (February, 1789)
before the Regency Bill, framed by Mr. Pitt,
had been passed. — T. E. Jlay, Const. Hist, of
Eng., V. 1, i-h. 3.
A. D. 1789-1792. — War with Tippoo Saib
(third Mysore War). See India: A. D. 1785-
1793.
A. D. 1793. — The Coalition against Revolu-
tionary France. — Unsuccessful siege of Dun-
kirk. See France: A. D. 1793 (March — Sep-
te.mber), and (July — December),
A. D. 1793-1796. — Popular feeling tovyards
the French Revolution. — Small number of
the English Jacobins. — Pitt forced into war. —
Tory panic and reign of terror. — -Violence of
government measures. — ' ' That the war [of Rev-
olutionary France] with Germany would widen
into a vast European struggle, a struggle iu
which the peoples would rise against their op-
pressors, and the freedom which France had won
diffuse itself over the world, no French revolu-
tionist doubted for an hour. Nor did they doubt
that in this struggle England would join them.
It was from England that they had drawn those
principles of political and social liberty which they
believed themselves to be putting into practice.
It was to England that they looked above all for
approbation and sympathy. ... To the revolu-
tionists at Paris the attitude of England remained
imintelligible and Irritating. Instead of the aid
they had counted on, they found but a cold neu-
trality. . . . But that this attitude was that of
the English people as a whole was incredible to
the French enthusiasts. . . . Their first work
therefore they held to be the bringing about a
revolution in England. . . . They strove, through
a number of associations which had formed them-
selves under the name of Constitutional Clubs,
to rouse the same spirit which they had roused
in France; and the French envoy, Chauvelin,
protested warmly against a proclamation which
denounced this correspondence as seditious. . . .
Burke was still working hard in writings whose
extravagance of style was forgotten in their in-
tensity of feeling to spread alarm throughout
Europe. He had from the first encouraged the
emigrant princes to take arms, and sent his son
to join them at Coblentz. 'Be alarmists,' he
wrote to them ; ' diffuse terror 1 ' But the royalist
terror which he sowed would have been of little
moment had it not roused a revolutionary terror
in France. ... In November the Convention
decreed that France offered the aid of her soldiers
to all nations who would strive for freedom. . . .
In the teeth of treaties signed only two years be-
fore, and of the stipulation made by England
when it pledged itself to neutrality, the French
Government resolved to attack Holland, and
ordered its generals to enforce by arms the open-
ing of the Scheldt [see France: A. D. 1792-1793
(December — February)]. To do this was to
force England into war. Public opinion was
already pressing every day harder upon Pitt. . . .
But even while withdrawing our Minister from
Paris on the imprisonment of the King, to whose
Court he had been commissioned, Pitt clung
969
ENGLAND, 1793-1796.
English
Jacobins,
ENGLAND, 1797.
stubbornly to a policy of peace. . . . No hour
of Pitt's life is so great as the hour when he stood
lonely and passionless before the growth of
national passion, and refused to bow to the gath-
ering cry for war. . . . But desperately as Pitt
struggled for peace, his struggle was in vain.
. . . Both sides ceased from diplomatic communi-
cations, and in February 1793 France issued her
Declaration of "War. From that moment Pitt's
power was at an end. His pride, his immoveable
firmness, and the general confidence of the nation,
still kept him at the head of affairs ; but he could
do little save drift along with a tide of popular
feeling which he never fully understood. Around
him the country broke out in a fit of passion and
panic which rivalled the passion and panic over-
sea. . . . The partisans of Republicanism were
in reality but a few haudfuls of men. . . . But
in the mass of Englishmen the dread of these
revolutionists passed for the hour into sheer panic.
Even the bulk of the Whig party believed prop-
erty and the constitution to be in peril, and for-
sook Pox when he still proclaimed his faith in
France and the Revolution." — J. R. Green, Jlist.
of the Eng. People, bk. 9, ch. 4 (». 4). — "Burke
himself said that not one man in a hundred was
a Revolutionist. Fox's revolutionary sentiments
mut with no response, but with general reproba-
tion, and caused even his friends to shrink from
liis side. Of the so-called Jacobin Societies, .the
Society for Constitutional Information numbered
only a few hundred members, who, though they
held extreme opinions, were headed by men of
character, and were quite incapable of treason
or violence. The Corresponding Society was of
a more sinister character ; but its numbers were
computed oulj^ at 6,000, and it was swallowed up
in the loyal masses of the people. ... It is sad
to say it, but when Pitt had once left the path of
right, he fell headlong into evil. To gratify the
ignoble fears and passions of his party, he com-
menced a series of attacks on English liberty of
speaking and writing which Mr. Massey, a strong
anti-revolutionist, characterizes as unparalleled
since the time of Charles I. The country was
filled with spies. A band of the most infamous
informers was called into activity by the govern-
ment. . . . There was a Tory reign of terror, to
which a slight increase of the panic among the
upper classes would probably have lent a redder
hue. Among other measures of repression the
Habeas Corpus Act was suspended ; and the lib-
erties of all men were thus placed at the mercy
of the party in power. ... In Scotland the Tory
reign of terror was worse than in England." —
Goldwin Smith, Tlwee Engliih Statesmen, pp. 339-
247. — " The gaols were filled with political delin-
quents, and no man who professed himself a
reformer could say, that the morrow might not
see him a prisoner upon a charge of high treason.
. . . But the rush towards despotism against
which the Whigs could not stand, was arrested
by the people. Although the Habeas Corpus
had fallen, the Trial by Jury remained, and now,
as it had done before, when the alarm of fictitious
plots had disposed the nation to acquiesce in the
surrender of its liberties, it opposed a barrier
which Toryism could not pass." The trials which
excited most interest were those of Hardy, who
organized the Corresponding Society, and Home
Tooke. But no unlawful conduct or treasonable
designs could be proved against them by credita-
ble witnesses, and both were acquitted. ' ' The
public joy was very general at these acquittals.
. . . The war lost its popularity ; bread grew
scarce ; commerce was crippled ; . . . the easy
success that had been anticipated was replaced
by reverses. The people clamoured and threw
stones at the king, and Pitt eagerly took advan-
tage of their violence to tear away the few shreds
of the constitution which j'et covered them. He
brought forward the Seditious Meetings bill,
and the Treasonable Practices bill. Bills which,
among other provisions, placed the conduct of
every political meeting under the protection of a
magistrate, and rendered disobedience to his com-
mand a felony." — G. W. Cooke, Sist. of Party,
r. 3, ch. 17.
Also in : J. Adolphus, Hist, of Eng. : Reign
of George III. ch. 81-89a,/jfZ9.5((\5-6).— J. Gifford,
mst. of the Political Life of Win. Pitt, ch. 33-24,
and 38-29 (». 3-4).— W. Massey, Sist. of Eng. :
Reign of George III.,ch. 82-36 (c. 3-4).— E. Smith,
The Story of the English Jacobins. — A. Bisset,
Short Hist, of the Eng. Parliament, ch. 8.
A. D. 1794. — Campaigns of the Coalition
against France. — French successes in the
Netherlands and on the Rhine. — Conquest of
Corsica. — Naval victory of Lord Howe. See
France: A. D. 1794 (M.\rch— July),
A. D. 1794. — Angry relations with the
United States.— The Jay Treaty. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1794-1795.
A. D. 1794-1795. — Withdrawal of troops
from the Netherlands. — French conquest of
Holland. — Establishment of the Batavian Re-
public. — Crumbling of the European Coalition.
See France: A. O. 1794-179.5 (October— May).
A. D. 1795. — Disastrous expedition to Qui-
beron Bay. See Fr.\nce: A. D. 1794-1796.
A. D. 1795. — Capture of the Cape of Good
Hope from the Dutch. See France: A. D.
1793 (.June — December).
A. D. 1796 (September). — Evacuation and
abandonment of Corsica. See France; A. D.
1796 (September).
A. D. 1796 (October). — Unsuccessful peace
negotiations with the French Directory. See
France: A. D. 1796 (October).
A. D. 1796-1798. — Attempted French inva-
sions of Ireland. — Irish Insurrection. See Ire-
land: A. D. 1793-1798.
A. D. 1797. — Monetary panic and suspen-
sion of specie payments. — Defeat of the first
Reform movement. — Mutiny of the Fleet. —
Naval victories of Cape St. Vincent and Cam-
perdown. — "The aspect of affairs in Britain
had never been so clouded during the 18th cen-
tury as at the beginning of the year 1797. The
failure of Lord Malmesbury's mission to Paris
had closed every hope of an honourable termina-
tion to the war, while of all her original allies,
Austria alone remained ; the national burdens
were continually increasing, and the three-per-
cents had fallen to fifty-one ; while party spirit
raged with uncommon violence, and Ireland was
in a state of partial insurrection. A still greater
disaster resulted from the panic arising from the
dread of invasion, and which produced such a
run on all the banks, that the Bank of England
itself was reduced to payment in sixpences, and
an Order in Council appeared (Feb. 26) for the
suspension of all cash payments. This measure,
at first only temporary, was prolonged from time
to time by parliamentary enactments, making
bank-notes a legal-tender; and it was not till
970
ENGLAND, 1797.
Victories
at Sea.
ENGLAND, 1800.
1819, after the conclusion of peace, that the re-
currence to metallic currency took place. The
Opposition deemed this a favourable opportunity
to renew their cherished project of parliamen-
tary reform ; and on 26th May, Mr. (afterwards
Lord) Grey brought forward a plan chiefly re-
markable for containing the outlines of that sub-
sequently earned into effect in 1831. It was
negatived, however, after violent debates, by a
majority of 258 against 93. After a similar
strife of parties, the motion for the continuance
of the war was carried by a great majority in
both houses; and the requisite supplies were
voted. . . . Unknown to the government, great
discontent had for a long time prevailed in the
navy. The exciting causes were principally the
low rate of pay (which had not been raised
since the time of Charles II.), the unequal distri-
bution of prize-money, and undue severity in
the maintenance of discipline. These grounds of
complaint, with others not less well founded,
gave rise to a general conspiracy, which broke
out (April 15) in the Channel fleet under Lord
Bridport. All the ships fell under the power of
the insurgents ; but they maintained perfect order,
and memorialised the Admiralty and the Com-
mons on their grievances: their demands being
examined by government, and found to be rea-
sonable, were granted ; and on the 7th of May
the fleet returned to its duty. But scarcely was
the spirit of disaffection quelled in this quarter,
when it broke out in a more alarming form
(May 22) among the squadron at the Nore, which
was soon after (June 6) joined by the force which
had been cruising off the Texel under Lord Dun-
can. The mutineers appointed a seaman named
Parker to the command ; and, blockading the
mouth of the Thames, announced their demands
in such a tone of menacing audacity as insured
their instant rejection by the government. This
second mutiny caused dreadful consternation in
London ; but the firmness of the King remained
unshaken, and he was nobly seconded by the
parliament. A bill was passed, prohibiting all
communication with the mutineers under pain of
deatli. Sheerness and Tilbury Fort were armed
and garrisoned for the defence of the Thames ; and
the sailors, finding the national feelings strongly
arraj^ed against them, became gradually sensible
that their enterprise was desperate. One by one
the ships returned to their duty; and on 15th
June all had submitted. Parker and several
other ringleaders suffered death; but clemency
was extended to the multitude. . . . Notwith-
standing all these dissensions, the British navy
was never more terrible to its enemies than dur-
ing this eventful year. On the 14th of February,
the Spanish fleet of 27 sail of the line and 12
frigates, which had put to sea for the purpose of
raising the blockade of the French harbours, was
encountered off Cape St. Vincent by Sir John
Jarvis, who had only 15 ships and 6 frigates.
By the old manoeuvre of breaking the line, 9 of
the Spanish ships were cut off from the rest;
and the admiral, while attempting to regain them
by wearing round the rear of the Britisli line,
was boldly assailed by Nelson and Collingwood,
— the former of whom, in the Captain, of 74
guns, engaged at once two of the enemy's gigan-
tic vessels, the Santissima Trinidad of 136 guns,
and the San Josef of 112; while the Salvador del
Mundo, also of 112 guns, struck in a quarter of
an hour to Collingwood. Nelson at length car-
ried the San Josef by boarding, and received the
Spanish admiral's sword on his own quarter-
deck. The Santissima Trinidad — an enormous
four-decker — though her colours were twice
struck, escaped in the confusion; but the San
Josef and the Salvador, with two 74-gun ships,
remained in the hands of the British ; and the
Spanish armament, thus routed by little more
than half its own force, retired in the deepest
dejection to Cadiz, which was shortly after in-
sulted by a bombardment from the gallant Nel-
son. A more important victory than that of Sir
John Jarvis (created in consequence Earl St.
Vincent) was never gained at sea, from the evi-
dent superiority of skill and seamanship which
it demonstrated in the British navy. The battle
of St. Vincent disconcerted the plans of Truguet
for the naval campaign ; but later in the season
a second attempt to reach Brest was made by a
Dutch fleet of 15 sail of the line and 11 frigates,
under the command of De Winter, a man of
tried courage and experience. The British block-
ading fleet, under Admiral Duncan, consisted of
16 ships and 3 frigates; and the battle was
fought (Oct. 16) off Camperdown, about nine
miles from the shore of Holland. The manoeu-
vres of the British Admiral were directed to cut
off the enemy's retreat to his own shores ; and
this having been accomplished, the action com-
menced yard-arm to yard-arm, and continued
with the utmost fury for more than tliree hours.
The Dutch sailors fought with the most admi-
rable skill and courage, and proved themselves
worthy descendants of VanTromp and De Ruy ter ;
but the prowess of the British was irresistible.
12 sail of the line, including the flagship, two 56-
gun ships, and 2 frigates, struck their colours;
but the nearness of the shore enabled two of the
prizes to escape, and one 74-gun ship foundered.
The obstinacy of the conflict was evidenced by
the nearly equal number of killed and wounded,
which amounted to 1,040 English, and 1,160
Dutch. . . . The only remaining operations of
the year were the capture of Trinidad in Febru-
ary, by a force which soon after was repulsed
from before Porto Rico ; and an abortive attempt
at a descent in Pembroke Bay by about 1,400
French." — Epitome of Alison's Uist. of Europe,
sect. 190-196 {eh. 22, v. 5— of complete work).
Also in: J. Adolphus, Hist, of Eng.: Reign of
George III., ch. 100-103 («. 6).— R. Southey, Life
of Nelson, ch. 4. — E. J. De La Gravifere, Sketches of
the Last Naval War, v. 1, pt. 2. — Capt. A. T.
Mahan, Influence of Sea Power on the French Bev.
and Empire, ch. 8 and 11 {v. 1).
A. D. 1798 (August). — Nelson's victory in the
Battle of the Nile. See Fuance: A. D. 1798
(May — August).
A. D. 1798. — Second Coalition against Revo-
lutionary France. See Fkance: A. D. 1798-
1799 (August — April).
A. D. 1799 (April). — Final war with Tippoo
Saib (third Mysore War). See Indlv : A. D.
1798-1805.
A. D. 1799 (August — October). — Expedition
against Holland. — Seizure of the Dutch fleet.
— Ignominious ending of the enterprise. —
Capitulation ofthe Duke of York. See France:
A. D. 1799 (April — September), and (Septem-
ber — October),
A. D. 1800. — Legislative union of Ireland
with Great Britain. — Creation of the " United
Kingdom." See Ireland: A. D. 1798-1800.
971
ENGLAKD, 1801.
PiWs last
Admiii istration.
ENGLAND, 1801-1806.
A. D. 1801.— The first Factory Act. See
Factory Legislation.
A. D. 1801-1802. — Import of the Treaty of
Luneville. — Bonaparte's preparations for con-
flict with Great Britain alone. — Retirement of
Pitt. — The Northern Maritime League and its
summary annihilation at Copenhagen. — Ex-
pulsion of the French from Egypt. — The Peace
of Amiens. SccFrakce: A. D. 1801-1802,
A. D. 1801-1806. — Pitt's promise to the Irish
Catholics broken by the King. — His resigna-
tion. — The Addington Ministry. — The Peace
of Amiens. — War resumed. — Pitt at the helm
again.— His death.— The Ministry of " All the
Talents." — " The union with Ireland introduced
a new topic of party discussion, which quickly
became only second to that of parliamentary re-
form. In transplanting the parliament of Col-
lege Green to St. Stephen's, Pitt had transplanted
the questions which were there debated ; and, of
these, none had been more important than the
demand of the Catholics to be admitted to the
common rights of citizens. Pitt, whose Toryism
was rather the imperiousness of a haughty master,
than the cautious cowardice of the miser of
power, thought their complaints were just. In
Ms private negotiations with the Irish popular
leaders he probably promised that emancipation
should be the sequel to the union. In his place
In parliament he certainly gave an intimation,
which from the mouth of a minister could receive
no second interpretation. Pitt was not a min-
ister who governed by petty stratagems, by am-
biguous professions, and by skilful shuffles : he
was at least an honourable enemy. He prepared
to fulfil the pledge he had given, and to admit
the Catholics within the pale of the constitution.
It had been better for the character of George
III. had he imitated the candour of his minister;
had he told him that he had made a promise he
would not be suffered to fulfil, before he had ob-
tained the advantage to gain which that promise
had been made. When Pitt proposed Catholic
emancipation as one of the topics of the king's
speech, for the session of 1801, the royal negative
was at once Interposed, and when Dundas per-
sisted in his attempt to overcome his master's
objections, the king abruptly terminated the
conference, saying, ' Scotch metaphysics cannot
destroy religious obligations. ' Pitt immediately
tendered his resignation. . . . All that was bril-
liant in Toryism passed from the cabinet with
the late minister. When Pitt and Canning were
withdrawn, with their satellites, nothing remained
of the Tory party but the mere courtiers who
lived upon the favour of the king, and the insipid
lees of the party; men who voted upon every
subject in accordance with their one ruling idea
— the certain ruin which must follow the first
particle of innovation. Yet from these relicts
the king was obliged to form a new cabinet,
for application to the Whigs was out of the
question. These were more strenuous for eman-
cipation than Pitt. Henry Addington, Pitt's
speaker of the house of commons, was the person
upon whom the king's choice fell; and he suc-
ceeded, with the assistance of the late premier,
In filling up the offices at his disposal. . . . The
peace of Amiens was the great work of this feeble
administration [see France: A. D. 1801-1802],
and formed a severe commentary upon the boast-
ings of the Tories. ' Unless the monarchy of
France be restored,' Pitt had said, eight years
before, ' the monarchy of England is lost for-
ever.' Eight years of warfare had succeeded,
yet the monarchy of France was not restored,
and the crusade was stayed. England had sur-
rendered her conquests, France retained hers;
the landmarks of Europe had been in some de-
gree restored ; England, alone, remained bur-
dened with the enduring consequences of the
ruinous and useless strife. The peace was ap-
proved by the Whigs, who were glad of any
respite from such a war, and by Pitt, who gave
his support to the Addington administration.
But he could not control his adherents. ... As
the instability of the peace grew manifest, the
incompetency of the administration became gen-
erally acknowledged : with Pitt sometimes chid-
ing, Windham and Canning, and Lords Spencer
and Grenville continually attacking, and Fox
and the Whigs only refraining from violent op-
position from a knowledge that if Addington
went out Pitt would be his successor, the conduct
of the government was by no means an easy or a
grateful task to a man destitute of commanding
talents. When to these parliamentary difficulties
were added a recommencement of the war, and
a popular panic at Bonaparte's threatened inva-
sion, Addington's embarrassments became inex-
tricable. He had performed the business which
Pitt had assigned him ; he had made an experi-
mental peace, and had saved Pitt's honour with
the Roman Catholics. The object of his ap-
pointment he had unconsciously completed, and
no sooner did his predecessor manifest an inten-
tion of returning to office, than the ministerial
majorities began to diminish, and Addington
found himself without support. On the 12th of
April it was announced that Mr. Addington had
resigned, and Pitt appeared to resume his station
as a matter of course. During his temporary re-
tirement, Pitt had, however, lost one section of
his supporters. The Grenville party and the
AVhigs had gradually approximated, and the
former now refused to come into the new arrange-
ments unless Fox was introduced into the cabinet.
To this Pitt offered no objection, but the king
was firm — or obstinate. ... In the following
year, Addington himself, now created Viscount
Sidmouth, returned to office with the subordinate
appointment of president of the council. The
conflagration had again spread through Europe.
. . . Pitt had the mortification to see his grand
continental coalition, the produce of such im-
mense expense and the object of such hope, shat-
tered in one campaign. At home, Lord Mel-
ville, his most faithful political supporter, was
attacked by a charge from which he could not
defend him, and underwent the impeachment of
the commons for malpractices in his office as
treasurer of the navy. Lord Sidmouth and sev-
eral others seceded from the cabinet, and Pitt,
broken in health, and dispirited by reverses, had
lost much of his wonted energy. Thus passed
away the year 1805. On the" 23d of January,
1806, Pitt expired. . . . The death of Pitt was
the dissolution of his administration. The Tory
party was scattered in divisions and subdivisions
innumerable. Canning now recognised no po-
litical leader, but retained his old contempt for
Sidmouth and his friends, and his hostility to the
Grenvilles for their breach with Pitt. Castle-
reagh, William Dundas, Hawkesbury, orBarham,
although sufficiently effective when Pitt was
present to direct and to defend, would have made
972
ENGLAND, 1801-1806.
Abolition of
the Slave Tj'ade.
ENGLAND. 1806-1813.
a hopeless figure without him in face of such an
opposition as the house of commons now afforded.
The administration, which was ironically desig-
nated by its opponents as ' All the Talents, ' suc-
ceeded. Lord Grenville was first lord of the treas-
ury. Fox chose the office of secretary for foreign
affairs with the hope of putting an end to the
war. Windham was colonial secretary. Earl
Spencer had the seals of the home department.
Erskine was lord chancellor. Mr. Grey was first
lord of the admiralty. Sheridan, treasurer of the
iiavy. Lord Sidmouth was privy seal. Lord
Henry Petty, who, although now only in his 36th
year, had already acquired considerable distinc-
tion as an eloquent Whig speaker, was advanced
to the post of chancellor of the exchequer, the
vacant chair of Pitt. Such were the men who
now assumed the reins under circumstances of
unparalleled difficulty." — G. W. Cooke, Hist, of
Party, v. 3, ch. 17-18.
Also in : Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon), Life of
Pitt, ch. 39-44 (». 3^).— A. G. Stapleton, George
Canning and His Times, ch. 6-8. — Earl Russell,
Life and Times of Charles James Fox, ch. 58-69
<». 3). — G. Pellew, Life and Corr. of Henry Ad-
dington, \st Viscmint Sidmouth, ch. 10-36 (v. 1-3).
A. D. l802 (October).— Protest against Bo-
naparte's interference in Svsritzerland. — His
extraordinary reply. See Fkance: A. D. 1801-
1808.
A. D. 1802-1803. — Bonaparte's complaints
and demands. — The Peltier trial. — The First
Consul's rage. — Declaration of war. — Napo-
leon's seizure of Hanover. — Cruel detention
of all English people in France, Italy, Switz-
erland and the Netherlands. See France:
A. D. 1803-1803.
A. D. 1804-1809. — Difficulties with the
United States. — Questions of neutral rights.
— Right of Search and Impressment. — The
American Embargo. See United States of
Am. : A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.
A. D. 1805 (January— April).— Third Coali-
tion against France. See France: A. D. 1805
(.J.\NUARY — April).
A. D. 1805. — Napoleon's threatened inva-
sion. — Nelson's long pursuit of the French
fleet. — His victory and death at Trafalgar. —
The crushing of the Coalition at Austerlitz.
See France: A. D. 1805 (March — December).
A. D. 1806. — Final seizure of Cape Colony
from the Dutch. See South Africa: A. D.
1486-1806.
A. D. 1806. — Cession of Hanover to Prussia
by Napoleon. — War with Prussia. See Ger-
many: A. D. 1806 (.January— August).
A. D. 1806. — Attempted reinstatement of
the dethroned King of Naples. — The Battle of
Maida. See France : A. D. 1805-1806 (Decem-
ber — September).
A. D. 1806.— Death of Pitt.— Peace nego-
tiations with Napoleon. See France: A. D.
1806 (.January- — October).
A. D. 1806-1807.— Expedition against Bue-
nos Ay res. See Argentine Republic: A. D.
1806-1830.
A. D. 1806-1810. — Commercial warfare with
Napoleon. — Orders in Council. — Berlin and
Milan Decrees. See France : A. D. 1806-1810.
A. D. 1806-1812.— The ministry of "All the
Talents."— Abolition of the Slave Trade.—
The Portland and the Perceval ministries. —
Confirmed insanity of George III. — Beginning
of the regency of the Prince of Wales. — As-
sassination of Mr. Perceval. — The "Ministry
of All the Talents" is "remarkable solely for its
mistakes, and is to be remembered chiefly for
the death of Fox [September 13, 1806] and the
abolition of the slave-trade. Fox was now des-
tined at the close of his career to be disillusioned
with regard to Napoleon. He at last thoroughly
realized the insincerity of his hero. . . . The
second great object of Fox's life he succeeded in
attaining before his death ; — this was the aboli-
tion of the slave-trade. For more than thirty
years the question had been before the country,
and a vigorous agitation had been conducted
by Clarkson, Wilberforce, and Fox. Pitt was
quite at one with them on this question, and had
brought forward motions on the subject. The
House of Lords, however, rejected all measures
of this description during the Revolutionary
War, under the influence of the Anti-Jacobin
feeling. It was reserved for Fox to succeed in
carrying a Bill inflicting heavy pecuniary pun-
ishments on the traffic in slaves. And yet this
measure — the sole fruit of Fox's statesmanship
— was wholly inadequate; nor was it till the
slave-trade was made felony in 1811 that its final
extinction was secured. "The remaining acts of
the Ministry were blunders. . . . Their finan-
cial system was a failure. They carried on the
war so as to alienate their allies and to cover
themselves with humiliation. Finally, they in-
sisted on bringing forward a measure for the
relief of the Catholics, though there was not the
slightest hope of carrying it, and it could only
cause a disruption of the Government. . . . The
king and the Pittites were determined to oppose
it, and so the Ministry agreed to drop the ques-
tion under protest. George Insisted on their
withdrawing the protest, and as this was refused
he dismissed them. . . . This then was the
final triumph of George III. He had success-
fully dismissed this Ministry ; he had maintained
the principle that every Ministry is bound to
withdraw any project displeasing to the king.
These principles were totally inconsistent with
Constitutional Government, and they indirectly
precipitated Reform by rendering it absolutely
necessary in order to curb the royal influence.
. . . The Duke of Portland's sole claims to form
a Ministry were his high rank, and the length of
his previous services. His talents were never
very great, and they were weakened by age and
disease. "The real leader was Mr. Perceval, the
Chancellor of the Exchequer, a dexterous de-
bater and a patriotic statesman. This Govern-
ment, being formed on the closest Tory basis and
on the king's influence, was pledged to pursue a
retrograde policy and to oppose all measures of
Reform. The one really high-minded statesman
in the Cabinet was Canning, the Foreign Minis-
ter. His advanced views, however, continually
brought hira into collision with Castlereagh, the
War Minister, a man of much inferior talents
and the narrowest Tory views. Quarrels inevita-
bly arose between the two, and there was no
real Prime Minister to hold them strongly under
control. ... At last the ill-feeling ended in a
duel, which was followed by a mutual resigna-
tion on the ground that neither could serve with
the other. This was followed by the resignation
of Portland, who felt himself wholly unequal
to the arduous task of managing the Ministry
any longer. The leadership now devolved on
973
ENGLAND. 1806-1813.
The Regency.
The Walcheren Piasco.
ENGLAND, 1809.
Perceval, 'n-ho found liimself in an apparently
hopeless condition. His only supporters were
Lords Liverpool, Eldon, Palmerston, and Welles-
ley. Neither Canning, Castlereagh, nor Sidmouth
(Addington) would join Mm. The miserable
expedition to Walcheren had just ended in igno-
miny. The campaign in the Peninsula was re-
garded as a chimerical enterprise, got up mainly
for the benefit of a Tory commander. Certainly
the most capable man in the Cabinet was Lord
Wellesley, the Foreign Minister, but he was con-
tinually thwarted by the incapable men he had
to deal with. However, as long as he remained
at the Foreign Oflace, he supported the Peninsu-
lar War with vigour, and enabled his brother to
carry out more effectually his plans with regard
to the defence of Portugal. In November, 1810,
the king was again seized with insanity, nor did
he ever recover the use of his faculties during
the rest of his life. The Ministry determined to
bring forward Pitt's old Bill of 1788 in a some-
what more modified form, February, 1811. The
Prince of Wales requested Grey and Grenville
to criticize this, but, regarding their reply as
lukewarm, he began to entertain an ill-will for
them. At this moment the judicious flattery of
his family brought him over from the Whigs,
and he decided to continue Perceval in oflice.
Wellesley, however, took the opportunity to re-
sign, and was succeeded by Castlereagh, Febru-
ary, 1812. In May Perceval was assassinated by
Mr. Bellingham, a lunatic, and his Ministry at
once fell to pieces." — B.C. Skottowe, Our Han-
overian Kings, bk. 10, ch. 3.
Also in: F. H. Hill, Oeorge Canning, ch. 13-
17. — S. Walpole, Life of Spencer Perceval, v. 2. —
R. I. and S. Wilberforce, Life of William Wilber-
force, ch. 20 (c. 3).
A. D. 1807.— Act for the Abolition of the
Slave-Trade. See Slavery, Negro; A. D.
1792-1807.
A. D. 1807 (February— September).— Opera-
tions in support of the Russians against the
Turks and French. — Bold naval attack on
Constantinople and humiliating failure. — Dis-
astrous expedition to Egypt. See Turks:
A. D. 1806-1807.
A. D. 1807 (June— July).— Alliance formed at
Tilsit between Napoleon and Alexander I. of
Russia. See Germany: A. D. 1807 (June —
July).
A. D. 1807 (August— November).— Bombard-
ment of Copenhagen and seizure of the Dan-
ish fleet. — War vyith Russia and Denmark.
See Scandinavian States: A. D. 1807-1810.
A. D. 1807 (October— November).— Submis-
sion of Portugal to Napoleon under English
advice. — Flight of the house of Braganza to
Brazil. See Portugal: A. D. 1807.
A. D. 1808 (May).— Ineffectual attempt to
aid Sweden. — Expedition of Sir John Moore.
See ScANiftNAViAN States: A. D. 1807-1810.
A. D. 1808 (July).— Peace and alliance with
the Spanish people against the new Napo-
leonic monarchy. — Opening of the Peninsular
War. See Spain : A. D. 1808 (May— Septejiber).
A. D. 1808. — Expulsion of English forces
from Capri. See Italy (Southern) : A. D. 1808-
1809.
A. D. 1808-1809.— Wellington's first cam-
paign in the Peninsula. — Convention of Cintra.
— Evacuation of Portugal by the French.—
Sir John Moore's advance into Spain and his
retreat. — His death at Corunna. See Spain:
A. D. 1808-1809 (August— January).
A. D. 1809 (February — July).— 'Wellington
sent to the Peninsula. — The passage of the
Douro and the Battle of Talavera. Sue Spain:
A. D. 1809 (Feeru.ary— July).
A. D. 1809 (July— December).— The Wal-
cheren Expedition. — " Three times before, dur-
ing the war, it had occurred to one or another,
connected with the government, that it would be
a good thing to hold Antwerp, and command the
Scheldt, seize the French ships in the river, and
get possession of their arsenals and dockyards.
On each occasion, men of military science and
experience had been consulted; and invariably
they had pronounced against the scheme. Now,
however, what Mr. Pitt had considered imprac-
ticable. Lord Castlereagh, with the rashness of
incapacity, resolved should be done: and, in
order not to be hindered, he avoided consulting
with those who would have objected to the en-
terprise. Though the scene of action was to be
the swamps at the mouths of the Scheldt, he con-
sulted no physician. Having himself neither
naval, military, nor medical knowledge, he as-
sumed the responsibility — except such as the
King and the Duke of York chose to share. . . .
It was May, 1809, before any stir was apparent
which could lead men outside the Cabinet to in-
fer that an expedition for the Scheldt was in con-
templation ; but so early as the beginning of April
(it is now known), Mr. Canning signified that he
could not share in the responsibility of an enter-
prise which must so involve his own office. . . .
The fleet that rode in the channel consisted of 39
ships of the line, and 36 frigates, and a due pro-
portion of small vessels: in all, 245 vessels of
war: and 400 transports carried 40,000 soldiers.
Only one hospital ship was provided for the
whole expedition, though the Surgeon General
implored the grant of two more. He gave his
reasons, but was refused. . . . The naval com-
mander was Sir Richard J. Strachan, whose title
to the responsibility no one could perceive, while
many who had more experience were unem-
ployed. The military command was given (as
the selection of the present Cabinet had been) to
Lord Chatham, for no better reason than that he
was a favourite with the King and Queen, who
liked his gentle and courtly manners, and his
easy and amiable temper. . . . The fatal mis-
take was made of not defining the respective au-
thorities of the two commanders; aud both being
inexperienced or apathetic, each relied upon the
other first, and cast the blame of failure upon him
afterwards. In the autumn, an epigram of un-
known origin was in every body's mouth, all over
England:
' Lord Chatham, with his sword undrawn.
Stood waiting for Sir Richard Strachan ;
Sir Richard, longing to be at 'em.
Stood waiting for the Earl of Chatham.'
The fleet set sail on the 28th of July, and was on
the coast of Holland the next day. The first dis-
covery was that there were not boats enough to
land the troops and the ordnance. The next was
that no plan had been formed about how to pro-
ceed. The most experienced officers were for
pushing on to Antwerp, 45 miles off, and taking
it before it could be prepared for defence ; but
the commanders determined to take Flushing
first. They set about it so slowly that a fort-
night was consumed in preparations. In two
974
ENGLAND, 1809.
Distress
and Disorders.
ENGLAND, 1812-1813.
(lays more, the 15th of August, Flushing was
taken. After this. Lord Chatham paused to con-
sider what lie should do next ; and it was the 21st
before he began to propose to go on to Antwerp.
Tlien came the next discovery, that, by this time
two intermediate places had been so strengthened
tliat there must be some fighting on the way.
So he did nothing more but take possession of
two small islands near Flushing. Not another
blow was struck ; not another league was trav-
ersed by this magnificent expedition. But the
most important discovery .of all now disclosed
itself. The army had been brought into the
swamps at the beginning of the sickly season.
Fever sprang up under their feet, and 3,000 men
were in hospital in a few days, just when it be-
came necessary to reduce the rations, because
provisions were falling short. On the 27th of
August, Lord Chatham led a council of war to
resolve that 'it was not advisable to pursue
further operations. ' But, if they could not pro-
ceed, neitlier could they remain where they were.
The enemy had more spirit than their invaders.
On the 30th and 31st, such a fire was opened
from both banks of the river, that the ships were
obliged to retire. Flushing was given up, and
everything else except the island of Walcheren,
which it was fatal to hold at this season. On the
4th of September, most of the ships were at
home again ; and Lord Chatliam appeared on the
14th. Eleven thousand men were by that time
in the fever, and he brouglit home as many as he
could. Sir Eyre Coote, whom ho left in com-
mand, was dismayed to see all the rest sinking
down in disease at the rate of hundreds in a daj'.
Though the men had been working in tlie
swamps, up to the waist in marsh water, and the
roofs of their sleeping places had been carried
off by bombardment, so that they slept under a
canopy of autumn fog, it was supposed that a
supply of Thames water to drink would stop the
sickness ; and a supply of 500 tons per week was
transmitted. At last, at the end of October, a
hundred English bricklayers, with tools, bricks,
and mortar, were sent over to mend the roofs ;
but they immediately dropped into the hospitals.
Then the patients were to be accommodated in the
towns; but to spare the inhabitants, the soldiers
were laid down in damp churches; and their
bedding had from the beginning been insufficient
for their need. At last, government desired the
cliief officers of the army Medical Board to repair
to Walcheren, and see what was the precise
nature of the fever, and what could be done.
The Surgeon-General and the Physician-General
threw the duty upon each other. Government
appointed it to the Pliysician-General, Sir Lucas
Pepys ; but he refused to go. Both officers were
dismissed, and the medical department of the
army was reorganized and greatly improved.
The deatlis were at this time from 200 to 300 a
week. AVhen Walcheren was evacuated, on the
23rd of December, nearly half the force sent out
five months before were dead or missing ; and of
those who returned, 35,000 were admitted into
the hospitals of England before the next 1st of
June. Twenty millions sterling were spent on
this expedition. It was the purchase money of
tens of thousands of deaths, and of ineffaceable
national disgrace." — H. Martineau, fij«i. of Eruj..
1800-1815, bk. 2, ch. 2.
Also in : C. Knight, Popular Hist, of Eng. , v.
7, ch. 29.
A. D. 1809 (August — December). — Difficul-
ties of Wellington's campaign in the Penin-
sula. — His retreat into Portugal. See Spaik:
A. D. 1809 (August— December).
A. D. 1810. — Capture of the Mauritius. See
India: A. D. 180.5-1816.
A. D. 1810-1812.— The War in the Penin-
sula. — Wellington's Lines of Torres Vedras. —
French recoil from them. — English advance
into Spain. See Spain: A. D. 1809-1810 (Oc-
tober — September), and 1810-1812.
A. D. i8ii. — Capture of Java from the
Dutch. See India: A. D. 180.5-1816.
A. D. 1811-1812. — Desertion of Napoleon's
Continental System by Russia and Sweden. —
Reopening of their ports to British com-
merce. See Francj=: A. D. 1810-1813.
A. D. 1812 (January). — Building of the first
passenger Steam-boat. See Steam Naviga-
tion: The Beginnings.
A. D. i8i2(June — August). — The Peninsular
War. — Wellington's victory at Salamanca
and advance to Madrid. See Spain: A. D. 1813
(June — August).
A. D. 1812-1813. — The Liverpool Ministry.
— Business depression and bad harvests. —
Distress and rioting. — The Luddites. — " Again
there was mucli negotiation, and an attempt to
introduce Lord Wellesley and Mr. Canning to the
ministry. Of course they could not serve with
Castlereagh ; they were then asked to form a
ministry with Grenville and Grey, but these
Lords objected to the Peninsular War, to which
Wellesley was pledged. Grenville and Grey then
attempted a ministry of their own but quarrelled
with Lord Moira on the appointments to the
Household ; and as an American war was threat-
ening, and the ministrj^ had already given up
their Orders in Council (one of the chief causes
of their unpopularity), the Regent rather than
remain longer without a ministry, intrusted Lord
Liverpool with the Premiership, with Castlereagh
as his Foreign Secretary, and the old ministry
remained in office. Before the day of triumph
of this ministry arrived, while Napoleon was still
at the height of his power, and the success of
AVellington as yet imcertain, England had drifted
into war with America. It is difficult to believe
that this useless war might not have been avoided
had the ministers been men of ability. It arose
from the obstinate manner in which the Govern-
ment clung to the execution of their retaliatory
measures against France, regardless of the prac-
tical injury they were inflicting upon all neutrals.
. . . The same motive of class aggrandizement
which detracts from the virtue of the foreign
policy of this ministry underlay the whole ad-
ministration of home affairs. There was an in-
capacity to look at public affairs from any but a
class or aristocratic point of view. The natural
consequence was a constantly increasing mass of
discontent among the lower orders, only kept in
restraint by an overmastering fear felt by all
those higher in rank of the possible revolutionary
tendencies of any attempt at change. Much of
the discontent was of course the inevitable con-
sequence of the circumstances in which England
was placed, and for which the Government was
only answerable in so far as it created those cir-
cumstances. At the same time it is impossible
not to blame the complacent manner in which
the misery was ignored and the occasional success
of individual merchants and contractors regarded
975
ENGLAND, 1812-1813.
Agitation and
Riot.
ENGLAND, 1816-1820.
as evidences of national prosperity. ... A plen-
tiful harvest in 1813, and the opening of many
continental ports, did much to revive both trade
and manufactures; but it was accompanied by
a fall in the price of corn from 171s. to 75s.
The consequence was widespread distress among
the agriculturists, which involved the country
banks, so that in the two following years 240 of
them stopped payment. So great a crash could
not fail to affect the manufacturing interest also ;
apparently, for the instant, the very restoration
of peace brought widespread ruin. . . . Before
the end of the year 1811, wages had sunk to 7s.
6d. a week. The manufacturing operatives were
therefore in a state of absolute misery. Petitions
signed by 40,000 or 50,000 men urged upon Par-
liament that they were starving ; but there was
another class which fared still worse. Machinery
had by no means superseded hand- work. Li thou-
sands of hamlets and cottages handlooms still
existed. The work was neither so good nor so
rapid as work done by machinery ; even at the
be§t of times used chiefly as an auxiliary to
agriculture, this hand labour could now scarcely
find employment at all. Not unnaturally, with-
out work and without food, these hand workers
were very ready to believe that it was the ma-
chinery which caused their ruin, and so in fact it
was ; the change, though on the whole beneficial,
had brought much individual misery. The people
were not wise enough to see this. They rose in
riots in many parts of England, chiefly about
Nottingham, calling themselves Luddites (from
the name of a certain idiot lad who some 30 years
before had broken stocking-frames), gathered
round them many of the disbanded soldiery with
whom the country was thronged, and with a very
perfect secret organization, carried out their
object of machine-breaking. The unexpected
thronging of the village at nightfall, a crowd of
men with blackened faces, armed sentinels hold-
ing every approach, silence on all sides, the vil-
lage inhabitants cowering behind closed doors,
an hour or two's work of smashing and buroing,
and the disappearance of the crowd as rapidly as
it had arrived — such were the incidents of the
night riots." — J. F. Bright, Hist, of Eng., period
3, pp. 1325-1832.
Also m: C. Knight, Popular Hist, of Eng.,
V. 7, ch. 30. — Pictorial Hist, of Eng., v. 8, ch. 4
(Beign. of George III., v. 4).
A. D. 1812-1815.— War with the United
States. See United States op Am. • A. D.
1804-1809; 1808; and 1810-1812, to 1815 (J anu-
akt).
A. D. 1813 (June). — Joined with the new
European Coalition against Napoleon. See
GEKM.VNY: A. D. 1813 (.AIay— Aut^rsT).
A. D. 1813-1814. — Wellington's victorious
and final campaigns in the Peninsular War.
See Spain: A. D. 1812-1814.
A. D. 1813-1816.— War with the Ghorkas of
Nepal. See India: A. D. 1805-1816.
A. D. 1814. — The allies in France and in
possession of Paris. — Fall of Napoleon. See
France: A. D. 1814 (Januaky — 3Iarch), and
(March — April).
A. D. 1814 (May— June).— Treaty of Paris.—
Acquisition of Malta, the Isle of France and
the Cape of Good Hope. See France: A. D.
1814 (Apkil — June).
A. D. 1814 (December).- The Treaty of
Ghent, terminating war with the United
States. See United States op Am. : A. D.
1814 (December).
A. D. 1814-1815.— The Congress of Vienna
and its revision of the map of Europe. See
ViEXN.\, The Congress of.
A. D. 1815 (March).— The Corn Law. See
Tariff Legislation (England); A. D. 1815-
1838.
A. D. 1815 (June). — The Waterloo cam-
paign. — Defeat and final Overthrow of Na-
poleon. See France: A. D. 1815 (.June).
A. D. 1815 (July— August). — Surrender of
Napoleon. — His confinement on the Island of
St. Helena. See France: A. D. 1815 (June —
August).
A. D. i8i5(July— November).— Wellington's
army in Paris. — The Second Treaty. See
Fr.ance: a. D. 1815 (July— No\t:mber).
A. D. 181S (September).— The Holy Alliance.
See Holy Alli.ance.
A. D. 1816-1820.— Agitation for Parliamen-
tary Reform. — Hampden Clubs. — Spencean
philanthropists. — Trials of William Hone. —
The Spa-fields meeting and riot. — March of
the Blanketeers. — Massacre of Peterloo. — The
Six Acts. — Death of George III.— Accession
of George IV. — "From this time the name of
Parliamentary Reform became, for the most part,
a name of terror to the Government. ... It
passed away from the patronage of a few aristo-
cratic lovers of popularity, to be advocated by
writers of ' two-penny trash,' and to be discussed
aud organized by ' Hampden Clubs ' of hunger-
ing philanthropists aud unemployed ' weaver-
boys.' Samuel Bamford, who thought it no dis-
grace to call himself 'a Radical'. . . says, 'at
this time (1816) the writings of William Cobbett
suddenly became of great authority ; they were
read on nearly every cottage hearth in the manu-
facturing disti-icts of South Lancashire, in those
of Leicester, Derby, and Nottingham; also in
many of the Scottish manufacturing towns. Their
influence was speedily visible.' Cobbett ad-
vocated Parliamentary Reform as the corrective
of whatever miseries the lower classes suffered.
A new order of politicians was called into action :
' The Sunday-schools of the preceding thirty years
had produced many working men of suflicient
talent to become readers, writers, and speakers in
the village meetings for Parliamentary Reform ;
some also were found to possess a rude poetic
talent, which rendered their effusions popular,
and bestowed an additional charm on their assem-
blages ; and by such various means, anxious lis-
teners at first, and then zealous proselytes, were
drawn from the cottages of quiet nooks and din-
gles to the weekly readings and discussions of
the Hampden Clubs.'. . . In a Report of the
Secret Committee of the House of Commons, pre-
sented on the 19th of February, 1817, the Hamp-
den Clubs are described as ' associated profess-
edly for the purpose of Parliamentary Reform,
upon the most extended principle of universal
suffrage and annual parliaments ' ; but that ' in
far the greater number of them . . . nothing
short of a Revolution is the object expected and
avowed.' The testimony of Samuel Bamford
shows that, in this early period of their history,
the Hampden Clubs limited their object to the
attainment of Parliamentary Reform. . . . Bam-
ford, at the beginning of 1817, came to London
as a delegate from the Middleton Club, to attend
a great meeting of delegates to be assembled in
976
ENGLAND, 1816-1830.
The Blanketeers
and Peterloo.
ENGLAND, 1816-1820.
London. . . . The Middleton delegate was in-
troduced, amidst the reeking tobacco-fog of a low
tavern, to the leading members of a society called
the ' Spencean Philanthropists.' They derived
their name from that of a Mr. Spence, a school-
master in Yorkshire, who had conceived a plan
for making the nation happy, by causing all the
lands of the country to become the property of
the State, which State should divide all the pro-
duce for the support of the people. . . . The
Committee of the Spenceans openly meddled
with sundry grave questions besides that of a
community in land; and, amongst other notable
projects, petitioned Parliament to do away with
'machinery. Amongst these fanatics some dan-
gerous men had established themselves, such as
Thistlewood, who subsequently paid the penalty
of five years of maniacal plotting." A meeting
held at Spa-fields on the 2d of December, 1816, in
the interest of the Spencean Philanthropists, ter-
minated in a senseless outbreak of riot, led by a
young fanatic named Watson. The mob plun-
dered some gunsmiths' shops, shot one gentleman
who remonstrated, and set out to seize the Tower ;
but was dispersed by a few resolute magistrates
and constables. "It is difficult to imagine a
more degraded and dangerous position than that
In which every political writer was placed during
the year 1817. In the first place, he was subject,
by a Secretary of State's warrant, to be impris-
oned upon suspicion, under the Suspension of
the Habeas Corpus Act. Secondly, he was open
to an ex-officio information, under which he
would be compelled to find bail, or be imprisoned.
The power of ex-offlcio information had been ex-
tended so as to compel bail, by an Act of 1808;
but from 1808 to 1811, during which three years
forty such informations were laid, only one per-
son was held to bail. In 1817 numerous ex-offlcio
informations were filed, and the almost invariable
practice then was to hold the alleged offender to
bail, or, in default, to commit to prison. Under
this Act Mr. Hone and others were committed to
prison during this year. . . . The entire course
of these proceedings was a signal failure. There
was only one solitary instance of success — Wil-
liam Cobbett ran away. On the 28th of March
he fled to America, suspending the publication of
his ' Register ' for four mouths. On the 12th of
May earl Grey mentioned in the House of Lords
that a Mr. Hone was proceeded against for pub-
lishing some blasphemous parody; but he had
read one of the same nature, written, printed,
and published, some years ago, by other people,
without any notice havmg been officially taken
of it. The parody to which earl Grey al-
luded, and a portion of which he recited, was
Canning's famous parody, ' Praise Lepaux ' ; and
he asked whether the authors, be they in the
cabinet or in any other place, would also be found
out and visited with the penalties of the law ?
This hint to the obscure publisher against whom
these ex-officio informations had been filed for
blasphemous and seditious parodies, was effec-
tually worked out by him in the solitude of his
prison, and in the poor dwelling where he had
surrounded himself, as he had done from his
earliest j'ears, with a collection of odd and curious
books. Prom these he had gathered an abun-
dance of knowledge that was destined to perplex
the technical acquirements of the Attorney-Gen-
eral, to whom the sword and buckler of his pre-
cedents would be wholly useless, and to change
977
the determination of the boldest judge in the land
[Lord Ellenborough] to convict at any rate, into
tlie prostration of helpless despair. Altogether,
the three trials of William Hone are amongst the
most remarkable in our constitutional history.
They produced more distinct effects upon the
temper of the country than any public proceed-
ings of that time. They taught the Government
a lesson which has never been forgotten, and to
which, as much as to any other cause, we owe
the prodigious improvement as to the law of
libel itself, and the use of the law, in our own
day, — an improvement which leaves what is dan-
gerous in the press to be corrected by the reme-
dial power of the press itself ; and which, instead
of lamenting over the newly-acquired ability of
the masses to read seditious and irreligious works,
depends upon the general diffusion of this ability
as the surest corrective of the evils that are in-
cident even to the best gift of heaven, — that of
knowledge." — C. Knight, Popular Hist, of Eng.,
V. 8, ch. 5.— In 1817 "there was widespread dis-
tress. There were riots in the counties of Eng-
land arising out of the distress. There were riots
in various parts of London. Secret Committees
were appointed by both Houses of the Legisla-
ture to inquire into the alleged disaffection of
part of the people. The Habeas Corpus Act was
suspended. The march of the Blanketeers from
Manchester [March, 1817] caused panic and con-
sternation through various circles in London.
The march of the Blanketeers was a very simple
and harmless project. A large number of the
working-men in Slanchester conceived the idea
of walking to London to lay an account of their
distress before the heads of the Government, and
to ask that some remedy might be found, and
also to appeal for the granting of Parliamentary
reform. It was part of their arrangement that
each man should carry a blanket with him, as
they would, necessarily, have to sleep at many
places along the way, and they were not exactly in
funds to pay for first-class hotel accommodation.
The nickname of Blanketeers was given to them
because of their portable sleeping-arrangements.
The whole project was simple, was touching in
its simplicity. Even at this distance of time one
cannot read about it without being moved by its
pathetic childishness. These poor men thought
they had nothing to do but to walk to London,
and get to speech of Lord Liverpool, and justice
would be done to them and their claims. The
Government of Lord Liverpool dealt very roundly,
and in a very different way, with the Blanket-
eers. If the poor men had been marching on
London with pikes, muskets and swords, they
could not have created a greater fury of panic
and of passion in official circles. The Government,
availing itself of the suspension of the Habeas
Corpus Act, had the leaders of the movement
captured and sent to prison, stopped the march
by military force, and dispersed those who were
taking part in it. . . . The ' Massacre of Peter-
loo,' as it is not inappropriately called, took place
not long after. A great public meeting was held
[August 16, 1819] at St. Peter's Field, then on the
outskirts of Manchester, now the site of the Free
Trade Hall, which many years later rang so often
to the thrilling tones of John Bright. The meet-
ing was called to petition for Parliamentary re-
form. It should be remembered that in those
days Manchester, Birmingham, and other great
cities were without any manner of representation
ENGLAND, 1816-1820.
TriaC of
Queen Caroline,
ENGLAND, 1820-1837
in Parliament. It was a vast meeting — some
80,000 men and women are stated to have been
present. The yeomanry [a mounted militia
force], for some reason impossible to understand,
endeavoured to disperse the meeting, and actually
dashed in upon the crowd, spurring their horses
and flourishing their sabres. Eleven persons were
killed, and several hundreds were wounded. The
Government brought in, as their panacea for
popular trouble and discontent, the famous Six
Acts. These Acts were simply measures to
render it more easy for the authorities to put
down or disperse meetings which they consid-
ered objectionable, and to suppress any manner
of publication wliich they chose to call seditious.
But among tliem were some Bills to prevent
training and drilling, and the collection and use
of arms. These measures show what the panic
of the Government was. It was the conviction
of the ruling classes that the poor and the work-
ing-classes of England were preparing a revolu-
tion. . . . During all this time, the few genuine
Radicals in the House of Commons were bring-
ing on motion after motion for Parliamentary re-
form, just as Grattan and his friends were bring-
ing forward motion after motion for Catholic
Emancipation. In 1818, a motion by Sir Francis
Burdett for annual Parliaments and universal
suffrage was lost by a majority of 106 to nobody.
. . . The motion had only two supporters —
Burdett himself, and his colleague. Lord Coch-
rane. . . . The forms of the House require two
tellers on either side, and a compliance with this
inevitable rule took up the whole strength of
Burdett's party. ... On January 29, 1820, the
long reign of George III. came to an end. The
life of the King closed in darlvness of eyes and
mind. Stone-blind, stone-deaf, and, except for
rare lucid intervals, wholly out of his senses, the
poor old King wandered from room to room of
his palace, a touching picture, with his long,
white, flowing beard, now repeating to himself
the awful words of Milton — the 'dark, dark,
dark, amid the blaze of noon — irrecoverably
dark ' — now, in a happier mood, announcing him-
self to be in the companionship of angels. George,
the Prince Regent, succeeded, of course, to the
throne ; and George TV. at once announced his
willingness to retain the services of the Ministry
of Lord Liverpool. The Whigs had at one time
expected much from the coming of George IV.
to the throne, but their hopes had begun to be
chilled of late." — J. McCarthy, Sir Robert Peel,
ell. 3.
Also in ; J. Routledge, Chapters in tlie Hist,
of Popular Progress, ch. 12-19. — H. Martineau,
ilist. of the Thirti/ Tears' Peace, bk. 1, ch. 5-17
(!). 1).— E. Smith, William Cobbett, ch. 21-23 {v. 2).
— See, also, Tarifp Legislation (England):
A. D. 1815-1838.
A. D. i8i8.— Convention with the United
States relating to Fisheries, etc. See Fish-
eries, North American : A. D. 1814-1818.
A. D. 1820.— Accession of King George IV.
A. D. 1820-1822. — Congresses of Troppau,
Laybach and Verona. — Projects of the Holy
Alliance. — English protests. — Canning's pol-
icy towards Spain and the Spanish American
colonies. See Verona, The Congress op.
A. D. 1820-1827.— TheCato Street Conspir-
acy. — Trial of Queen Caroline. — Canning in
the Foreign Office. — Commercial Crisis of
1825. — Canning as Premier. — His death. —
"Riot and social misery had, during the Re-
gency, heralded the Reign. They did not cease
to afflict the country. At once we are plunged into
the wretched details of a conspiracy. Secret intel-
ligence reached the Home Office to the effect that
a man named Thistlewood, who had been a year
in jail for challenging Lord Sidmouth, had with
several accomplices laid a plot to murder the
Ministers during a Cabinet dinner, which was to
come off at Lord Harrowby's. The guests did
not go, and the police pounced on the gang,
arming themselves in a stable in Cato Street, off
the Edgeware Road. Thistlewood blew out the
candle, having first stabbed a policeman to the
heart. For that night he got off; but, being
taken next day, he was soon hanged, with his
four leading associates. This is called the Cato
Street Conspiracy. . . . George IV., almost as
soon as the crown became his own, began to stir
in the matter of getting a divorce from his wife.
He had married this poor Princess Caroline of
Brunswick in 1795, merely for the purpose of
getting his debts paid. Their first interview
disappointed both. After some time of semi-
banishment to Blackheath she had gone abroad
to live chiefly in Italy, and had been made the
subject of more than one ' delicate investigation '
for the purpose of procuring evidence of infidel-
ity against her. She now came to England (Juno
6, 1830), and passed from Dover to London
through joyous and sympathizing crowds. The
King sent a royal message to the Lords, asking
for an inquiry into her conduct. Lord Liver-
pool and Lord Castlereagh laid before the Lords
and Commons a green bag, stuffed with indecent
and disgusting accusations against the Queen.
Happily for her she had two champions, whose
names shall not readily lose the lustre gained in
her defence — Henry Brougham and Thomas
Denman, her Attorney-General and Solicitor-
General. After the failure of a negotiation, in
which the Queen demanded two things that the
Ministers refused — the insertion of her name in
the Liturgy, and a proper reception at some for-
eign court — Lord Liverpool brought into the
Upper House a ' Bill of Pains and Penalties, '
which aimed at her degradation from the throne
and the dissolution of her marriage. Through
the fever-heat of a scorching summer the case
went on, counsel and witnesses playing their
respective parts before the Lords. ... At length
the Bill, carried on its third reading by a major-
ity of only nine, was abandoned by the Ministry
(November 10). And the country broke out into
cheers and flaming windows. Had she rested
content with the vindication of her fair fame, it
would have been better for her own peace. But
she went in public procession to St. Paul's to re-
turn thanks for her victory. And more rashly
still in the following year she tried to force her
way into Westminster Abbey during the Coro-
nation of her husband (July 19, 1821). But mercy
came a few days later from the King of kings.
The people, true to her even in death, insisted
that the hearse containing her remains should
pass through the city; and in spite of bullets
from the carbines of dragoons they gained their
point, the Lord Mayor heading the procession
till it had cleared the streets. . . . George Can-
ning had resigned his office rather than take any
part with the Liverpool Cabinet in supporting
the ' Bill of Pains and Penalties, ' and had gone
to the Continent for the summer of the trial year.
978
ENGLAND, 1820-1837.
Disabilities of
Dissenters Removed.
ENGLAND, 1837-1838.
Early in 1823 Lord Sidmouth . . . resigned the
Home Office. He was succeeded by Robert
Peel, a statesman destined to acliieve eminence.
Canning- about tiie same time was offered the
post of Governor-General of India," and accepted
it ; but this arrangement was suddenly changed
by the death of Castlereagh, who committed sui-
cide in August. Canning then became Foreign
Secretary. "The spirit of Canning's foreign
policy was diametrically opposed to that of Lon-
donderry [Castlereagh]. . . . Refusing to inter-
fere in Spanish affairs, he yet acknowledged the
new-won freedom of the South American States,
which had lately shaken off the Spanish yoke.
To preserve peace and yet cut England loose
from the Holy Alliance were the conflicting aims,
which the genius of Canning enabled him to
reconcile [see Verona, Congress of]. . . .
During the years 1834-25, the country, drunk
with unusual prosperity, took that speculation
fever which has afflicted her more than once dur-
ing the last century and a half. ... A crop of
fungus companies sprang up temptingly from
the heated soil of the Stock Exchange. . . .
Shares were bought and gambled in. The win-
ter passed ; but spring shone on glutted markets,
depreciated stock, no buyers, and no returns
from the shadowy and distant investments in
South America, which had absorbed so much
capital. Then the crashing began — the weak
broke first, the strong next, until banks went
down by dozens, and commerce for the time was
paralyzed. By causing the issue of one and two
pound notes, by coining in great haste a new
supply of sovereigns, and by inducing the Bank
of England to lend money upon the security of
goods — in fact to begin the pawnbroking busi-
ness — the Government met the crisis, allayed
the panic, and to some extent restored commer-
cial credit. Apoplexy having struck down Lord
Liverpool early in 1827, it became necessary to
select a new Premier. Canning was the chosen
man." He formed a Cabinet with difficulty in
April, Wellington, Peel, Eldon, and others of his
former colleagues refusing to take office with
him. His administration was brought abruptly
to an end in August by his sudden death. — W.
F. Collier, Hist, of Eng., pp. 526-539.
Also in : Lord Brougham, Life and Times, by
Himself, ch. 13-18 {v. 3). — A. G. Stapleton, Oeorye
Canning and His Times, ch. 18-31;.— The same.
Some OJjUial Gorr. of Oeorge Canning, 3 v. — F. H.
Hill, George Canning, ch. 19-33.— Sir T. Martin,
Life of Lord Lyndhurst, ch. 7.
A. D. 1824-1826. — The first Burmese War.
See IxDLv: A. D. 1833-1833.
A. D. 1825-1830. — The beginning of rail-
roads. See Ste.ui Loco.motion on Land.
A. D. 1827-1828.— Removal of Disabilities
from the Dissenters. — Repeal of the Test and
Corporation Acts. — "Early in 1837 a private
member, of little influence, unexpectedly raised
a dormant question. For the best part of a cen-
tury the Dissenters had passively submitted to
the anomalous position in which they had been
placed by the Legislature [see above : A. D. 1663-
1665; 1673-1673; 1711-1714]. Nominally unable
to hold any office under the Crown, they were
aimually ' whitewashed ' for their infringement
of the law by the passage of an Indemnity Act.
The Dissenters had hitherto been assenting parties
to this policy. They fancied that the repeal of
the Test and Corporation Acts would logically
lead to the emancipation of the Roman Catholics,
and they preferred remaining under a disability
themselves to running the risk of conceding relief
to others. The tacit understanding, which thus
existed between the Church on one side and Dis-
sent on the other, was maintained unbroken and
almost unchallenged till 1837. It was challenged
in that year by William Smith, the member for
Norwich. Smith was a London banker ; he was
a Dissenter; and he felt keenly the 'hard, unjust,
and unnecessary ' law which disabled him from
holding ' any office, however insignificant, under
the Crown,' and from sitting 'as a magistrate in
any corporation without violating his conscience. '
Smith took the opportunity Which the annual
Indemnity Act afforded him of stating these
views in the House of Commons. As he spoke
the scales fell from the eyes of the Liberal mem-
bers. The moment he sat down Harvey, the
member for Colchester, twitted the Opposition
with disregarding ' the substantial claims of the
Dissenters,' while those of the Catholics were
urged 3'ear after year 'with the vehemence of
party,' and supported by 'the mightiest powers
of energy and eloquence.' The taunt called up
Lord John Russell, and elicited from him the de-
claration, that he would bring forward a motion
on the Test and Corporation Acts, ' if the Prot-
estant Dissenters should think it to their interest
that he should do so.' A year afterwards — on
the 36th of February, 1838 — Lord John Russell
rose to redeem the promise which he thus gave. "
His motion "was carried by 337 votes to 193.
The Ministry had sustained a crushing and un-
expected reverse. For the moment it was doubt
ful whether it could continue in office. It was
saved from the necessity of resigning by the
moderation and dexterity of Peel. Peel consid-
ered that nothing could be more unfortunate for
the Church than to involve the House of Com-
mons in a conflict with the House of Lords on a
religious question. . . . On his advice the Bishops
consented to substitute a formal declaration for
the test hitherto in force. The declaration, which
contained a promise that the maker of it would
' never exert any power or any influence to injure
or subvert the Protestant ' Established Church,
was to be taken by the members of every corpo-
ration, and, at the pleasure of the Crown, by the
holder of every office. Russell, though he dis-
liked the declaration, assented to it for the sake
of securing the success of his measure." The
bill was modified accordingly and passed both
Houses, though strenuously resisted by all the
Tories of the old school. — S. Walpole, Hist, of
Eng. from 1815, ch. 10 (ii. 3).
Also m : J. Stoughton, Religion in Enq. from
1800 to 1850, V. 1, ch. 2.— H. S. Skeats, Hist, of
the Free Churches of Eng., ch. 9.
A. D. 1827-1828. — The administration of
Lord Goderich. — Advent of the Wellington
Ministry. — "The death of Mr. Canning placed
Lord Goderich at the head of the government.
The composition of the Cabinet was slightly
altered. Mr. Huskissou became Colonial Secre-
tary, -Mr. Herries Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The government was generally considered to be
weak, and not calculated for a long endurance.
. . . The differences upon financial measures be-
tween Mr. Herries . . . and Mr. Huskisson . . .
coild not be reconciled by Lord Goderich, and he
therefore tendered his resignation to the king on
the !)lli of January, 1838. His majesty immedi-
97D
ENGLAND, 1827-1828.
Parliavient
before Eefomi.
ENGLAND, 1830.
ately sent to lord Lyndhurst to desire that he and
the duke of Wellington should come to Windsor.
The king told the duke that he wished him to
form a government of which he should he the
head. ... It was understood that lord Lynd-
hurst was to continue in office. The duke of
Wellington immediately applied to Mr. Peel,
who, returning to his post of Secretary of State
for the Hume Department, saw the impossibility
of re-uniting in this administration those who had
formed the Cabinet of lord Liverpool. He de-
sired to strengthen the government of the duke
of Wellington by the introduction of some of the
more important of Mr. Canning's friends into
the Cabinet and to fill some of the lesser offices.
The earl of Dudley, Mr. Huskisson, lord Palmer-
ston, and Mr. Charles Grant, became members of
the new administration. Mr. William Lamb,
afterwards lord Melbourne, was appointed Chief
Secretary for Ireland. The ultra-Tories were
greatly indignant at these arrangements. They
groaned and reviled as if the world was un-
changed." — C. Knight, Popular Hist, of Eng., v.
8, ch. 13.
Also in: Sir T. Martin, Life of Lord Lynd-
hurst, ch. 9. — W. M. Torrens, Life of Viscount
Melbourne, v. 1, c7i. 15.
A. D. 1827-1829. — Intervention on behalf of
Greece. — Battle of Navarino. See Greece:
A. D. 1821-1829.
A. D. 1828. — Corn Law amendment. — The
Sliding Scale. See T.\ripf Legislation (Eng-
L.\ND): A. D. 1815-1828.
A. D. 1829. — Catholic Emancipation. See
Iiiel.\nd: a. D. 1811-1829.
A. D. 1830. — The state of the Parliamentary
representation before Reform. — Death of
George IV. — Accession of William IV. — Fall
of the Wellington Ministry. — "Down to the
year 1800, when the Union between Great Brit-
ain and Ireland was effected, the House consisted
of 558 members; after 1800, it consisted of 658
members. In the earlier days of George III., it
was elected by 160,000 voters, out of a popula-
tion of a little more than eight millions ; in the
later days of that monarch, it was elected by about
440,000 voters, out of a population of twenty -two
millions. . . . But the Inadequacy of the repre-
sentation will be even more striking if we con-
sider the manner in which the electors were broken
up into constituencies. The constituencies con-
sisted either of counties, or of cities or boroughs.
Generally speaking, the counties of England and
Wales (and of Ireland, after the Union) were rep-
resented by two members, and the counties of
Scotland by one member ; and the voters were the
forty-shilling freeholders. The number of cities
and boroughs which returned members varied;
but, from the date of the Union, there were about
217 in England and Wales, 14 in Scotland, and 39
in Ireland, — all the English and Welsh boroughs
(with a few exceptions) returning two members,
and the Scotch and Irish boroughs one member.
How the particular places came to be Parliamen-
tary boroughs is a question of much historic in-
terest, which cannot be dealt with here in detail.
Originally, the places to which writs were issued
seem to have been chosen by the Crown, or, not
unfrequently, by the Sheriffs of the counties.
Probably, in the first instance, the more impor-
tant places were selected ; though other considera-
tions, such astlie political opinions of the owners
of the soil, and the desire to recognise services
(often of a very questionable character) rendered
by such owners to the King, no doubt had their
weight. In the time of Cromwell, some im-
portant changes were made. In 1654, he dis-
franchised many small boroughs, increased the
number of county members, and enfranchised
^Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax. All these re-
forms were cancelled after the Restoration; and
from that time very few changes were made.
... In the hundred and fifty years which fol-
lowed the Restoration, however, there were
changes in the condition of the country, alto-
gether beyond the control of either kings or par-
liaments. Old towns disappeared or decayed,
and new ones sprang up. Manchester, Birming-
ham, and Leeds were remarkable examples of
the latter, — Old Sarum was an example of the
former. ... At one time a place of some impor-
tance, it declined from the springing up of New
Sarum (Salisbury) ; and, even so far back as the
reign of Henry VII., it existed as a town only in
imagination, and in the roll of the Parliamentary
boroughs. . . . !Many other places might be
named [known as Rotten Boroughs and Pocket
Boroughs] — such as Gatton in Surrey, and Lud-
gershall in Wiltshire — which represented only
their owners. In fact, the representation of
owners, and of owners onl)', was a very promi-
nent feature of the electoral system now under
consideration. Thus, the Duke of Norfolk was
represented by eleven members, who sat for places
forming a part of his estates; similarly, Lord
Lonsdale was represented by nine members. Lord
Darlington by seven, the Duke of Rutland and
several other peers by six each ; and it is stated
by one authority that the Duke of Newcastle, at
one time, returned one third of all the members
for the boroughs, while, up to 1780, the members
for the county of York — the largest and most
influential of the counties — were always elected
in Lord Rockingham's dining-room. But these
are only selected instances. JIany others might
be cited. According to a statement made by the
Duke of Richmond in 1780, 6,000 persons re-
turned a clear majority of the House of Com-
mons. In 1793, the Society of the Friends of
the People asserted, and declared that they were
able to prove, that 84 individuals returned 157
members; that 70 individuals returned 150 mem-
bers ; and that of the 154 individuals who thus
returned 307 members — the majority of the
House before the Union with Ireland — no fewer
than 40 were peers. The same Society asserted
in the same year, and declared that they were
able to prove, that 70 members were returned
b}' 35 places, in which there were scarcely any
electors ; that 90 members were returned by 46
places, in which there were fewer than 50 electors ;
that 37 members were returned by 19 places, with
not more than 100 electors; and that 52 members
were returned by 26 places, with not more than
200 electors : all these in England alone. Even
in the towns which had a real claim to represen-
tation, the franchise rested upon no uniform basis.
... In some cases the suffrage was practically
household suffrage; in other cases the suffrage
was extremely restricted. But they all returned
their two members equally ; it made no difference
whether the voters numbered 3, 000 or only thi-ee
or four. Such being the state of the representa-
tion, corruption was inevitable. Bribery was
practised to an inconceivable extent. Many of
the smaller boroughs had a fixed price, and it
980
ENGLAND, 1830.
The Question of
Reform.
ENGLAND, 1830.
was by no means uncommon to see a borough
advertised for sale in the newspapers. ... As
an example of cost in contesting a county elec-
tion, it is on record that the joint expenses of
Lord Milton and Mr. Lascelles, in contesting the
county of York in 1807, were £300,000. ... It
is not to be supposed that a condition of things
which appears to us so intolerable attracted no
attention before what may be called the Reform
era. So far back as 174.5, Sir Francis Dashwood
(afterwards Lord de Spencer) moved an amend-
ment to the Address in favour of Reform ; Lord
Chatham himself, in 1766 and 1770, spoke of the
borough representation as ' the rotten part of the
constitution,' and likened it to a ' mortified limb';
the Duke of Richmond of that day, in 1780, in-
troduced a bill into the House of Lords which
would have given manhood suffrage and annual
parliaments; and three times in succession, in
1783, 1783, and 1785, Mr. Pitt proposed resolu-
tions in favour of Reform. . . . After Mr. Pitt
had abandoned the cause, Mr. (afterwards Earl)
Grey took up the subject. First, in 1793, he
presented that famous petition from the Society
of the Friends of the People, to which allusion
has been already made, and founded a resolution
upon it. He made further efforts in 1793, 1795,
and 1797, but was on every occasion defeated by
large majorities. . . . From the beginning of
the 19th century to the year 1815 — with the ex-
ception of a few months after the Peace of
Amiens in 1803 — England was at war. During
that time Reform dropped out of notice. . . .
In 1817. and again in 1818 and 1819, Sir Francis
Burdett, who was at that time member for West-
minster and a leading Reformer, brought the
question of Reform before the House of Com-
mons. On each occasion he was defeated by a
tremendous majority. . . . The next ten years
were comparatively uneventful, so far as the
subject of this history is concerned. . . . Two
events made the year 1830 particularly opportune
for raising the question of Parliamentary Reform.
The first of these events was the death of George
TV. [June 36], — the second, the deposition of
Charles X. of France. . . . For the deposition
of Charles — followed as it was very soon by a
successful insurrection in Belgium — produced
an immense impression upon the Liberals of this
country, and upon the people generally. In a
few days or weeks there had been secured in two
continental countries what the people of England
had been asking for in vain for years. . . . We
must not omit to notice one other circumstance
that favoured the cause of Reform. This was
the popular distress. Distress always favours
agitation. The distress in 1830 was described in
the House of Lords at the time as ' unparalleled
in any previous part of our history. ' Probably
this was an exaggeration. But there can be no
doubt that the distress was general, and that it
was acute. . . . By the law as it stood when
George IV. died, the demise of the Crown in-
volved a dissolution of Parliament. The Parlia-
ment which was in existence in 1830 had been
elected in 1836. Since the beginning of 1838 the
Duke of Wellington had boon Prime Minister,
with Mr. (soon after Sir Robert) Peel as Home
Secretary, and Leader of the House of Commons.
They decided to dissolve at once. ... In the
Parliament thus dissolved, and especially in the
session just brought to a close, the question of
Reform had held a prominent place. At the
very beginning of the session, in the first week of
February, the Marquis of Blandford (afterwards
Duke of Marlborough) moved an amendment to
the Address, in which, though a Tory, he af-
firmed the conviction ' that the State is at this
moment in the most imminent danger, and that
no effectual measures of salvation will or can be
adopted until the people shall be restored to their
rightful share in the legislation of the country.'
. . . He was supported on very different grounds
by Mr. O'Connell, but was defeated by a vote of
96 to 11. A few days later he introduced a spe-
cific plan of Reform — a very Radical plan in-
deed—but was again ignominiously defeated ;
then, on the 33d of February, Lord John Russell
. . . asked for leave to bring in a bill for con-
ferring the franchise upon Leeds, Manchester,
and Birmingham, as the three largest unrepre-
sented towns in the kingdom, but was defeated
by 188 votes to 140 ; and finally, on the 38th of
May — scarcely two months before the dissolu-
tion — Mr. O'Connell brought in a bill to estab-
lish universal suffrage, vote by ballot, and trien-
nial parliaments, but found only 13 members to
support him in a House of 333. . . . Thus, the
question of Reform was now before the country,
not merely as a popular but as a Parliamentary
question. It is not too much to say that, when
the dissolution occurred, it occupied all minds.
. . . The whole of August and a considerable
part of September, therefore, were occupied with
the elections, which were attended by an un-
paralleled degree of excitement. . . . When all
was over, and the results were reckoned up, it
was founa that, of the 38 members who repre-
sented the thirteen greatest cities in England
(to say nothing of Wales, Scotland, or Ireland),
only 3 were Ministerialists. ... Of the 236 men
who were returned by elections, more or less pop-
ular, in England, only 79 were Ministerialists.
. . . The first Parliament of William IV. met on
the 36th of October, but the session was not really
opened till the 3d of November, when the King
came down and delivered his Speech. . . . The
occasion was made memorable, however, not by
the King's Speech, but by a speech by the Duke
of Wellington, who was then Prime Minister.
. . . 'The noble Earl [Grey],' said the Duke,
' has alluded to something in the shape of a Par-
liamentary Reform, but he has been candid
enough to acknowledge that he is not prepared
with any measure of Reform ; and I have as little
scruple to say that his Majesty's Government is
as totally unprepared as the noble lord. Nay,
on my own part, I will go further, and say, that
I have never read or heard of any measure, up
to the present moment, which could in any de-
gree satisfy my mind that the state of the repre-
sentation could be improved, or be rendered more
satisfactory to the country at large than at the
present moment. ... I am not only not prepared
to bring forward any measure of this nature, but
I will at once declare that, as far as I am con-
cerned, as long as I hold any station in the gov-
ernment of the country, I shall always feel it my
duty to resist such measures when jjroposed by
others. ' Exactly fourteen days after the delivery
of this speech, the Duke's career as Prime Min-
ister came for the time to a close. On the 16th
of November he came down to Westminster,
and announced that he had resigned office. In
the meantime, there had been something like a
panic in the city, because Ministers, apprehending
981
ENGLAND, 1830.
The First
Eeform Bill.
ENGLAND, 1830-1832.
disturbance, had advised the King and Queen to
abandon an engagement to dine, on the 9th, "witli
the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall. On the 15th,
too, the Government had sustained a defeat in
the House of Commons, on a motion proposed
by Sir Henry Parnell on the part of the Oppo-
sition, having reference to the civil list. This
defeat was made the pretext for resignation.
But it was only a pretext. After the Duke's
declaration in regard to Reform, and in view of
his daily increasing unpopularity, his continuance
in office was impossible." — W. Heaton, The
Three Refm-ms of Parliament, ch. 1-2.
Also in: A. Paul, Mist, of Eeform, ch. 1-6. —
W. Bagehot, Essays on Parliavientary Reform,
essay 2. — H. Cox, Antient Parliamentary Elec-
tions. — S. Walpole, The Electorate and the Legis-
lature, ch. 4. — E. A. Freeman, Decayed Boroughs
(Hist. Essays, 4th seriei<).
A. D. 1830-1832. — The great Reform of Rep-
resentation in Parliament, under the Ministry
of Earl Grey. — "Earl Grey was the new Minis-
ter; and Mr. Brougham his Lord Chancellor.
The first announcement of the premier was that
the government would ' take into immediate con-
sideration the state of the representation, with a
view to the correction of those defects which
have been occasioned in it, by the operation of
time ; and with a view to the reestablishment of
that confidence upon the part of the people,
which he was afraid Parliament did not at present
enjoy, to the full extent that is essential for the
welfare and safety of the country, and the pres-
ervation of the government.' The government
were now pledged to a measure of parliamentary
reform ; and during the Christmas recess were
occupied in preparing it. Meanwhile, the cause
was eagerly supported by the people. ... So
great were the difficulties with which the govern-
ment had to contend, that they needed all the
encouragement that the people could give. They
had to encounter the reluctance of the king, —
the interests of the proprietors of boroughs,
which Mr. Pitt, unable to overcome, had sought
to purchase, — the opposition of two thirds of
the House of Lords, and perhaps of a majority
of the House of Commons, — and above all, the
strong Tory spirit of the country. ... On the
3d February, when Parliament reassembled,
Lord Grey announced that the government had
succeeded in framing ' a measure which would
be effective, without exceeding the bounds of a
just and well-advised moderation,' and which
' had received the unanimous consent of the whole
government.'. . . On the 1st March, this measure
was brought forward in the House of Commons
by Lord John Russell, to whom, — though not in
the cabinet, — this honorable duty had been justly
confided. ... On the 22d JIarch, the second
reading of the bill was carried by a majority of
one only, in a House of 608, — probably the
greatest number which, up to that time, had ever
been assembled at a division. On the 19th of
April, on going into committee, ministers found
themselves in a minority of eight, on a resolution
proposed by General Gascoyue, that the number
of members returned for England ought not to
be diminished. On the 21st, ministers announced
that it was not their intention to proceed with
the bill. On that same night, they were again
defeated on a question of adjournment, by a
majority of twenty-two. This last vote was de-
cisive. The very next day. Parliament was pro-
rogued by the king in person, ' with a view to its
immediate dissolution.' It was one of thu moct
critical days iu the history of our country. . . .
The people were now to decide the question; —
and they decided it. A triumphant body of re-
formers was returned, pledged to carry the reforni
bill ; and on the 6th July, the second reading of
the renewed measure was agreed to, by a ma-
jority of 136. The most tedious and irritating
discussions ensued in committee, — night after
night; and the bill was not disposed of until the
31st September, when it was passed by a majority
of 109. That the peers were still adverse to the
bill was certain ; but whether, at such a crisis,
they would venture to oppose the national will,
was doubtful. On the 7th October, after a debate
of five nights, — one of the most memorable by
which that House has ever been distinguished,
and itself a great event in history, — the Ijill was
rejected on the second reading, by a majority of
forty-one. The battle was to be fought again.
Ministers were too far pledged to the people to
think of resigning ; and on the motion of Lord
Ebrington, they were immediately supported by
a vote of confidence from the House of Commons.
On the 20th October, Parliament was prorogued;
and after a short interval of excitement, turbu-
lence, and danger [see Bristol: A. D. 1831], met
again on the 6th December. A third reform bill
was immediately brought in, — changed in many
respects, — and much improved by reason of the
recent census, and other statistical investigations.
Amongst other changes, the total number of
members was no longer proposed to be reduced.
This bill was read a second time on Sunday
morning, the 18th of December, by a majority
of 162. On the 23d March, it was passed by the
House of Commons, and once more was before
the House of Lords. Here the peril of again re-
jecting it could not be concealed, — the courage
of some was shaken, — the patriotism of others
aroused ; and after a debate of four nights, the
second reading was affirmed by the narrow ma-
jority of nine. But danger still awaited it. The
peers who would no longer venture to reject such
a bill, were preparing to change its essential
character by amendments. Meanwhile the agi-
tation of the people was becoming dangerous.
. . . The time had come, when either the Lords
nuist be coerced, or the ministers must resign.
This alternative was submitted to the king. He
refused to create peers: the ministers resigned,
and their resignation was accepted. Again the
Commons came to the rescue of the bill and the
reform ministry. On the motion of Lord Ebring-
ton, an address was immediately voted by them,
renewing their expressions of unaltered confi-
dence iu the late ministers, and imploring his
Majesty ' to call to his councils such persons only
as will carry into effect, unimpaired in all its es-
sential provisions, that bill for reforming the
representation of the people, which has recently
passed this House.'. . . The public excitement
was greater than ever ; and the government and
the people were In imminent danger of a bloody
collision, when Earl Grey was recalled to the
councils of his sovereign. The bill was now se-
cure. The peers averted the threatened addition
to their numbers by abstaining from further
opposition; and the bill, — the Great Charter
of 1832, — at length received the Royal Assent.
It is now time to advert to the provisions of
this famous statute; and to inquire how far it
982
ENGLAND, 1830-1833.
Social and In-
dxistrial Reforms.
ENGLAND, 1833-1833.
corrected the faults of a system, which had been
complained of for more than half a century. The
main evil had been the number of nomination, or
rotten boroughs enjoying the franchise. Fifty-
six of these, — having less than 2,000 inhabitants,
and returning 111 members, — were swept away.
Thirty boroughs, having less than 4,000 inhabi-
tants, lost each a member. Weymouth and Mel-
combe Regis lost two. This disfranchisement
extended to 143 members. The next evil had
been, that large populations were unrepre-
sented; and this was now redressed. Twenty-
two large towns, including metropolitan districts,
received the privilege of returning two members ;
and 20 more of returning one. The large county
populations were also regarded in the distribu-
tion of seats, — the number of county members
being increased from 94 to 159. The larger
counties were divided ; and the number of mem-
bers adjusted with reference to the importance
of the constituencies. Another evil was the re-
stricted and unequal franchise. This too was
corrected. All narrow rights of election were
set aside in Boroughs; and a £10 household fran-
chise was established. The freemen of corporate
towns were the only class of electors whose
rights were reserved; but residence within the
borough was attached as a condition to their
right of voting. . . . The county constituency
was enlarged by the addition of copyholders and
leaseholders, for terms of years, and of tenants-
at-will paying a rent of £50 a year. . . . The de-
fects of the Scotch representation, being even
more flagrant and indefensible than those of Eng-
land, were not likely to be omitted from Lord
Grey's general scheme of reform. . . . The entire
representation was remodelled. Forty -five mem-
bers had been assigned to Scotland at the Union :
this number was now increased to 53 of whom 30
were allotted to counties, and 23 to cities and
burglis. The county franchise was extended to
all owners of property of £10 a year, and to cer-
tain classes of leaseholders ; and the burgh fran-
chise to all £10 householders. The representa-
tion of Ireland had many of the defects of the
English system. . . . The right of election was
taken away from the corporations, and vested in
£10 householders ; and large additions were made
to the county constituency. The number of
members in Ireland, which the Act of Union had
settled at 100, was now increased to 105." — T. E.
May, Const. Hist/ of Eng., 1760-1860, ch. 6 (v. 1).
Also in : W. N. Molesworth, Hist, of the Re-
form Bill of 1832.— W. Jones, Biog. Sketches of
the Beform Ministers. — Lord Brougham, Life and
Times, by Himself, ch. 21-22.— S. Walpole, Hist,
of Eng. from 1815, ch. 11 («. 2).
A. D. 1831. — First assumption of the name
Conservatives by the Tories. See Conserva-
tive Party.
A. D. 1831-1832. — Intervention in the Neth-
erlands. — Creation of the kingdom of Belgium.
— War with Holland. See Netherlands;
A. D. 1830-1833.
A. D. 1832-1833.— Abolition of Slavery in
the West Indies. — Trade monopoly of the
East India Company iwithdrawn. — Factory
Bill. — Irish tithes. — "The period which suc-
ceeded the passing of the Reform Bill was one of
immense activity and earnestness in legislation.
. . . The first great reform was the complete
abolition of the system of slavery in the British
colonies. The slave trade had itself been sup-
pressed so far as we could suppress it long be-
fore that time, but now the whole system of
"West Indian slavery was brought to an end [see
Slavery, Negro: A. D. 1834-1838]. ... A
long agitation of the small but energetic anti-
slavery party brought about this practical result
in 1833. . . . Granville Sharpe, Zachary Macau-
lay, father of the historian and statesman, Thomas
Powell Buxton, Wilberforce, Brougham, and
many others, had for a long time been striving
hard to rouse up public opinion to the abolition
of the slave system." The bill which passed
Parliament gave immediate freedom to all chil-
dren subsequently born, and to all those who
were then under six years of age ; while it de-
termined for all other slaves a period of appren-
ticeship, lasting five years in one class and seven
years in another, after which they attained abso-
lute freedom. It appropriated £20,000,000 for
the compensation of the slave-owners. ' ' Another
reform of no small importance was accomplished
when the charter of the East India Company
came to be renewed in 1833. The clause giving
them a commercial monopoly of the trade of the
East was abolished, and the trade thrown open
to the merchants of the world [see India: A. D.
1823-1833]. There were other slaves in those
days as well as the negro. There were slaves at
home, slaves to all intents and purposes, who
were condemned to a servitude as rigorous as
that of the negro, and who, as far as personal
treatment went, suffered more severely than
negroes in the better class plantations. We
speak now of the workers in the great mines
and factories. No law up to this time regulated
with anything like reasonable stringency the
hours of labour in factories. ... A commission
was appointed to investigate the condition of
those who worked in the factories. Lord Ash-
ley, since everywhere known as the Earl of
Shaftesbury, . . . brought forward the motion
which ended in the appointment of the commis-
sion. The commission quickly brought together
an Immense amount of evidence to show the
terrible effect, moral and physical, of the over-
working of women and children, and an agitation
set in for the purpose of limiting by law the
durationof the hours of labour. . . . The principle
of legislative interference to protect children
working in factories was established by an Act
passed in 1833, limiting the work of children to
eight hours a day, and that of young persons
under eighteen to 69 hours a week [see Factory
Legislation]. The agitation then set on foot
and led by Lord Ashley was engaged for years
after in endeavouring to give that principle a
more extended application. . . . Irish tithes were
one of the grievances which came under the ener-
getic action of this period of reform. The people
of Ireland complained with justice of having to
pay tithes for the maintenance of the church es-
tablislmient in which they did not believe, and
under whose roofs they never bent In worship."
In 1832, committees of both Houses of Parliament
reported in favor of the extinction of tithes ; but
the Government undertook temporarily a scheme
whereby it made advances to the Irish clergy
and assumed the collection of tithes among its
own functions. It only succeeded in making
matters worse, and several years passed before
the adoption (in 1838) of a bill which "converted
the tithe composition into a rent charge." — J.
McCarthy, The Epoch of Reform, ch. 7-8.
983
ENGLAND, 1833-1833.
Qiteen Victoria.
ENGLAND, 1837-1839.
Also in: C. Knight, Popular Sist. of Eng., v.
8, ch. 17.— H. Martineau, Sist. of the Thirty
Years' Peace, bk. 4, ch. 6-9 {v. 2-3).
A. D. 1833-1840. — Turko-Egyptxan ques-
tion and its settlement. — The capture of Acre.
— Bombardment of Alexandria. See Turks:
A, D. 1831-1840.
A. D. 1833-1845.— The Oxford orTractarian
Movement. See Oxford or Tbactarian Move
MBNT.
A. D. 1834-1837. — Resignation of Lord Grey
and the Reform Ministry. — The first Mel-
bourne Administration. — Peel's first Ministry
and Melbourne's second. — Death of William
IV. — Accession of Queen Victoria. — " On May
27th, Mr. Ward, member of St. Albans, brought
forward . . . resolutions, that the Protestant
Episcopal Church of Ireland much exceeded the
spiritual wants of the Protestant population ; that
it was the right of the State, and of Parliament,
to distribute church property, and that the tem-
poral possessions of the Irish church ought to be
reduced. The ministers determined to adopt a
middle course and appoint a commission of in-
quiry ; they hoped thereby to Induce Mr. Ward
to withdraw his motion, because the question
was already In government hands. While the
negotiations were going on, news was received of
the resignation of four of the most conservative
members of the Cabinet, who regarded any inter-
ference with church property with abhorrence ;
they were Mr. Stanley, Sir James Graham, the
Duke of Richmond, and the Earl of Ripon. . . .
Owing to the difference of opinion in the Cabinet
on the Irish coercion bill, on July 9, 1834, Earl
Grey placed his resignation as Prime Minister in
the hands of the king. On the 10th the House
of Commons adjourned for four days. On the
14th, Viscount Melbourne stated in the House of
Lords that his Majesty had honored him with
his commands for the formation of a ministry.
He had undertaken the task, but it was not yet
completed. There was very little change in the
Cabinet; Lord Melbourne's place in the Home
Department was filled by Lord Duncannon ; Sir
John Cam Hobhouse obtained a seat as First
Commissioner of Woods and Forests, and Lord
Carlisle surrendered the Privy Seal to Lord Mul-
grave. The Irish Church Bill was again brought
forward, and although it passed the Commons,
was defeated in the Lords, August 1st. The
king much disliked the church policy of the
Whigs, and dreaded reform. He was eager to
prevent the meeting of the House, and circum-
stances favored him. Before the session Lord
Spencer died, and Lord Althorpe, his son, was
thus removed to the upper House. There was
no reason why this should have broken up the
ministry, but the king seized the opportunity,
sent for Lord Melbourne, asserted that the min-
istry depended chiefly on the personal influence
of Lord Althorpe in the Commons, declared that,
deprived of it as it now was, the government
could not go on, and dismissed his ministers, in-
structing Melbourne at once to send for the Duke
of Wellington. The sensation in London was
great ; the dismissal of the ministry was consid-
ered unconstitutional; the act of the king was
wholly without precedent. . . . The Duke of
Wellington, from November 15th to December
9th, was the First Lord of the Treasury, and the
sole Secretary of State, having only one col-
league. Lord Lyndhurst, who held the great seal.
while at the same time he sat as Chief Baron of
the Court of Exchequer. This temporary gov-
ernment was called a dictatorship. ... On Sir
Robert Peel's return from Italy, whence he had
been called, he waited upon the king and ac-
cepted the oflice of First Lord of the Treasury
and Chancellor of the Exchequer. With the
king's permission, he applied to Lord Stanley
and Sir James Graham, entreating them to give
him the benefit of their co-operation as colleagues
in the Cabinet. They both declined. Prevented
from forming a moderate Conservative ministry,
he was reduced to fill his places with men of more
pronounced opinions, which promised ill for any
advance in reform. . . . The Foreign, Home,
War, and Colonial offices were filled by Welling-
ton, Goulburn, Herries, and Aberdeen ; Lord
Lyndhurst was Lord Chancellor ; Harding, Sec-
retary for Ireland; and Lord Wharncliffe, Privy
Seal. With this ministry Peel had to meet a hos-
tile House of Commons. . . . The Prime Minis-
ter therefore thought it necessary to dissolve Par-
liament, and took the opportunity [in what was
called ' the Tam worth manifesto '] of declaring
his policy. He declared his acceptance of the
Reform Bill as a final settlement of the question.
. . . The elections, though they returned a
House, as is generally the case, more favorable
to the existing government than that which had
been dissolved, still gave a considerable majority
to the Liberals. . . . Lord John Russell, on April
7th, proposed the resolution, ' That it is the
opinion of this House that no measure upon the
subject of the tithes in Ireland can lead to satis-
factory and final adjustment which does not em-
body the temporalities of the Church in Ireland.'
This was adopted by a majority of 27, and that
majority was fatal to the ministry. On the fol-
lowing day the Duke of Wellington, in the House
of Lords, stated that in consequence of the reso-
lution in the House of Commons, the ministry
had tendered their resignation. Sir Robert made
a similar explanation in the Commons. Ten
days later. Viscount Melbourne, in moving the
adjournment of the House of Lords, stated that
the king had been pleased to appoint him First
Lord of the Treasury. ... On June 9, 1837, a
bulletin issued from Windsor Castle informing a
loyal and really affectionate people that the king
was ill. From the 12th they were regularly
issued until the 19th, when the malady, inflam-
mation of the lungs, had greatly increased. . . .
On Tuesday, June 20th, the last of these official
documents was issued. His Majesty had ex-
pired that morning at 2 o'clock. William died
in the seventy-second year of his age and seventh
year of his reign, leaving no legitimate issue.
He was succeeded by his niece, Alexandrina Vic-
toria." — A. H. McC3haa.n, Abridged Hist, of Etig-
land, pp. 565-570.
Also ik : W. C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir
Pobert Peel, v. 2, ch. 10-12.— W. M. Torrens,
Memoirs of Viscount Melbourne, v. 2, ch. 1-8. — J.
W. Croker, Correspondence and Diaries, ch. 18-20
(!'. 2).
A. D. 1836-1839.— Beginning of the Anti-
Corn-Law Agitation. See Tariff Legisla-
tion (England) : A. D. 1836-1839.
A. D. 1837. — Separation of Hanover. See
Hanover: A. D. 1837.
A. D. 1837-1839.— Opening of the reign of
Queen Victoria. — End of personal rule.— Be-
ginning of purely constitutional government.
984
ENGLAND, 1837-1839.
The Victorian
Literature.
ENGLAND, 1837-.
— Peel and the Bedchamber Question. — "The
Duke of Wellington thought the accession of a
woman to the sovereign's place would be fatal
to the present hopes of the Tories [who were
then expecting a turn of events in their favor, as
against the Whig administration of Lord Mel-
bourne]. 'Peel,' he said, ' has no manners, and
I have no small talk.' He seemed to take it for
granted that the new sovereign would choose
her Ministers as a school-girl chooses her com-
panions. He did not know, did not foresee, that
with the accession of Queen Victoria the real
reign of constitutional government in these is-
lands was to begin. The late King had advanced
somewhat on the ways of his predecessors, but
his rule was still, to all intents and purposes, a
personal rule. With the accession of Victoria
the system of personal rule came to an end. The
elections which at that time were necessary on
the coming of a new sovereign went slightly in
favour of the Tories. The Whigs had many trou-
bles. They were not reformers enough for the
great body of their supporters. . . . The Radi-
cals had split off from them. They could not
manage O'Connell. The Chartist fire was al-
ready burning. There was many a serious crisis
in foreign policy — in China and in Egypt, for
example. The Canadian Rebellion and the mis-
sion of Lord Durham involved the Whigs in
fresh anxieties, and laid them open to new at-
tacks from their enemies. On the top of all
came some disturbances, of a legislative rather
than an insurrectionary kind, in Jamaica, and
the Government felt called upon to bring in a
Bill to suspend for five years the Constitution of
the island. A Liberal and reforming Ministry
bringing in a Bill to suspend a Constitution is in
a highly awkward and dangerous position. Peel
saw his opportunity, and opposed the Bill. The
Government won by a majority of only 5. Lord
Melbourne accepted the situation, and resigned
[May 7, 1839]. The Queen sent for the Duke of
Wellington, and he, of course, advised her to
send for Peel. When Peel came, the young
Queen told him with all the frankness of a girl
that she was sorry to part with her late Minis-
ters, and that she did not disapprove of their
conduct, but that she felt bound to act in accor-
dance with constitutional usages. Peel accepted
the task of forming an Administration. And
then came the famous dispute known as the
'Bedchamber Question' — the 'question de ju-
pons.' The Queen wished to retain her ladies-
in-waiting ; Peel insisted that there must be some
change. 'Two of these ladies were closely re-
lated to Whig statesmen whose policy was dia-
metrically opposed to that of Peel on no less im-
portant a question than the Government of
Ireland. Peel insisted that he could not under-
take to govern under such conditions. The
Queen, acting on the advice of her late Ministers,
would not give way. The whole dispute created
immense excitement at the time. There was a
good deal of misunderstanding on both sides. It
was quietly settled, soon after, by a compromise
which the late Prince Consort suggested, and
which admitted that Peel had been in the right.
... Its importance to us now is that, as Peel
would not give way, the Whigs had to come
back again, and they came back discredited and
damaged, having, as Mr. Molesworth puts it,
got back ' behind the petticoats of the ladies-in-
waiting.' "—J. McCarthy, Sir Bobert Peel, ch. 12.
Alsoin: W. N. Molesworth, Hist, of Eng.,
1830-1874, V. 2, ch. 1.— H. Dunckley, Lord Mel-
bourne, ch. 11.
A. D. 1837-. — The Victorian Age in Litera-
ture. — "It may perhaps be assumed without any
undue amount of speculative venturesomeness
that the age of Queen Victoria will stand out in
history as the period of a literature as distinct
from others as the age of Elizabeth or Anne, al-
though not perhaps equal in greatness to the
latter, and far indeed below the former. At the
opening of Queen Victoria's reign a great race of
literary men had come to a close. It is curious
to note how sharply and completely the litera-
ture of Victoria separates itself from that of tlic
era whose heroes were Scott, Byron, and Words-
worth. Before Queen Victoria came to the throne,
Scott, Byron, Coleridge, and Keats were dead.
Wordsworth lived, indeed, for many years after;
so did Southey and Moore ; and Savage Landor
died much later still. But Wordsworth, Southey,
Moore, and Landor had completed their literary
work before Victoria came to the throne. Not
one of them added a cubit or an inch to his in-
tellectual stature from that time ; some of them
even did work which distinctly proved that their
day was done. A new and fresh breath was
soon after breathed into literature. Nothing,
perhaps, is more remarkable about the better
literature of the age of Queen Victoria than its
complete .severance from the leadership of that
which had gone before it, and its evidence of a
fresh and genuine inspiration. It is a somewhat
curious fact, too, very convenient for the pur-
poses of this history, that the literature of Queen
Victoria's time thus far divides itself clearly
enough into two parts. The poets, novelists, and
historians who were making their fame with the
beginning of the reign had done all their best
work and made their mark before these later
years, and were followed by a new and different
school, drawing inspiration from wholly different
sources, and challenging comparison as antago-
nists rather than disciples. We speak now only
of literature. In science the most remarkable
developments were reserved for the later years
of the reign." — J. McCarthy, The Literature of the
Victorian Reign {Appletons' Journal, Jan., 1879,
p. 498). — "The age of Queen Victoria is as justly
entitled to give name to a literary epoch as any
of those periods on which this distinction has been
conferred by posterity. A new tone of thought
and a new colour of style are discernible from
about the date of the Queen's accession, and,
even should these characteristics continue for
generations without apparent break, it will be
remembered that the Elizabethan age did not
terminate with Elizabeth. In one important re-
spect, however, it differs from most of those
epochs which derive their appellation from a sov-
ereign. The names of Augustus, Lorenzo, Louis
XIV., Anne, are associated with a literary ad-
vance, a claim to have bequeathed models for
imitation to succeeding ages. This claim is not
preferred on behalf of the age of Victoria. It
represents the fusion of two currents which had
alternately prevailed in successive periods. De-
light and Utility met. Truth and Imagination
kissed each other. Practical reform awoke the
enthusiasm of genius, and genius put poetry to
new use, or made a new path for itself in prose.
The result has been much gain, some loss, and an
originality of aspect which would alone render our
985
ENGLAND, 1837-.
The Victorian
Literature.
ENGLAND, 1837-
Queen's reign intenectually memorable. Look-
ing back to "the 18th century in England, we see
the spirit of utility entirely in the ascendant.
Intellectual power is as great as ever, immortal
books are written as of old, but there is a general
incapacity not only for the production, but for
the comprehension of works of the imagination.
Minds as robust as Johnson's, as acute as Hume's,
display neither strength nor intelligence in their
criticism of the Elizabethan writers, and their
professed regard for even the masterpieces of an-
tiquity is evidently in the main conventional.
Conversely, when the spell is broken and the
capacity for imaginative composition returns, the
half -century immediately preceding her Majesty's
accession does not, outside the domain of the
ideal, produce a single work of the first class.
Hallam, the elder Mill, and others compose, in-
deed, books of great value, but not great books.
In poetry and romantic fiction, on the other hand,
the genius of that age reaches a height unat-
tained since Milton, and probably not destined to
be rivalled for many generations. In the age of
Victoria we witness the fusion of its predecessors. "
— R. Garnett, Literature (The Beign of Queen
Victoria, ed. by T. H. Ward. t\ 2, pp. 445-446).—
"The most conspicuous of the substantial dis-
tinctions between the literature of the present
day and that of the first quarter or third of the
century may be described as consisting in the
different relative positions at the two dates of
Prose and Verse. In the Georgian era ver.se was
in the ascendant; in the Victorian era the su-
premacy has passed to prose. It is not easy for
any one who has grown up in the latter to esti-
mate aright the universal excitement which used
to be produced in the former by a new poem of
Scott's, or Byron's, or Moore's, or Campbell's, or
Crabbe's, or the equally fervid interest that was
taken throughout a more limited circle in one by
Wordsworth, or Southey, or Shelley. There may
have been a power in the spirit of poetry which
that of prose would in vain aspire to. Probably
all the verse ages would be found to have been
of higher glow than the prose ones. The age in
question, at any rate, will hardly be denied by
any one who remembers it to have been in these
centuries, perhaps from the mightier character
of the events and circumstances in the midst of
which we were then placed, an age in which the
national heart beat more strongly than it does at
present in regard to other things as well as this.
Its reception of the great poems that succeeded
one another so rapidly from the first appearance
of Scott till the death of Byron was like its re-
ception of the succession of great victories that,
ever thickening, and almost unbroken by a single
defeat, filled up the greater part of the ten years
from Trafalgar to Waterloo — from the last fight
of Nelson to the last of Wellington. No such
huzzas, making the welkin ring with the one
voice of a whole people, and ascending alike
from every city and town and humblest vDlage
in the land, have been heard since then. ... Of
course, there was plenty of prose also written
throughout the verse era ; but no book in prose
that was then produced greatly excited the pub-
lic mind, or drew any considerable amount of at-
tention, till the Waverley novels began to ap
pear; and even that remarkable series of works
did not succeed in at once reducing poetry to the
second place, however chief a share it may have
had in hastening that result. Of tlic other prose
writing that then went on what was most effec-
tive was that of the periodical press. — of the Edin-
burgh Review and Cobbett's Register, and, at a
later date, of Blackwood's Magazine and the Lou-
don Magazine (the latter with Charles Lamb ;ind
De Quincey among its contributors), — much of
it owing more or less of its power to its vehement
political partisanship. A descent from poeti'}' to
prose is the most familiar of all phenomena in
the history of literature. Call it natural decay
or degeneracy, or only a relaxation which the
spirit of a people requires after having been for
a certain time on the wing or on the stretch, it
is what a period of more than ordinary poetical
productiveness always ends in." — G. L. Craik,
Compendious Hist, of Eng. Literature, i>. 2, j>p.
553-555. — "What . . . are the specific channels
of Victorian utterance in verse ? To define them
is difficult, because they are so subtly varied and
so inextricably interwoven. Yet I think they
may be superficially described as the idyll and
the lyric. Under the idyll I should class all
narrative and descriptive poetry, of which this
age has been extraordinarily prolific ; sometimes
assuming tlie form of minstrelsy, as in the lays
of Scott; sometimes approaching to the classic
style, as in the Hellenics of Landor ; sometimes
rivalling the novellette, as in the work of Tenny-
son ; sometimes aiming at psychological analysis,
as in the portraits drawn by Robert Browning;
sometimes confining art to bare history, as in
Crabbe ; sometimes indulging flights of pure artis-
tic fancy, as in Keats' "Eudyraiou" and "Lamia."
Under its many metamorphoses the narrative and
descriptive poetry of our century bears the stamp
of the idyll, because it is fragmentary and be-
cause it results in a picture. . . . No literature
and no age has been more fertile of lyric poetry
than English literature in the age of Victoria.
The fact is apparent. I should superfluously
burden my readers if I were to prove the point
by reference to Byron, Coleridge, Shelley, Keats,
Wordsworth, Rossetti, Clough, Swinburne, Ar-
nold, Tennyson, and I do not know how many
of less illustrious but splendid names, in detail.
The causes are not far to seek. Without a com-
prehensive vehicle like the epic, which belongs
to the first period of national life, or the drama,
which belongs to its secondary period, our poets
of a later day have had to sing from their inner
selves, subjectively, introspectively, obeying im-
pulses from nature and the world, which touched
them not as they were Englishmen, but as they
were this man or that woman. . . . When they
sang, they sang with their particular voice ; and
the lyric is the natural channel for such song.
But what a complex thing is this Victorian lyric I
It includes Wordsworth's sonnets and Rossetti's
ballads, Coleridge's ' Ancient Mariner ' and Keats'
odes, Clough's ' Easter day ' and Tennyson's
' Maud,' Swinburne's ' Songs before Sunrise ' and
Browning's 'Dramatis Persons,' Thomson's
' City of Dreadful Night ' and Mary Robinson's
' Handful of Honeysuckle.?,' Andrew Lang's Bal-
lades and Sharp's ' Weird of Michael Scot,' Dob-
son's dealings with the eighteenth century and
Noels 'Child's Garland, '"Barnes's Dorsetshire
Poems and Buchanan's London Lyrics, the songs
from Empedocles on Etna and Ebenezer Jones's
' Pagans Drinking Chant,' Shelley's Ode to the
West Wind and Mrs. Browning's ' Pan is Dead,'
Newman's hymns and Gosse's Chant Royal. The
kaleidoscope presented by this lyric is so inex-
986
ENGLAND, 1837-.
Jlie Chartists.
ENGLAND, 1838-1843.
haustible that any man with the fragment of a
memory might pair off scores of poems by ad-
mired authors, and yet not fall upon the same
parallels as those which I have made. The
genius of our century, debarred from epic, de-
Ijarred from drama, falls back upon idyllic and
lyrical expression. In the idyll it satisfies its
objective craving after art. In the lyric it pours
forth personality. It would be wrong, however,
to limit the wealth of our poetry to these two
branches. Such poems as Wordsworth's ' Ex-
cursion,' Byron's 'Don Juan 'and 'Childe Har-
old,' Mrs. Browning's 'Aurora Leigh,' William
Morris's 'Earthly Paradise,' Clough's 'Amours
de Voyage,' are not to be classified in either
species. They are partly autobiographical, and
in part the influence of the tale makes itself dis-
tinctly felt in them. Nor again can we omit the
translations, of which so many have been made ;
some of them real masterpieces and additions to
our literature." — J. A. Symonds, A Comparison
of EUzahethan with Victorian Poetry {Pm'tnightly
Bev., Jan. 1, 1889, pp. 62-64). — The difference
between the drama and the novel "is one of per-
spective ; and it is this which in a wide sense dis-
tinguishes the Elizabethan and the Victorian
views of life, and thence of art. . . . It is . . .
the present aim of art to throw on life all manner
of side-lights, such as the stage can hardly con-
trive, but which the novel professes to manage
for those who can read. The round unvarnished
tale of the early novelists has been dead for over
a century, and in its place we have fiction that
seeks to be as complete as life itself. . . . There
is, then, in each of these periods an excellence
and a relative defect: in the Elizabethan, round-
ness and balance, but, to us, a want of fulness ;
in the Victorian, amplified knowledge, but a fall-
ing short of comprehensiveness. And adapted
to each respectively, the drama and the novel
are its most expressive literary form. The limita-
tions and scope of the drama are those of its
time, and so of the novel. Even as the Eliza-
bethan lived with all his might and was not
troubled about many things, his art was intense
and round, but restricted ; and as the Victorian
commonly views life by the light of a patent
reading-lamp, and so, sitting apart, sees much to
perplex, the novel gives a more complex treat-
ment of life, with rarer success in harmony.
This rareness is not, however, due to the novel
itself, but to the minds of its makers. In pos-
sibility it is indeed the greater of the two, being
more epical ; for it is as capable of grandeur, and
is ampler. This largeness in Victorian life and
art argues in the great novelists a quality of
spirit which it is difficult to name without being
misunderstood, and which is peculiarly non-Eliza-
bethan. It argues what Burns would call a casti-
gated pulse, a supremacy over passion. Yet
they are not Lucretian gods, however calm their
atmosphere; their minds are not built above
humanity, but, being rooted deep in it, rise high.
. . . Both periods are at heart earnest, and the
stamp on the great literature of each is that of
reality, heightened and made powerful by ro-
mance. Nor is their agreement herein greatly
shaken by the novel laying considerable stress on
the outside of life, while the drama is almost
heedless of it ; for they both seek to break into
the kernel, their variance being chiefly one of
method, dictated by difference of knowledge,
taste, and perception." — T. D. Robb. The Eliza-
bethan Drama and the Victorian Novel {Lippin-
cott's Monthly Magazine, April, 1891, pp. 520-522).
A. D. 1838-1842.— The Chartist agitation.—
"When the Parliament was opened by tCe Queen
on the 5th of February, 1839, a passage in the
Royal Speech had reference to a state of domes-
tic affairs which presented an unhappy con-
trast to the universal loyalty which marked the
period of the Coronation. Her Majesty said: 'I
have observed with pain the persevering efforts
which have been made in some parts of the coun-
try to excite my subjects to disobedience and
resistance to the law, and to recommend dan-
gerous and illegal practices.' Chartism, which
for ten subsequent years occasionally agitated
the country, had then begun to take root. On
the previous 12th of December a proclamation
had been issued against illegal Chartist assem-
blies, several of which had been held, says the
proclamation, ' after sunset by torchlight. ' The
persons attending these meetings were armed
with guns and pikes; and demagogues, such as
Feargus O'Connor and the Rev. Mr. Stephens at
Bury, addressed the people in the most inflam-
matory language. . . . The document called
'The People's Charter,' which was embodied in
the form of a bill in 1838, comprised six points: —
universal suffrage, excluding, however, women;
division of the United Kingdom into equal
electoral districts ; vote by ballot ; annual parlia-
ments; no property qualification for members;
and a paj'ment to every member for his legisla-
tive services. These principles so quickly rec-
ommended themselves to the working-classes
that in the session of 1839 the number of signa-
tures to a petition presented to Parliament was
upwards of a million and a quarter. The mid-
dle classes almost universally looked with ex-
treme jealousy and apprehension upon any at-
tempt for an extension of the franchise. The
upper classes for the most part regarded the pro-
ceedings of the Chartists with a contempt which
scarcely concealed their fears. This large sec-
tion of the working population very soon became
divided into what were called physical-force
Chartists and moral-force Chartists. As a nat-
ural consequence, the principles and acts of the
physical-force Chartists disgusted every sup-
porter of order and of the rights of property." —
C. Knight, Popular Hist, of Eng., v. 8, eh. 23.—
"Nothing can be more unjust than to represent
the leaders and promoters of the movement as
mere factious and self-seeking demagogues.
Some of them were men of great ability and elo-
quence; some were impassioned young poets,
drawn from the class whom Kingsley has de-
scribed in his ' Alton Locke ' ; some were men of
education; many were earnest and devoted fanat-
ics; and, so far as we can judge, all, or nearly
all, were sincere. Even the man who did the
movement most harm, and who made himself
most odious to all reasonable outsiders, the once
famous, now forgotten, Feargus O'Connor, ap
pears to have been sincere, and to have person-
ally lost more than he gained by his Chartism.
. . . He was of commanding presence, great stat-
ure, and almost gigantic strength. He had edu
cation ; he had mixed in good society ; he belonged
to an old family. . . . There were many men in
the movement of a nobler moral nature than
poor, huge, wild Feargus O'Connor. There
were men like Thomas Cooper, . . . devoted,
impassioned, full of poetic aspiration, and no
987
ENGLAND, 1838-1843.
Penny Postage.
ENGLAND, 1840.
scant measure of poetic inspiration as well.
Henry Vincent was a man of unimpeachable
character. . . . Ernest Jones was as sincere and
self-sacrificing a man as ever joined a sinking
cause. ... It is necessary to read sucli a book
as Thomas Cooper's Autobiography to under-
stand how genuine was the poetic and political
enthusiasm which was at the heart of the Cliart-
ist movement, and how bitter was the suffering
which drove into its ranks so many thousands
of stout working men who, in a country like
England, might well have expected to be able
to live by the hard work they were only too will-
ing to do. One must read the Anti-Corn-Law
Rhymes of Ebenezer Elliott to understand how
the ' bread tax ' became identified in the minds
of the very best of the working class, and Iden-
tified justly, with the system of political and
economical legislation which was undoubtedly
kept up, although not of conscious purpose, for
the benefit of a class. ... A whole literature of
Chartist newspapers sprang up to advocate the
cause. The 'Northern Star,' owned and con-
ducted by Feargus O'Connor, was the most popu-
lar and influential of them; but every great
town had its Chartist press. Meetings were held
at which sometimes very violent language was
employed. ... A formidable riot took place in
Birmingham, where the authorities endeavoured
to put down a Chartist meeting. . . . Efforts
were made at times to bring about a compromise
with the middle-class Liberals and the Anti-Corn-
Law leaders; but all such attempts proved fail-
ures. The Chartists would not give up their
Charter ; many of them would not renounce the
hope of seeing it carried by force. The Govern-
ment began to prosecute some of the orators and
leaders of the Charter movement; and some of
these were convicted, imprisoned and treated
with great severity. Henry Vincent's imprison-
ment at Newport, In Wales, was the occasion of
an attempt at rescue [November 4, 1839] which
bore a very close resemblance indeed to a scheme
of organised and armed rebellion." A conflict
occurred In which ten of the Chartists were
killed, and some 50 were wounded. Three of
the leaders, named Frost, Williams, and Jones,
were tried and convicted on the charge of high
treason, and were sentenced to death; but tlie
sentence was commuted to one of transportation.
"The trial and conviction of Frost, Williams,
and Jones, did not put a stop to the Chartist agi-
tation. On the contrary, that agitation seemed
rather to wax and strengthen and grow broader
because of the attempt at Newport and its
consequences. . . . There was no lack of what
were called energetic measures on the part of the
Government. The leading Chartists all over the
country were prosecuted and tried, literally by
hundreds In most cases they were convicted
and sentenced to terras of imprisonment. . . .
The working classes grew more and more bitter
against the Whigs, who they said had professed
Liberalism only to gain their own ends. . . .
There was a profound distrust of the middle
class and their leaders," and it was for tliat rea-
son that the Chartists would not join hands with
the Anti-Corn-Law movement, then in full prog-
ress. "It is clear that at that time the Chart-
ists, who represented the bulk of the artisan
class In most of the large towns, did in their very
hearts believe that England was ruled for the
benefit of aristocrats and millionaires who were
absolutely indifferent to the sufferings of the
poor. It is equally clear that most of what are
called the ruling class did really believe the Eng-
lish working men who joined the Chartist move-
ment to be a race of fierce, unmanageable, and
selfish communists, who, if thej' were allowed
their own way for a moment, would prove them-
selves determined to overthrow throne, altar, and
all established securities of society." — J. Mc-
Carthy, Hist, of Our Own Times, ch. 5 (». 1). —
Among the measures of coercion advocated in
the councils of the Chartists was that of appoint-
ing and observing what was to be called a
"'sacred month,' during which the working
classes throughout the whole kingdom were to
abstain from every kind of labour, in the hope
of compelling the governing classes to concede
the charter. " — W. N. Molesworth, Hist, of Eng. ,
1830-1874, V. 2, ch. 5.
Also in : T. Cooper, Life, by himself, ch. 14-23.
— W. Lovett, Life and Struggles, ch. 8-15. — T.
Frost, Forty Years' Recollections, ch. 3-11. — H.
Jephsou, The Platform, pt. 4, ch. 17 and 19 {v. 3).
A. D. 1839-1842. — The Opium War with
China. See Chtna: A. D. 1839-1842.
A. D. 1840. — Adoption of Penny-Postage. —
"In 1837 Mr. Rowland Hill had published his
plan of a cheap and uniform postage. A Com-
mittee of the House of Commons was appointed
in 1837, which continued its inquiries through-
out the session of 1838, and arrived at the con-
viction that the plan was feasible, and deserving
of a trial under legislative sanction. After much
discussion, and the experiment of a varying
charge, the uniform rate for a letter not weigh-
ing more than half an ounce became, by order of
the Treasury, one penny. This great reform
came into operation on the 10th of January, 1840.
Its final accomplisliment is mainly due to the sa-
gacity and perseverance of the man who first con-
ceived the scheme."- — C. Knight, Crown Hist, of
Eng., p. 883. — "Up to this time the rates of pos-
tage on letters were very heavy, and varied ac-
cording to the distance. For instance, a single
letter conveyed from one part of a town to an-
other cost 2d. ; a letter from Reading, to London
7d. ; from Brighton, 8d. ; from Aberdeen, Is. 3id. ;
from Belfast, Is. 4d. If the letter was writ-
ten on more than a single sheet, the rate of pos-
tage was much higher." — W. N. Molesworth,
Hist, of Eng., 1830-1874, v. 2, ch. 1.
Also in : G. B. Hill, Life of Sir Rowland Hill.
A. D. 1840. — The Queen's marriage. — " On
January 16, 1840, the Queen, opening Parliament
in person, announced her intention to marry her
cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg-Gotha — a
step which she trusted would be ' conducive to
the interests of my people as well as to my own
domestic happiness.' . . . It was indeed a mar-
riage founded on affection. . . . The Queen had
for a long time loved her cousin. He was nearly
her own age, the Queen being the elder by three
months and two or three days. Francis Charles
Augustus Albert Emmanuel was the full name
of the young Prince. He was the second son of
Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and of
his wife Louisa, daughter of Augustus, Duke of
Saxe-Gotha-Altenberg. Prince Albert was born
at the Rosenau, one of his father's residences,
near Coburg, on August 26, 1819. ... A mar-
riage between the Princess Victoria and Prince
Albert had been thought of as desirable among
the families on both sides, but it was always
988
ENGLAND, 1840.
Peel and
ttie Com Laws.
ENGLAND, 1846.
wisely resolved that nothing should be said to the
young Princess on the subject unless she herself
showed a distinct liking for lier cousin. In 1836,
Prince Albert was brouglit by his father to Eng-
land, and made the personal acquaintance of the
Princess, and she seems at once to have been
drawn toward him in tlie manner whicli her fam-
ily and friends would most have desired. . . .
The marriage of the Queen and the Prince tools
place on February 10, 1840."— J. McCarthy, ffist.
of Our Own Times, ch. 7 (c 1).
A. D. 1841-1842. — Interference in Afghanis-
tan.— The first Afghan War. See Afghanis-
tan: A. D. 1803-1838; 1838-1843; 1842-1869.
A. D. 1841-1842.— Fall of the Melbourne
Ministry. — Opening of the second administra-
tion of Sir Robert Peel.— In 1841, the Whig
Ministry (Melbourne's) determined "to do some-
thing for freedom of trade. . . . Colonial timber
and sugar were charged with a duty lighter than
was imposed on foreign timber and sugar ; and
foreign sugar paid a lighter or a heavier duty ac-
cording as it was imported from countries of
slave labour or countries of free labour. It was
resolved to raise the duty on colonial timber, but
to lower the duty on foreign timber and foreign
sugar, and at the same time to replace the slid-
ing scale of the Corn Laws tlien in force [see
Tariff Legislation (Engi,.\nd): A. D. 1815-
1828] witli a fixed duty of 8s. per quarter. . . .
The concessions offered by tlie Ministry, too small
to excite tlie enthusiasm of tlie free traders, were
enough to rally all the threatened interests around
Peel. Baring's revision of the sugar duties was
rejected by a majority of 36. Everybody ex-
pected the Ministers to resign upon this defeat;
but they merely announced the continuance of
the former duties. Then Peel gave notice of a
vote of want of confidence, and carried it on the
4th of June by a single vote in a House of 633
members. Instead of resigning, the Ministers
appealed to tlie country. Tlie elections went on
tiirough tlie last days of June and the whole of
July. When the new Parliament was complete,
it appeared that the Conservatives could count
upon 367 votes in tlie House of Commons. The
Ministry met Parliament on the 24th of August.
Peel in the House of Commons and Ripon in the
House of Lords moved amendments to the Ad-
dress, which were carried by majorities of 91 and
72 respectively." Tlie Jliuistry resigned and a
Conservative Government was formed, with Peel
at its head, as First Lord of tlie Treasury. " Wel-
lington entered the Cabinet without otfice, and
Lyndhurst assumed for the third time tlie honours
of Lord Chancellor. " Among the lesser members
of the Administration — not in the Cabinet — was
Mr. Gladstone, who became Vice-President of
the Board of Trade. "This time Peel experi-
enced no difficulty with regard to the Queen's
Household. It had been previously arranged
that in the case of Lord Melbourne's resignation
three Whig Ladies, the Ducliess of Bedford, tlie
Duchess of Sutherland, and Lady Normanby,
should resign of their own accord. One or two
other changes in tlie Household contented Peel,
and these the Queen accorded with a frankness
which placed him entirely at his ease. . . . Dur-
ing the recess Peel took a wide survey of the ills
affecting the commonwealth, and of the possible
remedies. To supply the deficiency in the reve-
nue without laying new burthens upon the hum-
bler class; to revive our fainting manufactures
by encouraging the importation of raw material ;
to assuage distress by making the price of pro-
visions lower and more regular, without taking
away that protection which he still believed es-
sential to British agriculture: these were the
tasks which Peel now bent his mind to compass.
. . . Having solved [the problems] to his own
satisfaction, he had to persuade his colleagues
that they were right. Only one proved obstinate.
The Duke of Buckingham would hear of no
change in the degree of protection afforded to
agriculture. He surrendered the Privy Seal,
which was given to the Duke of Buccleugh. . . .
The Queen's Speech recommended Parliament
to consider the state of the laws affecting the im-
portation of corn and other commodities. It an-
nounced the beginmng of a revolution which few
persons in England thought possible, although it
was to be completed in little more than ten years."
—P. C. Montague, Life of Sir Robert Peel, ch. 7-8.
AisoiN: J. R. Thursfleld, Peel, ch. 7-8.— W.
C. Taylor, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel, v.
3, ch. 3-5. — J. W. Croker, Correspondence and
Diaries, ch. 22 (». 2).
A. D. 1842. — The Ashburton Treaty. See
United States of Am.: A. D. 1843.
A. D. 1844.— The Bank Charter Act. See
MOKEY AND ISanking : A. D. 1844.
A. D. 1845-1846. — Repeal of the Corn Laws.
See Tariff Legislation : A. D. 18-15-1846.
A. D. 1845-1846. — First war with the Sikhs.
See India: A. D. 1845-1849.
A. D. 1846. — Settlement of the Oregon
Boundary Question with the United States.
See Oregon: A. D. 1844-1846.
A. D. 1846. — The vengeance of the Tory-
Protectionists. — Overthrow of Peel. — Advent
of Disraeli. — Ministry of Lord John Russell. —
"Strange to say, the day when the Bill [extin-
guishing the duties on corn] was read in the
House of Lords for the third time [June 25] saw
the fall of Peel's Ministry. The fall was due to
the state of Ireland. The Government had been
bringing in a Coercion Bill for Ireland. It was
introduced while the Corn Bill was yet passing
through the House of Commons. The situation
was critical. All the Irish followers of Mr.
O'Connell would be sure to oppose the Coercion
Bill. The Liberal party, at least when out of of-
fice, had usually made it their principle to oppose
Coercion Bills, if they were not attended with
some promises of legislative reform. The Eng-
lish Radical members, led by Mr. Cobden and Mr.
Bright, were certain to oppose coercion. If the
protectionists should join with these other oppo-
nents of the Coercion Bill, the fate of the
measure was assured, and with it the fate of the
Government. This was exactly what happened.
Eighty Protectionists followed Lord George Ben-
tinck into the lobby against the Bill, in combina-
tion with the Free Traders, the Whigs, and the
Irish Catholic and national members. The divi-
sion took place on the second reading of the Bill on
Thursday, June 35, and there was a majority of
73 against the Ministry. "—J. McCarthy, T7ie Epoch
of Reform, p. 183.— The revengeful Tory-Protec-
tionist attack on Peel was led by Sir George
Bentinck and Benjamin Disraeli, then just mak-
ing himself felt in the House of Commons. It
was distinctly grounded upon no objection in
principle to the Irish Coercion Bill, but on the
declaration that they could "no longer trust Peel,
and, ' must therefore refuse to give him unconsti-
989
ENGLAND, 1846.
TKe Chartists
Again,
ENGLAND, 1849-1850.
tutional powers.' ... He had twice betrayed
the party who had trusted his promises. . . .
'The gentlemen of England,' of whom it had
once been Sir Robert's proudest boast to be tlie
leader, declared against him. He was beaten by
an overpowering majority, and his career as an
English Minister was closed. Disraeli's had been
the hand which dethroned him, and to Disraeli
himself, after three years of anarchy and uncer-
tainty, descended the task of again building
together the shattered ruins of the Conservative
party. Very unwillingly they submitted to the
unwelcome necessity. Canning and the elder
Pitt had both been called adventurers, but they
had birth and connection, and they were at least
Englishmen. Disraeli had risen out of a despised
race; he had never sued for their favours; he
had voted and spoken as he pleased, whether
they liked it or not. . . . He was without Court
favour, and had hardly a powerful friend except
Lord Lyndhurst. He had never been tried on
the lower steps of the official ladder. He was
young, too— only 42 — after all the stir that he
had made. There was no- example of a rise so
sudden under such conditions. But the Tory
party had accepted and cheered his services, and
he stood out alone among them as a debater of
superior power. Their own trained men had all
deserted them. Lord George remained for a year
or two as nominal chief; but Lord George died;
the conservatives could only consolidate them-
selves under a real leader, and Disraeli was the
single person that they had who was equal to the
situation. ... He had overthrown Peel and suc-
ceeded to Peel's honours." — J. A. Froude, Lord
Beaconsfidd, ch. 9. — Although the Tory-Protec-
tionists had accomplished the overthrow of Peel,
they were not prepared to take the Government
into their own hands. The new Ministry was
formed under Lord John Russell, as First Lord of
the Treasury, with Lord Palmerston in the Foreign
Office, Sir George Grey in the Home Department,
Earl Grey Colonial Secretary, Sir C. Wood Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, and Mr. Macaulay Pay-
master-General. — W. C. Taylor, Life and Times
of Sir Robert Pe-el, )!. 3, ch. 11.— The most im-
portant enactment of the Coercion Bill ' ' (which
subsequently gave it the name of the Curfew
Act) was that which conferred on the executive
Government the power in proclaimed districts of
forbidding persons to be out of their dwellings
between sunset and sunrise. The right of pro-
claiming a district as a disturbed district was
placed in the hands of the Lord-Lieutenant, who
might station additional constabulary there, the
whole expense of which was to be borne by the
district." — J. F. Bright, Hist, of Eng., period i,
p. 137.
Also in: S. Walpole, Life of Lord John Rus-
sell, ch. 16 {v. 1). — B. Disraeli, Lord George Ben-
tinck, ch. 14-16.
A. D. 1846.— Difference with France on the
Spanish marriages. See France; A. D. 1841-
1848.
A. D. 1848.— The last Chartist demonstra-
tion. — "The more violent Chartists had broKen
from the Radical reformers, and had themseives
divided into two sections; for their nominal
leader, Feargus O'Connor, was at bitter enmity
with more thoroughgoing and earnest leaders
such as O'Brien and Cooper. O'Connor had not
proved a very efficient guide. He had entered
iato a land scheme of a somewhat doubtful char-
acter. . . . Hehad also iniudiciously taken up a
position of active hostility to the free-traders,
and while thus appearing as the champion of a
falling cause had alienated many of his sup-
porters. Yet the Parliament elected in 1846 con-
tained several representatives of the Chartist
principles, and O'Connor himself had been re-
turned for Nottingham by a large majority
over Hobhouse, a member of the new Ministry.
The revolution in France gave a sudden and
enormous impulse to the agitation. The coun-
try was filled with meetings at which violent
speeches were uttered and hints, not obscure,
dropped of the forcible establishment of a repub-
lic in England. A new Convention was sum-
moned for the 6tli of April, a vast petition was
prepared, and a meeting, at which it was believed
that half a million of people would have been
present, was summoned to meet on Kennington
Common on the 10th of April for the purpose of
carrying the petition to tlie House in procession.
The alarm felt in London was very great. It
was thought necessary to swear in special con-
stables, and the wealthier classes came forward
in vast numbers to be enrolled. There are said
to have been no less than 170,000 special con-
stables. The military arrangements were en-
trusted to the Duke of Wellington; the public
offices were guarded and fortified ; public vehicles
were forbidden to pass the streets lest they should
be employed for barricades; and measures were
taken to prevent the procession from crossing
the bridges. . . . Such a display of determina-
tion seemed almost ridicidous when compared
with what actually occurred. But it was in fact
the cause of the harmless nature of the meeting.
Instead of half a million, about 30,000 men
assembled on Kennington Common. Feargus
O'Connor was there; Mr. Maine, the Commis-
sioner of Police, called him aside, told him he
might hold his meeting, but that the procession
would be stopped, and that he would be held
personally responsible for any disorder that might
occur. His heart had already begun to fail him,
and he . . . used all his influence to put an end
to the procession. His prudent advice was fol-
lowed, and no disturbance of any importance
took place. . . . The air of ridicule thrown over
the Chartist movement by the abortive close of a
demonstration which had been heralded with so
much violent talk was increased by the disclo-
sures attending the presentation of the petition."
There were found to be only 2,000,000 names
appended to the document, instead of 5,000,000
as claimed, and great numbers of them were
manifestly spurious. "This failure proved a
deathblow to Chartism." — J. F. Bright, Hist, of
Eng., period ^, jrj). 176-178.
Also in; S. Walpole, Hist, of Eng. from 1815,
ch. 20 (ii. 4).
A. D. 1848-1849. — Second war with the
Sikhs. — Conquest and annexation of the Pun-
jab. See India; A. D. 184.5-1849.
A. D. 1849. — Repeal of the Navigation Laws.
See N.^viG.\TioN L-\ws; A. I). 1849.
A. D. 1849-1850.— The Don Pacifico Affair.
— Lord Palmerston's speech. — The little diffi-
culty with Greece which came to a crisis in the
last weeks of 1849 and the first of 1850 (see
Greece; A. D. 1846-1850). and which was com-
monly called the Don Pacifico Affair, gave occa-
sion for a memorable speech in Parliament by
Lord Palmerston, defending his foreign policy
990
ENGLAND, 1849-1850.
Palmerston and,
the French Coup d^Eiat.
ENGLAND, 1851-1852.
against attacks. The speech (.June 24, 1850),
which occupied five hours, "from the dusk of
one day till the dawn of another," was greatly
admired, and proved immensely effective in rais-
ing the speaker's reputation. "The Don Pacifico
debate was unquestionably an important land-
mark in the life of Lord Palmerston. Hitherto
his merits had been known only to a select few ;
for the British public does not read Blue Books,
and as a rule troubles itself very little about
foreign politics at all. . . . But the Pacifico
speech caught the ear of the nation, and was re-
ceived with a universal verdict of approval.
From that hour Lord Palmerston became the
man of the people, and his rise to the premier-
ship only a question of time." — L. C. Sanders,
Life of Viscount Palmerston, eh. 8.
Also in; Marquis of Lome, Yiacoxint Palm-
erston, ch. 7. — J. McCarthy, Hist, of Our Own
Times, ch. 19 {v. 2),— J. Morley, Life of Cobden,
1). 2, ch. 3. — T. Martin, Life of the Prince Consort,
ch. 38 (t: 2).
A. D. 1850.— The so-called Clayton-Bulwer
Treaty with the United States, establishing a
joint protectorate over the projected Nicara-
gua Canal. See Nicaragua: A. D. 1850.
A. D. 1850.— Restoration of the Roman
Episcopate. — The Ecclesiastical Titles Bill.
See P.'i.PACY: A. D. 1850.
A. D. 1850-1852. — The London protocol and
treaty on the Schleswig-Holstein Question.
See Scandinavian States (Denmark): A. D.
1848-1862.
A. D. 1851.— The Great Exhibition.— "The
first of May, 1851, will always be memorable as
the day on which the Great Exhibition was
opened in Hyde Park. . . . Many exhibitions of
a similar kind have taken place since. Some of
these far surpassed that of Hyde Park in the
splendour and variety of the collections brought
together. Two of them at least — those of Paris
in 1867 and 1878 — were infinitely superior in the
array and display of the products, the dresses,
the inhabitants of far-divided countries. But
the impression which the Hyde Park Exhibition
made upon the ordinary mind was like that of
the boy's first visit to the play — an impression
never to be equalled. ... It was the first or-
ganised to gather all the representatives of the
world's industry into one great fair. . . . The
Hyde Park Exhibition was often described as
the festival to open the long reign of Peace. It
might, as a mere matter of chronology, be called
without any impropriety the festival to celebrate
the close of the short reign of Peace. From that
year, 1851, it may be said fairly enough that the
world has hardly known a week of peace. . . .
The first idea of the Exhibition was conceived by
Prince Albert ; and it was his energy and influ-
ence which succeeded in carrying the idea into
practical execution. . . . Many persons were
disposed to sneer at it; many were sceptical
about its doing any good; not a few still re-
garded Prince Albert as a foreigner and a ped-
ant, and were slow to believe that anything
really practical was likely to be developed under
his impulse and protection. . . . There was a
great deal of difficulty in selecting a plan for the
building. . . . Happily, a sudden inspiration
struck Mr. (afterward Sir Joseph) Paxton, who
was then in charge of the Duke of Devonshire's
superb grounds at Chatsworth. Why not try
glass and iron ? he asked himself. . . . Mr. Pax-
ton sketched out his plan hastily, and the idea
was eagerly accepted by the Royal Commission-
ers. He made many improvements afterwards
in his design ; but the palace of glass and iron
arose within the specified time on the green turf
of Hyde Park. "—J. McCarthy, Mist, of Our Own
Times, ch. 21 {v. 2).
Also in : T. Martin, Life of tTie Prince Consort,
ch. 33-36, 39, 42-43 (v. 2). ,
A. D. 1851-1852.— The Coup d'Etat in
France and Lord Palmerston's dismissal from
the Cabinet. — Defeat and resignation of Lord
John Russell.— The first Derby-Disraeli Min-
istry and the Aberdeen coalition Ministry. —
The "coup d'etat" of December 2nd, 1851, by
which Louis Napoleon made himself master of
France (see France: A. D. 1851) brought about
the dismissal of Lord Palmerston from the British
Ministry, followed quickly by the overthrow of
the Ministry which expelled him. "Lord Palm-
erston not only expressed privately to Count
Walewski [the French ambassador] his approval
of the 'coup d'etat," but on the 16th of December
wrote a despatch to Lord Normanby, our repre-
sentative in Paris, expressing in strong terms his
satisfaction at the success of the French Presi-
dent's arbitrary action. This despatch was not
submitted either to the Prime Minister or to the
Queen, and of course the offence was of too
serious a character to be passed over. A great
deal of correspondence ensued, and as Palmer-
ston's explanations were not deemed satisfactory,
and he had clearly broken the undertaking he
gave some time previously, he was dismissed
from office. . . . There were some who thought
him irretrievably crushed from this time for-
ward ; but a very short time only elapsed before
he retrieved his fortunes and was as powerful
as ever. In February 1852 Lord John Russell
brought in a Militia Bill which was intended to
develop a local militia for the defence of the
country. Lord Palmerston strongly disapproved
of the scope of the measure, and in committee
moved an amendment to omit the word 'local,'
so as to constitute a regular militia, which should
be legally transportable all over the kingdom,
and thus be always ready for any emergency.
The Government were defeated by eleven votes,
and as the Administration had been very weak
for some time. Lord John resigned. Lord
Derby formed a Ministry, and invited the co-
operation of Palmerston, but the offer was de-
clined, as the two statesmen differed on the
question of imposing a duty on the importation
of corn, and other matters." — G. B. Smith, The
Prims Ministers of Queen Victoria, pp. 264-265.
—"The new Ministry [in which Mr. Disraeli
became Chancellor of the Exchequer] took their
seats on the 27th of February, but it was under-
stood that a dissolution of Parliament would
take place in the summer, by which the fate of
the new Government would be decided, and that
in the meantime the Opposition should hold its
hand. The raw troops [of the Tory Party in the
House of Commons], notwithstanding their in-
experience, acquitted themselves with credit, and
some good Bills were passed, the Militia Bill
among the number, while a considerable addition
to the strength of the Navy was effected by the
Duke of Northumberland. No doubt, when the
general election began, the party had raised
itself considerably in public estimation. But for
one consideration the country would probably
991
ENGLAND. 1851-1852.
War in the
Crimea.
ENGLAND, 1856-1860.
have been quite willing to entrust its destinies to
their hands. But that one consideration was all
important. . . . The Government was obliged
to go to the country, to some extent, on Protec-
tionist principles. It was known that a Derbyite
majority meant a moderate import duty ; and the
consequence was that Lord Derby just lost the
battle, though by a very narrow majority.
When Parliament met in November, Lord Derby
and Mr. Disraeli had a very difficult game to
play. . . . Negotiations were again opened with
Palmerston and the Peelites, and on this occasion
Gladstone and Mr. Sidney Herbert were willing
to join if Lord Palmerston might lead in the
House of Commons. But the Queen put her
veto on this arrangement, which accordingly fell
ta the ground ; and Lord Derby had to meet the
Opposition attack without any reinforcements.
... On the 16th of December, . . . being de-
feated on the Budget by a majority of 19, Lord
Derby at once resigned." — T. E. Kebbel, Life of
the Earl of Derby, ch. 6. — "The new Government
[which succeeded that of Derby] was a coalition
of Whigs and Peelites, with Sir William Moles-
worth thrown in to represent the Radicals. Lord
Aberdeen became Prime Minister, and Mr. Glad-
stone Chancellor of the Exchequer. The other
Peelites in the Cabinet were the Duke of New-
castle, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Sidney Her-
bert."— G. W. E. Russell, TJui Rt. Hon. William
Ewart Qladstone, ch. 5.
A. D. 1852. — Second Burmese War. — An-
nexation of Pegu. See India: A. D. 1852.
A. D. 1852-1853. — Abandonment of Protec-
tion by the Conservatives. — Further progress
in Free Trade. See Tariff Legislation
(E.NGi.AND): A. D. 1846-1879; and Trade.
A. D. 1853-1855.— Civil-Service Reform. See
CrvTL-SERVicE Reform in England.
A. D. 1 853- 1 856.— The Crimean War. See
Russia: A. D. 1853-1854, to 1854-1856.
A. D. 1855. — Popular discontent vvith the
management of the war. — Fall of the Aber-
deen Ministry. — Palmerston's first premier-
ship. — A brightening of prospects. — "Our
army system entirely broke down [in the Cri-
mea], and Lord Aberdeen and the Duke of New-
castle were made the scapegoats of the popular
indignation. . . . But England was not only
suffering from unpreparedness and want of ad-
ministrative power in the War department ; there
were dissensions in the Cabinet. . . . Lord John
Russell gave so much trouble, that Lord Aber-
deen, after one of the numerous quarrels and
reconciliations which occurred at this juncture,
wrote to the Queen that nothing but a sense
of public duty and the necessity for avoiding
the scandal of a rupture kept him at his post.
... At a little later stage . . . the difficulties
were renewed. Mr. Roebuck gave notice of his
motion for the appointment of a select committee
to inquire into the condition of the army be-
fore Sebastopol, and Lord John definitively re-
signed. The Ministry remained in office to await
the fate of Jlr. Roebuck's motion, which was
carried against them by the very large majority
of 157. Lord Aberdeen now placed the resigna-
tion of the Cabinet in the hands of the Queen
[Jan. 31, 1855]. . . . Thus fell the Coalition
Cabinet of Lord Aberdeen. In talent and parlia-
mentary influence it was apparently one of the
strongest Governments ever seen, but it suffered
from a fatal want of cohesion." — G. B. Smith,
Prime Ministers of Queen Victoria, pp. 227-230.
— "Lord Palmerston had passed his 70th year
when the Premiership came to him for the first
time. On the fall of the Coalition Government
the Queen sent for Lord Derby, and upon his
failure for Lord John Russell. Palmerston was
willing at the express request of her Majesty to
serve once more under his old chief, but Claren-
don and many of the Whigs not unnaturally
positively refused to do so. Palmerston finally
undertook and successfully achieved the task of
forming a Government out of the somewhat
heterogeneous elements at his command. Lord
Clarendon continued at the Foreign Office, and
Gladstone was still Chancellor of the Exchequer.
The War Department was reorganised, the office
of Secretary at War disappearing, and being
finally merged in that of Secretary of State for
War. Although Palmerston objected to Roe-
buck's Committee, he was practically compelled
to accept it, and this led to the resignation of
Gladstone, Graham and Herbert; their places
being taken by Sir G. C. Lewis, Sir Charles
Wood, and Lord John Russell." — Marquis of
Lome, Viscount Palmerston, ch. 10. — " It was a
dark hour in the history of the nation when Lord
Palmerston essayed the task which had been
abandoned by the tried wisdom of Derby, Lans-
downe, and John Russell. Far away in the
Crimea the war was dragging on without much
hope of a creditable solution, though the winter
of discontent and mismanagement was happily
over. The existence of the European concert
was merely nominal. The Allies had discovered,
many months previously, that, though Austria
was staunch, Prussia was a faithless friend. . . .
Between the belligerent powers the cloud of sus-
picion and distrust grew thicker ; for Abd-el-
Medjid was known to be freely squandering his
war loans on seraglios and palaces while Kars
was starving ; and though there was no reason
for distrusting the present good faith of the
Emperor of the French, his policy was straight-
forward only as long as he kept himself free from
the influence of the gang of stock-jobbers and
adventurers who composed his Ministry. Nor
was the horizon much brighter on the side of
England. A series of weak cabinets, and the
absence of questions of organic reform, had com-
pletely relaxed the bouds of Party. If there was
noregular Opposition, still less was there a regular
majority. . . . And the hand that was to restore
order out of chaos was not so steady as of yore.
. . . Lord Palmerston was not himself during the
first weeks of his leadership. But the prospect
speedily brightened. Though Palmerston was
considerably over seventy, he still retained a won-
derful vigour of constitution. He was soon re-
stored to health, and was always to be found at
his post. . . . His generalship secured ample
majorities for the Government in every division
during the session. Of the energy which Lord
Palmerston inspired into the operations against
Sebastopol, there can hardly be two opinions."
— L. C. Sanders, Life of Viscount Palmerston,
ch. 10.
A. D. 1855. — Mr. Gladstone's Commission
to the Ionian Islands. See Ionian Islands:
A. D. 1815-1863.
A. D. 1856-1860.— War writh China.— French
alliance in the war. — Capture of Canton. —
Entrance into Pekin. — Destruction of the
Summer Palace. See China: A. D. 1856-1860
992
ENGLAND, 1857-1858.
Cotton Famine.
ENGLAND, 1861-1865.
A. D. 1 857-1 858.— The Sepoy Mutiny in
India. See India: A. D. 1857, to 1857-1858
(July — June).
A. D. 1858. — Assumption of the government
of India by the Crown. — End of the rule of the
East India Co. See India: A. D. 1858.
A. D. 1858-1859.— The Conspiracy Bill.—
Fall of Palmerston's government. — Second
Ministry of Derby and Disraeli. — Lord Palmer-
ston again Premier. — " On January 14, 1858,
an attempt was made to assassinate Napoleon
III. by a gang of desperadoes, headed by Orsini,
whose head-quarters had previously been in Lon-
don. Not witliout some reason it was felt in
France tliat such men ought not to be able to find
shelter in this country, and the French Minister
was ordered to make representations to that
effect. Lord Palmerston, alwa}'S anxious to cul-
tivate the good feeling of the French nation, de-
sired to pass a measure which should give to the
British Government the power to banish from
England any foreigner conspiring in Britain
against the life of a foreign sovereign. . . . An
unfortunate outburst of vituperation against Eng-
land in the French press, and the repetition of
such language by officers of the French army
who were received by the Emperor when thej'
waited on liiin as a deputation, aroused very
angry English feeling. Lord Palmerston had
already introduced the Bill he desired to pass,
and it had been read the first time by a majority
of 300. But the foolish action of the French
papers changed entirely the current of popular
opinion. Lord Derby saw his advantage. An
amendment to the second reading, which was
practically a vote of censure, was carried against
Lord Palmerston, and to his own surprise no less
than to that of the country, he was obliged to re-
sign. Lord Derby succeeded to Palmerston's
vacant office. . . . Lord Derby's second Ministry
was wrecked upon the fatal rock of Reform early
in 1859, and at once appealed to the country. . . .
The election of 1859 failed to give the Conserva-
tives a majority, and soon after the opening of
the session they were defeated upon a vote of
want of confidence moved by Lord Hartington.
Earl Granville was commissioned by the Queen
to form a Ministry, because her Majesty felt that
' to make so marked a distinction as is implied
in the choice of one or other as Prime Minister of
two statesmen so full of years and honour as Lord
Palmerston and Lord John Russell would be a
very invidious and unwelcome task.' Each of
these veterans was willing to serve under the
other, but neither would follow the lead of a
third. And so Granville failed, and to Palmer-
ston was entrusted the task. He succeeded in
forming what was considered the strongest ]\Iin-
istry of modem times, so far as the individual
ability of its members was concerned. Russell
went to the Foreign Office and Gladstone to the
Exchequer." — Marquis of Lome, Viscount Palm-
erston, ch. 10-11.
Also in: T. Martin, Life of the Prince Con-
sort, ch. 83-84. 91-93, and 94 (v. 4).— T. E. Keb-
bel. Life of the Earl of Derby, eh. 7.
A. b. i860. — The Cobden-Chevalier com-
mercial treaty with France. See Tariff
Legisl.\tion (France): A. D. 1853-1860.
A. D. 1861 (May).— The Queen's Proclama-
tion of Neutrality with reference to the Ameri-
can Civil War. See United States of Am. :
A. D. 1861 (APRn—MAT).
'' 993
A. D. 1861 (October). — The allied interven-
tion in Mexico. See Mexico: A. D. 1861-1867.
A. D. 1861 (November).— The Trent Affair.
— Seizure of Mason and Slidell. See United
St.\tes of A.M. : A. D. 1861 (November).
A. D. 1861-1865. — The Cotton Famine. —
"Upon a population, containing half a million of
cotton operatives, in a career of rapid prosperity,
the profits of 1860 reaching in some instances
from 30 to 40 per cent upon the capital engaged;
and with wages also at the highest point which
they had ever touched, came the news of the
American war, with the probable stoppage of 85
per cent of the raw material of their manufacture.
A few wise heads hung despondently down, or
shook with fear for the fate of ' the freest nation
under heaven,' but the great mass of traders re-
fused to credit a report which neither suited their
opinions nor their interests. . . . There was a
four months' supply held on this side the water
at Christmas (1860), and there had been three
months' imports at the usual rate since that time,
and there would be the usual twelve months' sup-
ply from other sources ; and by the time this was
consumed, and the five months' stock of goods
held by merchants sold, all would be right again.
That this was the current opinion was proved by
the most delicate of all barometers, the scale of
prices; for during the greater part of the year
1861 tlie market was dull, and prices scarcely
moved upwards. But towards the end of the
year the aspect of affairs began to change. . . .
The Federals had declared a blockade of the
Southern ports, and, although as yet it was pretty
much a 'paper blockade,' yet the newly estab-
lished Confederate government was doing its best
to render it effective. They believed that cottJon
■VPas king in England, and that the old country
could not do without it, and would be forced, in
order to secure its release, to side with those who
kept it prisoner. Jlills began to run short tiiUB
or to close in the month of October, but no noise
was made about it ; and the only evidence of any-
thing unusual was at the boards of guardians,
where the applications had reached the mid-win-
ter height three months earlier than usual. The
poor-law guardians in the various unions were
aware that the increase was not of the usual
character — it was too early for out-door labour-
ers to present themselves; still the difference was
not of serious amount, being only about 3,000 in
the whole twenty-eight unions. In November,
7,000 more presented themselves, and in Decem-
ber the increase was again 7,000; so that the re-
cipients of relief were at this time 13,000 (or aboiit
35 per cent) more than in the January previous.
And now serious thoughts began to agitate many
minds ; cotton was very largely held by specula-
tors for a rise, the arrivals were meagre in quan-
tity, and the rates of insurance began to show
that, notwithstanding the large profits on im-
ports, the blockade was no longeron paper alone.
January, 1862, added 16,000 more to the recipi-
ents of relief, who were now 70 per cent abovE
the usual number for the same period of the
year. But from the facts as afterwards revealed,
the statistics of boards of guardians were evi-
dently no real measure of the distress prevailing.
. . . The month of February usually lessens the
dependents on the poor-rates, for out-door labour
begins again as soon as the signs of sjiring ap-
pear; but in 1863 it added nearly 9,000 to the al-
ready large number of extra cases, the recipients
ENGLAND, 1861-1863.
Cotton Famine.
ENGLAND, 1865-1868.
being now 105 per cent above the average for the
same period of the year. But this average ^ives
no idea of the pressure in particular locahties.
. . . The cotton operatives were now, if left to
themselves, like a ship's crew upon short provi-
sions, and those very unequally distributed, and
without chart or compass, and no prospect of get-
ting to land. Li Ashton there were 3,197; in
Stockport, 8,588; and in Preston, 9.488 persons
absolutely foodless; and who nevertheless de-
clined to go to the guardians. To have forced
the high-minded heads of these families to hang
about the work-house lobbies in company with
the idle, the improvident, the dirty, the diseased,
Mid the vicious, would have been to break their
heaving hearts, and to hurl them headlong into
despair. Happily there is spirit enough in this
country to appreciate nobility, even when dressed
in fustian, and pride and sympathy enough to
spare even the poorest from unnecessary humili-
ation ; and organisations spring up for any im-
portant work so soon as the necessity of the case
becomes urgent in any locality. Committees
arose almost simultaneously in Ashton, Stock-
port, and Preston ; and in April, Blackburn fol-
lowed in the train, and the guardians and the re-
lief committees of these several places divided an
extra 6, 000 dependents between them. The month
of May, which usually reduces pauperism to al-
most its lowest ebb, added 6,000 more to the re-
cipients from the guardians, and 5,000 to the de-
pendents on the relief committees, which were
now six in number, Oldham and Prestwich (a
part of Manchester) being added to the list. . . .
The month of June sent 6,000 more applicants to
sue for bread to the boards of guardians, and
5,000 additional to the six relief committees ; and
these six committees had now as many depend-
ents as the whole of the boards of guardians in
the twenty-eight unions supported in ordinary
years. ... In the month of July, when all un-
employed operatives would ordinarily be lending
a hand in the hay harvest, and picking up the
means of living whilst improving in health and
enjoying the glories of a summer in the country,
the distress increased like a flood, 13,000 ad-
ditional applicants being forced to appeal for
poor-law relief ; whilst 11,000 others were adopted
by the seven relief committees. ... In August
the flood had become a deluge, at which the
stoutest heart might stand appalled. The in-
creased recipients of poor-law relief were in a
single month 33,000, being nearly as many as the
total number diargeable in the same month of
the previous j'ear, whilst a further addition of
more than 34,000 became chargeable to the relief
committees. . . . Most of the cotton on hand at
this period was of Indian growth, and needed al-
terations of machinery to make it workable at all,
and in good times an employer might as well shut
up his mill as try to get it spun or manufactured.
But oh ! how glad would the tens of thousands
of unwilling idlers have been now, to have had
a chance even of working at Surats, although
they knew that it required much harder work
for one-third less than normal wages. . . . An-
other month is past, and October has added to
the number under the guardians no less than
55,000, and to the charge of the relief committees
39,000 more. . . . And now dread winter ap-
proaches, and the authorities have to deal not
only with hundreds of thousands who are com-
pulsorily idle, and consequently foodless, but
who are wholly unprepared for the inclemencies
of the season ; who have no means of procuring
needful clothing, nor even of making a show of
cheerfulness upon the hearth by means of the
fire, which is almost as useful as food. . . . The
total number of persons chargeable at the end of
November, 1862, was, under boards of guardians,
258,357, and on relief committees, 3007084; total
458,441. . . . There were not wanting men who
saw, or thought they saw, a short way out of the
difficulty, viz., by a recognition on the part of
the English government of the Southern con-
federacy in America. And meetings were called
in various places to memorialise the government
to this effect. Such meetings were always bal-
anced by counter meetings, at which it was shown
that simple recognition would be waste of words ;
that it would not bring to our siiores a single
shipload of cotton, unless followed up by an
armed force to break the blockade, which course
if adopted would be war ; war in favour of the
slave confederacy of the South, and against the
free North and North-west, whence comes a large
proportion of our imported corn. In addition to
the folly of interfering in the affairs of a nation
3,000 rniles away, the cotton, if we succeeded in
getting it, would be stained with blood and cursed
with the support of slavery, and would also pre-
vent our getting the food which we needed from
the North equally as much as the cotton from
the South. . . . These meetingsand counter meet-
ings perhaps helped to steady the action of the
government (notwithstanding the sympathy of
some of its members towards the South), to con-
firm them in the policy of the royal proclamation,
and to determine them to enforce the provisions
of the Foreign Enlistment Act against all of-
fenders. . . . The maximum pressure upon the
relief committees was reached early in December,
1862, but, as the tide had turned before the end
of the month, the highest number chargeable at
any one time is nowhere shown. The highest
number exhibited in the returns is for the last
week in the year 1863, viz. : 485,434 persons ; but
in the previous weeks of the same month some
thousands more were relieved. " — J. Watts, The
Facts of the Cotton Famine, ch. 8 and 12.
Also in: R. A. Arnold, Hist, of the Cotton
Famine.— E. Waugh, Factory Folk during the
Cotton Famine.
A. D. 1862 (July).— The fitting out of the
Confederate cruiser Alabama at Liverpool.
See Alab.«ia Claims: A. D. 1S63-1864.
A. D. 1865. — Governor Eyre and the Jamaica
Insurrection. See Jamaica: A. D. 1865.
A. D. 1865-1868.— Death of Palmerston.—
Ministry of Lord John Russell. — Its unsatis-
factory Reform Bill and its resignation. — Tri-
umph of the Adullamites. — Third administra-
tion of Derby and Disraeli, and its Reform
Bills. — "On the death of Lord Palmerston
[which occurred October 18, 1865], the premier-
ship was intrusted for the second time to Earl
Russell, with Mr. Gladstone as leader in the
House of Commons. The queen opened her sev-
enth parliament (February 6, 1866), in person,
for the first time since the prince consort's death.
On March 12th Mr. Gladstone brought forward
his scheme of reform, proposing to extend the
franchise in counties and boroughs, but the op-
position of the moderate Liberals, and their join-
ing the Conservatives, proved fatal to the meas-
ure, and in consequence the ministry of Earl
994
ENGLAND, 1865-1868.
Reform BUI
of 1867.
ENGLAND, 1865-1868.
Russell resigned. The government had been
personally weakened by the successive deaths of
Mr. Sidney Herbert, Sir George Cornewall Lewis,
the Duke of Newcastle, Earl of Elgin, and Lord
Palmerston. The queen sent for the Earl of
Derby to form a Cabinet, who, although the
Conservative party was in the minority in the
House of Commons, accepted the responsibility
of undertaking the management of the govern-
ment : he as Premier and First Lord of the Treas-
ury ; Mr. Disraeli, Chancellor of the Exchequer."
— A. H. McCalman, Abridged Hist, of England, p.
603. — "The measure, in fact, was too evidently
a compromise. The Russell and Gladstone sec-
tion of the Cabinet wanted reform : the remnants
of Palmerston's followers still thouglit it unne-
cessary. The result was this wretched, tinkering
measure, which satisfied nobody, and disap-
pointed the expectation of all earnest Reformers.
. . . The principal opposition came not from the
Conservatives, as miglit have been expected, but
from :Mr. Horsman and Mr. Robert Lowe, both
members of the Liberal party, who from the
very tirst declared they would have none of it.
. . . Mr. Bright denounced them furiously as
' AduUamites ' ; all who were in distress, all who
were discontented, had gathered themselves to-
gether in the political cave of Adullam for the
attack on the Government. But Mr. Lowe, all
unabashed by denunciation or sarcasm, carried
the war straight into the enemy's camp in a
swift succession of speeches of extraordinary
brilliance and power. . . . The party of two,
whicli in its origin reminded Mr. Bright of ' the
Scotch terrier which was so covered with hair
that you could not tell which was the head and
which was the tail of it,' was gradually rein-
forced by deserters from the ranks of the Gov-
ernment until at last the Adullarnites were strong
enough to turn the scale of a division. Then
one wild night, after a hot and furious debate,
the combined armies of the AduUamites and
Conservatives carried triumphantly an amend-
ment brought forward by one of the Adullamite
chiefs, Lord Dunkellin, to the effect that a rat-
ing be substituted for a rental qualification ; and
the Government was at an end. . . . The failure of
the bill brought Lord Russell's official career to
Its close. He formally handed over the leader-
ship of the party to Mr. Gladstone, and from this
time took but little part in politics. Lord Derby,
his opponent, was soon to follow his example,
and then the long-standing duel between Glad-
stone and Disraeli would be pushed up to the
very front of the parliamentary stage, right in
the full glare of the footlights. Meanwhile,
however. Lord Derby had taken office [July 9,
1866]. Disraeli and Gladstone were changing
weapons and crossing the stage. . . . The ex-
asperated Liberals, however, were rousing a
widespread agitation throughout the country in
favour of Reform; monster meetings were held
in Hj'de Park; the Park railings were pulled
down and trampled on by an excited mob, and
the police regulations proved as unable to bear
the unusual strain as police regulations usually
do on such occasions. The result was that Mr.
Disraeli became convinced that a Reform Bill of
some kind or other was inevitable, and Mr. Dis-
raeli's opinion naturally carried the day. The
Government, however, did not go straight to the
point at once. They began by proposing a num-
ber of resolutions on the subject, which were
very soon laughed out of existence. Then they
brought a bill founded on them, which, how-
ever, was very shortly afterwards withdrawn
after a very discouraging reception. Finally,
the Ministry, lightened by the loss of three of its
members — the Earl of Carnarvon, Viscount
Cranborne, and General Peel — announced their
intention of bringing in a comprehensive mea-
sure. The measure in question proposed house-
hold suffrage in the boroughs subject to the
payment of rates, and occupation franchise for
the counties subject to the same limitation, and
a variety of fanciful clauses, which would have
admitted members of the liberal professions,
graduates of the universities, and a number of
other classes to the franchise. The most novel
feature was a clause which permitted a man to
acquire two votes if he possessed a double quali-
fication by rating and by profession. The great
objection to the bill was that it excluded 'the
compound householder.' The compound house-
holder is now as extinct an animal as the pot-
walloper found in earlier parliamentary strata,
but he was the hero of the Reform debates of
1867, and as such deserves more than a passing
reference. He was, in fact, an occupier of a
small house who did not pay his rates directly
and in person, but paid them through his land-
lord. Now the occupiers of these very small
houses were naturally by far the most numerous
class of occupiers in the boroughs, and the omis-
sion of them implied a large exclusion from the
franchise. The Liberal party, therefore, rose in
defence of the compound householder, and the
struggle became fierce and hot. It must be re-
membered, however, that neither Mr. Gladstone
nor Mr. Bright wished to lower the franchise
beyond a certain point, and a meeting was held
in consequence, in which it was agreed that the
programme brought forward in committee should
begin by an alteration of the rating laws, so that
the compound householder above a certain level
should pay his own rates and be given a vote,
and that all occupiers below the level should be
excluded from the rates and the franchise alike.
On what may be described roughly as ' the great
drawing-the-line question,' however, the Liberal
party once more split up. The advanced sec-
tion were determined that all occupiers should
be admitted, and they would have no ' drawing
the line.' Some fifty or sixty of them held a
meeting in the tea-room of the House of Com-
mons and decided on this course of action: in
consequence they acquired the name of the ' Tea-
Room Party.' The communication of their
views to Mr. Gladstone made him excessively
indignant. He denounced them in violent lan-
guage, and his passion was emulated by Mr.
Bright. . . . Mr. Gladstone had to give in, and
his surrender was followed by that of Mr. Dis-
raeli. The Tea-Room Party, in fact, were mas-
ters of the day, and were able to bring sufficient
pressure to bear on the Government to induce
them to admit the principle of household suf-
frage pure and simple, and to abolish all dis-
tinctions of rating. . . . Not only was the house-
hold suffrage clause considerably extended, the
dual vote abolished, and most of the fancy fran-
chises swept away, but there were numerous
additions which completely altered the character
of the bill, and transformed it from a balanced
attempt to enlarge the franchise without shifting
the balance of power to a sweeping measure of
995
ENGLAND, 1865-1868.
Gladstone's
Irish Land Bill.
ENGLAND, 1868-1870.
feform."— B. C. Skottowe, STiort Hist, of Parlia-
ment, ch. 22. — The Reform Bill for England
" was followed in 1868 by measures for Scotland
and Ireland. By these Acts the county franchise
in England was extended to all occupiers of
lands or houses of the yearly value of £12, and
in Scotland to all £5 property owners and £14
property occupiers; while that in Ireland was
not altered. The borough franchise in England
and Scotland was given to all ratepaying house-
holders and to lodgers occupying lodgings of
the annual value of £10; and in Ireland to all
ratepaying £4 occupiers. Thus the House of
Commons was made nearly representative of all
taxpaying commoners, except agricultural la-
bourers and women." — D. W. 'R&xmK, Hist. Out-
line of the Eng. Const., eh. 12, sect. 4.
Also in : W. Bagehot, Essays on Parliamen-
tary Reform, 3, — G. B. Smith, Life of Oladstone,
ch. 17-18 (ii. 2).— W. Robertson, Life and Times
if John Bright, ch. 39-40.
A. D. 1865-1869. — Discussionof the Alabama
Claims of the United States.— The Johnson-
Clarendon Treaty and its rejection. See Ala-
BAMA Claims; A. D. 1862-1869.
A. D. 1867-1868.— Expedition to Abyssinia.
See Abyssinia: A. D. 1854-1889.
A. D. 1868-1870.— Disestablishment of the
Irish Church. — Retirement of the Derby-Dis-
raeli Ministry. — Mr. Gladstone in power. —
His Irish Land Bill.— "On ilarch 16, 1868, a
remarkable debate took place in the House of
Commons. It had for its subject the condition
of Ireland, and it was introduced by a series of
resolutions which Mr. John Francis Maguire, an
Irish member, proposed. ... It was on the
fourth night of the debate that the importance of
the occasion became fully manifest. Then it was
that Mr. Gladstone spoke, and declared that in
his opinion the time had come when the Irish
Church as a State institution must cease to exist.
Then every man in the House knew that the end
was near. Mr. Maguire withdrew his resolutions.
The cause he had to serve was now in the hands
of one who, though not surely more earnest for
its success, had incomparably greater power to
serve it. There was probably not a single Eng-
lishman capable of forming an opinion who did
not know that from the moment when Mr. Glad-
stone made his declaration, the fall of the Irish
State Church had become merely a question of
time. Men only waited to see how Jlr. Gladstone
would proceed to procure its fall. Public expec-
tation was not long kept in suspense. A few
days after the debate on 'Mi. Maguire's motion,
Mr. Gladstone gave notice of three resolutions on
the subject of the Irish State Church. The first
declared that in the opinion of the House of
Commons it was necessary that the Established
Church of Ireland should cease to exist as an
Establishment, due regard being had to all per-
sonal interests and to all individual rights of
property. The second resolution pronounced it
expedient to prevent the creation of new personal
interests by the exercise of any public patronage ;
and the third asked for an address to the Queen,
praying that her Majesty would place at the dis-
posal of Parliament her interest in the temporali-
ties of the Irish Church. The object of these
resolutions was simply to prepare for the actual
disestablishment of the Church, by providing
that no further appointments should be made,
and that the action of patronage should be stayed,
until Parliament should decide the fate of the
whole institution. On March 30, 1868, Mr. Glad-
stone proposed his resolutions. Not many per-
sons could have had much doubt as to the result
of the debate. But if there were any such, their
doubts must have begim to vanish when they
read the notice of amendment to the resolutions
which was given by Lord Stanley. The amend-
ment proclaimed even more surely than the reso-
lutions the impending fall of the Irish Church.
Lord Stanley must have been supposed to speak
in the name of the Government and the Conser-
vative party; and his amendment merely de-
clared that the House, while admitting that con-
siderable modifications in the temporalities of the
Church in Ireland might appear to be expedient,
was of opinion ' that any proposition tending
to the disestablishment or disendowment of the
Church ought to be reserved for the decision of
the new Parliament.' Lord Stanley's amendment
asked only for delay. . . . The debate was one
of great power and interest. . . . When the
division was called there were 370 votes for the
amendment, and 331 against it. The doom of
the Irish Church was pronounced by a majority
of 61. An interval was afEorded for agitation on
both sides. . . . Mr. Gladstone's first resolution
came to a division about a month after the defeat
of Lord Stanley's amendment. It was carried
by a majority somewhat larger than that which
had rejected the amendment — 330 votes were
given for the resolution; 265 against it. The
majority for the resolution was therefore 65.
Mr. Disraeli quietly observed that the Govern-
ment must take some decisive step in consequence
of that vote ; and a few days afterwards it was
announced that as soon as the necessary business
could be got through. Parliament would be dis-
solved and an appeal made to the country. On
the last day of July the dissolution took place,
and the elections came on in November. Not for
many years had there been so important a general
election. The keenest anxiety prevailed as to its
results. The new constituencies created by the
Reform Bill were to give their votes for the first
time. The question at issue was not merely the
existence of the Irish State Church. It was a
general struggle of advanced Liberalism against
Toryism. . . . The new Parliament was to all
appearance less marked in its Liberalism than
that which had gone before it. But so far as
mere numbers went the Liberal party was much
stronger than it had been. In the new House of
Commons it could count upon a majority of
about 120, whereas in the late Parliament it had
but 60. Mr. Gladstone it was clear would now
have everything in his own hands, and the coun-
try might look for a career of energetic reform.
. . . Mr. Disraeli did not meet the new Parlia-
ment as Prime Minister. He decided very prop-
erly that it would be a mere waste of public
time to wait for the formal vote of the House of
Commons, which would inevitably command him
to surrender. He at once resigned his office, and
Mr. Gladstone was immediately sent for by the
Queen, and invited to form an Administration.
Mr. Gladstone, it would seem, was only beginning
his career. He was nearly sixty years of age,
but there were scarcely any evidences of advanc-
ing years to be seen on his face. . . . The Govern-
ment he formed was one of remarkable strength.
. . . Mr. Gladstone went to work at once with
his Irish policy. On March 1, 1869, the Prime
996
ENGLAND, 1868-1870.
Army Purchase and
University Tests.
ENGLAND, 1873-1880.
Minister introduced his measure for the disestab-
lishment and partial disendowraent of the Irish
State Church. The proposals of the Government
were, that the Irish Church should almost at
once cease to exist as a State Establishment,
and should pass into the condition of a free
Episcopal Church. As a matter of course the
Irish bishops were to lose their seats in the House
of Lords. A synodal, or governing body, was
to be elected from the clergy and laity of the
Church and was to be recognised by the Govern-
ment, and duly incorporated. The union between
the Churches of England and Ireland was to be
dissolved, and the Irish Ecclesiastical Courts
were to be abolished. There were various and
complicated arrangements for the protection of
the life interests of those already holding positions
in the Irish Church, and for the appropriation of
the fund which would return to the possession of
the State when all these interests had been fairly
considered and dealt with. . . . Many amend-
ments were introduced and discussed ; and some
of these led to a controversy between the two
Houses of Parliament; but the controvers}' ended
in compromise. . On July 26, 1869, the measure
for the disestablishment of the Irish Church re-
ceived the royal assent. Lord Derby did not
long survive the passing of the measure which he
had opposed with such fervour and so much
pathetic dignity. He died before the Irish State
Church had ceased to live. . . . When the Irish
Church had been disposed of, Jlr. Gladstone at
once directed his energies to the Irish land system.
... In a speech delivered by him during his
electioneering campaign in Lancashire, he had de-
iilared that the Irish upas-tree had three great
branches: the State Church, the Land Tenure
System, and the System of Education, and that
he meant to hew them all down if he could. On
February 15, 1870, Mr. Gladstone introduced his
Irish Land Bill into the House of Commons. . . .
It recognised a certain property or partnership of
the tenant in the land which he tilled. Mr. Glad-
stone took the Ulster tenant-right as he found it,
and made it a legal institution. In places where
the Ulster practice, or something analogous to it,
did not exist, he threw upon the landlord the
burden of proof as regarded the right of eviction.
The tenant disturbed in the possession of his land
could claim compensation for improvements, and
the bill reversed the existing assumption of the law
by presuming all improvements to be the property
of the tenant, and leaving it to the landlord, if he
could, to prove the contrary. The bill estab-
lished a special judiciary machinery for carrying
out its provisions. ... It put an end to the reign
of the landlord's absolute power ; it reduced the
landlord to the level of every other proprietor, of
every other man in the country who had anything
to sell or hire. . . . The bill passed without sub-
stantial alteration. On August 1, 1870, the bill
received the Royal assent. The second branch
of the upas-tree had been hewn down. . . . Mr.
Gladstone had dealt with Church and land; he
had yet to deal with university education. He
had gone with Irish ideas thus far." — J. McCar-
thy, Shoj-t Hist, of Our Own Times, ell. 23.
Also m : W. N. Molesworth, Hist, of Eng. ,
1830-1874, V. 3, ch. &.— Annual Register, 1869,
pt. 1 .• Eng. Hist. , ch. 3-3, and 1870, ch. 1-3.
A. D. 1870.— The Education Bill. See Edu-
cation, Modern ; European countries. — Eng-
land: A. D. 1699-1870.
A. D. 1871. — Abolition of Army Purchase
and University Religious Tests. — Defeat of the
Ballot Bill. — "The great measure of the Session
[of 1871] was of course the Army Bill, which
was introduced by Mr. Cardwell, on the 16th of
February. It abolished the system by which
rich men obtained by purchase commissions and
promotion in the army, and provided £8,000,000
to buy all commissions, as they fell in, at their
regulation and over-regulation value [the regula-
tion value being a legal price, fixed by a Royal
"Warrant, but which in practice was never re-
garded]. In future, commissions were to be
awarded either to those who won them by opei}
competition, or who had served as subalterns in
the Militia, or to deserving non-commissioned
oflicers. . . . The debate, which seemed inter-
minable, ended in an anti-clima.x that astonished
the Tory Opposition. Mr. Disraeli threw over the
advocates of Purchase, evidently dreading an
appeal to the country. . . . The Army Regula-
tion Bill thus passed the Second Reading without
a division," and finally, with some amendments
passed the House. "In the House of Lords the
Bill was again obstructed. . . . Mr. Gladstone
met them with a bold stroke. By statute it was
enacted that only such terms of Purchase could
exist as her Majesty chose to permit by Royal
Warrant. The Queen, therefore, acting on Mr.
Gladstone's advice, cancelled her warrant per-
mitting Purchase, and thus the opposition of the
Peers was crushed by what Mr. Disraeli indig-
nantly termed ' the high-handed though not il-
legal ' exercise of the "lloyal Prerogative. The
rage of the Tory Peers knew no bounds." They
"carried a vote of censure on the Government,
who ignored it, and then their Lordships passed
the Army Regulation Bill without any altera-
tions. . . . The Session of 1871 was also made
memorable by the struggle over the Ballot Bill,
in the course of which nearly all the devices of
factious obstruction were exhausted. . . . When
the Bill reached the House of Lords, the real
motive which dictated the . . . obstruction of
the Conservative Opposition in the House of
Commons was quickly revealed. The Lords re-
jected the Bill on the 18th of August, not merely
because they disliked and dreaded it, but because
it had come to them too late for proper considera-
tion. Ministers were more successful with some
other measures. In spite of much conservative
opposition they passed a Bill abolishing religious
tests in the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge,
and throwing open all academic distinctions and
privileges except Divinity Degrees and Clerical
Fellowships to students of all creeds and faiths. "
— R. Wilson, Life and Times of Queen Victoria, v.
2, ch. 16.
Also in: G. W. E. Russell, T/ie Rt. Hon. W. E.
Gladstone, ch. 9.
A. D. 1871-1872. — Renewed negotiations
with the United States. — The Treaty of
Washington and the Geneva Award. See
Alabama Claims: A. D. 1869-1871; 1871; and
1871-1872.
A. D. 1873-1879.— Rise of the Irish Home
Rule Party and organization of the Land
League. Sec Ireland: A. D. 1873-1879.
A. D. 1873-1880.— Decline and fall of the
Gladstone government. — Disraeli's Ministry.
— His rise to the peerage, as Earl of Beacons-
field. — The Eastern Question. — Overthrow of
the administration. — The Second Gladstone
997
ENGLAND, 1873-1880.
Beacoiisfield and
Gladstone.
ENGLAND, 1883.
IVIinistry. — " One of the little wars in wbich we
had to engage broke out with the Ashantees, a
misunderstanding resulting from our purchase
of the Dutch possessions (1873) in their neighbour-
hood. Troops and marines under Wolseley . . .
were sent out to West Africa. Crossing the
Prah River, January 20th, 1874, he defeated the
Ashantees on the last day of that month at a
place called Amoaful, entered and burnt their
capital, Coomassie, and made a treaty with their
King, Koffee, by which he withdrew all claims
•of sovereignty over the tribes under our protec-
tion. The many Liberal measures carried by
the Ministry caused moderate men to wish for a
halt. Some restrictions on the licensed vintners
turned that powerful body against the Adminis-
tration, which, on attempting to carry an Irish
University Bill in 1873, became suddenly aware
■of its unpopularity, as the second reading was
•only carried by a majority of three. Resignation
followed. The erratic, but astute, Disraeli de-
clined to undertake the responsibility of govern-
ing the country with the House of Commons then
existing, consequently Mr. Gladstone resumed
office; yet Conservative reaction progressed.
He in September became Chancellor of the Ex-
■chequer (still holding the Premiership) and 23rd
January, 1874, he suddenly dissolved Parliament,
promising in a letter to the electors of Greenwich
the final abolition of the income tax, and a re-
duction in some other ' imposts. ' The elections
went against him. The ' harassed ' interests
•overturned the Jlinistry (17th February, 1874).
... On the accession of the Conservative Gov-
ernment under Mr. Disraeli (February, 1874),
the budget showed a balance of six millions in
favour of the reduction of taxation. Conse-
quently the sugar duties were abolished and the
income tax reduced to 2d. in the pound. This,
the ninth Parliament of Queen Victoria, sat for
a little over si.x years. . . . Mr. Disraeli, now the
Earl of Beaconsfleld, was fond of giving the coun-
try surprises. One of these consisted in the pur-
-chase of the interest of the Khedive of Egypt in
the Suez Canal for four millions sterling (Feb-
ruary, 1876). Another was the acquisition of
the Turkish Island of Cyprus, handed over for
the guarantee to Turkey of her Asiatic provinces
in the event of any future Russian encroach-
ments. ... As war had broken out in several
•of the Turkish provinces (1876), and as Russia
had entered the lists for the insurgents against
the Sultan, whom England was bound to sup-
port by solemn treaties, we were treated to a
third surprise b}' the conveyance, in anticipation
of a breach with Russia, of 7,000 troops from
India to Malta. The Earl of Derby, looking
upon this manoeuvre as a menace to that Power,
resigned his office, which was filled by Lord
Salisbury (1878). . . . The war proving disas-
trous to Turkey, the treaty of St. Stephano (Feb-
ruary, 1878), was concluded with Russia, by
which the latter acquired additional territory in
Asia Minor in violation of the treaty of Paris
(1856). Our Government strongly remonstrated,
and war seemed imminent. Through the inter-
cession, however, of Bismarck, the German Chan-
cellor, war was averted, and a congress soon met
in Berlin, at which Britain was represented by
Lords Salisbury and Beaconsfleld ; the result
being the sanction of the treaty already made,
with the exception that the town of Brzeroum
•was handed back to Turkey. Our ambassadors
returned home rather pompously, the Prime
Minister loftily declaring, that they had brought
back ' peace with honour. ' . . . Our expenses
had rapidly increased, the wealthy commercial
people began to distrust a Prime Minister who
had brought us to the brink of war, the Irish
debates, Irish poverty, and Irish outrages had
brought with them more or less discredit on
the Slinistry. . . . The Parliament was dis-
solved March 24th, but the elections went so
decisively in favour of the Liberals that Beacons-
field resigned (April 23rd). Early in the fol-
lowing year he appeared in his place in the
House of Peers, but died April 19th. Though
Mr. Gladstone had in 187.5 relinquished the
political leadership in favour of Lord Hartington
yet the ' Bulgarian Atrocities ' and other writings
brought him again so prominent before the pub-
lic that his leadership was universally acknowl-
edged by the party. ... He now resumed office,
taking the two posts so frequently held before
by Prime Ministers since the days of William
Pitt, who also held them. . . . The result of the
general election of 1880 was the return of more
Liberals to Parliament than Conservatives and
Home Rulers together. The farming interest
continued depressed both in Great Britain and
Ireland, resulting in thousands of acres being
thrown on the landlords' hands in the former
country, and numerous harsh evictions in the
latter for non-payment of rent. Mr. Gladstone
determined to legislate anew on the Irish Land
Question : and (1881) carried through both Houses
that admirable measure known as the Irish Land
Act, which for the first time in the history ol
that country secured to the tenant remuneration
for his own industry. A Land Commission Court
was established to fix Fair Rents for a period of
15 years. After a time leaseholders were in-
cluded in this beneficent legislation." — R. Johns-
ton, A Slwrt Sist. of the Queen's Reign, pp. 49-
57.
Also in; J. A. Froude, Lord Beaeonsfield, ch.
16-17.— G. B. Smith, Life of Oladstone, ch. 22-
28 (v. 2).— H. Jephson, Th^ Platform, ch. 21-22
(V. 2).
A. D. 1877. — Assumption by the Queen of
the title of Empress of India. See India: A. D.
1877.
A. D. 1877-1878.— The Eastern Question
again. — Bulgarian atrocities. — Excitement
over the Russian successes in Turkey. — War-
clamor of " the' Jingoes." — The fleet sent
through the Dardanelles. — Arrangement of the
Berlin Congress. See B.vlk.vn and D.^nubian
States; A. D. 1875-1878; and Turks: A. D.
1878.
A. D. 1877-1881. — Annexation of the Trans-
vaal. — The Boer War. See South Africa;
A. D. 1806-1881.
A, D. 1878.— The Congress of Berlin. — Ac-
quisition of the control of Cyprus. See Turks :
A. D. 1878.
A. D. 1878-1880. — The second Afghan War.
See Afgil^nistan ; A. D. 1.869-1881.
A. D. 1880. — Breach bet-sveen the Irish Party
and the English Liberals.— Coercion Bill and
Land Act. See Ireland: A. D. 1880; and
1SH1-1S82.
A. D. 1882.— War in Egypt. See Egypt :
A. 1). 1875-1882, and 1882-1883.
A. D. 1883. — The Act for Prevention of Cor-
rupt and Illegal Practices at Parliamentary
998
ENGLAND, 1883.
Corrupt Practices
in Elections.
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
Elections. — "Prior to the General Electioa of
1880 there were those who hoped aud believed
that Corrupt Practices at Elections were decreas-
ing. These hopes were based upon the growth
of the constituencies and their increased political
intelligence, and also upon the operation of the
Ballot Act. The disclosures following the General
Election proved to the most sanguine that this
belief was an error. Corrupt practices were
found to be more prevalent than ever. If in
olden times larger aggregate suras were expended
in bribery and treating, never probably had so
man}' persons been bribed and treated as at the
General Election of 1880. After that election
nineteen petitions against returns on the ground
of corrupt practices were presented. In eight
instances the Judges reported that those practices
had extensively prevailed, and in respect of seven
of these the reports of the Commissioners ap-
pointed under the Act of 1852 demonstrated the
alarming extent to which corruption of all kinds
had grown. ... A most serious feature in the
Commissioners' Reports was the proof they
afforded that bribery was regarded as a meri-
torious not as a disgraceful act. Thirty magis-
trates were reported as guilty of corrupt practices
and removed from the Commission of the Peace
by the Lord Chancellor. 3Iayors, aldermen, town-
councillors, solicitors, the agents of the candi-
dates, and others of a like class were found to
have dealt with bribery as if it were a part of
the necessary machinery for conducting an elec-
tion. "Worst of all, some of these persons had
actually attained municipal honours, not only
after they had committed these practices, but
even after their misdeeds had been exposed by
public inquiry. The Reports also showed, and
a Parliamentary Return furnished still more con-
clusive proof, that election expenses were ex-
travagant even to absurdity, and moreover were
on the increase. The lowest estimate of the ex-
penditure during the General Election of 1880
amounts to the enormous sum of two and a half
millions. With another Reform Bill in view, the
prospects of future elections were indeed alarm-
ing. . . . The necessity for some change was
self-evident. Public opinion insisted that the
subject should be dealt with, and the evil en-
countered. . . . The Queen's Speech of the 6th of
January, 1881, announced that a measure 'for
the repression of corrupt practices ' would be
submitted to Parliament, and on tlie following
day the Attorney-General (Sir Henry James), in
forcible and eloquent terms, moved for leave to
introduce his Bill. His proposals (severe as they
seemed) were received with general approval and
sympathy, both inside and outside the House of
Commons, at a time when members and con-
stituents alike were ashamed of the excesses so
recently brought to light. It is true that the
two and a half years' delay that intervened be-
tween the introduction of the Bill and its finally
becoming law (a delay caused by the necessities
of Irish legislation), sufHced very considerably to
cool the enthusiasm of Parliament and the pub-
lic. Yet enough desire for reform remained to
carry in July 1883 the Bill of January 1881,
modified indeed in detail, but with its principles
intact and its main provisions unaltered. The
measure which has now become the Parliamen-
tary Elections Act of 1883, was in its conception
pervaded by two principles. The first was to
strike hard and home at corrupt practices ; the
second was to prohibit by positive legislation any
expenditure in the conduct of an election which
was not absolutely necessary. Bribery, undue
influence, and personation, had long been crimes
for which a man could be fined and imprisoned.
Treating was now added to the same class of
offences, and tbe punishment for all rendered
more deterrent by a liability to hard labour. . . .
Besides punishment on conviction, incapacities
of a serious character are to result from a person
being reported guilty of corrupt practices by
Election Judges or Election Commissioners. . . .
A candidate reported personally guilty of cor-
rupt practices can never sit again for the same
constituency, and is rendered incapable of being
a member of the House of Commons for seven
years. All persons, whether candidates or not,
are, on being reported, rendered incapable of hold-
ing any public office or exercising any franchise
for the same period. Moreover, if any persons
so found guilty are magistrates, barristers, so-
licitors, or members of other honourable pro-
fessions, they are to be reported to the Lord
Chancellor, Inns of Court, High Court of Justice,
or other authority controlling their profession,
and dealt with as in the case of professional mis-
conduct. Licensed victuallers are, in a similar
manner, to be reported to the licensing justices,
who may on the next occasion refuse to renew
their licenses. . . . The employment of all paid
assistants except a very limited number is for-
bidden; no conveyances are to be paid for, and
only a restricted number of committee rooms are
to be engaged. Unnecessary payments for the
exhibition of bills and addresses, and for flags,
bands, torches, and the like are declared illegal.
But these prohibitions of specific objects were
not considered suflicieut. Had these alone been
enacted, the money of wealthy and reckless can-
didates would have found other channels in which
to flow. . . . And thus it was that the ' maxi-
mum scale ' was adopted as at once the most
direct and the most efficacious means of limit-
ing expenditure. Whether by himself or his
agents, by direct payment or by contract, the
candidate is forbidden to spend more in ' the con-
duct and management of an election ' than the
sums permitted by the Act, sums which depend
in each case on the numerical extent of the con-
stituency." — H. Hobhouse, The Parliamentary
Elections {Corrupt and Illegal Practices) Act, 1883,
pp. 1-8.
A. D. 1884-1885.— The Third Reform Bill
and the Redistribution Bill. — The existing
qualifications and disqualifications of the Suf-
frage. — "Soon after Sir. Gladstone came into
power in 1880, Mr. Trevelyau became a member
of his Administration. Already the Premier had
secured the co-operation of two other men new to
office — Mr. Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke.
. . . Their presence in the Administration was
looked upon as a good augury by the Radicals,
and the augury was not destined to prove mis-
leading. It was understood from the first that,
with such men as his coadjutors, Mr. Gladstone
was pledged to a still further Reform. He was
pledged already, in fact, by his speeches in Mid-
lothian. ... On the 17th of October, 1883, a
great Conference was held at Leeds, for the pur-
pose of considering the Liberal programme for
the ensuing season. The Conference was at-
tended by no fewer than 3,000 delegates, who
represented upwards of 500 Liberal Associations.
999
ENGLAND. 1884-1885.
Third Reform
BiU.
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
It was presided over by Mr. John Morley. . . .
To a man the delegates agreed as to the impera-
tive necessity of liousehold suffrage being ex-
tended to the counties ; and almost to a man they
agreed also as to the necessity of the measure be-
ing no longer delayed. . . . When Parliament
met on the 5tli of the following February ... a
measure for 'the enlargement of the occupation
franchise in Parliamentary Elections throughout
the United Kingdom ' was distinctly promised in
the Royal Speech; and the same evening Mr.
Gladstone gave notice that ' on the first available
day,' he would move for leave to bring in the
bill. So much was the House of Commons occu-
pied with affairs in Egypt and the Soudan, how-
ever, that it was not till the 29th of February
that the Premier was able to fulfil his pledge."
Four months were occupied in the passage of the
bill through tlie House of Commons, and when it
reached the Lords it was rejected. This roused
"an intense feeling throughout the country. On
the 21st of July, a great meeting was held in
Hyde Park, attended, it was believed, by upwards
of 100,000 persons. ... On the 30th of July, a
great meeting of delegates was held in St. James's
Hall, London. . . . Mr. John Morley, who pre-
sided, used some words respecting the House that
had rejected the bill which were instantly caught
up by Reformers everywhere. 'Be sure,' he
said, ' that no power on earth can separate hence-
forth the question of mending the House of Com-
mons from the question of mending, or ending,
the House of Lords.' On the 4th of August, Mr.
Bright, speaking at Birmingham, refen'ed to the
Lords as ' many of them the spawn of the plunder
and the wars and the corruption of the dark ages
of our country ' ; and his colleague, Mr. Chamber-
lain, used even bolder words: ' During the last
one hundred years the House of Lords has never
contributed one iota to popular liberties or popu-
lar freedom, or done anything to advance the
common weal ; and during that time it has pro-
tected every abuse and sheltered every privilege.
. . . It is irresponsible without independence, ob-
stinate without courage, arbitrary without judg-
ment, and arrogant without knowledge.' . . . In
very many instances, a strong disposition was
manifested to drop the agitation for the Reform
of the House of Commons for a time, and to con-
centrate the whole strength of the Liberal party
on one final struggle for the Reform (or, prefer-
ably, the extinction) of the Upper House. " But
Mr. Gladstone gave no encouragement to this in-
clination of his party. The outcome of the agi-
tation was the passage of the Franchise Bill a
second time in the House of Commons, in Novem-
ber, 1884, and by the Lords soon afterwards. A
concession was made to the latter by previously
satisfying them with regard to the contemplated
redistribution of seats in the House of Commons,
for which a separate bill was framed and intro-
duced while the Franchise Bill was yet pending.
The Redistribution Bill passed the Commons in
May and the Lords in June, 1885. — W. Heaton,
The Three Reforms of Parliaimiit, ch. 6. — -"In
regai'd to electoral districts, the equalization, in
other words, the radical refashioning of electoral
districts, having about the same number of in-
habitants, is carried out. For this purpose, 79
towns, having less than 15,000 inhabitants, are
divested of the right of electing a separate mem-
ber; 36 towns, with less than 50,000, return only
one member; 14 large towns obtain an increase
of the number of the members in proportion to
the population; 35 towns, of nearly 50,000, obtain
a new franchise. The counties are throughout
parcelled-out into ' electoral districts ' of about
the like population, to elect one member each.
This single-seat system is, regularly, carried out
in towns, with the exception of 28 middle-sized
towns, which have been left with two members.
The County of York forms, for example, 26 elec-
toral districts ; Liverpool 9. To sum up, the re-
sult stands thus: — the counties choose 253 mem-
bers (formerly 187), the towns 287 (formerly 397).
The average population of the county electoral
districts is now 52,800 (formerly 70,800); the
average number of the town electoral districts
52, 700 (formerly 41, 200). . . . The number of the
newly-enfrancliised is supposed, according to an
average estimate, to be 2,000,000."— Dr. R.
Gneist, The English Parliament in its Trarisfor-
matiom, cJt. 9.
Also in : J. Murdoch, Hist, of Const. Reform
in Gt. Britain and Ireland, pp. 277-398. — H.
Jephson, The Platform, ch. 23 {v. 2).
Tlie following is the text of the "Third Re-
form Act," which is entitled "The Representa-
tion of the People Act, 1884 " :
An Act to amend the Law relating to the Rep-
resentation of the People of the United Kingdom.
[6th December, 1884.]
Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent
Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of
the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons,
in this present Parliament assembled, and by the
authority of the same, as follows :
1. This Act may be cited as the Representa-
tion of the People Act, 1884.
2. A uniform household franchise and a uni-
form lodger franchise at elections shall be estab-
lished in all counties and boroughs throughout
the United Kingdom, and every man possessed
of a household qualification or a lodger qualifi-
cation shall, if the qualifying premises be situate
in a county in England or Scotland, be entitled to
be registered as a voter, and when registered to
vote at an election for such county, and if the
qualifying premises be situate in a county or
borough in Ireland, be entitled to be registered
as a voter, and when registered to vote at an
election for such county or borough.
3. Where a man himself inhabits any dwelling-
house by virtue of any oflSce, service, or employ-
ment, and the dwelling-house is not inhabited by
any person under whom such man serves in such
office, service, or employment, he shall be deemed
for the purposes of this Act and of the Repre-
sentation of the People Acts to be an inhabitant
occupier of such dwelling-house as a tenant.
4. Subject to the saving in this Act for exist-
ing voters, the following provisions shall have
effect with reference to elections: (1.) A man
shall not be entitled to be registered as a voter in
respect of the ownersliip of any rentcharge ex-
cept the owner of the whole of the tithe rent-
cliarge of a rectory, vicarage, chapelry, or bene-
fice to whicli an apportionment of tithe rentcharge
shall have been made in respect of any portion of
tithes. (2.) Where two or more men are owners
either as joint tenants or as tenants in common
of an estate in any land or tenement, one of such
men, but not more than one, shall, if his interest
is suflicient to confer a qualification as a voter in
respect of the ownership of such estate, be en-
titled (in the like cases and subject to the like
1000
ENGLAND, 1884-1885,
Third Reform
Bill.
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
conditions as if he were the sole owner) to be
registered as a voter, and when registered to
vote at an election. Provided that where such
owners have derived their interest by descent,
succession, marriage, marriage settlement, or
will, or where they occupy the land or tene-
ment, and are bona fide engaged as partners
carrying on trade or business thereon, each of
such owners whose interest is sufficient to confer
on him a qualitication as a voter shall be entitled
(in the like cases and subject to the like con-
ditions as if he were sole owner) to be regis-
tered as a voter in respect of such ownership,
and when registered to vote at an election, and
the value of the interest of each such owner
where not otherwise legally defined shall be as-
certained by the division of the total value of
the laud or tenement equally among the whole of
such owners.
5. Every man occupying any land or tene-
ment in a county or borough in the United King-
dom of a clear yearly value of not less than ten
pounds shall be entitled to be registered as a
voter and when registered to vote at an election
for such county or borough in respect of such
occupation subject to the like conditions respec-
tively as a man is, at the passing of this Act,
entitled to be registered as a voter and to vote
at an election for such county in respect of the
county occupation franchise, and at an election
for such borough in respect of the borough occu-
pation franchise.
6. A man shall not by virtue of this Act be
entitled to be registered as a voter or to vote at
any election for a county in respect of the occu-
pation of any dwelling-house, lodgings, land, or
tenement, situate in a borough.
7. (1.) In this Act the expression "a house-
hold qualification " means, as respects England
and Ireland, the qualification enacted by the
third section of the Representation of the People
Act, 1867 [see comments appended to this text],
and the enactments amending or affecting the
same, and the said section and enactments so far
as they are consistent with this Act, shall extend
to counties in England and to counties and bor-
oughs in Ireland. (2.) In the construction of the
said enactments, as amended and applied to Ire-
land, the following dates shall be substituted for
the dates therein mentioned, that is to say, the
twentieth day of July for tlie fifteenth day of
July, the first day of July for the twentieth day
of July, and the first day of January for the fifth
day of January. (3.) The expression "a lodger
qualification " means the qualification enacted,
as respects England, by the fourth section of the
Representation of the People Act, 1867 [see com-
ments appended to this text], and the enactments
amending or affecting the same, and as respects
Ireland, by the fourth .section of the Representa-
tion of the People (Ireland) Act, 1868, and the
enactments amending or affecting the same, and
the said section of the English Act of 1867, and
the enactments amending or affecting the same,
shall, so far as they are consistent with this Act,
extend to counties in England, and the said sec-
tion of the Irish Act of 1868, and the enactments
amending or affecting the same, shall, so far as
they are consistent with this Act, extend to
counties in Ireland; and sections five and six and
twenty-two and twenty-three of the Parliamen-
tary and Municipal Registration Act, 1878, so
far as they relate to lodgings, shall apply to Ire-
land, and for the purpose of such application
the reference in tlie said section six to the Repre-
sentation of the People Act, 1867, shall be
deemed to be made to the Representation of the
People (Ireland) Act, 1868, and in the said sec-
tion twenty-two of the Parliamentary and Mu-
nicipal Registration Act, 1878, the reference to
section thirteen of the Parliamentary Registra-
tion Act, 1843, shall be construed to refer to the
enactments of the Registration Acts in Ireland
relating to the making out, signing, publishing,
and otherwise dealing with the lists of voters,
and the reference to the Parliamentary Regis-
tration Acts shall be construed to refer to the
Registration Acts in Ireland, and the following
dates shall be substituted in Ireland for the dates
in that section mentioned, that is to say, the
twentieth day of July for the last day of July,
and the fourteenth day of July for the twenty-
fifth day of July, and the word "overseers"
shall be construed to refer in a county to the
clerk of the peace, and in a borough to the town
clerk. (4.) The expression "a household qualifica-
tion" means, as respects Scotland, the qualifica-
tion enacted by the third section of the Repre-
sentation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868, and
the enactments amending or affecting the same,
and the said section and enactments shall, so far
as they are consistent with this Act, extend to
counties in Scotland, and for the purpose of
the said section and enactments the expression
"dwelling-house " in Scotland means any house
or part of a house occupied as a separate dwel-
ling, and this definition of a dwelling-house shall
be substituted for the definition contained in
section fifty-nine of the Representation of the
People (Scotland) Act, 1868. (5.) The expression
"a lodger qualification " means, as respects Scot-
land, the qualification enacted by the fourth
section of the Representation of the People (Scot-
land) Act, 1868, and the enactments amending or
affecting the same, and the said section and en-
actments, so far as they are consistent with this
Act, shall extend to counties in Scotland. (6.)
The expression "county occupation franchise"
means, a^ respects England, the franchise enacted
by the sixth section of the Representation of the
People Act, 1867 [see comments appended to
this text] ; and, as respects Scotland, the fran-
chise enacted by tlie sixth section of the Repre-
sentation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868; and,
as respects Ireland, the franchise enacted by the
first section of the Act of the session of the thir-
teenth and fourteenth years of the reign of Her
present Majesty, chapter sixty-nine. (7.) The ex-
pression "borough occupation franchise " means,
as respects England, the franchise enacted by
the twenty-seventh section of the Act of the ses-
sion of the second and third years of the reign of
King AVilliam the Fourth, chapter forty-five
[see comments appended to this text] ; and as
respects Scotland, the franchise enacted by the
eleventh section of the Act of the session of the
second and third j'ears of the reign of King Wil-
liam the Fourth, chapter sixty -five; and as re-
spects Ireland the franchise enacted by section
five of the Act of the session of the thirteenth
and fourteenth years of the reign of Her present
Majesty, chapter sixty-nine, and the third section
of the Representation of the People (Ireland) Act,
1868. (8.) Any enactments amending or relating
to the county occupation franchise or borough
occupation franchise other than the sectious in
1001
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
Third Reform
Bill.
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
this Act in that behalf mentioned shall be deemed
to be referred to in the definition of the county
occupation franchise and the borough occupation
franchise in this Act mentioned.
8. (1.) In this Act the expression "the Repre-
sentation of the People Acts " means the enact-
ments for tlie time being in force in England,
Scotland, and Ireland respectively relating to the
representation of the people, inclusive of the
Registration Acts as defined by this Act. (2.)
The expression "the Registration Acts" means
the enactments for the time being in force in
England, Scotland, and Ireland respectively, re-
lating to the registration of persons entitled to
vote at elections for counties and boroughs, in-
clusive of the Rating Acts as defined by this Act.
(3.) The expressions "the Representation of the
People Acts" and "the Registration Acts" re-
spectively, where used in this Act, shall be read
distributively in reference to the three parts of
the LTnited Kingdom as meaning in the case of
each part the enactments for the time being in
force in that part. (4.) All enactments of the
Registration Acts which relate to the registra-
tion of persons entitled to vote in boroughs in
England in respect of a household or a lodger
qualification, and in boroughs in Ireland in re-
spect of a lodger qualification, shall, with the
necessary variations and with the necessary al-
terations of precepts, notices, lists, and other
forms, extend to counties as well as to boroughs.
(5.) All enactments of the Registration Acts
which relate to the registration in counties and
boroughs in Ireland of persons entitled to vote in
respect of the county occupation franchise and
the borough occupation franchise respectively,
shall, with the necessary variations and with the
necessary alterations of precepts, notices, lists,
and other forms, extend respectively to the re-
gistration in counties and boroughs in Ireland of
persons entitled to vote in respect of the house-
hold qualification conferred by this Act. (6.)
In Scotland all enactments of the Registration
Acts which relate to the registration of persons
entitled to vote in burghs, including the pro-
visions relating to dates, shall, with the neces-
sary variations, and with the necessary altera-
tions of notices and other forms, extend and
apply to counties as well as to burghs ; and the
enactments of the said Acts which relate to the
registration of persons entitled to vote in counties
shall, so far as inconsistent with the enactments
so applied, be repealed: Provided that in coun-
ties the valuation rolls, registers, and lists shall
continue to be arranged in parishes as heretofore.
9. (1.) In this Act the expression "the Rating
Acts " means the enactments for the time being
in force in England, Scotland, and Ireland re-
spectively, relating to the placing of the names
of occupiers on the rate book, or other enact-
ments relating to rating in so far as they are
auxiliary to or deal with the registration of per-
sons entitled to vote at elections ; and the expres-
sion "the Rating Acts" where used in this Act
shall be read distributively in reference to the
three parts of the United Kingdom as meaning
in the case of each part the Acts for the time
being in force in that part. (2.) In every part of
the United Kingdom it shall be the duty of the
overseers annually, in the months of April and
May, or one of them, to inquire or ascertain with
respect to every hereditament which comprises
any dwelling-house or dwelling-houses within
the meaning of the Representation of the People
Acts, ■nhether any man, other than the owner or
other person rated or liable to be rated in respect
of such hereditament, is entitled to be registered
as a voter in respect of his being an inhabitant
occupier of any such dwelling-house, and to en-
ter in the rate book the name of every man so
entitled, and the situation or description of the
dwelling-house in respect of which he is entitled,
and for the purposes of such entry a separate
column shall be added to the rate book. (3.) For
the purpose of the execution of such duty the
overseers may serve on the person who is the
occupier or rated or liable to be rated in respect
of such hereditament, or on some agent of such
person concerned in the management of such
hereditament, the requisition specified in the
Third Schedule of this Act requiring that the
form in that notice be accurately filled up and
returned to the overseers within twenty -one days
after such service ; and if any such person or
agent on whom such requisition is served fails
to comply therewith, he shall be liable on sum-
mary conviction to a fine not exceeding forty
shillings, and any overseer who fails to perform
his duty under this section shall be deemed guilty
of a breach of duty in the execution of the Re-
gistration Acts, and shall be liable to be fined
accordingly a sum not exceeding forty shillings
for each default. (4.) The notice under this sec-
tion may be served in manner provided by the
Representation of the People Acts with respect
to the service on occupiers of notice of non-pay-
ment of rates, and, where a body of persons,
corporate or unincorporate, is rated, shall be
served on the secretary or agent of such body of
persons; and where the hereditament by reason
of belonging to the Crown or otherwise is not
rated, shall be served on the chief local officer
having the superintendence or control of such
hereditament. (5. ) In the application of this sec-
tion to Scotland the expression rate book means
the valuation roll, and where a man entered on
the valuation roll by virtue of this section inhab-
its a dwelling-house by virtue of any office, ser-
vice, or employment, there shall not be entered
in the valuation roll any rent or value against
the name of such man as applicable to such
dwelling-house, nor shall any such man by rea-
son of such entry become liable to be rated in
respect of such dwelling-house. (6.) The proviso
in section two of the Act for the valuation of
lands and heritages in Scotland passed in the
session of the seventeenth and eighteenth years
of the reign of Her present Majesty, chapter
ninety -one, and section fifteen of the Represen-
tation of the People (Scotland) Act, 1868, shall
be repealed: Provided that in any county in
Scotland the commissioners of supply, or the
parochial board of any parish, or any other rat-
ing authority entitled to impose assessments ac-
cording to the valuation roll, may, if they think
fit, levy such assessments in respect of lands and
heritages separately let for a shorter period than
one year or at a rent not amounting to four
pounds per annum in the same manner and from
the same persons as if the names of the tenants
and occupiers of such lands and heritages were
not inserted in the valuation roll. (7.) In Ireland
where the owner of a dwelling-house is rated
instead of the occupier, the occupier shall never-
theless be entitled to be registered as a voter, and
to vote under the same conditions under which
1002
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
Quatifications of
the Suffrage.
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
an occupier of a dwelling-house in England is
entitled in pursuance of the Poor Rate Assess-
ment and Collection Act, 1869, and the Acts
amending the same, to be registered as a voter,
and to vote where the owner is rated, and the
enactments referred to in the First Schedule to
this Act shall apply to Ireland accordingly, with
the modifications in that schedule mentioned.
(8.) Both in England and Ireland where a man
inhabits any dwelling-house by virtue of any
office, service, or employment, and is deemed for
the purposes of this Act and of the Representa-
tion of the People Acts to be an inhabitant occu-
pier of such dwelling-house as a tenant, and
another person is rated or liable to be rated for
such dwelling-house, the rating of such other
person shall for the purposes of this Act and of
the Representation of the People Acts be deemed
to be that of the inhabitant occupier ; and the
several enactments of the Poor Rate Assessment
and Collection Act, 1869, and other Acts amend-
ing the same referred to in the First Schedule to
this Act shall for those purposes apply to such
inhabitant occupier, and in the construction of
those enactments the word "owner" shall be
deemed to include a person actually rated or
liable to be rated as aforesaid. (9.) In any part
of the United Kingdom where a man inhabits a
dwelling-house in respect of which no person is
rated by reason of such dwelling-house belong-
ing to or being occupied on behalf of the Crown,
or by reason of any other ground of exemptiou,
such person shall not be disentitled to be regis-
tered as a voter, and to vote by reason only that
no one is rated in respect of such dwelling-house,
and that no rates are paid in respect of the same,
and it shall be the duty of the persons making
out the rate book or valuation roll to enter any
such dwelling-house as last aforesaid in the rate
book or valuation roll, together with the name of
the inhabitant occupier thereof.
10. Nothing in this Act shall deprive any per-
son (who at the date of the passing of this Act
is registered in respect of any qualification to
vote for any county or borough), of his right to
be from time to time registered and to vote for
such county or borough in respect of such quali-
fication in like manner as if this Act had not
passed. Provided that where a man is so regis-
tered in respect of the county or borough occu-
pation franchise by virtue of a qualification
which also qualifies him for the franchise under
this Act, he shall be entitled to be registered in
respect of such latter franchise only. Nothing
in this Act shall confer on any man who is sub-
ject to any legal incapacity to be registered as a
voter or to vote, any right to be registered as a
voter or to vote.
II. This Act, so far as may be consistently
with the tenor thereof, shall be construed as one
with the Representation of the People Acts as
defined by this Act; and the expressions "elec-
tion," "county," and "borough," and other ex-
pressions in this Act and in the enactments ap-
plied by this Act, shall have the same meaning
as in the said Acts. Provided that in this Act
and the said enactments — The expression "over-
seers" Includes assessors, guardians, clerks of
unions, or other persons by whatever name
known, who perform duties in relation to rating
or to the registration of voters similar to those
performed in relation to such matters by over-
seers in England. The expression ' ' rentcharge "
Includes a fee farm rent, a feu duty in Scotland,,
a rent seek, a chief rent, a rent of assize, and
any rent or annuity granted out of land. The
expression "land or tenement" includes any
part of a house separately occupied for the pur-
pose of any trade, business, or profession, and
that expression, and also the expression "here-
ditament " when used in this Act, in Scotland in-
cludes "lands and heritages. " The exprepiona
"joint tenants " and "tenants in common " shall
include "pro indiviso proprietors." The ex-
pression "clear yearly value " as applied to any-
land or tenement means in Scotland the annual
value as appearing in the valuation roll, and In
Ireland the net annual value at which the occu-
pier of such land or tenement was rated under
the last rate for the time being, under the Act
of the session of the first and second years of the
reign of Her present Majesty, chapter fifty-six,
or any Acts amending the same.
12. Whereas the franchises conferred by this
Act are in substitution for the franchises con-
ferred by the enactments mentioned in the first
and second parts of the Second Schedule hereto,
be it enacted that the Acts mentioned in the first
part of the said Second Schedule shall be re-
pealed to the extent in the third column of that
part of the said schedule mentioned except in sO'
far as relates to the rights of persons saved by
this Act ; and the Acts mentioned in the second
part of the said Second Schedule shall be re-
pealed to the extent in the third column of that
part of the said schedule mentioned, except in so-
far as relates to the rights of persons saved by
this Act and except in so far as the enactments-
so repealed contain conditions made applicable
by this Act to any franchise enacted by this Act.
13. This Act shall commence and come into
operation on the first day of January one thou-
sand eight hundred and eighty -five: Provided
that the register of voters in any county or bor-
ough in Scotland made in the last-mentioned
year shall not come into force until the first day
of January one thousand eight hundred and
eighty-six, and until that day the previous regis-
ter of voters shall continue in force.
The following comments upon the foregoing^
act afford explanations which are needed for the
understanding of some of its provisions:
" The introduction of the household franchise
into counties is the main work of the Representa-
tion of the People Act, 1884. . . . The county
household franchise is . . . made identical with
the borough franchise created by the Reform
Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vict., c. 102), to which we
must, therefore, turn for the definition of the one
household franchise now established in^ both
counties and boroughs throughout the United
Kingdom. The third section of the Act in ques-
tion provides that ' Every man shall in and after
the year 1868 be entitled to be registered as a
voter, and when registered to vote, for a member
or members to serve in Parliament for a borough
[we must now add "or for a county or division
of a county"] who is qualified as follows:— (l.>
Is of full age and not subject to any legal in-
capacity ; (3.) Is on the last day of July [now July
15th] in any year, and has during the whole of the
preceding twelve calendar months been an inhabi-
tant occupier as owner or tenant of any dwelling
house within the borough [or within a county or
division of a county]; (3.) Has during the time
of such occupation been rated as an ordinary
1U03
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
Suj^rage
Qualifications,
ENGLAND, 1884^188a.
occupier in respect of the premises so occupied by
him within the borough to all rates (if any) made
for the relief of the poor in respect of such prem-
ises; and, (4.) Has on or before the 20th day of
July in the same year bona fide paid an equal
amount in the pound to that payable by other or-
dinary occupiers in respect of all poor rates that
have been payable by him in respect of the said
premises up to the preceding 5th day of January :
Provided that no man shall under this section be
entitled to be registered as a voter by reason of
his being a joint occupier of any dwelling house.
. . . The lodger franchise was the creation of
the Reform Act of 1867 (30 & 31 Vict., c. 102),
the 4th section of which conferred the suffrage
upon lodgers who, being of full age and not sub-
ject to any legal incapacity, have occupied in
the same borough lodgings ' of a clear yearly
value, if let unfurnished, of £10 or upwards ' for
twelve months preceding the last day of July,
and have claimed to be registered as voters at
the next ensuing registration of voters. By this
clause certain limitations or restrictions were im-
posed on the lodger franchise; but these were
swept away by the 41 & 42 Vict., c. 26, the 6th
section of which considerably enlarged the fran-
chise by enacting that: — (1.) Lodgings occupied
by a person in any j'ear or two successive years
shall not be deemed to be different lodgings by
reason only that in that j'ear or either of those
years he has occupied some other rooms or place
in addition to his original lodgings. (2.) For the
purpose of qualifjiug a lodger to vote the occu-
pation in immediate succession of different lodg-
ings of the requisite value in the same house
shall have the same effect as continued occupa-
tion of the same lodgings. (3.) Wliere lodgings
are jointly occupied by more than one lodger,
and the clear yearly value of the lodgings if let
unfurnished is of an amount which, when divided
by the number of the lodgers, gives a sum of not
less than £10 for each lodger, then each lodger
(if otherwise qualified and subject to the condi-
tions of the Representation of the People Act,
1867) shall be entitled to be registered and when
registered to vote as a lodger, provided that not
more than two persons being such joint lodgers
shall be entitled to be registered in respect of
such lodgings. . . . Until the passing of the
Representation of the People Act, 1884, no house-
holder was qualified to vote unless he not only
occupied a dwelling house, but occupied it either
as owner or as the tenant of the owner. And
where residence in an official or other house was
necessary, or conducive to the efficient discharge
of a man's duty or service, and was either ex-
pressly or impliedly made a part of such duty or
service then the relation of landlord or tenant
was held not to be created. The consequence
was that a large number of persons who as offi-
cials, as employes, or as servants are required to
reside in public buildings, on the premises of
their employers or in houses assigned to them by
their masters were held not to be entitled to the
franchise. In future such persons will ... be
entitled to vote as inhabitant occupiers and ten-
ants (under Section 3 of the recent Act), notwith-
standing that they occupy their dwelling houses
' by virtue of any office, service or employment.'
But this is subject to the condition that a subor-
dinate cannot qualify or obtain a vote in respect
of a dwelling house which is also inhabited by
any person under whom ' such man serves in
such office, service or employment,' . . . Persons
seised of (i. e. , owning) an estate of inheritance
(i. e., in fee simple or fee-tail) of freehold tenure,
in lands or tenements, of the value of 40s. per
annum, are entitled to a vote for the county or
division of the county in which the estate is situ-
ated. This is the class of electors generally
known as ' forty shilling freeholders.' Originally
all freeholders were entitled to county votes, but
by the 8 Henry VI., c. 7, it was provided that no
freehold of a less annual value than 40s. should
confer the franchise. Until the Reform Act of
1832, 40s. freeholders, whether their estate was
one of inheritance or one for life or lives, were
entitled to county votes. That Act, however,
restricted the county freehold franchise by draw-
ing a distinction between (1) freeholds of inheri-
tance, and (2) freeholds not of inheritance. While
the owners of the first class of freeholds were
left in possession of their former rights (except
when the property is situated within a Parlia-
mentary borough), the owners of the latter were
subjected to a variety of conditions and restric-
tions. . . . Before the passing of the Represen-
tation of the People Act, 1884, any number of
persons might qualify and obtain county votes
as joint owners of a freehold of inheritance, pro-
vided that it was of an annual value sufficient to
give 40s. for each owner. But . . . this right
is materially qualified by Section 4 of the recent
Act. . . . Persons seised of an estate for life or
lives of freehold tenure of the annual value of
40s., but of less than £5, are entitled to a county
vote, provided that they (1) actually and bonS
fide occupy the premises, or (2) were seised of
the property at the time of the passing of the 2
Will. IV., c. 45 (June 7th, 1832), or (3) have ac-
quired the property after the date by marriage,
marriage settlement, devise, or promotion to a
benefice or office. . . . Persons seised of an es-
tate for life or lives or of any larger estate in
lands or tenements of any tenure whatever of
the yearly value of £5 or upwards : This quali-
fication is not confined to the ownership of free-
hold lands. Under the words 'of any tenure
whatever' (30 & 31 Vict., c. 103, s. 5) copyholders
have county votes if their property is of the an-
nual value of £5. . . . The electoral qualifica-
tions in Scotland are defined by the 2 & 3 Will.
IV., c. 65, the 31 & 32 Vict., c. 48, and the Repre-
sentation of the People Act, 1884 (48 Vict., c. 3).
The effect of the three Acts taken together
is that the County franchises are as follows: — 1.
Owners of Land, &c., of the annual value of £5,
after deducting feu duty, ground annual, or
other considerations which an owner may be
bound to pay or to give an account for as a con-
dition of his right. 2. Leaseholders under a
lease of not less than 57 years or for the life of
the tenant of the clear yearly value of £10, or
for a period of not less than 19 years when the
clear yearly value is not less than £50, or the
tenant is in actual personal occupancy of the
land. 3. Occupiers of land, &c., of the clear
yearly value of £10. 4. Householders. 5. Lodg-
ers. 6. The service franchise. Borough fran-
chises. — 1. Occupiers of land or tenements of the
annual value of £10. 2. Householdere. 3. Lodg-
ers. 4. The service franchise. The qualification
for these franchises is in all material respects the
same as for the corresponding franchises in the
Scotch counties, and in the counties and boroughs
of England and Wales. . . . The Acts relating to
1004
ENGLAND, 1884-1885.
Gladstone
and Salisbury.
ENGLAND, 1885-1886.
the franchise in Ireland are 2 & 3 Will. IV. , c. 88,
13 & 14 Vict. , c. 69, the representation of the Peo-
ple (Ireland) Act, 1868, and the Representation of
the People Act, 1884. Read together they give
the following qualifications : — County franchises.
— 1. Owners of freeholds of inheritance or of free-
holds for lives renewable for ever rated to the
poor at the annual value of £5. 3, Freeholders and
copyholders of a clear annual value of £10. 3.
Leaseholders of various terras and value. 4.
Occupiers of land or a tenement of the clear an-
nual value of £10. 5. Householders. 6. The
lodger franchise. 7. The service franchise. Bor-
ough franchises. — 1. Occupiers of lands and
tenements of the annual value of £10. 3. House-
holders. ... 3. Lodgers. 4. The service fran-
chise. 5. Freemen in certain boroughs. . . .
All the franchises we have described . . . are
subject to this condition, that no one, however
qualified, can be registered or vote in respect of
them if he is subjected to any legal incapacity
to become or act as elector. . . . No alien unless
certificated or naturalised, no minor, no lunatic
or idiot, nor any person in such a state of drunk-
enness as to be incapable — is entitled to vote.
Police magistrates in London and Dublin, and
police officers throughout the country, including
the members of the Royal Irish Constabulary,
are disqualified from voting either generally or
for constituencies within which their duties lie.
In the case of the police the disqualification con-
tinues for six months after an officer has left the
force. . . . Persons are disqualified who are con-
victed of treason or treason-felony, for which the
sentence is death or penal servitude, or any term
of imprisonment with hard labour or exceeding
twelve months, until they have suffered their
punishment (or such as may be substituted by
competent authority), or until they receive a
free pardon. Peers are disqualified from voting
at the election of any member to serve in Parlia-
ment. A returning officer may not vote at any
election for which he acts, unless the numbers
are equal, when he may give a casting vote. No
person is entitled to be registered in any year as
a voter for any county or borough who has within
twelve calendar months next previous to the last
day of July in such year received parochial re-
lief or other alms which by the law of Parlia-
ment disqualify from voting. Persons employed
at an election for reward or payment are dis-
qualified from voting thereat although they may
be on the register. . . . The Corrupt and Illegal
Practices Prevention Act, 1883, disqualifies a
variety of offenders." — W. A. Holdsworth, The
New Reform Act. pp. 20-SQ.
A. D. 1884-1885.— Campaign in the Soudan
for the relief of General Gordon. See Egypt :
A. D. 1884-1885.
A. D. 1884-1895. — Acquisitions in Africa.
See Africa : A. D. 1884-1885, and after.
A. D. 1885.— The fall of the Gladstone gov-
ernment. — The brief first Ministry of Lord Sal-
isbury. — "Almost simultaneously with the as-
sembling of Parliament [February 19, 1885] had
come the news of the fall of Khartoum and the
death of General Gordon [see Egypt: A. D.
1884-1885]. These terrible events sent a thrill of
horror and indignation throughout the country,
and the Government was severely condemned in
many quarters for its procrastination. Mr. Glad-
stone, who was strongly moved by Gordon's
death, rose to the situation, and announced that
it was necessary to overthrow the Mahdi at Khar
toum, to renew operations against Osman Digma,
and to construct a railway from Suakim to Berber
with a view to a campaign in the autumn. A
royal proclamation was issued calling out the re-
serves. Sir Stafford Northcote initiated a debate
on the Soudan question with a motion aflSrming
that the risks and sacrifices which the Govern-
ment appeared to be ready to encounter could
only be justified by a distinct recognition of our
responsibility for Egypt, and those portions of
the Soudan which are necessary to its security.
Mr. John Morley introduced an amendment to
the motion, waiving any judgment on the policy
of the Ministry, but expressing regret at its de-
cision to continue the conflict with the Mahdi.
Mr. Gladstone skilfully dealt with both motion
and amendment. Observing that it was impossi-
ble to give rigid pledges as to the future, he ap-
pealed to the Liberal party, if they had not made
up their minds to condemn and punish the Gov-
ernment, to strengthen their hands by an unmis-
takable vote of confidence. The Government
obtained a majority of 14, the votes being 303 in
their favour with 388 against; but many of those
who supported the Government had also voted
for the amendment by Mr. Morley. . . . Finan-
cial questions were extremely embarrassing to the
Government, and it was not until the 30th of
April that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was
ready with his financial statement. He was
called upon to deal with a deficit of upwards of
a million, with a greatly depressed revenue, and
with an estimated expenditure for the current
year — including the vote of credit — of no less
than £100,000,000. Amongst Mr. Childers's pro-
posals was one to levy upon laud an amount of
taxation proportioned to that levied on personal
property. There was also an augmentation of
the spirit duties and of the beer duty. The
country members were dissatisfied and demanded
that no new charges should be thrown on the
land till the promised relief of local taxation had
been carried out. The agricultural and the liquor
interests were discontented, as well as the Scotch
and Irish members with the whiskey duty. The
Chancellor made some concessions, but they were
not regarded as suflicient, and on the Monday
after the Whitsun holidays, the Opposition joined
battle on a motion by Sir M. Hicks Beach. . . .
Mr. Gladstone stated at the close of the debate
that the Government would resign if defeated.
The amendment was carried against them by 264
to 253, and the Ministry went out. . . . Lord
Salisbury became Premier. . . . The general
election . . . [was] fixed for November 1885." —
G. B. Smith, T/ie Prune Ministers of Queen Vic-
toria, pp. 373-377.
A. D. 1 885-1 886.— The partition of East
Africa with Germany. See Africa: A. D.
1884-1891.
A. D. 1885-1886. — Mr. Gladstone's return to
power. — His Home Rule Bill for Ireland and
his Irish Land Bill. — Their defeat. — Division
of the Liberal Party. — Lord Salisbury's Min-
istry. — "The House of Commons which had been
elected in November and December, 1885, was
the first House of Commons which represented
the whole body of the householders and lodgers
of the United Kingdom. The result of the appeal
to new constituencies and an enlarged elector-
ate had taken all parties by surprise. The Tories
found themselves, by the help of their Irish
1005
ENGLAND, 1885-1886.
Home Rute for
Ireland.
ENGLAND, 1885-1886.
allies, successful in the towns beyond all their
hopes ; the Liberals, disappointed in the boroughs,
had found compensation in unexpected successes
in the counties ; and the Irish Nationalists had
almost swept the board. . . . The Englisli repre-
sentation — exclusive of one Irish Nationalist for
Liverpool — gave a liberal majority of 28 in the
English constituencies; which Wales and Scot-
land swelled to 106. The Irish representation
had undergone a still more remarkable change.
Of 103 members for the sister island, 85 were
Home Rulers and only 18 were Tories. . . . The
new House of Commons was exactly divided be-
tween the Liberals on one side and the Tories
with their Irish allies on the other. Of its 670
members just one-half, or 335, were Liberals,
349 were Tories, and 86 were Irish Nationalists
[or Home Rulers]. ... It was soon clear enough
that the alliance between the Tory Ministers and
the Irish Nationalists was at an end." On the
25th of January 1886, the Government was de-
feated on an amendment to the address, and on the
28th it resigned. Mr, Gladstone was invited to
form a Ministry and did so with Lord Herschell
for Lord Chancellor, Sir William Harcourt for
Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. Childers for
Home Secretary, Lord Granville for Secretary
for the Colonies, Mr. John Morley for Chief Sec-
retary for Ireland, and Mr. Chamberlain for Presi-
dent of the Local Government Board. On the
29th of March " Mr. Gladstone announced in the
House of Commons that on the 8th of April he
would ask for leave to bring in a bill ' to amend
the provision for the future government of Ire-
land ' ; and that on the 15th he would ask leave to
bring in a measure 'to make amended provision
for the sale and purchase of land in Ireland.'"
The same day Mr. Chamberlain and Mr.Trevelyan
(Secretary for Ireland) resigned their seats in the
Cabinet, and it was generally understood that
differences of opinion on the Irish bills had
arisen. On the 8th of April the House of Com-
mons was densely crowded when Mr. Gladstone
introduced his measure for giving Home Rule to
Ireland. In a speech whicTi lasted three hours
and a half he set forth the details of his plan and
the reasons on which they were based. The es-
sential conditions observed in the framing of the
measure, as he defined them, were these: "The
unity of the Empire must not be placed in jeo-
pardy ; the minority must be protected ; the
political equality of the three countries must be
maintained, and there must be an equitable dis-
tribution of Imperial burdens. He then discussed
some proposals which had been made for the
special treatment of Ulster — its exclusion from
the bill, its separate autonomy or the reservation
of certain matters, such as education, for Pro-
vincial Councils ; all of which he rejected. The
establishment of an Irish legislature involved the
removal of Irish peers from the House of Lords
and the Irish representatives from the House of
Commons. But if Ireland was not represented
at Westminster, how was it to be taxed ? The
English people would never force on Ireland tax-
ation without representation. The taxing power
would be in the hands of the Irish legislature,
but Customs and Excise duties connected with
Customs would be solely in the control of the
Imperial Parliament, Ireland's share in these being
reserved for Ireland's use. Ireland must have
security against her Magna Charta being tam-
pered with; the provision of the Act would
therefore only be capable of modification with
the concurrence of the Irish legislature, or after
the recall of the Irish members to the tvpo Houses
of Parliament. The Irish legislature would have
all the powers which were not specially reserved
from it in the Act. It was to consist of two
orders, though not two Houses. It would be sub-
ject to all the prerogatives of the Crown ; it would
have nothing to do with Army or Navy, or with
Foreign or Colonial relations ; nor could it modify
the Act on which its own authority was based.
Contracts, charters, questions of education, re-
ligious endowments and establishments, would
be beyond its authority. Trade and navigation,
coinage, currency, weights and measures, copy-
right, census, quarantine laws, and some other
matters, were not to be within the powers of the
Irish Parliament. The composition of the legis-
lature was to be first, the 103 members now rep-
resenting Ireland with 101, elected by the same
constituencies, with the exception of the Univer-
sity, with power to the Irish legislature to give
two members to the Royal University if it chose;
then the present Irish members of the House of
Lords, with 75 elected by the Iri.sh people under
a property qualification. The Viceroyalty was
to be left, but the Viceroy was not to quit oflice
with an outgoing government, and no religious
disability was to affect his appointment. He
would have a Privy Council, and the executive
would remain as at present, but might be changed
by the action of the legislative body. The present
judges would preserve their lien on the Consoli-
dated Fund of Great Britain, and the Queen would
be empowered to antedate their pensions if it
was seen to be desirable. Future judges, with
the exception of two in the Court of Exchequer,
would be appointed by the Irish government,
and, like English judges, would hold their office
during good behaviour. The Constabulary
would remain under its present administration,
Great Britain paying all charges over a million.
Eventually, however, the whole police of Ireland
would be under the Irish government. The
civil servants would have two years' grace, with
a choice of retirement on pension before passing
under the Irish executive. Of the financial ar-
rangements Mr. Gladstone spoke in careful and
minute detail. He fixed the proportion of Im-
perial charges Ireland should pay at one-fifteenth,
or in other words she would pay one part and
Great Britain fourteen parts. Jlore than a mil-
lion of duty is paid on spirits in Ireland which
come to Great Britain, and this would be practi-
cally a contribution towards the Irish revenue.
So with Irish porter and with the tobacco manu-
factured in Ireland and sold here. Altogether
the British taxpayers would contribute in this
way £1,400,000 a year to the Irish Exchequer;
reducing the actual payment of Ireland itself for
Imperial affairs to one-twenty-sixth." On the
16th of April Mr. Gladstone introduced his Irish
Land Bill, connecting it with the Home Rule
Bill as forming part of one great measure for the
pacification of Ireland. In the meantime the op-
position to his policy within the ranks of the
Liberal party had been rapidly taking form. It
was led by Lord Hartington, Mr. Chamberlain,
Mr. Trevelyan, Sir Henry James, Sir John Lub-
bock, Mr. Goschen, and Mr. Courtney. It soon
received the support of Mr. John Bright. The
debate in the House, which lasted until the 3rd
of June, was passionate and bitter. It ended in
1006
ENGLAND, 1885-1886.
Home Rule for
Ireland.
ENGLAND, 1893-1893.
the defeat of the Government by a majority of
30 against the bill. The division was the largest
which had ever been taken in the House of Com-
mons, 657 members being present. The majority
was made up of 249 Conservatives and 94 Lib-
erals. The minority consisted of 228 Liberals
and 85 Nationalists. Mr. Gladstone appealed to
the country by a dissolution of Parliament.^ The
elections were adverse to him, resulting in the
return to Parliament of members representing the
several parties and sections of parties asfollo^ys:
Home Rule Liberals, or Gladstonians, 194, Irish
Nationalists 85 — total 279; seceding Liberals
75, Conservatives 316 — total 391. Mr. Glad-
stone and his colleagues resigned and a new Min-
istry was formed under Lord Salisbury. The
Liberals, in alliance with the Conservatives and
giving their support to Lord Salisbury's Govern-
ment, became organized as a distinct party under
the leadership of Lord Hartiugton, and took the
name of Liberal Unionists.— P. W. Clayden, JEng-
land under the Coalition, ch. 1-6.
Also est : H. D. Traill, Tlie Marquis of Salis-
bxiry, ch. VZ.— Annual Register, 1885, 1886.
A. D. 1885-1888.— Termination of the Fish-
ery Articles of the Treaty of Washington.—
Renewed controversies with the United States.
—The rejected Treaty. See Fisheries, North
American: A. D. 18TT-1888.
A. D. 1886.— Defeat of Mr. Parnell's Ten-
ants' Relief Bill.— The plan of campaign in
Ireland. See Ireland : A. D. 1886.
A. D. 1886-1893.— The Bering Sea Contro-
versy and Arbitration. See United States op
Am. : A. D. 1886-1893.
A. D. 1890.— Settlement of African questions
with Germany.— Cession of Heligoland. See
Africa: A. D. 1884-1889.
A. D. 1891.— The Free Education Bill. See
Education, Modern: European Countries. —
England: A. D. 1891.
A. D. 1892-1893. — The fourth Gladstone
Ministry.— Passage of the Irish Home Rule
Bill by the House of Commons.— Its defeat by
the Lords.— On the 28th of June, 1893, Parlia-
ment was dissolved, having been in existence
since 1886, and a new Parliament was summoned
to meet on the 4th of August. Great excitement
prevailed in the ensuing elections, which turned
almost entirely on the question of Home Rule
for Ireland. The Liberal or Gladstonian party,
favoring Home Rule, won a majority of 43 in the
House of Commons ; but in the representation of
England alone there was a majority of 70 re-
turned against it. In Ireland, the representation
returned was 103 for Home Rule, and 23 against;
in Scotland, 51 for and 21 against; in Wales,
28 for and 3 against. Conservatives and Liberal
Unionists (opposing Home Rule) lost little ground
in the boroughs, as compared with the previous
Parliament, but largely in the counties. As the
result of the election. Lord Salisbury and his
Ministry resigned August 13, and Mr. Gladstone
was summoned to form a Government. In the
new Cabinet, which was announced four days
later. Earl Rosebery became Foreign Secretary ;
Baron Herschell, Lord Chancellor; Sir William
Vernon Harcourt, Chancellor of the Exchequer;
Mr. Herbert H. Asquith, Home Secretary ; and
Mr. John Morley, Chief Secretary for Ireland.
Although the new Parliament assembled in Au-
gust, 1892, it was not until the 13th of February
following that Mr. Gladstone introduced his bill
to establish Home Rule in Ireland. The bill was
under debate in the House of Commons until the
night of September 1, 1893, when it passed that
body by a vote of 301 to 267. "The bill pro-
vides for a Legislature for Ireland, consisting of
the Queen and of two Houses— the Legislative
Council and the Legislative Assembly. This
Legislature, with certain restrictions, is author-
ized to make laws for the peace, order, and good
government of Ireland in respect of matters ex-
clusively relating to Ireland or some part thereof.
The bill says that the powers of the Irish Legis-
lature shall not extend to the making of any law
respecting the establishment or endowment of re-
ligion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or
imposing any disability or conferring any privi-
lege on account of religious belief, or whereby
any person may be deprived of life, liberty, or
property without due process of law, or whereby
private property may be taken without just com-
pensation. According to the bill the executive
power in Ireland shall continue vested in her
Majesty the Queen, and the Lord Lieutenant, on
behalf of her Majesty, shall exercise any preroga-
tives or other executive power of the Queen the
exercise of which may be delegated to him by
her Majesty, and shall in the Queen's name sum-
mon, prorogue, and dissolve the Legislature. An
Executive Committee of the Privy Council of
Ireland is provided for, which ' shall aid and ad-
vise in the government of Ireland.' The Lord
Lieutenant, with the advice and consent of the
Executive Council, is authorized to give or with-
hold the assent of her Majesty to bills passed by
the houses of the Legislature. The Legislative
Council by the terms of the bill shall consist of
forty-eight Councilors. Every man shall be en-
titled to vote for a Councilor who owns or occu-
pies any land or tenement of a ratable value of
£30. the term of office of the Councilors is to
be for eight years, which is not to be affected by
dissolution, but one-half of the Councilors shall
retire in every fourth year and their seats be filled
by a new election. The Legislative Assembly is
to consist of 103 members returned by the Parlia-
mentary constituencies existing at present in
Ireland. This Assembly, unless sooner dissolved,
may exist for five years. The bill also provides
for 80 Irish members in the House of Commons.
In regard to finance, the bill provides that for
the purposes of this act the public revenue shall
be divided into general revenue and special rev-
enue, and general revenue shall consist of the
gross revenue collected in Ireland from taxes;
the portion due to Ireland of the hereditary rev-
enues of the crown which are managed by the
Commissioners of Woods, an annual sum for the
customs and excise duties collected in Great Brit-
ain on articles consumed in Ireland, provided
that an annual sum of the customs and excise
duties collected in Ireland on articles consumed
in Great Britain shall be deducted from the rev-
enue collected in Ireland and treated as revenue
collected in Great Britain ; these annual sums to
be determined by a committee appointed jointly
by the Irish Government and the Imperial Treas-
ury. It is also provided that one-third of the
general revenue of Ireland and also that portion
of any imperial miscellaneous revenue to which
Ireland may claim to be entitled shall be paid
into the Treasury of the United Kingdom as the
contribution of Ireland to imperial liabilities and
expenditures; this plan to continue for a term of
1007
ENGLAND, 1892-1893.
EPHE8U8.
six years, at the end of which time a new scheme
of tax division shall be devised. The Legisla-
ture, in order to meet expenses of the public ser-
vice, is authorized to impose taxes other than
those now existing in Ireland. Ireland should
also have charged up against her and be compelled
to pay out of her own Treasury all salaries and
pensions of Judges and liabilities of all kinds
which Great Britain has assumed for her benefit.
,The bill further provides that appeal from courts
in Ireland to the House of Lords shall cease and
I that all persons having the right of appeal shall
have a like right to appeal to the Queen in coun-
cil. The term of office of the Lord Lieutenant
is fixed at six years. Ultimately the Royal Irish
Constabulary shall cease to exist and no force
other than the ordinary civil police shall be per-
mitted to be formed. The Irish Legislature shall
be summoned to meet on the first Tuesday in
September, 1894, and the first election for mem-
bers shall be held at such time before that day
as may be fixed by her Majesty in council." In
the House of Lords, the bill was defeated on the
8th of September — the second reading postponed
to a day six months from that date — by the over-
whelming vote of 419 to 41.
ENGLE.— ENGLISH. See Ajigles and
Jdtes; also, England: A. D. 547-633.
ENGLISH PALE, The. See Pale, The
English.
ENGLISH SWEAT, The. See Sweating
Sickness.
ENGLISHRY.— To check the assassination
of his tyrannical Norman followers by the exas-
perated English, William the Conqueror ordained
that the whole Hundred within which one was
slain should pay a heavy penalty. "In con-
nexion with this enactment there grew up the
famous law of 'Englishry,' by which every mur-
dered man was presumed to be a Norman, unless
proofs of ' Englishry ' were made by the four
nearest relatives of the deceased. ' Presentments
of Englishry,' as they were technically termed,
are recorded in the reign of Richard I. , but not
later." — T. P. Taswell-Langmead, Eng. Const.
Hist., p. 68.
ENNISKILLEN, The defence of. See Ike-
l.\nd:^A. D. 1688-1689.
ENOMOTY, The. — In the Spartan military
organization the enomoty ' ' was a small company
of men, the number of whom was variable, being
given differently at 25, 32, or 36 men, — drilled
and practised together in military evolutions, and
bound to each other by a common oath. Each
Enomoty had a separate captain or enomotarch,
the strongest and ablest soldier of the company."
— G. Grote, Hist, of Greece, pt. 2, ch. 8.
ENRIQUE. See Henry.
ENSISHEIM, Battle of (1674). See Neth-
BRL.VNDS (HoLL.^'D) : A. D. 1674-1678.
EORL AND CEORL.— " The modern Eng-
lish forms of these words have completely lost
their ancient meaning. The word 'Earl,' after
several fluctuations, has settled down as the title
of one rank in the Peerage ; the word ' Churl '
has come to be a word of moral reprobation, ir-
respective of the rank of the person who is guilty
of the offence. But in the primary meaning of
the words, ' Eorl ' and ' Ceorl ' — words whose
happy jingle causes them to be constantly op-
posed to each other — form an exhaustive divi-
sion of the free members of the state. The dis-
tinction in modem language is most nearly
expressed by the words 'Gentle 'and 'Simple.'
The ' Ceorl ' is the simple freeman, the mere unit
in the army or in the assembly, whom no distinc-
tion of birth or ofiice marks out from his fel-
lows." — E. A. Freeman, Hist, of the Norman
Oonq. of Eng., ch. 3, sect. 2. — See, also, Ethel;
and England: A. I). 958.
EORMEN STREET. See Ekmyn Street.
EPAMINONDAS, and the greatness of
Thebes. See Greece: B. C. 379-371, and 371-
863; also Thebes: B. C. 378.
EPEIROS. See Epirds.
EPHAH, The.— "The ephah, or bath, was
the unit of measures of capacity for both liquids
and grain [among the ancient Jews], The ephah
is considered by Queipo to have been the mea-
sure of water contained in the ancient Egyptian
cubic foot, and thus equivalent to 29.376 litres,
or 6. 468 imperial gallons, and to have been nearly
identical with the ancient Egyptian artaba and the
Greek metretes. For liquids, the ephah was di-
vided into six bin, and the twelfth part of the hin
was the log. As a grain measure, the ephah was
divided into ten omers, or gomers. 'The omer
measure of manna gathered by the Israelites in
the desert as a day's food for each adult person
was thus equal to 2.6 imperial quarts. The
largest measure of capacity both for liquids and
dry commodities was the cor of twelve ephahs. " —
H. "W. Chisholm, On the Science of Weighing and
Measuring, ch. 2.
EPHES-DAMMIM, Battle of.— The battle
which followed David's encounter with Goliath,
the gigantic Philistine. — 1 Sam., xvii.
EPHESIA, The. See Ionic (Pan-Ionic)
Amphiktyony.
EPHESUS. — The Ephesian Temple. —
"The ancient city of Ephesus was situated on
the river Cayster, wliich falls into the Bay of
Scala Nova, on the western coast of Asia Minor.
Of the origin and foundation of Ephesus we have
no historical record. Stories were told which
ascribed the settlement of the place to Androklos,
the son of the Athenian king, Codrus. . . . With
other Ionian cities of Asia Minor, Ephesus fell
into the hands of Crffisus, the last of the kings
of Lydia, and, on the overthrow of Croesus by
Cyrus, it passed under the heavier yoke of the
Persian despot. Although from that time, dur-
ing a period of at least five centuries, to the con-
quest by the Romans, the city underwent great
changes of fortune, it never lost its grandeur and
importance. Tlie Temple of Artemis (Diana),
whose splendour has almost become proverbial,
tended chiefly to make Ephesus the most attrac-
tive and notable of all the cities of Asia Minor.
Its magnificent harbour was filled with Greek
and Phenician merchantmen, and multitudes
flocked from all parts to profit by its commerce
and to worship at the shrine of its tutelary god-
dess. The City Port was fully four miles from
the sea, which has not, as has been supposed,
receded far. . . . During the generations which
immediately followed the conquest of Lydia and
the rest of Asia Minor by the Persian kings, the
arts of Greece attained their highest perfection,
and it was within this short period of little more
than two centuries that the great Temple of
Artemis was three times built upon the same
site, and, as recent researches have found, each
1008
EPHESUS.
EPIRUS.
time on the same grand scale." — J. T. Wood,
Discoveries at Eptiesus, ch. 1. — The excavations
which were carried on at Bpliesus by Mr. Wood,
for the British Museum, during eleven years,
from 1863 until 1874, resulted in the uncovering
of a large part of the site of the great Temple
and the determining of its architectural features,
besides bringing to light many inscriptions and
much valuable sculpture. The account given in
the work named above is exceedingly interesting.
Ionian conquest and occupation. See Asia
Minor: The Greek CoLONrEs.
Ancient Commerce. — "The spot on the Asi-
atic coast which corresponded most nearly with
Corinth on the European, was Ephesus, a city
which, in the time of Herodotus, had been the
starting point of caravans for Upper Asia, but
which, under the change of dynasties and ruin
of empires, had dwindled into a mere provin-
cial town. The mild sway of Augustus re-
stored it to wealth and eminence, and as the offi-
cial capital of the province of Asia, it was reputed
to be the metropolis of no less than 500 cities. "
— C. Merivale, Hist, of the Somans, ch. 40.
A. D. 267. — Destruction by the Goths of the
Temple of Diana. See Goths: A. D. 258-267.
A. D. 431 and 449. — The General Council
and the " Robber Synod." See Nestori.vn akd
Monopuysite Controversy.
EPHETyE.The. — A board of fifty-one judges
Instituted by the legislation of Draco, at Athens,
for the trial of crimes of bloodshed upon the
Areopagus. — G. Schomann, Antig. of Greece:
The folate, pt. 3, c?i. 3.
EPHORS. — "Magistrates, called by the name
of Ephors, existed in many Dorian as well as in
other States [of ancient Greece], although our
knowledge with regard to them extends no fur-
ther than to the fact of their existence ; while
the name, which signifies quite generally ' over-
seers,' affords room for no conclusion as to their
political position or importance. In Sparta,
however, the Board of Five Ephors became, in
the course of time, a magistracy of such dignity
and influence that no other can be found in any
free State with which it can be compared.
Concerning its first institution nothing certain
can be ascertained. . . . The following appears
to be a probable account: — The Ephors were
originally magistrates appointed by the kings,
partly to render them special assistance in the
judicial decision of private disputes, — a function
which they continued to exercise in later times,
— partly to undertake, as lieutenants of the
kings, other of their functions, during their ab-
sence in military service, or through some other
cause. . . . When the monarchy and the Gerou-
sia wished to re-establish their ancient influence
in opposition to the popular assembly, they were
obliged to agree to a concession which should
give some security to the people that this power
should not be abused to their detriment. This
concession consisted in the fact that the Ephors
were independently authorized to exercise control
over the kings themselves. . . . The Ephors
were enabled to interfere in every department of
the administration, and to remove or pimish
whatever they found to be contrary to the laws
or adverse to the public interest." — G. F. SchO-
mann, Antig. of Greece: The State, pt. 3, ch. 1,
sect. 8. — See, also, Spakta: The Constitution,
-%;c.
64
EPHTHALITES, The. See Huns, The
White.
EPIDAMNUS. See Greece: B. C. 435-432;
and KoRKYRA.
EPIDII, The. See Britain, Celtic Tribes.
EPIGAMIA.— The right of marriage in an-
cient Athens. — G. F. SchOmann, Antig. of Greece:
The State, pt. 3, ch. 3.
EPIGONI, The. See Bosotia.
EPIPOL/E. — One of the parts or divisions of
the ancient citv of Syracuse, Sicily.
EPIROT LEAGUE, The.— "The tempo-
rary greatness of the Molossian kingdom [of
Epeiros, or Epirus] under Alexander and Pyrrhus
is matter of general history. Our immediate
business is with the republican government which
succeeded on the bloody extinction of royalty
and the royal line [which occurred B. C. 239].
Epeiros now became a republic ; of the details of
its constitution we know nothing, but its form
can hardly fail to have been federal. The Epei-
rots formed one political body ; Polybios always
speaks of them, like the Achaians and Akarnani-
ans, as one people acting with one will. Decrees
are passed, ambassadors are sent and received, in
the name of the whole Epeirot people, and Epeiros
had, like Akarnania, a federal coinage bearing
the common name of the whole nation." — E. A.
Freeman, Hist, of Federal Govt., bk. 4, sect. 1.
EPIRUS. — THE EPIROTS. — " Passing
over the borders of Akarnania [in ancient western
Greece] we find small nations or tribes not con-
sidered as Greeks, but known, from the fourth
century B. C. downwards, under the common
name of Epirots. This word signifies, properly,
inhabitants of a continent, as opposed to those of
an island or a peninsula. It came only gradually
to be applied by the Greeks as their comprehen-
sive denomination to designate all those diverse
tribes, between the Ambrakian Gulf on the south
and west, Pindus on the east, and the Illyrians
and Macedonians to the north and north-east.
Of these Epirots the principal were — the Chaoni-
ans, Thesprotians, Kassopians, and Molossians,
who occupied the country inland as well as mari-
time along the Ionian Sea, from the Akrokerau-
nian mountains to the borders of Ambrakia
in the interior of the Ambrakian Gulf. . . .
Among these various tribes it is diflicult to dis-
criminate the semi-Hellenic from the non-Hel-
lenic; for Herodotus considers both Molossians
and Thesprotians as Hellenic, — and the oracle
of Dodona, as well as the Nekyomanteion (or
holy cavern for evoking the dead) of Acheron,
were both in the territory of the Thesprotians,
and both (in the time of the historian) Hellenic.
Thucydides, on the other hand, treats both
Molossians and Thesprotians as barbaric. . . .
Epirus is essentially a pastoral country: its cat-
tle as well as its shepherds and shepherds' dogs
were celebrated throughout all antiquity : and
its population then, as now, found divided vil-
lage residence the most suitable to their means
and occupations. . . . Both the Chaonians and
Thesprotians appear, in the time of Thucydides,
as having no kings : there was a privileged kingly
race, but the presiding chief was changed from
year to year. The Molossians, however, had a
line of kings, succeeding from father to son,
which professed to trace its descent through
fifteen generations downward from Achilles and
Neoptolemus to Tharypas about the year 400
1009.
EPIRUS.
EQUESTRIAN ORDER.
B. 0."— G. Grote, Hist, of Greece, pt. 3, eh. 34.—
The Molossian kings subsequently extended their
sovereignty over the whole country and styled
themselves kings of Epirus. Pyrrhus, whose
war with Rome (see Rome: B. C. 382-375) is one
of the well known episodes of history, was the
most ambitious and energetic of the dynasty (see
Macedonl\: B. C. 397-380); Hannibal reckoned
him among the greatest of soldiers. In the next
century Epirus fell under the dominion of Rome.
Subsequently it formed part of the Byzantine
empire; then became a separate principality,
ruled by a branch of the imperial Comnenian
family; "was conquered by the Turks in 1466 and
is now represented by tlie southern half of the
province of Turkey, called Albania. — See, also,
ffiNOTRIANS.
A. D. 1204-1350. — The Greek Despotat. —
From the ruins of the Byzantine empire, over-
thrown by the Crusaders and the Venetians in
1304, " that portion . . . situated to the west of
the range of Hndus was saved from feudal dom-
ination by Michael, a natural son of Constantine
Angelos, the uncle of the Emperors Isaac II. and
Alexius III. After the conquest of Constanti-
nople, he escaped into Epirus, where his marriage
with a lady of the country gave him some influ-
ence ; and assuming the direction of the adminis-
tration of the whole country from Dyrrachium to
Naupactus, he collected a considerable military
f oroe, and established the seat of his authority gen-
erally at loannina or Arta. . . . History has un-
fortunately preserved very little information con-
cerning tlie organisation and social condition of
the different classes and races which inhabited
the dominions of the princes of Epirus. Almost
the only facts that have been preserved relate to
the wars and alliances of the despots and their
families with the Byzantine emperors and the
Latin princes. . . . They all assumed the name
of Angelos Komnenos Dukas; and the title of
despot, by which they are generally distinguished,
was a Byzantine honorary distinction, never
borne by the earlier members of the family
until it had been conferred on them by the Greek
emperor. Michael I, the founder of the des-
potat, distinguished himself by his talents as a
soldier and a negotiator. He extended his au-
thority over all Epirus, Acarnania and Etolia,
and a part of Macedonia and Thessaly. Though
virtually independent, he acknowledged Theo-
dore I. (Laskaris), [at Nicaea] as the lawful em-
peror of the East. " The able and unscrupulous
brother of Michael, Theodore, who became his
successor in 1214, extinguished by conquest the
Lombard kingdom of Saloniki, in Macedonia
(A. D. 1232), and assumed the title of emperor,
in rivalry with the Greek emperor at Nicsea,
establishing his capital at Thessalonica. The
empire of Thessalonica ^as short lived. Its
capital was taken by the emperor of Nicsea, in
1334, and Michael's son John, then reigning, was
forced to resign the imperial title. The despotat
of Epirus survived for another century, much
torn and distracted by wars and domestic con-
flicts. In 1350 its remaining territory was occu-
pied by the king of Servia, and finally it was
swallowed up in the conquests of the Turks. — G.
Finlay, Hist, of Greece from its Conquest by tlie
Crusaders, ch. 6.
Also in: Sir J. E. Tennent, Hist, of Modern
Oreece, ch. 3.
Modern History. See Albanians.
EPISCOPAL CHURCH. See Church of
England.
EPISTATES.— The presiding officer of the
ancient Athenian council and popular assembly.
EPONYM.— EPONYMUS. — The name-
giver, — the name-giving hero of primitive myths,
in which tribes and races of people set before
themselves, partly by tradition, partly by imagi-
nation, an heroic personage who is supposed to
be their common progenitor and the source of
their name.
EPONYM CANON OF ASSYRIA. See
AssTRiA. Epontm Canon op.
EPPING FOREST. -Once so extensive that
it covered the whole county of Essex, England,
and was called the Forest of Essex. Subse-
quently, when diminished in size, it was called
Waltham Forest. Still later, when further re-
trenched, it took the name of Epping, from a
town that is embraced in it. It is still quite
large, and within recent years it has been for-
mally declared by the Queen ' ' a people's park. " —
J. C. Brown, Forests of Eng.
EPULONES, The.— "The epulones [at
Rome] formed a college for the administration
of the sacred festivals." — C. Merivale, Hist, of
tlie Romans, ch. 31.
EQUADOR. See Ecuador.
EQUAL RIGHTS PARTY. See New
York: A. D. 1835-1837.
EQUESTRIAN ORDER, Roman.— "The
selection of the burgess cavalry was vested in
the censors. It was, no doubt, the duty of these
to make the selection on purely military grounds,
and at their musters to insist that all horsemen
incapacitated by age or otherwise, or at all un-
serviceable, should surrender their public horse ;
but it was not easy to hinder them from looking
to noble birth more than to capacity, and from
allowing men of standing, who were once ad-
mitted, senators particularly, to retain their horse
beyond the proper time. Accordingly it became
the practical rule for the senators to vote in the
eighteen equestrian centuries, and the other
places in these were assigned chiefly to the
younger men of the nobility. The military sys-
tem, of course, suffered from this, not so much
through the unfitness for effective service of no
small part of the legionary cavalry, as through
the destruction of military equality to which the
change gave rise; the noble youth more and
more withdrew from serving in the infantry, and
the legionary cavalry became a close aristocratic
corps." — T. Mommsen, Hist, of Home, bk. 3, ch.
11. — " Theeighteen centuries, therefore, in course
of time . . . lost their original military charac-
ter and remained only as a voting body. It was
by the transformation thus effected in the char-
acter of the eighteen centuries of knights, whilst
the cavalry service passed over to the richer citi-
zens not included in the senatorial families, that
a new class of Roman citizens began gradually to
be formed, distinct from the nobility proper and
from the mass of the people, and designated as
the equestrian order." — W. Ihne, Hist, of Rome,
bk. 7, ch. 1.— The equestrian order became a
legally constituted class under the judicial law
of Caius Gracchus, B. C. 133, which fixed its
membership by a census, and transferred to it the
judicial functions previously exercised by the
senators only. It formed a kind of monetary
aristocracy. — Tlie same, bk. 7, ch. 6.
EQUITY. See Law, Equity.
1010
ERA.
ERFURT.
ERA, Christian. — "Unfortunately for ancient
C'lironology, there was no one fixed or univer-
sally established Era. Different countries recli-
oned by different eras, whose number is embar-
rassing, and their commencements not always
easily to be adjusted or reconciled to each other;
and it was not until A. D. 533 that the Christian
Era was invented by Dionysius Exiguus, a
Scythian by birth, and a Roman Abbot, who
flourished in the reign of Justinian. . . . Dionys-
ius began his era with the year of our Lord's
incarnation and nativity, in U. C. 753, of the
Varronian Computation, or the 45th of the Julian
Era. And at an earlier period, Panodorus, an
Egyptian monk, who flourished under the Em-
peror Arcadius, A. D. 395, had dated the incar-
nation in the same year. IJut by some mistake,
or misconception of his meaning, Bede, who
lived in the next century after Dionysius, adopted
his year of the Nativity, U. C. 753, yet began
the Vulgar Era, which he first introduced, the
year after, and made it commence Jan. 1, U. C.
754, which was an alteration for the worse, as
making the Christian Era recede a year further
from the true year of the Nativity. The Vulgar
Era began to prevail in the West about the time
of Charles Martel and Pope Gregory II. A. D.
730. . . . But it was not established till the time
of Pope Eugenius IV. A. D. 1431, who ordered
this era to be used in the public Registers. . . .
Dionysius was led to date the year of the Nativ-
ity, ij. C. 753, from the Evangelist Luke's ac-
count that John the Baptist began his ministry
'in the fifteenth year of the reign of Tiberius
Caesar'; and that Jesus, at his baptism, 'was be-
ginning to be about 30 years of age.' Luke iii.
1-23. . . . But this date of the Nativity is at
variance with Matthew's account, that Christ
was born before Herod's death ; which followed
shortly after his massacre of the infants at
Bethlehem. . . . Christ's birth, therefore, could
not have been earlier than U. C. 748, nor later
than U. C. 749. And if we assume the latter
year, as most conformable to the whole tenor of
Sacred History, with Chrysostom, Petavius,
Prideaux, Playfair, &c., this would give Christ's
age at his baptism, about 34 years ; contrary to
Luke's account." — W. Hales' Neio Analysis of
Chronology, v. 1, bk. 1. — In a subsequent table,
Mr. Hales gives the results of the computations
made by different chronologists, ancient and
modern, to fix the true year of the Nativity, as
accommodated to what is called "the vulgar," or
popularly accepted. Christian Era. The range
is through no less than ten years, from B. C. 7
to A. D. 3. His own conclusion, supported by
Prideau.x and Playfair, is in favor of the year
B. C. 5. Somewhat more commonly at the
present time, it is put at B. C. 4. — See, also,
Jews: B. C. 8— A. D. 1.
ERA, French Revolutionary. See France:
A. D. 1793 (September — No\^mber), and 1793
(October).
ERA, Gregorian. See Calendar, Gregorian.
ERA, Jalalaean. See Turks (The Skljuk):
A. D. 1073^1093.
ERA, Julian. See Calendar, Julian.
ERA, Mahometan, or Era of the Hegira. —
" The epoch of the Era of the Hegira is, accord-
ing to the civil calculation, Friday, the 16th of
July, A. D. 633, the day of the flight of Ma-
homet from Mecca to Medina, which is the date
of the Mahometans; but astronomers and some
historians assign it to the preceding day, viz.,
Thursday, the 15th of July ; an important fact to
be borne in mind when perusing Arabian writers.
The years of the Hegira are lunar years, and con-
tain twelve months, each commencing with the
new moon ; a practice which necessarily leads to
great confusion and uncertainty, inasmuch as
every year must begin considerably earlier in the
season than the preceding. In chronology and
historj', however, and in dating their public in-
struments, the Turks use months which contain
alternately thirty and twenty-nine days, except-
ing the last month, which, in intercalary years,
contains thirty days. . . . The years of the
Hegira are divided into cycles of thirty years,
nineteen of which are termed common years, of
354 days each ; and the eleven others intercalary,
or abundant, from their consisting of one day
more: these are the 3d, 5th, 7th, 10th, 13th, 16th,
18th, 21st, 24th, 26th and 39th. To ascertain
whether any given year be intercalary or not
divide it by 30 ; and if either of the above num-
bers remain, the year is one of 355 days." — Sir
H. Nicolas, Chronology of History. — See, also,
Mahometan Conquest : A. D. 609-633.
ERA, Spanish. — "The Spanish era dates from
38 B. C. (A. U. 716) and is supposed to mark
some important epoch in the organization of the
province by the Romans. It may coincide with
the campaign of Calvinus, which is only known
to us from a notice in the Fasti Triumphales.
. . . The Spanish era was preserved in Aragon
tUl 1358, in Castile till 1383, and in Portugal till
1415." — C. Merivale, Hist, of the Romans, ch. 34,
note.
ERA OF DIOCLETIAN, or Era of Mar-
tyrs. See Ro.me: A. D. 192-284.
ERA OF GOOD FEELING. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1821-1834,
ERA OF THE FOUNDATION OF
ROME. See Rome: B. C. 7.53.
ERA OF THE OLYMPIADS. See Olym-
piads, Era of the.
ERANL- — Associations existing in ancient
Athens which resembled the mutual benefit or
friendly-aid societies of modern times. — G. F.
SchOmann, Antiq. ofG-reece : The State, pt. 3, ch. 3.
ERASTIANISM.— A doctrine which "re-
ceived its name from Thomas Erastus, a German
physician of the 16th century, contemporary with
Luther. The work in which he delivered his
theory and reasonings on the subject is entitled
' De Excommunicatione Ecclesiastica. ' . . . The
Erastians . . . held that religion is an affair be-
tween man and his creator, in which no other
man or society of men was entitled to interpose.
. . . Proceeding on this ground, they maintained
that every man calling himself a Christian has a
right to make resort to any Christian place of
worship, and partake in all its ordinances. Sim-
ple as this idea is. it strikes at the root of all
priestcraft." — W. Godwin, Hist, of the Common-
wealth, V. 1, c7i. 13.
ERCTE, Mount, Hamilcar on. See Punic
War, The First. — See, also, Eryx.
ERDINI, The. See Ireland, Tribes of
early Celtic Inhabitants.
EREMITES OF ST. FRANCIS. See
Minims.
ERETRIA. See Chalcis and Eretria.
ERFURT, Imperial Conference and Treaty
of. See France: A. D. 1808 (September-
October).
1011
ERECTHEION.
ESPINOSA.
ERECTHEION AT ATHENS, The.—
"At a very early period there was, opposite the
long northern side of the Parthenon, a temple
which, according to Herodot, was dedicated
jointly to Athene Polias and the Attic hero, Erec-
theus. . . . This temple was destroyed by fire
while the Persians held the city. Not unlikely
the rebuilding of the Erectheion was begun by
Perikles together with that of the other destroyed
temples of the Akropolis ; but as it was not fin-
ished by him, it is generally not mentioned
amongst his works. . . . This temple was re-
nowned amongst the ancients as one of the most
beautiful and perfect in existence, and seems to
have remained almost intact down to the time of
the Turks. The siege of Athens by the Venetians
In 1687 seems to have been fatal to the Erec-
theion, as it was to the Parthenon." — E. Guhl
and W. Koner, Life of the 0-reeks, sect. 14. — See,
also, Acropolis of Athens.
ERIC, King of Denmark, Sweden and Nor-
way, A. D. 1413-1439 Eric Blodaexe, King
of Norway, A. D. 934-940 Eric I., King of
Denmark, A. D. 850-854 Eric I. (called
Saint), King of Sweden, A. D. 1155-1161
Eric II., King of Denmark, A. D. 8.54-883
Eric II., King of Norway, A. D. 1280-1299
Eric II. (Knutsson), King of Sweden, A. D.
1210-1216 Eric III., King of Denmark,
A. D. 1095-1103 Eric III. (called The Stam-
merer), King of Sweden, A. D. 1223-1250
Eric IV., King of Denmark, A. D. 1134-1137.
...Eric v.. King of Denmark, A. D. 1137-
1147 Eric VI., King of Denmark, A, D.
1241-1250 Eric VII., King of Denmark,
A. D. 1359-1286 Eric VIII., King of Den-
mark, A. D. 1286-1319 Eric XIV., King of
Sweden, A. D. 1560-1568.
ERICSSON, John.— Invention and con-
struction of the Monitor. See United St.^tes
OF Am. : A. D. 1862 (March).
ERIE, The City of: A. D. 1735.— Site oc-
cupied by the French. See Canada: A. D.
1700-1735. _
ERIE, Fort: A. D. 1764-1791.— Origin.—
Four years after the British conquest of Canada,
in 1764, Colonel John Bradstreet built a block-
house and stockade near the site of the later Fort
Erie, which was not constructed until 1791.
When war with the United States broke out, in
1812, the British considered the new fort unten-
able, or unnecessary, and evacuated and partly
destroyed it, in May, 1813. — C. K. Remington,
Old Fort Erie.
A. D. 1814.— The siege and the destruction.
See United States of Am. : A. D. 1814 (July —
September).
A. D. 1866. — The Fenian invasion. See Can-
ada; A. D. 1866-1871.
ERIE, Lake : The Indian name. See Niag-
ara: The Name. &c.
A. D. 1679. — Navigated by La Satle. See
Canada: A. D. 1669-1687.
A. D. 1813. — Perry's naval victory. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1812-1813.
ERIE CANAL, Construction of the. See
New York: A. D. 1817-1825.
ERIES, The. See American Aborigines:
Hurons, &c., and iRoquois Contederact:
Thbir conquests.
ERIN. See Ireland.
ERITREA. The name given in 1890 to a
strip of territory acquired by Italy on the Afri-
can coast of the Red Sea, bordering on Nubia
and Abyssinia.
ERMANRIC, The empire of. See Goths
(OsTKociOTHS); A. D. 3.50-375; and 376.
ERMYN STREET.— A corruption of Eor-
men street, the Saxon name of one of the great
Roman roads in Britain, which ran from London
to Lincoln. See Roman Roads in Britain.
ERNESTINE LINE OF SAXONY. See
Saxony: A. D. 1180-1558.
ERPEDITANI, The. See Ireland, Tribes
OF EARLY Celtic inhabitants.
ERTANG, The.— The sacred book of the
Manicheans. See M.^nicheans.
ERYTHR.<E.— ERYTHR^AN SIBYL.—
Erythroe was an ancient Ionian city on the Lydian
coast of Asia Minor, opposite the island of Chios
or Scio. It was chieliy famous as the home or
seat of one of the most venerated of the sibyls —
prophetic women — of antiquity. The collection
of Sibylline oracles which was sacredly preserved
at Rome appears to have been largely derived
from Erythrfe. The Cumasan Sibyl is sometimes
identified with her Erythrfean sister, who is said
to have passed into Europe. — See, also, Sibyls.
ERYTHR.£AN SEA, The.— The Ery-
thrfean Sea, in the widest sense of the term, as
used by the ancients, comprised "the Arabian
Gulf (or what we now call the Red Sea), the
coasts of Africa outside the straits of Bab el Man-
deb as far as they had then been explored, as well
as those of Arabia and India down to the ex-
tremity of the Malabar coast." The Periplus of
the Erythreean Sea is a geographical treatise of
great importance which we owe to some unknown
Greek writer supposed to be nearly contemporary
with Pliny. It is "a kind of manual for the in-
struction of navigators and traders in the Ery-
thrjEan Sea." — E. H. Bunbury, Hist, of Ancient
Oeog., ch. 25. — "The Erythrean Sea is an appel-
lation ... in all appearance deduced [by the
ancients] from their entrance into it by the straits
of the Red Sea, styled Erythra by the Greeks,
and not excluding the gulph of Persia, to which
the fabulous history of a king Erythras is more
peculiarly appropriate." — W. Vincent, Periplus
of the Erythrmn Sea, bk. 1, prelim, disquis.
ERYX.— ERCTE.— A town originally Phoe-
nician or Carthaginian on the northwestern coast
of Sicily. It stood on the slope of a mountain
which was crowned with an ancient temple of
Aphrodite, and which gave the name Erycina to
the goddess when her worship was introduced at
Rome. See Punic War, The First.
ERZEROUM : A. D. 1878.— Taken by the
Russians. ,See Turks: A. D. 1877-1878.
ESCOCES, The party of the. See Mexico:
A. D. 1833-1838.
ESCOMBOLI. See Stamboul.
ESCORIAL, The. See Spain: A. D. 1.559-
1563.
ESCUYER.— ESQUIRE. See Chivalry.
ESDRAELON, Valley of. See Megiddo.
ESKIMO, The. See American Aborigines:
Eskimauan Family.
ESNE. See Theow.
ESPARTERO, Regency of. See Spain:
A. D. 1833-1846.
ESPINOSA, Battle of. See Spain: A. D.
1808 (September — December).
1012
ESQUILINE.
ESSENES.
ESQUILINE, The. See Seven Hills of
Rome.
ESQUIRE. -ESCUYER.— SQUIRE. See
Chivalry.
ESQUIROS, Battle of (1521). See Na-
VAiiiiE: A. 1). 1443-1531.
ESSELENIAN FAMILY, The. See
American Aborigines: Esselenian Family.
ESSENES, The. — "Apart from the great
highroad of Jewish life, there lived in Palestine
in the time of Christ a religious community
which, though it grew up on Jewish soil, differed
essentially in many points from traditional Ju-
daism, and which, though it exercised no pow-
erful influence upon the development of the
people, deserves our attention as a peculiar prob-
lem in the history of religion. This community,
the Essenes or Essajans, is generally, after the
precedent of Josephus, placed beside the Phari-
sees and Sadducees as the third Jewish sect.
But it scarcely needs the remark, that we have
here to deal with a phenomenon of an entirely
different kind. While the Pharisees and Sad-
ducees were large political and religious parties,
the Essenes might far rather be compared to a
monastic order. There is indeed much tliat is
enigmatical in them as to particulars. Even
their name is obscure. . . . The origin of the
Essenes is as obscure as their name. Josephus
first mentions them in the time of Jonathan the
Maccabee, about 150 B. C, and speaks expressly
of one Judas, an Essene, in the time of Aristobu-
lus I. (105-104 B. C). .\ccording to this, the
origin of the order would have to be placed in
the second century before Christ. But it is ques-
tionable whether they proceeded simply from
Judaism, or whether foreign and especially Hel-
lenistic elements had not also an influence in
their organization. . . . Philo and Josephus
agree in estimatiug the number of the Essenes in
their time at above 4.000. As far as is known,
they lived only in Palestine, at least there are no
certain traces of their occurrence out of Palestine.
. . . For the sake of living as a community, they
had special houses of the order in whicli they
dwelt together. Their whole community was
most strictly organized as a single body. . . .
The strongest tie by which the members were
united was absolute community of goods. 'The
community among them is wonderful [says Jose-
phus], one does not find that one possesses more
than another. For it is the law, that those who
enter deliver up their property to the order, so
that there is nowhere to be seen, either the hu-
miliation of poverty or the superfluity of wealth,
but on the contrary one property for all as
brethren, formed by the collection of the posses-
sions of individuals.' 'They neither buy nor
sell among each other ; but while one gives to
another what he wants, he receives in return
what is useful to himself, and without anything
in return they receive freely whatever they
want.' . . . "There is but one purse for all, and
common expenses, common clothes, and common
food in common meals. For community of
dwelling, of life, and of meals is nowhere so
firmly established and so developed as with them.
And this is intelligible. For what they receive
daily as wages for their labour, they do not keep
for themselves, but put it together, and thus
make the profits of their work common for those
who desire to make use of it. And the sick are
without anxiety on account of their inability to
earn, because the common purse is in readiness
for the care of them, and they ma.v with all cer-
taintj' meet their expenses from abundant stores.'
. . . The daily labour of the Essenes was under
strict regulation. It began with prayer, after
which the members were dismissed to their work
by the presidents. They reassembled for puri-
fying ablutions, which were followed bj' the
common meal. After this they again went to
work, to assemble again for their evening meal.
The chief employment of members of the order
was agriculture. They likewise carried on, how-
ever, crafts of every kind. On the other hand,
trading was forbidden as leading tocovetousness,
and also the making of weapons or of any kind
of utensils that might injure men. . . . The
Essenes are described by both Philo and Jose-
phus as very connoisseurs in morality. . . .
Their life was abstemious, simple and un]5re-
tending. ' They condemn sensual desires as
sinful, and esteem modei'ation and freedom from
passion as of the nature of virtue.' They only
take food and drink till they have had enough ;
abstaining from passionate excitement, they are
' just dispensers of wrath.' At their meals they
are 'contented with the same dish day by day,
loving sufficiency and rejecting great expense
as harmful to mind and body.' . . . There is not
a slave among them, but all are free, mutually
working for each other. All that they say is
more certain than an oath. They forbid swear-
ing, because it is worse than perjury. . . . Be-
fore every meal they bathe in cold water. They
do the same after performing the functions of
nature. . . . They esteem it seemly to wear
white raiment at all times. . . . They entirely
condemned marriage. Josephus indeed knew of
a branch of the Essenes who permitted marriage.
But these must at all events have formed a small
minority. ... A chief peculiarity of the Essenes
was their common meals, which bore the char-
acter of sacrificial feasts. The food was jire-
pared by priests, with the observance probably
of certain rites of purification : for an Essene was
not permitted to partake of any other food than
this. The meals are described as follows by
Josephus: 'After the bath of purification they
betake themselves to a dwelling of their own,
entrance into which is forbidden to all of another
faith. And being clean they go into the refec-
tory as into a sanctuary. . . . The priest prays
before the meal, and none may eat before the
prayer. After the meal he prays again. At the
beginning and end they honour God as the giver
of food. Then they put off their garments as
sacred and go back to their work till evening.
Returning, they feed again in the same man-
ner.' In their worship, as well as in that of
other Jews, the Holy Scriptures were read and
explained ; and Philo remarks, that they specially
delighted in allegorical interpretation. They
were extraordinarily strict in the celebration of
the Sabbath. They did not venture on that day
to move a vessel from its place, nor even to per-
form the functions of nature. In other respects
too they showed themselves to be Jews. Though
they were excluded from the temple they sent
gifts of incense there. . . . Concerning their
doctrine of the soul and of its immortality,
Josephus expresses himself most full}'. If we
may trust his account, they taught that bodies
are perishable, but souls immortal, and that the
latter dwelt originally in the subtlest ather, but
1013
ESSENES.
ESTE.
being debased by sensual pleasures united them-
selves with bodies as with prisons ; but when
thev are freed from the fetters of sense they will
joyfully soar on high, as if delivered from long
bondage. To the good (souls) is appointed a life
beyond the ocean. . . . But to the bad (souls) is
appointed a darli, cold region full of unceasing
torment." — E. Schiirer, A Histary of the Jewish
People in the Time of Jesus Chiist. r. 2.
ESSEX.— Originally the kingdom formed
by that body of the Saxon conquerors of Britain,
in the fifth and sixth centuries, who acquired,
from their geographical position in the island,
the name of the East Saxons. It covered the
present county of Esses, and London and Middle-
sex. See EkcJl.^nd : A. D. 477-.')27.
ESSEX JUNTO, The.— In the Massachu-
setts election of 1781, "the representatives of the
State in Congress, and some of the more moder-
ate leaders at home, opposed Governor Hancock,
the popular candidate, and supported James
Bowdoin, who was thought to represent the more
conservative elements. ... It was at this time
that Hancock is said to have bestowed on his op-
ponents the title of the ' Essex Junto, ' and this is
the first appearance of the name in American
politics. . . . The ' Junto ' was generally sup-
posed to be composed of such men as Theophilus
Parsons, George Cabot, Fisher Ames, Stephen
Higginson, tlie Lowells, Timothy Pickering, &c.,
and took its name from the county to which most
of its reputed members originally belonged. . . .
The reputed members of the 'Junto' held politi-
cal power in Massachusetts [as leaders of the
Federalist party] for more than a quarter of a
century." According to Chief Justice Parsons,
as quoted by Colonel Pickering in his Diary, the
term ' Essex Junto ' was applied by one of the
Massachusetts royal governors, before the Revo-
lution, to certain gentlemen of Essex county who
opposed his measures. Hancock, therefore, only
revived the title and gave it currency, with a
new application. — H. C. Lodge, Life and Letters
of George Cabot, pp. 17-22,
ESSLINGEN, OR ASPERN, Battle of.
See Germ.^ny : A. D. 1809 (January— J lt<'e).
ESSUVII, The.— A Gallic tribe established
anciently in the modern French department of
the Orne. — Napoleon III., Hist, of Casar, bk. 3,
ch. 2, itote.
ESTATES, Assembly of.— "An assembly
of estates is an organised collection, made by
representation or otherwise, of the several orders,
states or conditions of men, who are recognised
as possessing political power. A national coun-
cil of clergy and barons is not an assembly of
estates, because it does not include the body of
the people, the plebs, the simple freemen or com-
mons." — W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng., ch. 15,
sect. 185. — See, also. Estates, The Three.
ESTATES, The Three.— "The arrange-
ment of the political factors In three estates is
common, with some minor variations, to all the
European constitutions, and depends on a prin-
ciple of almost universal acceptance. This classi-
fication differs from the system of caste and from
all divisions based on differences of blood or re-
ligion, historical or prehistorical. ... In Chris-
tendom it has always taken the form of a distinc-
tion between clergy and laity, the latter being
subdivided according to national custom into
noble and non-noble, patrician and plebeian,
warriors and traders, landowners and craftsmen.
. . . The Aragonese cortes contained four brazos
or arms, the clergy, the great barons or ricos
hombres, the minor barons, knights or infan-
zones, and the towns. The Germanic diet com-
prised three colleges, the electors, the princes
and the cities, the two former being arranged in
distinct benches, lay and clerical. . . . The Cas-
tilian cortes arranged the clergy, the ricos hom-
bres and the communidades, in three estates.
The Swedish diet was composed of clergy, barons,
burghers and peasants. ... In France, both in
the States General and in the provincial estates,
the division is into gentz de Feglise, nobles, and
gentz des bonnes villes. In England, after a
transitional stage, in which the clergy, the greater
and smaller barons, and the cities and boroughs,
seemed likely to adopt the system used in Aragon
and Scotland, and another in which the county and
borough communities continued to assert an es-
sential difference, the three estates of clergy, lords
and commons, finally emerge as the political con-
stituents of the nation, or, in their parliamentary
form, as the lords spiritual and temporal and the
commons. This familiar formula in either shape
bears the impress of history. The term com-
mons is not in itself an appropriate expression for
the third estate ; it does not signify primarily the
simple freemen, the plebs, but the plebs organ-
ised and combined in corporate communities, in*
a particular way for particular purposes. The
commons are the communitates or universitates,
the organised bodies of freemen of the shires and
towns. . . . The third estate in England differs
from the same estate In the continental constitu-
tions, by including the landowners under baronial
rank. In most of those systems it contains the
representatives of the towns or chartered com-
munities only. "—W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng.,
ch. 15, sect. 185, 193. — "The words ' gens de tiers
et commun etat ' are found in many acts [France]
of the 15th century. The expressions ' tiers etat,'
'commun etat,' and 'le commun' are used in-
differently. . . . Tills name of Tiers Etat, when
used in its ordinary sense, properly comprises
only the population of the privileged cities ; but
in effect it extends much beyond this; it includes
not only the cities, but the villages and hamlets
— not only the free commonalty, but all those for
whom civil liberty is a privilege still to come." —
A. Thierrj', Formation and Progress of the Tiers
^tat in Francs, v. 1, pp. 61 and 60.
ESTATES, or " States," of the Netherland
Provinces. See Netherlands: A. D. 1584-1585.
ESTATES GENERAL. See States Gen-
eral.
ESTE, The House of.— " Descended from
one of the northern families which settled in
Italy during the darkest period of the middle
ages, the Este traced their lineal descent up to
the times of Charlemagne. They had taken ad-
vantage of the frequent dissensions between the
popes and the German emperors of the houses of
Saxony and Swabia, and acquired wide domin-
ions in Lunigiana, and the March of Treviso,
where the castle of Este, their family residence,
was situated. Towards the middle of the 11th
century, that family had been connected by mar-
riages with the Guelphs of Bavaria, and one of
the name of Este was eventually to become the
common source from which sprung the illustrious
houses of Brunswick and Hanover. The Este
had wai-mly espoused the Guelph party [see
GuELFs], during the wars of the Lombard League.
1014
ESTE.
ETHELRED.
. . . Towards the year 1200, Azzo V., Marquis
of Bste, married Marchesella degli Adelardi,
daughter of one of the most conspicuous Guelphs
at Ferrara, where the influence of the House of
Este was thus first established." — L. Mariotti (A.
Oallenga), Italy, v. 3, pp. 62-63. — The Marquesses
of Este became, "after some of the usual fluc-
tuations, permanent lords of the cities of Ferrara
[1364] and Modena [1288]. About the same time
they lost their original holding of Este, which
passed to Padua, and with Padua to Venice.
Thus the nominal marquess of Este and real lord
of Ferrara was not uncommonly spoken of as
Marquess of Ferrara. In the 15th century these
princes rose to ducal rank ; but by that time the
new doctrine of the temporal dominion of the
Popes had made great advances. Modena, no
man doubted, was a city of the Empire ; but Fer-
rara was now held to be under the supremacy of
the Pope. Tlie Marquess Borso had thus to seek
his elevation to ducal rank from two separate
lords. He was created Duke of Modena [1453]
and Reggio by the Emperor, and afterwards Duke
of Ferrara [1471] by the Pope, This difference
of holding . . . led to the destruction of the
power of the house of Este. In the times in
which we are now concerned, their dominions
lay in two masses. To the west lay the duchy
of Modena and Reggio ; apart from it to the ea.st
lay the duchy of Ferrara. Not long after its
creation, this last duchy was cut short by the sur-
render of the border-district of Rovigo to Venice.
. . . Modena and Ferrara remained united, till
Ferrara was annexed [1598] as an escheated fief
to the dominions of its spiritual overlord. But
the house of Este still reigned over Modena with
Reggio and Mirandola, while its dominions were
extended to the sea by the addition of Massa and
other small possessions between Lucca and Genoa.
The duchy in the end passed by female succes-
sion to the House of Austria [1771-1803]."— E.
A. Freeman, Historical Oeog. of Europe, ch. 8,
sect. 3-4. — "The government of the family of
Este at Ferrara, Modena, and Reggio displays
curious contrasts of violence and popularity.
Within the palace frightful deeds were perpe-
trated ; a princess was beheaded [1435] for alleged
adultery with a stepson ; legitimate and illegiti-
mate children fled from the court, and even abroad
their lives were threatened by assassins sent in
pursuit of them (1471), Plots from without were
incessant ; the bastard of a bastard tried to wrest
the crown from the lawful heir, Hercules I. : this
latter is said afterwards (1493) to have poisoned
his wife on discovering that she, at the instiga-
tion of her brother, Ferrante of Naples, was going
to poison him. This list of tragedies is closed by
the plot of two bastards against their brothers,
the ruling Duke Alfonso I. and the Cardinal Ip-
polito (1506), wliich was discovered in time, and
punished with imprisonment for life. ... It is
undeniable that the dangers to which these
princes were constantly exposed developed in
them capacities of a remarkable kind. " — J. Burck-
hardt. The Civilization of the Period of the Re-
naissance in Italy, pt. 1, ch. 5. — For the facts of
the ending of the legitimate Italian line of Este,
see Papacy: A. D. 1597.
ESTHONIA, OR ESTONIA: Origin of
the name. See ^stii.
Christian conquest. See Livonia : 12th-13th
CENTDKtES.
ESTIENNES, The Press of the. See
Printing: A, D. 1496-1598,
ESTREMOS, OR AMEIXAL, Battle of
(1663). See Portugal: A. D. 1637-1668.
ETCHEMINS, The. See American Abo-
rigines: Algonqui-^n Fa.mily.
ETHANDUN, OR EDINGTON, Battle of
(A. D. 878). See England: A. D. 855-880.
ETHEL, ETHELINGS, OR yETHEL-
INGS. — "The sons and brothers of the king [of
the English] were distinguished by the title of
jEthelings. The word ^theling, like eorl, origi-
nally denoted noble birth simply ; but as the royal
house of Wessex rose to pre-eminence and the
other royal houses and the nobles generally were
thereby reduced to a relatively lower grade, it be-
came restricted to the near kindred of the national
king." — T. P. Taswell-Langmead, Eng. Const.
Hist. ,p. 29. — "It has been sometimes held that the
only nobility of blood recognized in England be-
fore the Norman Conquest was that of the king's
kin. The statement may be regarded as deficient
in authority, and as the result of a too hasty gener-
alization from the fact that only the sons and
brothers of the kings bear the name of setheling.
On the other hand must be alleged the existence
of a noble (edhiling) class among the continental
Saxons who had no kings at all. . . . The laws
of Ethelbert prove the existence of a class bearing
the name of eorl of which no other interpreta-
tion can be given. That these, eorlas and sethel,
were the descendants of the primitive nobles of
the first settlement, who, on the institution of
royalty, sank one step in dignity from the
ancient state of rude independence, in which they
had elected their own chiefs and ruled their own
dependents, may be very reasonably conjectured.
. . . The ancient name of eorl, like that of
setheling, changed its application, and, under the
influence, perhaps, of Danish association, was
given like that of jarl to the oflicial ealdorman.
Henceforth the thegn takes the place of the
sethel, and the class of thegns probably embraces
all the remaining families of noble blood. The
change may have been very gradual ; the ' north
people's law ' of the tenth or early eleventh cen-
tury still distinguishes the eorl and setheling with
a wergild nearly double that of the ealdorman
and seven times that of the thegn ; but the north
people's law was penetrated with Danish influ-
ence, and the eorl probably represents the jarl
rather than the ealdorman, the great eorl of the
fourth part of England as it was divided by
Canute. . . . The word eorl is said to be the
same as the Norse jarl and another form of
ealdor (?); whilst the ceorl answers to the Norse
Karl ; the original meaning of the two being old
man and young man." — W. Stubbs, Const. Hist,
of Eng. , ch. 6, sect. 64, and note.
ETHEL. — Family-land. See Alod; and
Folcland.
ETHELBALD, King of Mercia, A. D.
716-755 Ethelbald, King of 'Wessex, A. D.
858-860.
ETHELBERT, King of Kent, A. D. 565-
616 Ethelbert, King of 'Wessex, A. D. 860-
866.
ETHELFRITH, King of Northumberland,
A. D, 593-617.
ETHELRED, King of Wessex, A. D. 866-
871 Ethelred, called the Unready, King of
Wessex, A. D, 979-1016,
1015
ETHELSTAN.
ETRUSCANS.
ETHELSTAN, KingofWessex, A. D. 925-
940.
ETHELWULF, King of Wessex, A. D.
836-858.
ETHIOPIA. — The Ethiopia of the ancients,
" in the ordinary and vague sense of the terra,
was a vast tract extending in length above a
thousand miles, from the 9th to the 24th degree
of north latitude, and in breadth almost 900 miles,
from the shores of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean
to the desert of the Sahara. This tract was in-
habited for the most part by wild and barbarous
tribes- — herdsmen, hunters, or fishermen — who
grew no corn, were unacquainted with bread,
and subsisted on the milk and flesh of their cat-
tle, or on game, turtle, and fish, salted or raw.
The tribes had their own separate chiefs, and
acknowledged no single head, but on the con-
trary were frequently at war one with the other,
and sold their prisoners for slaves. Such was
Ethiopia in the common vague sense ; but from
this must be distinguished another narrower
Ethiopia, known sometimes as 'Ethiopia Proper'
or 'Ethiopia above Egypt,' the limits of which
were, towards the south, the junction of the
White and Blue Niles, and towards the north the
Third Cataract. Into this tract, called some-
times 'the kingdom of Meroi!,' Egyptian civilisa-
tion had, long before the eighth century [B. C],
deeply penetrated. Temples of the Egyptian
type, stone pyramids, avenues of sphinxes, had
been erected; a priesthood had been set up,
which was regarded as derived from the Egyp-
tian priesthood ; monarchical institutions had been
adopted ; the whole tract formed ordinarily one
kingdom, and the natives were not very much
behind the Egyptians in arts or arms, or very
different from them in manners, customs, and
mode of life. Even in race the difference was
not great. The Ethiopians were darker in com-
plexion than the Egyptians, and possessed prob-
ably a greater infusion of Nigritic blood; but
there was a common stock at the root of the two
races — Cush and Mizraim were brethren. In the
region of Ethiopia Proper a very important
position was occupied in the eighth century
[B. C] by Napata. Napata was situated mid-
way in the great bend of the Nile, between lat.
18° and 19°. ... It occupied the left bank of
the river in the near vicinity of the modern
Gebel Berkal. . . . Here, when the decline of
Egypt enabled the Ethiopians to reclaim their
ancient limits, the capital was fixed of that king-
dom, which shortly became a rival of the old
empire of the Pharaohs, and aspired to take its
place. . . . The kingdom of Meroe, whereof it
was the capital, reached southward as far as the
modern Khartoum, and eastward stretched up to
the Abyssinian highlands, including the valleys
of the Atbara and its tributaries, together with
most of the tract between the Atbara and the
Blue Nile. . . . Napata continued down to Ro-
man times a place of importance, and only sank
to ruin in consequence of the campaigns of
Petronius against Candace in the first century
after our era." — G. Rawlinson, Hist, of Ancient
Egypt, ch. 25.
Also in: A. H. L. Heeren, Sistmcal He-
searches, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, &c., pp. 143-
249.— See, also, Egypt: About B. C. 1200-670;
and Libyans, The.
ETON SCHOOL. See Education, Modern :
European countries. — England.
ETRURIA, Ancient. See Etruscans.
ETRURIA, The kingdom of. See Ger
many: a. D. 1801-1803; also Portugal: A. D.
1807; and France: A. D. 1807-1808 (November
— February).
ETRUSCANS, The.—" At the time when
Roman history begins, we find that a powerful
and warlike race, far superior to the Latins In
civilisation and in the arts of life, hemmed in the
rising Roman dominion in the north. The Greeks
called them Turrhenoi, the Romans called them
Etrusci, they called themselves the Rasenna.
Who they were and whence they came has ever
been regarded as one of the most doubtful and
difficult problems in ethnology. One conclusion
only can be said to have been universally accepted
both in ancient and in modern times. It is agreed
on every hand that in all essential points, in lan-
guage, in religion, in customs, and in appearance,
the Etruscans were a race wholly different from
the Latins. There is also an absolute agreement
of all ancient tradition to the effect that the
Etruscans were not the original inhabitants of
Etruria, but that they were an intrusive race of
conquerors. ... It has been usually supposed
that the Rasenna made their appearance in Italy
some ten or twelve centuries before the Christian
era. . . . For some six or seven centuries, the
Etruscan power and territory continued steadily
to increase, and ultimately stretched far south of
the Tiber, Rome itself being included in the
Etruscan dominion, and being ruled by an Etrus-
can dynasty. The early history of Rome is to a
great extent the history of the uprising of the
Latin race, and its long struggle for Italian su-
premacy with its Etruscan foe. It took Rome
some six centuries of conflict to break through
the obstinate barrier of the Etruscan power. The
final conquest of Etruria by Rome was effected
in the year 281 B. C. . . . The Rasennic people
were collected mainly in the twelve great cities
of Etruria proper, between the Amo and the
Tiber. [Modern Tuscany takes its name from
the ancient Etruscan inhabitants of the region.]
This region was the real seat of the Etruscan
power. . . . From the ' Shah-nameh,' the great
Persian epic, we learn that the Aryan Persians
called their nearest non- Aryan neighbours — the
Turkic or Turcoman tribes to the north of them
— by the name Turan, a word from which we
derive the familiar ethnologic term Turanian.
The Aryan Greeks, on the other hand, called the
Turkic tribe of the Rasenna, the nearest non-
Aryan race, by the name of Turrhenoi. The
argument of this book is to prove that the Tyrr-
henians of Italy were of kindred race with the
Turanians of Turkestan. Is it too much to con-
jecture that the Greek form Turrhene may be
identically the same word as the Persian form
Turan ? "—I. Taylor, Etruscan Researches, ch. 2.
— " The utmost we can say is that several traces,
apparently reliable, point to the conclusion that
the Etruscans may be on the whole included
among the Indo-Germans. . . . But even grant-
ing those points of connection, the Etruscan peo-
ple appears withal scarcely less isolated. ' The
Etruscans,' Dionysius said long ago, ' are like no
other nation in language and manners ' ; and we
have nothing to add to his statement. . . . Re-
liable traces of any advance of the Etruscans
beyond the Tiber, by land, are altogether want-
ing. . . . South of the Tiber no Etruscan settle-
ment can be pointed out as having owed its origlD
1016
ETRUSCANS.
to founders who came by land ; and that no indi-
cation whatever is discernible of any senous
pressure by the Etruscans upon the Latin nation.
_T Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, hk 1, ch. 9.
EUBCEA.— "The island of Eubcea, long and
narrow like Krgte, and exhibiting a continuous
backbone of lofty mountains from northwest to
southeast, is separated from Bojotia at one pomt
by a strait so narrow (celebrated in antiquity
under the name of the Eurlpus) that the two
were connected by a bridge for a large portion
of the historical period of Greece, erected during
the later times of the Peloponnesian war by the
inhabitants of Chalkis [Chalcis]. Its general
want of breadth leaves little room for plains
The area of the island consists principally of
mountain, rock, dell, and ravine, suited in many
parts for pasture, but rarely convenient for grain-
culture or town habitations. Some plains there
were, however, of great fertility, especially that
of Lelantum, bordering on the sea near Chalkis,
and continuing from that city in a southerly
direction towards Eretria. Chalkis and Eretria,
both situated on the western coast, and both oc-
cupving parts of this fertile plain, were the two
principal places in the island : the domain of each
seems to have extended across the island from sea
to sea . . . Both were in early times governed
by an oligarchy, which among the Chalkidians
■was called the Hippobotse, or Horse feeders,—
proprietors probably of most part of the plain
called Lelantum."— G. Grote, Hist, of areece,
pt. 2, ch. 12.— See, also, Negropont.
EUROPE.
EUBOIC TALENT. See Talent.
EUCHITES, The. See Mysticism.
EUDES, King of France (in partition with
Charles the Simple), A. D. 887-898.
EUDOSES, The. See Aviones.
EUGENE (Prince) of Savoy, Campaigns of.
See Hungary: A. D. 1699-1718; Germany:
A D. 1704; Italy (Savoy and Piedmont):
A D 1701-1713; Netherlands: A. D. 1708-
1709, and 1710-1713.
EUGENE L, Pope, A. D. 655-657. ... .Eu-
gene IL, Pope, A. D. 824^-827 Eugene III.,
Pope, A. D. 1145-1153 Eugene IV., Pope,
A. D. 1431-1447.
EUGENIANS, The. See Hy-Niai8.
EUMENES, and the vrars of the Diadochi.
See Macedonia: B. C. 323-316.
EUMOLPHIDiE, The. See Phyl^.
EUPATRIDiE, The.— "The Eupatridoe [in
ancient Athens] are the wealthy and powerful
men belonging to the most distinguished fami-
lies in all the various gentes, and principally
livino- in the city of Athens, after the consolida-
tion of Attica : from them are distinguished the
middling and lower people, roughly classified
into husbandmen and artisans. To the Eupatn-
d* is ascribed a religious as well as a political
and social ascendency. They are represented aa
the source of all authority on matters both sacred
and profane."— G. Grote, Hist, of Greece, pt. 2.
ch. 10.
EUROKS, OR YUROKS. See American
Aborioinks : MODOCS.
EUROPE.
A HISTORICAL SKETCH.'
The first inhabitants of the contment of Eu-
rope have left no trace of their existence on the
surface of the land. The little that we know of
them has been learned by the discovery of deeply
buried remains, including a few bones and skulls,
many weapons and tools which they had fash-
ioned out of stone and bone, and some other rude
marks of their hands which time has not de-
stroyed. The places in which these remains are
found — under deposits that formed slowly in
ancient river beds and in caves — have convinced
geologists that the people whose existence they
reveal lived many thousands of years ago, and
that the continent of Europe in their time was
very different from the Europe of the present
day, m its climate, in its aspect, and in its form.
They find reason to suppose that the peninsula
of Italy, as well as that of Spain, was_ then an
isthmus which joined Europe to Africa; and
this helps to explain the fact that remains of
such animals as the elephant, the lion, the rhino-
ceros, the hippopotamus, and the hyena, as well
as the mammoth, are found with the remains of
these early men. They all seem to have be-
longed, together, to a state of things, on the sur-
face of the earth, which was greatly changed
before the men and the animals that we have
historical knowledge of appeared.
The Stone Age.
These primitive Europeans were evidently
quite at the bottom of the savage state. They
had learned no use of metals, since every relic of
their workmanship that can be found is of stone,
or bone, or wood. It is thought possible that
they shaped rough vessels out of unbaked clay ;
but that is uncertain. There is nothing to show
that they had domesticated any animals. It is
plain that they dwelt in caves, wherever nature
provided such dwellings ; but what shelters they
may have built elsewhere for themselves is un-
Icnown. .
In one direction, only, did these ancient peo-
ple exhibit a faculty finer than we see in the
lowest savages of the present day: they were
artists, in a way. They have left carvings and
drawings of animals — the latter etched with a
sharp point on horns, bones, and stones — which
are remarkable for uncultured men.
The period in man's life on the earth at which
these people lived— the period before metals
were known — has been named by archaeologists
the Stone Age. But the Stone Age covers two
stages of human culture — one in which stone
implements were fashioned unskilfully, and a
second in which they were finished with expert
and careful hands. The first is called the Paleo-
lithic or Old Stone Age, the second the Neolithic
or New Stone Age. Between the two periods in
Europe there seems to have been a long interval
of time, and a considerable change in the condi-
tion of the country, as well as in that of its peo-
ple In fact, the Europe of the Neolithic Age
*A
cannot
general sketch of the history of Europe at large
cannoi. for obvious reasons, be constructed of quotations
from the historians, on the plan followed in other parte
of this work. The editor has found it necessary, there-
fore, to introduce here an essay of his own.
1017
EUEOPE.
Before
Kecorded History,
EUROPE.
was probably not very different in form and cli-
mate from the Europe of our own day. Relics
of the human life of that time are abundantly
scattered over the face of the continent. There
are notable deposits of them in the so-called
' ' kitchen-middens " of Denmark, which are great
mounds of shells, — shells of oysters and other
molluscs, — which these ancient fishermen had
opened and emptied, and then cast upon a refuse
heap. Buried in those mounds, many bits of
their workmanship have been preserved, and
many hints of their manner of life are gleaned
from the signs and tokens which these afford.
They had evidently risen some degrees above the
state of the men of the Palseolithic or Old Stone
Age ; but they were inferior in art.
The Bronze Age.
The discovery and use of copper — the metal
most easily worked, and most frequently found
in the metallic state — is the event by which
archiEologists mark the beginning of a second
stage in early civilizations. The period during
which copper, and copper hardened by an allov
of tin, are the only metals found in use, they call
the Bronze Age. There is no line of positive
division between this and the Neolithic period
which it followed. The same races appear to
have advanced from the one stage to the other,
and probably some were in possession of tools
and weapons of bronze, while others were still
contenting themselves with implements of stone.
Lake Dv7ellings.
In many parts of Europe, especially in Switz-
erland and northern Italy, plain traces of some
curious habitations of people who lived through
the later Stone Age into the Bronze Age, and
even after it, have been brought to light. These
are the "lake dwellings," or "lacustrine habita-
tions," as they have been called, which have
excited interest in late years. They were gener-
ally built on piles, driven into a lake-bottom, at
such distance from shore as would make them
easy of defence against enemies. The founda-
tions of whole villages of these dwellings have
been found in the Swiss and North Italian lakes,
and less numerously elsewhere. Prom the lake-
mud under and around them, a great quantitj'
of relics of the lake-dwellers have been taken,
and many facts about their arts and mode of life
have been learned. It is known that, even be-
fore a single metal had come into their hands,
they had begun to cultivate the earth ; had raised
wheat and barley and flax ; had domesticated the
horse, the os, the sheep, the goat, the pig and
the dog; had become fairly skilful in weaving,
in rope-making, and in the art of the potter,
but without the potter's wheel.
Gradually copper and bronze made their ap-
pearance among the implements of these people,
as modern search discovers them imbedded, layer
upon layer, in the old ooze of the lake-beds
where they were dropped. In time, iron, too,
reveals itself among their possessions, showing
that they lived in their lake-villages from the
later Stone Age into that third period of the
early process of civilization which is named the
Iron Age — when men first acquired the use of
the most useful of all the metals. It appears, in
fact, that the lake-dwellings were occupied even
down to Roman times, since articles of Roman
make have been found in the ruins of them.
Barrows.
In nearly all parts of Europe there are found
burial mounds, called barrows, which contain
buried relics of people who lived at one or the
other of the three periods named. For the most
part, they represent inhabitants of the Neolithic
and of the Bronze Ages. In Great Britain some
of these barrows are long, some are round ; and
the skulls found in the long barrows are differ-
ent in shape from those in the round ones, show-
ing a difference of race. The people to whom
the first belonged are called "long-headed," or
' ' dolichocephalic " ; the others are called ' ' broad-
headed, " or ' ' brachycephalic. " In the opinion of
some ethnologists, who study this subject of the
distinctions of race in the human family, the
broad-headed people were ancestors of the Celtic
or Keltic tribes, whom the Romans subdued in
Gaul and Britain; while the long-headed men
were of a preceding race, which the Celts,
when they came, either drove out of all parts of
Europe, except two or three mountainous corners,
or else absorbed by intermarriage. The Basques-
of northwestern Spain, and some of their neigh-
bors on the French side of the Pyrenees, are sup-
posed to be survivals of this very ancient people ;
and there are suspected to be traces of their ex-
istence seen in the dark-haired and dark-skinned
people of parts of Wales, Ireland, Corsica, North
Africa, and elsewhere.
The Aryan Nations.
At least one part of this conjecture has much
to rest upon. The iniiabitants of western Europe
when our historical knowledge of them — that is,
our recorded and reported knowledge of them —
begins, were, certainly, for the most part, Celtic
peoples, and it ^s extremely probable that they
had been occupying the country as long as the
period represented by the round barrows. It is
no less probable that tliey were the lake-dwellers
of Switzerland, North Italy, and other regions;
and that they did, in fact, displace some earlier
people in most parts of Western Europe.
The Celts — whose nearly pure descendants are
found now in the Bretons of France, the Welsh,
the Highland Scotch and the Celtic Irish, and
who formed the main stock of the larger part of
the French nation — were one branch of the great
family of nations called Aryan or Indo-European.
The Aryan peoples are assumed to be akin to one
another — shoots from one stem — because their
languages are alike in grammatical structure and
contain great numbers of words that are mani-
festly formed from the same original ' ' root " ; and
because they differ in these respects from all other
languages. The nations thus identified as Aryan
are the nations that have acted the most impor-
tant parts in all human history except the history
of extremely ancient times. Besides the Celtic
peoples already mentioned, they include the Eng-
lish, the Dutch, tlie Germans, and the Scandi-
navians, forming the Teutonic race; the Rus-
sians, Poles, and others of the Slavonic group;
the ancient Greeks and Romans, with their mod-
ern representatives, and the Persians and Hindus
in Asia. According to the evidence of their lan-
guages, there must have been a time and a place,
in the remote past, when and where a primitive
Aryan race, which was ancestral to all these na-
tions, lived and multiplied until it outgrew its
original country and began to send forth suc-
cessive ' ' swarms, "or migrating hordes, as many
1018
EUROPE.
The Greeke.
EUROPE.
unsettled races have been seen to do within the
historic age. It is hopeless, perhaps, to thinli of
determining the time when such a dispersion of
the Aryan peoples began ; but many scholars be-
lieve it possible to trace, by various marks and in-
dications, in language and elsewhere, the lines
of movement in the migration, so far as to guess
with some assurance the region of the primitive
Aryan home; but thus far there are great disa-
greements in the guessing. Until recent years,
the prevailing judgment pointed to that highland
district in Central Asia which lies north of the
Hindoo-Koosh range of mountains, and between
the upper waters of the O.xus and Jaxartes. But
later studies have discredited this first theory and
started many opposing ones. The strong ten-
dency now is to believe that the cradle of all the
peoples of Aryan speech was somewhere in
Europe, rather than in Asia, and in the north of
Europe rather than in the center or the south.
At the same time, there seems to be a growing
opinion that the language of the Aryans was
communicated to conquered peoples so exten-
sively that its spread is not a true measure of the
existing diffusion of the race.
The Celtic Branch.
Whatever may have been the starting-point of
the Aryan migrations, it is supposed that the
branch now distinguished as Celtic was the first
to separate from the parent stem and to acquire
for itself a new domain. It occupied southwest-
ern Europe, from northern Spain to the Rhine,
and across the Channel to the British islands, ex-
tending eastward into Switzerland, North Italy
and the Tyrol. But little of what the tribes and
nations forming this Celtic race did is known,
until the time when another Aryan people, better
civilized, came into collision with them, and drew
them into the written history of the world by
conquering them and making them its sub-
jects.
The people who did this were the Romans, and
the Romans and the Greeks are believed to have
been carried into the two peninsulas which they
inhabited, respectively, by one and the same move-
ment in the Aryan dispersion. Their languages
show more affinity to one another than to the other
Aryan tongues, and there are other evidences of
a near relationship between them ; though they
separated, it is quite certain, long before the ap-
pearance of either in history.
The Hellenes, or Greeks.
The Greeks, or Hellenes, as tliey called them-
selves, were the first among the Aryan peoples
in Europe to make themselves historically known,
and the first to write the record which transmits
history from generation to generation. The pe-
ninsula in which they settled themselves is a very
peculiar one in its formation. It is crossed in
different directions by mountain ranges, which
divide the land into parts naturally separated
from one another, and which form barriers easily
defended against invading foes. Between the
mountains he numerous fertile valleys. The
coast is ragged with gulfs and bays, which notch
it deeply on all sides, making the whole main
peninsula a cluster of minor peninsulas, and sup-
plying the people with harbors which invite them
to a life of seafaring and trade. It is surrounded,
moreover, with islands, which repeat the invita-
tion,
Almost necessarily, in a country marked with
such features so strongly, the Greeks became
divided politically into small independent states
— city-states they have been named — and those
on the sea-coast became engaged very early in
trade with other countries of the Mediterranean
Sea. Every city of importance in Greece was
entirely sovereign in the government of itself and
of the surrounding territory which formed its
domain. The stronger among them extended
their dominion over some of the weaker or less
valiant ones; but even then the subject cities
kept a considerable measure of independence.
There was no organization of national govern-
ment to embrace the whole, nor any large part,
of Greece. Certain among the states were some-
times united in temporary leagues, or confedera-
cies, for common action in war ; but these were
unstable alliances, rather than political unions.
In their earliest form, the Greek city-states
were governed by kings, whose power appears
to have been quite limited, and who were leaders
rather than sovereigns. But kingship disap-
peared from most of the states in Greece proper
laefore they reached the period of distinct and
accepted history. The kings were first displaced
by aristocracies — ruling families, which took all
political rights and privileges to themselves, and
allowed their fellows (whom they usually op-
pressed) no part or voice in public affairs. In
most instances these aristocracies, or oligarchies,
were overthrown, after a time, by bold agitators
who stirred up a revolution, and then contrived,
while confusion prevailed, to gather power into
their own hands. Almost every Greek city had
its time of being ruled by one or more of these
Tyrants, as they were called. Some of them,
like Pisistratus of Athens, ruled wi.sely and justly
for the most part, and were not " tyrants" in the
modern sense of the term ; but all who gained
and held a princely power unlawfully were so
named by the Greeks. The reign of the Tyrants
was nowhere lasting. They were driven out of
one city after another until they disappeared.
Then the old aristocracies came uppermost again
in some cities, and ruled as before. But some,
like Athens, had trained the whole body of their
citizens to such intelligence and spirit that neither
kingship nor oligarchy would be endured any
longer, and the people undertook to govern them-
selves. These were the first democracies — the
first experiments in popular government — that
history gives any account of. "The little com-
monwealths of Greece," says a great historian,
"were the first states at once free and civilized
which the world ever saw. They were the first
states which gave birth to great statesmen,
orators, and generals who did great deeds, and to
great historians who set down those great deeds
in writing. It was in the Greek commonwealths,
in short, that the political and intellectual life of
the world began."
In the belief of the Greeks, or of most men
among them, their early history was embodied
with truth in the numerous legends and ancient
poems which they religiously preserved; but
people in modern times look differently upon
those wonderful myths and epics, studying them
with deep interest, but under more critical views.
They throw much light on the primitive life of
the Hellenes, and more light upon the develop-
ment of the remarkable genius and spirit of those
thoughtful and imaginative people ; but of actual
1019
EUROPE.
Dorians and
lonians.
EUROPE.
history there are only glimpses and guesses to be
got from them.
The Homeric poems, the "Iliad" and the
"Odyssey," describe a condition of things in
■which the ruling state of Peloponnesus (the
southern peninsula of Greece) was a kingdom of
the Achaians, having its capital at Mycenae, in
Argolis,^ the realm of King Agamemnon, — and
in which Athens is unknown to the poet. Within
recent years, Dr. Schliemann has excavated the
ruins of Mycenae, and has found evidence that it
really must have been, in very early times, the
seat of a strong and rich monarchy. But the
Achaian kingdom had entirely disappeared, and
the Acliaian people had shrunk to an insignifi-
cant community, on the Gulf of Corinth, when
the first assured views of Greek history open to
us.
The Dorians.
It seems to be a fact that the Achaians had
been overwhelmed by a great invasion of more
barbarous Greek tribes from the North, very
much as the Roman Empire, in later times, was
buried under an avalanche of barbarism from
Germany. The invaders were a tribe or league
of tribes called Dorians, who had been driven
from their own previous home on the slopes of
the Pindus mountain range. Their movement
southward was part, as appears, of an extensive
shifting of place, or migration, that occurred at
that time (not long, it is probable, before the be-
ginning of the historic period) among the tribes
of Hellas. The Dorians claimed that in con-
quering Peloponnesus they were recovering a
heritage from which their chiefs had been an-
ciently expelled, and their legends were shaped
accordingly. The Dorian chiefs appeared in these
legends as descendants of Hercules, and the
tradition of the conquest became a story of "The
Return of the Heraclids."
The principal states founded or possessed and
controlled by the Dorians in Peloponnesus, after
their conquest, were Sparta, or Lacedoemon,
Argos, and Corinth. The Spartans were the
most warlike of the Greeks, — the most resolute
and energetic, — and their leadership in practical
affairs common to the whole came to be generally
acknowledged. At the same time they had little
of the intellectual superiority which distinguished
some of their Hellenic kindred in so remarkable
a degree. Their state was organized on military
principles ; its constitution (the body of famous
ordinances ascribed to Lycurgus) was a code of
rigid discipline, which dealt with the citizen as a
soldier always under ti-aining for war, and de-
manded from him the utmost simplicity of life.
Their form of government combined a peculiar
monarcliy (having two royal families and two
kings) with an aristocratic senate (the Gerousia),
and a democratic assembly (which voted on
matters only as submitted to it by the senate),
with an irresponsible executive over the whole,
consisting of five men called the Ephors. This
singular government, essentially aristocratic or
oligarchical, was maintained, with little disturb-
ance or change, through the whole independent
history of Sparta. In all respects, tlie Spartans
were the most conservative and the least progres-
sive among tlie politically important Greeks.
At the beginning of the domination of the
Dorians in Peloponnesus, their city of Argos
took the lead, and was the head of a league
which included Corinth and other city-states.
But Sparta soon rose to rivalry with Argos ; then
reduced it to a secondary place, and finally sub-
jugated it completely.
The lonians.
The extensive shifting of population which
had produced its most important result in the
invasion of Peloponnesus by the Dorians, must
have caused great commotions and changes
throughout the whole Greek peninsula; and
quite as much north of the Corinthian isthmus
as south of it. But in the part which lies nearest
to the isthmus — the branch peninsula of Attica
— the old inhabitants appear to have held their
ground, repelling invaders, and their country
was affected only by an influx of fugitives, flying
from the conquered Peloponnesus. The Attic
people were more nearly akin to the expelled
Achaians and lonians than to the conquering
Dorians, although a common brotherhood in the
Hellenic race was recognized by all of them.
Whatever distinction there may have been be-
fore between Achaians and lonians now practi-
cally disappeared, and the Ionic name became
common to the whole branch of the Greek peo-
ple which derived itself from them. The impor-
tant division of the race through all its subse-
quent history was between Dorians and lonians.
The ^olians constituted a third division, of
minor importance and of far less significance.
The distinction between lonians and Dorians
was a very real one, in character no less than in
traditions and name. The lonians were the
superior Greeks on the intellectual side. It was
among them that the wonderful genius resided
which produced the greater marvels of art, litera-
ture and philosophy in Greek civilization. It
was among them, too, that the institutions of
political freedom were carried to their highest
attainment. Their chief city was Athens, and
the splendor of its history "bears testimony to
their unexampled genius. On the other hand,
the Dorians were less thoughtful, less imagina-
tive, less broad in judgment or feeling — less
susceptible, it would seem, of a high refinement
of culture ; but no less capable in practical pur-
suits, no less vigorous in effective action, and
sounder, perhaps, in their moral constitution.
Sparta, which stood at the head of the Doric
states, contributed almost nothing to Greek lit-
erature, Greek thought, Greek art, or Greek
commerce, but exercised a great influence on
Greek political history. Other Doric states, es-
pecially Corinth, were foremost in commercial
and colonizing enterprise, and attained some
brilliancy of artistic civilization, but with mod-
erate originality.
Greeks and Phoenicians.
It was natural, as noted above, that the Greeks
should be induced at an early day to navigate
the surrounding seas, and to engage in trade
with neighboring nations. They were not origi-
nal, it is supposed, in these ventures, but learned
more or less of ship-building and the art of navi-
gation from an older people, the Phoenicians, who
dwelt on the coast of Syria and Palestine, and
whose chief cities were Sidon and Tyre. The
Phoenicians had extended their commerce widely
through the Jlediterranean before the Greeks
came into rivalry with them. Their ships, and
their merchants, and the wares they bartered,
were familiar in the ^gean when the Homeric
1020
EUROPE.
Early Athens.
EUROPE.
poems were composed. They seem to have been
the teachers of the early Greeks in many things.
They gave them, witli little doubt, the invention
of the alphabet, which they themselves had bor-
rowed from Egypt. They conveyed hints of art.
which bore astonishing fruits when planted in the
fertile Hellenic imagination. They carried from
the East strange stories of gods and demigods,
which were woven into the mythology of the
Greeks. They gave, in fact, to Greek civilization,
at its beginning, the greatest impulse it received.
But all that Hellas took from the outer world it
wrought into a new character, and put upon it
the stamp of its own unmistakable genius. In
navigation and commerce the Greeks of the coast-
cities and the islands were able, ere long, to com-
pete on even terms with the Phoenicians, and it
happened, in no great space of time, that they
had driven the latter entirely from the .^gean
and the Euxine seas.
Greek Colonies.
They had now occupied with colonies the coast
of Asia Minor and the islands on both their own
coasts. The Ionian Greeks were the principal
colonizers of the Asiatic shore and of the Cy-
clades. On the former and near it they founded
twelve towns of note, including Samos, Miletus,
Ephesus, Chios, and Phocsea, which are among
the more famous cities of ancient times. Their
important island settlements in the Cyclades were
Naxos, Delos, Melos, and Paros. They pos-
sessed, likewise, the great island of Euboea, with
its two wealthy cities of Chalcis and Eretria.
These, with Attica, constituted, in the main, the
Ionic portion of Hellas.
The Dorians occupied the islands of Rhodes
and Cos, and founded on the coast of Asia Minor
the cities of Halicarnassus and Cuidus.
The important ^^Eolian colonies in Asia were
Smyrna (acquired later by the lonians), Temnos,
Larissa, and Cyme. Of the islands they occu-
pied Lesbos and Tenedos.
From these settlements on neighboring coasts
and islands the vigorous Greeks pushed on to
more distant fields. It is probable that their col-
onies were in Cyprus and Crete before the eighth
century, B. C. In the seventh century B. C,
during a time of confusion and weakness in
Egyot, they had entered that country as allies
or as mercenaries of the kings, and had founded
a city, Naucratis, which became an important
agent iu the exchange of arts and ideas, as well
as of merchandise, between the Nile and the
jEgean. Within a few years past the site of
Naucratis has been uncovered by explorers, and
much has been brought to light that was obscure
in Greek and Egyptian history before. Within
the same seventh century, Cyrene and Barca had
been built on the African coast, farther west.
Even a century before that time, the Corinthians
had taken possession of Corcyra (modern Corfu),
and they, with the men of Chalcis and i\Iegara,
had been actively founding cities that grew great
and rich, in Sicily and in southern Italy, which
latter acquired the name of "Magna Grsecia"
(Great Greece). At a not much later time they
had pressed northwards to the Euxine or Black
Sea, and had scattered settlements along the
Thracian and Macedonian coast, including one
(Bj'zantium) on the Bosphorus, which became,
after a thousand years had passed, the imperial
city of Constantinople. About 597 B.C., the
Phocasans had planted a colony at Massalia, in
southern Gaul, from which sprang the great
city known in modern times as Marseilles. And
much of all this had been done, by lonians and
Dorians together, before Athens (in which Attica
now centered itself, and which loomed finally
greater iu glory than the whole Hellenic world
besides) had made a known mark in history.
Rise of Athens.
At first there had been kings in Athens, and
legends had gathered about their names which
give modern historians a ground- work for criti-
cal guessing, and scarcely more. Then the king
disappearedf and a magistrate called Archon took
his place, wlio held office for only ten years.
The archons are believed to have been chosen
first from the old royal family alone; but after
a time the office was thrown open to all noble
families. This was the aristocratic stage of po-
litical evolution in the city-state. The next step
was taken in 683 B. C. (which is said to be the
beginning of authentic Athenian chronology)
when nine archons were created, in place of the
one, and their term of office was reduced to a
single year.
Fifty years later, about 621 B. C, the people
of Athens obtained their first code of written
law, ascribed to one Draco, and described as a
code of much severity. But it gave certainty to
law, for the first time, and was the first great
protective measure secured by the people. In
612 B. C. a noble named Kylon attempted to over-
throw the aristocratic government and establish
a tyranny under himself, but he failed.
Legislation of Solon.
Then there came forward iu public life another
noble, who was one of the wisest men and purest
patriots of any country or age, and who made an
attempt of quite another kind. This was Solon,
the famous lawgiver, who became archon in 594
B. C. The political state of Athens at that time
has been described for us in an ancient Greek
treatise lately discovered, and which is believed
to be one of the hitherto lost writings of Aristotle.
' ' Not only, " says the author of this treatise, ' ' was
the constitution at this time oligarchical in every
respect, but the poorer classes, men, women,
and children, were in absolute slavery to the rich.
. . . The whole country was in the hands of a
few persons, and if the tenants failed to pay their
rent, they were liable to be haled into slavery,
and their children with them. Their persons
were mortgaged to their creditors. " Solon saw
that this was a state of things not to be endured
by such a people as the Athenians, and he exerted
himself to change it. He obtained authority to
frame a new constitution and a new code of laws
for the state. In the latter, he provided measures
for relieving the oppressed class of debtors. In
the former, he did not create a democratic gov-
ernment, but he greatly increased the political
powers of the people. He classified them ac-
cording to their wealth, defining four classes, the
citizens in each of which had certain political
duties and privileges measured to them by the
extent of their property and income. But the
whole body of citizens, in their general assembly
(the Ecclesia), were given the important right of
choosing the annual archons, whom they must
select, however, from the ranks of the wealthiest
class. At the same time, Solon enlarged the
1021
EUROPE.
(Greeks and
Persiaris.
EUROPE.
powers of the old aristocratic senate — the Areop-
agus — giving it a supervision of the execution
of the laws and a censorship of the morals of the
people.
" These changes did not constitute Democracy,
— a form of government then unknown, and for
which there was as yet no word in the Greek
language. But they initiated the democratic
spirit. . . . Athens, thus fairly started on her
way, — emancipated from the discipline of aristo-
cratic school-masters, and growing into an age
of manly liberty and self-restraint, — came even-
tually nearer to the ideal of ' the good life ' [Aris-
totle's phrase] than any other State in Hellas."
(W. "W. Fowler.)
Tyranny of Pisistratus.
But before the Athenians reached their near-
ness to this " good life," they had to pass under
the yoke of a " tyrant," Pisistratus, who won
the favor of the poorer people, and, with their
help, established himself in the Acropolis (.560
B. C.) with a foreign guard to maintain his power.
Twice driven out, he was twice restored, and
reigned quite justly and prudently, on the whole,
until his death in 527 B. C. He was succeeded
by his two sons, Hippias and Hipparchus ; but the
latter was killed in 514, and Hippias was expelled
by the Spartans in 510 B. C. ; after which there
was no tyranny in Athens.
The Democratic Republic.
On the fall of the Pisistratida?, a majority of
the noble or privileged class struggled hard to
regain their old ascendancy; but one of their
number, Cleisthenes, took the side of the people
and helped them to establish a democratic consti-
tution. He caused the ancient tribal division of
the citizens to be abolished, and substituted a
division which mixed the members of clans and
broke up or weakened the clannish influence in
politics. He enlarged Solon's senate or council
and divided it into committees, and he brought
the "ecclesia," or popular assembly, into a more
active exercise of its powers. He also introduced
the custom of ostracism, which permitted the
citizens of Athens to banish by their vote any
man whom they thought dangerous to the state.
The constitution of Cleisthenes was the final
foundation of the Athenian democratic republic.
Monarchical and aristocratic Sparta resented the
popular change, and undertook to restore the
oligarchy by force of arms ; but the roused democ-
racy of Athens defended its newly won liberties
with vigor and success.
The Persian Wars.
Not Athens only, but all Greece, was now
about to be put to a test which proved the re-
markable quality of both, and formed the begin-
ning of their great career. The Ionian cities of
Asia Minor had recently been twice conquered,
first by Croesus, King of Lydia, and then by
Cyrus the Great, founder of the Persian empire,
who had overthrown Crmsus (B. C. 547), and
taken his dominions The Persians oppressed
them, and in 500 B, C. they rose in revolt. Athens
and Eretria sent help to them, while Sparta re-
fused. The revolt was suppressed, and Darius,
the king of Persia, planned vengeance upon the
Athenians and Eretrians for the aid they had
given to it. He sent an expedition against them
in 493 B. C. , which was mostly destroyed by a
storm. In 490 B. C. he sent a second powerful
army and fleet, which took Eretria and razed it
to the ground. The great Persian army then
marched upon Athens, and was met at Marathon
by a small Athenian force of 9,000 men. The little
city of Platfea sent 1,000 more to stand with them
in the desperate encounter. They had no other
aid in the fight, and the Persians were a great un-
numbered host. But Miltiades, the Greek general
that day, planned his battle-charge so well that he
routed the Asiatic host and lost but 192 men.
The Persians abandoned their attempt and re-
turned to their wrathful king. One citizen of
Athens, Themistocles, had sagacity enough to
foresee that the " Great King," as he was known,
would not rest submissive under his defeat ; and
with difficulty he persuaded his fellow citizens to
prepare themselves for future conflicts by build-
ing a fleet and by fortifying their harbors, thus
making themselves powerful at sea. The wis-
dom of his counsels was proved in 480 B. C,
when Xerxes, the successor of Darius, led an
army of prodigious size into Greece, crossing the
Hellespont by a bridge of boats. This time,
Sparta, Corinth, and several of the lesser states,
rallied witli Athens to the defence of the common
country ; but Thebes and Argos showed friend-
ship to the Persians, and none of the important
island-colonies contributed any help. Athens
was the brain and right arm of the war, notwith-
standing the accustomed leadership of Sparta in
military affairs.
The "first encounter was at Thermopylae, where
Leonidas and his 300 Spartans defended the nar-
row pass, and died in their place when the Per-
sians found a way across the mountain to sur-
round them. But on that same day the Persian
fleet was beaten at Artemisium. Xerxes marched
on Athens, however, found the city deserted,
and destroyed it. His fleet had followed him,
and was still stronger than the naval force of the
Greeks. Themistocles forced a battle, against the
will of the Peloponnesian captains, and practi-
cally destroyed the Persian fleet. This most
memorable battle of Salamis was decisive of the
war, and decisive of the independence of Greece.
Xerxes, in a panic, hastened back into Asia, leav-
ing one of his generals, Mardonius, with 300,000
men, to pursue the war. But Mardonius was
routed and his host annihilated, at Plataja, the
next year, while the Persian fleet was again de-
feated on the same day at Mycale.
The Golden Age of Athens.
The war had been glorious for the Athenians,
and all could see that Greece had been saved by
their spirit and their intelligence much more than
by the valor of Sparta and the other states. But
they were in a woful condition, with their city
destroyed and their families without homes.
AVasting no time in lamentations, they rebuilt the
town, stretched its walls to a wider circuit, and
fortified it more strongly than before, under the
lead of the sagacious Themistocles. Their neigh-
boi's were meanly jealous, and Sparta made at-
tempts to interfere with the building of the walls ;
but Themistocles bafiled them cunninglj', and
the new Athens rose proudly out of the ashes of
the old.
The Ionian islands and towns of Asia Minor
(which had broken the Persian yoke) now recog-
nized the superiority and leadership of Athens,
and a league was formed among them, which held
1022
EUROPE.
Decline of Athens.
EUROPE.
the meetings of its deputies and kept its treasury
in the temple of Apollo on the sacred island of
Deles; for ■which reason it was called the Con-
federacy of Delos, or the Dalian League. The
Peloponnesian states formed a looser rival league
under the headship of Sparta. The Confederacy
of Delos was in sympathy with popular govern-
ments and popular parties everywhere, while the
Spartans and their following favored oligarchies
and aristocratic parties. There were many occa-
sions for hostility between the two.
The Athenians, at the head of their Confed-
eracy, were strong, until they impaired their
power by usmg it in tyrannical ways. Many
lesser states in the league were foolish enough to
commute in money payments the contribution of
ships and men which they had pledged them-
selves to make to the conunon naval force. This
gave Athens the power to use that force despoti-
cally, as her own, and she did not scruple to ex-
ercise the power. The Confederacy was soon a
name ; the states forming it were no longer allies
of Athens, but her subjects; she ruled them as
the sovereign of an Empire, and her rule was
neither generous nor j ust. Thereby the double
tie of kinship and of interest which might have
bound the whole circle of Ionian states to her
fortunes and herself was destroyed by her own
acts. Provoking the hatred of her allies and
challenging the jealous fear of her rivals, Athens
had many enemies.
At the same time, a dangerous change in the
character of her democratic institutions was be-
gun, produced especially by the institution of
popular jury-courts, before which prosecutions
of every kind were tried, the citizens who con-
stituted the courts acting as jury and judge at
once. This gave them a valuable training, with-
out doubt, and helped greatly to raise the com-
mon standard of intelligence among the Atheni-
ans so high ; but it did unquestionably tend also
to demoralizations that were ruinous in the end.
The jury service, which was slightly paid, fell
more and more to an unworthy class, made up of
idlers or intriguers. Party feeling and popular
passions gained an increasing influence over the
juries, and demagogues acquired an increasing
skill in making use of them.
But these evils were scarcely more than in their
seed during the great period of ' ' Athenian Em-
pire," as it is sometimes called, and everything
within its bounds was suffused with the shining
splendor of that matchless half-century. The
genius of this little Ionic state was stimulated to
amazing achievements in every intellectual field.
jEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristoplianes,
within a single generation, crowded Athenian
literature with the masterpieces of classic drama.
Pheidias and his companions crowned the Acropo-
lis and filled the city with works that have been
the models in art for all ages since. Socrates
began the quizzing which turned philosophy into
honest truth-seeking paths, and Plato listened to
him and was instructed for his mission. Thucyd-
ides watched events with sagacious young eyes,
and prepared his pen for the chronicling of them ;
while Herodotus, pausing at Athens from his
wide travels, matured the knowledge he had
gathered up and perfected it for his final work.
Over all of them came Pericles to preside and
rule, not as a master, or " tyrant," but as leader,
guide, patron, princely republican, — statesman
and politician in one.
The Peloponnesian War.
The period of the ascendancy of Pericles was
the "golden age " of Athenian prosperity and
power, both material and intellectual. The be-
ginning of the end of it was reached a little before
he died, when the long-threatened war between
Athens and the Peloponnesian league, led by
Sparta, broke out (B. C. 431). If Athens had
then possessed the good will of the cities of her
own league, and if her citizens had retained their
old sobriety and intelligence, she might have tri-
umphed in the war ; for she was all powerful at
sea and fortified almost invincibly against at-
tacks by land. But the subject states, called al-
lies, were hostile, for the most part, and helped
the enemy by their revolts, while the death of
Pericles (B. C. 429) let loose on the people a
swarm of demagogues who flattered and deluded
them, and baffled the wiser and more honest,
whose counsels and leadership might have given
her success.
The fatal folly of the long war was an expedi-
tion against the distant city of Syracuse (B. C.
415-413), into which the Athenians were enticed
by the restless and unscrupulous ambition of
Alcibiades. The entire force sent to Sicily per-
ished there, and the strength and spirit of Atliens
were ruinously sapped by the fearful calamity.
She maintained the war, however, until 404 B. C.,
when, having lost her fleet in the decisive battle
of ^gospotami, and being helplessly blockaded
by sea and land, the city was surrendered to the
Spartan general Lysander. Her walls and forti-
fications were then destroyed and her democratic
government was overthrown, giving place to an
oligarchy known as the " thirty tyrants. " The
democracy soon suppressed the thirty tyrants and
regained control, and Athens, in time, rose some-
what from her deep humiliation, but never again
to much political power in Greece. In intellect
and cultivation, the superiority of the Attic state
was still maintained, and its greatest productions
in philosophy and eloquence were yet to be given
to the world.
Spartan and Theban Ascendancy.
After the fall of Athens, Sparta was dominant
in the whole of Greece for thirty years and more,
exercising her power more oppressively than
Athens had done. Then Thebes, which had been
treacherously seized and garrisoned by the Spar-
tans, threw off their yoke (B.C. 379) and led a rising,
under her great and high-souled citizen, Epami-
nondas, which resulted in bringing Thebes to the
head of Greek affairs. But the Theban ascen-
dancy was short-lived, and ended with the death
of Epaminondas in 363 B. C.
Macedonian Supremacy.
Meantime, while the city-states of Hellas prop-
er had been wounding and weakening one an-
other by their jealousies and wars, the semi-
Greek kingdom of Macedonia, to the north of
them, in their own peninsula, had been acquiring
their civilization and growing strong. And now
there appeared upon its throne a very able king,
Philip, who took advantage of their divisions,
interfered in their affairs, and finally made a
practical conquest of the whole peninsula, by his
victory at the battle of Chseronea (B. C. 338).
At Athens, the great orator Demosthenes had
exerted himself for years to rouse resistance to
Philip. If his eloquence failed fhen, it has served
1023
EUROPE.
Beginnings of
Rome.
EUROPE.
the world immortally since, by delighting and
instructing mankind.
King Philip was succeeded by his famous son,
Alexander the Great, who led an army of Mace-
donians and Greeks into Asia (B. C. 334), over-
threw the already crumbling Persian power,
pursued his conquests through Afghanistan to
India, and won a great empire which he did not
live to rule. AVhen he died (B. C. 333), his gen-
erals divided the empire among them and fought
with one another for many years. But the gen-
eral result was the spreading of the civilization
and language of the Greeks, and the establishing
of their intellectual influence, in Egypt, in Syria,
in Asia Minor, and beyond.
In Greece itself, a state of disturbance and of
political confusion and weakness prevailed for
another century. There was promise of some-
thing better, in the formation, by several of the
Peloponnesian states, of a confederacy called the
Achaian League, which might possibly have
federated and nationalized the whole of Hellas
in the end; but the Romans, at this juncture,
turned their conquering arms eastward, and in
three successive wars, between 211 and 146 B. C,
they extinguished the Macedonian kingdom, and
annexed it, with the whole peninsula, to the do-
minions of their wonderful republic.
The Romans.
The Romans, as stated already, are believed to
have been originally near kindred to the Greeks.
The same movement, it is supposed, in the suc-
cessive outswarmings of Aryan peoples, deposited
in one peninsula the Italian tribes, and in the
next peninsula, eastward, the tribes of the Hel-
lenes. Among the Italian tribes were Latins,
Umbrians, Sabines, Samnites, etc., occupying
the middle and much of the southern parts of the
peninsula, while a mysterious alien people, the
Etruscans, whose origin is not known, possessed
the country north of them between the Arno and
the Tiber. In the extreme south were remnants
of a primitive race, the lapygian, and Greek
colonies were scattered there around the coasts.
From the Latins sprang the Romans, at the be-
ginning of their separate existence; but there
seems to have been a very early union of these
Romans of the primitive tradition with a Sabine
community, whereby was formed the Roman
city-state of historical times. That union came
about through the settlement of the two com-
munities, Latin and Sabine, on two neighboring
hills, near the mouth of the river Tiber, on its
southern bank. In the view of some historians,
it is the geographical position of those hills,
hardly less than the masterful temper and capaci-
ty of the race seated on them, which determined
the marvellous career of the city founded on that
site. Says Professor Freeman : ' ' The whole
history of the world has been determined by the
geological fact that at a point a little below the
junction of the Tiber and the Anio the isolated
hills stand nearer to one another than most of the
other hills of Latium. On a site marked out
above all other sites for dominion, the centre of
Italy, the centre of Europe, as Europe then was, a
site at the j unction of three of the great nations of
Italy, and which had the great river as its high-
way to lands beyond the bounds of Italy, stood
two low hills, the hill which bore the name of
Latin Saturn, and the hill at the meaning of
whose name of Palatine scholars will perhaps
guess for ever. These two hills, occupied by
men of two of the nations of Italy, stood so near
to one another that a strait choice indeed was
laid on those who' dwelled on them. They must
either join together on terms closer than those
which commonly united Italian leagues, or they
must live a life of border warfare more ceaseless,
more bitter, than the ordinary warfare of Italian
enemies. Legend, with all likelihood, tells us
that warfare was tried ; histor)', with all certainty,
tells us that the final choice was union. The
two hills were fenced with a single wall ; the men
who dwelled on them changed from wholly sepa-
rate communities into tribes of a single city."
The followers of Romulus occupied the Pala-
tine Mount, and the Sabines were settled on the
Quirinal. At subsequent times, the Coelian, the
Capitoline, the Aventine, the Esquiline and the
Viminal hills were embraced in the circumvalla-
tion, and the city on the seven hills thus acquired
that name.
If modem students and thinkers, throwing
light on the puzzling legends and traditions of
early Rome from many sources, in language and
archaeology, have construed their meaning right-
ly, then great importance attaches to those first
unions or incorporations of distinct settlements
in the forming of the original city-state. For it
was the beginning of a process which went on
until the whole of Latium, and then the whole
of Italy, and, finally, the whole Mediterranean
world, were joined to the seven hills of Rome.
"The whole history of Rome is a history of in-
corporation" ; and it is reasonable to believe that
the primal spring of Roman greatness is found
in that early adoption and persistent practice of
the policy of political absorption, which gave
conquest a character it had never borne before.
At the same time, this view of the creation of
the Roman statp contributes to an understanding
of its early constitutional history. It supposes
that the union of the first three tribes which
coalesced — those of the Palatine, the Quirinal
and Capitoline (both occupied by the Sabines)
and the Cojlian hills — ended the process of in-
corporation on equal terms. These formed the
original Roman people — the "fathers," the
"patres," whose descendants appear in later
times as a distinct class or order, the "patri-
cians " — • holding and struggling to maintain ex-
clusive political rights, and exclusive owner-
ship of the public domain, the "ager publicus,"
which became a subject of bitter contention for
four centuries. Around these heirs of the ' ' fa-
thers " of Rome arose another class of Romans,
brought into the community by later incorpora-
tions, and not on equal terms. If the first class
were "fathers," these were children, in a politi-
cal sense, adopted into the Roman family, but
without a voice in general affairs, or a share in
the public lands, or eligibility to the higher
offices of the state. These were the "plebeians "
or "plebs" of Rome, whose long struggle with
the patricians for political and agrarian rights
is the more interesting side of Roman history
throughout nearly the whole of the prosperous
age of the republic.
At Rome, as at Athens, there was a period of
early kingship, the legends of which are as famil-
iar to us all as the stories of the Bible, but the
real facts of which are almost totally unknown.
It is surmised that the later kings — the well
known Tarquins of the classical tale — were
1024
EUROPE.
Founding of
the Roman Republic.
EUROPE.
Etruscan princes (it is certain that they were
Etruscans), who liad broken for a time the inde-
pendence of the Romans and extended their sov-
ereignty over them. It is suspected, too, that
this period of Etruscan domination was one in
which Roman civilization made a great advance,
under the tuition of a more cultivated people.
But if Rome in its infancy did know a time of
subjugation, the endurance was not long. It
ended, according to Roman chronology, in the
245th year of the city, or 509 B.C., by the expul-
sion of Tarquin the Pro\id, tlie last of the kings.
The Roman Republic.
The Republic was then founded ; but it was an
aristocratic and not a democratic republic. The
consuls, who replaced the kings, were required
to be patricians, and they were chosen by the
landholders of the state. The senate was pa-
trician; all the important powers of govern-
ment were in patrician hands, and the plebs suf-
fered grievous oppression in consequence. They
were not of a tamely submissive race. They
demanded powers for their own protection, and
by slow degrees they won them ■ — strong as the
patricians were in their wealth and their trained
political skill.
Precisely as in Athens, the first great effort
among the common people was to obtain relief
from crushing burdens of debt, which had been
laid upon them in precisely the same way — by
loss of harvests while in military service, and by
the hardness of the laws which creditors alone
had framed. An array of plebs, just home from
war, marched out of the city and refused to re-
turn until magistrates of their own choosing had
been conceded to them. The patricians could
not afford to lose the bone and sinew of their
state, and they yielded the point in demand
(B.C. 494). This first "secession of the plebs"
brought about the first great democratic change
in the Roman constitution, by calling into exis-
tence a powerful magistracy — the Tribunes of
the Plebs — who henceforth stood between the
consuls and the common people, for the protec-
tion of the latter.
From this first success the plebeian order went
forward, step by step, to the attainment of equal
political rights in the commonwealth, and equal
participation in the lands which Roman conquest
was continually adding to the public domain. In
450 B.C., after ten years of struggle, they se-
cured the appointment of a commission which
framed the famous Twelve Tables of the Law,
and so established a written and certain code.
Five years later, the caste exclusiveness of the
patricians was broken down by a law which per-
mitted marriages between the orders. In 367
B. C. the patrician monopoly of the consular
office was extinguished, by the notable Licinian
Laws, which also limited the extent of land that
any citizen might occupy, and forbade the ex-
clusive employment of slave labor on any estate.
One by one, after that, other magistracies were
opened to the plebs ; and in 287 B. C. by the Lex
Hortensia, the plebeian concilium, or assembly,
was made independent of the senate and its acts
declared to be valid and binding. The demo-
cratic commonwealth was now completely
formed.
Roman Conquest of Italy.
While these changes in the constitution of their
Republic were in progress, the Romans had been
making great advances toward supremacy in the
peninsula. First they had been in league with
their Latin neighbors, for war with the ^qui-
ans, the Volscians, and the Etruscans. The
Volscian war extended over forty years, and
ended about 450 B. C. in the practical disap-
pearance of the Volscians from history. Of war
with the ^quians, nothing is heard after 458
B.C., when, as the tale is told, Cincinnatus left
his plow to lead the Romans against them.
The war with the Etruscans of the near city of
Veii had been more stubborn. Suspended by a
truce between 474 and 438 B. C, it was then
renewed, and ended in 396 B. C., when the
Etruscan city was taken and destroyed. At the
same time the power of the Etruscans was being
shattered at sea by the Greeks of Tarentum and
Syracuse, while at home they were attacked from
the north by the barbarous Gauls or Celts.
These last named people, having crossed the
Alps from Gaul and Switzerland and occupied
northern Italy, were now pressing upon the
more civilized nations to the south of the Po.
The Etruscans were first to suffer, and their des-
pair became so great that they appealed to Rome
for help. The Romans gave little aid to them in
their extremity; but enough to provoke the
wrath of Brennus, the savage leader of the Gauls.
He quitted Etruria and marched to Rome, de-
feating an army which opposed him on the Allia,
pillaging and burning the city (B. C. 390) and
slaying the senators, who had refused to take
refuge, with other Inhabitants, in the capitol.
The defenders of the capitol held it for seven
months; Rome was rebuilt, when the Gauls
withdrew, and soon took up her war again with
the Etruscan cities. By the middle of the same
century she was mistress of southern Etruria,
though her territories had been ravaged twice
again by renewed incursions of the Gauls. In a
few years more, when her allies of Latium com-
plained of their meager share of the fruits of
these common wars, and demanded Roman citi-
zenship and equal rights, she fought them
fiercely and humbled them to submissiveness
(B. C. 339-338), reducing their cities to the status
of provincial towns.
And now, having awed or subdued her rivals,
her friends, and her enemies, near at hand, the
young Republic swung into the career of rapid
conquest which subdued to her will, within three-
fourths of a century, the whole of Italy below the
mouth of the Amo.
In 343 B. C. the Roman arms had been turned
against the Samnites at the south, and they had
been driven from the Campania. In 327 B. C.
the same dangerous rivals were again assailed,
with less impunity. At the Caudine Forks, in
321 B. C, the Samnites inflicted both disaster and
shame upon their indomitable foes ; but the end
of the war (B. C. 304) found Rome advanced and
Samnium fallen back. A third contest ended
the question of supremacy ; but the Samnites
(B. C. 290) submitted to become allies and not
subjects of the Roman state.
In this last struggle the Samnites had sum-
moned Gauls and Etruscans to join them against
the common enemy, and Rome had overcome
their united forces in a great fight at Sentinum.
This was in 295 B. C. Ten years later she an-
nihilated the Senonian Gauls, annexed their ter-
ritory and planted a colony at Sena on the coast.
In two years more she had paralyzed the Boian
65
1025
EUROPE.
Conquests of
the Roman Republic.
EUROPE.
Gauls by a terrible chastisement, and had noth-
ing more to fear from the northward side of her
realm. Then she turned back to finish her work
in the south.
War with Pyrrhus.
The Greek cities of the southern coast were
harassed by various marauding neighbors, and
most of them solicited the protection of Rome,
which Involved, of course, some surrender of their
independence. But one great city, Tarentum,
the most powerful of their number, refused these
terms, and hazarded a war with the terrible re-
public, expecting support from the ambitious
Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, on the Greek coast op-
posite their own. Pyrrhus came readily at their
call, with dreams of an Italian kingdom more
agreeable than his own. Assisted in the under-
taking by his royal kinsmen of Macedonia and
Syria, he brought an army of 25,000 men, with
20 elephants — which Roman eyes had never seen
before. In two bloody fights (B. C. 280-379),
Pyrrhus was victorious ; but the cost of victory
was so great that he dared not follow it up. He
went over to Sicily, instead, and waged war for
three years (B. C. 278-376) with the Carthaginians,
who had subjugated most of the island. The
Epirot king brought timely aid to the Sicilian
Greeks, and drove their Punic enemies into the
western border of the island ; but he claimed sov-
ereignty over all that his arms delivered, and was
not successful in enforcing the claim. He re-
turned to Italy and found the Romans better pre-
pared than before to face his phalanx and his
elephants. They routed him at Beneventum, in
the spring of 375 B. C. and he went back to Epirus,
with his dreams dispelled. Tarentum fell, and
Southern Italy was added to the dominion of
Rome.
Punic Wars.
During her war with Pyrrhus, the Republic
had formed an alliance with Carthage, the power-
ful maritime Phojnician city on the African coast.
But friendship between these two cities was im-
possible. The ambition of both was too boundless
and too fierce. They were necessarily competi-
tors for supremacy in the Mediterranean world,
from the moment that a narrow strait between
Italy and Sicily was all that held them apart.
Rome challenged her rival to the duel in 264 B. C. ,
when she sent help to the Mamertines, a band of
brigands who had seized the Sicilian city of Mes-
sina, and who were being attacked by both Car-
thaginians and Syracusan Greeks. The "First
Punic War," then begun, lasted twenty -four
years, and resulted in the withdrawal of the Car-
thaginians from Sicily, and in their payment of
an enormous war indemnity to Rome. The lat-
ter assumed a protectorate over the island, and
the kingdom of Hiero of Syracuse preserved its
nominal independence for the time; but Sicily, as
a matter of fact, might already be looked upon
as the first of those provinces, beyond Italy, which
Rome bound to herself, one by one, until she had
compassed tlie Mediterranean with her dominion
and gathered to it all the islands of that sea.
The "Second Punic war," called sometimes
the " Hannibalic war," was fought with a great
Carthaginian, rather than with Carthage herself.
Hamilcar Barca had been the last and ablest of
the Punic generals in the contest for Sicily. Af-
terwards he undertook the conquest of Spain,
where his arms had such success that he estab-
lished a very considerable power, more than half
independent of the parent state. He nursed an
unquenchable hatred of Rome, and transmitted
it to his son Hannibal, who solemnly dedicated
his life to warfare with the Latin city. Hamilcar
died, and in due time Hannibal found himself
prepared to make good his oath. He provoked
a declaration of war (B. C. 218) by attacking
Saguntum, on the eastern Spanish coast — a town
which the Romans " protected." The latter ex-
pected to encounter him in Spain ; but before the
fleet bearing their legions to that country had
reached Massilia, he had already passed the Pyr-
enees and the Rhone, with nearly 100,000 men,
and was crossing the Alps, to assail his astounded
foes on their own soil. The terrific barrier was
surmounted with such suffering and loss that only
20,000 foot and 6,000 horse, of the great army
which left Spain, could be mustered for the
clearing of the last Alpine pass. With this small
following, by sheer energy, rapidity and precision
of movement — by force, in other words, of a mili-
tary genius never surpassed in the world — he
defeated the armies of Rome again and again,
and so crushingly in the awful battle of Cannae
(B. C. 216) that the proud republic was staggered,
but never despaired. For fifteen years the great
Carthaginian held his ground in southern Italy ;
but his expectation of being joined by discon-
tented subjects of Rome in the peninsula was
very slightly realized, and his own country gave
him little encouragement or help. His brother
Hasdrubal, marching to his relief in 307 B. C,
was defeated on the river ^Metaurus and slain.
The arms of Rome had prospered meantime in
Sicily and in Spain, even while beaten at home, and
her Punic rival had been driven from both. In
204 B. C. the final field of battle was shifted to
Carthaginian territory by Scipio, of famous mem-
ory, thereafter styled Africanus, because he "car-
ried the war into Africa." Hannibal abandoned
Italy to confront him, and at Zama, in the autumn
of 303 B. C. , the long contention ended, and the
career of Carthage as a Power in the ancient
world was forever closed. Existing by Roman
sufferance for another half century, she then gave
her implacable conquerors another pretext for
war, and they ruthlessly destroyed her (B.C. 146).
Roman Conquest of Greece.
In that same year of the destruction of Car-
thage, the conquest of Greece was finished. The
first war of the Romans on that side of the Adri-
atic had taken place during the Second Punic
war, and had been caused bj' an alliance formed
between Hannibal and King Philip of Macedonia
(B. C. 314). They pursued it then no further
than to frustrate Philip's designs against them-
selves; but they formed alliances with the
Greek states oppressed or menaced by the Mace-
donian, and these drew them into a second war,
just as the century closed. On Cynoscephalse,
Philip was overthrown (B. C. 197), his kingdom
reduced to vassalage, and the freedom of all
Greece was solemnly proclaimed by the Roman
Consul Flaminius.
And now, for the first time, Rome came into
conflict with an Asiatic power. The throne of
the Syrian monarchy, founded by one of the
generals of Alexander the Great, was occupied
by a king more ambitious than capable, who had
acquired a large and loosely jointed dominion in
the East, and who bore the sounding name of
1026
EUROPE.
Decline of the
Roman Republic.
EUROPE.
Antiochus the Great. This vainglorious King,
having a huge army and many elephants at his
disposal, was eager to try a passage at arms with
the redoubtable men of Rome. He was encour-
aged in his desire by the ^tolians in Greece,
who bore ill-will to Rome. Under this encour-
agement, and having Hannibal — then a fugitive
at his court — to give him counsel, which he
lacked intelligence to use, Antiochus crossed the
jEgean and invaded Greece (B. C. 193). The
Romans met him at the pass of Thermopylae ;
drove him back to the shores from which he
came ; pursued him thither ; crushed and humbled
him on the field of Magnesia, and took the king-
doms and cities of Asia Minor under their pro-
tection, as the allies (soon to be subjects) of
Rome.
Twenty years passed with little change in the
outward situation of affairs among the Greeks.
But discontent with the harshness and haughti-
ness of Roman "protection" changed from sul-
lenness to heat, and Perseus, son of Philip of
Macedonia, fanned it steadily, with the hope of
bringing it to a flame. Rome watched him with
keen vigilance, and before his plans were ripe
her legions were upon him. He battled with
them obstinately for three years (B. C. 171-168);
but his fate was sealed at Pydna. He went as
a prisoner to Rome; his kingdom was broken
into four small republics ; the Achtean League
was stricken by the captivity of a thousand of its
chief men; the whole of Greece was humbled to
submissiveness, though not yet formally reduced
to the state of a Roman province. That followed
some years later, when risings in Macedonia and
Achaia were punished by the extinction of the
last semblance of political independence in both
(B. C. 148-146).
The zenith of the Republic.
Rome now gripped the Mediterranean (the
ocean of the then civilized world) as with four
fingers of a powerful hand: one laid on Italy
and all its islands, one on Macedonia and Greece,
one on Carthage, one on Spain, and the little
finger of her "protection" reaching over to the
Lesser Asia. Little more than half a century,
since the day that Hannibal threatened her own
city gates, had sufliced to win this vast dominion.
But the losses of the Republic had been greater,
after all, than the gains ; for the best energies of
its political constitution had been expended in
the acquisition, and the nobler qualities in Its
character had been touched with the incurable
taints of a licentious prosperity.
Beginning of Decline.
A century and a half had passed since the
practical ending of the struggle of plebeians with
patricians for political and agrarian rights. In
theory and in form, the constitution remained as
democratic as it was made by the Licinian Laws
of 367 B. C, and by the finishing touch of the
Hortensian Law of 287 B. C. But in practical
working it had reverted to the aristocratic mode.
A new aristocracy had risen out of the plebeian
ranks to reinforce the old patrician order. It was
composed of the families of men who had been
raised to distinction and ennobled by the holding
of eminent oflices, and its spirit was no less jeal-
ous and exclusive than that of the older high
caste.
The Senate and the Mob.
Thus strengthened, the aristocracy had recov-
ered its ascendancy in Rome, and the Senate,
which it controlled, had become the supreme
power in government. The amazing success of
the Republic during the last century just re-
viewed — its successes in war, in diplomacy, and
in all the sagacious measures of policy by which
its great dominion had been won — are reasona-
bly ascribed to this fact. For the Senate had
wielded the power of the state, in most emergen-
cies, with passionless deliberation and with unity
and fixity of aim.
But it maintained its ascendancy by an increas-
ing employment of means which debased and
corrupted all orders alike. The people held pow-
ers which might paralyze the Senate at any mo-
ment, if they chose to exercise them, through
their assemblies and their tribunes. They had
seldom brought those powers into play thus far,
to interfere with the senatorial government of
the Republic, simply because they had been
bribed to abstain. The art of the politician in
Rome, as distinguished from the statesman, had
already become demagoguery. This could not
well have been otherwise under the peculiar con-
stitution of the Roman citizenship. Of the thirty-
five tribes who made up the Roman people, le-
gally qualified to vote, only four were within
the city. The remaining thirty-one were tribus
rustieci. There was no delegated representation
of this country populace — citizens beyond the
walls. To exercise their right of suffrage they
must be personally present at the meetings of
the "comitia tributa" — the tribal assemblies;
and those of any tribe who chanced to be in at-
tendance at such a meeting might give a vote
which carried with it the weight of their whole
tribe. For questions were decided by the ma-
jority of tribal, not individual, votes; and a
very few members of a tribe might act for and
be the tribe, for all purposes of voting, on occa-
sions of the greatest possible importance.
It is quite evident that a democratic system of
this nature gave wide opportunity for corrupt
"politics." There must have been, always, an
attraction for the baser sort among the rural
plebs, drawing them into the city, to enjoy the
excitement of political contests, and to partake
of the flatteries and largesses which began early
to go with these. And circumstances had tended
strongly to increase this sinister sifting into Rome
of the most vagrant and least responsible of her
citizens, to make them practically the deputies and
representatives of that mighty sovereign which
had risen in the world — the " Populus Romanus. "
For there was no longer either thrift or dignity
possible in the pursuits of husbandry. The long
Hannibalic War had ruined the farming class
in Italy by its ravages ; but the extensive con-
quests that followed it had been still more ruin-
ous to that class by several effects combined.
Corn supplies from the conquered provinces were
poured into Rome at cheapened prices ; enormous
fortunes, gathered in the same provinces by offi-
cials, by farmers of taxes, by money-lenders, and
by traders, were largely invested in great estates,
absorbing the small farms of olden time; and,
finally, free-labor in agriculture was supplanted,
more and more, by the labor of slaves, which
war and increasing wealth combined to multiply
in numbers. Thus the rural " plebs" of Rome
1027
EUROPE.
The Gracchi.
EUROPE.
were a depressed and, therefore, a degenerating
class, and the same circumstances that made them
so impelled them towards the city, to swell the
mob which held its mighty sovereignty in their
hands.
So far, a lavish amusement of this mob with
free games, and liberal bribes, had kept it gen-
erally submissive to the senatorial government.
But the more it was debased by such methods,
and Its vagrancy encouraged, the more extrava-
gant gratuities of like kind it claimed. Hence
a time could never be far away when the aris-
tocracy and the senate would lose their control
of the popular vote on which they had built tlieir
governing power.
Agrarian Agitations.
But they invited the quicker coming of that
time by their own greediness in the employment
of their power for selfish and dishonest ends.
They had practically recovered their monopoly
of the use of the public lands. The Licinian
law, which forbade any one person to occupy
more than five hundred jugera (about three hun-
dred acres) of the public lands, had been made a
dead letter. The great tracts acquired in the
Samnite wars, and since, had remained undis-
tributed, while the use and profit of them were
enjoyed, under one form of authority or another,
by rich capitalists and powerful nobles.
This evil, among many that waxed greater each
year, caused the deepest discontent, and provoked
movements of reform which soon passed by rapid
stages into a revolution, and ended in the fall of
the Republic. The leader of the movement at
its beginning was Tiberius Gracchus, grandson
of Scipio Africanus on the side of his mother,
Cornelia. Elected tribune in 133 B. C. , he set
himself to the dangerous task of rousing the
people against senatorial usurpations, especially
in the matter of the public domain. He only
drew upon himself the hatred of the senate and
its selfish supporters ; he failed to rally a popular
party that was strong enough for his protection,
and his enemies slew him in the very midst of a
meeting of the tribes. His brother Caius took
up the perilous cause and won the ofiice of tri-
bune (B. C. 123) in avowed hostility to the sena-
torial government. He was driven to bid high
for popular help, even when the measures which
he strove to carry were most plainly for the wel-
fare of the common people, and he may seem to
modern eyes to have played the demagogue with
some extravagance. But statesmanship and pa-
triotism without demagoguery for their instru-
ment or their weapon were hardly practicable,
perhaps, in the Rome of those days, and it is not
easy to find them clean-handed in any political
leader of the last century of the Republic.
The fall of Caius Gracchus was hastened by
his attempt to extend the Roman franchise be-
yond the " populus Romanus," to all the freemen
of Italy. The mob in Rome was not pleased
with such political generosity, and cooled in its
admiration for the large-minded tribune. He
lost his office and the personal protection it threw
over him, and then he, like his brother, was slain
(B. C. 121) in a melee.
Jugurthine War.
For ten years the senate, the nobility, and the
capitalists (now beginning to take the name of
the equestrian order), had mostly their own way
again, and effaced the work of the Gracchi as
completely as they could. Then came disgrace-
ful troubles in Numidia which enraged the
people and moved them to a new assertion of
themselves. The Numidian king who helped
Scipio to pull Carthage down had been a ward of
Rome since that time. When he died, he left
his kingdom to be governed jointly by two young
sons and an older nephew. The latter, Jugurtha,
put his cousins out of the way, took the king-
dom to himself, and baffled attempts at Rome to
call him to account, by heavy bribes. The cor-
ruption in the case became so flagrant that even
the corrupted Roman populace revolted against
it, and took the Numidian business into Its own
hands. War was declared against Jugurtha by
popular vote, and, despite opposing action in the
Senate, one Marius, an experienced soldier of
humble birth, was elected consul and sent out to
take command. Marius distinguished himself
in the war much less than did one of his officers,
Cornelius Sulla ; but he bore the lion's share of
glory when Jugurtha was taken captive and con-
veyed to Rome (B. C. 104). JIarius was now the
great hero of the hour, and events were prepar-
ing to lift him to the giddiest heights of popu-
larity.
Teutones and Cimbri.
Hitherto, the barbarians of wild Europe whom
the Romans had met were either the Aryan Celts,
or the non- Aryan tribes found in northern Italy,
Spain and Gaul. Now, for the first time, the
armies of Rome were challenged by tribes of
another grand division of the Aryan stock, com-
ing out of the farther North. These were the
Cimbri and the Teutones, wandei'ing hordes of
the great Teutonic or Germanic race which has
occupied AVestern Europe north of the Rhine
since the beginning of historic time. So far as
we can linow, these two were the first of the
Germanic nations to migrate to the South. They
came into collision with Rome in 113 B. C, when
they were in Noricum, threatening the frontiers
of her Italian dominion. Four years later they
were in southern Gaul, where the Romans were
now settling colonies and subduing the native
Celts. Twice they had beaten the armies op-
posed to them ; two years later they added a third
to their victories ; and in 105 B. C. they threw
Rome into consternation by destroying two great
armies on the Rhone. Italy seemed helpless
against the invasion for which these terrible bar-
barians were now preparing, when Marius went
against them. In the summer of 102 B. C. he
annihilated the Teutones, near AquEE Sextise
(modern Aix), and in the following year he de-
stroyed the invading Cimbri, on a bloody field in
northern Italy, near modern Vercelloe.
Marius.
From these great victories, Marius went back
to Rome, doubly and terribly clothed with power,
by the devotion of a reckless army and the hero-
worship of an unthinking mob. The state was
at his mercy. A strong man in his place might
have crushed the class-factions and accomplished
the settlement which Csesar made after half a
century more of turbulence and shame. But
Marius was ignorant, he was weak, and he be-
came a mere blood-stained figure in the ruinous
anarchy of his time.
1028
EUROPE.
Marius and Sulla.
EUROPE.
Optimates and Populares.
The social and political state of the capital had
grown rapidly -worse. A middle-class in Roman
society, had practically disappeared. The two
contending parties or factions, which had taken
new names — "optimates" and "populares" —
were now divided almost solely by the line which
separates rich from poor. "If we said that
'optimates' signified the men who bribed and
abused office under the banner of the Senate and
its connections, and that ' populares ' meant men
who bribed and abused office with the interests of
the people outside the Senatorial pale upon their
lips, we might do injustice to many good men on
both sides, but should hardly be slandering the
parties " (Beesly). There was a desperate conflict
between the two in the year 100 15. C. and the
Senate once more recovered its power for a brief
term of years.
The Social War.
Tlio enfranchisement of the so-called "allies"
— the Latin and other subjects of Rome who were
not citizens — was the burning question of the
time. The attempt of Caius Gracchus to extend
rights of citizenslup to them had been renewed
again and again, without success, and each failure
had increased the bitter discontent of the Italian
people. In 90 B. C. they drew together in a for-
midable confederation and rose in revolt. In the
face of this great danger Rome sobered herself
to action with old time wisdom and vigor. She
yielded her full citizenship to all Italian freemen
who had not taken arms, and then offered it to
those who would lay their arms down. At the
same time, she fought tlie insurrection with every
army she could put into the field, and in two
years it w'as at an end. Marius and his old lieu-
tenant, Sulla, had been the principal commanders
in this "Social War," as it was named, and Sulla
had distinguished himself most. The latter had
now an army at his back and was a power in the
state, and between the two military champions
there arose a rivalry which produced the first of
the Roman Civil Wars.
Marius and Sulla.
A troublesome war in the East had been forced
upon the Romans by aggressions of Mithridates,
King of Pontus. Botli Marius and Sulla aspired
to the command. Sulla obtained election to the
consulship in 88 B. C. and was named for the
coveted place. But Marius succeeded in getting
the appointment annulled by a popular assembly
and himself chosen instead for the Eastern com-
mand. Sulla, personally Imperilled by popular
tumults, fled to his legions, put himself at their
head, and marched back to Rome — the first
among her generals to turn her arms against her-
self. There was no effective resistance ; Marius
fled ; both Senate and people were submissive to
the dictates of the consul who had become master
of the city. He "made the tribes decree their
own political extinction, resuscitating the comitia
centuriata; he reorganized the Senate by adding
three hundred to its members and vindicating the
right to sanction legislation ; conducted the con-
sular elections, exacting from L. Cornelius Cinna,
the newly elected consul, a solemn oath that he
would observe the new regulations, and securing
the election of Cn. Octavius in his own interest,
and then, like 'a countryman who had just
shaken the lice off his coat,' to use his own figure,
he turned to do his great work in the East " (Hor-
ton).
Sulla went to Greece, which was in revolt and
in alliance with Mithridates, and conducted there a
brilliant, ruthless campaign for three years (B. C.
87-84), until he had restored Roman authority
in the peninsula, and forced the King of Pontus
to surrender all his conquests in Asia Minor.
Until this task was finished, he gave no heed to
what his enemies did at Rome ; though the strug-
gle there between " Sullans " and "Marians"
had gone fiercely and bloodily on, and his own
partisans had been beaten in the fight. The con-
sul Octavius, who was in Sulla's interest, had
first driven the consul Cinna out of the city, after
slaying 10,000 of his faction. Cinna's cause was
taken up by the new Italian citizens; he was
joined by the exiled Marius, and these two re-
turned together, with an army which the Senate
and the party of Sulla were unable to resist.
Marius came back with a burning heart and with
savage intentions of revenge. A liorrible mas-
sacre of his opponents ensued, which went on
unchecked for five days, and was continued more
deliberately for several months, until Marius
died, at the beginning of the year 86 B. C.
Then Cinna ruled absolutely at Rome for three
years, supported in the main by the newly-made
citizens ; while the provinces generally remained
under the control of the party of the optimates.
In 83 B. C. Sulla, having finished with care-
fulness ills work in the East, came back into Italy,
with 40,000 veterans to attend his steps. He had
been outlawed and deprived of his command, by
the faction governing at the capital; but its de-
crees had no effect and troubled him little. Cinna
had been killed by his own troops, even before
Sulla's landing at Brundisiura. Several important
leaders and soldiers on the Marian side, such as
Pompeius, then a young general, and Crassus,
the millionaire, went over to Sulla's camp. One
of the consuls of the year saw his troops follow
their example, in a body ; the other consul was
beaten and driven into Capua. Sulla wintered in
Campania, and the next spring he pressed for-
ward to Rome, fighting a decisive battle with
Marius the younger on the way, and took posses-
sion of the city ; but not in time to prevent a
massacre of senators by the resentful mob.
Sulla's Dictatorship.
Before that year closed, the whole of Italy had
been subdued, the final battle being fought with
the Marians and Italians at the CoUine Gate, and
Sulla again possessed power supreme. He placed
it beyond dispute by a deliberate extermination
of his opponents, more merciless than the Marian
massacre had been. They were proscribed by
name, in placarded lists, and rewards paid to-
those who killed them ; while their property was
confiscated, and became the source of vast for-
tunes to Sulla's supporters, and of lands for dis-
tribution to his veterans.
When this terror had paralyzed all resistance to-
his rule, the Dictator (for he had taken that title)
undertook a complete reconstruction of the con-
stitution, aiming at a permanent restoration of
senatorial ascendancy and a curbing of the pow-
ers which the people, in their assemblies, and the
magistrates wlio especially represented them, had
gained during the preceding century. He re-
modelled, moreover, the judicial system, and
some of his reforms were imdoubtedly good.
1029
EUROPE.
Pompeius, Crassiis
and Ctxsar.
EUROPE.
though they did not prove enduring. When he
had fashioned the state to his liking, this extra-
ordinary usurper quietly abdicated his dictatorial
office (B. C. 80) and retired to private life, undis-
turbed until his death (B. C. 78).
After Sulla.
The system he had established did not save
Rome from renewed distractions and disorder
after Sulla died. There was no longer a practi-
cal question between Senate and people — be-
tween tlie few and the many in government. The
question now, since the legionaries held their
swords prepared to be flung into the scale, was
what one should again gather the powers of
government into his hands, as Sulla had done.
The great Game and the Players.
The history of the next thirty years — the last
generation of republican Rome — is a sad and
sinister but thrilling chronicle of the strifes and
intrigues, the machinations and corruptions, of a
stupendous and wicked game in politics that was
played, against one another and against the Re-
public, by a few daring, unscrupulous players,
with the empire of the civilized world for the
stake between them. There were more than a
few who aspired ; there were only three players
who entered really as principals into the game.
These were Pompeius, called "the Great," since
he extinguished the Marian faction in Sicilj- and
in Spain ; Crassus, whose wealth gave him power,
and who acquired some military pretensions be-
sides, by taking the field against a formidable in-
surrection of slaves (B. C. 73-71); and Julius
Caesar, a j'oung patrician, but nephew of Marius
by marriage, who assiduously strengthened that
connection with the party of the people, and who
began, very soon after Sulla's death, to draw at-
tention to himself as a rising power in the poli-
tics of the day. There were two other men,
Cicero and the younger Cato, who bore a nobler
and greater because less selfish part in the contest
of that fateful time. Both were blind to the im-
possibility of restoring the old order of things,
with a dominant Senate, a free but well guided
populace, and a simply ordered social state ; but
their blindness was heroic and high-souled.
Pompeius in the East.
Of the three strong rivals for the vacant dic-
tatorial chair which waited to be filled, Pompeius
held by far the greater advantages. His fame as
a soldier was already won ; he had been a favorite
of Fortune from the beginning of his career ; every-
thing had succeeded with him ; everything was
expected for him and expected from him. Even
while the issues of the great struggle were pend-
ing, a wonderful opportunity for increasing his re-
nown was opened to him. Tlie disorders of the civil
war had licensed a swarm of pirates, who fairly
possessed the eastern Jlediterranean and had
.nearly extirpated the maritime trade. Pompeius
I was sent against them (B. C. 67), with a commission
'that gave him almost unlimited powers.and within
ninety days he had driven them from the sea.
Then, before he had returned from this exploit,
he was invested with supreme command in the
entire East, where another troublesome war with
Mithridates was going on. He harvested there
all the laurels which belonged by better right to
his predecessor, LucuUus. finding the power of
Mithridates already broken down. From Pontus
he passed into Armenia, and thence into Syria,
easily subjugating both, and extinguishing the
monarchy of the Seleucids. The Jews resisted
him and he humbled them by the siege and con-
quest of their sacred city. Egypt was now the
only Jlediterranean state left outside the all-ab-
sorbing dominion of Rome; and even Egypt, by
bequest of its late king, belonged to the Repub-
lic, though not yet claimed.
The First Triumvirate.
Pompeius came back to Rome in the spring of
61 B. C. so glorified by his successes that he
might have seemed to be irresistible, whatever
he should undertake. But, either through an
honest patriotism or an overweening confidence,
he had disbanded his army when he reached
Italy, and he had committed himself to no party.
He stood alone and aloof, with a great prestige,
great ambitions, and no ability to use the one or
realize the other. Before another year passed,
he was glad to accept offers of a helping hand in
politics from Caesar, who had climbed the ladder
of office rapidly within four or five years, spend-
ing vast sums of borrowed money to amuse the
people with games, and distinguishing himself
as a democratic champion. Ccesar, the far seeing
calculator, discerned the enormous advantages
that he might gain for himself by massing together
the prestige of Pompeius, the wealth of Crassus
and his own invincible genius, which was sure to
be the master element in the combination. He
brought the coalition about through a bargain
which created what is known in history as the
First Triumvirate, or supremacy of three.
Caesar in Gaul.
Under the terms of the bargain, Caesar was
chosen consul for 59 B. C, and at the end of his
term was given the governorship of Cisalpine
and Transalpine Gaul, with command of three
legions there, for five years. His grand aim
was a military command — the leadership of an
arm}- — the prestige of a successful soldier. No
sooner had he secured the command than fortune
gave him opportunities for its use in the most
striking way and with the most impressive re-
sults. The Celtic tribes of Gaul, north of the
two small provinces which the Romans had al-
ready acquired on the ]\Iediterrauean coast, gave
him pretexts or provocations (it mattered little
to Cfesar which) for war with them, and in a
series of remarkable campaigns, which all soldiers
since have admired, he pushed the frontiers of
the dominion of Rome to the ocean and the
Rhine, and threatened the nations of Germany
on the farther banks of that .stream. " The con-
quest of Gaul by Cfesar," says Mr. Freeman, "is
one of the most important events in the history
of the world. It is in some sort the beginning of
modem history, as it brought the old world of
southern Europe, of whicli Rome was the head,
into contact with the lands and nations which
were to play the greatest part in later times —
with Gaul, Germany, and IJritain. " From Gaul
Ciesar crossed the channel to Britain in 55 B. C.
and again in the following year, exacting tribute
from the Celtic natives, but attempting no lodg-
ment in the island.
Meantime, while pursuing a career of conquest
which excited the Roman world, Caesar never lost
touch with the capital and its seething politics.
Each winter he repaired to Lucca, the point in
1030
EUROPE.
CcBsar''s
Supremacy.
EUROPE.
bis provicce which was nearest to Rome, and
conferred there with his friends, who flocked to
the rendezvous. He secured an extension of liis
terra, to enable him to complete his plans, and
year by year he grew more independent of the
support of his colleagues in the triumvirate,
while they weakened one another by their jeal-
ousies, and the Roman state was more hopelessly
distracted by factious strife.
End of the Triumvirate.
The year after Caesar's second invasion of
Britain, Crassus, who had obtained the govern-
ment of Syria, perished in a disastrous war with
the Parthians, and the triumvirate was at an end.
Disorder in Rome increased and Pompeius lacked
energy or boldness to deal with it, though he
seemed to be the one man present who might do
so. He was made sole consul in 52 B. C. ; he
might have seized the dictatorship, with appro-
val of many, but he waited for it to be offered to
him, and the offer never came. He drew at last
into close alliance with the party of the Opti-
mates, and left the Populares to be won entirely
to Cassar's side.
Civil War.
JIatters came to a crisis in 50 B. C. , when the
Senate passed an order removing Cassar from his
command and discharging his soldiers who had
served their term. He came to Ravenna with a
single legion and concerted measures with his
friends. The issue involved is supposed to have
been one of life or death to him, as well as of
triumph or failure in his ambitions ; for his ene-
mies were malignant. His friends demanded
that he be made consul, for his protection, before
laying down his arms. The Senate answered by
proclaiming him a public enemy if he failed to
disband his troops with no delay. It was a
declaration of war, and Ciesar accepted it. He
marched his single legion across the Rubicon,
which was the boundary of his province, and
advanced towards Rome.
Pompeius, with the forces he had gathered, re-
treated southward, and consuls, senators and
nobles generally streamed after him. Caesar fol-
lowed them — turning aside from the city — and
his force gathered numbers as he advanced.
The Pompeians continued their flight and aban-
doned Italy, withdrawing to Epirus, planning to
gather there the forces of the East and return
with them. Caesar now took possession of Rome
and secured the islands of Sicily and Sardinia,
from which it drew its supply of food. This
done, he proceeded without delay to Spain,
where seven legions strongly devoted to Pom-
peius were stationed. He overcame them in a
single campaign, enlisted most of the veterans
in his own service, and acquired a store of treas-
ure. Before the year ended he was again in
Rome, where the citizens had proclaimed him
dictator. He held the dictatorship for eleven
days, only, to legalize an election which made
him consul, with a pliant associate. He reor-
ganized the government, complete in all its
branches, including a senate, partly composed of
former members of the body who had remained
or returned. ThenfB. C. 48. — January) he took
up the pursuit of Pompeius and the Optimates.
Crossing to Epirus, after some months of change-
ful fortune, he fought and won the decisive
battle of Pliarsalia. Pompeius, flying to Egypt,
was murdered there. Caesar, following, with a
small force, was placed in great peril by a rising
at Alexandria, but held his ground until assis-
tance came. He then garrisoned Egypt with
Roman troops and made the princess Cleopatra,
who had captivated him by her charms, joint
occupant of the throne with her younger brother.
During his absence, affairs at Rome were again
disturbed, and he was once more appointed dic-
tator, as well as tribune for life. His presence
restored order at once, and he was soon in readi-
ness to attack the party of his enemies who had
taken refuge in Africa. The battle of Thapsus,
followed by the suicide of Cato and the surrender
of Utica, practically finished the contest, though
one more campaign was fought in Spain the fol-
lowing year.
Ceesar Supreme.
Caesar was now master of the dominions of
Rome, and as entirely a monarch as any one of
his imperial successors, who took his name, with
the power which he caused it to symbolize, and
called themselves "Csesars," and "Imperators,"
as though the two titles were equivalent. " Im-
perator " was the title under which he chose to
exercise his sovereignty. Other Roman generals
had been Imperators before, but he was the first
to be named Imperator for life, and the word
(changed in our tongue to Emperor) took a mean-
ing from that day more regal than Rex or King.
That Caesar, the Imperator, first of all Emperors,
ever coveted the crown and title of an older-
fashioned royalty, is not an easy thing to believe.
Having settled his authority firmly, he gave
his attention to the organization of the Empire
(still Republic in name) and to the reforming of
the evils which afflicted it. That he did this
work with consummate judgment and success is
the opinion of all who study his time. He grati-
fied no resentments, executed no revenges, pro-
scribed no enemies. All who submitted to his
rule were safe ; and it seems to be clear that the
people in general were glad to be rescued by his
rule from the old oligarchical and anarchical
state. But some of Caesar's own partisans were
dissatisfied with the autocracy which they helped
to create, or with the slenderness of their own
parts in it. They conspired with surviving lead-
ers of the Optimates, and Caesar was assassinated
by them, in the Senate chamber, on the 15th of
March, B. C. 44.
Professor Mommsen has expressed the estimate
of Caesar which many thoughtful historians have
formed, in the following strong words: "In the
character of Caesar the great contrasts of exis-
tence meet and balance each other. He was of
the mightiest creative power, and yet of the most
penetrating judgment; of the highest energy of
will and the highest capacity of execution ; filled
with republican ideals, and at the same time
born to be king. He was 'the entire perfect
man ' ; and he was this because he was the entire
and perfect Roman." This may be nearly true
if we ignore the moral side of Caesar's character.
He was of too large a nature to do evil things
unnecessarily, and so he shines even morally in
comparison with many of his kind ; but he had
no scruples.
After the Murder of Caesar.
The murderers of Csesar were not accepted by
the people as the patriots and "liberators " which
1031
EUROPE.
Augustus
and the Empire.
EUROPE.
they claimed to be, and they were soon in flight
from the city. Marcus Antonius, who had been
Caesar's associate in the consulship, now naturally
and skilfully assumed the direction of affairs,
and aspired to gather the reins of imperial power
into his own hands. But rivals were ready to
dispute with him the great prize of ambition.
Among them, it is probable that Antony gave
little heed at tirst to the young man, Caius
Octavius, or Octavianus, who was Coesar's
nephew, adopted son and heir; for Octavius was
less than nineteen years old, he was absent in
Apollonia, and he was little known. But the
young Caesar, coming boldly though quietly to
Rome, began to push his hereditary claims with
a patient craftiness and dexterity that were mar-
vellous in one so young.
The Second Triumvirate.
The contestants soon resorted to arras. The
result of their first indecisive encounter was a
compromise and the formation of a triumvirate,
like that of Ctesar, Pompeius and Crassus. This
second triumvirate was made up of Antonius,
Octavius, and Lepidus, lately master of the horse
in Caesar's army. Unlike the earlier coalition, it
was vengeful and bloody-minded. Its first act
was a proscription, in the terrible manner of
Sulla, which filled Rome and Italy with murders,
and with terror and mourning. Cicero, the
patriot and great orator, was among the victims
cut down.
After this general slaughter of their enemies at
home, Antonius and Octavius proceeded against
Brutus and Cassius, two of the assassins of
Casar, who had gathered a large force in Greece.
They defeated them at Philippi, and both "lib-
erators" perished by their own hands. The tri-
umvirs now divided the empire between them,
Antonius ruling the East, Octavius the West,
and Lepidus taking Africa — that is, the Cartha-
ginian province, which included neitlier Egypt
nor Numidia. Unhappily for Antonius, the
queen of Egypt was among his vassals, and she
ensnared him. He gave himself up to voluptu-
ous dalliance with Cleopatra at Alexandria, while
the cool intriguer, Octavius, at Rome, worked
unceasingly to solidify and increase his power.
After six years had passed, the young Caesar
was ready to put Lepidus out of his way, which
he did mercifully, by sending him into exile.
After five years more, he launched his legions
and his war galleys against Antonius, with the
full sanction of the Roman senate and people.
The sea-fight at Actium (B. C. 31) gave Octavius
the whole empire, and both Antonius and Cleo-
patra committed suicide after flying to Egypt.
The kingdom of the Ptolemies was now extin-
guished and became a Roman province in due
form.
Octavius (Augustus) Supreme.
Octavius was now more securely absolute as
the ruler of Rome and its great empire than
Sulla or Julius Ctesar had been, and he main-
tained that sovereignty without challenge for
forty-five years, until his death. He received
from the Senate the honorary title of "Augus-
tus," by which he is most commonly known.
For official titles, he took none but those which
had belonged to the institutions of the Republic,
and were familiarly known. He was Imperator,
as his uncle had been. He was Princeps, or
head of the Senate; he was Censor; he wa»
Tribune ; he was Supreme Pontiff. All the great
offices of the Republic he kept alive, and in-
geniously constructed his sovereignty by uniting
their powers in himself.
Organization of the Empire.
The historical position of Augustus, as the
real founder of the Roman Empire, is unique in
its grandeur; and yet History has dealt con-
temptuously, for the most part, with his name.
His character has been looked upon, to use the
language of De Quincey, as ' ' positively repulsive,
in the very highest degree." "A cool head,"
wrote Gibbon of him, "an unfeehng heart, and
a cowardly disposition, prompted him, at the
age of nineteen, to assume the mask of hypoc-
risy, which he never afterwards laid aside."
And again: "His virtues, and even his vices,
were artificial ; and according to the various dic-
tates of his interest, he was at first the enemy,
and at last the father, of the Roman world."
Yet, how can we deny surpassing high qualities
of some description to a man who set the shat-
tered Roman Republic, with all its democratic
bases broken up, ou a new — an imperial — foun-
dation, so gently that it suffered no further shock,
and so solidly that it endured, in whole or in
part, for a millenium and a half ?
In the reign of Augustus the Empire was
consolidated and organized; it was not much
extended. The frontiers were carried to the
Danube, throughout, and the subjugation of Spain
was made complete. Augustus generally dis-
couraged wars of conquest. His ambitious step-
sons, Drusus and Tiberius, persuaded him into
several expeditions beyond the Rhine, against
the restless German nations, which perpetually
menaced the borders of Gaul ; but these gained
no permanent footing in the Teutonic territory.
They led, on the contrar}', to a fearful disaster
(A.D. 9), near the close of the reign of Augustus,
when three legions, under Varus, were destroyed
in the Teutoburg Forest by a great combination
of the tribes, planned and conducted by a young
chieftain named Hermann, or Arminius, who is
the national hero of Germany to this day.
The policy of Drusus in strongly fortifying the
northern frontier against the Germans left marks
which are conspicuously visible at the present
day. From the fifty fortresses which he is said
to have built along the line sprang many impor-
tant modern cities, — Basel, Strasburg, Worms,
Mainz, Bingen, Coblenz, Bonn, Cologne, and
Leyden, among the number. From similar forts
on the Dauubiaii frontier rose Vienna, Regens-
burg and Passau.
Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius and Nero.
Augustus died A. D. 11, and was succeeded in
his honors, his offices, and his powers, by his
step-son, Tiberius Claudius Nero, whom he had
adopted. Tiberius, during most of his reign,
was a vigorous ruler, but a detestable man, unless
his subjects belied him, which some historians
suspect. Another attempt at the conquest of
Germany was made by his nephew Germanicus,
son of Drusus; but the jealousy of the emperor
checked it, and Germanicus died soon after, be-
lieving that he had been poisoned. A son of
Germanicus, Caius, better known by his nick-
name of Caligula, succeeded to the throne on the
death of Tiberius (A. D. 37), and was the first of
1032
EUROPE.
Vespasian
to Hadrian.
EUROPE.
many emperors to be crazed and made beast-
like, in lust, cruelty and senselessness, by the
awful, unbounded power which passed into their
hands. The Empire bore his madness for three
years, and then he was murdered by his own
guards. The Senate had thouglits now of restor-
ing the commonwealth, and debated the question
for a day; but the soldiers of the praetorian
guard took it out of their hands, and decided it,
by proclaiming Tiberius Claudius (A. D. 41), a
brother of Gcrmanicus, and uncle of the em-
^peror just slain. Claudius was weak of body
land mind, but not vicious, and his reign was dis-
Itinctly one of improvement and advance in the
Empire. He began the conquest of Britain,
which the Romans had neglected since Ca;sar's
time, and he opened the Senate to the provincials
of Gaul. He had two wives of infamous charac-
ter, and the later one of these, Agrippina, brought
him a son, not his own, whom he adopted, and
who succeeded him (A.D. 54). This was Nero, of
foul memory, who was madman and monster in
as sinister a combination as history can show.
During the reign of Nero, the spread of Chris-
tianity, which had been silently making its way
from Judsea into all parts of the Empire, began
to attract the attention of men in public place,
and the first persecution of its disciples took
place (A. D. 64). A great fire occurred in Rome,
which the hated emperor was believed to have
caused ; but he found it convenient to accuse the
Christians of the deed, and large numbers of
them were put to death in horrible ways.
Vespasian and his Sons.
Nero was tolerated for fourteen years, until
the soldiers in the provinces rose against him,
and he committed suicide (A. D. 68) to escape a
worse death. Then followed a year of civil war
between rival emperors • — Galba, Otho, Vitellius,
and Vespasian — proclaimed by different bodies
of soldiers in various parts of the Empire. The
struggle ended in favor of Vespasian, a rude,
strong soldier, who purged the government,
disciplined the army, and brought society baclt
toward simpler and decenter ways. The great
revolt of the Jews (A. D. 66-70) had broken out
before he received the purple, and he was com-
manding in Judaea when Nero fell. The siege,
capture and destruction of Jeru.salem was ac-
complished by his son Titus. A more formida-
ble revolt in the West (A. D. 69) was begun by
the Batavians, a German tribe which occupied
part of the Netherland territory, near the mouth
of the Rhine. They were joined by neighboring
Gauls and bj' disaffected Roman legionaries, and
they received help from their German kindred
on the northern side of the Rliine. The revolt,
led by a chieftain named Civilis, who had served
in the Roman army, was overcome with extreme
difficulty.
Vespasian was more than worthily succeeded
(A. D. 79) by liis elder son, Titus, whose subjects
so admired his many virtues that lie was called
"the delight of the human race." His short
reign, however, was one of calamities: fire at
Rome, a great pestilence, and the frightful erup-
tion of Vesuvius which destroyed Herculaneum
and Pompeii. After Titus came his younger
brother Domitian (A. D. 81), who proved to be
another creature of the monstrous species that
appeared so often in the series of Roman emper-
ors. The conquest of southern Britain (modern
England) was completed in his reign by an able
soldier, Agricola, who fought the Caledonians of
the North, but was recalled before subduing them.
Domitian was murdered by his own servants
(A. D. 96), after a reign of fifteen years.
Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian.
Rome and the Empire were happy at last in
the choice that was made of a sovereign to suc-
ceed the hateful son of Vespasian. Not the sol-
diery, but the Senate, made the choice, and it
fell on one of their number, Cocceius Nerva, who
was already an aged man. He wore the purple
but sixteen months, and his single great distinc-
tion in Roman history is, that he introduced to
the imperial succession a line of the noblest men
who ever sat in the seat of the Ctesars. The first
of these was the soldier Trajan, whom Nerva
adopted and associated with himself in authority.
When Nerva died (A. D. 97), his son by adoption
ascended the throne with no opposition. The
new Emperor was simple and plain in his habits
and manners of life ; he was honest and open in
all his dealings with men ; he was void of sus-
picion, and of malice and jealousy no less. He
gave careful attention to the business of state
and was wise in his administration of affairs, im-
proving roads, encouraging trade, helping agri-
culture, and developing the resources- of the Em-
pire in very prudent and practical ways. But
he was a soldier, fond of war, and he unwisely
reopened the career of conquest which had been
almost closed for the Empire since Pompeius
came back from the East. A threatening king-
dom having risen among the Dacians, in the
country north of the lower Danube — the Tran-
sylvania and Roumaniaof the present day — he at-
tacked and crushed it, in a series of vigorous
campaigns (A. D. 101-106), and annexed the
whole territory to the dominion of Rome. He
then garrisoned and colonized the country, and
Romanized it so completely that it keeps the
Roman name, and its language to this day is of
the Latin stock, though Goths, Huns, Bulgarians
and Slavs have swept it in successive invasions,
and held it among their conquests for centuries
at a time. In the East, he ravaged the terri-
tory of the Parthian king, entered his capital and
added Mesopotamia, Armenia, and Arabia Petrsea
to the list of Roman provinces. But he died
(A. D. 117) little satisfied with the results of his
eastern campaigns.
His successor abandoned them, and none have
doubted that he did well; becau!;e the Empire
was weakened by the new frontier in Asia which
Trajan gave it to defend. His Dacian conquests
were kept, but all beyond the Euphrates in the
East were given up. Tlie successor who did this
was Hadrian, a kinsman, whom the Emperor
adopted in his last hours. Until near the close
of his life, Hadrian ranked among the best of the
emperors. Rome saw little of him, and resented
his incessant ti-avels through every i)art of his
great realm. His manifest preference for Alliens
where he lingered longest, and whicli flourished
anew under his patronage, was still more dis-
pleasing to the ancient capital. For the Emperor
was a man of cultivation, fond of literature, phi-
losophy and art, though busy with the cares of
State. In his later years he was afflicted with a
disease which poisoned his nature by its torments,
filled his mind with dark suspicions, and made
him fitfully tyrannical and cruel. The event most
1033
EUROPE.
The Antonines,
and after.
EUROPE.
notable in his generally peaceful and prosperous
reign was the renewed and final revolt of the
Jews, under Barchochebas, which resulted in
their total expulsion from Jerusalem, and its con-
version into a heathen city, with a Roman name.
The Antonines.
Hadrian had adopted before his death (A. D.
138) a man of blameless character, Titus Aurelius
Antoninus, who received from his subjects, when
he became Emperor, the appellation "Pius," to
signify the dutiful reverence and kindliness of
his disposition. He justified the name of Anto-
ninus Pius, by which he is historically known, and
his reign, though disturbed by some troubles on
the distant borders of the Empire, was happy for
Ms subjects in nearly all respects. "No great
deeds are told of him, save this, perhaps the great-
est, that he secured the love and happiness of
those he ruled " (Capes).
Like so many of the emperors, Antoninus had
no son of his own ; but even before he came to
the throne, and at the request of Hadrian, he had
adopted a young lad who won the heart of the
late Emperor while still a child. The family
name of this son by adoption was Verus, and he
was of Spanish descent ; the name which he took,
in his new relationship, was Marcus Aurelius
Antoninus. It is unquestionably the most illus-
trious name in the whole imperial line, from
Augustus to the last Constantine, and made so,
not so much by deeds as by character. He gave
the world the solitary example of a philosopher
upon the throne. There have been a few — a very
few — surpassingly good men in kingly places;
but there has never been another whose soul was
lifted to so serene a height above the sovereignty
of his station. Unlimited power tempted no form
of selfishness in him ; he saw nothing in his im-
perial exaltation but the duties which it imposed.
His mind was meditative, and inclined him to the
studious life ; but he compelled himself to be a
man of vigor and activity in affairs. He dis-
liked war ; but he spent years of his life in camp
on the frontiers ; because it fell to his lot to en-
counter the first great onset of the barbarian na-
tions of the north, which never ceased from
that time to beat against the barriers of the Em-
pire until they had broken them down. His
struggle was on the line of the Danube, with the
tribes of the Marcomanni, the Quadi, the Van-
dals, and others of less formidable power. He
held them back, but the resources of the Empire
were overstrained and weakened lastingly by the
effort. For the first time, too, there were colo-
nies of barbarians brought into the Empire,
from beyond its lines, to be settled for the supply
of soldiers to the armies of Rome. It was a
dangerous sign of Roman decay and a fatal policy
to begin. Tlie decline of the great world-power
was, in truth, already well advanced, and the
century of good emperors which ended when
Marcus Aurelius died (A. D. 180), only retarded,
and did not arrest, the progress of mortal mala-
dies in the state.
From Commodus to Caracalla.
The best of emperors, was followed on the
throne by a son, Commodus, who went mad, like
Nero and Caligula, with the drunkenness of
power, and who was killed (A. D. 193) by his
own servants, after a reign of twelve years. The
soldiers of the praetorian guard now took upon
themselves the making of emperors, and placed
two upon the throne — first, Pertinax, an aged
senator, whom they murdered the next 3'ear, and
then Didius Julianus, likewise a senator, to
whom, as the highest bidder, they sold the purple.
Again, as after Nero's death, the armies on the
frontiers put forward, each, a rival claimant,
and there was war between the competitors. The
victor who became sovereign was Septimius Se-
verus (A. D. 194-311), who had been in com-
mand on the Danube. He was an able soldier,
and waged war with success against the Par-
thians in the East, and with the Caledonians in
Britain, which latter he could not subdue. Of
his two sons, the elder, nicknamed Caracalla (A. D.
311-317), killed his brother with his own hands,
and tortured the Roman world with his brutali-
ties for six years, when he fell under the stroke
of an assassin. The reign of this foul beast
brought one striking change to the Empire. An
imperial edict wiped away the last distinction
between Romans and Provincials, giving citizen-
ship to every free inhabitant of the Empire.
"Rome from this date became constitutionally
an empire, and ceased to be merely a mimici-
pality. The city had become the world, or,
viewed from the other side, the world had be-
come ' the City ' " (Merivale).
Anarchy and Decay.
The period of sixty-seven years from the mur-
der of Caracalla to the accession of Diocletian —
when a great constitutional change occurred —
demands little space in a sketch like this. The
weakening of the Empire by causes inherent in
its social and political structure, — the chief among
which were the deadly influence of its system of
slavery and the paralyzing effects of its autoc-
racy, — went on at an increasing rate, while dis-
order grew nearly to the pitch of anarchy, com-
plete. There were twenty-two emperors in the
term, which scarcely exceeded that of two genera-
tions of men. Nineteen of these were taken from
the throne by violent deaths, through mutiny or
murder, while one fell in battle, and another was
held captive in Persia till he died. Only five
among these twenty -two ephemeral lords of the
world, — namely Alexander Severus, Decius (who
was a vigorous soldier and ruler, but who perse-
cuted the Christians with exceptional cruelty),
Claudius, Aurelian, and Probus, — can be credited
with any personal weight or worth in the history
of the time ; and they held power too briefly to
make any notable mark.
The distractions of the time were made worse
by a great number of local ' ' tyrants, " as they
were called — military adventurers who rose in
different parts of the Empire and established
themselves for a time in authority over some dis-
trict, large or small. In the reign of Gallienus
(A. D. 360-368) there were nineteen of these petty
" imperators," and they were spoken of as the
"thirty tyrants." The more important of the
" provincial empires " thus created were those of
Postumus, in Gaul, and of Odenatus of Palmyra.
The latter, under Zenobia, queen and successor
of Odenatus, became a really imposing monarchy,
until it was overthrown by Aurelian, A. D. 373.
The Teutonic Nations.
The Germanic nations beyond the Rhine and
the Danube had, by this time, improved their
organization, and many of the tribes formerly
1034
EUROPE.
Constantine and
Imperial Christianity.
EUROPE.
separated and independent were now gathered
into powerful confederations. The most formida-
ble of these leagues in the West was that which
acquired the common name of tlie Franks, or Free-
men, and which was made up of the peoples oc-
cupying territory along the course of the Lower
Rhine. Another of nearly equal power, dominat-
ing the German side of the Upper Rhine and tlie
headwaters of the Danube, is believed to have
absorbed the tribes which had been known in the
previous century as Boii, Marcomanni, Quadi,
and others. The general name it received was
that of the Alemanni. The Alemanni were in
Intimate association with the Suevi, and little is
known of the distinction that existed between the
two. They had now begun to make incursions
across the Rhine, but were driven back in 238.
Farther to the East, on the Lower Danube, a
still more dangerous horde was now threatening
the flanks of the Empire in its European domain.
These were Goths, a people akin, without doiibt,
to the Swedes, Norsemen and Danes ; but wnence
and when they made their way to the neighbor-
hood of the Black Sea is a question in dispute.
It was in the reign of Caracalla that the Romans
became first aware of their presence in the coun-
try since known as the Ukraine. A few years
later, when Alexander Severus was on the throne,
they began to make incursions into Dacia. Dur-
ing the reign of Philip the Arabian (A. D. 244-
249) they passed through Dacia, crossed the
Danube, and invaded Moesia (modern Bulgaria).
In their next invasion (A. D. 251) they passed the
Balkans, defeated the Romans in two terrible
battles, the last of which cost the reigning Em-
peror, Decius, his life, and destroyed the city of
Philippopohs, with 100,000 of its people. But
when, a few years later, they attempted to take
possession of even Thrace and Macedonia, they
were crushingly defeated by the Emperor Clau-
dius, whose successor Aurelian made peace by
surrendering to tliem the whole province of Dacia
(A. D. 270), where they settled, giving the Em-
pire no disturbance for nearly a hundred years.
Before this occurred, the Goths, having acquired
the little kingdom of Bosporus (the modern
Crimea) had begun to launch a piratical navy,
which plundered the coast cities of Asia Minor
and Greece, including Athens itself.
On the Asiatic side of the Empire a new power,
a revived and regenerated Persian monarchy,
had risen out of the ruins of the Parthian king-
dom, which it overthrew, and had begun with-
out delay to contest the rule of Rome in the East.
Diocletian.
Briefly described, this was the state and situa-
tion of the Roman Empire when Diocletian, an
able Ulyrian soldier, came to the throne (A. D.
284). His accession marks a new epoch. ' ' From
this time," says Dean Merivale, " the old names
of the Republic, the consuls, the tribunes, and
the Senate itself, cease, even if still existing, to
have any political significance. " ' ' The empire
of Rome is henceforth an Oriental sovereignty."
But the changes which Diocletian made in the
organization and administration of the Empire,
if they did weigh it down with a yet more crush-
ing autocracy and contribute to its exhaustion
in the end, did also, for the time, stop the wast-
ing of its last energies, and gather them in hand
for potent use. It can hardly be doubted that
he lengthened the term of its career.
Finding that one man in the exercise of supreine
sovereignty, as absolute as he wished to make it,
could not give sufficient care to every part of the
vast realm, he first associated one Maximian with
himself, on equal terms, as Emperor, or Augustus,
and six years later (A. D. 293) he selected two
others from among his generals and invested
them with a subordinate sovereignty, giving them
the title of ' ' Cssars. " The arrangement appears
to have worked satisfactorily while Diocletian
remained at the head of his imperial college. But
in 305 he wearied of the splendid burden that he
bore, and abdicated the throne, unwillingly fol-
lowed by his associate, Maximian. The two
Ciesars, Constantius and Galerius, were then ad-
vanced to the Imperial rank, and two new Csesars
were named.
Jealousies, quarrels, and civil war were soon
rending the Empire again. The details are un-
important.
Constantine and Christianity.
After nine years of struggle, two competitors
emerged (A. D. 314) alone, and divided the Em-
pire between them. They were Constantine, son
of Constantius, the Cfesar, and one Licinius.
After nine years more, Licinius had disappeared,
defeated and put to death, and Constantine (A. D.
323) shared the sovereignty of Rome with none.
In its final stages, the contest had become,
practically, a trial of strength between expiring
Paganism in the Roman world and militant
Christianity, now grown to great strength. _ The
shrewd adventurer Constantine saw the polltica'l
importance to which the Christian Church had
risen, and identified himself with it by a " con-
version " which has glorified his name most un-
deservedly. If to be a Christian with sincerity
is to be a good man, then Constantine was none ;
for his life was full of evil deeds, after he pro-
fessed the religion of Christ, even more than be-
fore. ' ' He poured out the best and noblest blood
in torrents, more especially of those nearly con-
nected with himself. ... In a palace which he
had made a desert, the murderer of his father-in-
law, his brothers-in-law, his sister, his wife, his
son, and his nephew, must have felt the stings of
remorse, if hypocritical priests and courtier
bishops had not lulled his conscience to rest"
(Sismondi).
But the so-called "conversion" of Constantine
was an event of vast import in history. It
changed immensely, and with suddenness, the
position, the state, the influence, and very con-
siderably the character and spirit of the Christian
Church. The hierarchy of the Church became,
almost at once, the greatest power in the Empire,
next to the Emperor himself, and its political as-
sociations, which were dangerous from the be-
ginning, soon proved nearly fatal to Its spiritual
integrity. ' ' Both the purity and the freedom of
the Church were in danger of being lost. State
and Church were beginning an amalgamation
fraught with peril. The State was becoming a
kind of Church, and the Church a kind of Sta,te.
The Emperor preached and summoned councils,
called himself, though half in jest, a ' bishop,'
and the bishops had become State officials, who,
like the high dignitaries of the Empire, travelled
by the imperial courier-service, and frequented
the ante-chambers of the palaces in Constanti-
nople." "The Emperor determined what doc-
trines were to prevail in the Church, and banished
1035
EUROPE.
Tlie Goihs
in the Empire.
EUROPE.
Arius to-day and Athanasius to-morrow. " " The
Church was surfeited with property and privi-
leges. Tlie Emperor, a poor financier, impover-
ished the Empire to enrich " it (Uhlhorn). That
Christianity had shared the gain of the Christian
Church from these great changes, is very ques-
tionable.
By another event of his reign, Constantino
marked it in history with lasting effect. He re-
built with magnificence the Greek city of Byzan-
tium on the Bosphorus, transferred to it his im-
perial residence, and raised it to a nominal equality
with Rome, but to official and practical superior-
ity, as the capital of the Empire. The old Rome
dwindled in rank and prestige from that day;
the new Rome — the city of Constantine, or Con-
stantinople — rose to the supreme place in the
€yes and the imaginations of men.
Julian and the Pagan Revival.
That Constantine added the abilities of a states-
man to the unscrupulous cleverness of an ad-
venturer is not to be disputed ; but he failed to
give proof of this when he divided the Empire
between liis three sons at his death (A. D. 337).
The inevitable civil wars ensued, until, after six-
teen years, one survivor gathered the whole realm
under his scepter again. He (Constantius), who
debased and disgraced the Church more than his
father had done, was succeeded (A. D. 361) by his
cousin, Julian, an honest, thoughtful, strong man,
who, not unnaturally, preferred the old pagan
Greek philosophy to the kind of Cliristianity
which he had seen flourishing at the Byzantine
court. He i^ublicly restored the worship of the
ancient gods of Greece and Rome ; he excluded
Christians from the schools, and bestowed his
favor on those who scorned the Church; but
he entered on no violent persecution. His reign
was brief, lasting only two years. He perished
in a hapless expedition against the Persians, by
whom the Empire was now almost incessantly
harassed.
Valentinian and Valens.
His successor, Jovian, whom the anny elected,
died in seven moutlis; but Valentinian, another
soldier, raised by his comrades to the throne,
reigned vigorously for eleven years. He associ-
ated his brother, Valens, with him in the sov-
ereignty, assigning the latter to the East, while he
took the administration of the West.
Until the death of Valentinian, in 375, the
northern frontiers of the Empire, along the
Rhine and the Danube, were well defended.
Julian had commanded in Gaul, with Paris for
his capital, six years before he became Emperor,
and had organized its defence most effectively.
Valentinian maintained the line with success
against the Alenianni; while his lieutenant, Theo-
dosius, delivered Roman Britain from the ruinous
attacks of the Scots and Picts of its northern
region. On the Danube, there continued to be
peace with the Goths, who held back all other
barbarians from that northeastern border.
The Goths in the Empire.
But the <lcatli of Valentinian was the beginning
of fatal calamities. His brother, Valens, had
none of his capability or his vigor, and was un-
equal to such a crisis as now occurred. The terri-
ble nation of the Huns had entered Europe from
the Asiatic steppes, and the Western Goths, or
Visigoths, fled before them. These fugitives
begged to be permitted to cross the Danube and
settle on vacant lands in McEsia and Thrace.
Valens consented, and the whole Visigothic na-
tion, 300,000 warriors, with their women and
children, passed the river (A. D. 376). It is pos-
sible that they might, by fair treatment, have
been converted into loyal citizens, and useful de-
fenders of the land. But the corrupt officials of
the court took advantage of their dependent
state, and wrung extortionate prices from them
for disgusting food, until they rose in desperation
and wasted Thrace with fire and sword. Fresh
bodies of Ostrogoths (Eastern Goths) and other
barbarians came over to join them (A. D. 378);
the Roman armies were beaten in two great bat-
tles, and Valens, the Emperor, was slain. The
victorious Goths swept on to the very walls of
Constantinople, which they could not surmount,
and the whole open country, from the Black Sea
to the Adriatic, was ravaged by them at will.
Theodosius.
In the meantime, the western division of the
Empire had passed, on the death of Valentinian,
under the nominal rule of his two young sons,
Gratian, aged sixteen, and Valentinian II., aged
four. Gratian had made an attempt to bring help
to his uncle Valens ; but the latter fought his fatal
battle while the boy emperor was on the way, and
the latter, upon hearing of it, turned back. Then
Gratian performed his one great act. He sought
a colleague, and called to the throne the most
promising young soldier of the day. This was
Theodosius, whose father, Count Theodosius, the
deliverer of Britain, had been put to death by
Valens, on some jealous accusation, only three
years before. The new Emperor took the East
for his realm, having Gratian and Valentinian II.
for colleagues in the West. He speedily checked
the ravages of the Goths and rcstoi'cd the confi-
dence of the Roman soldiers. Then he brought
diplomacy to bear upon the dangerous situation,
and succeeded in arranging a peace with the
Gothic chieftains, which enlisted them in the im-
perial service with forty thousand of their men.
But they retained their distinctive organization,
under their own chiefs, and were called " fojder-
ati," or allies. This concession of a semi-inde-
pendence to so great a body of armed barbarians
in the heart of the Empire was a fatal mistake,
as was proved before many years.
For the time being it secured peace, and gave
Theodosius opportunity to attend to other things.
The controversies of the Church were among
the subjects of his consideration, and by taking
the side of the Athanasians, whom his predecessor
had persecuted, he gave a final victory to Trini-
tarianism, in the Roman world. His reign was
signalized, moreover, by the formal, official abo-
lition of paganism at Rome.
The weak but amiable Gratian, reigning at
Paris, lost his throne and his life, in 383. as the
consequence of a revolt which began in Britain
and spread to Gaul. The successfid rebel and
usurper, Maximus, seemed so strong that Theo-
dosius made terms with him, and acknowledged
his sovereignty for a number of years. But, not
content with a dominion which embraced Brit-
ain, Gaul and Spain, Maximus sought, after a
time, to add Italy, where the youth, Valentinian
II., was still enthroned (at Milan, not Rome),
under the tutelage of his mother. Valentinian
1036
EUROPE.
Division, decay,
and the coming of Alaric.
EUROPE.
fled to Theodosius ; the Eastern Emperor adopted
his cause, and restored him to liis throne, defeat-
ing the usurper and putting him to death (A. D.
388). Four years later Valentinian II. died;
another usurper arose, and again Theodosius
(A.. D. 394) recovered the throne.
Final Division of the Empire.
Theodosius was now alone in the sovereignty.
The Empire was once more, and for the last time,
in its full extent, united under a single lord. It
remained so for but a few months. At the be-
ginning of the year 39.5, Theodosius died, and
his two weak sons, Arcadius and Honorius, divi-
ded the perishing Empire between them, only to
augment, in its more venerable seat, the distress
of the impending fall.
Arcadius, at the age of eighteen, took the gov-
ernment of the East ; Honorius, a child of eleven,
gave his name to the administration of the West.
Each emperor was under the guardianship of a
minister chosen by Theodosius before he died.
Rutinus, who held authority at Constantinople,
was worthless in all ways ; Stilicho, who held the
reins at Milan, was a Vandal by birth, a soldier
and a statesman of vigorous powers.
Decay of the Western Empire.
The West seemed more fortunate than the
East, in this division ; yet the evil days now fast
coming near fell crushingly on the older Rome,
while the New Rome lived through them, and
endured for a thousand years. No doubt the
Empire had weakened more on its elder side;
had suffered more exhaustion of vital powers.
It had little organic vitality now left in it. If
no swarms of barbaric invaders had been waiting
and watching at its doors, and pressing upon it
from every point with increasing fierceness, it
seems i)robable that it would have gone to pieces
ere long through mere decay. And if, on the
other hand, it could have kept the vigorous life
of its best republican days, it might have defied
Teuton and Slav forever. But all the diseases,
political and social, which the Republic engen-
dered in itself, had been steadily consuming the
state, with their virulence even increased, since
it took on the imperial constitution. All that
imperialism did was to gather waning energies
in hand, and make the most of them for external
use. It stopped no decay. The industrial palsy,
induced by an ever-widening system of slave-
labor, continued to spread. Production de-
creased ; the sum of wealth shrunk in the hands
of each succeeding generation ; and yet the great
fortunes and great estates grew bigger from age
to age. The gulf between rich and poor opened
deeper and wider, and the bridges once built
across it by middle-class thrift were fallen down.
The burden of imperial government had become
an unendurable weight; the provincial munici-
palities, which had once been healthy centers of
a local political life, were strangled by the nets
of taxation flung over them. Men sought refuge
even in death from the magistracies which made
them responsible to the imperial treasury for
revenues which they could not collect. Popula-
tion dwindled, year by year. Recruiting from
the body of citizens for the common needs of the
army became more impossible. The state was
fully dependent, at last, on barbaric mercenaries
of one tribe for its defence against barbaric in-
vaders of another ; and it was no longer able, as
of old, to impress its savage servitors with awe
of its majesty and its name.
Stilicho and Alaric.
Stilicho, for a time, stoutly breasted the rising
flood of disaster. He checked the Picts and
Scots of Northern Britain, and the Alemanni and
their allies on the frontiers of Gaul. But now
there arose again the more dreadful barbarian
host which had footing in the Empire itself, and
which Theodosius had taken into pay. The
Visigoths elected a king (A. D. 393), and were
persuaded with ease to carve a kingdom for him
out of the domain which seemed waiting to be
snatched from one or both of the feeble monarchs,
who sat in mockery of state at Constantinople
and Milan. Alaric, the new Gothic king, moved
first against the capital on the Bosphorus ; but
Ruflnus persuaded him to pass on into Greece,
where he went pillaging and destroying for a
year. Stilicho, the one manly defender of the
Empire, came over from Italy with an army to
oppose him ; but he was stopped on the eve of
battle by orders from the Eastern Court, which
sent him back, as an officious meddler. This act
of mischief and malice was the last that Rufinus
could do. He was murdered, soon afterwards,
and Arcadius, being free from his influence,
then called upon Stilicho for help. The latter
came once more to deliver Greece, and did so
with success. But Alaric, though expelled from
the peninsula, was neither crushed nor disarmed,
and the Eastern Court had still to make terms
with him. It did so for the moment by conferring
on him the government of that part of Illyricum
which the Servia and Bosnia of the present day
coincide with, very nearly. He rested there in
peace for four years, and then (A. D. 400) he
called his people to arms again, and led the
whole nation, men, women and children, into
Italy. The Emperor, Honorius, fled from Milan
to Ravenna, which, being a safe shelter behind
marshes and streams, became tlie seat of the
court for years tliereafter. Stilicho, stripping
Britain and Gaul of troops, gathered forces with
which, at Eastertide in the year 403, and again
in the following year, he defeated the Goths, and
forced them to retreat.
He had scarcely rested from these exertions,
when the valiant Stilicho was called upon to con-
front a more savage leader, Radagaisus by name,
who came from beyond the lines (A. D. 405),
with a vast swarm of mixed warriors from many
tribes pouring after him across the Alps. Again
Stilicho, by superior skill, worsted the invaders,
entrapping them in the mountains near Fiesole
(modern Florence), and starving them there till
they yielded themselves to slavery and their
chieftain to death.
This was the last great service to the dying
Roman state which Stilicho was permitted to do.
Undermined by the jealousies of the cowardly
court at Ravenna, he seems to have lost suddenly
the power by which he held himself so high.
He was accused of treasonable designs and was
seized and instantly executed, by the Emperor's
command.
Alaric and his Goths in Rome.
Stilicho dead, there was no one in Italy for
Alaric to fear, and he promptly returned across
the Alps, with the nation of the Visigoths behind
him. There was no resistance to his march, and
1037
EUROPE.
7%€ inriish
of Barbarians.
EUROPE.
he advanced straight upon Rome. He did not
assail the walls, but sat down before the gates
(A. D. 408), until the starving citizens paid him
a great ransom in silver and gold and precious
spices and silken robes. With this booty he re-
tired for the winter into Tuscany, where his army
was swelled by thousands of fugitive barbarian
slaves, and by reinforcements of Goths and Huns.
From his camp he opened negotiations with
Honorius, demanding the government of Dal-
matia, Venetia and Noricum, with certain sub-
sidies of money and corn. The contemptible
court, skulking at Ravenna, could neither make
war nor make concessions, and it soon exhausted
the patience of the barbarian by its puerilities.
He marched again to Rome (A. D. 409), seized
the port of Ostia, with its supplies of grain, and
forced the helpless capital to join him in pro-
claiming a rival emperor. The prefect of the
city, one Attains, accepted the purple at his
hands, and played the puppet for a few months
in imperial robes. But the scheme proved un-
profitable, Attains was deposed, and negotiations
were reopened with Honorius. Their only result
was a fresh provocation which ssnt Alaric once
more against Rome, and this time with wrath and
vengeance in his heart. Then the great, august
capital of the world was entered, through treach-
ery or by surprise, on the night of the 24th of
August, 410, and suffered all that the lust, the
ferocity and the greed of a barbarous army let
loose could inflict on an unresisting city. It was
her first experience of that supreme catastrophe
of war, since Brennus and the Gauls came in;
but it was not to be the last.
From the sack of Rome, Alaric moved south-
ward, intending to conquer Sicily ; but a sudden
illness brought his career to an end.
The Barbarians Swarming in.
The Empire was now like a dying quarry,
pulled down by fierce hunting packs and torn on
every side. The Goths were at its throat ; the
tribes of Germany — Sueves, Vandals, Burgun-
dians, Alans — had leaped the Rhine (A. D. 406)
and swarmed upon its flanks, throughout Gaul
and Spain. The inrush began after Stilicho, to
defend Italy against Alaric and Radagaisus, had
stripped the frontiers of troops. Sueves, Van-
dals, and Alans passed slowly through the prov-
inces, devouring their wealth and making havoc
of their civilization as they went. After three
years, they had reached and surmounted tlie Pyr-
enees, and were spreading the same destruction
through Spain.
The confederated tribes of the Franks had al-
ready been admitted as allies into northwestern
Gaid, and were settled there in peace. At first,
they stood faithful to the Roman alliance, and
valiantly resisted the new invasion ; but its num-
bers overpowered them, and tlieir fidelity gave
way when they saw the pillage of the doomed
provinces going on. They presently joined the
barbarous mob, and with an energy which se-
cured the lion's sliare of plunder and domain.
The Burgundians did not follow the Vandals
and Sueves to the southwest, but took possession
of the left bank of the middle Rhine, whence
they gradually spread into western Switzerland
and Savoy, and down the valleys of the Rhone
and Saone, establishing in time an important
kingdom, to which they gave their name.
No help from Ravenna or Rome came to the
perishing provincials of Gaul in the extremity of
their distress ; but a pretender arose in Britain, who
assumed the imperial title and promised deliver-
ance. He crossed over to Gaul in 407 and was
welcomed with eagerness, both there and in
Spain, to which he advanced. He gained some
success, partly by enlisting and partly by resist-
ing the invaders ; but his career was brief. Other
pretenders appeared in various provinces of the
West ; but the anarchy of the time was too great
for any authority, legitimate or revolutionary, to
establish itself.
The Visigoths in Gaul.
And, now, into the tempting country of the
afflicted Gauls, already crowded with rapacious
freebooters, the Visigoths made their way. Their
new king, Ataulph, or Adolphus, who succeeded
Alaric, passed into Gaul, but not commissioned,
as sometimes stated, to restore the imperial
sovereignty there. He moved with his nation, as
Alaric had moved, and Italy, by his departure,
was relieved; but Narbonne, Toulouse, Bordeaux,
and the Aquitainian country at large, was soon
subject to his command (A. D. 412-419), He
passed the Pyrenees and entered Spain, where an
assassin took his life. His successor, Wallia,
drove the Sueves into the mountains and the Van-
dals into the South ; but did not take possession
of the country until a later time. The Visigoths,
returning to Aquitaine, found there, at last, the
kingdom which Alaric set out from the Danube
to seek, and they were established in it with the
Roman Emperor's consent. It was known as the
kingdom of Gothia, or Septimania, but is more
commonly called, from its capital, the kingdom
of Toulouse.
The Eastern Empire.
Affairs in the Eastern Empire had never arrived
at so desperate a state as in the AVest. With
the departure of Alaric, it had been relieved from
its most dangerous immediate foe. There had
been tumults, disorders, assassinations, court
conspiracies, fierce religious strifes, and every
evidence of a government with no settled au-
thority and no title to respect ; but yet the Em-
pire stood and was not yet seriously shaken. In
408 Arcadius died. His death was no loss, though
he left an infant son to take his place ; for he also
left a daughter, Pulcheria, who proved to be a
woman of rare virtue and talents, and who reigned
in her brother's name.
Aetius and the Huns.
The imbecile Honorius, with whose name the
failing sovereignty of Rome had been so dis-
astrously linked for eight and twenty years, died
in 423. An infant nephew was his heir, and Pla-
cidia, the mother, ruled at Ravenna for a fourth
of a century, in the name of her child. Her reign
was far stronger than her wretched brother's had
been, because she gave loyal support to a valiant
and able man. who stood at her side. Aetius,
her minister, did all, perhaps, that man could do
to hold some parts of Gaul, and to play barbarian
against barbarian — Hun against Goth and Frank
— in skilful diplomacy and courageous war. But
nothing that he won was any lasting gain.
In his youth, Aetius had been a hostage in the
camps of both the Goths and the Huns, and had
made acquaintances among the chieftains of both
1038
EUROPE.
Huns and
Vandals.
EUROPE.
■which served his policy many times. He had
employed the terrible Huns in the early years of
his ministry, and perhaps they had learned too
much of the weakness of the Roman State. These
most fearful of all the barbarian peoples then
surging in Europe had been settled, for some
years, in the region since called Hungary, under
Attila, their most formidable king. He terrorized
all the surrounding lands and exercised a lord-
ship from the Caspian to the Baltic and the Rhine.
The imperial court at the East stooped to pay
him annual tribute for abstaining from the in-
vasion of its domain. But in 450, when the re-
gent Pulcheria became Empress of the East, by
her brother's death, and married a brave old
soldier, Marcian, in order to give him the gov-
erning power, a new tone was heard in the voice
from Constantinople which answered Attila's de-
mands.
Defeat of Attila.
The Hun then appears to have seen that the
sinking Empire of the West offered a more cer-
tain victim to his terrors and his arms, and he
turned them to that side. First forming an al-
liance with the Vandals (who had crossed from
Spain to Africa in 439, had ravaged and sub-
dued the Roman provinces, and had established a
kingdom on the Carthaginian ground, with a
naval power in the Carthaginian Sea), Attila led
his huge army into suffering Gaul. There were
Ostrogoths, and warriors from many German
tribes, as well as Huns, in the terrific host ; for
Attila's arm stretched far, and his subjects were
forced to follow when he led. His coming into
Gaul affrighted Romans and barbarians alike,
and united them in a common defense. Aetius
formed an alliance with Theodoric, the Visi-
gothic king, and their forces were joined by Bur-
gundians aud Franks. They met Attila near
Chalons, and there, on a day in June, A. D. 451,
upon the Catalaunian fields, was fought a battle
that is always counted among the few which
gave shape to all subsequent history. The
Huns were beaten back, and Europe was saved
from the hopeless night that must have followed
a Tartar conquest in that age.
Attila threatening Rome.
Attila retreated to Germany, foiled but not
daunted. The next year (A. D. 452) he invaded
Italy and laid siege to Aquileia, an important
city which stood in his path. It resisted for
three months and was then utterly destroyed.
The few inhabitants who escaped, with fugitives
from neighboring ports, found a refuge in some
islands of the Adriatic coast, and formed there a
sheltered settlement which grew into the great
city and republican state of Venice. Aetius
made strenuous exertions to gather forces for
another battle with the Huns ; but the resources
of the Empire had sunk very low. While he
labored to collect troops, the effect of a pacific
embassy was despairingly tried, and it went forth
to the camp of Attila, led by the venerable bishop
of Rome — the first powerful Pope — Leo I.,
called the Great. The impression which Leo
made on the Hunnish king, by his venerable pres-
ence, and by the persuasiveness of his words, ap-
pears to have been extraordinary. At all events,
Attila consented to postpone his designs on Rome ;
though he demanded and received promise of an
annual tribute. The next winter he died, and
Rome was troubled by him no more.
Rome Sacked by the 'Vandals.
But another enemy came, who rivalled Attila
in ruthlessness, and who gave a name to bar-
barity which it has kept to this day. The Van-
dal king, Genseric, who now swept the Mediter-
ranean with a piratical fleet, made his appearance
in the Tiber (A. D. 455) and found the Roman
capital powerless to resist his attack. The venera-
ble Pope Leo again interceded for the city, and
obtained a promise that captives should not be
tortured nor buildings burned, — which was the
utmost stretch of mercy that the Vandal could
afford. Once more, then, was Rome given up,
for fourteen days and nights, to pillage and the
horrors of barbaric debauch. "Whatever had
survived the former sack,— whatever the luxury
of the Roman Patriciate, during the intervening
forty-five years, had accumulated in reparation
of their loss, — the treasures of the imperial
palace, the gold and silver vessels employed in
the churches, the statues of pagan divinities and
men of Roman renown, the gilded roof of the
temple of Capitolian Jove, the plate and orna-
ments of private individuals, were leisurely con-
veyed to the Vandal fleet and shipped off to
Africa " (Sheppard).
The Vandal invasion had been preceded, in the
same year, by a palace revolution which brought
the dynasty of Theodosius to an end. Placidia
was dead, and her unworthy son, Valentinian III.,
provoked assassination by dishonoring the wife
of a wealthy senator, Maximus, who mounted to
his place. "Maximus was slain by a mob at Rome,
just before the Vandals entered the city. The
Empire was now without a head, and the throne
without an heir. In former times, the Senate or
the army would have filled the vacant imperial
seat; now, it was a barbarian monarch, Theo-
doric, the Visigothic king, who made choice of
a successor to the Caesars. He named a Gallic
noble, Avitus by name, who had won his esteem,
and the nomination was confirmed by Marcian,
Emperor of the East.
Ricimer and Majorian.
But the influence of Theodoric in Roman
affairs was soon rivalled by that of Count Rici-
mer, another Goth, or Sueve, who held high
command in the imperial army, and who resented
the elevation of Avitus. The latter was de-
posed, after reigning a single year, and Majorian,
a soldier of really noble and heroic character,
was promoted to the throne. He was too great
and too sincere a man to be Ricimer's tool, and
the same hand which raised him threw him
down, after he had reigned four years (A. D.
457-461). He was in the midst of a powerful
undertaking against the Vandals when he per-
ished. Majorian was the last Emperor in the
Western line who deserves to be named.
The last Emperors in the 'West.
Ricimer ruled Italy, with the rigor of a despot,
under the modest title of Patrician, until 473.
His death was soon followed by the rise of
another general of the barbarian troops, Orestes,
to like autocracy, and he, in turn, gave way to a
third, Odoacer, who slew him and took his place.
The creatures, half a dozen in number, who put
on and put off the purple robe, at the command
of these adventurers, who played with the maj-
esty of Rome, need no further mention. The
1039
EUHOPE.
Ostrogothic Kingdom
of Theodoric.
EUROPE.
last of them was Romulus Augustulus, son of
Orestes, who escaped his father's fate by for-
mally resigning the throne. He was the last Ro-
man Emperor in the West, until Charlemagne
revived the title, three centuries and a quarter
later. "The succession of the "Western Emper-
ors came to an end, and the way in which it
came to an end marks the way in which the
names and titles of Rome were kept on, while all
power was passing into the hands of the barba-
rians. The Roman Senate voted that one Em-
peror was enough, and that the Eastern Emperor,
Zeno, should reign over the whole Empire. But
at the same time Zeno was made to entrust the
government of Italy, with the title of Patrician,
to Odoacer, . . . Thus the Roman Empire went
on at Constantinople, or New Rome, while Italy
and the Old Rome itself passed into the power
of the Barbarians. Still the Roman laws and
names went on, and we may be sure that any
man in Italy would have been much surprised if
he had been told that the Roman Empire had
come to an end" (Freeman).
Odoacer.
The government of Odoacer, who ruled with
the authority of a king, though pretending to
kingship only in his own nation, was firm and
strong. Italy was better protected from its
lawless neighbors than it had been for nearly
a century before. But nothing could arrest the
decay of its population — the blight that had
fallen upon its prosperity. Nor could that tur-
bulent age afford any term of peace that would
be long enough for even the beginning of the
cure of such maladies and such wounds as had
brought Italy low. For fourteen years Odoacer
ruled; and then he was overthrown by a new
kingdom seeking barbarian, who came, like
Alaric, out of the Gothic swarm.
Theodoric the Ostrogoth.
The Ostrogoths had now escaped, since Attila
died, from the yoke of the Huns, and were pre-
pared, under an able and ambitious young king,
Theodoric, who had been reared as a hostage at
Constantinople, to imitate the career of their
cousins, the Visigoths. Having troubled tlie
Eastern Court until it stood in fear of him, Tlieo-
doric asked for a commission to overthrow
Odoacer, in Italy, and received it from the Em-
peror's hand. Thus empowered by one still rec-
ognized as lawful lord on both sides of the Adri-
atic, Theodoric crossed the Julian Alps (A. D.
489) with the families of his nation and their
household goods. Three battles made him mas-
ter of the peninsula and decided the fate of his
rival. Odoacer held out in Ravenna for two
years and a half, and surrendered on a promise
of equal sovereignty with the Ostrogothic king.
But Theodoric did not scruple to kill him with
his own sword, at the first opportunity which
came. In that act, the native savagery in him
broke loose ; but through most of his life he kept
his passions decently tamed, and acted the bar-
barian less frequently than the civilized states-
man and king. He gave Italy peace, security,
and substantial justice for thirty years. With
little war, he extended his sovereignty over
Illyrium, Pannonia, Noricum, Rhffitia and Pro-
vence, in south-eastern Gaul. If the exten-
sive kingdom which he formed — with more
enlightenment than any other among those who
divided the heritage of Rome — could have en-
dured, the parts of Europe which it covered
might have fared better in after times than they
did. "Italy might have been spared six hun-
dred years of gloom and degradation." But
powerful influences were against it from the
first, and they were influences which proceeded
mischievously from the Christian Church. Had
the Goths been pagans, the Church might have
turned a kindly face to them, and wooed them
to conversion as she wooed the Franks. But
they were Christians, of a heretic stamp, and the
orthodox Christianity of Rome held them in
deadly loathing. While still beyond the Dan-
ube, they had received the faith from an Arian
apostle, at the time of the great conflict of Atha-
nasius against Arius, and were stubbojn in the
rejection of Trinitarian dogma. Hence the
Church in the AVest was never reconciled to the
monarchy of Theodoric in Italy, nor to that of
the Visigoths at Toulouse ; and its hostility was
the ultimate cause of the failure of both.
The Empire in the East.
To understand the events which immediately
caused tlie fall of the Ostrogothic power, we
must turn back for a moment to the Empire in
the East. Marcian, whom Pulclieria, the wise
daughter of Arcadius, made Emperor by marry-
ing him, died in 457, and Aspar, the barbarian
who commanded the mercenaries, selected his
successor. He chose his own steward, one Leo,
who proved to have more independence than his
patron expected, and who succeeded in destroy-
ing the latter. After Leo I. came (474) his infant
grandson, Leo II., whose father, an Isaurian
chieftain, took his place when he died, within the
year. The Isaurian assumed a Greek name, Zeno,
and occupied the throne — with one interval of
flight and exile for twenty months — during seven
years. When he died, his widow gave her hand
in marriage to an excellent oflicer of the palace,
Anastasius by name, and he wag sovereign of the
Empire for twenty-seven years.
The reign of Justinian.
After Anastasius, came Justin I. , born a peas-
ant in Dacia (modern Roumania), but advanced as
a soldier to the command of the imperial guards,
and thence to the throne. He had already
adopted and educated his nephew, Justinian, and
before dying, in 527, he invested him with sov-
ereignty as a colleague. The reign of Justinian
was the most remarkable in the whole history of
the Empire in the East. Without breadth of
understanding, or notable talents of any kind;
without courage ; without the least nobility of
character ; without even the virtue of fidelity to
his ministers and friends,— this remarkable mon-
arch contrived to be splendidly served by an ex-
traordinary generation of great soldiers, great
jurists, great statesmen, who gave a brilliance to
his reign that was never rivalled while the Byzan-
tine seat of Empire stood. It owes, in modern
esteem, its greatest fame to the noble collection
of Roman laws which was made, in the Pandects
and the Code, under the direction of the wise and
learned Tribonian. Transiently it was glorified
by conquests that bore a likeness to the march of
tiie resistless legions of ancient Rome ; and the
laurelled names of Belisarius and Narses claimed
a place on the columns of victory with the names
of Caesar and Pompeius. But the splendors of
1040
EUROPE.
Justinian^s
Recovery of Italy.
EUBOPE.
the reign were much more than offset by miseries
and calamities of the darkest kind. " The reign
of Justinian, from its length, its glory and its
disasters, may be compared to the reign of Louis
XIV. , which exceeded it in length, and equalled
it in glory and disaster. ... He extended the
limits of his empire ; but he was unable to defend
the territory he had received from his predeces-
sors. Every one of the thirty-eight years of his
reign was marked by an invasion of the barbari-
ans ; and it has been said that, reckoning those
who fell by the sword, who perished from want,
or were led into captivity, each invasion cost
200, 000 subjects to the emp'ire. Calamities which
human prudence is unable to resist seemed to
combine against the Romans, as if to compel
them to expiate their ancient glory. ... So that
the very period which gave birth to so many
monuments of greatness, may be looked back
upon with horror, as that of the widest desola-
tion and the most terrific mortality " (Sismondi).
The first and longest of tlie wars of Justinian
was the Persian war, which he inherited from
his predecessors, and which scarcely ceased while
the Persian monarchy endured. It was in these
Asiatic campaigns that Belisarius began his
career. But his lirst great achievement was the
overthrow and extinction of the Vandal power in
Africa, and the restoration of Roman authority
(the empire of the new Rome) in the old Cartha-
ginian province (A. D. 533-534). He accom-
plished this with a force of but 10,000 foot and
5,000 horse, and was hastily recalled by his jeal-
ous lord on the instant of his success.
Conquests of Belisarius in Italy.
But the ambition of Justinian was whetted by
this marvellous conquest, and he promptly pro-
jected an expedition against the kingdom of the
Eastern Goths. The death of Theodoric had
occurred in 536. His successor was a child of
ten years, his grandson, whose mother exercised
the regency. Amalsuentha, the queen-regent,
was a woman of highly cultivated mind, and she
offended her subjects by too marked a Romani-
zation of her ideas. Her son died in his eigh-
teenth year, and she associated with herself on the
throne the next heir to it, a worthless nephew of
Theodoric, who was able, in a few weeks, to strip
all her power from her and consign her to a dis-
tant prison, where she was soon put to death (A. D.
535). She had previously opened negotiations
with Justinian for the restoration of his suprem-
acy in Italy, and the ambitious Emperor assumed
with eagerness a right to avenge her deposition and
death. The fate of Amalsuentha was his excuse,
the discontent of Roman orthodoxy with the rule
of the heretic Goths was his encouragement, to
send an army into Italy with Belisarius at its head.
First taking possession of Sicily, Belisarius
landed in Italy in 536, took Naples and advanced on
Rome. An able soldier, Vitiges, had been raised
to the Gothic throne, and he evacuated Rome in
December ; but he returned the following March
and laid siege to the ancient capital, which Beli-
sarius had occupied with a moderate force. It
was defended against him for an entire year, and
the strength of the Gothic nation was consumed
on the outer side of the walls, while the inhabi-
tants within were wasted by famine and disease.
The Goths invoked the aid of the Franks in
Gaul, and those fierce warriors, crossing the Alps
lA. D. 538), assailed both Goths and Greeks, with
indiscriminate hostility, destroyed Milan and
Genoa, and mostly perished of hunger themselves
before they retreated from the wasted Cisalpine
country.
Released from Rome, Belisarius advanced in his
turn against Ravenna, and took the Gothic capi-
tal, making Vitiges a prisoner (A. D. 539). His
reward for these successes was a recall from com-
mand. The jealous Emperor could not afford
his generals too much glory at a single winning.
As a consequence of his folly, tlie Goths, under
a new king, Totila, were allowed to recover so
much ground in the next four years that, when,
in 544, Belisarius was sent back, almost without
an army, the work of conquest had to be done
anew. Rome was still being held against Totila,
who besieged it, and the great general went by
sea to its relief. He forced the passage of the
Tiber, but failed through the misconduct of the
commander in the city to accomplish an entry,
and once more the great capital was entered and
yielded to angry Goths (A. D. 546). They spared
the lives of the few people they found, and the
chastity of the women ; but they plundered with-
out restraint.
Rome a Solitude for Forty Days.
Totila commanded the total destruction of the
city ; but his ruthless hand was stayed by the re-
monstrances of Belisarius. After demolishing a
third of the walls, he withdrew towards the
South, dragging the few inhabitants with him,
and, during forty days, Rome is said to have
been an unpeopled solitude. The scene which
this offers to the imagination comes near to being
the most impressive in history. At the end of
that period it was entered by Belisarius, who
hastily repaired the walls, collected his forces,
and was prepared to defend himself when Totila
came back by rapid marches from Apulia. The
Goths made three assaults and were bloodily re-
pulsed.
End of the Ostrogothic Kingdom.
But again Belisarius was recalled by a mean
and jealous court, and again the Gothic cause
was reanimated and restored. Rome was taken
again from its feeble garrison (A. D. 549), and
this time it was treated with respect. Most of
Italy and Sicily, with Corsica and Sardinia, were
subdued by Totila's arms, and that king, now
successful, appealed to Justinian for peace. It
was refused, and in 553 a vigorous prosecution
of the war resumed, under a new commander —
the remarkable eunuch Narses, who proved him-
self to be one of the great masters of war.
Totila was defeated and slain in the first battle
of the campaign ; Rome was again beleaguered
and taken; and the last blow needed to extin-
guish the Gothic kingdom in Italy was given the
following year (A. D. 553), when Totila's suc-
cessor. Tela, ended his life on another disastrous
field of battle.
The Exarchate.
Italy was restored for the moment to the Em-
pire, and was placed under the government of
an imperial viceroy, called Exarch, which high
otfice the valiant Narses was the first to fill. His
successors, known in history as the Exarchs of Ra-
venna, resided in that capital for a long period,
while the arm of their authority was steadily
shortened by the conquests of new invaders,
whose story is yet to be told.
66
1041
EUROPE.
Beginning
of English History,
EUROPE.
Events in the West.
Leaving Italy and Rome, once more in the im-
perial fold, but mere provinces now of a distant
and alienated sovereignty, it is necessary to turn
back to the West, and glance over the regions in
■which, -when we looked at them last, the institu-
tions of Roman government and society were be-
ing dissolved and broken up by flood upon flood
of barbaric invasion from the Teutonic North.
Teutonic Conquest of Britain.
If we begin at the farthest West which the
Roman dominion reached, we shall find that the
island of Britain was abandoned, practically, by
the imperial government earlier than the year
410, when Rome was sinking under the blows of
Alaric. From that time the Inhabitants were left
to their own government and their own defense.
To the inroads of the savage Caledonian Picts
and Irish Scots, there were added, now, the coast
ravages of a swarm of ruthless pirates, which
the tribes of northwestern Europe had begun to
launch upon the German or North Sea. The
most cruel and terrible of these ocean freebooters
were the Saxons, of the Elbe, and they gave their
name for a time to the whole. Their destructive
raids upon the coasts of Britain and Gaul had
commenced more than a century before the
Romans withdrew their legions, and that part
of the British coast most exposed to their ravages
was known as the Saxon Shore. For about
thirty years after the Roman and Romanized
inhabitants of Britain had been left to defend
themselves, they held their ground with good
courage, as appears; but the incessant attacks of
the Picts wore out, at last, their confidence in
themselves, and they were fatally led to seek
help from their other enemies, who scourged
them from the sea. Their invitation was given,
not to the Saxons, but to a band of Jutes — war-
riors from that Danish peninsula in which they
have left their name. The Jutes landed at Ebbs-
fleet, in the Isle of Thanet (A. D. 449 or 450),
with two chiefs, Hengest and Horsa, at their
head. They came as allies, and fought by the
side of the Britons against the Picts with excel-
lent success. Then came quarrels, and presently,
in 455, the arms of Hengest and Horsa were
turned against their employers. Ten years later
the Jutes had secure possession of the part of
Britain now called Kent, and Hengest was their
king, Horsa having fallen in the war. This was
the beginning of the transformation of Roman-
Celtic Britain into the Teutonic England of later
history. The success of the Jutes drew their
cousins and piratical comrades, the Saxons and
the Angles, to seek kingdoms in the same rich
island. The Saxons came first, landing near Sel-
sey, in 477, and taking gradual possession of a
district which became known as the kingdom of
the South Saxons, or Sussex. The next invasion
was by Saxons under Cerdic, and Jutes, who
joined to form the kingdom of the West Saxons,
or Wessex, covering about the territory of modern
Hampshire. So much of their conquest was
complete by the year 519. At about the same
time, other colonies were established and gave
their names, as East Saxons and Middle Saxons,
to the Essex and Jliddlesex of modern English
geography. A tliird tribe from the German
shore, the Angles, now came (A. D. 547) to take
their part in the conquest of the island, and these
laid their hands upon kingdoms in the East and
North of England, so much larger than the mod-
est Jute and Saxon realms in the south that their
name fixed itself, at last, upon the whole country,
when it lost the name of Britain. Northumber-
land, which stretched from the Humber to the
Firth of Forth, Mercia, which covered at one
time the whole middle region of England, and
East Anglia, which became divided into the two
English counties of Norfolk (North-folk) and
SulSolk (South-folk), were the three great king-
doms of the Angles.
The Making of England.
Before the end of the sixth century, almost the
whole of modern England, and part of Scotland,
on its eastern side, as far to the north as Edin-
burgh, was in possession of the German invaders.
They had not merely subdued the former posses-
sors—Britons and Roman provincials (if Romans
remained in the island after their domination
ceased), — but, in the judgment of the best in-
vestigators of the subject, they had practically
swept them from all the parts of the island in
which their own settlements were established.
That is to say, the prior population was either
exterminated by the merciless swords of these
Saxon and English pagans, or was driven into the
mountains of Wales, into the peninsula of Corn-
wall and Devon, or into the Strathclyde comer
of Scottish territory, — in all which regions the
ancient British race has maintained itself to this
day. Scarcely a vestige of its existence remains
elsewhere in England, — neither in language, nor
in local names, nor in institutions, nor in survi-
vals of any other kind ; which shows that the in-
habitants were effaced by the conquest, as the
inhabitants of Gaul, of Spain, and of Italy, for
example, were not.
The new society and the new states which now
arose on the soil of Britain, and began to shape
themselves into the England of the future, were
as purely Germanic as Q they had grown up in
the Jutish peninsula or on the Elbe. The institu-
tions, political and social, of the immigrant
nations, had been modified by changed circum-
stances, but they had incorporated almost nothing
from the institutions which they found existing
in their new home and which they supplanted.
Broadly speaking, nothing Roman and nothing
Celtic entered into them. They were constructed
on German lines throughout.
The barbarism of the Saxons and their kin when
they entered Britain was far more immitigated
than that of most of the Teutonic tribes which
overwhelmed the continental provinces of Rome
had been. The Goths had been influenced to
some extent and for quite a period by Roman
civilization, and had nominally accepted Chris-
tian precepts and beliefs, before they took arms
against the Empire. The Franks had been allies
of Rome and in contact with the refinements of
Roman Gaul, for a century or two before they
became masters in that province. !Most of the
other nations which transplanted themselves in
the fifth century from bej'ond the Rhine to new
homes in the provinces of Rome, had been living
for generations on the borders of the Empire, or
near; had acquired some acquaintance, at least,
with the civilization which they did not share,
and conceded to it a certain respect : while some
of them had borne arms for the Emperor and
taken his pay. But the Saxons, Angles ana
1042
EUROPE.
Kingdom
of the Franks.
EUROPE.
Jutes had thus far been remote from every influ-
ence or experience of the kind. They knew the
Romans only as rich strangers to be plundered
and foes to be fought. Christianity represented
nothing to them but an insult to their gods.
There seems to be little doubt, therefore, that
the civilizing work which Rome had done in
western Europe was obliterated nowhere else so
ruthlessly and so wantonly as in Britain.
Christianity, still sheltered and strong in Ire-
land, was wholly extinguished in England for a
century and more, until the memorable mission of
Augustine, sent by Pope Gregory the Great
(A. D. 597), began the conversion of the savage
islanders.
The Kingdom of the Franks.
In Gaul, meanwhile, and in southwestern Ger-
many, the Franks had become the dominant
power. They had moved tardily to the con-
quest, but when they moved it was with rapid
strides. While they dwelt along the Lower
Rhine, they were in two divisions: the Salian
Franks, who occupied, first, the country near
the mouth of the river, and then spread south-
wards, to the Somme, or beyond; and the Ripu-
arians, who lived farther up the Rhine, in the
neighborhood of Cologne, advancing thence to
the Moselle. In the later part of the fifth cen-
tury a Roman Patrician, Syagrius, still exer-
cised some kind of authority in northern Gaul ;
but in 486 he was defeated and overthrown by
Chlodvig, or Clovis, the chief of the Salian
Franks. Ten years later, Clovis, leading both
the Salian and the Ripuarian Franks in an attack
upon the German Alemanni, beyond the Upper
Rhine, subdued that people completely, and took
their country. Their name survived, and ad-
hei-ed to the whole people of Germany, whom
the Franks and their successors the French have
called Allemands to this day. After his con-
quest of the Alemanni, Clovis, who had married
a Christian wife, accepted her faith and was
baptized, with three thousand of his chief men.
The professed conversion was as fortunate politi-
cally for him as it had been for Constantine.
He adopted the Christianity which was that of
the Roman Church — the Catholic Christianity
of the Athanasian creed — and he stood forth at
once as the champion of orthodo.vy against the
heretic Goths and Biu'gundians, whose religion
had been poisoned by the condemned doctrines
of Arius. The blessings, and the more substan-
tial endeavors, of the Roman Church were, there-
fore, on his side, when he attacked the Burguu-
dians and made them tributary, and when, a few
years later, he expelled the Goths from Aqui-
taine and drove them into Spain (A.D. 500-508).
Beginning, apparently, as one of several chiefs
among the Salian Franks, he ended his career
(510) as sole king of the whole Frank nation, and
master of all Gaul except a Gothic corner of Pro-
vence, with a considerable dominion beyond the
Rhine.
The Merovingian Kings.
But Clovis left his realm to four sons, who
divided it into as many kingdoms, with capitals
at Metz, Orleans, Paris, and Soissons. There
was strife and war between them, until one of
the brothers, Lothaire, united again the whole
kingdom, which, meantime, had been enlarged
by the conquest of Thuringia and Provence, and
by the extinction of the tributary Burgundian
kings. When he died, his sons rent the king-
dom again, and warred with one another, and
once more it was brought together. Says Hal-
lam: "It is a weary and unprofitable task to
follow these changes in detail, through scenes of
tumult and bloodshed, in which the eye meets
with no sunshine, nor can rest upon an}' interest-
ing spot. It would be diflicult, as Gibbou has
justly observed, to find anywhere more vice or less
virtue." But, as Dean Church has remarked, the
Franks were maintained in their ascendancy by
the favor of the clergy and the circumstances of
their position, despite their divisions and the
worthless and detestable character of their kings,
after Clovis. " They occupied a land of great
natural wealth, and great geographical advan-
tages, which had been prepared fof them by
Latin culture ; they inherited great cities which
they had not built, and fields and vineyards
which they had not planted; and they had the
wisdom, not to destroy, but to use their con-
quest. They were able with singular ease and
confidence to employ and trust the services, civil
and military, of the Latin population. . . . The
bond between the Franks and the native races
was the clergy. . . . The forces of the whole
nation were at the disposal of the ruling race ;
and under Frank chiefs, the Latins and Gauls
learned once more to be warriors." This no
doubt suggests a quite true explanation of the
success of the Franks; but too much may easily
be inferred from it. It will not be safe to con-
clude that the Franks were protectors of civili-
zation in Gaul, and did not lay destroying hands
upon it. We shall presently see that it sank to
a very darkened state under their rule, though
the eclipse may have been less complete than in
some other of the barbarized provinces of Rome.
Rise of the Carolingians.
The division in the Prankish dominion which
finally marked itself deeply and became permanent
was that which separated the East Kingdom, or
Austrasia, from the West Kingdom, or Neustria.
In Austrasia, the Germanic element prevailed ; In
Neustria, the Roman and Gallic survivals entered
most largely into the new society. Austrasia
widened into the Germany of later history ; Neus-
tria into France. In both these kingdoms, the
Prankish kings sank lower and lower in charac-
ter, until their name (of Merwings or Mero-
vingians, from an ancestor of Clovis) became a
byword for sloth and worthlessness. In each king-
dom there arose, beside the nominal monarch, a
strong minister, called the Maj or Domus, or Mayor
of the Palace, who exercised the real power
and governed in the king's name. During the
last half of the seventh century, the Austrasian
Mayor, Pippin of Heristal, and the Neustrian
Mayor, Ebroin, converted the old antagonism of
the two kingdoms into a personal rivalry and
struggle for supremacy. Ebroin was murdered,
and Pippin was the final victor, in a decisive bat-
tle at Testry (687), which made him virtual mas-
ter of the whole Frank realm, although the idle
Merwings still sat on their thrones. Pippin's son,
Charles Martel, strengthened and extended the
domination which his father had acquired. He
drove back the Saxons and subdued the Frisians
in the North, and, in the great and famous battle
of Tours (732) he repelled, once for all, the at-
tempt of the Arab and Moorish followers of Ma-
homet, already lodged in Spain, to push their
1043
EUROPE.
Mafiomet
and the East.
EUROPE.
conquests beyond the Pyrenees. The next of
the family, Pippin the Short, son of Charles
Martel, put an end to the pretence of governing
in the name of a puppet-king. The last of
the Merovingians was quietly deposed — lacking
even importance enough to be put to death —
and Pippin received tlie crown at the hands of
Pope Zachary (A. D. 751). He died in 768, and the
reign of his son, who succeeded him — the Great
Charles — the Charlemagne of mediaeval history
— is the introduction to so new an era, and so
changed an order of circumstances in the Euro-
pean world, that it will be best to finish with all
that lies behind it in our hasty survey before we
take it up.
The Conquests of Islam.
Outside of Europe, a new and strange power
had now risen, and had spread its forces with ex-
traordinary rapidity around the southern and
eastern circuit of the Mediterranean, until it
troubled both extremities of the northern shore.
This was the power of Islam — the proselyting,
war-waging religion of Slahomet, the Arabian
prophet. At the death of Mahomet, in 633, he
was lord of Arabia, and his armies had just
crossed the border, to attack the S3'rian posses-
sions of the Eastern Roman Empire. In seven
years from that time, the whole of Palestine and
Syria had been overrun, Jerusalem, Damascus,
Antioch, and all the strong cities taken, and Ro-
man authority expelled. In two years more,
they had dealt the last blow to the Sassanian
monarchy in Persia and shattered it forever. At
the same time they were besieging Alexandria
and adding Egypt to their conquests. In 668,
only thirty-six years after the death of the
Prophet, they were at the gates of Constantino-
ple, making the first of their many attempts to
gain possession of the New Rome. In 698 they
had taken Carthage, had occupied all North Af-
rica to the Atlantic coast, had converted the
Mauretanians, or Moors, and absorbed them into
their body politic as well as into their commu-
nion. In 711 the commingled Arabs and Moors
crossed the Straits and entered Spain, and the
overthrow of the Christian kingdom of the Visi-
goths was practically accomplished in a single
battle that same year. Within two years more,
the floors (as they came to be most commonly
called) were in possession of the whole southern,
central, and eastern parts of the Spanish penin-
sula, treating the inhabitants who had not fled
with a more generous toleration than differing
Christians were wont to offer to one another.
The Spaniards (a mixed population of Roman,
Suevic, Gothic, and aboriginal descent) who did
not submit, took refuge in the mountainous re-
gion of the Asturias and Galicia, where they
maintained their independence, and, in due time,
became aggressive, until, after eight centuries,
they recovered their whole land.
The Eastern Empire.
At the East, as we have seen, the struggle of
the Empire with the Arabs began at the first
moment of their career of foreign conquest.
They came upon it when it was weak from many
wounds, and exhausted by conflict with many
foes. Before the death of Justinian (56.5), the
transient glories of his reign had been waning
fast. His immediate successor saw the work of
Belisarius and Narses undone, for the most part,
and the Italian peninsula overrun by a new
horde of barbarians, more rapacious and more
savage than the Goths. At the same time, the
Persian war broke out again, and drained the
imperial resources to pay for victories that had
no fruit. Two better and stronger emperors —
Tiberius and Maurice — who came after him,
only made an honorable struggle, without leav-
ing the Empire in a better state. Then a brutal
creature — Phocas — held the throne for eight
years (602-610) and sunk it very low b}' his
crimes. The hero, Heraclius, who was now
raised to power, came too late. Assailed sud-
denly, at the very beginning of his reign, by a
fierce Persian onset, he was powerless to resist.
Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor were successively
ravaged and conquered by the Persian arms.
They came even to the Bosphorus, and for
ten years they held its eastern shore and main-
tained a camp within sight of Constantinople
itself; while the wild Tartar nation of the
Avars raged, at the same time, through the
northern and western provinces of the Empire,
and threatened the capital on its landward
sides. The Roman Empire was reduced, for a
time, to "the walls of Constantinople, with the
remnant of Greece, Italy, and Africa, and some
maritime cities, from Tyre to Trebizond. of the
Asiatic coast." But in 633 Heraclius turned the
tide of disaster and rolled it back upon his
enemies. Despite an alliance of the Persians
with the Avars, and their combined assault
upon Constantinople in 626, he repelled the lat-
ter, and wrested from the former, in a series of
remarkable campaigns, all the territory they
had seized. He had but just accomplished this
great deliverance of his dominions, when the
Arabs came upon him, as stated above. There
was no strength left in the Empire to resist the
terrible prowess of these warriors of the desert.
They extinguished its authority in Syria and
Egypt, as we have seen, in the first years of their
career; but then turned their arms to the East
and the West, and were slow in disputing Asia
Minor with its Christian lords. ' ' From the time
of Heraclius the Byzantine theatre is contracted
and darkened : the line of empire which had been
defined by the laws of Justinian and the arms of
Belisarius recedes on all sides from our view"
(Gibbon). There was neither vigor nor virtue in
the descendants of Heraclius; and when the last
of them was destroyed by a popular rising
against his vicious tyranny (711), revolution fol-
lowed revolution so quickly that three reigns
were begun and ended in six years.
The so-called Byzantine Empire.
Then came to the throne a man of strong
character, who redeemed it at least from contempt ;
who introduced a dynasty which endured for a
century, and whose reign is the beginning of a
new era in the history of the Eastern Empire, so
marked that the Empire has taken from that time,
in the common usage, a changed name, and is
known thenceforth as the Byzantine, rather than
the Eastern or the Greek. This was Leo the Isau-
rian, who saved Constantinople from a second des-
perate Moslem siege ; who checked for a consider-
able period the Mahometan advance in the East ;
who reorganized the imperial administration on
lasting lines ; and whose suppression of image-
worship in the Christian churches of his empire
led to a rupture with the Roman Church in the
1044
EUROPE.
Rise of
Papal power.
EUROPE.
^est, — to the breaking of all relations of de-
pendence in Rome and Italy upon the Empire in
the East, and to the creating of a new imperial
sovereignty in Western Europe which claimed
succession to that of Rome.
Lombard Conquest of Italy.
On the conquest of Italy by Belisarius and
Narses, for Justinian, the eunuch Narses, as
related before, was made governor, residing at
Ravenna, and bearing the title of Exarch. In a
few years he was displaced, through the influ-
ence of a palace intrigue at Constantinople. To
be revenged, it is said that he persuaded the
Lombards, a German tribe lately become threaten-
ing on the Upper Danube, to enter Italy. They
came, under their leader Alboin, and almost the
whole northern and middle parts of the peninsula
submitted to them with no resistance. Pavia
stood a siege for three years before it surrendered
to become the Lombard capital ; Venice received
an added population of fugitives, and was safe
in her lagoons — like Ravenna, where the new
Exarch watched the march of Lombard conquest,
and scarcely opposed it. Rome was preserved,
with part of southern Italy and with Sicily ; but
no more than a shadow of the sovereignty of the
Empire now stretched westward beyond the
Adriatic.
Temporal Power of the Popes.
The city of Rome, and the territory surround-
ing it, still owned a nominal allegiance to the
Emperor at Constantinople ; but their immediate
and real ruler was the Bishop of Rome, who had
already acquired, in a special way, the fatherly
name of "Papa" or Pope. Many circumstances
had combined to place both spiritual and temporal
power in the hands of these Christian pontiffs of
Rome. They may have been originally, in the con-
stitution of the Church, on an equal footing of ec-
clesiastical authority with the four other chiefs of
the hierarchy — the Patriarchs of Constantinople,
Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem; but the
great name of Rome gave them prestige and
weight of superior influence to begin with. Then,
they stood, geographically and sympathetically,
in nearest relations with that massive Latin side
of Christendom, in western Europe, which was
never much disturbed by the raging dogmatic
controversies that tore and divided the Church
on its Eastern, Greek side. It was inevitable that
the Western Church should yield liomage to one
head — to one bishopric above all other bishop-
rics; and it was more inevitable that the See
of Rome should be that one. So the spiritual
supremacy to which the Popes arrived is easily
enough explained. The temporal authority
which they acquired is accounted for as obvi-
ously. Even before the interruption of the line
of emperors in the West, the removal of the im-
perial residence for long periods from Rome, to
Constantinople, to Milan, to Ravenna, left the
Pope the most impressive and influential person-
age in the ancient capital. Political functions
were forced on him, whether he desired to ex-
ercise them or not. It was Pope Leo who headed
the embassy to Attila, and saved the city from
the Huns. It was the same Pope who pleaded
for it with the Vandal king, Genseric. And still
more and more, after the imperial voice which
uttered occasional commands to his Roman sub-
jects was heard from a distant palace in Con-
stantinople, and in accents that had become
wholly Greek, the chair of St. Peter grew throne-
like, — the respect paid to the Pope in civil mat-
ters took on the spirit of obedience, and his as-
pect before the people became that of a temporal
prince.
This process of the political elevation of the
Papacy was completed by the Lombard conquest
of Italy. The Lombard kings were bent upon
the acquisition of Rome ; the Popes were resolute
and successful in holding it against them. At
last the Papacy made its memorable and momen-
tous alliance with the Carolingian cliiefs of the
Franks. It assumed the tremendous super-im-
perial right and power to dispose of crowns, by
taking that of the kingdom of the Franks from
Childeric and giving it to Pippin (751); and this
was the first assumption of that right by the
chief priest of Western Christendom. In return.
Pippin led an army twice to Italy (754-755), hum-
bled the Lombards, took from them the exarch-
ate of Ravenna and the Pentapolis (a district east
of the Appenines, between Aucona and Ferrara),
and transferred this whole territory as a con-
queror's "donation" to the Apostolic See. The
temporal sovereignty of the Popes now rested on
a base as political and as substantial as that of
the most worldly and vulgar potentates around
them.
Charlemagne's restored Roman Empire.
Pippin's greater son, Charlemagne, renewed
the alliance of his house with the Papacy, and
strengthened it by completing the conquest of the
Lombards, extinguishing their kingdom (774), and
confirming his father's donation of the States of
the Church. Charlemagne was now supreme in
Italy, and the Pope became the representative of
his sovereignty at Rome, — a position which last-
ingly enhanced the political importance of the
Roman See in the peninsula. But while Pope
and King stood related, in one view, as agent and
principal, or subject and sovereign, another very
different relationship slowly shaped itself in the
thoughts of one, if not of both. The Western
Church had broken entirely with the Eastern, on
the question of image-worship ; the titular sov-
ereignty of the Eastern Emperor in the ancient
Roman capital was a worn-out fiction ; the reign
of a female usurper, Irene, at Constantinople
afforded a good occasion for renounotng and dis-
carding it. But a Roman Emperor there must
be, somewhere, for lesser princes and sovereigns
to do homage to ; the political habit and feeling of
the European world, shaped and fixed by the long
domination of Rome, still called for it. "Nor
could the spiritual head of Christendom dispense
with the temporal ; without the Roman Empire
there could not be," according to the feeling of
the ninth century, "a Roman, nor by necessary
consequence a Catholic and Apostolic Church."
For "men could not separate in fact what was
indissoluble in thought: Cliristianity must stand
or fall along with the great Christian state ; they
were but two names for one and the same thing "
(Bryce). Therefore the head of the Church, boldly
enlarging the assumption of his predecessor who
bestowed the crown of the Merovingians upon
Pippin, now took it upon himself to set the diadem
of the Cfesars on the head of Charlemagne. On
the Christmas Day, in the year 800, in the basilica
of St. Peter, at Rome, the solemn act of corona-
tion was performed by Pope Leo III. ; the Roman
1045
EUROPE.
The Northmen.
EUROPE.
Empire lived again, in the estimation of tliat age,
and Charles the Great reopened the interrupted
line of successors to Augustus.
Before this imperial coronation of Charlemagne
occurred, he had already made his dominion im-
perial in extent, by the magnitude of his con-
quests. North, south, east, and west, his armies
had been everywhere victorious. In eighteen
campaigns against the fierce and troublesome
Saxons, he subdued those stubborn pagans and
forced them to submit to a Christian baptism —
' -with how much of immediate religious effect may
'be easily surmised. But by opening a way for
the more Christ-like missionaries of the cross,
who followed him, this missionary of the battle-
ax did, no doubt, a very real apostolic work.
He checked the ravages of the piratical Danes.
He crushed the Avars and took their country,
which comprised parts of the Austria and Hun-
gary of the present day. He occupied Bavaria,
on the one hand, and Brittany on the other. He
crossed the Pyrenees to measure swords with the
Saracens, and drove them from the north of
Spain, as far as the Ebro. His lordship in Italy
has been noticed already. He was unquestion-
ably one of the greatest monarchs of any age,
and deserves the title Magnus, afiixed to his
name, if that title ever has been deserved by the
kings who were flattered with it. There was
much more in his character than the mere aggres-
sive energy which subjugated so wide a realm'.
He was a man of enlightenment far beyond his
time ; a man who strove after order, in that dis-
orderly age, and who felt oppressed by the igno-
rance "into which the world had sunk. He was a
seeker after learning, and the friend and patron
of all in his day who groped in the darkness and
felt their way towards the light. He organized
his Empire with a sense of political system which
was new among the Teutonic masters of Western
Europe (except as shown by Theodoric in Italy) ;
but there were not years enough in his own life
for the organism to mature, and his sons brought
back chaos again.
Appearance of the Northmen.
Before Charlemagne died (814) he saw the west-
em coasts and river valleys of his Empire harried
by a fresh outpouring of sea-rovers from the far
North, and it is said that he had sad forebodings
of the affliction they would become to his people
thereafter. These new pirates of the North Sea,
who took up, after several centuries, the aban-
doned trade of their kinsmen, the Saxons (now
retired from their wild courses and respectablj'
settled on one side of the water, while subdued
and kept in order on the other), were of the bold
and rugged Scandinavian race, which inhabited
the countries since known as Denmark, Sweden
and Norway. They are more or less confused
under the general name of Northmen, or Norse-
men — men of the North ; but that term appears
to have been applied more especially to the free-
booters from the Norwegian coast, as distin-
guished from the "Danes of the lesser penin-
sula. It is convenient, in so general a sketch as
this, to ignore the distinction, and to speak of tlie
Northmen as inclusive, for that age, of the whole
Scandinavian race.
Their visitations began to terrify the coasts of
England, France and Germany, and the lower
valleys of the rivers which they found it possible
to ascend, some time in the later halt of the
eighth century. It is probable that their appear-
ance on the sea at this time, and not before, was
due to a revolution which united Norway under
a single king and a stronger government, and
which, by suppressing independence and disorder
among the petty chiefs, drove many of them to
their ships and sent them abroad, to lead a life of
lawlessness more agreeable to their tastes. It is
also probable that the northern countries had be-
come populated beyond their resources, as seemed
to have happened before, when the Goths
swarmed out, and that the outlet by sea was
necessarily and deliberately opened. Whatever
the cause, these Norse adventurers, in fleets of
long boats, issued with some suddenness from
their "vies," or fiords (whence the name "vi-
king "), and began an extraordinary career. For
more than half a centur}' their raids had no ob-
ject but plunder, and what they took they car-
ried home to enjoy. First to the Frisian coast,
then to the Rhine — the Seine — the Loire, — they
came again and again to pillage and destroy;
crossing at the same time to the shores of their
nearest kinsmen — but heeding no kinship in
their savage and relentless forays along the Eng-
lish coasts — and around to Ireland and the Scot
tish islands, where their earliest lodgments were
made.
The Danes in England.
About the middle of the ninth century they
began to seize tracts of land in England and to
settle themselves there in permanent homes.
The Angles in the northern and eastern parts
and the Saxons in the southern part of England
had weakened themselves and one another by
rivalry and war between their divided kingdoms.
There had been for three centuries an unceasing
struggle among them for supremacy. At the
time of the coming of the Danes (who were
prominent in the English invasion and gave their
name to it), the West Saxon kings had won a
decided ascendancy. The Danes, by degrees,
stripped them of what they had gained. North-
umberland, Mercia and East Anglia were occupied
in succession, and Wessex itself was attacked.
King Alfred, the great and admirable hero of
early English historj', who came to the throne in
871, spent the first eight years of his reign in a
deadly struggle with the invaders. He was
obliged in the end to concede to them the whole
northeastern part of England, from the Thames
to the Tyne, which was known thereafter as
' ' the Danelaw " ; but they became his vassals, and
submitted to Christian baptism. A century later,
the Norse rovers resumed their attacks upon
England, and a cowardly English king, dis-
trusting the now settled and peaceful Danes,
ordered an extensive massacre of them (1003).
The rage which this provoked in Denmark led to
a great^ invasion of the country. England was
completely conquered, and remained subject to
the Danish kings until 1042, when its throne was
recovered for a brief space of time by the Eng-
lish line.
The Normans in Normandy.
Meanwhile the Northmen had gained a much
firmer and more important footing in the terri-
tory of the Western Pranks — which had not yet
acquired the name of France. The Seine and
its valley attracted them again and again, and
after repeated expeditions up the river, even to
the city of Paris, which they besieged several
1046
EUROPE.
The Feudal
System.
EUROPE.
times, one of their ctiiefs, Rolf or Rollo, got pos-
session of Rouen and began a permanent settle-
ment in tlie country. The Frank King, Charles
the Simple, now made terms witli Rollo and
granted him a district at the mouth of the Seine,
(913), the latter acknowledging the suzerainty or
feudal superiority of Charles, and accepting at
the same time the doubly new character of a
baptised Christian and a Frankish Duke. The
Northmen on the Seine were known thenceforth
as Normans, their dukedom as Normandy, and
they played a great part in European history
during the next two centuries.
The Northmen in the West.
The northern sea-rovers who had settled neither
in Ireland, England, nor Frankland, went farther
afield into the West and North and had wonder-
ful adventures there. They took possession of
the Orkneys, the Shetlands, the Hebrides, and
other islands in those seas, including Man, and
founded a powerful island-kingdom, which they
held for a long period. Thence they passed on
to Faroe and Iceland, and in Iceland, where they
lived peaceful and quiet lives of necessity, they
founded an Interesting republic, and developed a
very remarkable civilization, adorned by a litera-
ture which the world is learning more and more
to admire. From Iceland, it was a natural step
to the discovery of Greenland, and from Green-
land, there is now little doubt that they sailed
southwards and saw and touched the continent
of America, five centuries before Columbus made
his voyage.
The Northmen in the East.
While the Northmen of the ninth and tenth
centuries were exciting and disturbing all West-
ern Europe by their naval exploits, other adven-
turers from the Swedish side of the Scandinavian
country were sallying eastwards under different
names. Both as warriors and as merchants, they
made their way from the Baltic to the Black
Sea and the Bosphorus, and bands of them en-
tered the service of the Eastern Emperor, at
Constantinople, where they received the name
of Varangians, from the oath by which they
bound themselves. One of the Swedish chiefs,
Rurik by name, was chosen by certain tribes of
the country now called Russia, to be their prince.
Rurik's capital was Novgorod, where he formed
the nucleus of a kingdom which grew, through
many vicissitudes, into the modern empire of
Russia. His successors transferred their capital
to Kief, and ultimately it was shifted again to
Moscow, where the Muscovite princes acquired
the title, the power, and the great dominion of
the Czars of all the Russias.
The Slavonic Race.
The Russian sovereigns were thus of Swedish
origin; but their subjects were of another race.
They belonged to a branch of the great Aryan
stock, called the Slavic or Slavonic, which was the
last to become historically known. The Slavonians
bore no important part in events that we have
knowledge of until several centuries of the
Christian era had passed. They were the ob-
scure inhabitants in that period of a wide region
in Eastern Europe, between the Vistula and the
Caspian. In the sixth century, pressed by the
Avars, they crossed the Vistula, moving west-
wards, along the Baltic ; and, about the same time
they moved southwards, across the Danube, and
established the settlements which formed the
existing Slavonic states in South-eastern Europe
— Servia, Croatia and their lesser neighbors.
But the principal seat of the Slavonic race within
historic times has always been in the region still
occupied by its principal representatives, the
Russians and the Poles.
Mediaeval Society. — The Feudal System.
We have now come to a period in European
history — the middle period of the Middle Ages
— when it is appropriate to consider the peculiar
state of society which had resulted from the
transplanting of the Germanic nations of the
North to the provinces of the Roman Empire,
and from placing the well civilized surviving
inhabitants of the latter in subjection to and in
association with masters so vigorous, so capable
and so barbarous. In Gaul, the conquerors, un-
used to town-life, not attracted to town pursuits,
and eager for the possession of land, had gener-
ally spread themselves over the country and left
the cities more undisturbed, except as they pil-
laged them or extorted ransom from them. The
Roman-Gallic population of the country had
sought refuge, no doubt, to a large extent, in
the cities ; the agricultural laborers were already,
for the most part, slaves or half -slaves — the
coloni of the Roman system — and remained in
their servitude; while some of the poorer class
of freemen may have sunk to the same condition.
How far the new masters of the country had
taken possession of its land by actual seizure,
ousting the former owners, and under what
rules, if any, it was divided among them, are
questions involved in great obscurity. In the
time of Charlemagne, there seems to have been
a large number of small landowners who cul-
tivated their own holdings, which they owned,
not conditionally, but absolutely, by the tenure
called allodial. But alongside of these peasant
proprietors there was another landed class whose
estates were held on very different terms, and
this latter class, at the time now spoken of, was
rapidly absorbing the former. It was a class
which had not existed before, neither among the
Germans nor among the Romans, and the system
of land tenure on which it rested was equally
new to both, although both seem to have con-
tributed something to the origin of it. This was
the Feudal System, which may be described, in
the words of Bishop Stubbs, as being "a com-
plete organization of society through the medium
of land tenure, in which, from the king down to
the landowner, all are bound together by obliga-
tion of service and defence : the lord to protect
his vassal, the vassal to do service to his lord;
the defence and service being based on, and regu-
lated by, the nature and extent of the land held
by the one of the other. " Of course, the service
exacted was, in the main, military, and the sys-
tem grew up as a military system, expanding
into a general governing system, during a time
of loose and ineffective administration. That it
was a thing of gradual growth is now fairly
well settled, although little is clearly known of
the process of growth. It came to its perfection
in the tenth century, by which time most other
tenures of land had disappeared. The allodial
tenure gave way before it, because, in those dis-
orderly times, men of small or moderate property
in land were in need of the protection which a
1047
EUROPE.
Formation of
France.
EUROPE.
powerful lord, who had many retainers at his
bacli, or a strong monastery, could give, and
were induced to surrender, to one or the other,
their free ownership of the land they held, receiv-
ing it back as tenants, in order to establish the
relation wliicli secured a protector.
In its final organization, the feudal system, as
stated before, embraced the whole society of the
kingdom. Theoretically, the king was the pin-
nacTe of the system. In the political view of the
time — so far as a political view existed — he was
the over-lord of the realm rather by reason of
being its ultimate land-lord, than by being the
center of authority and the guardian of law. The
greater subordinate lordships of the kingdom —
the dukedoms and counties — were held as huge
estates, called fiefs, derived originally by grant
from the king, subject to the obligation of mili-
tary service, and to certain acts of homage, ac-
knowledging the dependent relationship. The
greater feudatories, or vassals, holding immedi-
ately from the king, were lords in their turn of
a second order of feudatories, who held lands
under them ; and they again might divide their
territories among vassals of a third degree ; for
the process of subinfeudation went on until it
reached the cultivator of the soil, who bore the
whole social structure of society on his bent
back.
But the feudal system would have wrought
few of the effects which it did if it had involved
nothing but laud tenure and military service. It
became, however, as before intimated, a system
of government, and one which inevitably pro-
duced a disintegration of society and a destruc-
tion of national bonds. A grant of territory
generally carried with it almost a grant of sov-
ereignty over the inliabitants of the territory,
limited only by certain rights and powers re-
served to the king, which he found extreme diffi-
culty in exercising. The system was one "in
which every lord judged, taxed, and commanded
the class next below him, in which abject slavery
formed the lowest and irresponsible tyranny the
highest grade, in wliich private war, private
coinage, private prisons, took the place of the
imperial institutions of government " (Stubbs).
This was the singular system which had its
original and special growth among the Franks,
in the Middle Ages, and which spread from them,
under the generally similar conditions of the age,
to other countries, with various degrees of modi-
fication and limitation. Its influence was ob-
viously opposed to political unity and social
order, and to the development of institutions
favorable to the people.
But an opposing influence had kept life in one
part of society which feudalism was not able to
envelope. That was in cities. The cities, as
before stated, had been the refuge of a large and
perhaps a better part of tlie Roman-Gallic free
population which survived the barbarian con-
quest. Tliey, in conjunction with the Church,
preserved, without doubt, so much of the plant
of Roman civilization as escaped destruction.
They certainly sufliered heavily, and languished
for several centuries ; but a slow revival of in-
dustries and arts went on in them, — trade crept
again into its old channels, or found new ones, —
and wealth began to be accumulated anew. With
the consciousness of wealth came feelings of inde-
pendence ; and such towns were now beginning
to acquire the spirit which made them, a little
later, important instruments in the weakening and
breaking of the feudal system.
Rise of the Kingdom of France.
During the period between the deatli of Char-
lemagne and the settlement of the Normans in
the Carlovingian Empire, that Empire had be-
come permanently divided. The final separation
had taken place (887) between the kingdom of
the East Franks, or Germany, and tlie kingdom
of the West Franks, which presently became
France. Between them stretched a region in
dispute called Lotharingia, out of whicli came
the duchy of Lorraine. Tlie kingdom of Bur-
gundy (sometimes cut into two) and the kingdom
of Italy, had regained a separate existence; and
the Empire which Charlemagne had revived was
nothing but a name. The last of the Carlovin-
gian emperors was Arnulf, who died in 899. The
imperial title was borne afterwards by a number
of petty Italian potentates, but lost all imperial
significance for two-thirds of a century, until it
was restored to some grandeur again and to a
lasting influence in history, by another German
king.
Before this occurred, the Carlovingian race of
kings had disappeared from both the Frank king-
doms. During the last hundred years of their
reign in the West kingdom, the tlirone had been
disputed with them two or three times by mem-
bers of a rising family, the Counts of Paris and
Orleans, who were also called Dukes of the
French, and whose duchy gave its name to the
kingdom which they finally made their own. The
kings of the old race held their capital at Laon,
with little power and a small dominion, until
987, when the last one died. The then Count of
Paris and Duke of the French, Hugh, called
Capet, became king of the French, by election ;
Paris became the capital of the kingdom, and
the France of modern times had its birth, though
very far from its full growth.
The royal power had now declined to extreme
weakness. The development of feudalism had
undennined all central authority, and Hugh
Capet as king had scarcely more power than he
drew from his own large fief. "At first he was
by no means acknowledged in the kingdom; but
. . . the chief vassals ultimately gave at least a
tacit consent to the usurpation, and permitted
the royal name to descend undisputed upon his
posterity. But this was almost the sole attribute
of sovereignty which the first kings of the third
dynasty enjoyed. For a long period before and
after the accession of that family France has,
properly speaking, no national history" (Hallam).
The Communes.
When the royal power began to gain ascen-
dancy, it seems to have been largely in consequence
of a tacitly formed alliance between tlie kings
and the commons or burghers of the towns. The
latter, as noted before, were acquiring a spirit
of independence, born of increased prosperity,
and were converting their guilds or trades unions
into crude forms of municipal organization, as
" communes " or commons. Sometimes b}' pur-
chase and sometimes by force, they were ridtling
themselves of the feudal pretensions wliich neigh-
boring lords held over them, and were obtaining
charters which defined and guaranteed municipal
freedom to them. One or two kings of the time
happened to be wise enough to give encourage
1048
k
EUROPE.
Tlie Holy
Roman Empire,
EUROPE.
ment to this movement towards the enfranchise-
ment of the communes, and it proved to have an
important influence in weakening feudalism and
strengthening royalty.
Germany.
In the German kingdom, much the same pro-
cesses of disintegration had produced much the
same results as in France. The great fiefs into
whicli it was divided — the duchies of Saxony,
Francouia, S wabia and Bavaria — were even more
powerful than the great fiefs of France. When
the Carlovingian dynasty came to an end, in
911, the nobles made choice of a king, electing
Conrad of Franconia, and, after him (919), Henry
the Fowler, Duke of Saxony. The monarchy
continued thereafter to be elective, actually as
well as in theory, for a long period. Three times
the crown was kept in the same family during
several successive generations: in the House of
Saxony from 919 to 1024; in the House of Fran-
conia from 1034 to 1137; in the House of the
Hohenstaufens, of Swabia, from 1137 to 1354:
but it never became an acknowledged heritage
until long after the Hapsburgs won possession
of it; and even to the end the forms of election
were preserved.
The Holy Roman Empire.
The second king of the Saxon dynasty, Otho I.,
called the Great, recovered the imperial title,
which had become extinct again in the "West,
added the crown of Lombardy to the crown of
Germany, and founded anew the Germanic Roman
Empire, which Charlemagne had failed to es-
tablish enduringly, but which now became one
of the conspicuous facts of Euroi^ean history for
more than eight hundred years, although seldom
more than a shadow and a name. But the
shadow and the name were those of the great
Rome of antiquity, and the mighty memory it
had left in the world gave a superior dignity and
rank to these German emperors, even while it
diminished their actual power as kings of Ger-
many. It conferred upon them, indeed, more
than rank and dignity; it bestowed an " oiiice "
which the ideas and feelings of that age could
not suffer to remain vacant. The Imperial office
seemed to be required, in matters temporal, to
balance and to be the complement of the Papal
office in matters spiritual. " In nature and com-
pass the government of these two potentates is
the same, differing only in the sphere of its work-
ing ; and it matters not whether we call the Pope
a spiritual Emperor, or the Emperor a secular
Pope. " " Thus the Holy Roman Church and the
Holy Roman Empire are one and the same thing,
in two aspects ; and Catholicism, the principle of
the universal Cliristian society, is also Romanism ;
that is, rests upon Rome as the origin and type
of its universality " (Bryce). These mediaeval
ideas of the ' ' Holy Roman Empire, " as it came to
be called (not immediately, but after a time), gave
importance to the imperial coronation thenceforth
claimed bj^ tlie German kings. It was a facti-
tious importance, so far as concerned the inune-
diate realm of those kings. In Germany, while it
brought no increase to their material power, it
tended to alarm feudal jealousies; it tended to
draw the kings away from their natural identifi-
cation with their own country ; it tended to dis-
tract them from an effective royal policy at home,
by foreign ambitions and aims ; and altogether
it interfered seriously witli the nationalization of
Germany, and gave a longer play to the disrupt-
ing influences of feudalism in that country than
in any other.
Italy, the Empire and the Papacy.
Otto I. had won Italy and the Imperial crown
(963) very easily. For more than half a century
the peninsula had been in a deplorable state.
The elective Lombard crown, quarreled over by
the ducal houses of Friuli, Spoleto, Ivrea, Prov-
ence, and others, settled nowhere with any sure-
ness, and lost all dignity and strength, though
several of the petty kings who wore it had been
crowned emperors by the Pope. At Rome, all
legitimate government, civil or ecclesiastical, had
disappeared. The city and the Church had been
for years imder the rule of a family of courte-
sans, who made popes of their lovers and their
sons. Southern Italy was being ravaged by the
Saracens, who occupied Sicily, and Northern
Italy was desolated by the Hungarians. Under
these circumstances, Otto I., the German Idng,
listened to an appeal from an oppressed queen,
Adelaide, widow of a murdered king, and crossed
the Alps (951), like a gallant knight, to her re-
lief. He chastised and humbled the oppressor,
rescued the queen, and married her. A few
years later, on further provocation, he entered
Italy again, deposed the troublesome King Ber-
engar, caused himself to be crowned King of
Italy, and received the imperial crown at Rome
(963) from one of the vilest of a vile brood of
popes, John XII. Soon afterwards, he was im
polled to convoke a synod which deposed this
disgraceful pope and elected in his place Leo
VIII. , who had been Otto's chief secretary. The
citizens now conceded to the Emperor an absolute
veto on papal elections, and the new pope con-
firmed their act. The German sovereigns, from
that time, for many years, asserted their right to
control the filling of the chair of St. Peter, and
exercised the right on many occasions, though
always with difficulty.
Nominally they were sovereigns of Rome and
Italy ; but during their long absences from the
country they scarcely made a show of adminis-
trative government in it, and their visits were
generally of the nature of expeditions for a re-
conquest of the land. Their claims of sover-
eignty were resisted more and more, politically
throughout Italy and ecclesiastically at Rome.
The Papacy emancipated itself from their con-
trol and acquired a natural leadership of Italian
opposition to German imperial pretensions. The
conflict between these two forces became, as will
be seen later on, one of the dominating facts of
European liistory for four centuries — from the
eleventh to the fourteenth.
The Italian City-republics.
The disorder that had been scarcely checked in
Italy since the Goths came into it, — the practical
extinction of central authority after Charlemagne
dropped his sceptre, and the increasing conflicts
of the nobles among themselves, — had one con-
sequence of remarkable importance in Italian his-
tory. It opened opportunities to many cities in
the northern parts of the peninsula for acquiring
municipal freedom, whicli they did not lack
spirit to improve. They led the movement and
set the example which created, a little later, so
many vigorous communes in Flanders and France.
1049
EUROPE.
Emperors and
Popes.
EUKOPB.
and Imperial free cities in Germany at a still later
day. They were earlier in winning their liber-
ties, and they pushed them farther, — to the point
in many cases of creating, as at Pisa, Genoa,
Florence, and Venice, a republican city state.
Venice, growing up in the security of her la-
goons, from a cluster of fishing villages to a great
city of palaces, had been independent from the
beginning, except as she acknowledged for a time
the nominal supremacy of the Eastern Emperor.
Others won their way to independence through
struggles that are now obscure, and developed,
before these dark centuries reached their close,
an energy of life and a splendor of genius that
come near to comparison with the power and the
genius of the Greeks. But, like the city-republics
of Greece, they were perpetually at strife with
one another, and sacrificed to their mutual jeal-
ousies, in the end, the precious liberty which
made them great, and which they might, by a
well settled union, have preserved.
The Saxon line of Emperors.
Such were the conditions existing or taking
shape in Italy when the Empire of the West —
the Holy Roman Empire of later times — was
founded anew by Otho the Great. Territorially,
the Empire as be left it covered Germany to its
full extent, and two-thirds of Ital}', with the Em-
peror's superiority acknowledged by the subject
states of Burgundy, Bohemia, Moravia, Poland,
Denmark, and Hungary — the last named with
more dispute.
Otho the Great died in 973. His two immediate
successors, Otho II. (973-983) and Otho III. (983-
1002) accomplished little, though the latter had
great ambitions, planning to raise Rome to her
old place as the capital of the world ; but he died
in his youth in Ital_y, and was succeeded by a
cousin, Henry II., whose election was contested
by rivals in Germany, and repudiated in Italy.
In the latter country the great nobles placed
Ardoin, marquis of Ivrea, on the Lombard throne ;
but the factions among them soon caused his over-
throw, and, Henry, crossing the Alps, reclaimed
the crown.
The Franconian Emperors.
Henry II. was the last of the Saxon line, and
upon his death, in 1024, the House of Franconia
came to the throne, by the election of Conrad II. ,
called " the Salic." Under Conrad, the kingdom
of Burgundy, afterwards called the kingdom of
Aries (which is to be distinguished from the
French Duchy of Burgundy — the northwestern
part of the old kingdom), was reunited to the
Empire, by the bequest of its last king, Rudolph
III. Conrad's son, grandson, and great grand-
son succeeded him in due order ; Henry III. from
1039 to 1056; Henry IV. from 1056 to 1106;
Henry V. from 1106 to 1135. Under Henry III.
the Empire was at the summit of its power.
Henry II., exercising the imperial prerogative,
had raised the Duke of Hungary to royal rank,
giving him the title of king. Henry III. now
forced the Hungarian king to acknowledge the
imperial supremacy and pay tribute. The Ger-
man kingdom was ruled with a strong hand
and peace among its members compelled. "In
Rome, no German sovereign had ever been so
absolute. A disgraceful contest between three
claimants of the papal chair had shocked even
the reckless apathy of Italy. Henry deposed
them all and appointed their successor." " The
synod passed a decree granting to Henry the
right of nominating the supreme pontiff ; and the
Roman priesthood, who had forfeited the respect
of the world even more by habitual simony than
by the flagrant corruption of their manners, were
forced to receive German after German as their
bishop, at the bidding of a ruler so powerful, so
severe, and so pious. But Henry's encroach-
ments alarmed his own nobles no less than the
Italians, and the reaction, which might have
been dangerous to himself, was fatal to his suc-
cessor. A mere chance, as some might call it,
determined the course of history. The great
Emperor died suddenly in A. D. 1056, and a
child was left at the helm, while storms were
gathering that might have demanded the wisest
hand " (Bryce).
Hildebrand and Henry IV.
The child was Henry IV., of unfortunate
memory ; the storms which beset him blew from
Rome. The Papacy, lifted from its degradation
by Henry's father and grandfather, had recov-
ered its boldness of tone and enlarged its pre-
tensions and claims. It had come under the
influence of an extraordinary man, the monk
Hildebrand, who swayed the councils of four popes
before he became pope himself (1073), and whose
pontifical reign as Gregory VII. is the epoch of
greatest importance in the history of the Roman
Church. The overmastering ascendancy of the
popes, in the Church and over all who acknowl-
edge its communion, really began when this in-
vincible monk was raised to the papal throne.
He broke the priesthood and the whole hierarchy
of the West to blind obedience by his relentless
discipline. He isolated them, as an order apart,
by enforcing celibacy upon them ; and he extin-
guished the corrupting practices of simony.
Then, when he had marshalled the forces of the
Church, he proclaimed its independence and its
supremacy in absolute terms. In the growth of
feudalism throughout Europe, the Church had
become compromised in many ways with the
civil powers. Its bishoprics and abbeys had
acquired extensively the nature of fiefs, and bish-
ops and abbots were required to do homage to a
secular lord before they could receive an "inves-
titure " of the rich estates which had become
attached by a feudal tenure to their sees. The
ceremony of investiture, moreover, included de-
livery of the crozier and the pastoral ring, which
were the very symbols of their spiritual ofiice.
Against this dependence of the Church upon
temporal powers, Gregory now arrayed it in re-
volt, and began the "War of Investitures,"
which lasted for half a century. The great
battle ground was Germany ; the Emperor, of
necessity, was the chief opponent; and Henry
IV., whose youth had been badly trained, and
whose authority had been weakened by a long,
ill-guardianed minority, was at a disadvantage
in the contest. His humiliation at Canossa
(1077), when he stood through tliree winter days,
a suppliant before the door of the castle which
lodged his haughty enemy, praying to be released
from the dread penalties of excommunication, is
one of the familiar tableaux of history. He had
a poor revenge seven years later, when he took
Rome, drove Gregory into the castle St. Angelo,
and seated an anti-pope in the Vatican. But his
triumph was brief. There came to the rescue
1050
EUROPE.
Norman Conquests.
EUROPE.
of the beleaguered Pope certain new actors in
Italian history, whom it is now necessary to in-
troduce.
The Normans in Italy and Sicily.
The settlement of predatory Northmen on the
Seine, which took the name of Normandy and the
constitution of a ducal fief of France, had long
since grown into an important half-independent
state. Its people — now called Normans in the
smoother speech of the South — had lost some-
thing of their early rudeness, and had fallen a
little under the spell of the rising chivalry of the
age ; but the goad of a warlike temper which drove
their fathers out of Norway still pricked the sons
and sent them abroad, in restless search of ad-
ventures and gain. Some found their way into
the south of Italy, where Greeks, Lombards and
Saracens were fighting merrily, and where a good
sword and a tough lance were tools of the only
industry well-paid. Presently there was banded
among them there a little army, which found
itself a match for any force that Greek or Lom-
bard, or other opponent, could bring against it,
and which proceeded accordingly to work its
own will in the land. It seized Apulia (1043) and
divided it into twelve countships, as an aristo-
cratic republic. Pope Leo IX. led an army against
it and was beaten and taken prisoner (1053). To
release himself he was compelled to grant the
duchy they had taken to them, as a fief of the
Church, and to extend his grant to whatever they
might succeed in taking, beyond it. The chiefs
of the Normans thus far had been, in succession,
three sons of a poor gentleman in the Cotentin,
Tancred by name, who now sent a fourth son to
the scene. This new comer was Robert, having
the surname of Guiscard, who became the fourth
leader of the Norman troop (1057), and who, in a
few years, assumed the title of Duke of Calabria
and Apulia. His duchies comprised, substan-
tially, the territory of the later kingdom of
Naples. A fifth brother, Roger, had meantime
crossed to Sicily, with a small following of his
countrymen, and, between 1060 and 1090, had ex-
pelled the Saracens from that island, and pos-
sessed it as a flef of his brother's duchy. But in
the next generation these relations between the
two conquests were practically reversed. The
son of Roger received the title of King of Sicily
from the Pope, and Calabria and Apulia were an-
nexed to his kingdom, through the extinction of
Robert's family.
These Normans of Southern Italy were the al-
lies who came to the rescue of Pope Gregory,
when the Emperor, Henry IV., besieged him in
Castle St. Angelo. He summoned Robert Guis-
card as a vassal of the Church, and the response
was prompt. Henry and his Germans retreated
when the Normans came near, and the latter en-
tered Rome (1084). Accustomed to pillage, they
began, soon, to treat the city as a captured place,
and the Romans rose against them. They retali-
ated with torch and sword, and once more Rome
suffered from the destroying rage of a barba-
rous soldiery let loose. "Neither Goth nor Van-
dal, neither Greek nor German, brought such
desolation on the city as this capture by the Nor-
mans " (Milman). Duke Robert made no attempt
to hold the ruined capital, but v/ithdrew to his
own dominions. The Pope wcsi with him, and
died soon afterwards (1085), unable to return to
Rome. But the imperious temper he had imparted
to the Church was lastingly fixed in it, and his
lofty pretensions were even surpassed by the pon-
tiffs who succeeded him. He spoke for the Papacy
the first syllables of that awful proclamation that"
was sounded in its finality, after eight hundred
years, when the dogma of infallibility was put
forth.
Norman Conquest of England.
The Normans in Italy established no durable
power. In another quarter they were more for-
tunate. Their kinsmen, the Danes, who subju-
gated England and annexed it to their own king-
dom in 1016, had lost it again in 1043, when the
old line of kings was restored, in the person of
Edward, called the Confessor. But William,
Duke of Normandy, had acquired, in the course
of these shiftings of the English crown, certain
claims which he put forth when Edward died,
and when Harold, son of the great Earl Godwine,
was elected king to succeed him, in 1066. To en-
force his claim, Duke William, commissioned by
the Pope, invaded England, in the early autumn
of that year, and won the kingdom in the great
and decisive battle of Senlac, or Hastings, where
Harold was slain. On Christmas Day he was
crowned, and a few years sufficed to end all re-
sistance to his authority. He established on the
English throne a dynasty which, though shifting
sometimes to collateral lines, has held it to the
present day.
The Norman Conquest, as estimated by its-
greatest historian. Professor Freeman, wrought
more good effects than ill to the English people.
It did not sweep away their laws, customs or lan-
guage, but it modified them all, and not unfavor-
ably ; while ' ' it aroused the old national spirit to
fresh life, and gave the conquered people fellow-
workers in their conquerors." The monarchy
was strengthened by William's advantages as a
conqueror, used with the wisdom and moderation
of a statesman. Feudalism came into England
stripped of its disrupting forces ; and the possible
alternative of absolutism was hindered by po-
tent checks. At the same time, the Conquest
brought England into relations with the Continent
which might otherwise have arisen very slowly,
and thus gave an early importance to the nation
in European history.
The Crusades.
At the period now reached in our survey, all
Europe was on the eve of a profounder excite-
ment and commotion than it had ever before
known — -one which stirred it for the first time
with a common feeling and with common
thoughts. A great cry ran through it, for help
to deliver the holy places of the Christian faith
from the infidels who possessed them. The
pious and the adventurous, the fanatical and
the vagrant, rose up in one motley and tumul-
tuous response to the appeal, and mobs and
armies (hardly distinguishable) of Crusaders —
warriors of the Cross — began to whiten the high-
ways into Asia with their bones. The first move-
ment, in 1096, swept 300,000 men, women and
children, under Peter the Hermit, to their death,
with no other result; but nearly at the same
time there went an army, French and Norman
for the most part, which made its way to Jerusa-
lem, took the city by assault (1099) and founded
a kingdom there, which defended itself for almost
a hundred years. Long before it fell, it was
pressed sorely by the surrounding Moslems and
1061
EUROPE.
Turks, Byzantines
and Crusaders.
EUROPE.
cried to Europe for help. A Second Crusade, in
1147, accomplished nothiag for its relief, but
spent vast multitudes of lives; and when the
feeble kingdom disappeared, in 1187, and the
Sepulchre of the Saviour was defiled again by
unbelievers, Christendom grew wild, once more,
with passion, and a Third Crusade was led by
the redoubtable Emperor Frederick Barbarossa,
of Germany, King Richard Coeur de Lion, of
England, and King Philip Augustus of France.
The Emperor perished miserably on the way and
his army was wasted in its march; the French
and English exhausted themselves in sieges which
won nothing of durable advantage to the Chris-
tian world ; the Sultan Saladin gathered most of
the laurels of the war.
The Turks on the Scene.
The armies of Islam which the Crusaders en-
countered in Asia Minor and the Holy Land were
no longer, in their leadership, of the race of Ma-
homet. The religion of the Prophet was still
triumphant in the East, but his nation had lost
its lordship, and Western Asia had submitted to
new masters. These were the Turks — Turks of
the House of Seljuk — first comers of their swarm
from the great Aral basin. First they had been
disciples, won by the early armed missionaries
of the Crescent ; then servants and mercenaries,
hired to fight its battles and guard its princes,
when the vigor of the Arab conquerors began to
be sapped, and their character to be corrupted by
luxur_y and pride ; then, at last, they were masters.
About the middle of the ninth century, the Caliph
at Bagdad became a puppet in their hands, and
the Jloslem Empire in Asia (Africa and Spain
being divided between rival Caliphs) soon passed
under their control.
These were the possessors of Jerusalem and its
sacred shrines, whose grievous and insulting
treatment of Christian pilgrims, in the last years
of the eleventh century, had stirred Europe to
wrath and provoked the great movement of the
Crusades. The movement had Important conse-
quences, both immediate and remote ; but its first
effects were small in moment compared with
those which lagged after. To understand either,
it will be necessary to glance back at the later
course of events in the Eastern or Byzantine
Empire.
The Byzantine Empire.
The fortunes of the Empire, since it gave up
Syria and Egypt to the Saracens, had been, on
the whole, less unhappy than the dark prospect
at that time. It had checked the onrush of Arabs
at the Taurus mountain range, and retained Asia
Minor; it had held Constantinople against them
through two terrible sieges; it had fought for
three centuries, and finally subdued, a new Tu-
ranian enemy, the Bulgarians, who had estab-
lished a kingdom south of the Danube, where
their name remains to the present day. The his-
tory of its court, during much of the period, had
been a black and disgusting record of conspira-
cies, treacheries, murders, mutilations, usurpa-
tions and foul vices of every description ; with
now and then a manly figure climbing to the
throne and doing heroic things, for the most part
uselessly; but the system of governmental ad-
ministration seems to have been so well con
structed that it worked with a certain indepen-
dence of its vile or imbecile heads, and the country
was probably better and better governed than its
court.
At Constantinople, notwithstanding frequent
tumults and revolutions, there had been material
prosperity and a great gathering of wealth. The
Saracen conquests, by closing other avenues of
trade between the East and the West, had concen-
trated that most profitable commerce in the By-
zantine capital. The rising commercial cities of
Italy — Amalphi, Venice, Genoa, Pisa — seated
their enterprises there. Art and literature, which
had decayed, began then to revive, and Byzan-
tine culture, on its surface, took more of superi-
ority to that of Teutonic Europe.
The conquests of the Seljuk Turks gave a
serious check to this improvement of the circum-
stances of the Empire. Momentarily, by divid-
ing the Moslem power in Asia, they had opened
an opportunity to an energetic Emperor, J^iceph-
orus Phocas. to recover northern Syria and
Cilicia (961-969). But when, in the next cen-
tury, they had won a complete mastery of the
dominions of the Caliphate of Bagdad, they
speedily swept back the Byzantines, and overran
and occupied the most of Asia Minor and Ar-
menia. Adecisive victory at Manzikert, in 1071,
when the emperor of the moment was taken
prisoner and his army annihilated, gave them
well nigh the whole territory to the Hellespont.
The Empire was nearly reduced to its European
domain, and suffered ten years of civil war be-
tween rivals for the throne.
At the end of th;it time it acquired a ruler, in
the person of Alexius Comueuus, who is the gen-
erally best known of all the Byzantine line, be-
cause he figures notably in the stories of the
First Crusade. He was a man of crafty abili-
ties and complete unscrupulousness. He took
the Empire at its lowest state of abasement and
demoralization. In the first year of his reign he
had to face a new enemy. Robert Guiscard, the
Norman, who had conquered a dukedom in
Southern Italy, thought the situation favorable
for an attack on the Eastern Empire, and for
winning the imperial crown. Twice he invaded
the Greek peninsula (1081-1084) and defeated
the forces brought against him by Alexius ; but
troubles in Italy recalled him on the first occa-
sion, and his death brought the second expedi-
tion to naught.
Such was the situation of the Byzantines when
the waves of the First Crusade, rolling Asia- ward,
surged up to the gates of Constantinople. It
was a visitation that might well appal them, —
these hosts of knights and vagabonds, fanatics
and freebooters, who claimed and proffered help
in a common Christian war with the infidels, and
who, nevertheless, had no Christian communion
with them — schismatics as they were, outside
the fold of the Roman shepherd. There is not
a doubt that they feared the crusading Franks
more than they feared the Turks. They knew
them less, and the little hearsay knowledge they
had was of a lawless, barbarous, fighting feu-
dalism in the countries of the West, — more rough
and uncouth, at least, than their own defter
methods of murdering and mutilating one another.
They received their dangerous visitors with ner-
vousness and suspicion ; but Alexius Coranenus
proved equal to the delicate position in which
he found himself placed. He burdened his soul
with lies and perfidies; but he managed affairs
so wonderfully that the Empire plucked the best
1052
EUROPE.
Effects of the
Crusades.
EUROPE.
fruits of the first Crusades, by recovering a
great part of Asia Minor, with all the coasts of
the Euxine and the ^gean, from the weakened
Turks. The latter were so far shaken and de-
pi'essed by the hard blows of the Crusaders that
they troubled the Byzantines very little in the
century to conae.
But against this immediate gain to the Eastern
Empire from the early Crusades, there were
seriou.s later offsets. The commerce of Constanti-
nople declined rapidly, as soon as the Moslem
blockade of the Syrian coast line was broken. It
lost its monopoly. Trade ran back again into other
reopened channels. The Venetians and Genoese
became more independent. Formerly, they had
received privileges in the Empire as a gracious
concession. Now they dictated the terms of
their commercial treaties and their naval alliances.
Their rivalries with one another involved the
Empire in quarrels with both, and a state of
things was brought about which had much to do
with the catastrophe of 1304, when tlie fourth
Crusade was diverted to the conquest of Con-
stantinople, and a Latin Empire supplanted the
Empire of the Roman-Greeks.
Effects of the Crusades.
Briefly noted, these were the consequences of
the early Crusades in the East. In western
Europe they had slower, but deeper and more
lasting effects. They weakened feudalism, by
sending abroad so many of the feudal lords, and
by impoverishing so many more ; whereby the
towns gained more opportunity for enfranchise-
ment, and the crown, in Prance particularly, ac-
quired more power. They checked smaller wars
and private quarrels for a time, and gave in
many countries unwonted seasons of peace, dur-
ing which the thoughts and feelings of men were
acted on by more civilizing influences. They
brought men into fellowship who were only ac-
customed to fight one another, and thus softened
their provincial and national antipathies. They
expanded the knowledge — the experience — the
ideas — of the whole body of those who visited
tlie East and who survived the adventurous ex-
pedition; made them acquainted with civiliza-
tions at least more polished than their own;
taught them many things which they could only
learn in those days by actual sight, and sent
them back to their homes throughout Europe, to
be instructors and missionaries, who did much to
prepare "Western Cliristendom for the Renaissance
or new birth of a later time. The twelfth cen-
tury — the century of the great Crusades — saw
the gray day-break in Europe after the long night
of darkness which settled down upon it in the
fifth. In the thirteenth it reached the brighten-
ing dawn, and in the fifteenth it stood iu the
full morning of the modern day. Among all the
movements by which it was pushed out of dark-
ness into light, that of the Crusades would appear
to have been the most important ; important in
itself, as a social and political movement of great
change, and important in the seeds that it scattered
for a future harvest of effects.
In both the Byzantine and Arabian civiliza-
tions of the East there was much for western
Europe to learn. Perhaps there was more in the
last named than in the first ; for the Arabs, when
they came out from behind their deserts, and ex-
changed the nomadic life for the life of cities,
had shown an amazing avidity for the lingering
science of old Greece, which they encountered in
Egypt and Syria. They had preserved far more
of it, and more of the old fineness of feeling that
went with it, than had survived in Greece it-
self, or in any part of the Teutonized empire of
Rome. The Crusaders got glimpses of its in-
fluence, at least, and a curiosity was wakened,
which sent students into Moorish Spain, and
opened scholarly interchanges which greatly ad-
vanced learning in Europe.
Rising Power of the Church.
Not the least important effect of the Crusades
was the atmosphere of religion which they caused
to envelope the great affairs of the time, and
which they made common in politics and so-
ciety. The influence of the Church was increased
by this ; and its organization was powerfully
strengthened by the great monastic revival that
followed presently: the rise of purer and more
strictly disciplined orders of the " regular" (that
is the secluded or monastic) clergy — Cistercians,
Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc. ; as
well as the creation of the great military-religious
orders — Knights Templars, Knights of the Hos-
pital of St. John, Teutonic Knights, and others,
which were immediately connected with the
Crusades.
To say that the Church gained influence is to
say that the clergy gained it, and that the chief
of the clergy, the Pope, concentrated the gain in
himself. The whole clerical body was making
encroachments in every field of politics upon the
domain of the civil authority, using shrewdly the
advantages of superior learning, and busying
itself more and more in temporal affairs. The
popes after Gregory VII. maintained his high
pretensions and [pursued his audacious course.
In most countries they encountered resistance
from the Crown; but the brunt of the conflict
still fell upon the emperors, who, in some re-
spects, were the most poorly armed for it.
Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Henry IV., who outlived his struggle with
Gregory, was beaten down at last — dethroned
by a graceless son, excommunicated by a relent-
less Church and denied burial when he died (1106)
by its clergy. The rebellious son, Henry V., in
his turn fought the same battle over for ten years,
and forced a compromise which saved about half
the rights of investiture that his father had
claimed. His death (1135) ended the Franconian
line, and the imperial crown returned for a few
years to the House of Saxony, by the election of
the Duke Lothaire. But the estates of the Fran-
conian family had passed, by his mother, to
Frederick of Hohenstaufen, duke of Swabia; and
now a bitter feud arose between the House of
Saxony and the House of Hohenstaufen or Swa-
bia, — a feud that was the most memorable and
the longest lasting in history, if measured by the
duration of party strifes which began in it and
which took their names from it. For the raging
factions of Guelfs and Ghibellines which divided
Italy for two centuries had their beginning in
this Swabian-Saxon feud, among the Germans.
The Guelfs were the partisans of the House of
Saxony ; the Ghibellines were the party of the
Hohenstaufens. The Hohenstaufens triumphed
when Lothaire died (1138), and made Conrad of
their House Emperor. They held the crown,
moreover, in their family for four generations,
1053
EUROPE.
Gnelfs
and Ghibellines.
EUROPE.
extending through more than a century ; and so it
happened that the German name of the German
party of the Hohenstaufens came to be identified
in Italy with the party or faction in that country
which supported imperial interests and claims in
the free cities and against the popes. AVhereupon
the opposed party name was borrowed from Ger-
many likewise and applied to the Italian faction
which took ground against the Emperors — al-
though these Italian Guelfs had no objects in
common with the partisans of Saxony.
The Hohenstaufens in Italy.
The first Hohenstauf en emperor was succeeded
(1152) by his nephew Frederick I., called Bar-
barossa. because of his red beard. The long
reign of Frederick, until 1190, was mainly filled
with wars and contentions in Italy, where he
pushed the old quarrel of the Empire with the
Papacy, and where, furthermore, he resolutely
undertook to check the growing independence of
the Lombard cities. Five times during his reign
he led a great army into the peninsula, like a
hostile invader, and his destroying marches
through the country, of which he claimed to be
sovereign, were like those of the barbarians who
came out of the North seven centuries before.
The more powerful cities, like Milan, were un-
doubtedly oppressing their weaker neighbors,
and Barbarossa assumed to be the champion of
the latter. But he smote impartially the weak
and the strong, the village and the town, which
provoked his arrogant temper in the slightest de-
gree. Jlilan escaped his wrath on the first visi-
tation, but went down before it when he came
again (1158), and was totally destroyed, the in-
habitants being scattered in other towns. Even
the enemies of Milan were moved to compassion
by the savageness of this punishment, and joined,
a few years later, in rebuilding the prostrate walls
and founding Milan anew. A great ' ' League of
Lombardy " was formed by all the northern towns,
to defend their freedom against the hated Em-
peror, and the party of the Ghibellines was re-
duced for the time to a feeble minority. Mean-
time Barbarossa had forced his way into Rome,
stormed the very Church of St. Peter, and seated
an anti-pope on the throne. But a sudden pesti-
lence fell upon his army, and he tied before it,
out of Italy, almost alone. Yet he never relaxed
his determination to bend both the Papacy and
the Lombard republics to his will. After seven
years he returned, for the fifth time, and it
proved to be the last. The League met him at
Legnano (1176) and administered to him an over-
whelming defeat. Even his obstinacy was then
overcome, and after a truce of six years he made
peace with the League and the Pope, on terms
which conceded most of the liberties that the
cities claimed. It was in the reign of Frederick
that the name " Holy Roman Empire " began, it
seems, to be used.
Frederick died while on a crusade and was
succeeded (1190) by his son, Henry VI., who had
married the daughter and heiress of the King of
Sicily and who acquired that kingdom in her
right. His short reign was occupied mostlj' in
subduing the Sicilian possession. When lie died
(1197) his son Frederick was a child. Frederick
succeeded to the crown of Sicily, but his rights
in Germany (where his father had already caused
him to be crowned "King of the Romans" —
the step preliminary to an imperial election)
were entirely ignored. The German crown was
disputed between a Swabian and a Saxon claim-
ant, and the Saxon, Otho, was King and Em-
peror in name, until 1218, when he died. But
he, too, quarreled with a pope, about the lands
of the Countess Matilda, which she gave to the
Church; and his quarrel was with Innocent III.,
a pope who realized the autocracy which Hilde-
brand had looked forward to, and who lifted the
Papacy to the greatest Iieight of power it ever
attained. To cast down Otho, Innocent took up
the cause of Frederick, who received the royal
crown a second time, at Aix-la-Chapelle (1215)
and the imperial crown at Rome (1220). Fred-
eiick II. (his designation) was one of the few
men of actual genius who have ever sprung
from the sovereign families of the world ; a man
so far in advance of his time that he appears
like a modern among his mediaeval contempo-
raries. He was superior to the superstitions of
his age, — superior to its bigotries and its pro-
vincialisms. His large sympathies and cosmo-
politan frame of mind were acted upon by all
the new impulses of the epoch of the crusades,
and made him reflect, in his brilliant character,
as in a mirror, the civilizing processes that were
working on his generation.
Between such an emperor as Frederick II. and
such popes as Innocent III. and his immediate
successors, there could not fail to be collision and
strife. The man who might, perhaps, under
other circumstances, have given some quicker
movement to the hands which measure human
progress on the dial of time, spent his life in
barely proving his ability to live and reign
under tlic anathemas and proscriptions of the
Church. But he fought a losing fight, even
when he seemed to be winning victories in north-
ern Italy, over the Guelf cities of Lombardy,
and when the party of the Ghibellines appeared
to be ascendant throughout the peninsula. His
death (1250) was the end of the Hohenstaufens
as an imperial family. His son, Conrad, who
survived him four years, was king of Sicily and
had been crowned king of Germany; but he
never wore the crown imperial. Conrad's ille-
gitimate brother, Manfred, succeeded on the
Sicilian throne ; but the implacable Papacy gave
his kingdom to Charles of Anjou, brother of
King Louis IX. of France, and invited a crusade
for the conquest of it. Manfred was slain in
battle, Conrad's young son, Couradin, perished
on the scaffold, and the Hohenstaufens disap-
peared from history. Their rights, or claims, in
Sicily and Naples, passed to the Spanish House
of Aiagon, by the marriage of Manfred's daugh-
ter to the Aragonese king; whence long strife
between the House of Anjou and the House of
Aragon, and a troubled history for the Neapoli-
tans and the Sicilians during some centuries. In
the end, Anjou kept Naples, while Aragon won
Sicil}'; the kings in both lines called themselves
Kings of Sicily, and a subsequent re-union of
the two crowns created a very queerly named
"Kingdom of the Two Sicilies."
Germany and the Empire.
After the death of Frederick II. , the German
kings, while maintaining the imperial title,
practically abandoned their serious attempts to
enforce an actual sovereignty in Italy. The
Holy Roman Empire, as a political factor com-
prehending more than Germany, now ceased in
1054
EUROPE.
Germany.
EUROPE.
reality to exist. The name lived on, but only to
represent a flattering fiction for magnifying the
rank and importance of the German kings. In
Italy, the conflict, as between Papacy and Em-
pire, or between Lombard republican cities and
Empire, was at an end. No further occasion
existed for an imperial party, or an anti-imperial
party. The Guelf and Ghibelline names and
divisions had no more the little meaning that
first belonged to them. But Guelfs and Ghibel-
lines raged against one another more furiously
than before, and generations passed before their
feud died out.
While the long, profitless Italian conflict of
the Emperors went on, their kingship in Ger-
many suffered sorely. As they grasped at a
shadowy imperial title, the substance of royal
authority slipped from them. Their frequent
prolonged absence in Italy gave opportunities for
enlarged independence to the German princes
and feudal lords; their difiiculties beyond the
Alps forced them to buy support from their vas-
sals at home by fatal concessions and -grants;
their neglect of German affairs weakened the ties
of loyaUy, and provoked revolts. The result
might have been a dissolution of Germany so
complete as to give rise to two or three strong
states, if another potent influence had not worked
injury in a different way. This came from the
custom of equalized inheritance which prevailed
among the Germans. The law of primogeniture,
which already governed hereditary transmissions
of territorial sovereignty in many countries, even
where it did not give an undivided private es-
tate, as in England, to the eldest son of a family,
got footing in Germany very late and very
slowly. At the time now described, it was the
quite common practice to divide principalities
between all the sons surviving a deceased duke
or margrave. It was this practice which gave
rise to the astonishing number of petty states
into which Germany came to be divided, and
the forms of which are still intact. It was this,
in the main, which prevented the growth of
any states to a power that would absorb the rest.
On the other hand, the flimsy, half fictitious
general constitution which the Empire substi-
tuted for such an one as the Kingdom of Ger-
many would naturally have grown into, made
an effective centralization of sovereignty — easy
as the conditions seemed to be prepared for it —
quite impossible.
Free Cities in Germany and their Leagues.
One happy consequence of this state of things
was the enfranchisement, either wholly or nearly
so, of many thriving cities. The growth of cities,
as centers of industry and commerce, and the
development of municipal freedom among them,
was considerably later in Germany than in Italy,
France and the Netherlands; but the indepen-
dence gained by some among them was more en-
tire than in the Low Countries or in France, and
more lasting than in Italy.
Most of the free cities of Germany were di-
rectly or immediately subject to the Emperor,
and wholly independent of the princes whose
territories surrounded them ; whence they were
called " imperial cities. " This relationship bound
them to the Empire by strong ties ; they had less
to fear from it than from the nearer small poten-
tates of their country ; and it probably drew a
considerable part of such strength as it possessed,
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, from their
support. Their own power was being aug-
mented at this period by the formation of exten-
sive Leagues among them, for common defense,
and for the protection, regulation and extension
of their trade. In that age of lawless violence,
there was so little force in government, every-
where, and so entire a want of cooperation be-
tween governments, that the operations of trade
were exposed to piracy, robbery, and black-mail,
on every sea and in every land. By the organi-
zation of their Leagues, the energetic merchants
of north-western Europe did for themselves what
their half-civilized governments failed to do for
them. They not only created effective agencies
for the protection of their trade, but they legis-
lated, nationally and internationally, for them-
selves, establishing codes and regulations, nego-
tiating commercial treaties, making war, and
exercising many functions and powers that seem
strange to modem times. The great Hansa, or
Hanseatic League, which rose to importance in the
thirteenth century among the cities in the north
of Germany, was the most extensive, the longest
lasting and the most formidable of these confed-
erations. It controlled the trade between Ger-
many, England, Russia, the Scandinavian coun-
tries, and the Netherlands, and through the latter
it made exchanges with southern Europe and the
East. It waged successful war with Denmark,
Sweden and Norway combined, in defiance of the
opposition of the Emperor and the Pope. But
the growth of its power engendered an arrogance
which provoked enmity in all countries, while
the slow crystalizing of nationalities in Europe,
with national sentiments and ambitions, worked
in all directions against the commercial monopoly
of the Hansa towns. By the end of the fifteenth
century their league had begun to break up and
its power to decline. The lesser associations of
similar character — such as the Rhenish and the
Swabian — had been shorter-lived.
The Great Interregnum.
These city -confederations represented in their
time the only movement of concentration that ap-
peared in Germany. Every other activity seemed
tending toward dissolution. Headship there was
none for a quarter of a century after Frederick
II. died. The election of the Kings, who took
rank and title as Emperors when crowned by the
Pope, had now become the exclusive privilege
of three prince-bishops and four temporal princes,
who acquired the title of Electors. Jealous of
one another, and of all the greater lords outside
their electoral college, it was against their policy
to confer the scepter on any man who seemed
likely to wield it with a strong hand. For twenty
years — a period in German history known as the
Great Interregnum — they kept the throne prac-
tically vacant. Part of the Electors were bribed
to choose Richard, Earl of Cornwall, brother of
the English King Henry III. , and the other part
gave their votes to Alfonso, King of Castile. Al-
fonso never came to be crowned, either as King
or Emperor ; Richard was crowned King, but exer-
cised no power and lived mostly in his own coun-
try. The Empire was virtually extinct; the
Kingdom hardly less so. Burgundy fell away
from the imperial jurisdiction even more than
Italy did. Considerable parts of it passed to
France.
1055
EUROPE.
"Rise of the House of Austria.
France in the
Twelfth Century.
EUROPE.
At last in 1273, the interregnum was ended
by the election of a German noble to be Kmg
of Germany. This was Rodolph, Count of
Hapsburg,— lord of a small domain and of little
importance from his own possessions, which ex-
plains, without doubt, his selection. But Ko-
-dolph proved to be a vigorous king, and he
founded a family of such lasting stamina and such
self-seeking capability that it secured in time
permanent possession of the German crown, and
acquired, outside of Germany, a great dominion
of its own. He began the aggrandizement of
his House by taking the fine duchy of Austria
from the kingdom of Bohemia and bestowing it
upon his sons. He was energetic in improving
opportunities like this, and energetic, too, in de-
stroying the castles of robber-knights and hang-
ing the robbers on their own battlements; but
of substantial authority or power he had little
enough. He never went to Rome for the imperial
crown ; nor troubled himself much with Italian
On Rodolph's death (1291), his son Albert of
Austria was a candidate for the crown. The
Electors rejected him and elected another poor
noble, Adolphus of Nassau; but Adolphus dis-
pleased them after a few years, and they decreed
Ibis deposition, electing Albert in his place. War
followed and Adolphus was killed. Albert's
reign was one of vigor, but he accomplished
little of permanent effect. He planted one of
his sons on the throne of Bohemia, where the
reigning family had become extinct; but the
new king died in a few months, much hated, and
the Bohemians resisted an Austrian successor.
In 1308, Albert was assassinated, and the electors
raised Count Henry of Luxemburg to the throne,
as Henry VII. Henry VII. was the first king of
■Germany since the Hohenstaufens who went to
Italy (1310) for the crown of Lombardy and the
■crown of the CcBsars, both of which he received.
The Ghibelline party was still strong among the
Italians. In the distracted state of that country
there were many patriots — the poet Dante promi-
nent among them — who hoped great things
from the reappearance of an emperor; but the
enthusiastic welcome he received was mainly
from those furious partisans who looked for a
party triumph to be vion under the new emper-
or's lead. When they found that he would not
let himself be made an instrument of faction in
the unhappy country, they turned against him.
His undertakings in Italy promised nothing but
failure, when he died suddenly (1313), from
poison, as the Germans believed. His successor
in Germany, chosen by the majority of the elec-
tors, was Lewis of Bavaria; but Frederick the
Fair of Austria, supported by a minority, dis-
puted the election, and there was civil war for
twelve years, until Frederick, a prisoner, so won
the heart of Lewis that the latter divided the
throne with him and the two reigned together.
France under the Capetians.
While Germany and the fictitious Empire
linked with it were thus dropping from the fore-
most place in western Europe into the back-
ground, several kingdoms were slowly emerging
out of the anarchy of feudalism, and acquiring
the organization of authority and law which
creates stable and substantial power. France for
two centuries, under the first three Capetian
kings, had made little progress to that end. At
the accession (1108) of the fourth of those kings,
namely, Louis VI. , it is estimated that the actual
possessions of the Crown, over which it exercised
sovereignty direct, equalled no more than about
five of the modern departments of France ; while
twenty -nine were in the great fiefs of Flanders,
Burgundy, Champagne, Normandy, Brittany,
Anjou, Vermandois, and Boulogne, where the
royal authority was but nominal; thirty-three,
south of the Loire, were hardly connected with
the Crown, and twenty-one were then dependent
on the Empire. The actual ' ' France, " as a king-
dom, at that time, was very small. "The real
domain of Louis VI. was almost confined to the
five towns of Paris, Orieans, Estampes, Melun,
and Compiegne, and to estates in their neighbour-
hood." But the strengthening of the Crown
was slightly begun in the reign of this king, by
his wise policy of encouraging the enfranchise-
ment of the communes, as noted before, which
introduced a helpful alliance between the mon-
archy and the burgher-class, or third estate, as it
came to be called, of the cities, agamst the feudal
aristocracy.
But progress in that direction was slight at
first and slowly made. Louis VII., who came to
the throne in 1137, acquired momentarily the
great duchy of Aquitaine, or Guienne, by his
marriage with Eleanor, who inherited it ; but he
divorced her, and she married Henry Plantagenet,
who became Henry II., King of England, being
at the same time Duke of Normandy, by inheri-
tance from his mother, and succeeding his father
in Anjou, Maine and Touraine. Eleanor having
carried to him the great Aquitanian domain of
her family, he was sovereign of a larger part of
modern France than owned allegiance to the
French king.
French recovery of Normandy and Anjou.
But the next king in France, Philip, _ called
Augustus (1180), who was the son of Louis VII.,
wrought a change of these circumstances. He
was a prince of remarkable vigor, and he rallied
with rare ability all the forces that the Crown
could command. He wrested Vermandois from
the Count of Flanders, and extorted submission
from the rebellious Duke of Burgundy. Sus-
pending his projects at home for a time, to go
crusading to the Holy Land in company with
King Richard of England, he resumed them with
fresh energy after Richard's death. The latter
was succeeded by his mean brother John, who
seems to have been hated with unanimity. John
was accused of the murder of his young nephew,
Arthur of Brittany, who disputed the inheritance
from Richard. As Duke of Normandy and
Anjou John, thoua;h King of England, was
nevertheless a vassal of the King of Prance
Philip summoned him, on charges, to be tned
by his peers. John failed to answer the sum-
mons and the forfeiture of his fiefs was promptly
declared. The French king stood well prepared
to make the confiscation effective, while John, in
serious trouble with his Engli.sh subjects, could
offer little resistance. Thus the Norman realm
of the English kings — their original dominion --
was lost beyond recovery, and with it Anjou and
Maine They held Guienne and Poitou for some
years; but the bases of the French monarchy
were broadened immensely from the day when
1056
EUROPE.
Philip Augustus and
Saint Louis.
EUROPE.
the great Norman and Angevin flefs became
royal domain.
The Albigenses.
Events in the south of France, during Philip's
reign, prepared the way for a further aggrandise-
ment of the Crown. Ancient Latin civilization
had lingered longer there, in spirit, at least, than
in the central and northern districts of the king-
dom, and the state of society intellectually was
both livelier and more refined. It was the region
of Europe where thought first showed signs of in-
dependence, and where the spiritual despotism of
Rome was disputed first. A sect arose in Lan-
guedoc which took its name from the district of
Albi, and which offended the Church perhaps
more by the freedom of opinion that it claimed
than by the heresy of the opinions themselves.
These Albigeois, or Albigenses, had been at issue
with the clergy of their country and with the
Papacy for some years before Innocent III., the
pontifical autocrat of his age, proclaimed a cru-
sade against them (1208), and launched his sen-
tence of excommunication against Raymond,
Count of Toulouse, who gave them countenance
if not sympathy. The fanatical Simon de Mont-
fort, father of the great noble of like name who
figures more grandly in English history, took the
lead of the Crusade, to which bigots and brutal
adventurers flocked together. Languedoc was
wasted with fire and sword, and after twenty
years of intermittent war, in which Peter of Ara-
gon took part, assisting the Albigeois, the Count
of Toulouse purchased peace for his ruined land
by ceding part of it to the king of France, and
giving his daughter in marriage to the king's
brother Alphonso, — by which marriage the re-
mainder of the country was transferred, a few
years later, to the French crown.
The Battle of Bouvines.
Philip Augustus, in whose reign this brutal
crushing of Proven9al France began, took little
part in it, but he saw with no unwillingness
another too powerful vassal brought low. The
next blow of like kind he struck with his own
hand. John of England had quarreled with the
mighty Pope Innocent III. ; his kingdom had
been placed under interdict and his subjects ab-
solved from their allegiance. Philip of France
eagerly offered to become the executor of the
papal decree, and gathered an army for the in-
vasion of England, to oust Jolm from his throne.
But John hastened now to make peace with the
Church, submitting himself, surrendering his
kingdom to the Pope, and receiving it back as a
papal fief. This accomplished, the all-powerful
pontiff persuaded the French king to turn his
army against the Count of Flanders, who had
never been reduced to a proper degree of sub-
mission to his feudal sovereign. He seems to
have become the recognized head of a body of
nobles who showed alarm and resentment at the
growing power of the Crown, and the war which
ensued was quite extraordinary in its political im-
portance. King John of England came person-
ally to the assistance of the Flemish Count, be-
cause of the hatred he felt towards Philip of
France. Otho, Emperor of Germany, who had
been excommunicated and deposed by the Pope,
and who was struggling for his crown with the
young Hohenstaufen, Frederick II., took part
in the melee, because Jolm was his uncle, and be-
cause the Pope was for Philip, and because Ger-
many dreaded the rising power of France. So
the war, which seemed at first to be a trifling af-
fair in a corner, became in fact a grand clearing
storm, for the settlement of many large issues,
important to all Europe. The settlement waa
accomplished by a single decisive battle, fought
at Bouvines (1214). not far from Tournay. It es-
tablished effectively in France the feudal supe-
riority and actual sovereignty of the king. It
evoked a national spirit among the French people,
having been their flrst national victory, won
under the banners of a deflnite kingdom, over
foreign foes. It was a triumph for the Papacy
and the Church and a crushing blow to those who
dared resist the mandates of Rome. It sent King
John back to England so humbled and weakened
that he had little stomach for the contest which
awaited him there, and the grand event of the
signing of Magna Charta next year was more
easily brought about. It settled the fate of Otho
of Germany, and cleared the bright opening of
the stormy career of Frederick II., his successor.
Thus the battle of Bouvines, which is not a famous
field in common knowledge, must really be num-
bered among the great and important battles of
the world.
When Philip Augustus died in 1323, the re-
gality which he bequeathed to his son, Louis
VIII., was something vastly greater than that
which came to him from his predecessors. He
had enhanced both the dignity and the power,
both the authority and the prestige, of the Crown,
and made a substantial kingdom of France.
Louis VIII. enlarged his dominions by the con-
quest of Lower Poitou and the taking of Ro-
chelle from the English ; but he sowed the seeds
of future weakness in the monarchy by creating
great duchies for his children, which became as
troublesome to later kings as Normandy aad
Anjou had been to those before him.
Saint Louis.
Louis IX. — Saint Louis in the calendar of the
Catholic Church — who came to the throne in
1226, while a child of eleven years, was a king
of so noble a type that he stands nearly alone in
history. Marcus Aurelius, the Emperor, and
King Alfred of England, are the only sovereigns
who seem worthy to be compared with him;
and even the purity of those rare souls is not
quite so simple and so selfless, perhaps, as that
which shines in the beautiful character of this
most Christian king. His goodness was of that
quality which rises to greatness — above all other
measures of greatness in the distinction of men.
It was of that quality which even a wicked world
is compelled to feel and to bend to as a power,
much exceeding the power of state-craft or of
the sword. Of all the kings of his line, this Saint
Louis was probably the one who had least
thought of a royal interest in France distinct
from the interest of the people of France ; and
the one who consciously did least to aggrandize
the monarchy and enlarge its powers; but no
king before him or after him was so much the
true architect of the foundations of the absolute
French monarchy of later times. His constant
purpose was to give peace to his kingdom and
justice to his people; to end violence and wrong-
doing. In pursuing this purpose, he gave a new
character and a new influence to the royal courts,
— established them m public confidence,— accua-
67
1057
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I*ya7ice under
Philip the Fair.
EUROPE.
tomed his subjects to appeal to them; he de-
nounced the brutal senselessness of trials by com-
bat, and commanded their abolition; he gave
encouragement to the study and the introduction
of Roman law, and so helped to dispel the crude
political as well as legal ideas that feudalism
rested on. His measures in these directions all
tended to the undermining of the feudal system
and to the breaking down of the independence of
the great vassals who divided sovereignty with
the king. At the same time the upriglit soul of I
King Louis, devotedljf pious son of the Church
as he was, yielded his conscience to it, and the
just ordinances of his kingdom, no more than he
yielded to the haughty turbulence of the great
vassals of the crown.
The great misfortunes of the reign of Saint
Louis were the two calamitous Crusades in which
he engaged (1248-1354, and 1270), and in the last
of which he died. They were futile in every
way — as unwisely conducted as they were un-
wisely conceived ; but they count among the few
errors of a noble, great life. Regarded altogether,
in the light which after-history throws back upon
it, the reign of Louis IX. is more loftily distin-
guished than any other in the annals of France.
Philip the Fair and Pope Boniface.
There is little to distinguish the reign of St.
Louis' son, Philip IIL, "le Hardi," "the Rash"
(1270-1285), though the remains of the great fief
of Toulouse were added in his time to the royal
domain; but under the grandson of St. Louis,
the fourth Philip, surnamed "le Bel," there was
a season of storms in France. This Philip was
unquestionably a man of clear, cold intellect, and
of powerful, unbending will. There was nothing
of the soldier in him, much of the lawyer-like
mind and disposition. The men of the gown
were his counsellors ; he advanced their influence,
and promoted the acceptance in France of the
principles of the Roman or civil law, which were
antagonistic to feudal ideas. In his attitude
towards the Papacy — which had declined greatly
in character and power within the century past
— he was extraordinarily bold. His famous
quarrel with Pope Boniface VIII. resulted in
humiliations to the head of the Church from
which, in some respects, there was no recovery.
The quarrel arose on questions Connected chiefly
with the taxing of the clergy. The Pope launched
one angry Bull after another against the auda-
cious king, and the latter retorted with Ordi-
nances which were as effective as the Bulls. Ex-
communication was defied ; the Inquisition was
suppressed in France ; appeal taken to a General
Council of the Church. At last Boniface suf-
fered personal violence at the hands of a party of
hired rufiians, in French pay, who attacked him
at his country residence, and received such in-
dignities that he expired soon after of shame and
rage. The pope immediately succeeding died a
few months later, and dark suspicions as to the
cause of his death were entertained ; for he gave
place (1305) to one, Clement V., who was the
tool of the French king, bound to him by pledges
and guarantees before his election. This Pope
Clement removed the papal residence from Rome
to Avignon, and for a long period — the period
known as ' ' the Babylonish Captivity " — the Holy
See was subservient to the monarchy of France.
In this contest with the Papacy, Philip threw
himself on the support of the whole body of his
people, convoking (1302) the first meeting of the
Three Estates — the first of the few general Par-
liaments — ever assembled in France.
Destruction of the Templars.
A more sinister event in the reign of Pliilip
IV. was his prosecution and destruction of the
famous Order of the Knights Templars. The
dark, dramatic story has been told many times,
and its incidents are familiar. Perhaps there
will never be agreement as to the bottom of
truth that might exist in the charges brought
against the Order; but few question the fact
that its blackest guilt in the eyes of the French
King was its wealth, which he coveted and
which he was resolved to find reasons for taking
to himself. The knights were accused of infi-
delity, blasphemy, and abominable vices. They
were tried, tortured, tempted to confessions,
burned at the stake, and their lands and goods
were divided between the Crown and the Knights
of St. John.
Flemish Wealth and Independence.
The wilful king had little mercy in his cold
heart and few scruples in his calculating brain.
His character was not admirable ; but the ends
which he compassed were mostly good for the
strength and independence of the monarchy of
France, and, on the whole, for the welfare of
the people subject to it. Even the disasters of
his reign had sometimes their good effect: as
in the case of his failure to subjugate the great
county of Flanders. Originally a fief of the
Kings of France, it had been growing apart
from the French monarchy, through the inde-
pendent interests and feelings that rose in it with
the increase of wealth among its singularly in-
dustrious and thrifty people. The Low Coun-
tries, or Netherlands, on both sides of the Rhine,
had been the first in western Europe to develop
industrial arts and the trade that goes with them
in a thoroughly intelligent and systematic way.
The Flemings were leaders in this industrial de-
velopment. Their country was full of busy
cities, — communes, with large liberties in pos-
session, — where prosperous artisans, pursuing
many crafts, were organized in gilds and felt
strong for the defense of their chartered rights.
Ghent exceeded Paris in riches and population
at the end of the thirteenth century. Bruges
was nearly its equal; and there were many of
less note. The country was already a prize to
be coveted by kings ; and the kings of France,
who claimed the rights of feudal superiority
over its count, had long been seeking to make
their sovereignty direct, while the spirit of the
Flemings carried them more and more toward
independence.
In 1294, Philip IV. became involved in war
with Edward I. of England over Guienne.
Flanders, which traded largely with England
and was in close friendship with the English
king and people, took sides with the latter, and
was basely abandoned when Philip and Edward
made peace, in 1302. The French king then
seized his opportunity to subjugate the Flem-
ings, which he practically accomplished for a
time, mastering all of their cities except Ghent.
His need and his greed made the burden of taxes
which he now laid on these new subjects very-
heavy and they were soon in revolt. By acci-
dent, and the folly of the French, they won a
1058
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England under the
Norman Kings.
EUROPE.
fearfully decisive victory at Courtray, where some
thousands of the nobles and knights of France
charged blindly into a canal, and were drowned,
suffocated and slaughtered in heaps. The car-
nage was so great that it broke the strength of the
feudal chivalry of France, and the French crown,
while it lost Flanders, yet gained power from the
very disaster.
In 1314, Philip IV. died, leaving three sons,
who occupied the throne for brief terms in suc-
cession: Louis X., surnamedHutin (disorder), who
survived his father little more than a year ; Philip
v., called "the Long " (1316-1322), and Charles
rV., known as " the Fair " (1322-1328). With the
death of Charles the Pair, the direct line of the
Capetian Kings came to an end, and Philip, Count
of Valois, first cousin of the late kings, and grand-
son of Philip III. , came to the throne, as Philip
VI. — introducing the Valois line of kings.
Claims of Edward III. of England.
The so-called Salic law, excluding females, in
France, from the throne, had now, in the arrange-
ment of these recent successions, been affirmed and
enforced. It was promptly disputed by King
Edward III. of England, who claimed the French
crown by right of his mother, daughter of Philip
IV. and sister of the last three kings. His at-
tempt to enforce this claim was the beginning of
the wicked, desolating " Hundred Years War"
between England and France, which well-nigh
ruined the latter, while it contributed in the
former to the advancement of the commons in
political power.
England after the Norman Conquest.
The England of the reign of Edward III., when
the Hundred Years War began, was a country
quite different in condition from that which our
narrative left, at the time it had yielded (about
1071) to William the Norman conqueror. The
English people were brought low by that subju-
gation, and the yoke which the Normans laid
upon them was heavy indeed. They were stripped
of their lands by confiscation; they were dis-
armed and disorganized; every attempt at re-
bellion failed miserably, and every failure brought
wider confiscations. The old nobility suffered
most and its ranks were thinned. England be-
came Norman iu its aristocracy and remained
English in its commons and its villeinage.
Modified Feudalism in England.
Before the Conquest, feudalism had crept into
its southern parts and was working a slow change
of its old free Germanic institutions. But the
Normans quickened the change and widened it.
At the same time they controlled it in certain
ways, favorably both to the monarchy and the
people. They established a feudal system, but
it was a system different from that which broke
up the unity of both kingdoms of the Franks.
William, shrewd statesman that he was, took
care that no dangerous great fiefs should be cre-
ated ; and he took care, too, that every landlord
in England should swear fealty direct to the king,
— thus placing the Crown in immediate relations
with all its subjects, permitting no intermediary
lord to take their first allegiance to himself and
pass it on at second hand to a mere crowned over-
lord.
The effect of this diluted organization of feu-
dalism in England was to make the monarchy so
strong, from the beginning, that both aristocracy
and commons were naturally put on their defence
against it, and acquired a feeling of association,
a sense of common interest, a habit of alliance,
which became very important influences in the
political history of the nation. In France, as we
have seen, there had been nothing of this. There,
at the beginning, the feudal aristocracy was
dominant, and held itself so haughtily above the
commons, or Third Estate, that no political co-
operation between the two orders could be
thought of when circumstances called for it. The
kings slowly undermined the aristocratic power,
using the communes in the process; and when,
at last, the power of the monarchy had become
threatening to both orders in the state, they were
separated by too great an alienation of feeling
and habit to act well together.
It was the great good fortune of England that
feudalism was curbed by a strong monarchy. It
was the greater good fortune of the English
people that their primitive Germanic institu-
tions — their folk-moots, and their whole simple
popular system of local government — should
have had so long and sturdy a growth before the
feudal scheme of society began seriously to in-
trude upon them. The Norman conqueror did
no violence to those institutions. He claimed to
be a lawful English king, respecting English
laws. The laws, the customs, the organization
of government, were, indeed, greatly modified
in time ; but the modification was slow, and the
base of the whole political structure that rose in
the Anglo-Norman kingdom remained wholly
English.
Norman Influences in England.
The Normans brought with them into England
a more active, enterprising, enquiring spirit than
had animated the land before. They brought an
increase of learning and of the appetite for knowl-
edge. They brought a more educated taste in
art, to improve the building of the country and
its workmanship in general. They brought a
wider acquaintance with the affairs of the out-
side world, and drew England into political re-
lations with her continental neighbors, which
were not happy for her in the end, but which
may have contributed for a time to her develop-
ment. They brought, also, a more powerful or-
ganization of the Church, which gave England
trouble in later days.
The Conqueror's Sons.
When the Conqueror died (1087), his eldest
son Robert succeeded him in Normandy, but he
wished the crown of England to go to his son
William, called Rufus, or " the Red." He could
not settle the succession by his will, because in
theory the succession was subject to the choice
or assent of the nobles of the realm. But, in
fact, William Rufus became king through mere
tardiness of opposition ; and when, a few months
after his coronation, a formidable rebellion broke
out among the Normans in England, who pre-
ferred his wayward brother Robert, it was the na-
tive English who sustained him and established
him on the throne. The same thing occurred
again after William Rufus died (1100). The Nor-
man English tried again to bring in Duke Robert,
while the native English preferred the younger
brother, Henry, who was born among them. They
won the day. Henry I. , called Beauclerc, the
1059
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England under the
Angevins.
EUROPE.
Scholar, was seated on the throne. Unlike William
Rufus, who had no gratitude for the support the
English gave him, and ruled them harshly,
Henry showed favor to his English subjects,
and, during his reign of thirty-five years, the
two races were so eflfectually reconciled and
drawn together that little distinction between
them appears thereafter.
Henry acquired Normandy, as well as Eng-
land, uniting again the two sovereignties of his
father. His thriftless brother, Robert, had
pledged the dukedom to William Rufus, who
lent him money for a crusading expedition. Re-
turning penniless, Robert tried to recover his
heritage ; but Henry claimed it and made good
the claim.
Anarchy in Stephen's Reign.
At Henry's death, the succession fell into dis-
pute. He had lost his only son. His daughter,
Matilda, first married to the Emperor Henry V.,
had subsequently wedded Count Geoffrey of
Anjou, by whom she had a son. Henry strove,
during his life, to bind his nobles by oath to ac-
cept Matilda and her son as his successors. But
on his death (1135) their promises were broken.
They gave the crown to Stephen of Blois, whose
mother was Henry's sister; whereupon there en-
sued the most dreadful period of civil war and
anarchy that England ever knew. Stephen, at
his coronation, swore to promises whicli he did
not keep, losing many of his supporters for that
reason ; the Empress Matilda and her young son
Henry had numerous partisans; and eacli side
was able to destroy effectually the authority of
the other. "The price of the support given to
both was the same — absolute licence to build
castles, to practise private war, to hang their
private enemies, to plunder their neighbours, to
coin their money, to e-xercise their petty tyran-
nies as they pleased." "Castles innumerable
sprang up, and as fast as they were built they
'Were filled with devils; each lord judged and
taxed and coined. The feudal spirit of disinte-
■ gration had for once its full play. Even party
union was at an end, and every baron fought on
his own behalf. Feudalism had its day, and the
completeness of its triumph ensured its fall "
(Stubbs).
Angevin Kings of England.
At length, in 11.53, peace was made by a treaty
which left Stephen in possession of the throne
during his life, but made Henry, already recog-
nized as Duke of Normandy, his heir. Stephen
died the following year, and Henry II., now
twenty-one years old, came quietly into his king-
dom, beginning a new royal line, called the
Angevin kings, because of tlieir descent from
Geoffrey of Anjou; also taking the name Plan-
tagenets from Geoffrey's fashion of wearing a bit
of broom, Planta Genista, in his hat.
Henry II. proved, happily, to be a king of the
strong character that was needed in tlie England
of that wretched time. He was bold and ener-
getic, yet sagacious, prudent, politic. He loved
power and he used it with an unsparing hand ;
but he used it with wise judgment, and England
was the better for it. He struck liard and per-
sistently at the lawlessness of feudalism, and
practically ended it forever as a menace to order
and unity of government in England. He de-
stroyed hundreds of the castles which had sprung
up throughout the land in Stephen's time, to be
nests of robbers and strongholds of rebellion. He
humbled the turbulent barons. He did in Eng-
land, for the promotion of justice, and for the
enforcement of the royal authority, what Louis
IX. did a little later in France: that is, he re-
organized and strengthened the king's courts,
creating a judicial system which, in its most
essential features, has existed to the present time.
His organizing hand brought system and effi-
ciency into every department of the government.
He demanded of the Church that its clergy
should be subject to the common laws of the
kingdom, in matters of crime, and to trial before
the ordinary courts; and it was this most just
reform of a crying abuse — the exemption of
clerics from the jurisdiction of secular courts —
which brought about the memorable collision of
King Henry with Thomas Becket, the inflexible
archbishop of Canterbury. Becket's tragical
death made a martyr of him, and placed Henry
in a penitential position which checked his great
works of reform ; but, on the whole, his reign
was one of splendid success, and shines among
the epochs that throw light on the great after-
career of the English nation.
Aside from his importance as an English states-
man, Henry II. figured largely, in his time, among
tlie most powerful of the monarchs of Europe.
His dominions on the continent embraced much
more of the territory of modern France than was
ruled directly by the contemporary French king,
though nominally he held them as a vassal of
the latter. Normandy came to him from his
grandfather; from his father he inherited the
large possessions of the House of Anjou; by his
marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine (divorced by
Louis VII. of France, as mentioned already) he
acquired her wide and rich domain. On the con-
tinent, therefore, he ruled Normandy, JIaine,
Touraine, Anjou, Guienne, Poitou and Gascony.
He may be said to have added Ireland to his
English kingdom, for lie began the conquest. He
held a great place, in liis century, and historically
he is a notable figure in the time.
His rebellious, undutiful son Richard, Coeurde
Lion, the Crusader, the hard fighter, the knight
of many rude adventures, who succeeded Henry
II. in 1189, is popularly better known than he;
but Richard's noisy brief career shows poorly
when compared with Ins father's life of thought-
ful statesmanship. It does not show meanly,
however, like that of the younger son, John, who
came to the throne in 1199. 'The story of John's
probable murder of his young nephew, Arthur,
of Brittany, and of his consequent loss of all the
Angevin lands, and of Normandy (excepting only
the Norman islands, the Jerseys, which have re-
mained English to our own day) has been briefly
told heretofore, when the reign of Philip Augus-
tus of France was under review.
The whole reign of John was ignominious.
He quarreled with the Pope — with the inflexible
Innocent III., who humbled many kings — over
a nomination to tlie Archbishopric of Canterbury
(1205); his kingdom was put under, interdict
(1308); he was threatened with deposition; and
when, in affright, he surrendered, it was so
abjectly done that he swore fealty to the Pope,
as a vassal to his suzerain, consenting to hold
his kingdom as a fief of the Apostolic See.
The triumph of the Papacy in this dispute
brought one great good to England. It made
1060
EUROPE.
The English
Parliament.
EUROPE.
Stej'hen Langton Archbishop of Canterbury, and
ther<iby gave a wise and righteous leader to the
opponents of the king's oppressive rule. Lords
and commons, laity and clergy, were all alike
sufferers from John's greed, his perfidy, his mean
devices and his contempt of law. Langton ral-
lied them to a sober, stern, united demonstration,
which awed King John, and compelled him to
put his seal to Magna Charta — the grand Char-
ter of English liberties (1315). A few weeks later
he tried to annul what he had done, with en-
couragement from the Pope, who anathematized
the Charter and all who had to do with it. Then
certain of the barons, in their rage, offered the
English crown to the heir of France, afterwards
Louis Vin. ; and the French prince actually came
to England (1216) with an army to secure it. But
before the forces gathered on each side were
brought to any decisive battle, John died. Louis'
partisans then dropped away from him and the
next year, after a defeat at sea, he returned to
France.
Henry III. and the Barons' War.
John left a son, a lad of nine years, who grew
to be a better man than himself, though not a
good king, for he was weak and untruthful in
character, though amiable and probably well-
meaning, lie held the throne for fifty-six years,
during which long time, after his minority was
passed, no minister of ability and honorable char-
acter could get aud keep office in the royal ser-
vice. He was jealous of ministers, preferring
mere administrative clerks ; while he was docile
to favorites, and picked them for the most part
from a swarm of foreign adventurers whom the
nation detested. The Great Charter of his father
had been reaffirmed in his name soon after he re-
ceived the crown, and in 1325 he was required to
issue it a third time, as the condition of a grant of
money; but he would not rule honestly in com-
pliance with its provisions, and sought continu-
ally to lay and collect heavy taxes in unlawful
ways. He spent money extravagantly, and was
foolish and reckless in foreign undertakings, ac-
cepting, for example, the Kingdom of Sicily,
offered to his son Edmund by the Pope, whose
gift could only be made good by force of arms.
At the same time he was servile to the popes,
whose increasing demands for money from Eng-
land were rousing even the clergy to resistance.
So the causes of discontent grew abundantly
until they brought it to a serious head. All classes
of the people were drawn together again, as they
had been to resist the aggressions of John. The
great councils of the kingdom, or assemblies of
barons and bishops (which had taken the place
of the witenagemot of the old English time, and
which now began to be called Parliaments), be-
came more and more united against the king. At
last the discontent found a leader of high capacity
and of heroic if not blameless character, in Simon
de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Simon de Jlont-
fort was of foreign birth, — son of that fanatical
crusader of the same name, who spread ruin over
the fair country of the Albigeois. The English
earldom of Leicester had passed to his family, and
the younger Simon, receiving it, came to England
and became au Englishman. After some years he
threw himself into the struggle with the Crown,
aud his leadership was soon recognized. In 1258,
a parliament held at London compelled the king
to consent to the appointment of an extraordinary
commission of twenty-four barons, clothed with
full power to reform the government. The com-
mission was named at a subsequent meeting of
parliament, the same year, at Oxford, where the
grievances to be redressed were set forth in a
paper known as the Provisions of Oxford. From
the twenty-four commissioners there were chosen
fifteen to be the King's Council. This was really
the creation of a new constitution for the king-
dom, and Henry swore to observe it. But ere
long he procured a bull from the Pope, absolving
him from his oath, and he began to prepare for
throwing off the restraints that had been put
upon him. The other side took up arms, under
Simon's lead ; but peace was preserved for a time
by referring all questions in dispute to the arbi-
tration of Louis IX. of France. The arbiter
decided against the barons (1264) and Montfort's
party refused to abide by the award. Then fol-
lowed the civil conflict known as the Barons'
War. The king was defeated and taken prisoner,
and was obliged to submit to conditions which
practically transferred the administration of the
government to three counsellors, of whom Simon
de Montfort was the chief.
Development of the English Parliament.
In January, 1365, a memorable parliament was
called together. It was the first national assem-
bly in which the larger element of the English
Commons made its appearance ; for Montfort had
summoned to it certain representatives of borough
towns, along witli the barons, the bishops and
tlie abbots, and along, moreover, with represen-
tative knights, who had been gaining admittance
of late years to what now became a convocation
of the 'Three Estates. The parliamentary mode)
thus roughly shaped by the great Earl of Leices-
ter was not continuously followed until another
generation came ; but it is his glory, nevertheless,
to have given to England the norm and principle
on which its imexampled parliament was framed.
By dissensions among themselves, Simon de
Montfort and his party soon lost the great advan-
tage they had won, and on another appeal to
arms they were defeated (1265) by the king's
valiant and able son, afterwards King Edward I.,
and Montfort was slain. It was seven years after
tliis before Edward succeeded his father, and
nine before he came to the throne, because he
was absent on a Crusade; but when he did,
it was to prove himself, not merely one of the
few statesmen-kings of England, but one large
enough in mind to take lessons from the van-
quished enemies of the Crown. He, in reality,
took up the half-planned constitutional work of
Simon de Jlontfort, in the development of the
English Parliament as a body representative of
all orders in tlie nation, and carried it forward to
substantial completion. He did it because he
had wit to see that the people he ruled could be
led more easily than they could be driven, and
that their free-giving of supplies to the Crown
would be more open-handed than their giving
under compulsion. The year 1395 "witnessed
the first summons of a perfect and model parlia-
ment; the clergy represented by their bishops,
deans, archdeacons, and elected proctors; the
barons summoned severally in person by the
king's special writ, aud the commons summoned
by writs addressed to the sheriffs, directing them
to send up two elected knights from each shire,
two elected citizens from each city, and two
1061
EUKOPE.
Christian Spain
and the Moors.
EUROPE.
elected burghers from each borough " (Stubbs).
Two years later, the very fundamental principle
of the English Constitution was established, by
a Confirmation of the Charters, conceded in Ed-
ward's absence by his son, but afterwards assented
to by him, which definitely renounced the right
of the king to tax the nation without its consent.
Thus the reign of Edward I. was really the
most important in the constitutional history of
England. It was scarcely less important in the
historj' of English jurisprudence; for Edward
was in full sympathy with the spirit of an age in
which the study and reform of the law were
wonderfully awakened throughout Europe. The
great statutes of his reign are among the monu-
ments of Edward's statesmanship, and not the
least important of them are those by which he
checked the encroachments of the Church and
its dangerous acquisition of wealth.
At the same time, the temper of this vigorous
king was warlike and aggressive. He subdued
the Welsh and annexed Wales as a principality
to England. He enforced the feudal supremacy
which the English kings claimed over Scotland,
and, upon the Scottish throne becoming vacant,
in 1290, seated John Baliol, as a vassal who did
homage to him. The war of Scottish Indepen-
dence then ensued, of which William Wallace and
Robert Bruce were the heroes. Wallace perished
on an English scaffold in 1305; Bruce, the next
year, secured the Scottish crown, and eventually
broke the bonds in which his country was held.
Edward I. died in 1307, and his kingly capa-
bility died with him. He transmitted neither
spirit nor wisdom to his son, the second Edward,
who gave himself and his kingdom up to foreign
favorites, as his grandfather had done. His
angry subjects practically took the government
out of his hands (1310), and confided it to a body
of twenty-one members, called Ordainers. His
reign of twenty years was one of protracted
strife and disorder; but the constitutional power
of Parliament made gains. In outward appear-
ance, however, there was nothing to redeem the
wretchedness of the time. The struggle of fac-
tions was pushed to civil war ; while Scotland,
by the great blow struck at Bannockburn (1314),
made her independence complete. In 1322,
Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, whose descent was
as royal as the king's, but who headed the oppo-
nents of Edward and Edward's unworthy favor-
ites, was defeated in battle, taken prisoner, and
brought to the block. This martyrdom, as it
was called, embalmed Lancaster's memory in the
hearts of the people.
Edward III. and his French Claims.
The queen of Edward II., Isabella of France,
daughter of Philip the Fair, made, at last, com-
mon cause with his enemies. In January, 1327,
he was forced to formally resign the crown, and
in September of the same year he was murdered,
the queen, with little doubt, assenting to the
deed. His son, Edward III., who now came to
the throne, founded claims to the crown of
France upon the rights of his mother, whose
three brothers, as we have seen, had been crowned
in succession and had died, bringing the direct
line of royalty in France to an end. By this
claim the two countries were plunged into the
miseries of the dreadful Hundred Years War,
and the progress of civilization in Europe was
seriously checked.
Recovery of Christian Spain.
Before entering that dark century of war, it
will be necessary to go back a little in time, and
carry our survey farther afield, in the countries
of Europe more remote from the center of the
events we have already scanned. In Spain, for
example, there should be noticed, very briefly, the
turning movement of the tide of Mahometan con-
quest which drove the Spanish Christians into
the mountains of the North. In the eighth cen-
tury, their little principality of Asturia had
widened into the small kingdom of Leon, and the
eastern county of Leon had taken the name of
Castelja (Castile) from the number of forts or
castles with which it bristled, on the Moorish
border. East of Leon, in the Pyrenees, there
grew up about the same time the kingdom of
Navarre, which became important in the eleventh
century, under an enterprising king, Sancho the
Great, who seized Castile and made a separate
kingdom of it, which he bequeathed to his son.
The same Navarrese king extended his dominion
over a considerable part of the Spanish March,
which Charlemagne had wrested from the Moors
in the ninth century, and out of this territory the
kingdom of Aragon was presently formed. These
four kingdoms, of Leon, Navarre, Castile, and
Aragon, were shuffled together and divided again,
in changing combinations, many times during the
next century or two ; but Castile and Leon were
permanently united in 1230. Meantime Portugal,
wrested from the Moors, became a distinct king-
dom ; while Navarre was reduced in size and im-
portance. Castile, Aragon, and Portugal are
from that time the Christian Powers in the Pe-
ninsula which carried on the unending war with
their Moslem neighbors. By the end of the
thirteenth century they had driven the Jloors into
the extreme south of the peninsula, where the
latter, thenceforth, held little beyond the small
kingdom of Granada, which defended itself for
two centuries more.
Moorish Civilization and its Decay.
The Christians were winners and the ^Moslems
were losers in this long battle, because adversity
had disciplined the one and prosperity had re-
laxed and vitiated the other. Success bred dis-
union, and the spoils of victory engendered cor-
ruption, among the followers of Mahomet, very
quickly in their career. The middle of the eighth
century was hardly passed when the huge empire
they had conquered broke in twain, and two
Caliphates on one side of the Mediterranean, imi-
tated the two Roman Empires on the other. We
have seen how the Caliphate of the East, with
its seat at Bagdad, went steadily to wreck ; but
fresh converts of Islam, out of deserts at the
North, were in readiness, there, to gather the
fragments and construct a new Mahometan
power. In tlie West, where the Caliphs held
their court at Cordova, the same crumbling of
their power befell them, through feuds and jeal-
ousies and the decay of a sensuous race ; but
there were none to rebuild it in the Prophet's
name. The Moor gave way to the Castilian in
Spain for reasons not differing very much from
the reasons which explain the supplanting of the
Arab by the Turk in the East.
While its grandeur lasted in Spain, — from the
eighth to tlie eleventh centuries — the empire of
the Saracens, or Moors, was the most splendid of
its age. It developed a civilization which must
1062
EUROPE.
Spanish
Free InstitutiOTis.
EUROPE.
have been far finer, in the superficial showing,
and in much of its spirit as well, than anything
found in Christian Europe at that time. Its re-
ligious temper was less fierce and intolerant.
Its intellectual disposition was towards broader
thinking and freer inquiry. Its artistic feeling
was truer and more instinctive. It took lessons
from classic learning and philosophy before Ger-
manized Europe had become aware of the exis-
tence of either, and it gave the lessons at second
hand to its Christian neighbors. Its industries
were conducted with a fciowledge and a skill
that could be found among no other people.
Says Dr. Draper: "Europe at the present day
•does not offer more taste, more refinement, more
elegance, than might have been seen, at the epoch
of which we are speaking, in the capitals of the
Spanish Arabs. Their streets were lighted and
solidly paved. Their houses were frescoed and
carpeted; they were warmed in winter by fur-
naces, and cooled in summer with perfumed air
brought by underground pipes from flower beds.
They had baths, and libraries, and dining halls,
fountains of quicksilver and water. City and
country were full of conviviality, and of dancing
to lute and mandolin. Instead of the drunken
and gluttonous wassail orgies of their northern
neighbors, the feasts of the Saracens were marked
with sobriety."
The brilliancy of the Moorish civilization seems
like that of some short-lived flower, which may
spring from a thin soil of no lasting fertility.
The qualities which yielded it had their season
of ascendancy over the deeper-lying forces that
worked in the Gothic mind of Christian Spain;
but time exhausted the one, while it matured the
other.
Mediaeval Spanish Character.
There seems to be no doubt that the long
conflict of races and religions in the peninsula
affected the character of the Spanish Christians
more profoundly, both for good and for ill, than
it affected the people with whom they strove.
It hardened and energized them, preparing them
for the bold adventures they were soon to pursue
in a new-found world, and for a lordly career in
all parts of the rounded globe. It embittered
and gave fierceness to a sentiment among them
which bore some likeness to religion, but which
was, in reality, the partisanship of a church, and
not the devotion of a faith. It tended to put
bigotry in the place of piety — • religious rancor
in the place of charity — priests and images in
the place of Christ — much more among the
Spaniards than among other peoples ; for they,
alone, were Crusaders against the Moslem for
eight hundred years.
Early Free Institutions in Spain.
The political effects of those centuries of strug-
gle in the peninsula were also remarkable and
strangely mixed. In all the earlier stages of the
national development, until the close of the me-
dieval period, there seems to have been as prom-
ising a growth of popular institutions, in most
directions, as can be found in England itself.
Apparently, there was more good feeling be-
tween classes than elsewhere in Europe. Nobles,
knights and commons fought side by side in
so continuous a battle that they were more
friendly and familiar in acquaintance with one
another. Moreover, the ennobled and the
knighted were greatly more numerous in Spain
than in the neighboring countries. The kings
were lavish of such honors in rewarding valor,
on every battlefield and after every campaign.
It was impossible, therefore, for so great a dis-
tance to 'widen between the grandee and the
peasant or the burgher as that which separated
the lord and the citizen in Germany or France.
The division of Christian Spain into several
petty kingdoms, and the circumstances under
which they were placed, retarded the growth of
monarchical power, and yet did not tend to a
feudal disintegration of society; because the
pressure of its perpetual war with the infidels
forced the preservation of a certain degree of
unity, suflicient to be a saving influence. At
the same time, the Spanish cities became pros-
perous, and naturally, in the circumstances of
the country, acquired much freedom and many
privileges. The inhabitants of some cities in
Aragon enjoyed the privileges of nobility as a
body ; the magistrates of other cities were en-
nobled. Both in Aragon and Castile, the towns
had deputies in the Cortes before any represen-
tatives of boroughs sat in the English Parliament ;
and the Cortes seems to have been, in the twelfth
and thirteenth centuries, a more potent factor in
government than any assembly of estates in any
other part of Europe.
But something was wanting in Spain that was
not wanting in England and in the Netherlands,
for example, to complete the evolution of a pop-
ular government from this hopeful beginning.
And the primary want, it would seem, was a
political sense or faculty in the people. To illus-
trate this in one particular : the Castilian Com-
mons did not grasp the strings of the national
purse when they had it in their hands, as the
practical Englishmen did. They allowed the
election of deputies from the towns to slip out
of their hands and to become an ofiicial function
of the municipalities, where it was corrupted
and controlled by the Crown. In Aragon, the
popular rights were more efliciently maintained,
perhaps ; but even there the political faculty of
the people must have been defective, as compared
with that of the nations in the North which de-
veloped free government from less promising
germs. And, yet, it is possible that the whole
subsequent failure of Spain may be fully ex-
plained by the ruinous prosperity of her career
in the sixteenth century, — by the fatal gold it
gave her from America, and the independent
power it put into the hands of her kings.
Northern and North-eastern Europe.
While the Spaniards in their southern penin-
sula were wrestling with the infidel Moor, their
Gothic kindred of Sweden, and the other Norse
nations of that opposite extremity of Europe,
had been casting off paganism and emerging
from the barbarism of their piratical age, very
slowly. It was not until the tenth and eleventh
centuries that Christianity got footing among
them. It was not until the thirteenth century
that unity and order, the fruits of firm govern-
ment, began to be really fixed in any part of the
Scandinavian peninsulas.
The same is substantially true of the greater
Slavic states on the eastern side of Europe. The
Poles had accepted Christianity in the tenth cen-
tury, and their dukes, in the same century, had
assumed the title of kings. In the twelfth cen-
tury they had acquired a large dominion and
1063
EUROPE.
The Tliirteenth and
FourteenVi Centuries.
EUROPE.
exercised great power; but the kingdom was
divided, was brought into collision with the Teu-
tonic Knights, who conquered Prussia, and it fell
into a disordered state. The Russians had been
Christianized in the same missionary century —
the tenth; but civilization made slow progress
among them, and their nation was being divided
and re-divided in shifting principalities by con-
tending families and lords. In the thirteenth
century they were overwhelmed by the fearful
calamity of a conquest by Mongol or Tartar
hordes, and fell under the brutal domination of
the successors of Genghis Khan.
Latin Conquest of Constantinople.
At Constantinople, the old Greek-Roman Em-
pire of the East had been passing through singu-
lar changes since we noticed it last. The dread
with which Alexius Comnenius saw the coming
of the Crusaders in 1097 was justified by the ex-
perience of his successors, after little more than a
hundred years. In 1204, a crusade, which is
sometimes numbered as the fourth and some-
times as the fifth in the crusading series, was
diverted by Venetian influence from the rescue
of Jerusalem to the conquest of Constantinople,
ostensibly in the interest of a claimant of the
Imperial throne. The city was taken and pil-
laged, and the Greek line of Emperors was sup-
planted by a Frank or Latin line, of which Bald-
win, Count of Flanders, was the first. But this
Latin Empire was reduced to a fraction of the
conquered dominion, the remainder being divided
among several partners in the conquest; while
two Greek princes of the fallen house saved frag-
ments of the ancient realm in Asia, and throned
themselves as emperors at Trebizond and Nicoea.
The Latin Empire was maintained, feebly and
without dignity, a little more than half a cen-
tury; and then (1361) it was extinguished by the
sovereign of its Nicsean rival, Michael Palteolo-
gus, who took Constantinople by a night sur-
prise, helped by treachery within. Thus the
Greek or Byzantine Empire was restored, but
much shorn of its former European possessions,
and much weakened by loss of commerce and
wealth. It was soon involved in a fresh struggle
for life with the Turks.
The Thirteenth Century.
We have now, in our general survey of Euro-
pean liistory, just passed beyond the thirteenth
century, and it will be instructive to pause here
a moment and glance back over the movements
and events which distinguish that remarkable
age. For the thirteenth century, while it be-
longs chronologically to mediaeval times, seems
nearer in spirit to the Renaissance — shows more
of the travail of the birth of our modern mind
and life — than the fourteenth, and even more
than the greater part of the years of the fifteenth
century.
For England, it was the century in which the
enduring bases of constitutional government
were laid down ; within which Magna Charta and
its Confirmations were signed ; within which the
Parliament of Simon de Montfort and the Parlia-
ments of Edward I. gave a representative form,
and a controlling power to the wonderful legis-
lature of the English nation. In France, it was
the century of the Albigenses; of Saint Louis
and liis judicial reforms; and it stretched within
two years of the first meeting of the States-
General of the kingdom. In Switzerland, it was
the century which began the union of the three
forest cantons. In Spain, it was the century
which gave Aragon the "General Privilege" of
Peter III. ; in Hungary, it was the century of its
Golden Bull. In Italy it was the century of
Frederick II., — the man of modem spirit set in
mediaeval circumstances ; and it was the century,
too, which moulded the city-republics that re-
sisted and defeated his despotic pretensions.
Everywhere, it was an age of impulses toward
freedom, and of mighty upward strivings out of
the chaos and darkness of the feudal state.
It was an age of vast energies, directed with
practical judgment and power. It organized the
great league of the Hansa Towns, which sur-
passed, as an enterprise of combination in com-
mercial affairs, the most stupendous undertakings
of the present time. It put the weavers and
traders of Flanders on a footing with knights
and princes. In Venice and Genoa it crowned
the merchant like a king. It sent Marco Polo ta
Cathay, and inoculated men with the itch of ex-
ploration from which they find no ease to this day.
It was the century which saw painting revived
as a living art in the world by Cimabue and
Giotto, and sculpture restored by Is iccola Pisano.
It was the age of great church-building in Italy,
in Germany and in France. It was the century
of St. Francis of Assisi, and of the creation of
the mendicant orders in the Church, — a true re-
ligious reformation in its spirit, however unhappy
in effect it may have been. It was the time of
the high tide of mediaeval learning ; the epoch of
Aquinas, of Duns Scotus, of Roger Bacon; the
true birth-time of the Universities of Paris and
Oxford. It was the century which educated
Dante for his immortal work.
The Fourteenth Century.
The century which followed was a period of
many wars — of ruinous and deadly wars, and
miserable demoralizations and disorders, which
depressed all Europe by their effects. In the
front of them all was the wicked Hundred Years
War, forced on France by the ambition of an
English king to wear two crowns ; while with it
came the bloody insurrection of the Jacquerie,
the ravages of the free companies, and ruinous-
anarchy everywhere. Then, in Italy, there was
a duel to the death between Venice and Genoa;
and a long, wasting contest of rivals for the pos-
session of Naples. In Germany, a contested im-
perial election, and the struggle of the Swiss
against the Austrian Dukes. In Flanders, re-
peated revolts under the two Artevelds. In
the East, the terrible fight of Christendom with
the advancing Turk. And while men were
everywliere so busily slaying one another, there
came the great pestilence which they called the
Black Death, to help them in the grim work, and
Europe was half depopulated by it. At the
same time, the Church, which might have kin-
dled some beacon lights of faith and hope in the
midst of all this darkness and terror, was sinking
to its lowest state, and Rome had become an un-
ruled robbers' den.
There were a few voices heard, above the wail-
ing and the battle-din of the afflicted age, which
charmed and comforted it ; voices which preached
the pure gospel of Wycliffe and Huss, — which
recited the great epic of Dante, — which syllabled
the melodious verse of Petrarch and Chaucer, —
1064
EUROPE.
The Hundred
Years IVar.
EUROPE.
which told the gay tales of Boccaccio; but the
pauses of peace in which men might listen to
such messages and give themselves to such de-
lights were neither many nor long.
The Hundred Years War.
The conflict between England and France be-
gan in Flanders, then connected with the Eng-
lish very closely in trade. Philip VI. of France
forced the Count of Flanders to e.xpel English
merchants from his territory. Edward III. re-
taliated (1336) by forbidding the exportation of
wool to Flanders, and this speedily reduced the
Flemish weavers to idleness. They rose in revolt,
drove out their count, and formed an alliance with
England, under the lead of Jacob van Arteveld,
a brewer, of Ghent. The next year (1387) Edward
joined the Flemings with an army and entered
Prance; but made no successful advance, al-
though his fleet won a victory, in a sea-fight ofE
Sluys, and hostilities were soon suspended by a
truce. In 1341 they were renewed in Brittany,
over a disputed succession to the dukedom, and
the scattered sieges and chivalric combats which
made up the war in that region for two years are
described with minuteness by Froissart, the gos-
sipy chronicler of the time. After a second
truce, the grimly serious stage of the war was
readied in 1346. It was in that year that the
English won the victory at Crecy, which was the
pride and boast of their nation for centuries ; and
the next season they took Calais, which they held
for more than two hundred years.
Philip died in 1350 and was succeeded by his
son John. In 1355, Edward of England repeated
his invasion, ravaging Artois, whUe his son, the
Black Prince, from Guienne (which the English
had held since the Angevin time), devastated Lau-
guedoc. The next year, this last named prince
made another sally from Bordeaux, northwards,
towards the Loire, and was encountered by the
Frencli king, with a splendid army, at Poitiers.
The victory of the English in this case was more
overwhelming than at Crecy, although they
were greatly outnumbered. King John was
taken prisoner and conveyed to London. His
kingdom was in confusion. The dauphin called
together the States-General of France, and that
body, in whicii the commons, or third estate, at-
tained to a majority in numbers, assumed powers
and compelled assent to reforms which seemed
likely to place it on a footing of equal impor-
tance with the Parliament of England. The
leader of the third estate in these measures was
Etienne or Stephen JIarcel. provost of Paris, a
man of commanding energy and courage. The
dauphin, under orders from his captive father,
attempted to nullify the ordinances of the States-
General. Paris rose at the call of JIarcel and the
frightened prince became submissive; but the
nobles of the provinces resented these high-handed
proceedings of the Parisians and civil war ensued.
The peasants, who were in great misery, took
advantage of the situation to rise in support of
the Paris burgesses, and for the redressing of
their own wrongs. This insurrection of the
Jacquerie, as it is known, produced horrible
deeds of outrage and massacre on botli sides, and
seems to have had no other result. Paris, mean-
time (1358), was besieged and hard pressed;
Marcel, suspected of an intended treachery, was
killed, and with his death the whole attempt to
assert popular rights fell to the ground.
The state of France at this time was one of
measureless misery. It was overrun with free-
booters — discharged soldiers, desperate homeless
and idle men, and the ruffians who always bestir
themselves when authority disappears. They
roamed the country in bands, large and small,
stripped it of what war had spared, and left fam-
ine behind them.
At length, in 1360, terms of peace were agreed
upon, in a treaty signed at Bretigny, and fight-
ing ceased, except in Brittany, where the war
went on for four years more. By the treaty,
all French claims upon Aquitaine and the de-
pendencies were given up, and Edward acquired
full sovereignty there, no longer owing homage,
as a vassal, to the king of France. Calais, too,
was ceded to England, and so heavy a ransom
was exacted from the captive King John that
he failed to collect money for the payment of it
and died in London (1364).
Charles the Wise.
Charles V. , who now ruled independently, as
he had ruled for some years in his father's name,
proved to be a more prudent and capable prince,
and his counsellors and captains were wisely
chosen. He was a man of studious tastes and of
considerable learning for tliat age, with intelli-
gence to see and understand the greater sources of
evil in his kingdom. Above all, he had patience
enough to plant better things in the seed and
wait for them to grow, which is one of the
grander secrets of statesmanship. By careful,
judicious measures, he and those who shared the
task of government with him slowly improved
the discipline and condition of their armies. The
"great companies" of freebooters, too strong to
be put down, were lured out of the kingdom by
an expedition into Spain, which the famous war-
rior Du Guesclin commanded, and which was
sent against the detestable Pedro, called the
Cruel, of Castile, whom the English supported.
A stringent economy in public expenditure was
introduced, and the management of the finances
was improved. The towns were encouraged to
strengthen their fortifications, and the state and
feeling of the whole country were slowly lifted
from the gloomy depth to which the war had
depressed them.
At length, in 1369, Cliarles felt prepared to
challenge another encounter with the English,
by repudiating the ignominious terms of the
treaty of Bretigny. Before the year closed, Ed-
ward's armies were in the country again, but ac-
complished nothing beyond the havoc which they
wrought as they marched. The French avoided
battles, and their cities were well defended.
Next year the English returned, and the Black
Prince earned infamy by a ferocious massacre of
three thousand men, women, and children, in
the city of Limoges, when he had taken it by
storm. It was his last campaign. Already suf-
fering from a mortal disease, he returned to Eng-
land, and died a few years later. The war went
on, with no decisive results, until 1375, when it
was suspended by a truce. In 1377, Edward
III. died, and the French king began war again
with great success. Within three years he ex-
pelled the English from every part of France
except Bayonne, Bordeaux, Brest, Cherbourg
and Calais.
If he had lived a little longer, there might soon
have been an end of the war. But he died in
1065
EUROPE.
Burgundian^ and
AiTtiagnac^.
EUROPE.
1380, and fresh calamities fell upon unhappy
France.
Rising Power of Burgundy.
The son who succeeded him, Charles VI.,
was an epileptic boy of twelve years, who liad
three greedy and selfish uncles to quarrel over
the control of him, and to plunder the Crown of
territory and treasures. One of these was tlie
Duke of Burgundy, the first prince of a new
great house which King John had foolishly
created. Just before that fatuous liing died,
the old line of Burgundian dukes came to an end,
and he had the opportunity, which wise kings
before him would have improved very eagerly,
to annex that fief to the crown. Instead of doing
so, he gave it as an appanage to his son Philip,
called "the Bold," and thus rooted anew plant
of feudalism in France which was destined to
cause much trouble. Another of the uncles was
Louis, Duke of Anjou, heir to the crown of
Naples under a will of the lately murdered
Queen Joanna, and who was preparing for an
expedition to enforce his claim. The third was
Duke of Berry, upon whom his father. King
John, had conferred another great appanage, in-
cluding Berry, Poitou and Auvergne.
The pillage and misgovernraent of the realm
under these rapacious guardians of the young
king was so great that desperate risings were
provoked, the most formidable of which broke
out in Paris. They were all suppressed, and
with merciless severity. At the same time, the
Flemings, who had again submitted to their
count, revolted once more, under the lead of
Philip van Arteveld, son of their f onner leader.
The French moved an army to the assistance of
the Count of Flanders, and the sturdy men of
Ghent, who confronted it almost alone, suffered
a crushing defeat at Roosebeke (1382). Philip
van Arteveld fell in the battle, with twenty-si.\
thousand of his men. Two years later, the
Count of Flanders died, and the Duke of Bur-
gundy, who had married his daughter, acquired
that rich and noble possession. This beginning
of the union of Burgundy and the Netherlands,
creating a power by the side of the throne of
France which threatened to overshadow it, and
having for its ultimate consequence the casting
of the wealth of the Low Countries into the lap
of the House of Austria and into the coffers of
Spain, is an event of large importance in Euro-
pean history.
Burgundians and Armagnacs,
AVhen Charles VI. came of age, he took the gov-
ernment into his own hands, and for some years
it was administered by capable men. But in
1393 the king's mind gave way, and his uncles
regained control of affairs. Philip of Burgundy
maintained the ascendancy until his death, in
1404. Then the controlling influence passed to
the king's brother, the Duke of Orleans, between
whom and the new Duke of Burgundy, John,
called the Fearless, a bitter feud arose. John,
who was unscrupulous, employed assassins to
waylay and murder the Duke of Orleans, which
they did in November, 1407. This foul deed
gave rise to two parties in France. Those who
sought vengeance ranged themselves under the
leadership of the Count of Armagnac, and were
called by his name. The Burgundians, who
sustained Duke John, were in the main a party
of the people ; for the Duke had cultivated pop-
ularity, especially in Paris, by advocating liberal
measures and extending the rights and priv-
ileges of the citizens.
The kingdom was kept in turmoil and terror
for years by the war of these factions, especially
in and about Paris, where the guild of the
butchers took a prominent part in affairs, on the
Burgundian side, arming a riotous body of men
who were called Cabochiens, from their leader's
name. In 1413 the Armagnacs succeeded in re-
covering possession of the capital and the Cabo-
chiens were suppressed.
Second Stage of the Hundred Years War.
Meantime, Henry V. of England, the ambi-
tious young Lancastrian king who came to the
throne of tliat country in 1413, saw a favorable
opportunity, in the distracted state of France, to
reopen the questions left unsettled by the break-
ing of the treaty of Bretigny. He invaded
France in 1415, as the rightful king coming to
dethrone a usurper, and began by taking Har-
fleur at the mouth of the Seine, after a siege
which cost him so heavily that he found it pru-
dent to retreat towards Calais. The French in-
tercepted him at Agincourt and forced him to
give them battle. He liad only twenty thousand
men, but they formed a well disciplined and well
ordered army. The French had gathered eighty
thousand men, but they were a feudal mob. The
battle ended, like those of Crecy and Poitiers, in
the routing and slaughter of the French, with
small loss to Henry's force. His army remained
too weak in numbers, however, for operations in
a hostile country, and the English king returned
home, with a great train of captive princes and
lords.
He left the Armagnacs and Burgundians still
fighting one another, and disabling France as
effectually as he could do if he stayed to ravage
the land. In 1417 he came back and began to
attack the strong cities of Normandy, one by
one, taking Caen first. In the next year, by a
horrible massacre, the Burgundian mob in Paris
overcame the Armagnacs there, and reinstated
Duke John of Burgundy in possession of the
capital. The latter was already in negotiation
with the English king, and evidently prepared
to sacrifice the kingdom for whatever might
seem advantageous to himself. But in 1419'
Henry V. took Rouen, and, when all of Nor-
mandy submitted with its capital, he demanded
nothing less than that great province, with Brit-
tany, Guienne, Maine, Anjou and Touraine in
addition, — or, substantially, the western half of
France.
Burgundian and English Alliance.
Parleyings were brought to an end in Septem-
ber of that year by the treacherous murder of
Duke John. The Armagnacs slew him foully,
at an interview to which he had been enticed, on
the bridge of Montereau. His son, Duke Philip
of Burgundy, now reopened negotiations with
the invader, in conjunction with Queen Isabella
(wife of the demented king), who had played an
evil part in all the factious troubles of the time.
These two, having control of the king's person,
concluded a treaty with Henry V. at Troyes,
according to the terms of which Henry should
marry the king's daughter Catherine ; should be
administrator of the kingdom of France while
Charles VI. lived, and should receive the crowa
1066
EUROPE.
The Maid of
Orleans.
EUROPE.
when the latter died. The marriage took place
at once, and almost the whole of France north
of the Loire seemed submissive to the arrange-
ment. The States- General and the Parliament
of Paris gave official recognition to it ; the disin-
herited dauphin of France, whose own mother
had signed away his regal heritage, retired, with
his Armagnac supporters, to the country south
of the Loire, and had little apparent prospect of
holding even that.
Two Kings in France.
But a mortal malady had already stricken
King Henry v., and he died in August, 1432.
The unfortunate, rarely conscious French king,
whose crown Henry had waited for, died seven
weeks later. Each left an heir who was pro-
claimed king of France. The English pretender
(Henry VL in England, Henry II. in France)
was an innocent infant, ten months old ; but his
court was in Paris, his accession was proclaimed
with due ceremony at St. Denis, his sovereignty
was recognized by the Parliament and the Uni-
versity of that city, and the half of France
appeared resigned to the lapse of nationality
which its acceptance of him signified. The true
heir of the royal house of France (Charles VIL)
was a young man of nearly mature age and of
fairly promising character; but he was pro-
claimed in a little town of Berry, by a small
following of lords and knights, and the nation
for which he stood hardly seemed to exist.
The English supporters of the English king of
France were too arrogant and overbearing to re-
tain very long the good will of their allies among
the French people. Something like a national
feeling in northern France was aroused by the
hostility they provoked, and the strength of the
position in which Henry V. left them was steadily
but slowly lost. Charles proved incapable, how-
ever, of using any advantages which opened to
him, or of giving his better counsellors an op-
portunity to serve him with good effect, and no
important change took place in the situation of
affairs until the English laid siege, in 1428, to
the city of Orleans, which was the stronghold of
the French cause.
Jeanne d'Arc, the Maid of Orleans.
Then occurred one of the most extraordinary
episodes in history : the appearance of the young
peasant girl of Lorraine, Jeanne d'Arc, whose
coming upon the scene of war was like the de-
scent of an angel out of Heaven, sent with a
Divine commission to rescue France. Belief in
the inspiration of this simple maiden, who had
faith in her own visions and voices, was easier
for that age than belief in a rational rally of
public energies, and it worked like a miracle on
the spirit of the nation. But it could not have
done so with effect if the untaught country girl
of Domremy had not been endowed in a wonder-
ful way, with a wise mind, as well as with an
imaginative one, and with courage as well as
with faith. When the belief in her inspired mis-
sion gave her power to lead the foolish king, and
authority to command his disorderly troops, she
acted almost invariably with understanding, with
good sense, with a clear, unclouded judgment,
with straightforward singleness of purpose, and
with absolute personal fearlessness. She saw
the necessity for saving Orleans; and when that
had been done under her own captaincy (1439),
she saw how greatly King Charles would gain in
prestige if he made his way to Rheims, and re-
ceived, like his predecessors, a solemn coronation
and consecration in the cathedral of that city.
It was by force of her gentle obstinacy of de-
termination that this was done, and the effect
vindicated the sagacity of the Maid. Then she
looked upon her mission as accomplished, and
would have gone quietly home to her village ; for
she seems to have remained as simple in feeling as
when she left her father's house, and was inno-
cent to the end of any selfish pleasure in the
fame she had won and the importance she had
acquired. But those she had helped would not
let her go ; and yet they would not be guided by
her without wrangle and resistance. She wished
to move the army straight from Rheims to Paris,
and enter that city before it had time to recover
from the consternation it was in. But other
counsellors retarded the march, by stopping to
capture small towns on the way, until the op-
portunity for taking Paris was lost. The king,
who had been braced up to a little energy by her
influence, sank back into his indolent pleasures,
and faction and frivolity possessed the court
again. Jeanne strove with high courage against
malignant opposition and many disheartenments,
in the siege of Paris and after, exposing herself
in battle with the bravery of a seasoned warrior ;
and her reward was to find herself abandoned at
last, in a cowardly way, to the enemy, when she
had led a sortie from the town of Compifigne, to
drive back the Duke of Burgundy, who was be-
sieging it. Taken prisoner, she was given up to
the Duke, and sold by him to the English at
Rouen.
That the Maid acted with supernatural powers
was believed by the English as firmly as by the
French ; but those powers, in their belief, came,
not from Heaven, but from Hell. In their view
she was not a saint, but a sorceress. They paid
a high price to the Duke of Burgundy for his
captive, in order to put her on trial for the witch-
craft which they held she had practised against
them, and to destroy her mischievous power. No
consideration for her sex, or her youth, or for the
beauty and purity of character that is revealed in
all the accounts of her trial, moved her judges to
compassion. They condemned her remorselessly
to the stake, and she was burned on the 31st of
May, 1431, with no effort put forth on the part
of the French or their ungrateful king to save
her from that horrible fate.
End of the Hundred Years War.
After this, things went badlj^vith the English,
though some years passed before Charles VIL
was roused again to any display of capable pow-
ers. At last, in 1435, a general conference of all
parties in the war was brought about at Arras.
The English were offered Normandy and Aqui-
taine in full sovereignty, but they refused it, and
withdrew from the conference when greater con-
cessions were denied to them. The Duke of
Burgundy then made terms with King Charles,
abandoning the English alliance, and obtaining
satisfaction for the murder of his father. Charles
was now able, for the first time in his reign, to
enter the capital of his kingdom (May, 1436), and it
is said that he found it so wasted by a pestilence
and so ruined and deserted, that wolves came into
the city, and that forty persons were devoured
by them in a single week, some two years later.
1067
EUROPE.
England during
the loar in Et-ajice.
EUROPE.
Charles now began to show better qualities
than had aijpeared in his character before. He
adopted strong measures to suppress the bands
of marauders who harassed and wasted the
country, and to bring all armed forces in the
kingdom under the control and command of the
Crown. He began the creation of a disciplined
and regulated militia in France. He called into
his service the greatest French merchant of the
day, Jacques Coeur, who successfully reorgan-
ized the finances of the state, and whose reward,
after a few years, was to be prosecuted and
plundered by malignant courtiers, while the king
looked passively on, as he had looked on at the
trial and execution of Jeanne d'Arc.
In 1449, a fresh attack upon the English in
Normandy was begun ; and as civil war — the
War of the Roses — was then at the point of out-
break in England, they could make no effective
resistance. Within a year, the whole of Nor-
mandy had become obedient again to the rule of
the king of France. In two years more Guienne
had been recovered, and when, in October, 1453,
the French king entered Bordeaux, the English
had been finally expelled from every foot of the
realm except Calais and its near neighborhood.
The Hundred Years War was at an end.
England under Edward III.
The century of the Hundred Years War had
been, in England, one of few conspicuous events ;
and when the romantic tale of that war — the last
sanguinary romance of expiring Chivalry — is
taken out of the English annals of the time, there
is not much left that looks interesting on the sur-
face of things. Below the surface there are
movements of no little importance to be found.
When Edward III. put forward his claim to
the crown of France, and prepared to make it
good by force of arms, the English nation had
absolutely no interest of its own in the enter-
prise, from which it could derive no possible ad-
vantage, but which did, on the contrary, promise
harm to it, very plainly, whatever might be the
result. If the king succeeded, his English realm
would become a mere minor appendage to a far
more imposing continental dominion, and he and
his successors might easily acquire a power in-
dependent and absolute, over their subjects. If
he failed, the humiliation of failure would wound
the pride and the prestige of the nation, while its
resources would have been drained for naught.
But these rational considerations did not suffice
to breed any discoverable opposition to King
Edward's ambitious undertaking. The Parlia-
ment gave sanction to it; most probably the
people at large approved, witli exultant expec-
tations of national glory ; and when Crecy and
Poitiers, with victories over the hostile Scots, filled
the measure of England's glory to overflow-
ing, they were intoxicated by it, and had little
thought then of the cost or the consequences.
But long before Edward's reign came to an end,
the splendid pageantries of the war had passed
out of sight, and a new generation was looking
at, and was suffering from, the miseries and mor-
tifications that came in its train. The attempt to
conquer France had failed ; the fruits of the vic-
tories of Crecy and Poitiers had been lost; even
Guienne, whicli had been English ground since
the days of Henry II., was mostly given up.
And England was weak from the drain of money
and men which the war had caused. The awful
plague of the 14th century, the Black Death,
had smitten her people hard and left diminished
numbers to bear the burden. There had been
famine in the land, and grievous distress, and
much sorrow.
But the calamities of this bitter time wrought
beneficent effects, which no man then living is
likely to have clearly understood. By plague,
famine and battle, labor was made scarce, wages
were raised, the half -enslaved laborer was speed-
ily emancipated, despite the efforts of Parlia-
ment to keep him in bonds, and land-owners
were forced to let their lands to tenant-farmers,
who strengthened the English middle-class. By
the demands of the war for money and men, the
king was held more in dependence on Parliament
than he might otherwise have been, and the
plant of constitutional government, which began
its growth in the previous century, took deeper
root.
In the last years of his life Edward III. lost
all of his vigor, and fell under the influence of a
woman, Alice Ferrers, who wronged and scan-
dalized the nation. The king's eldest son, the
Black Prince, was slowly dying of an incurable
disease, and took little part in affairs ; when he
Interfered, it seems to have been with some
leanings to the popular side. The next in age of
the livmg sons of Edward was a turbulent, proud,
self-seekmg prince, who gave England much
trouble and was hated profoundly. This was
John, Duke of Lancaster, called John of Gaunt,
or Ghent, because of his birth in that city.
England under Richard II.
The Black Prince, dying in 1376, left a young
son, Richard, then ten years old, who was imme-
diately recognized as the heir to the throne, and
who succeeded to it in the following year, when
Edward III. died. The Duke of Lancaster had
been suspected of a design to set Richard aside
and claim the crown for himself. But he did not
venture the attempt ; nor was he able to secure
even the regency of the kingdom during the
young king's minority. The distrust of him was
so general that Parliament and the lords pre-
ferred to invest Richard with full sovereignty
even in his boyhood. But John of Gaunt, not-
withstanding these endeavors to exclude him
from any place of authority, contrived to attain
a substantial mastery of the government, man-
aging the war in France and the expenditure of
public moneys in his own way, and managing
them very badly. At least, he was held chiefly
responsible for what was bad, and his name was
heard oftenest in the mutterings of popular
discontent. The peasants were now growing
very impatient of the last fetters of villeinage
which they wore, and very conscious of their
right to complete freedom. Tliose feelings were
strongly stirred in them by a heavy poll-tax
which Parliament levied in 1381. "The conse-
quence was an outbreak of insurrection, led by
one Wat the Tyler, which became formidable
and dangerous. The insurgents began by making
everybody they encountered swear to be true to
King Richard, and to submit to no king named
John, meaning John of Gaunt. They increased
in numbers and boldness until they entered and
took possession of the city of London, where
they beheaded the Archbishop of Canterbury,
and other obnoxious persons ; but permitted no
thieving to be done. 'The day after this occurred,
1068
EUROPE.
Wat Tyler and
Wyclif.
EUROPE.
Wat Tyler met the young king at Smithfleld, for
a conference, and was suddenly killed by one of
those who attended tlie king. The e.xcuse made
for the deed was some word of insolence on the
part of the insurgent leader ; but there is every
appearance of a foul act of treachery in the affair.
Richard on this occasion behaved boldly and
with much presence of mind, acquiring by his
courage and readiness a command over the angry
rebels, which resulted in their dispersion.
The Wat Tyler rebellion appears to have
manifested a more radically democratic state of
thinking and feeling among the common people
than existed again in England before the seven-
teenth century. John Ball, a priest, and others
who were associated with Wat Tyler in the
leadership, preached doctrines of social equality
that would nearly have satisfied a. Jacobin of the
French Revolution.
This temper of political radicalism had no ap-
parent connection with the remarkable religious
feeling of the time, which the great reformer,
Wyclif, had aroused ; }'et the two movements of
the English mind were undoubtedly started by
one and the same revolutionary shock, which it
took from the grave alarms and an.xieties of the
age, and for which it had been prepared by the
awakening of the previous century. Wyclif was
the first English Puritan, and more of the spirit
of the reformation of religion which he sought,
than the spirit of Luther's reformation, went into
the Protestantism that ultimately took form in
England. The movement he stirred was a more
wonderful anticipation of the religious revolt of
the sixteenth century than any other which oc-
curred in Europe ; for that of Huss in Bohemia
took its impulse from Wyclif and the English
Lollards, as AVyclif's followers were called.
Richard was a weak but wilful king, and the
kingdom was kept in trouble by his fitful at-
tempts at independence and arbitrary rule. He
made enemies of most of the great lords, and lost
the good will and confidence of Parliament. He
did what was looked upon as a great wrong to
Henry of Bolingbroke, son of John of Gaunt, by
banishing both him and the Duke of Norfolk
from the kingdom, when he should have judged
between them ; and he made the wrong greater by
seizing the lands of the Lancastrian house when
John of Gaunt died. This caused his ruin.
Henry of Bolingbroke, now Duke of Lancaster,
came back to England (1399), encouraged by the
discontent in the kingdom, and was immediately
joined by so many adherents that Richard could
offer little resistance. He was deposed by act of
Parliament, and the Duke of Lancaster (a grand-
son of Edward IIL, as Richard was), was elected
to the throne, which he ascended as Henry IV.
By judgment of King and Parliament, Richard
was presently condemned to imprisonment for
life in Pomtret Castle ; and, early in the follow-
ing year, after a conspiracy in his favor had
been discovered, he died mysteriously in his
prison.
England Under Henry IV.
The reign of Henry IV. , which lasted a little
more than thirteen years, was troubled by risings
and conspiracies, all originating among the nobles,
out of causes purely personal or factious, and
having no real political significance. But no
events in English history are more commonly
familiar, or seem to be invested with a higher
importance, than the rebellions of Owen Glen-
dower and the Percys, — Northumberland and
Harry Hotspur, — simply because Shakespeare
has laid his magic upon what otherwise would
be a story of little note. Wars with the always
hostile Scots supplied other stirring incidents to
the record of the time ; but these came to a sum-
mary end in 1405, when the crown prince, James,
of Scotland, voyaging to France, was driven by
foul winds to the English coast and taken pris-
oner. The prince's father, King Robert, died on
hearing the news, and James, the captive, was
now entitled to be king. But the English held
him for eighteen years, treating him as a guest
at their court, rather than as a prisoner, and
educating him with care, but withholding him
from his kingdom.
To strengthen his precarious seat upon the
throne, Henry cultivated the friendship of the
Church, and seems to have found this course
expedient, even at considerable cost to his popu-
laritj'. For the attitude of the commons towards
the Church during his reign was anything but
friendly. They went so far as to pass a bill
for the confiscation of Church property, which
the Lords rejected; and they seem to have re-
pented of an Act passed early in his reign,
under which a cruel persecution of the Lollards
was begun. The clergy and the Lords, with the
favor of the king, maintained the barbarous law,
and England for the first time saw men burned
at the stake for heresy.
England Under Henry V. and Henry VI.
Henry IV. died in 1413, and was succeeded by
his spirited and able, but too ambitious son,
Henry V., the Prince Hal of Shakespeare, who
gave up riotous living when called to the grave
duties of government and showed himself to be
a man of no common mould. The war in France,
which he renewed, and the chief events of which
have been sketched already, filled up most of
his brief reign of nine years. His early death
(1423) left two crowns to an infant nine months
old. The English crown was not disputed. The
French crown, though practically won by con-
quest, was not permanently secured, but was
still to be fought for; and in the end, as we have
seen, it was lost. No more need be said of the
incidents of the war which had that result.
The infant king was represented in France by
his elder uncle, the Duke of Bedford. In Eng-
land, the government was carried on for him
during his minority by a council, in which his
younger uncle, Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester,
occupied the chief place, but with powers that
were jealously restricted. While the war in
Prance lasted, or during most of the thirty-one
years through which it was protracted after
Henry V.'s death, it engrossed the English mind
and overshadowed domestic interests, so that the
time has a meagre history.
Soon after he came of age, Henry VI. married
(1444) Margaret of Anjou, daughter of Rene,
Duke of Anjou, who claimed to be King of
Naples and Jerusalem. The marriage, which
aimed at peace with France, and which had been
brought about by the cession to that country of
Maine and Anjou, was unpopular in England.
Discontent with the feeble management of the
war, and with the general weakness and incapa-
bility of the government, grew apace, and
showed itself, among other exhibitions, in a
1069
EUROPE.
Wars of the Roses
and their effects.
EUROPE.
rebellion (1450) known as Jack Cade's, from the
name of an Irishman who got the lead of it.
Jack Cade and his followers took possession of
London and held it for three days, only yielding
at last to an offer of general pardon, after they
had beheaded Lord Say, the most obnoxious ad-
viser of the king. A previous mob had taken
the head of the Earl of Suffolk, who was detested
still more as the contriver of the king's marriage
and of the humiliating policy in France.
The Wars of the Roses.
At length, the Duke of York, representing an
elder line of royal descent from Edward IIL,
took the lead of" the discontented in the nation,
and civil war was imminent in 1452 ; but pacific
counsels prevailed for the moment. The king,
who had always been weak-minded, and entireljf
under the influence of the queen, now sank for
a time into a state of complete stupor, and was
incapable of any act. The Lords in Parliament
thereupon appointed the Duke of York Protector
of England, and the government was vigorously
conducted by him for a few months, until the
king recovered. The queen, and the councillors
she favored, now regained their control of affairs,
and the opposition took arms.
The long series of fierce struggles between
these two parties, which is commonly called the
Wars of the Roses, began on the 23d of ^lay,
1455, with a battle at St. Albans — the first of
two that were fought on the same ground. At
the beginning, it was a contest for the possession
of the unfortunate, irresponsible king, and of the
royal authority which resided nominally in his
person. But it became, ere long, a contest for
the crown which Henry wore, and to which the
Duke of York denied his right. The Duke
traced his ancestry to one son of Edward IIL,
and King Henry to another son. But the Duke's
forefather, Lionel, was prior in birth to the
King's forefather, John of Gaunt, and, as an
original proposition, the House of York was
clearly nearer than the House of Lancaster to
the royal line which had been interrupted when
Richard II. was deposed. The rights of the
latter House were such as it had gained prescrip-
tively by half a century of possession.
At one time it was decided by the Lords that
Henry should be king until he died, and that tlie
Duke of York and his heirs should succeed him.
But Queen Margaret would not yield the rights
of her son, and renewed the war. The Duke of
York was killed in the next battle fought. His
son, Edward, continued the contest, and early
in 1461, having taken possession of London, he
was declared king by a council of Lords, which
formally deposed Henry. The Lancastrians were
driven from the kingdom, and Edward held the
government with little disturbance for eight
years. Then a rupture occurred between him
and his most powerful supporter, the Earl of
"Warwick, Warwick put himself at the head of
a rebellion which failed in the first instance, but
which finally, when Warwick had joined forces
with Queen Margaret, drove Edward to flight.
The latter took refuge in the Netherlands (1470),
where he received protection and assistance from
the Duke of Burgundy, who was his brother-in-
law. Henry VI. was now restored to the throne ;
but for no longer a time than six months. At
the end of that period Edward landed again in
England, with a small force, professing that he
came only to demand his dukedom. As soon as
he found himself well received and strongly sup-
ported, he threw off the mask, resumed the title
of king, and advanced to London, where the
citizens gave him welcome. A few days later
(April 14, 1471) he went out to meet Warwick
and defeated and .slew him in the fierce battle of
Barnet. One more fight at Tewkesbury, where
Queen Margaret was taken prisoner, ended the
war. King Henry died, suspiciously, in the
Tower, on the very night of his victorious rival's
return to London, and Edward IV. had all his
enemies under his feet.
England under the House of York.
For a few years England enjoyed peace within
her borders, «nd the material cifects of the pro-
tracted civil wars were rapidly efliaced. Indeed,
the greater part of England appears to have been
lightly touched by those effects. The people at
large had taken little part in the conflict, and
had been less disturbed by it, in their industries
and in their commerce, than miglit have been ex-
pected. It had been a strife among the great
families, enlisting the gentry to a large extent,
no doubt, but not the middle class. Hence its
chief consequence had been the thinning and
weakening of the aristocratic order, which rela-
tively enhanced the political importance of the
commons. But the commons were not yet trained
to act independently in political affairs. Their
rise in power had been through joint action of
lords and commons against the Crown, with the
former in the lead ; they were accustomed to de-
pend on aristocratic guidance, and to lean on
aristocratic support. For this reason, they were
not only unprepared to take advantage of the
great opportunity which now opened to them,
for decisively grasping the control of govern-
ment, but they were unfitted to hold what they
had previously won, without the help of the
class above them. As a consequence, it was the
king who profited by the decimation and im-
poverishment of the nobles, grasping not only
the power which they lost, but the power which
the commons lacked skill to use. For a century
and a half following the Wars of the Roses, the
English monarchy approached more nearly to
absolutism than at any other period before or
after.
The unsparing confiscations by which Edward
IV. and his triumphant party crushed their op-
ponents enriched the Crown for a time and made
it independent of parliamentary subsidies. When
supply from that source began to fall short, the
king invented another. He demeaned himself so
far as to solicit gifts from the wealthy merchants
of the kingdom, to which he gave the name of
"benevolences," and he practiced this system of
royal beggary so persistently and effectually that
he had no need to call Parliament together. He
thus began, in a manner hardly perceived or re-
sisted, the arbitrary and unconstitutional mode of
government whicli his successors carried further,
until the nation roused itself and took back its
stolen liberties with vengeance and wrath.
Richard III. and the first of the Tudors.
Edward IV. died in 1483, leaving two young
sons, the elder not yet thirteen. Edward's
brother, Richard, contrived with amazing ability
and unscrupulousness to acquire control of the
government, first as Protector, and presently as
1070
EUROPE.
Origin of the
Swiss Confederacy.
EUROPE.
King. The young princes, confined in the Tower,
were murdered there, and Richard III. might
have seemed to be secure on his wickedly won
throne ; for he did not lack popularity, notwith-
standing his crimes. But an avenger soon came,
in the person of Henry, Earl of Richmond, who
claimed the Crown. Henry's claim was not a
strong one. Through his mother, he traced his
lineage to John of Gaunt, as the Lancastrians
had done ; but it was the mistress and not the
wife of that prince who bore Henry's ancestor.
His grandfather was a Welsh chieftain, Sir Owen
Tudor, who won the heart of the widowed queen
of Henry V., Catherine of France, and married
her. But the claim of Henry of Richmond, if a
weak one genealogically, sufficed for the over-
throw of the red-handed usurper, Richard.
Henry, who had been in exile, landed in England
in August, 1485, and was quickly joined by large
numbers of supporters. Richard hastened to at-
tack them, and was defeated and slain on Bos-
worth Field. With no more opposition, Henry
won the kingdom, and founded, as Henry VII.,
the Tudor dynasty which held the throne until
the death of Elizabeth.
Under that dynasty, the history of England
took on a new character, disclosing new ten-
dencies, new impulses, new currents of influence,
new promises of the future. We will not enter
upon it until we have looked at some prior events
in other regions.
Germany.
If we return now to Germany, we take up the
thread of events at an interesting point. We
parted from the ailairs of that troubled country
while two rival Empei-ors, Louis IV., or Ludwig,
of Bavaria, and Frederick of Austria, were en-
deavoring (1325) to settle thei r dispute in a friendly
way, by sharing the throne together. Before
noting the result of that chivalric and remarkable
compromise, let us glance backward for a moment
at the most memorable and important incident of
the civil war which led to it.
Birth of the Swiss Confederacy.
The three cantons of Switzerland which are
known distinctively as the Forest Cantons, name-
ly, Schwytz (which gave its name in time to the
whole country), Uri, and Unterwalden, had stood
in peculiar relations to the Hapsburg family
since long before Rudolph became Emperor and
his house became the House of Austria. In those
cantons, the territorial rights were held mostly
by great monasteries, and the counts of Haps-
burg for generations past had served the abbots
and abbesses in the capacity of advocates, or
champions, to rule their vassals for them and to
defend their rights. Authority of their own in
the cantons they had none. At the same time,
the functions they performed so continually de-
veloped ideas in their minds, without doubt,
which grew naturally into pretensions that were
offensive to the bold mountaineers. On the other
hand, the circumstances of the situation were
calculated to breed notions and feelings of in-
dependence among the men of the mountains.
They gave their allegiance to the Emperor — to
the high sovereign who ruled over all, in the
name of Rome — and they opposed what came
between them and him. It is manifest that a
threatening complication for thera arose when
the Count of Hapsburg became Emperor, which
occurred in 1273. They had no serious difficulty
with Rudolph, in his time ; but they wisely pre-
pared themselves for what might come, by form-
ing, or by renewing, in 1291, a league of the
three cantons, — the beginning and nucleus of the
Swiss Confederation, which has maintained its
independence and its freedom from that day to
this. The league of 1291 had existed something
more than twenty years when the confederated
cantons were first called upon to stand together
in resistance to the Austrian pretensions. This
occurred in 1315, during the war between Louis
and Frederick, when Leopold, Duke of Austria,
invaded the Forest Cantons and was disastrously
beaten in a fight at the pass of Morgarten. The
victory of the confederates and the independence
secured by it gave them so much prestige that
neighboring cities and cantons sought admis-
sion to their league. In 1332 Luzern was re-
ceived as a member; in 1351, 1352, and 1358,
Zurich, Glarus, Zug, and Bern came in, increasing
the membership to eight. It took the name of
the Old League of High Germany, and its mem-
bers were known as Eidgenossen, or Confeder-
ates.
Such, in brief, are the ascertained facts of the
origin of the Swiss Confederacy. There is noth-
ing found in authentic history to substantiate the
popular legend of William Tell.
The questions between the league and the
Austrian princes, which continued to be trouble-
some for two generations, were practically ended
by the two battles of Sempach and Naefels,
fought in 1386 and 1388, in both of which the
Austrians were overthrown.
The Emperor Louis IV. and the Papacy.
While the Swiss were gaining the freedom
which they never lost, Germany at large was
making little progress in any satisfactory direc-
tion. Peace had not been restored by the friendly
agreement of 1325 between Ludwig and Frede-
rick. The partisans of neither were contented
with it. Frederick was broken in health and soon
retired from the government; in 1380 he died.
The Austrian house persisted in hostility to Louis ;
but his more formidable enemies were the Pope
and the King of France. The period was that
known in papal history as "the Babylonish Cap-
tivity," when the popes resided at Avignon and
were generally creatures of the French court and
subservient to its ambitions or its animosities.
Philip of Valois, who now reigned in France, as-
pired to the imperial crown, which the head of
the Church had conferred on the German kings,
and which the same supreme pontiff might claim
authority to transfer to the sovereigns of France.
This is supposed to have been the secret of the re-
lentless hostility with which Louis was pursued
by the Papacy — himself excommunicated, his
kingdom placed under interdict, and every effort
made to bring about his deposition by the princes
of Germany. But divided and depressed as the
Germans were, they revolted against these mal-
evolent pretensions of the popes, and in 1388 the
electoral princes issued a bold declaration, as-
serting the sufficiency of the act of election to
confer imperial dignity and power, and denying
the necessity for any papal confirmation what-
ever. Had Louis been a commanding leader, and
independent of the Papacy in his own feelings,
he could probably have rallied a national senti-
ment on this issue that would have powerfully
1071
EUROPE.
Hiiss, and the
Bohemian Reformation.
EUROPE.
affected the future of Grerman history. But he
lacked the needful character, and his troubles
continued until he died (1347). A. year before
his death, his opponents had elected and put for-
ward a rival emperor, Charles, the son of King
John of Bohemia. Charles (IV.) was subse-
quently recognized as king without dispute, and
secured the imperial crown. " It may be affirmed
with truth that the genuine ancient Empire,
which contained a German kingdom, came to an
end with the Emperor Ludwig the Bavarian.
None strove again after his death to restore the
imperial power. The golden bull of his succes-
sor Charles IV. sealed the fate of the old Empire.
Through it, and indeed through the entire con-
duct of Charles IV. , King of Bohemia as he really
was, and emperor scarcely more than in name, the
imperial government passed more and more into
the hands of the prince -electors, who came to re-
gard the emperor no longer as their master, but
as the president of an assembly in which he shared
the power with themselves." "From the time
of Charles IV. the main object and chief occu-
pation of the emperors was not the Empire, but
the aggrandisement and security of their own
house. The Empire served only as the means
and instrument of their purpose " (DOllinger).
The Golden Bull of Charles IV.
The Golden BuU referred to by Dr. Dollinger
was an instrument which became the constitu-
tion, so to speak, of the Holy Roman or Ger-
manic Empire. It prescribed the mode of the
election of the King, and definitively named the
seven Electors. It also conferred certain special
powers and privileges on these seven princes,
which raised them much above their fellows and
gave them an independence that may be said to
have destroyed every hope of Germanic unity.
This was the one mark which the reign of Charles
IV. left upon the Empire. His exertions as Em-
peror were all directed to the aggrandizement of
his own family, and with not much lasting re-
sult. In his own kingdom of Bohemia he ruled
with better effect. He made its capital, Prague,
an important city, adorning it with noble build-
ings and founding in it the most ancient of Ger-
man universities. This University of Prague
soon sowed seeds from which sprang the first
movement of religious reformation in Germany.
Charles IV. , dying in 1378, was succeeded by
his son Wenzel, or Wenceslaus, on the Imperial
throne as well as the Bohemian. Wenceslaus neg-
lected both the Empire and the Kingdom, and
the confusion of things in Germany grew worse.
Some of the principal cities continued to secure
considerable freedom and prosperity for them-
selves, by the combined efforts of their leagues;
but everywhere else great disorder and oppres-
sion prevailed. It was at this time that the Swa-
bian towns, to the number of forty-one, formed a
union and waged unsuccessful war with a league
which the nobles entered into against them. They
were defeated, and crushingly dealt with by the
Emperor.
In 1400 Wenceslaus was deposed and Rupert of
the Palatinate was elected, producing another
civil war, and reducing the imperial government
to a complete nullity. Rupert died in 1410, and,
after some contention, Sigmund, or Sigismund,
brother of Wenceslaus, was raised to the throne.
He was Margrave of Brandenburg and King of
Hungary, and would become King of Bohemia
when Wenceslaus died.
The Reformation of Huss in Bohemia.
Bohemia was about to become the scene of an
extraordinary religious agitation, which John
Huss, teacher and preacher in the new but
already famous University of Prague, was be-
ginning to stir. Huss, who drew more or less of
his inspiration from Wyclif, anticipated Luther
in the boldness of his attacks upon iniquities in
the Church. In his case as in Luther's, the
abomination which he could not endure was the
sale of papal indulgences ; and it was by his denun-
ciation of that impious fraud that he drew on
himself the deadly wrath of the Roman hierarchy.
He was summoned before the great Council of
the Church which opened at Constance in 1414.
He obeyed the summons and went to the Coun-
cil, bearing a safe-conduct from the Emperor
which pledged protection to him until he re-
turned. Notwithstanding this imperial pledge,
he was imprisoned for seven months at Constance,
and was then impatiently listened to and con-
demned to the stake. On the 6th of July, 1415,
he was burned. In the following May, his friend
and disciple, Jerome of Prague, suffered the
same martyrdom. The Emperor, Sigismund,
blustered a little at the insolent violation of his
safe-conduct; but dared do nothing to make it
effective.
In Bohemia, the excitement produced bj' these
outrages was universal. The whole nation
seemed to rise, in the first wide-spread aggressive
popular revolt that the Church of Rome had yet
been called upon to encounter. In 1419 there
was an armed assembl}' of 40,000 men, on a
mountain which they called Tabor, who placed
themselves under the leadership of John Ziska, a
nobleman, one of Huss' friends. The followers
of Ziska soon displayed a violence of temper and
a radicalism which repelled the more moderate
Hussites, or Reformers, and two parties appeared,
one known as the Taborites, the other as the Ca-
lixtines, or Utraquists. The former insisted on
entire separation from the Church of Rome ; the
latter confined their demands to four reforms,
namely: Free preaching of the Word of God;
the giving of the Eucharistic cup to the laity ;
the taking of secular powers and of worldly
goods from the clergy ; the enforcing of Chris-
tian discipline by all authorities. So much stress
was laid by the Calixtines on their claim to the
chalice or cup (communion in both kinds) that it
gave them their name. The breach between
these parties widened until they were as hostile
to each other as to the Catholics, and the Bohe-
mian reform movement was ruined in the end by
their division.
In 1419, the deposed Emperor Wenceslaus, who
had still retained his kingdom of Bohemia, was
murdered in his palace, at Prague. His brother,
the Emperor Sigismund, was his heir; but the
Hussites refused the crown to him, and resisted
his pretensions with arms. This added a politi-
cal conflict to the religious one, and Bohemia was
afflicted with a frightful civil war for fifteen
years. Ziska fortified mount Tabor and took
possession of Prague. The Emperor and the
Pope allied themselves, to crush an insurrection
which was aimed against both. They sum-
moned Christendom to a new crusade, and Sigis-
mund led 100,000 men against Prague, in 1420.
1072
EUEOPE.
The Great Schism.
EUROPE.
Ziska met him and defeated him, and drove him,
with his crusaders, from the country. The Ta-
borites were now maddened by their success, and
raged over the land, destroying convents and
burning priests. Their doctrines, moreover, be-
gan to take on a socialistic and republican char-
acter, threatening property in general and ques-
tioning monarchy, too. The well-to-do and
conservative classes were more and more repelled
from them.
In 1431 a second crusading army, 300,000
strong, invaded Bohemia and was scattered like
chaff by Ziska (now blind) and his peasant sol-
diery. The next year they defeated the Emperor
again ; but in 1434 Ziska died, and a priest called
Procopius the Great took his place. Under their
new leader, the fierce Taborites were as invinci-
ble as they had been under Ziska. They routed
an imperial army in 1436, and then carried the
war into Austria and Silesia, committing fearful
ravages. Still another crusade was set in motion
against them by the Pope, and still another dis-
astrous failure was made of it. Then Germany
again suffered a more frightful visitation from
the vengeful Hussites than before. Towns and
villages were destroyed by hundreds, and wide
tracks of ruin and death were marked on the face
of the land, to its very center. Once more, and
for the last time, in 1431, the Germans rallied a
great force to retaliate these attacks, and they met
defeat, as in all previous encounters, but more com-
pletely than ever before. Then the Pope and the
Emperor gave up hope of putting down the in-
domitable revolutionists by force, and opened
parleyings. The Pope called a council at Basel
for the discussion of questions with the Hussites,
and, finally, in 1433, their moderate party was
prevailed upon to accept a compromise which
really conceded nothing to them except the use
of the cup in the communion. The Taborites
refused the terms, and the two parties grappled
each other in a fierce struggle for the control of
the state. But the extremists had lost much of
their old strength, and the Utraquists vanquished
them in a decisive battle at Lipan, in May, 1434.
Two years later Sigismund was formally acknowl-
edged King of Bohemia and received in Prague.
In 1437 he died. His son-in-law, Albert of Aus-
tria, who succeeded him, lived but two years,
and the heir to the throne then was a son, Ladis-
laus, born after his father's death. This left Bo-
hemia in a state of great confusion and disorder
for several years, until a strong man, George
Podiebrad, acquired the control of affairs.
Meantime, tlie Utraquists had organized a Na-
tional Church of Bohemia, considerably divergent
from Rome. It failed to satisfy the deeper re-
ligious feelings that were widely current among
the Bohemians in that age, and there grew up a
sect which took the name of " Unitas Fratrum,"
or "Unity of the Brethren," but which after-
wards became incorrectly known as the Moravian
Brethren. This sect, still existing, has borne an
important part in the missionary history of the
Christian world.
The Papacy.— The Great Schism.
The Papacy, at the time of its conflict with
the Hussites, in Bohemia, was rapidly sinking to
that lowest level of debasement which it reached
In the later part of the fifteenth century. Its
state was not yet so abhorrent as it came to be
under the Borgias ; but it had been brought even
^^ 1073
more into contempt, perhaps, by the divisions
and contentions of " the Great Schism. " The so-
called "Babylonish Captivity" of the series of
popes who resided for seventy years at Avignon
(1305-1376), and who were under French in-
fluence, had been humiliating to the Church ; but
the schism which immediately followed (1378-
1417), when a succession of rival popes, or popes
and antipopes, thundered anathemas and excom-
munications at one another, from Rome and from
Avignon, was even more scandalous and shame-
ful. Christendom was divided by the quarrel.
France, Spain, Scotland, and some lesser states,
gave their allegiance to the pope at Avignon;
England, Germany and the northern kingdoms
adhered to the pope at Rome. In 1403, an at-
tempt to heal the schism was made by a general
Council of the Church convened at Pisa. It de-
creed the deposition of both the contending pon-
tiffs, and elected a third; but its authority was
not recognized, and the confusion of the Church
was only made worse by bringing three popes
into the quarrel, instead of two. Twelve years
later, another Council, held at Constance, — the
same which burned Huss, — had more success.
Europe had now grown so tired of the scandal,
and so disgusted with the three pretenders to
spiritual supremacy, that the action of the Coun-
cil was backed by public opinion, and they were
suppressed. A fourth pope, ^Martin V., whom
the Council then seated in the chair of St. Peter
(1417), was universally acknowledged, and the
Great Schism was at an end.
But other scandals and abuses in the Church,
which public opinion in Europe had already be-
gun to cry loudly against, were untouched by
these Councils. A subsequent Council at Basel,
which met in 1431, attempted some restraints
upon papal extortion (ignoring the more serious
moral evils that claimed attention); but was
utterly beaten in the conflict with Pope Eugenius
IV., which this action brought on, and its decrees
lost all effect. So the religious autocracy at
Rome, sinking stage by stage below the foulest
secular courts of the time, continued without
check to insult and outrage, more and more, the
piety, the common sense, and the decent feeling
of Christendom, until the habit of reverence was
quite worn out in the minds of men throughout
the better half of Europe.
Rome and the last Tribune, Rienzi.
The city of Rome had fallen from all greatness
of its own when it came to be dependent on the
fortunes of the popes. Their departure to Avig-
non had reduced it to a lamentable state. They
took with them, in reality, the sustenance of the
city ; for it lived, in the main, on the revenues
of the Papacy, and knew little of commerce be-
yond the profitable traffic in indulgences, absolu-
tions, benefices, relics and papal blessings, which
went to Avignon with the head of the Church.
Authority, too, departed with the Pope, and the
wretched city was given up to anarchy almost
uncontrolled. A number of powerful families —
the Colonna, the Orsini, and others — perpetually
at strife with one another, fought out their feuds
in the streets, and abused and oppressed their
neighbors with impunity. Their houses were
impregnable castles, and their retainers were a
formidable army.
It was while this state of things was at its
worst that the famous Cola di Rienzi, "last of
EUROPE.
Troubles in Italy,
EUROPE.
the Tribunes," accomplished a revolution which
was short-lived but extraordinary. He roused
the people to action against their oppressors and
the disturbers of their peace. He appealed to
them to restore the republican institutions of an-
cient Rome, and when they responded, in 1347,
by conferring on him the title and authority of a
Tribune, he actually succeeded in expelling the
turbulent nobles, or reducing them to submis-
siou, and established in Rome, for a little time,
what he called "the Good Estate." But his head
was quickly turned by his success; he was in-
flated with conceit and vanity ; he became arro-
gant and despotic ; the people tired of him, and
after a few months of rule he was driven from
Rome. In 1354 he came back as a Senator, ap-
pointed by the Pope, who thought to use him for
the restoration of papal authority; but his in-
fluence was gone, and he was slain by a riotous
mob.
The return of the Pope to Rome in 1376 was
an event so long and ardently desired by the
Roman people that they submitted themselves
eagerly to his government. But his sovereignty
over the States of the Church was substantially
lost, and the regaining of it was the principal
object of the exertions of the popes for a long
subsequent period.
The Two Sicilies.
In Southern Italy and Sicily, since the fall of
the Hohenstaufens (1368), the times had been
continuously evil. The rule of the French con-
queror, Charles of Anjou, was hard and unmerci-
ful, and the power he established became threat-
ening to the Papacj', which gave the kingdom
to him. In 1282, Sicily freed itself, by the savage
massacre of Frenchmen which bears the name
of the Sicilian Vespers. The King of Aragon,
Peter III., whose queen was the Hohenstaufen
heiress, supported the insurrection promptly and
vigorously, took possession of the island, and
was recognized by tlie people as their king. A
war of twenty years' duration ensued. Botli
Charles and Peter died and their sons continued
the battle. In the end, the Angevin house held
the mainland, as a separate kingdom, with Naples
for its capital, and a younger branch of tlie royal
family of Aragon reigned in the island. But
both sovereigns called themselves Kings of Sicily,
so that History, ever since, has been forced to
speak puzzlingly of "Two Sicilies." For con-
venience it seems best to distinguish them by
calling one the kingdom of Naples and the other
the kingdom of Sicily. On the Neapolitan throne
there came one estimable prince, in Robert, who
reigned from 1809 to 1343, and who was a friend
of peace and a patron of arts and letters. But
after him the throne was befouled by crimes and
vices, and the kingdom was made miserable by
civil wars. His grand-daugliter Joanna, or Jane,
succeeded him. Robert's elder brother Caribert
had become King of Hungary, and Joanna now
married one of that Icing's sons — her cousin
Andrew. At the end of two years he was mur-
dered (1345) and the queen, a notoriously vicious
woman, was accused of the crime. Andrew's
brother, Louis, who had succeeded to the throne
in Hungary, invaded Naples to avenge his death,
and Joanna was driven to flight. 'The country
then suffered from the worst form of civil war —
a war carried on by the hireling ruffians of the
"free companies " who roamed about Italy in
that age, selling their swords to the highest bid-
ders. In 1351 a peace was brought about which
restored Joanna to the throne. The Hungarian
King's son, known as Cliarles of Durazzo, was
her recognized heir, but she saw fit to disinherit
him and adopt Louis, of the Second House of
Anjou, brother of Charles V. in France. Charles
of Durazzo invaded Naples, took the queen
prisoner and put her to death. Louis of Anjou
attempted to displace him, but failed. In 1383
Louis died, leaving his claims to his son. Charles
of Durazzo was called to Hungary, after a time,
to take the crown of that kingdom, and left his
young son, Ladislaus, on the Neapolitan throne.
The Angevin claimant, Louis II. , was then called
in by his partisans, and civil war was renewed
for years. When Ladislaus reached manhood
he succeeded in expelling Louis, and he held the
kingdom until his death, in 1414. He was suc-
ceeded by his sister, Joanna II. , who proved to
be as wicked and dissolute a woman as her pre-
decessor of the same name. She incurred the
enmity of the Pope, who persuaded Louis III. ,
son of Louis II. , to renew the claims of his liouse.
The most renowned " condottiere " (or military
contractor, as the term might be translated), of
the day, Attendolo Sforza, was engaged to make
war on Queen Joanna in the interest of Louis.
On her side she obtained a champion by promis-
ing her dominions to Alfonso V., of Aragon and
Sicily. The struggle went on for years, with
varying fortunes. The fickle and treacherous
Joanna revoked her adoption of Alfonso, after a
time, and made Louis her heir. When Louis
died, she bequeathed her crown to his brother
Rene, Duke of Lorraine. Her death occurred in
1435, but still the war continued, and nearly all
Italy was involved in it, taking one side or the
other. Alfonso succeeded at last (1442) in estab-
lishing himself at Naples, and Rene practically
gave up the contest, although he kept the title
of King of Naples. He was the father of the
famous English Queen Margaret of Anjou, who
fought for her weak-minded husband and her son
in the Wars of the Roses.
While the Neapolitan kingdom was passing
through these endless miseries of anarchy, civil
war, and evil government, the Sicilian kingdom
enjoyed a more peaceful and prosperous exis-
tence. The crown, briefly held by a cadet branch
of the House of Aragon, was soon reunited to
that of Aragon; and under Alfonso, as we have
seen, it was once more joined with that of Naples,
in a " Kingdom of the Two Sicilies." But both
these unions were dissolved on the death of
Alfonso, who bequeathed Aragon and Sicily to
his legitimate heir, and Naples to a bastard son.
The Despots of Northern Italy.
In Northern Italy a great change in the political
state of many among the formerly free common-
wealths had been going on since the thirteenth
century. The experience of the Greek city-re-
publics had been repeated in them. In one way
and another, they had fallen under the domina-
tion of powerful families, who had established a
despotic rule over them, sometimes gatliering
several cities and their surrounding territory into
a considerable dominion, and obtaining fronj the
Emperor or the Pope a formally conferred and
hereditary title. Thus the Visconti had estab-
lished themselves at Milan, and had become a
ducal house. After a few generations they gave
1074
EUROPE.
The Florentine
Republic,
EUROPE.
way to the military adventurer, Francesco Sforza,
son of the Sforza who made war for Louis III. of
Anjou on Joanna II. of Naples. In Verona, the
Delia Scala family reigned for a time, until Venice
overcame them; at Modena and Ferrara, the
Estes ; at Mantua, the Gonzagas ; at Padua, the
Carraras.
The Italian Republics.
In other cities, the political changes were of a
different character. Venice, which grew rich
and powerful with extraordinary rapidity, was
tyrannically governed by a haughty and exclu-
sive aristocracy. In commerce and in wealth she
surpassed all her rivals, and her affairs were more
shrewdly conducted. She held large possessions
in the Bast, and she was acquiring an extensive
dominion on the Italian mainland. The Geno-
ese, who were the most formidable competitors
of Venice in commerce, preserved their democracy,
but at some serious expense to the administra-
tive efficiency of their government. They were
troubled by a nobility which could only be tur-
bulent and could not control. They fought a
desperate but losing fight with the Venetians,
and were several times in subjection to the dukes
of Milan and the kings of France. Pisa, which
had led both Venice and Genoa in the commercial
race at the beginning, was ruined by her wars
with the latter, and with Florence, and sank, in
the fourteenth century, under the rule of the
Visconti, who sold their rights to the Florentines.
Florence.
The wonderful Florentine republic was the one
which preserved its independence under popular
institutions the longest, and in which they bore
the most splendid fruit. For a period that began
in the later part of the thirteenth century, the
government of Florence was so radically demo-
cratic that the nobles (grandi) were made ineli-
gible to office, and could only qualify themselves
for election to any place in the magistracy by
abandoning their order and engaging in the labor
of some craft or art. The vocations of skilled in-
dustry were all organized in gilds, called Arti, and
were divided into two classes, one representing
what were recognized as the superior arts (Arti
JIajor, embracing professional and mercantile
callings, with some others) ; the other including the
commoner industries, known as the Arti Minori.
From the heads, or Priors, of the Arti were
chosen a Signory, changed every two months,
which was entrusted with the government of the
republic. This popular constitution was main-
tained in its essential features through the better
part of a century, but with continual resistance
and disturbance from the excluded nobles, on one
side, and from the common laboring people, on
the other, who belonged to no art-gild and who,
therefore, were excluded likewise from partici-
pation in political affairs. Between these two
upper and lower discontents, the bourgeois con-
stitution gave way at last. The mob got control
for a time ; but only, as always happens, to bring
about a reactionary revolution, which placed an
oligarchy in power; and the oligarchy made
smooth the way for a single family of great
wealth and popular gifts and graces to rise to
supremacy in the state. This was the renowned
family which began to rule in Florence in 1435,
when Cosimo de' Medici entered on the office of
Gonfaloniere. The Medici were not despots, of
the class of the Visconti, or the Sforzas, or the
Estes. They governed under the old constitu-
tional forms, with not much violation of any-
thing except the spirit of them. They acquired
no princely title, until the late, declining days of
the house. Their power rested on influence and
prestige, at first, and finally on habit. They
developed, and enlisted in their own support, as
something reflected from themselves, the pride
of the city in itself,— r in its magnificence, — in its
great and liberal wealth, — in its patronage of
letters and art, — in its fame abroad and the ad-
miration with which men looked upon it.
Through all the political changes in Florence
there ran an unending war of factions, the bitter-
est and most inveterate in history. The control
of the city belonged naturally to the Guelfs, for
it was the head and front of the Guelfic party in
Italy. "Without Florence," says one historian,
' ' there would have been no Guelfs. " But neither
party scrupled to call armed help from the out-
side into its quarrels, and the Ghibellines were
able, nearly as often as the Guelfs, to drive their
opponents from the city. For the ascendancy of
one faction meant commonly the flight or expul-
sion of every man in the other who had importance
enough to be noticed. It was thus that Dante,
an ardent Ghibelline, became an exile from his
beloved Florence during the later years of his
life. But the strife of Guelfs with Ghibellines
did not suffice for the parti-san rancor of the Flor-
entines, and they complicated it with another
split of factions, which bore the names of the
Bianchi and the Neri, or the Whites and the
Blacks.
For two or three centuries the annals of Flor-
ence are naught, one tliinks in reading them, but
an unbroken tale of strife within, or war without
— of tumult, riot, revolution, disorder. And yet,
underneath, there is an amazing story to be found,
of thrift, industry, commerce, prosperity, wealth,
on one side, and of the sublimest genius, on an-
other, giving itself, in pure devotion, to poetry
and art. The contradiction of circumstances
seems irreconcilalile to our modern experience,
and we have to seek an explanation of it in the
very different conditions of mediieval life.
It is with certainty a fact that Florence, in its
democratic time, was phenomenal in genius, and
in richness of life, — in prosperity both material
and intellectual ; and it is reasonable to credit to
that time the planting and the growing of fruits
which ripened surpassingly in the Medicean age.
The Ottomans and the Eastern Empire.
So little occasion has arisen for any mention of
the lingering Eastern Empire, since Michael Pal-
feologus, the Greek, recovered Constantinople
from the Franks (1261), that its existence might
easily be forgotten. It had no importance until
it fell, and then it loomed large again, in history,
not only by the tragic impression of its fall upon
the imaginations of men, but by the potent con-
sequences of it.
For nearly two hundred years, the successors
of PalEBologus, still calling themselves "Emper-
ors of the Romans," and ruling a little Thracian
and Macedonian corner of the old dominion of
the Eastern Caesars, struggled with- a new race
of Turks, who had followed the Seljuk horde
out of the same Central Asian region. One of
the first known leaders of this tribe was Osman,
or Othman, after whom they are sometimes called
1075
EUROPE.
The Turks in
Europe.
EUROPE.
Osmanlis, but more frequently Ottoman Turks.
They appeared in Asia Minor about the middle
of tlie thirteenth century, attacking both Cliris-
tian and Mahometan states, and gradually ex-
tending their conquest over the whole. About
the end of the first century of their career, they
passed the straits and won a footing in Europe.
In 1361, they took Hadrianople and made it their
capital. Their sultan at this time was Amurath.
As yet, they did not attack Constantinople.
The city itself was too strong in its fortifications ;
but beyond the walls of the capital there was no
strength in the little fragment of Empire that
remained. It appealed vainly to Western Eu-
rope for help. It sought to make terras with
the Church of Rome. Nothing saved it for the
moment but the evident disposition of the Turk
to regard it as fruit which would drop to his
hand in due time, and which he might safely
leave waiting while he turned his arms against
its more formidable neighbors. He contented
himself with exacting tribute from the emperors,
and humiliating them by commands which they
dared not disobey. In the Servians, the Bos-
nians, and the Bulgarians, Amurath found wor-
thier foes. He took Sophia, their principal city,
from the latter, in 1383 ; in 1889 he defeated the
two former nations in the great battle of Kos-
sova. At tlie moment of victory he was assassi-
nated, and his son Bajazet mounted the Ottoman
throne. The latter, at Nicopolis (1396), over'
whelmed and destroyed the one army which West-
ern Europe sent to oppose the conquering march
of his terrible race. Six years later, lie himself
was vanquished and taken prisoner in Asia by
a still more terrible conqueror, — the fiendish
Timour or Tamerlane, then scourging the eastern
Continent. For some years the Turks were para-
lyzed by a disputed succession; but under Am-
urath II., who came to the throne in 1431, their
advance was resumed, and in a few years more
their long combat with the Hungarians began.
Hungary and the Turks.
The original line of kings of Hungary having
died out in 1301, the influence of the Pope, who
claimed the kingdom as a fief of the papal see,
secured the election to the throne of Charles Rob-
ert, or Caribert, of the Naples branch of the House
of Anjou. He and his son Louis, called the Great,
raised the kingdom to notable importance and
power. Louis added the crown of Poland to that
of Hungary, and on his death, leaving two daugh-
ters, the Polish crown passed to the husband of one
and the Hungarian crown to the husband of the
other. This latter was Sigismund of Luxemburg,
who afterwards became Emperor, and also King of
Bohemia. Under Sigismund, Hungary was threat-
ened on one side by the Turks, and ravaged on the
other by the Hussites of Bohemia. He was suc-
ceeded (1437) by his son-in-law, Albert of Austria,
who lived only two years, and the latter was fol-
lowed by Wladislaus, King of Poland, who again
united the two crowns, though at the cost of a dis-
tracting civil war with partisans of the infant son
of Albert. It was in the reign of this prince that
the Turks began their obstinate attacks on Hun-
gary, and thenceforth, for two centuries and more,
that afflicted country served Christendom as a
battered bulwark which the new waiTiors of
Islam could beat and disfigure but could not
break down. The hero of these first Hungarian
wars with the Turks was John Huniades. orHun-
yady, a Wallaohian, who fought them with suc-
cess until a peace was concluded in 1444. But
King Wladislaus was persuaded the same year
by a papal agent to break the treaty and to lead
an expedition against the enemy's lines. The
result was a calamitous defeat, the death of the
king, and the almost total destruction of his
army. Huniades now became regent of the
kingdom, during the minority of the late King
Albert's young son, Ladislaus.
He suffered one serious defeat at the hands of
the Turks, but avenged it again and again, with
help from an army of volunteers raised in all
parts of Europe by the exertions of a zealous
monk named Capistrano. When Huniades died,
in 1456, his enemies already controlled the worth-
less young king, Ladislaus, and the latter pur-
sued him in his grave with denunciations as a
traitor and a villain. In 1458, Ladislaus died,
and Mathias, a son of Huniades, was elected
king. After he had settled himself securely
upon the throne, Mathias turned his arms, not
against the Turks, but against the Hussites of
Bohemia, in an attempt to wrest the crown of that
kingdom from George Podiebrad.
The Fall of Constantinople.
Meantime, the Turkish Sultan, Mohammed II.,
had accomplished the capture of Constantinople
and brought the venerable Empire of the East —
Roman, Greek, or Byzantine, as we choose to
name it — to an end. He was challenged to the
undertaking by the folly of the last Emperor,
Constantine Paloeologus, who threatened to sup-
port a pretender to Mohammed's throne. The
latter began serious preparations at once for a
siege of the long coveted city, and opened his
attack in April, 1453. The Greeks, even in that
hour of common danger, were too hotly engaged
in a religious quarrel to act defensively together.
Their last preceding emperor had gone person-
ally to the Council of the Western Church, at
Florence, in 1439, with some of the bishops of
the Greek Church, and had arranged for the sub-
mission of the latter to Rome, as a means of pro-
curing help from Catholic Europe against the
Turks. His successor, Constantine, adhered to
this engagement, professed the Catholic faith and
observed the Catholic ritual. His subjects in
general repudiated the imperial contract with
scorn, and avowedly preferred a Turkish master
to a Roman shepherd. Hence they took little
part in the defense of the city. Constantine, with
the small force at his command, fought the host
of besiegers with noble courage and obstinacy
for seven weeks, receiving a little succor from
the Genoese, but from no other quarter. On the
39th of May the walls were carried by storm;
the Emperor fell, fighting bravely to the last ; and
the Turks became masters of the city of Con-
stantine. There was no extensive massacre of
the inhabitants; the city was given up to pillage,
but not to destruction, for the conqueror intended
to make it his capital. A number of fugitives
had escaped, before, or during the siege, and
made their way into Italy and other parts of Eu-
rope, carrying an influence which was impor--
tantly felt, as we shall presently see; but 60,000
captives, men, women and children, were sold
into slavery and scattered throughout the Otto-
man Empire.
Greece and most of the islands of the JEgean
soon shared the fate of Constantinople, and the
1076
EUROPE.
Renaissance.
EUROPE.
subjugation of Servia and Bosnia was made
complete. Mohammed was even threatening
Italy when he died, in 1481.
Renaissance.
We have now come, in our liasty survey of
European history, to the stretch of time within
which historians have quite generally agreed to
place the ending of the state of things character-
istic of tlie Middle Ages, and the beginning of
the changed conditions and the different spirit
that belong to the modern life of the civilized
world. The transition in European society from
mediaeval to modern ways, feelings, and thoughts
has been called Renaissance, or newbirtli; but
the figure under which this places the concep-
tion before one's mind does not seem to be really
a happy one. There was no birth of anything
new in the nature of the generations of men who
passed through that change, nor in the societies
which they formed. AVliat occurred to make
changes in both was an e.xpansion, a liberation,
an enlightenment — an opening of eyes, and of
ears, and of inner senses and sensibilities. There
was no time and no place that can be marked
at which this began ; and there is no cause
nor chain of causes to which it can be traced.
We have found signs of its coming, here and
there, in one token of movement and another,
all the way tlirougli later medLTival times — at
least since the first Crusades. In tlie thirteenth
century there was a wonderful quickening of all
the many processes whicli made it up. In the
fourteenth century they were checked ; but still
they went on. In the fifteenth they revived with
greater energy than before ; and in the sixteenth
they rose to their climax in intensity and effect.
That which took place in European society
was not a re-naissance so much as the re-wakening
of men to a day-light existence, after a thousand
years of sunless night, — moonlighted at the
best. The truest descriptive figure is that which
represents these preludes to our modern age as a
morning dawn and daybreak.
Probably foremost among the causes of the
change in Western Europe from the medieval to
the modern state, we must place those infiuences
that extinguished the disorganizing forces in
feudalism. Habits and forms of the feudal ar-
rangement remained troublesome in society, as
they do in some measure to the present day ; but
feudalism as a system of social disorder and dis-
integration was by this time cleared away. We
have noted in passing some of tlie undermining
agencies by which it was destroyed : the crusad-
ing movements ; the growtli and enfranchisement
of cities ; the spread of commerce ; tlie rise of a
middle class ; the study of Roman law ; the conse-
quent increase of royal authority in France, — all
these were among the causes of its decline. But
possibly none among them wrought such quick
and deadly harm to feudalism as the introduction
of gunpowder and fire-arms in war, whicli oc-
curred in tlie fourteenth century. When his
new weapons placed the foot-soldier on a fairly
even footing in battle with the mailed and
mounted knight, the feudal military organiza-
tion of society was ruined beyond remedy. The
changed conditions of warfare made trained
armies, and therefore standing armies, a neces-
sity ; standing armies implied centralized au-
thority; with centralized authority the feudal
condition disappeared.
If these agencies in the generating of the new
movement of civilization which we call Modem
are placed before the subtler and more powerful
influence of the printing press, it is because they
had to do a certain work in the world before the
printing press could be an efficient educator.
Some beginning of a public, in our modern sense,
required to be created, for letters to act upon.
Until that came about, the copyists of the mon-
asteries and of the few palace libraries existing
were more than sufficient to satisfy all demands
for the multiplication of ancient writings or the
publication of new ones. The printer, if he had
existed, would have starved for want of employ-
ment. He would have lacked material, more-
over, to work upon ; for it was the rediscovery
of a great ancient literature which made him
busy when he came.
Invention of Printing.
The preparation of Europe for an effective use
of the art of printing may be said to have begun
in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, wlien the
great universities of Paris, Bologna, Naples,
Padua, Modena, and others, came into existence,
to be centers of intellectual irritation — disputa-
tion — challenge — groping inquiry. But it was
not until the fourteenth century, when the labors
and the influence of Petrarch and other scholars
and men of genius roused interest in the forgot-
ten literature of ancient Rome and Greece, that
the craving and seeking for books grew consider-
able. Scholars and pretended scholars from the
Greek Empire then began to find employment, In
Italy more especially, as teachers of the Greek
language, and a market was opened for man-
uscripts of the older Greek writings, which
brought many precious ones to light, after long
burial, and multiplied copies of them. From
Italy, this revival of classic learning crept west-
ward and northward somewhat slowly, but it
went steadily on, and the book as a commodity
in the commerce of the world rose year by year
in importance, until the printer came forward,
about the middle of the fifteenth century, to
make it abundant and cheap.
AVhether John Gutenberg, at Mentz, in 1454,
or Laurent Coster, at Haarlem, twenty years
earlier, executed the first printing with movable
types, is a question of small importance, except
as a question of justice between the two possible
Inventors, in awarding a great fame which be-
longs to one or both. The grand fact is, that
thought and knowledge took wings from that
sublime invention, and ideas were spread among
men with a swift diffusion that the world had
never dreamed of before. The slow wakening that
had gone on for two centuries became suddenly
so quick tluit scarcely more than fifty years, from
the printing of the first Bible, sufficed to inocu-
late half of Europe with the independent think-
ing of a few boldly enlightened men.
The Greek Revival.
If Gutenberg's printing of Pope Nicholas'
letter of indulgence, in 1454, was really the first
achievement of the new-born art, then it followed
by a single year the event commonly fixed upon
for the dating of our Modern Era, and it derived
much of its earliest importance indirectly from
that event. For the fall of Constantinople, in
1453, was preceded and followed by a flight of
Greeks to Western Europe, bearing such treas-
1077
EUROPE.
Geographical
Discovery.
EUROPE.
ures as they could save from the Turks. Happily
those treasures included precious manuscripts;
and among the fugitives was no small number
of educated Greeks, who became teachers of their
language in the West. Thus teaching and text
were offered at the moment when the printing
press stood ready to make a common gift of them
to every hungering student. This opened the
second of the three stages which the late John
Addington Symonds defined in the history of
scholarship during the Renaissance : "The first
is the age of passionate desire ; Petrarch poring
over a Homer he could not understand, and Boc-
caccio in his maturity learning Greek, in order
that he miglit drink from the well-head of poetic
inspiration, are the heroes of this period. They
inspired the Italians with a tliirst for antique
culture. Ne.xt comes the age of acquisition and
of libraries. Nicholas V.,who founded the Vati-
can Library in 1453, Cosmo de' Medici, who began
the IMedicean Collection a little earlier, and Pog-
gio Bracciolani, who ransacked all the cities and
convents of Europe for manuscripts, together
with the teachers of Greek, who in the first half
of the fifteenth century escaped from Constanti-
nople with precious freights of classic literature,
are the heroes of this second period." "Then
came the third age of scholarship — the age of
the critics, philologers, and printers. . . . Flor-
ence, Venice, Basle, and Paris groaned with print-
ing presses. The Aldi, the Stephani, and Froben,
toiled by night and day, employing scores of
scholars, men of supreme devotion and of mighty
brain, whose work it was to ascertain the right
reading of sentences, to accentuate, to punctuate,
to commit to tlie press, and to place beyond the
reach of monkish hatred or of envious time, that
everlasting solace of humanity which exists in
the classics. All subsequent achievements in the
field of scholarship sink into insignificance be-
side the labours of these men, who needed genius,
enthusiasm, and the sympathy of Europe for the
accomplishment of their titanic task. Virgil was
printed in 1470, Homer in 1488, Aristotle in 1498,
Plato in 1513. They then became the inalienable
heritage of mankind. . . . This third age in the
history of the Renaissance Scholarship may be
said to have reached its climax in Erasmus [1465-
1536] ; for by this time Italy had handed on the
torch of learning to the northern nations" (Sy-
monds).
Art had already had its new birth in Italy ; but
it shared with everything spiritual and intellec-
tual the wonderful quickening of the age, and
produced the great masters of the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries: Michael Angelo, Leonardo
da Vinci, Raphael, Titian, in Italy, the Brothers
Van Eyck in Flanders, Holbein and Diirer, in
Germany, and the host of their compeers in that
astonishing age of artistic genius.
Portuguese Explorations.
A ruder and more practical direction in which
the spirit of the age manifested itself conspicu-
ously and with prodigious results was that of
exploring navigation, to penetrate the unknown
regions of the globe and find their secrets out.
But, strangely, it was none of the older maritime
and commercial peoples who led the way in this:
neither the Venetians, nor the Genoese, nor the
Catalans, nor the Flemings, nor the Hansa Lea-
guers, nor the English, were early in the search
for new countries and new routes of trade. The
grand exploit of "business enterprise" in the
fifteenth century, which changed tlie face of com-
merce throughout the world, was left to be per-
formed by the Portuguese, whose prior com-
mercial experience was as slight as that of any
people in Europe. And it was one great man
among them, a younger son in their royal family,
Prince Henry, known to later times as "the
Navigator," who woke tlie spirit of exploration
in them and pushed them to the achievement
which placed Portugal, for a time, at the head of
the maritime states. Beginning in 1434, Prince
Henry sent expedition following expedition down
the western coast of Africa, searching for the
southern extremity of the continent, and a way
round it to the eastward — to the Indies, the
goal of commercial ambition then and long after.
In our own day it seems an easy thing to sail
down the African coast to the Cape ; but it was
not easy in the middle of the fifteenth century ;
and when Prince Henry died, in 1460, his ships
had only reached the mouth of the Gambia, or a
little way beyond it. His countrymen had grown
interested, however, in the pursuit which he be-
gan, and expeditions were continued, not eagerly
but at intervals, until Bartolomew Diaz, in 1486,
rounded the southern point of the continent with-
out knowing it, and Vasco da Gama, in 1497,
passed beyond, and sailed to the coast of India.
Discovery of America.
Five years before this, Columbus, in the ser-
vice of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, had
made the more venturesome voyage westward,
and had found the New World of America. That
the fruits of that surpassing discovery fell to
Spain, is one of the happenings of history which
one need not try to explain ; since (if we except
the Catalans among them) there were no people
in Europe less inclined to ocean adventure than
the Spaniards. But they had just finished the
conquest of the Moors ; their energies, long exer-
cised in that struggle, demanded some new out-
let, and the Genoese navigator, seeking money
and ships, and baffled in all more promising
lands, came to them at the right moment for a
favorable hearing. So Castile won the amazing
prize of adventure, which seems to have be-
longed by more natural riglit to Genoa, or Venice,
or Bruges, or Lubeck, or Bristol.
The immediate material effects of the finding
of the new way to tlie Asiatic side of the world
were far more important than the effects of the
discovery of America, and they were promptly
felt. No sooner had the Portuguese secured their
footing in the eastern seas, and on the route thither,
which they proceeded vigorously to do, than the
commerce of Europe with that rich region of
spices and silks, and curious luxuries which
Europe loved, abandoned its ancient channels
and ran quickly into the new one. There were
several strong reasons for this: (1) the carriage
of goods by the longer ocean route was cheaper
than by caravan routes to the Mediterranean ; (3)
the pestilent Moorish pirates of the Barbary Coast
were escaped; (3) European merchants found
heavy advantages in dealing directly with the
East instead of trading at second hand through
Arabs and Turks. So the commerce of the Indies
fled suddenly away from the Mediterranean to
the Atlantic ; fled from Venice, from Genoa, from
Marseilles, from Barcelona, from Constantinople,
from Alexandria; fled, too, from many cities of
1078
EUROPE.
Nationalization.
EUROPE.
the arrogant Hanse league iu the North, which
had learned the old ways of traffic and were slow
to catch tlie idea of a possible change. At the
outset of the rearrangement of trade, the Por-
tuguese won and held, for a time, the tirst hand-
ling of East Indian commodities, while Dutch,
English and German traders — especially the first
named — met them at Lisbon and took their wares
for distribution through central and northern
Europe. But, iu no long time, tlie Dutch and
English went to India on their own account, and
ousted the Portuguese from their profitable mo-
nopoly.
Commercially, the discovery of America had
little effect on Europe for a century or two.
Politically, it had vast consequences in tlie six-
teenth century, which came, in the main, from
the power and prestige that accrued to Spain.
But perhaps its most important effects were
those moral and intellectual ones which may be
attributed to the sudden, surprising enlargement
of the geographical horizon of men. The lifting
of the curtain of mystery which had hung so long
between two halves of the world must have com-
pelled every man, who thought at all, to suspect
that other curtains of mystery might be hiding
facts as simple and substantial, waiting for their
•Columbus to disclose them ; and so the bondage
of the medifeval mind to that cowardice of su-
perstition which fears inquiry, must surely have
■been greatly loosened by the startling event.
But the Spaniards, who rushed to tlie possession
of the new-found world, showed small signs of
any such effect upon their minds ; and perhaps
it was tlie greedy thought of their possession
which excluded it.
Nationalization of Spain.
The Spaniards were one of half-a-dozen peo-
ples in Western Europe who had just arrived,
in this fifteenth century, at a fairly consolidated
nationality, and were prepared, for the first time
in their history, to act with something like or-
ganic unity in the affairs of the world. It was
one of tlie singular birth-marks of the new era
in history, that so many nations passed from the
inchoate to the definite form at so nearly the
same time. The marriage of Isabella of Castile
to Ferdinand of Aragon, in 1469, effected a per-
manent union of the two crowns, and a substan-
tial incorporation of the greater part of the
Spanish peninsula into a single strong kingdom,
made yet stronger in 1491 by the conquest of
Grenada and subjugation of the last of the
Spanish Moors.
Louis XI. and the Nationalizing of France.
The nationalizing of France had been a simul-
taneous but quite different process. From the
miserably downfallen and divided state in which
it was left by the Hundred Years War, it was
raised by a singular king, who employed strange,
ignoble methods, but employed them with re-
markable success. This was Louis XL, who
owes to Sir Walter Scott's romance of " Quentin
Durward " an introduction to common fame
which he could hardly have secured otherwise ;
since popular attention is not often drawn to the
kind of cunning and hidden work in politics
which he did.
Louis XL, on coming to the throne in 1461,
found himself surrounded by a state of things
•which seemed much like a revival of the feudal
state at its worst, when Philip Augustus and
Louis IX. had to deal with great vassals who
rivalled or overtopped them in power. The
reckless granting of appanages to children of
the royal family liad raised up a new group of
nobles, too powerful and too proud to be loyal
and obedient subjects of the monarchy. At the
head of them was the Duke of Burgundy, whose
splendid dominion, extended by marriage over
most of the Netherlands, raised him to a place
among the greater princes of Europe, and who
quite outshone the King of France in ever3'tliing
but the royal title. It was impossible, under
the circumstances, for the crown to establish its
supremacy over these powerful lords by means
direct and open. The craft and dishonesty of
Louis found methods more effectual. He cajoled,
beguiled, betrayed and cheated his antagonists,
one by one. He pla}'ed the selfishness and am-
bitions of each against the others, and he skilfully
evoked something like a public opinion in his
kingdom against the whole. At the outset of
his reign the nobles formed a combination against
him which they called the League of the Public
Weal, but which aimed at nothing but fresh
gains to the privileged class and advantages to
its chiefs. Of alliance with the people against
the crown, as in England, there was no thought.
Louis yielded to the League iu appearance, and
cunningly went beyond its demands in his con-
cessions, making it odious to the kingdom at
large, and securing to himself the strong support
of the States-General of France, when he ap-
pealed to it.
The tortuous policy of Louis was aided by
many favoring circumstances and happenings.
It was favored not least, perhaps, by the hot-
headed character of Charles the Bold, who suc-
ceeded his father, Philip, in the Duchy of Bur-
gundy, in 1467. Charles was inspired with a
great and not unreasonable ambition, to make
his realm a kingdom, holding a middle place be-
tween France and Germany. He had abilities,
but he was of a passionate and hauglity temper,
and no match for the cool, perfidious, plotting
King of France. The latter, by skilful intrigue,
involved him in a war with the Swiss, which he
conducted imprudently, and in which he was
defeated and killed (1477). His death cleared
Louis' path to complete mastery in France, and
he made the most of his opportunity. Charles
left only a daughter, Mary of Burgundy, and
her situation was helpless. Louis lost no time in
seizing the Duchy of Burgundy, as a fief of
France, and in the pretended exercise of his
rights as godfather of the Duchess Mary. He
also took possession of Franche Comte, which
was a fief of the Empire, and he put forward
claims in Flanders. Artois, and elsewhere. But
the Netherlanders, while they took advantage of
the young duche-ss' situation, and exacted large
concessions of chartered privileges from her, yet
maintained her rights; and before the first year
of her orphanage closed, she obtained a cliam-
pion by marriage with the Archduke Maximilian
of Austria, son of the Emperor, Frederick III.
Maximilian was successful in war with Louis;
but the latter succeeded, after all, in holding
Burgundy, which was thenceforth absorbed in
the royal domain of France and gave no further
trouble to the monarchy, while he won some im-
portant extensions of the northwestern frontiers
of his kingdom.
1079
EUROPE.
The French in
Italy.
EUROPE.
Before the deatli of Louis XI. the French
crown regained Anjou, Maine, and Provence, by
inheritance from the last representative of the
great second House of Anjou. Thus the liing-
dom which he left to his son, Charles VIII. (1483),
was a consolidated nation, containing in its cen-
tralized government the germs of the absolute
monarchy of a later day.
Italian Expedition of Charles VIII.
Charles VIII. was a loutish and uneducated
boy of eight years when his father died. His
capable sister Anne carried on the government
for some years, and continued her father's work
by defeating a revolt of the nobles, and by
marrying the young king to the heiress of Brit-
tany — thereby uniting to the crown the last of
the great semi-independent fiefs. When Charles
came of age, lie conceived the idea of recovering
the kingdom of Naples, which the House of
Anjou claimed, and which he looked upon as
part of liis inheritance from that House. He
was incited to the enterprise, moreover, by Ludo-
vico il Moro, or Louis the Moor, an intriguing
uncle of the young Duke of Milan, who con-
spired to displace his nephew. In 1494 Charles
crossed the Alps with a large and well-disciplined
army, and met with no effectual opposition. The
Medici of Florence and the Pope had agreed to-
gether to resist this French intrusion, which they
feared ; but the invading force proved too formid-
able, and the Florentines, then under the influ-
ence of Savonarola, looked to it for their libera-
tion from the Medicean rule, already oppressive.
Accordingly Charles marched triumphantly
through the peninsula, making some stay at
Rome. On his approach to Naples, the Arago-
nese King, Alfonso, abdicated in favor of his
son, Ferdinand II., and died soon after. Ferdi-
nand, shut out of Naples by an insurrection, fled
to Sicily, and Charles entered the city, where the
populace welcomed him with warmth. Most of
the kingdom submitted within a few weeks, and
the conquest seemed complete, as it had been
easy.
But what they had won so easily the French
held with a careless hand, and they lost it with
equal ease. While they revelled and caroused in
Naples, abusing the hospitality of their new sub-
jects, and gathering plunder with reckless greed,
a dangerous combination was formed against
them, throughout the peninsula. Before they
were aware, it had put them in peril, and Charles
was forced to retreat with haste, in the spring of
1495, leaving an inadequate garrison to hold the
Neapolitan capital. In Lombardy, he had to
fight with the Venetians, and with his protege,
Louis the Moor, now Duke of Milan. He defeated
them, and regained France in November. Long
before that time, the small force he left at Naples
had been overcome, and Ferdinand had recovered
his kingdom.
In one sense, the French had nothing to show
for this their first expedition of conquest. In
another sense they had much to show and their
gain was great. They had made their first ac-
quaintance with the superior culture of Italy.
They had breathed the air beyond the Alps,
which was then surcharged with the inspirations
of the Renaissance. Both the ideas and the spoil
they brought back were of more value to France
than can be easily estimated. They had re-
turned laden with booty, and much of it was in
treasures of art, every sight of which was a les
son to the sense of beauty and the taste of the
people among whom they were shown. The ex-
perience and the influence of the Italian expedi-
tion were undoubtedly very great, and the Re-
naissance in Prance, as an artistic and a literary
birth, is reasonably dated from it.
Italian Wars of Louis XII.
Charles VIII. died suddenly in 1498 and was
succeeded by his cousin, of the Orleans branch of
the Valois family, Louis XII. The new king was
weak in character, but not wicked. His first
thought on mounting the throne was of the
claims of his family to other thrones, in Italy.
Besides the standing Angevin claim to the
kingdom of Naples, he asserted rights of his own
to the duchy of Milan, as a descendant of Valen-
tina Visconti, heiress of the ducal house which
the Sforzas supplanted. In 1499 he sent an
army against Louis the Moor, and the latter fled
from Milan without an attempt at resistance.
Louis took possession of the duchy with the
greatest good will of the people; but, before
half a year had passed, French taxes, French
government, and French manners had disgusted
them, and they made an attempt to restore their
former tyrant. The attempt failed, and Louis
the Moor was imprisoned in France for the re-
mainder of his life.
Milan secured, Louis XII. began preparations
to repeat the undertaking of Charles VIII.
against Naples. The Neapolitan crown had
now passed to an able and popular king, Frede-
rick, and Frederick had every reason to suppose
that he would be supported and helped by his
kinsman, Ferdinand of Aragon, the well-known
consort of Isabella of Castile. Ferdinand had
the power to hold the French king in check ; but
instead of using it for the defense of the Neapoli-
tan branch of his house, he secretly and treacher-
ously agreed with Louis to divide the kingdom
of Naples with him. Under these circumstances,
the conquest was easily accomplished (1501). The
betrayed Frederick surrendered to Louis, and
lived as a pensionary in France until his death.
The Neapolitan branch of the House of Aragon
came to an end.
Louis and Ferdinand speedily quarreled over
the division of their joint conquest. The treach-
erous Spaniard cheated the French king in treaty
negotiations, gaining time to send forces into
Italy which expelled the French. It was in this
war that the Spanish general, Gonsalvo di Cor-
dova, won the reputation which gave him the
name of "the Great Captain"; and it was like-
wise in this war that the chivalric French knight,
Bayard, began the winning of his fame.
The League of Cambrai and the Holy
League.
Naples had again slipped from the grasp of-
France, and this time it had passed to Spain.
Louis XII. abandoned the tempting kingdom to
his rival, and applied himself to the establishing
of his sovereignty over Milan and its domain.
Some territory formerly belonging to the Milaness
had been ceded to Venice by the Sforzas. He
himself had ceded another district or two to the
republic in payment for services rendered. Fer-
dinand of Spain had made payments in the same
kind of coin, from his Neapolitan realm, for Vene-
tian help to secure it. The warlike Pope Julius
1080
EUROPE.
The black age of
the Papacy.
EUROPE.
II. saw Rimini and other towns former!}' be-
longing to tlie States of the Churcli now counted
among the possessions of the proud mistress of
the Adriatic. All of these disputants in Italy
resented the gains which Venice had gathered at
their expense, and envied and feared her some-
what insolent prosperity. They according!}' sus-
pended their quarrels with one another, to form
a league for Ijreaking her down and for despoil-
ing her. The Emperor Maximilian, who had
grievances of his own against the Venetians,
joined the combination, and Florence was bribed
to become a party to it by the betrayal of Pisa
into her hands. Thus was formed the shameful
League of Cambrai (1508). The French did
most of the fighting in the war tliat ensued,
though Pope Julius, who toolc the field in per-
son, easily proved himself a better soldier than
priest. The Venetians were driven for a time
from the greater part of the dominion tliey had
acquired on the mainland, and were sorely pressed.
But they made terms with the Pope, and it then
became his interest, not merely to stop the con-
quests of his allies, but to press them out of
Italy, if possible. He began accordingly to in-
trigue against the French, and presently had a
new league in operation, making war upon them.
It was called a Holy League, because the head
■of the Church was its promoter, and it embraced
the Emperor, King Ferdinand of Spain, King
Henry VIII. of England, and the Republic of
Venice. As the result of the ruthless and de-
structive war which they waged, Louis XII., be-
fore he died, in 1.515, saw all that he liad won in
Lombardy stripped from him and restored to the
Sforzas — the old family of the Dukes of Milan;
Venice recovered most of her possessions, but
never regained her former power, since the dis-
covery of the ocean route to India, round the
Cape of Good Hope, was now turning the rich
trade of the East, the great source of her wealth,
into the hands of the Portuguese ; the temporal
dominion of the Popes was enlarged by the re-
covery of Bologna and Perugia and by the addi-
tion of Parma and Piacenza ; and Florence, which
had been a republic since the death of Savonarola,
was forced to submit anew to the Medici.
The Age of Infamous Popes.
The fighting Pope, Julius II., who made war
and led armies, while professing to be the vicar of
Him wlio brought the message of good-will and
peace to mankind, was very far from being the
worst of the popes of his age. He was only
worldly, thinking much of his political place as
a temporal sovereign in Italy, and little of his
spiritual office as the head of the Church of
Christ. As the sovereign of Rome and the Papal
States, Julius 11. ran a brilliant career, and is one
of the splendid figures of the Italian renaissance.
Patron of Michael Angelo and Raphael, projector
of St. Peter's, there is a certain grandeur in his
character to be admired, if we could forget the
pretended apostolic robe which he smirched with
perfidious politics and stained with blood.
But the immediate predecessors of Julius II.,
Sixtus IV. and Alexander VI. , had had nothing
in their characters to lure attention from the hid-
eous examples of bestial wickedness which they
set before the world. Alexander, especially,
the infamous Borgia, — systematic murderer
and robber, liar and libertine, — accomplished
practitioner of every crime and every vice that
was known to the worst society of a depraved
generation, and shamelessly open in the foulest of
his doings, — there is scarcely a pagan monster
of antiquity that is not whitened by comparison
with him. Yet he sat in the supposed seat of
St. Peter for eleven years, to be venerated as the
Vicar of Christ, the "Holy Father " of the Cliris-
tian Church ; his declarations and decrees in
matters of faith to be accepted as infallible in-
spirations ; his absolution to be craved as a pass-
port to Heaven ; his anathema to be dreaded as a
condemnation to Hell !
This evil and malignant being died in 1503.
poisoned by one of his own cups, which he had
brewed for another. Julius II. reigned until
1513; and after him came the Medicean Pope,
LeoX., son of Lorenzo the Magnificent, — princely
and worldly as Julius, but in gentler fashion;
loving ease, pleasure, luxury, art, and careless
of all that belonged to religion beyond its cere-
monies and its comfortable establishment of
clerical estates. Is it strange that Christendom
was prepared to give ear to Luther ?
Luther and the Reformation.
When Luther raised his voice, he did hue renew
a protest which many pure and pious and coura-
geous men before him had uttered, against evils
in the Church and falsities and impostures in the
Papacy. But some of them, like Arnold of
Brescia, like Peter Waldo, and the Albigenses,
had been too far in advance of their time, and
their revolt was hopeless from the beginning.
Wyclif's movement had been timed unfortu-
nately in an age of great commotions, which
swallowed it up. That of Huss had roused an
ignorant peasantry, too uncivilized to represent a
reformed Christianity, and had been ruined by
the fierceness of their misguided zeal. The
Reformation of Savonarola, at Florence, had
been nobly begun, but not wisely led, and it had
spent its influence at the end on aims less reli-
gious than political.
But there occurred a combination, when Luther
arose, of character in himself, of circumstances
in his country, and of temper in his generation,
which made his protest more lastingly effective.
He had high courage, without rashness. He had
earnestness and ardor, without fanaticism. He
had the plain good sense and sound judgment
which win public confidence. His substantial
learning put him on terms with the scholars of
his day, and he was not so much refined by it as
to lose touch with the common people. A cer-
tain coarseness in his nature was not offensive to
the time in which he lived, but rather belonged
among the elements of power in him. His spirit-
uality was not fine, but it was strong. He was
sincere, and men believed in him. He was open,
straightforward, manly, commanding respect.
His qualities showed themselves in his speech,
which went straight to its mark, in the simplest
words, moulding the forms and phrases of the
German language with more lasting effect than
the speech of any other man who ever used it.
Not many have lived in any age or any country
who possessed the gift of so persuasive a tongue,
with so powerful a character to command the
hearing for it.
And the generation to which Luther spoke
really waited for a bold voice to break into the
secret of its thoughts concerning the Church-
It had inherited a centurv of alienation from
1081
EUROPE.
Lutker and
the Reformation.
EUROPE.
quarreling popes and greedy, corrupted priests;
and now there had been added in its feeling the
deep abhorrence roused by such villains as the
Borgia in the papal chair, and by their creatures
and minions in the priesthood of the Church. If
it is crediting too much to the common multi-
tude of the time to suppose them greatly sick-
ened by the vices and corruptions of their priests,
we may be sure, at least, that they were wearied
and angered by the exactions from them, which
a vicious hierarchy continually increased. The
extravagance of the Papacy kept pace with its
degradation, and Christendom groaned under the
burden of the taxes that were wrung from it in
the name of the lowly Saviour of mankind.
Nowhere in Europe were the extortions of the
Church felt more severely than in Germany,
where the serfdom of the peasants was still real
and hard, and where the depressing weight of
the feudal system had scarcely been lifted from
society at all. Feudalism had given way in that
country less than iu an}- other. Central authority
remained as weak, and national solidification as
far away, as ever. Of organic unity in the het-
erogeneous bundle of electoral principalities,
duchies, margravates and free cities which made
up the nominal realm of the King of the Romans,
there was no more at the beginning of the six-
teenth century than there had been in the twelfth.
But that very brokenness and division in the po-
litical state of Germany proved to be one of
the circumstances which favored the Protestant
Reformation of the Church. Had monarchical au-
thority established itself there as in France, then
the Austro-Spanish family which wielded it, with
the concentrated bigotry of their narrow-minded
race, would have crushed the religious revolt as
completely in Saxony as they did in Austria and
Bohemia.
The Ninety-five Theses.
The main events of the Reformation in Ger-
many are so commonly known that no more than
the slightest sketching of them is needed here.
Letters of indulgence, purporting to grant a re-
mission of the temporal and purgatorial penalties
of sin, had been sold by the Church for centuries ;
but none before Pope Leo X. had made merchan-
dize of them in so peddlar-like and shameful a
fashion as that which scandalized the intelligent
piety of Europe in 1517. Luther, then a profes-
sor in the new University of "Wittenberg, Saxony,
could not hide his indignation, as most men did.
He stood forth boldly and challenged the impious
fraud, in a series of propositions or theses, which,
after the manner of the time, he nailed to the
door of Wittenberg Church. Just that bold ac-
tion was needed to let loose the pent-up feeling
of the German people. The ninety -five theses
were printed and went broadcast through the
land, to be read and to be listened to, and to stir
every class with independent ideas. It was the
first great appeal made to the public opinion of
the world, after the invention of printing had put
a trumpet to the mouths of eloquent men, and
the effect was too amazing to be believed by the
careless Pope and his courtiers.
Political Circumstances.
But more than possibly — probably, indeed —
the popular feeling stirred up would never have
accomplished the rupture with Rome and the re-
ligious independence to which North Germany
atttained in the end, if political motives had not
coincided with religious feelings to bring certain
princes and great nobles into sympathy with the
Monk of AVittenberg. The Elector of Saxony,.
Luther's immediate sovereign, had long been in
opposition to the Papacy on the subject of its enor-
mous collections of money from his subjects, and
he was well pleased to have the hawking of indul-
gences checked in his dominions. Partly for
this reason, partl.y because of the pride and in-
terest with which he cherished his new Uni-
versity, partly from personal liking and admira-
tion of Luther, and partly, too, no doubt, in.
recognition of the need of Church reforms, he
gave Luther a quiet protection and a concealed-
support. He was the strongest and most influ-
ential of the princes of the Empire, and his ob-
vious favor to the movement advanced it power-
fully and rapidh'.
At first, there was no intention to break with-
the Papac}' and the Papal Church, — certainly
none in Luther's mind. His attitude towards both
was conciliatory in every way, except as con-
cerned the falsities and iniquities which he had
protested against. It was not until the Pope,
in June, 1530, launched against him the famous-
Bull, " Exurge Domine," which left no alterna-
tive between abject submission and open war,
that Luther and his followers cast off the author-
ity of the Roman Church and its head, and
grounded their faith upon Holy Scripture alone.
By formally burning the Bull, Luther accepted
the papal challenge, and those who believed with
him were ready for the contest.
The Diet of 'Worms.
In 1521, the reformer was summoned before a
Diet of the Empire, at "Worms, where a hearing
was given him. The influence of the Church,
and of the young Austro-Spanish Emperor,
Charles V., who adhered to it, was still great
enough to procure his condemnation; but they
did not dare to deal with him as Huss had
been dealt with. He was suffered to depart
safely, pursued by an imperial edict which placed
the ban of the Empire on all who should give
him countenance or support. His friends among
the nobles spirited him away and concealed him
in a castle, the "Wartburg, where he remained
for several months, employed in making his
translation of the Bible. Meantime, the Emperor
had been called away from Germany by his mul-
tifarious affairs, in the Netherlands and Spain,
and had little attention to give to Luther and the
questions of religion for half-a-dozen years. He
was represented in Germany by a Council of Re-
gency, with the Elector of Saxony at the head of
it ; and the movement of reformation, if not en-
couraged in his absence, was at least considerably
protected. It soon showed threatening signs of
wildness and fanaticism in many quarters ; but
Luther proved himself as powerful in leadership
as he had been in agitation, and the religious
passion of the time was controlled effectively,
on the whole.
Organization of the Lutheran Church.
Before the close of the year lo'Jl, Pope Leo X.
died, and his successor, Adrian, while insisting^
upon the enforcement of the Edict of Worms
against Luther and his supporters, yet acknow-
ledged the corruptions of the Church and prom-
ised a reformation of them. His promises came
1082
EUROPE.
The realms of
Charles V.
EUROPE.
too late ; his confession.s only gave testimony to
the independent reformers which their opponents
could not impeach. There was no longer any
thought of cleansing the Church of Rome, to
abide in it. A separated — a restored Church —
was clearly determined on, and Luther framed
a system of faith and discipline which was
adopted in Saxony, and then accepted very gen-
erally by the reformed Churches throughout
Germany. In 1525, the Elector Frederick of Sax-
ony died. He had quieth' befriended the Luther-
ans and tolerated the reform, but never identified
himself with them. His brother, John, who suc-
ceeded him, made public profession of his belief
in the Lutheran doctrines, and authoritatively
established the church system which Luther had
introduced. The Landgrave of Hesse Cassel,
the Margrave of Brandenburg, and the Dukes of
Mecklenburg, Pomerania and Zell, followed his
example ; while the imperial cities of Frankfort,
Nuremberg, Bremen, Strasburg, Brunswick,
Nordhausen, and others, formally ranged them-
selves on the same side. By the year 1526, wlien
a diet at Spires declared the freedom of each
state in the Empire to deal with the religious
reform according to its own will, the Reforma-
tion in Germany was a solidly organized fact.
But those of the reform had not yet received
their name, of "Protestants." That came to
them three years later, when the Roman party
had rallied its forces in a new diet at Spires, to
undo the declaration of 152G, and the leaders of
the Lutheran party recorded their solemn protest.
The Austro-Burgundian Marriage.
To understand the situation politically, dur-
ing the period of struggle for and against the
Reformation, it will be necessary to turn back
a little, for the noting of important occurrences
which have not been mentioned.
When Albert IL, who was King of Hungary
and Bohemia, as well as King of the Romans
(Emperor-clect, as the title came to be, soon after-
wards), died, in 1439, he was succeeded by his
second cousin Frederick IIL, Duke of Styria,
and from that time the Roman or imperial crown
was held continuously in the Austrian family,
becoming practically hereditary. But Frederick
did not succeed to the duchy of Austria, and he
failed of election to the throne in Hungary and
Bohemia. Hence his position as Emperor was
peculiarly weak and greatly impoverished,
through want of revenue from any considerable
possessions of his own. During his whole
long reign, of nearly fifty-four years, Frederick
was humiliated and hampered by his poverty;
the imperial authority was brought very low, and
Germany was in a greatly disordered state.
There were frequent wars between its members,
and between Austria and Bohemia, with rebel-
lions in Vienna and elsewhere; while the Hun-
garians were left to contend with the aggressive
Turks, almost unhelped.
But in 1477 a remarkable change in the cir-
cumstances and prospects of the family of the
Emperor Frederick III. was made by the mar-
riage of his son and heir, Maximilian, to Mary,
the daughter and heiress of the wealthy and
powerful Duke of Burgundy, Charles the Bold.
The bridegroom was so poor that the bride is
said to have loaned him the money which en-
abled him to make a fit appearance at the wed-
ding She had lost, as we saw, the duchy of
Burgundy, but the valiant arm of Maximilian
enabled her to hold the Burgundian county,
Franche Comte, and the rich provinces of the
Netherlands, which formed at that time, perhaps,
the most valuable principality in Europe. The
Duchess Mary lived only five years after her
marriage; but she left a son, Philip, who in-
herited the Netherlands and Franche Comte, and
Maximilian ruled them as his guardian.
In 1493, the Emperor Frederick died, and
Maximilian, who had been elected King of the
Romans some years before, succeeded him in the
imperial office. He was never crowned at Rome,
and he took the title, not used before, of King of
Germany and Emperor-elect. He was Archduke
of Austria, Duke of Styria, Carinthia and Car-
niola, and Count of Tyrol ; and, with his guar-
dianship in the Low Countries, he rose greatly
in importance and power above his father. But
he accomplished less than might possibly have
been done by a ruler of more sureness of judg-
ment and fixity in purpose. His plans were
generally beyond his means, and the failures In
his imdertakings were numerous. He was eager
to interfere with the doings of Charles VIII. and
Louis XIII. in Italy ; but the Germanic diet gave
him so little support that he could do nothing
effective. He joined the League of Cambrai
against Venice, and the Holy League against
France, but bore no Important part in either.
His reign was signalized in Germany by the
division of the nation into six administrative
"Circles," afterwards increased to ten, and by
the creation of a supreme court of appeal, called
the Imperial Chamber, — both of which measures
did something towards the diminution of private
wars and disorders.
The Austro-Spanish Marriage. — Charles V.
But Maximilian figures most conspicuously in
history as the immediate ancestor of the two
great sovereign dynasties — the Austrian and
the Austro-Spanish — which sprang from his
marriage with Mary of Burgundy and which
dominated Europe for a century after his death.
His son Philip, heir to the Burgundian sover-
eignty of the Netherlands, married (1496) Jo-
anna, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of
Spain. Two children, Charles and Ferdinand,
were the fruit of this marriage. Charles, the
elder, inherited more crowns and coronets than
were ever gathered, in reality, by one sovereign,
before or since. Ferdinand and Isabella had
united by their marriage the kingdoms of Ara-
gon and Castile, and, by the conquest of Granada
and the partial conquest of Navarre, the entire
peninsula, except Portugal, was subsequently
added to their joint dominion. Joanna inherited
the whole, on the death of Isabella, in 1504, and
the death of Ferdinand, in 1516. She also in-
herited from her father, Ferdinand, the kingdom
of the Two Sicilies — which he had reunited —
and the island of Sardinia. Philip, on his side,
already iu possession of the Netherlands and
Franche Comte, was heir to the domain of the
House of Austria. Both of these great inheri-
tances descended in due course to Charles, and he
had not long to wait for them. His father,
Philip, died in 1506, and his mother, Joanna,
lost her mind, through grief at that event. The
death of his Spanish grandfather, Ferdinand, oc-
curred in 1516, and that of his Austrian grand-
father, the Emperor Maximilian, followed three
1083
EUROPE.
Beginning of
the ruin of Spain.
EUROPE.
years later. At the age of twenty years (repr
8enting bis mother in her incapacity) Charh
) re-
nting bis mother in her incapacity) Charles
found himself sovereign of Spain, and America,
of Sicily, Naples, Sardinia, the Low Countries,
Franche Comte, Austria, and the duchies associ-
ated with it. The same year (1519) he was
chosen King of Germany and Emperor-elect,
after a keen contest over the imperial crown, in
which Francis I. of France and Henry VIII. of
England were his competitors. On attaining
this dignity, he conferred the Austrian posses-
sions on his brother Ferdinand. But he remained
the most potent and imposing monarch that
Europe had seen since Charlemagne. He came
upon the stage just as Luther had marshalled,
in Germany, the reforming forces of the new
era, against intolerable iniquities in the Papal
Church. Unfortunately, he came, with his vast
armament of powers, to resist the demands of
his age, and to be the champion of old falsities
and wrongs, both in Church and State. There
was nothing in the nature of the man, nor in his
education, nor in the influences which bore upon
him, from either the Spanish or the Austrian
side of his family, to put him in sympathy with
lifting movements or with liberal ideas. He
never formed a conception of the world in which
it looked larger to his eyes, or signified more to
him, than the globe upon his scepter.
So, naturally enough, this Cfesar of the Re-
naissance (Charles V. in German}- and Charles I.
in Spain) did his utmost, from the day he
climbed the throne, to thrust Europe back into
the murk of the fourteenth century, which he
found it pretty nearly escaped from. He did not
succeed ; but he gave years of misery to several
countries by his exertions, and he resigned the
task to a successor whom the world is never
likely to tire of abhorring and despising.
The end of popular freedom in Spain.
The affairs which called Charles V. away from
Germany, after launching his ineffectual edict of
Worms against Luther and Luther's supporters,
grew in part out of disturbances in his kingdom
of Spain. His election to the imperial olHce had
not been pleasing to the Spaniards, who antici-
pated the complications they would be dragged
into by it, the foreign character which their sover-
eign (already foreign in mind by his education in
the Netherlands) would be confirmed in, and the
indifference with which their grievances would
be regarded. For their grievances against the
monarchy had been growing serious in the last
years of" Ferdinand, and since his death. The
crown had gained power in the process of politi-
cal centralization, and its aggrandizement from
the possession of America began to loom start-
liugly in the light of the conquest of Mexico,
just achieved. During the absence of Charles in
^Germany, his former preceptor, Cardinal Adrian,
of Utrecht, being in charge of the government as
regent, a revolt broke out at Toledo which spread
widely and became alarming. The insurgents
organized their movement under the name of the
Santa Junta, or Holy League, and having ob-
tained possession of the demented Queen, Joanna,
they assumed to act for her and with her author-
ity. This rebellion was suppressed with diffi-
culty; but the suppression was accomplished
(1531-1522), and it proved to be the last struggle
for popular freedom in Spain. The government
used its victory with an unsparing determination
to establish absolute powers, and it succeeded.
The conditions needed for absolutism were already
created, in fact, by the deadly blight which the
Inquisition had been casting upon Spain for forty
years. Since the beginning of the frightful work
of Torquemada, in 1-183, it had been diligently
searching out and destroying every germ of free
thought and manly character that gave the
smallest sign of fruitfulness in the kingdom ; and
the crushing of the Santa Junta may be said to
have left few in Spain who deserved a better
fate than the political, the religious and the in-
tellectual servitude under which the nation sank.
Persecution of the Spanish Moriscoes.
Charles, whose mind was dense in its bigotry,
urged on the Inquisition, and pointed its dread-
ful engines of destruction against the unfortu-
nate Moriscoes, or Moors, who had been forced to
submit to Christian baptism after their subjuga-
tion. Many of these followers of Mahomet had
afterwards taken up again the prayers and prac-
tices of their own faith, either secretly or in quiet
ways, and their relapse appears to have been
winked at, more or less. For they were a most
useful people, far surpassing the Spaniards in
industry, in thrift and luiowledge of agriculture,
and in mechanical skill. JIany of the arts and
manufactures of the kingdom were entirely in
their hands. It was ruinous to interfere with
their peaceful labors. But Charles, as heathenish
as the Grand Turk when it suited his ends to be
so, could look on these well-behaved and useful
Moors with no eyes but the eyes of an orthodox
piety, and could take account of nothing but
their infidel faith. He began, therefore, in 1524,
the heartless, senseless and suicidal persecution
of the Jloriscoes which exterminated them or
drove them from the land, and which contributed
signally to the making of Spain an exemplary
pauper among the nations.
Despotism of Charles V. in the Netherlands.
In his provinces of the Low Countries, Charles
found more than in Spain to provoke his despotic
bigotry. The Flemings and the Dutch had been
tasting of freedom too much for bis liking, in
recent years, and ideas, both political and re-
ligious," bad laeen spreading among them, which
were not the ideas of his august mind, and must
therefore, of necessity, be false. They had al-
ready become infected with the rebellious anti-
papal doctrines of Luther. Indeed, they had
been even riper than Luther's countrymen for a
religious revolution, when he sounded tlie signal
note which echoed through all northern Europe.
In Germany, the elected emperor could fulminate
an edict against the audacious reformers, but he
had small power to give force to it. In the
Netherlands, he possessed a sovereignty more
potent, and he took instant measures to exercise
the utmost arbitrariness of which he could make
it capable. The Duchess Margaret, his aunt,
who had been governess of the provinces, was
confirmed by him in that office, and he enlarged
the powers in her commission. His commands
practically superseded the regular courts, and
subjected the whole administration of justice to
his arbitrary will and that of his representative.
At the same time they stripped the States of
their legislative functions and reduced them to
insignificance. Having thus trampled on the
civil liberties of the provinces, he borrowed the
1084
EUROPE.
Charles V. and
Francis L
EUROPE.
infernal enginery of the Inquisition, and intro-
duced it for the destruction of religious freedom.
Its first victims were two Augustine monks, con-
victed of Lutherauism, who were burned at
Brussels, in July, 1533. The first martyr in Hol-
land was a priest who suffered impalement as
well as burning, at the Hague, in 1525. From
these beginnings the persecution grew cruder as
the alienation of the stubborn Netherlanders from
the Church of Rome widened ; and Charles did
not cease to fan its fires with successive procla-
mations or ' ' placards, " which denounced and for-
bade every reading of Scripture, every act of
devotion, every conversation of religion, in pub-
lic or private, which the priests of the Church
did not conduct. ' ' The number of Netherlanders
who were burned, strangled, beheaded, or buried
alive, in obedience to his edicts, . . . have been
placed as high as 100,000 by distinguished au-
thorities, and have never been put at a lower
mark than 50,000."
Charles V. and Francis I. in Italy.
These exercises of an autocratic piety in Spain
and the Low Countries may be counted, perhaps,
among the pleasures of the young Emperor dur-
ing the earlier years of his reign. His more seri-
ous affairs were connected mainly with his in-
terests or ambitions in Italy, which seemed to be
threatened by the King of France. The throne
in that countr)' was now occupied by Francis I. , a
cousin of Louis XII. .who had succeeded the latter
in 1515, and who had taken up anew the Italian
projects in which Louis failed. In the first year
of his reign, he crossed the Alps with an army,
defeated the Swiss whom the Duke of Milan em-
ployed against him, and won the whole duchy
by that single fight. This re-establishment of the
French at Milan was regarded with exceeding
jealousy by the Austrian interest, and by the
Pope. Maximilian, shortly before his death, had
made a futile effort to dislodge them, and Charles
v., on coming to the throne, lost no time in or-
ganizing plans to the same end. He entered
into an alliance with Pope Leo X., by a treaty
which bears the same date as the Edict of Worms
against Luther, and there can be little doubt that
the two instruments were part of one under-
standing. Both parties courted the friendship of
Henry VIII. of England, whose power and im-
portance had risen to a high mark, and Henry's
able minister. Cardinal Wolsey, figured notably
in the diplomatic intrigues which went on during
many years.
War began in 1531, and in three mouths the
French were expelled from nearly every part of
the Milanese territory. Pope Leo X. lived just
long enough to receive the news. His successor
was Adrian VI., former tutor of the Emperor,
who made vain attempts to arrange a peace.
Wolsey had brought Henry VIII. of England
into the alliance against Francis, expecting to
win the papal tiara through the Emperor's in-
fluence ; but he was disappointed.
Francis made an effort ir. 1533 to recover Milan ;
but was crippled at the moment of sending his
expedition across the Alps by the treason of the
most powerful noble of France, the Constable,
Charles, Duke of Bourbon. The Constable had
been wronged and affronted by the King's mother,
and by intriguers at court, and he revenged him-
self basely b}' going over to the enemies of his
country. In the campaigns which followed (1523-
1524), the French had ill-success, and lost their
chivalrous and famous knight, Bayard, in one of
the last skirmishes of their retreat. Another
change now occurred in the occupancy of the
papal throne, and Wolsey's ambitious schemes
were foiled again. The new Pope was Giulio
de'Medici, who took the name of Clement VII.
Once more the King of France, in October.
1524, led his forces personally into Italy and laid
siege to Pavia. It was a ruinous undertaking.
He was defeated overwhelmingly in a battle
fought before Pavia (February 24, 1535) and
taken prisoner. After a captivity in Spain of
nearly a year, he regained his freedom disgrace-
fully, by signing and solemnly swearing to a
treaty which he never intended to observe. By
this treaty he not only renounced all claims to
Milan, Naples, Genoa, and other Italian territory,
but he gave up the duchy of Burgundy. Re-
leased in good faith on these terms, in the early
part of 1536, he perfidiously repudiated the treaty,
and began fresh preparations for war. He found
the Italians now as ready to oust the Spaniards
from their peninsula with French help, as they
had been ready before to expel the French with
help from Spain. The papal interest was in
great alarm at the power acquired by the Em-
peror, and Venice and Jlilan shared the feeling.
A new "Holy Alliance " was accordingly formed,
with the Pope at its head, and with Henry VIII.
of England for its "Protector." But before this
League took the field with its forces. Rome and
Italy were stricken and trampled, as though by
a fresh invasion of Goths.
Sack of Rome, by the army of the Constable.
The imperial army, quartered in the duchy of
Milan, under the command of the Constable Bour-
bon, was scantily paid and fed. The soldiers
were forced to plunder the city and country for
their subsistence, and, of course, under those cir-
cumstances, there was little discipline among
them. The region which they terrorized was
soon exhausted, by their robberies and by the
stoppage of industries and trade. It then be-
came necessary for the Constable to lead them to
new fields, and he moved southwards. His
forces were made up in part of Spaniards and in
part of Germans — the latter under a Lutheran
commander, and enlisted for war with the Pope
and for pillage in Italy. He directed the march
to Rome, constrained, perhaps, by the demands
of his soldiery, but expecting, likewise, to crush
the League by seizing its apostolic head. On
the 5th of May, 1537, his 40,000 brigands arrived
before the city. At daybreak, the next morning,
they assaulted the walls irresistibly and swarmed
over them. Bourbon was killed in the assault,
and his men were left uncontrolled masters of
the venerable capital of the world. They held it
for seven months, pillaging and destroying, com-
mitting every possible excess and every imagi-
nable sacrilege. Rome is believed to have suffered
at their hands more lasting defacement and loss
of the splendors of its art than from the sacking
of Vandals or Goths.
The Pope held out in Castle St. Angelo for a
month and then surrendered. The hypocritical
Charles V. , when he learned what his imperially
commissioned bandits had done, made haste to
express horror and grief, but did not hasten to
check or repair the outrage in the least. Pope
Clement was not released from captivity until a
108.3
EUROPE.
Jiff airs
in Germany.
EUROPE.
great money-payment had been extorted from
him, with the promise of a general council of the
Church to reform abuses and to eradicate Luther-
anism.
Spanish Domination in Italy.
Europe was shocked by the barbarity of the cap-
ture of Rome, and the enemies leagued against
Charles were stimulated to more vigorous exer-
tions. Assisted with money from England, Fran-
cis sent another army into Italy, which took
Genoa and Pavia and marched to Naples, block-
ading the city by sea and land. But the siege
proved fatal to the French army. So many per-
ished of disease that the survivors were left at
the mercy of the enemy, and capitulated in Sep-
tember, 1528.
The great Genoese Admiral, Andrea Doria, had
been offended, meantime, by King Francis, and
had excited his fellow citizens to a revolution,
which made Genoa, once more, an independent
republic, with Doria at its head. Shortly before
this occurred, Florence had expelled the Medici
and reorganized her government upon the old
republican basis. But the defeat of the French
before Naples ended all hope of Italian liberty ;
since the Pope resigned himself after that event
to the will of the Emperor, and the papal and
imperial despotisms became united as one, to ex-
terminate freedom from the peninsula. Florence
was the first victim of the combination. The city
was besieged and taken by tlie Emperor's troops,
in compliance with the wishes of the Pope, and
the Medici, his relatives, were restored. Francis
continued war feebly until 1529, when a peace
called the "Ladies Peace " was brought about, by
negotiations between the French King's mother
and the Emperor's aunt. This was practically
the end of the long French wars in Italy.
Germany.
Such were the events which, in different
quarters of the world, diverted the attention of
the Emperor during several years from Luther
and the Reformation in Germany. The religious
movement in those years had been making a
steady advance. Yet its enemies gained control
of another Diet held at Spires in 1529 and re-
versed the ordinance of the Diet of 1526, by
which each state had been left free to deal in its
own manner with the edict of Worms. Against
this action of the Diet, the Lutheran princes and
the representatives of the Lutheran towns entered
their solemn protest, and so acquired the name,
' ' Protestants, " which became in time the ac-
cepted and adopted name of all, in most parts of
the world, who witlidrew from the Roman com-
The Peasants' War and the Anabaptists.
Before this time, the Reform had passed through
serious trials, coming from excesses in the very
spirit out of which itself had risen and to which
it gave encouragement. The long suffering,
much oppressed peasantry of Germany, who had
found bishops as pitiless extortioners as lords,
caught eagerly at a hope of relief from the over-
throw of the ancient Church. Several times
witliin the preceding half-century they had risen
in formidable revolts, with a peasants' clog, or
bundschuh for their banner. In 1535 fresh risings
occurred in Swabia, Franconia, Alsace, Lorraine,
Bavaria, Thuringia and elsewhere, and a great
Peasants' War raged for months, with ferocity
and brutality on both sides. The number who
perished in the war is estimated at 100,000. The
demands made by the peasants were for measures
of the simplest justice — for the poorest rights
and privileges in life. But their cause was taken
up by half-crazed religious fanatics, who became
in some parts their leaders, and such a character
was given to it that reasonable reformers were
justified, perhaps, in setting themselves sternly
against it. The wildest prophet of the outbreak
was one Thomas Ml'inzer, a precursor of the
frenzied sect of the Anabaptists. Mlinzer per-
ished in the wreck' of the peasants' revolt; but
some of his disciples, who fled into Westphalia
and the Netherlands, made converts so rapidly
in the town of Miinster that in 1535 they con-
trolled the city, expelled every inhabitant who
would not join their communion, elected and
crowned a king, and exhibited a madness in their
proceedings that is hardly equalled in history.
The experience at Miinster may reasonably be
thought to have proved the soundness of Luther's
judgment in refusing countenance to the cause
of the oppressed peasants when they rebelled.
At all events, his opposition to them was hard
and bitter. And it has been remarked that what
may be called Luther's political position in Ger-
many had become by tliis time quite changed.
"Instead of the man of the people, Luther be-
came tlie man of tlie ijrinces ; the mutual confi-
dence between him and the masses, which had
supported the first faltering steps of the move-
ment, was broken ; the democratic element was
supplanted by the aristocratic ; and the Reforma-
tion, which at first had promised to lead to a
great national democracy, ended in establishing
the territorial supremacy of the German princes.
. . . The Reformation was gradually assuming
a more secular character, and leading to great
political combinations " (Dyer).
Progress of Lutheranism in Germany.
By the year 1530, the Emperor Charles was
prepared to give more attention to affairs in Ger-
many and to gratify his animosity towards the
movement of Reformation. He had effectually
beaten his rival, the King of France, had estab-
lished his supremacy in Italy, had humbled the
Pope, and was quite willing to be the zealous
champion of a submissive Church. His brother
Ferdinand, the Archduke of Austria, had secured,
against much opposition, both the Hungarian and
the Bohemian crowns, and so firmly that neither
was ever again wrested from his family, though
they continued for some time to be nominally
elective. The dominions of Ferdinand had suf-
fered a great Turkish invasion, in 1529, under the
Sultan Solyman, who penetrated even to Vienna
and besieged the city, but without success, losing
heavily in his retreat.
In May, 1530, Charles re-entered Germany from
Italy. The following month he opened the sit-
ting of the Diet, which had been convened at
Augsburg. His first act at Augsburg was to
summon the protesting princes, of Saxony, Hesse,
Brandenburg, and other states, before him and
to signify to them his imperial command that the
toleration of Lutheranism in their dominions must
cease. He expected the mandate to suffice ; when
he found it ineffectual, he required an abstract
of the new religious doctrines to be laid before
him. This was prepared by Melancthon, and,
1086
EUROPE.
TliC Schmalkaldic
War.
EUROPE.
afterwards known as the Confession of Augsburg,
became the Lutheran standard of faith. The
Catholic theologians prepared a reply to it, and
both were submitted to the Emperor. He made
some attempt to bring about a compromise of tlie
differences, but he demanded of tlie Protestants
that they should submit themselves to the Pope,
pending tlie final decisions of a proposed general
Council of tlie Church. When this was refused,
the Diet formally condemned their doctrines and
required them to reunite themselves with the
Catholic Church before the 15th of April follow-
ing. The Emperor, in November, issued a de-
cree accordingly, renewing the Edict of Worms
and commanding its enforcement.
The Protestant princes, tlius threatened, assem-
bled in conference at Schmalkald at Christmas,
1530, and there organized their famous armed
league. But fresh preparations for war by the
Turk now compelled Charles to make terms with
his Lutheran subjects. They refused to give any
assistance to Austria or Hungary against the
Sultan, while threatened by the Augsburg de-
cree. The gravity of the danger forced a conces-
sion to them, and by the Peace of Nuremberg
(1533) it was agreed that the Protestants should
have freedom of worship until the next Diet
should meet, or a General Council should be held.
This peace was several times renewed, and there
were ten years of quiet under it, in Germany, dur-
ing which time the cause of Protestantism made
rapid advances. By the year 1540, it had estab-
lished an ascendancy in Wftrtemberg, among the
states of the South, and in tlie imperial cities of
Nuremberg, Augsburg, Ulra, Constance, and
Strasburg. Its doctrines had been adopted by
"the whole of central Germany, Thuringia, Sax-
ony, Hesse, part of Brunswick, and the territory
of the Guelphs ; in the north by the bishoprics of
Magdeburg, Halberstadt, and Naumburg . . . ;
by East Priesland, the Hanse Towns, Holstein and
Sclileswig, Pomerania, Mecklenburg, Anhalt, Si-
lesia, the Saxon states, Brandenburg, and Prussia.
Of the larger states that were closed against it
there remained only Austria, Bavaria, the Palati-
nate and the Rhenish Electorates " (Hausser). In
1543, Duke Henry of Brunswick, the last of the
North German princes who adhered to the Papal
Church, was expelled from his duchy and Protes-
tantism established. About the same time the
Archbishop-Elector of Cologne announced his
conviction of the truth of the Protestant doctrines.
The Schmalkaldic War.
Charles was still too much involved in foreign
wars to venture upon a struggle with the Lu-
therans ; but a few years more sufficed to free his
hands. The Treaty of Crespy, in 1544, ended his
last conflict with Francis I. In the same year.
Pope Paul III. summoned the long promised
General Council of the Church to meet at Trent
the following spring — by which appointment a
term was put to the toleration conceded in the
Peace of Nuremberg. The Protestants, though
greatly increased in numbers, were now less
united than at the time of the formation of the
Schmalkaldic League. There was much division
among the leading princes. They yielded no
longer to the influence of their wisest and ablest
chief, Philip of Hesse. Luther, whose counsels
had always been for peace, approached his end,
and died in 1546. The circumstances were favor-
able to the Emperor, when he determined to put
a stop to the Reformation by force. He secured
an important ally in tlie very heart of Protestant
Germany, winning over to his side the selfish
sclieriier, Duke Maurice of Saxony — now the head
of tlie Albertine branch of the Saxon house. In
1546 he felt prepared and war began. The suc-
cesses were all on the imperial side. There was
no energy, no unity, no forethoughtfulness of
plan, among tlie Lutherans. The Elector. John
Frederick, of Saxony, and Philip of Hesse, both
fell into the Emperor's hands and were barbar-
ously imprisoned. The former was compelled to
resign his Electorate, and it was conferred upon
the renegade Duke Maurice. Philip was kept
in vile places of confinement and inhumanly
treated for years. The Protestants of Germany
were entirely beaten down, for the time being,
and the Emperor Imposed upon them in 1548 a
confession of faith called "the Interim," the chief
missionaries of which were the Spanish soldiers
whom he had brought into the country. But if
the Lutherans had suffered themselves to be over-
come, they were not ready to be trodden upon in
so despotic a manner. Even Maurice, now Elec-
tor of Saxony, recoiled from the tyranny which
Charles sought to establish, while he resented the
inhuman treatment of Philip of Hesse, who was
his father-in-law. He headed a new league, there-
fore, which was formed against the Emperor, and
which entered into a secret alliance with Henry
II. of France (Francis I. having died in 1547).
Charles was taken by surprise when the revolt
broke out, in 1553. and barely escaped capture.
The operations of Maurice were vigorous and ably
conducted, and in a few weeks the Protestants
had recovered all the ground lost in 1546-7 ; while
the French had improved the opportunity to seize
the three bishoprics of Metz, Toul and Verdun.
The ultimate result was the so-called " Religious
Peace of Augsburg," concluded in 1555, which
gave religious freedom to the ruling princes of
Germany, but none whatever to the people. It
put the two religions on the same footing, but it
was simply a footing of equal intolerance. Each
ruler had the right to choose his own creed, and
to impose it arbitrarily upon his subjects if he
saw fit to do so. As a practical consequence, the
final division of Germany between Protestantism
and Catholicism was substantially determined by
the princes and not by the people.
The humiliating failure of Charles V. to crush
the Reformation iu Germany was no doubt prom-
inent among the experiences which sickened him
of the imperial oflSce and determined him to ab-
dicate the throne, which he did in the autumn of
1.556.
Reformation in Switzerland.
A generation had now passed since the Lu-
theran movement of Reformation was begun in
Germany, and, within that time, not only had
the wave of influence from Wittenberg swept
over all western Europe, but other reformers
had risen independently and contemporaneously,
or nearly so, in other countries, and had co-opera-
ted powerfully in making the movement general.
The earliest of these was the Swiss reformer,
Ulrich Zwingli, who began preaching against in-
dulgences and other flagrant abuses in the Church,
at Zurich, in 1519, the same year in which Luther
opened his attack. The effect of his preaching
was so great that Zurich, four years later, had
practically separated itself from the Roman
1087
EUROPE.
BVance and
the Reformation.
EUEOPE.
Church. From that beginning the Reformation
spread so rapidly that in half-a-dozen years it had
mastered most of the Cantons of Switzerland
outside of the five Forest Cantons, where Cathol-
icism held its ground with stubbornness. The
two religions were then represented by two par-
ties, which absorbed in themselves all the political
as well as tlie religious questions of the day, and
which speedily came to blows. The Catholics
allied themselves with Ferdinand of Austria, and
the Protestants with several of the imperial cities
of Germany. But such an union between the
Swiss and the German Protestants as seemed
plainly desirable was prevented, mainly, b}' the
dictatorial obstinacy of Luther. Zwingli's re-
forming ideas were broader, and at the same
time more radical, than Luther's, and the latter
opposed them with irreconcilable hostility. He
still held with the Catholics to the doctrine of
transubstantiation, which the Swiss reformer re-
jected. Hence Zwingli was no less a heretic in
Luther's eyes than in the eyes of the pope, and the
anathemas launched against him from Witten-
berg were hardly less thunderous than those from
Rome. So the two contemporaneous reforma-
tion movements, German and Swiss, were held
apart from one another, and went on side by side,
with little help or sympathy from one another.
In 1531 the Forest Cantons attacked and de-
feated the men of Zurich, and Zwingli was slain in
the battle. Peace was then concluded on terms
which left each canton free to establish its own
creed, and each congregation free to do the same
In the common territories of the confederation.
Reformation in France.
In France, the freer ideas of Christianity — the
ideas less servile to tradition and to Rome — that
were in the upper air of European culture when
the sixteenth century began, had found some e.x-
pression even before Luther spoke. The influence
of the new classical learning, and of the "human-
ists" who imbibed its spirit, tended to that libera-
tion of the mind, and was felt in the greatest cen-
ter of the learning of the time, the University of
Paris. But not suiBciently to overcome the con-
servatism of the Sorbonne — the theological fac-
ulty of the University ; for Luther's writings were
solemnly condemned and burned by it in 1521, and
a persecution of those inclined toward the new
doctrines was early begim. Francis I., in whose
careless and coarse nature tliere was some taste for
letters and learning, as well as for art, and who
patronized in an idle way the Renaissance move-
ments of his reign, seemed disposed at the begin-
ning to be friendly to the religious Reformers.
But he was too shallow a creature, and too pro-
foundly unprincipled and false, to stand firmly in
any cause of righteousness, and face such a power
as that of Rome. His nobler sister, Margaret of
Angouleme, who embraced the reformed doctrines
witli conviction, exerted a strong influence upon
the king in their favor while she was by his
side ; but after her marriage to Henry d'Albret,
King of Navarre, and after Francis had suffered
defeat and shame in his war with Charles V., he
was ready to make himself the servant of the
Papacy for whatever it willed against his Protes-
tant subjects, in order to have its alliance and
support. So the persecution grew steadily more
fierce, more systematic, and more determined,
as the spirit of the Reformation spread more
widely through the kingdom.
Calvin at Geneva.
One of the consequences of the persecution
was the flight from France, in 1534, of John
Calvin, who subsequently became tiie founder
and the exponent of a system of Protestant theol-
ogy which obtained wider acceptance in Europe
than that of Luther. All minor differences were
practically merged in the great division between
these two theologies — the Lutheran and the
Calvinistic — which split the Reformation in
twain. After two years of wandering, Calvin
settled in the free city of Geneva, where his in-
fluence very soon rose to so extraordinary a height
that he transformed the commonwealth and ruled
it, unselfishly, and in perfect piety, but with iron-
handed despotism, for a quarter of a century.
The French Court.
The reign of Francis I. has one other mark in
history, besides that of his persecution of the
Reformers, his careless patronage of arts and
letters, and his unsuccessful wars with the Em-
peror. He gave to the French Court — at least
more than his predecessors had done — the char-
acter which made it in later French history so
evil and mischievous a center of dissoluteness, of
base intrigue, of national demoralization. It
was invested in his time with the fascinations
wliich drew into it the nobles of France and its
men of genius, to corrupt them and to destroy
their independence. It was in his time that the
Court began to seem to be, in its own eyes, a
kind of self-centered society, containing all of
the French nation which needed or deserved con-
sideration, and holding its place in the order of
things quite apart from the kingdom which it
helped its royal master to rule. Not to be of the
Court was to be non-existent in its view ; and thus
every ambition in France was invited to push at
its fatal doors.
Catherine de' Medici and the Guises.
Francis I. died in 1547, and was followed on
the throne by his son Henry II., whose marriage
to Catherine de' Medici, of the renowned Floren-
tine family, was the most important personal act
of his life. It was important in the malign
fruits which it bore; since Catherine, after his
death, gave an evil Italian bend-sinister to French
politics, which had no lack of crookedness before.
Henry continued the war with Charles V. , and
was afterwards at war with Philip II. , Charles'
son, and with England, the latter country losing
Calais in the contest, — its last French possession.
Peace was made in 1559, and celebrated with
splendid tournaments, at one of which the French
king received a wound that caused his death.
He left three sons, all weaklings in body and
character, who reigned successively. The elder,
Francis II., died the year following his acces-
sion. Although aged but seventeen when he
died, he had been married some two years to Mary
Stuart, the j'oung queen of Scots. This marriage
had helped to raise to great power in the king-
dom a family known as the Guises. They were
a branch of the ducal House of Lorraine,
whose duchy was at that time independent of
France, and, although the father of the family,
made Duke of Guise by Francis I. , had become
naturalized in France in 1505, his sons were
looked upon as foreigners by the jealous French-
men whom they supplanted at Court. Of the six
1088
EUROPE.
Catherine rfe' Medici, the Guises,
and ttie Huguenots.
EUROPE.
sons, there were two of eminence, one (the second
duke of Guise) a famous general in his day, the
other a powerful cardinal. Five sisters com-
pleted the family in its second generation. The
elder of these, Mary, had married James V. of Scot-
land (whose mother was the English princess,
Margaret, sister of Henry VIII.), and Mary Stuart,
queen of Scots, born of that marriage, was there-
fore a niece of the Guises. They had brought
about her marriage to Francis II. , while he was
dauphin, and they mounted with her to supreme
influence in the kingdom when she ascended the
throne with her husband. The queen-mother,
Catherine de' Medici, was as eager as the Guises
to control the government, in what appeared to
her eyes the interest of her children ; but during
the short reign of Francis II. she was quite
thrust aside, and the queen's uncles ruled the
The death of Francis II. (1560) brought a
change, and with the accession of Charles IX. , a
boy of ten years, there began a bitter contest for
ascendancy between Catherine and the Guises;
and this struggle became mixed and strangely
complicated with a deadly conflict of religions,
which the steady advance of the Reformation in
France had brought at this time to a crisis.
The Huguenots.
Under the powerful leadership which Calvin
assumed, at Geneva, the reformed religion in
France had acquired an organized firmness and
strength which not only resisted the most cruel
persecution, but made rapid headway against
it. "Protestantism had become a party which
did not, like Lutheranism in Germany, spring
up from the depths." "It numbered its chief
adherents among the middle and upper grades
of society, spread its roots rather among the
nobles than the citizens, and among learned
men and families of distinction rather than
among the people." " Some of the highest aris-
tocracy, who were discontented, and submitted
unwillingly to the supremacy of the Guises, had
joined the Calvinistic opposition — some undoubt-
edly from policy, others from conviction. The
Turennes, the Rohans, and Soubises, pure no-
bles, who addressed the king as 'mon cousin,'
especially the Bourbons, the agnates of the royal
house, had adopted the new faith " (Hausser).
One branch of the Bourbons had lately ac-
quired the crown of Navarre. The Spanish part
of the old Navarrese kingdom had been sub-
jugated and absorbed by Ferdinand of Aragon;
but its territory on the French side of the Pyre-
nees — Beam and other counties — still maintained
a half independent national existence, with the
dignity of a regal government. When Margaret
of Angouleme, sister of Francis I., married Henry
d'Albret, King of Navarre, as mentioned before,
she carried to that small court an earnest inclina-
tion towards the doctrines of the Reform. Under
her protection Navarre became largely Protes-
tant, and a place of refuge for the persecuted of
France. Margaret's daughter, the famous Jeanne
d'Albret, espoused the reformed faith fully, and
her husband, Antoine de Bourbon, as well as
Antoine's brother, Louis de Conde, found it poli-
tic to profess the same belief. For the Protes-
tants (who were now acquiring, in some unknown
way, the name of Huguenots) had become so
numerous and so compactly organized as to form
a party capable of being wielded with great
"^ 1089
effect, in the strife of court factions which the
rivalry of Catherine and the Guises produced.
Hence politics and religion were inextricably con-
fused in the civil wars which broke out shortly
after the death of Francis II. (1560), and the ac-
cession of the boy king, Charles IX. These wars
belong to a different movement in the general
current of European events, and we will return
to them after a glance at the religious Reforma-
tion, and at the political circumstances connected
with it, in England and elsewhere.
England.
Henry Tudor, Earl of Richmond, made king
of England by his victory at Bosworth, estab-
lished himself so lirmly in the seat of power that
three successive rebellions failed to disturb him.
In one of these (1487) a pretender, Lambert Sim-
nel, was put forward, who claimed to be the
Earl of Warwick. In another (1491-1497) a second
pretender, Perkin Warbeck, personated one of
the young princes whom Richard III. had caused
to be murdered in the tower. Neither of the im-
postures had much success in the kingdom.
Henry VII. was not a popular king, but he was
able and strong, and he solidified all the bases of
monarchical independence which circumstances
had enabled Edward IV. to begin laying down.
It was in the reign of Henry that America was
discovered, and he might have been the patron
of Columbus, the beneficiary of the great voy-
age, and the proprietor and lord of the grand
realm which Isabella and Ferdinand secured.
But he lacked the funds or the faith — apparently
both — and put aside his unequaled opportunity.
When the field of westward exploration had been
opened, however, he was early in entering it,
and sent the Cabots upon those voyages which
gave England her claim to the North American
coasts.
During the reign of Henry VII. there were
two quiet marriages in his family which strangely
influenced subsequent history. One was the
marriage, in 1501, of the king's eldest son, Arthur,
to Catherine of Aragon, youngest daughter of
Ferdinand and Isabella. The other, in 1503,
united the king's daughter, Margaret, to James
IV., King of Scotland. It was through this lat-
ter marriage that the inheritance of the English
crown passed to the Scottish House of Stuart,
exactly one hundred years later, upon the failure
of the direct line of descent in the Tudor family.
The first marriage, of Prince Arthur to Catherine
of Aragon, was soon dissolved by the death of the
prince, in 1.503. Seven years afterwards the
widowed Catherine married her late husband's
brother, just after he became Henry VIII., King
of England, upon the death of his father, in 1509.
Whence followed notable consequences which will
presently appear.
Henry VIII. and his breach with Rome.
It was the ambition of Henry VIII. to play a
conspicuous part in European affairs; and as
England was rich and strong, and as the king
had obtained nearly the absoluteness of the crown
in France, the parties to the great contests then
going on were all eagerly courting his alliance.
His ambitions ran parallel, too, with those of the
able minister, Thomas Wolsey, who rose to high
influence at his side soon after his reign began.
Wolsey aspired to the Papal crown, with the
cardinal's cap as a preparatory adornment, and he
EUROPE.
Henry VIII. and his
breach with Rome.
EUROPE.
drew England, as we have seen, into the stormy
politics of the sixteenth century in Europe, with
no gain, of glory or otherwise, to the nation, and
not much result of any kind. When tlie Emperor
Slaximilian died, in 1519, Henry entered the li.sts
against Maximilian's grandson, Charles of Spain,
and Francis I. of France, as a candidate for the
imperial crown. In the subsequent wars which
broke out between his two rivals, he took the
side of the successful Charles, now Emperor, and
helped him to climb to supremacy in Europe
over the prostrate French Idng. He had dreams
of conquering France again, and casting the
glories of Henry V. in the shade ; but he carried
his enterprise little beyond the dreaming. When
it was too late to check the growth of Charles'
overshadowing power, he changed his side and
took Francis into alliance.
But Henry's motives were always selfish and
personal — never political ; and the personal mo-
tives had now taken on a most despicable char-
acter. He had tired of his wife, the Spanish
Catherine, who was six years older than himself.
He had two pretexts for discontent with his mar-
riage: 1, that his queen had borne him only a
daughter, whereas England needed a male heir
to the throne ; 3, that he was troubled with scru-
ples as to the lawfulness of wedlock with his
brother's widow. On this latter ground he be-
gan intrigues to win from the Pope, not a divorce
in the ordinary sense of the term, but a declara-
tion of the nullity of his marriage. This chal-
lenged the opposition of the Emperor, Catherine's
nephew, and Henry's alliances were naturally
changed.
The Pope, Clement VII., refused to annul the
marriage, and Henry turned his unreasoning
wrath upon Cardinal Wolsey, who had conducted
negotiations with the Pope and failed in them.
Wolsey was driven from the Court in disgrace
and died soon afterwards. He was succeeded in
the king's favor by a more uncrupulous man,
Thomas Cromwell. Henry had not yet despaired
of bringing the Pope to compliance with his
wishes ; and he began attacks upon the Church
and upon the papal revenues which might shake,
as he hoped, the firmness of the powers at Rome.
With the help of a pliant minister and a sub-
servient Parliament, he forced the clergy (1.531-
1532) in Convocation to acknowledge him to be
the Supreme Head of the English Church, and
to submit themselves entirely to his authority.
At the same time he grasped the "annates," or
first year's income of bishoprics, which had been
the richest perquisite of the papal treasury.
In all these proceedings, the English king was
acting on a line parallel to that of the continental
rising against Rome ; but it was not in friendli-
ness toward it nor in sympathy with it that he
did so. He had been among the bitterest enemies
of the Reformation, and he never ceased to be
so. He had won from the Pope the empty title
of "Defender of the Faith," by a foolish book
against Luther, and the faitli which he defended
in 1521 was the faith in which he died. But
when he found that the influence of Charles V.
at Rome was too great to be overcome, and that
the Pope could be neither bribed, persuaded nor
coerced to sanction the putting away of his wife,
he resolved to make the English Church suffi-
cient in authority to satisfy his demand, by estab-
lishing its ecclesiastical independence, with a
pontiff of its own, in himself. He purposed
nothing more than this. He contemplated no
change of doctrine, no cleansing of abuses. He
permitted no one whose services he commanded
in the undertaking to bring such changes into
contemplation. So far as concerned Henry's in-
itiative, there was absolutely nothing of religious
Reformation in the movement which separated
the Church of England from the Church of
Rome. It accomplished its sole original end
when it gave finality to the decree of an English
ecclesiastical court, on the question of the king's
marriage, and barred queen Catherine's appe;il
from it. It was the intention of Henry VIII.
that the Church under his papacy should remain
precisely what it had been under the Pope at
Rome, and he spared neither stake nor gibbet in
his persecuting zeal against impudent reformers.
But the spirit of Reformation which was in
the atmosphere of that time lent itself, neverthe-
less, to King Henry's project, and made that
practicable which could hardly have been so a
generation before. The influence of Wyclif had
never wholly died out; the new learning was
making its way in England and broadening men's
minds ; the voice of Luther and his fellow work-
ers on the continent had been heard, and not
vainly. England was ripe for the religious revo-
lution, and her king promoted it, without inten-
tion. But while his reign lasted, and his despot-
ism was heavy on the land, there was nothing
accomplished but the breaking of the old Church
fetters, and the binding of the nation anew with
green withes, which, presently, it would burst
asunder.
The conspicuous events of Henry's reign are
familiarly known. Most of them bear the stamp
of his monstrous egotism and selfishness. He
was the incomparable tyrant of English history.
The monarch who repudiated two wives, sent
two to the block, and shared his bed with yet
two more ; who made a whole national church
the servant of his lusts, and who took the lives
of the purest men of his kingdom when they
would not bend their consciences to say that he
did well — has a pedestal quite his own in the
gallery of infamous kings.
Edward VI. and the Reformation.
Dying in 1.547, Henry left three children:
Mary, daughter of Catherine of Aragon, Eliza-
beth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, and Edward,
son of Jane Seymour. The latter, in his tenth
year, became King (Edward VI.), and his uncle,
the Duke of Somerset, acquired the control of
the government, with the title of Protector.
Somerset headed a party which had begun be-
fore the death of the king to press for more
changes in the character of the new Church of
England and less adherence to the pattern of
Rome. There seems to be little reason to sup-
pose that the court leaders of this party were
much moved in the matter by any interest of a
religious kind ; but the growth of thinking and
feeling in England tended that way, and the side
of Reformation had become the stronger. They
simply gave way to it, and abandoned the re-
pression which Henry had persisted in. At the
same time, their new policy gave them more free-
dom to grasp the spoils of the old Church, which
Henry VIII. had begun to lay hands on, by
suppression of monasteries and confiscation of
their estates. The wealth thus sequestered went
largely into private hands.
1090
EUROPE.
Tlie Reformation
in the North.
EUROPE.
It was in the short reign of Edward VI. that
the Church of England really took on its organic
form as one of the Churches of the Reformation,
by the composition of its first prayer-books, and
by the framing of a definite creed.
Lady Jane Grey.
In 1553, the young king died. Somerset had
fallen from power the previous year and had
suffered death. He had been supplanted by
Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northum-
berland, and that minister had persuaded Edward
to bequeath his crown to Lady Jane Grey, grand-
daughter of the younger sister of Henry VIII.
But Northumberland was hated by the people,
and few could recognize the right of a boy on the
throne to change the order of regal succession by
his will. Parliament had formally legitimated
both Catherine's daughter, JIary, and Anne
Boleyn's daughter, Elizabeth, and had placed
them in the line of inheritance. Mary's legal
title to the crown was clear. She had adhered
with her mother to the Roman Church, and her
advent upon the throne would mean the subjec-
tion of the English Church to the Papacy anew ;
since the constitution of the Church armed the
sovereign with supreme and indisputable power
over it. The Protestants of the kingdom knew
what to expect, and were in great fear; but they
submitted. Lady Jane Grey was recommended
to them by her Protestant belief, and by her
beautiful character; but her title was too defec-
tive and her supporters too much distrusted.
There were few to stand by the poor young girl
when Northumberland proclaimed her queen,
and she was easily dethroned by the partisans of
Mary. A year later she was sent to the block.
Catholicism was now ascendant again, and
England was brought to share in the great reac-
tion against the Reformation which prevailed
generally tlirough Europe and which we shall
presently consider. Before doing so, let us
glance briefly at the religious state of some other
countries not yet touched upon.
The Reformation in Scotland.
In Scotland, a deep undercurrent of feeling
against the corruptions of the Church had been
repressed by resolute persecutions, until after
the middle of the sixteenth century. Wars with
England, and the close connection of the Scottish
Court with the Guises of France, had both tended
to retard the progress of a reform sentiment, or
to delay the manifestation of it. But when the
pent-up feeling began to respond to the voice of
the great Calvinistic evangelist and organizer,
John Knox, it swept the nation like a storm.
Knox's first preaching, after his captivity in
France and exile to Geneva, was in 1555. In
1560, the authority of the Pope was renounced,
the mass prohibited, and the Geneva confession
of faith adopted, by the Scottish Estates. After
that time the Reformed Church in Scotland —
the Church of Presbyterianism — had only to re-
sist the futile hostility of JIary Stuart for a few
years, until it came to its great struggle against
English Episcopacy, under Mary's son and grand-
son, James and Charles.
The Reformation in the North.
In the three Scandinavian nations the ideas of
the Reformation, diffused from Germany, had
won early favor, both from kings and people.
and had soon secured an enduring foothold.
They owed their reception quite as much, per-
haps, to the political situation as to the religious
feeling of the northern peoples.
When the ferment of the Reformation move-
ment began, the three crowns were worn by one
king, as they had been since the " Union of Cal-
mar," in 1397, and the King of Denmark was the
sovereign of the Union. His actual power in
Sweden and Norway was slight ; his theoretical
authority was suflicient to irritate both. In
Sweden, especially, the nobles chafed under the
yoke of the profitless federation. Christian II.,
the last Danish king of the three kingdoms,
crushed their disaffection by a harsh conquest of
the country (1520), and by savage executions,
so perfidious and so numerous that they are
known in Swedish history as the Massacre of
Stockholm. But this brutal and faithless king
became so hateful in his own proper kingdom
that the Danish nobles rose against him in 1523
and he was driven from the land. The crown
was given to his uncle, Frederick, Duke of
Schleswig-IIolstein. In that German Duchy,
Lutheranism had already made its way, and
Frederick was in accord with it. On coming to
the throne of Denmark, where Catholicism still
prevailed, he pledged himself to attempt no in-
terference with it ; but he felt no obligation, on
the other hand, to protect it. He demanded and
established a toleration for both doctrines, and
gave to the reformers a freedom of opportunity
which speedily undermined the old faith and
overthrew it.
In the meantime, Sweden had undergone the
important revolution of her history, which placed
the national hero, Gustavus Vasa, on the throne.
Gustavus was a young noble whose title to the
crown was not derived from his lineage, but
from his genius. After Christian II. had bloodily
exterminated the elder leaders of the Swedish
state, this young lord, then a hostage and pris-
oner in the tyrant's hands, made his escape and
took upon himself the mission of setting his
country free. For three years Gustavus lived a
life like that of Alfred the Great in England,
when he, too, struggled with the Danes. His
heroic adventures were crowned with success,
and Sweden, led to independence by its natural
king, bestowed the regal title upon him (1533)
and seated him upon its ancient throne. The
new Danish king, Frederick, acknowledged the
revolution, and the Union of Calmar was dis-
solved. Sweden under Gustavus Vasa recovered
from the state of great disorder into which It
had fallen, and grew to be a nation of important
strength. As a measure of policy, he encour-
aged the introduction of Lutheranism and pro-
moted the spread of it, in order to break the
power of the Catholic clergy, and also, in order,
without doubt, to obtain possession of the property
of the Church, which secured to the Crown the
substantial revenues it required.
Italy.
In Italy, the reformed doctrines obtained no
popular footing at any time, though many among
the cultivated people regarded them with favor,
and would gladly have witnessed, not only a
practical purging of the Church, but a revision
of those Catholic dogmas most offensive to a
rational mind. But such little movement as
stirred in that direction was soon stopped by the
1091
EUROPE.
The Catholic
reaction.
EUROPE.
success of the Emperor, Charles V., in his Italian
wars with Francis I. , and by the Spanish domi-
nation in the peninsula which ensued thereon.
The Spain of that age was like the bloodless
octopus which paralyzes the victim in its clutch,
and Italy, gripped in half of its many principali-
ties by the deadly tentacles thrust out from
Madrid, showed no consciousness for the next
two centuries.
The Council of Trent.
The long demanded, long promised General
Council, for considering the alleged abuses in
the Church and the alleged falsities in its doc-
trine, and generally for discussion and action
upon the questions raised by the Reformation,
assembled at Trent in December, 1545. The
Emperor seems to have desired with sincerity
that the Council might be one which the Protes-
tants would have confidence in, and in which
they might be represented, for a full discussion
of their differences with Rome. But this was
made impossible from the beginning. The Prot-
estants demanded that "final appeal on all de-
bated points should be made to the sole authority
of Holy Scripture," and this being refused by
the Pope (Paul III), there remained no ground
on which the two parties could meet. The Ital-
ian prelates who composed the majority of the
Council made haste, it would seem, to take action
which closed the doors of conciliation against
the Reformers. "First, they declared that divine
revelation was continuous in the Church of which
the Pope was the head ; and that the chief writ-
ten depository of this revelation — namely, the
Scriptures — had no authority except in the ver-
sion of the Vulgate. Secondly, they condemned
the doctrine of justification by Faith. . . .
Thirdly, they confirmed the efficacy and the bind-
ing authority of the Seven Sacraments." " The
Council terminated in December [1563] with an
act of submission, which placed all its decrees at
the pleasure of the Papal sanction. Pius [Pius
IV. became Pope in 1560] was wise enough to
pass and ratify the decrees of the Tridentine
fathers by a Bull dated on December 26, 1563,
reserving to the Papal sovereign the sole right of
interpreting them in doubtful or disputed cases.
This he could well afford to do ; for not an article
had been penned without his concurrence, and
not a stipulation had been made without a pre-
vious understanding with the Catholic powers.
The very terms, moreover, by which his ratification
was conveyed, secured his supremac}', and con-
ferred upon his successors and himself the privi-
leges of a court of ultimate appeal. At no pre-
vious period in the history of the Church had so
wide, so undefined, and so unlimited an authority
been accorded to the See of Rome " (Symonds).
Some practical reforms in the Church were
wrought by the Council of Trent, but its disci-
plinary decrees were less important than the dog-
matic. From beginning to end of its sessions,
which, broken by many suspensions and adjourn-
ments, dragged through eighteen years, it ad-
dressed itself to the task of solidifying the
Church of Rome, as left bj' the Protestant schism,
— not of healing the schism itself or of remov-
ing the provocations to it. The work which the
Council did in that direction was of vast impor-
tance, and profoundly affected the future of the
Papacy and of its spiritual realm. It gave a
firm dogmatic footing to the great reactionary
new forces which now came into play, with ag-
gressive enthusiasm and zeal, to arrest the ad-
vance of the Reformation and roll it back.
The Catholic reaction.
The extraordinary revival of Catholicism and
thrusting back of Protestantism which occurred
in the later half of the sixteenth century had
several causes behind it and within it.
1. The spiritual impulse from which the Ref-
ormation started had considerably spent itself, or
had become debased by a gross admixture of
political and mercenary aims. In Germany, the
spoils derived from the suppressing of monastic
establishments and the secularizing of ecclesias-
tical fiefs and estates, appeared very early among
the potent inducements by which mercenary
princes were drawn to the side of the Lutheran
reform. Later, as the opposing leagues, Protes-
tant and Catholic, settled into chronic opposition
and hostility, the struggle between them took on
more and more the character of a great political
game, and lost more and more the spirit of a battle
for free conscience and a free mind. In France,
as we have noticed, the political entanglements of
the Huguenot party were such, by this time, that
it could not fail to be lowered by them in its re-
ligious tone. In England, every breath of spirit-
uality in the movement had so far (to the death
of Henry VIII.) been stifled, and it showed noth-
ing but a brazen political front to the world. In
the Netherlands, the struggle for religious free-
dom was about to merge itself in a fight of forty
years for self-government, and the fortitude and
valor of the citizen were more surely developed
in that long war than the faith and fervor of the
Christian. And so, generally throughout Eu-
rope. Protestantism, in its conflict with the pow-
ers of the ancient Church, had descended, ere the
sixteenth century ran far into its second half, to
a distinctly lower plane than it occupied at first.
On that lower plane Rome fronted it more for-
midably, with stronger arms, than on the higher.
2. Broadly stating the fact, it may be said that
Protestantism made all its great inroads upon the
Church of Rome before partisanship came to the
rescue of the latter, and closed the open mind
with which Luther, and Zwingli, and Farel, and
Calvin were listened to at first. It happens al-
ways, when new ideas, combative of old ones,
whether religious or political, are first put for-
ward in the world, they are listened to for a time
with a certain disinterestedness of attention — a
certain native candor in the mind — which gives
them a fair hearing. If they seem reasonable,
they obtain ready acceptance, and spread rapidly,
— until the conservatism of the beliefs assailed
takes serious alarm, and the radicalism of the
innovating beliefs becomes ambitious and ram-
Itant ; until the for and the against stiffen them-
selves in opposing ranks, and the voice of argu-
ment is drowned by the cries of party. That
ends all shifting of masses from the old to the
new ground. That ends conversion as an epi-
demic and dwindles it to the sporadic character.
3. Protestantism became bitterly divided within
itself at an early stage of its career by doctrinal
differences, first between Zwinglians and Luther-
ans, and then between Lutherans and Calvinists,
while Catholicism, under attack, settled into
more tmity and solidity than before.
4. The tremendous power in Europe to
which the Spanish monarchy, with its subject
1092
EUROPE.
Philip 11. a7id
the ruin of Spain.
EUROPE.
dominions, and its dynastic relations, had now
risen, passed, in 1556, to a dull-brained and soul-
less bigot, who saw but one use for it, namely, the
extinction of all dissent from his own beliefs, and
all opposition to his own will. Philip II. differed
from his father, Charles V., not in the enormity
of his bigoted egotism — the}' were equals, per-
haps, in that — but in the exclusiveness of it.
There was something else in Charles, something
sometimes faintly admirable. He did have some
interests in life that were not purely malignant.
But his horrid vampire of a son, the most re-
pulsive creature of his kind in all history, had
nothing in him that was not as deadly to man-
kind as the venom secreted behind the fang of a
cobra. It was a frightful day for the world
when a despotism which shadowed Spain, Sicily,
Italy and the Low Countries, and which had be-
gun to drag unbounded treasure from America,
fell to the possession of such a being as this.
Nothing substantial was taken away from the
potent malevolence of Philip by his failure of
election in Germany to the Imperial throne. On
the contrary, he was the stronger for it, because
all his dominion was real and all his authority
might assume to be absolute. His father had
been more handicapped than helped by his Ger-
man responsibilities and embarrassments, which
Philip escaped. It is not strange that his con-
centration of the vast enginery under his hands
to one limited aim, of exterminating what his
dull and ignorant mind conceived to be irreligion
and treason, had its large measure of success.
The stranger thing is, that there was fortitude and
courage to resist such power, in even one corner
of his realm.
5. The Papacy was restored at this time to tlie
purer and higher character of its best ages, by
well-guided elections, which raised in succession
to the throne a number of men, very different in
ability, and quite different, too, in the spirit of
their piety, but generally alike in dignity and
decency of life, and in qualities which command
respect. The fiery Neapolitan zealot, Caraffa,
who became Pope in 1555 as Paul IV. ; his cool-
tempered diplomatic successor, Pius IV., who
manipulated the closing labors of the Council of
Trent ; the austere inquisitor, Pius V. ; the more
commonplace Gregory XIII., and the powerful
Sixtus v., were pontiffs who gave new strength
to Catholicism, in their different ways, both by
what they did and by what they were.
6. The revival of zeal in the Roman Church,
naturally following the attacks upon it, gave rise
to many new religious organizations within its
elastic fold, some reformatory, some missionary
and militant, but all bringing an effectual rein-
forcement to it, at the time when its assailants
began to show faltering signs. Among these
was one — Loyola's Society of Jesus — which
marched promptly to the front of the battle, and
which contributed more than any other single
force in the field to the rallying of the Church,
to the stopping of retreat, and to the facing of
its stubborn columns forward for a fresh ad-
vance. The Jesuits took such a lead and accom-
plished such results by virtue of the military
precision of discipline under which they had
been placed and to which they were singularlj'
trained by the rules of the founder; and also
by effect of a certain subtle sophistry that runs
through their ethical maxims and their counsels
of piety. They fought for their faith with a
sublime courage, with a devotion almost unpar-
alleled, with an earnestness of belief that cannot
be questioned ; but they used weapons and modes
of warfare which the higher moral feeling of
civilized mankind, whether Christian or Pagan,
has always condemned. It is not Protestant
enemies alone who say this. It is the accusation
that has been brought against them again and
again in their own Church, and which has ex-
pelled them from Catholic countries, again and
again.. In the first century or more of their
career, this plastic conscience, moulded by a pas-
sionate zeal, and surrendered, with every gift of
mind and body, to a service of obedience which
tolerated no evasion on one side nor bending on
the other, made the Jesuits the most invinci-
ble and dangerous body of men that was ever
organized for defense and aggression in any
cause.
The order was founded in 1540, by a bull of
Pope Paul III. At the time of Loyola's death,
in 1556, it numbered about one thousand mem-
bers, and under Lainez, the second general of the
order, who succeeded Loyola at the head, it ad-
vanced rapidly, in numbers, in efficiency of or-
ganization, and in wide-spread influence.
Briefly stated, these are the incidents and cir-
cumstances which help to explain — not fully,
perhaps, but almost sufficiently — the check to
Protestantism and the restored energy and ag-
gressiveness of the Catholic Church, in the later
half of the sixteenth century.
The Ruin of Spain.
In his kingdoms of Spain, Philip II. may be said
to have finished the work of death which his
father and his father's grand-parents committed
to him. They began it, and appointed the lines
on which it was to be done. The Spain of their
day had the fairest opportunity of any nation in
Europe for a great and noble career. The golden
gates of her opportunity were unlocked and
opened by good Queen Isabella; but the pure
hands of the same pious queen threw over the
neck of her country the noose of a strangler, and
tightened it prayerfully. Her grandson, who
was neither pious nor good, flung his vast weight
of power upon it. But the strangling halter of
the Spanish Inquisition did not extinguish signs
of life in his kingdom fast enough to satisfy his
royal impatience, and he tightened other cords
upon the suffering body and all its limbs. Philip,
when he came to take up the murderous task,
found every equipment for it that he could de-
sire. He had only to gather the strands of the
infernal mesh into his hands, and bring the strain
of his awful sovereignty to bear upon them : then
sit and watch the palsy of death creep over his
dominions.
Of political life, Charles really left nothing for
his son to kill. Of positive religious life, there
can have been no important survival, for he and
his Inquisition had been keenly vigilant; but
Philip made much of the little he could discover.
As to the industrial life of Spain, father and son
were alike active in the murdering of it, and
alike ingenious. They paralyzed manufactures,
in the first instance, by persecuting and expelling
the thrifty and skilful Moriscoes ; then they made
their work complete by heavy duties on raw ma-
terials. To extinguish the agricultural indus-
tries of the kingdom, they had happy inspira-
tions. They prohibited the exportation of one
1093
EUKOPE.
Revolt of
the Netherlands.
EUROPE.
commodity after another — com, cattle, wool,
cloth, leather, and the like — until they had
brought Spain practically to the point of being
dependent on other countries for many products
of skill, and j'et of having nothing to offer in ex-
change, except the treasure of precious metals
which she drew from America. Hence it hap-
pened that the silver and gold of the Peruvian
and Mexican mines ran like quicksand through
her fingers, into the coffers of the merchants of
the Low Countries and of England; and, ^jrob-
ably, no other country in Europe saw so little of
them, had so little of benefit from them, as the
country they were supposed to enrich.
If the killing of Spain needed to be made com-
plete by anything more, Philip supplied the need,
in the deadliness of his taxation. Spending vast
sums in his attempt to repeat upon the Nether-
lands the work of national murder he had accom-
plished in Spain; losing, by the same act, the
rich revenues of the thrifty provinces ; launching
into new expenditures as he pursued, by clumsy
warfare, his mission of death into fresh fields,
aiming now at the life of France, and now at the
life of England,— he squeezed the cost of his
armies and armadas from a country in which he
had strangled production already, and made pov-
erty the common estate. It was the last draining
of the life-blood of a nation which ought to have
been strong and great, but which suffered mur-
der most foul and unnatural.
"We hardly exaggerate even in figure when we
say that Spain was a dead nation when Philip
quitted the scene of his arduous labors. It is
true that his successors still found something for
their hands to do, in the ways that were pleasant
to their race, and burned and bled and crushed
the unhappy kingdom with indefatigable persis-
tency ; but it was really tlie corpse of a nation
which they practised on. The life of Spain, as a
breathing, sentient state, came to an end under
the hands of Philip II. , first of the Thugs.
Philip II. and the Netherlands.
The hand of Charles V. had been heavy on the
Netherlands ; but resistance to such a power as
that of Spain in his day was hardly dreamed of.
It was not easy for Philip to outdo his father's
despotism ; less easy to drive the laborious Hol-
landers and Flemings to desperation and force
them into rebellious war. But he accomplished
it. He filled the country with Spanish troops.
He reorganized and stimulated the Inquisition.
He multiplied bishoprics in the Provinces, against
the wish of even the Catholic population. He
scorned the counsels of the great nobles, and
gave foreign advisers to the Regent, his half-sis-
ter, Margaret of Parma, illegitimate daughter of
Charles V., whom he placed at the head of the
government. His oppressions were endured,
with increasing signs of hidden passion, for ten
j-ears. Then, in 1.566, the first movement of pa-
triotic combination appeared. It was a league
among certain of the nobles; its objects were
peaceful, its plans were legal; but it was not
countenanced by the wiser of the patriots, who
saw that events were not ripe. The members of
the league went in solemn procession to the
Regent with a petition; whereupon one of her
councillors denounced them as "a troop of beg-
gars."' They promptly seized the epithet and
appropriated it. A beggar's wallet became their
emblem; the idea was caught up and carried
through the country, and a visible party rose
quickly Into existence.
The religious feeling now gained boldness.
Enormous field-meetings began to be held, under
arms, in every part of the open country, defy-
ing edicts and Inquisition. There followed a
little later some fanatical and riotous outbreaks
in several cities, breaking images and desecrat-
ing churches. Upon these occurrences, Philip
despatched to the Netherlands, in the summer of
1567, a fresh army of Spanish troops, commanded
by a man who was after his own heart — as mean,
as false, as merciless, as little in soul and mind,
as himself, — the Duke of Alva. Alva brought
with him authority which practically superseded
that of the Regent, and secret instructions which
doomed every man of worth in the Provinces.
At the head of the nobility of the country, bj'
eminence of character, no less than by precedence
in rank, stood "William of Nassau, Prince of
Orange, who derived his higher title from a petty
and remote principality, but whose large family
possessions were in Flanders, Brabant, Holland
and Luxemburg. Associated closely with him,
in friendship and in political action, were Count
Egraont, and the Admiral Count Horn, the lat-
ter of a family related to the Montmorencies of
France. These three conspicuous nobles Philip
had marked with special malice for the heads-
man, though their solitary crime had been the
giving of advice against his tyrannies. "William
of Orange — "the Silent," as he came to be known
— far-seeing in his wisdom, and well-advised by
trusty agents in Spain, withdrew into Germany
before Alva arrived. He warned his friends of
their danger and implored them to save them-
selves; but they were blinded and would not
listen. The perfidious Spaniard lured them with
flatteries to Brussels and thrust them into prison.
They were to be the first victims of the appalling
sacriflce required to appease the dull rage of the
king. "Within three months they had eighteen
hundred companions, condemned like themselves
to the scaffold, by a council in which Alva pre-
sided and which the people called "the Council
of Blood." In June, 1568, they were brought to
the block.
Meantime Prince "William and his brother,
Louis of Nassau, had raised forces in Germany
and attempted the rescue of the terrorized Prov-
inces ; but their troops were ill-paid and mutinous
and they suffered defeat. For the time being,
the Netherlands were crushed. As many of the
people as could escape had fled ; commerce was
at a standstill ; workshops were idle ; the cities,
once so wealthy, were impoverished; death,
mourning, and terror, were everywhere. Alva
had done very perfectly what he was sent to do.
The first break in the blackness of the clouds
appeared in April, 1573, when a fleet, manned by
refugee adventurers who called themselves Sea-
Beggars, attacked and captured the town of
Brill. From that day the revolt had its right
footing, on the decks of the ships of the best sail-
ors in the world. It faced Philip from that day as
a maritime power, which would grow by the very
feeding of its war with him, until it had con-
sumed everything Spanish within its reach. The
taking of Brill soon gave the patriots control of so
many places in Holland and Zealand that a meet-
ing of deputies was held at Don, in July, 1572,
which declared AVilliam of Orange to be "the
King's legal Stadtholder in Holland, Zealand,
1094
EUROPE.
Independence of
the United Brovinces,
EUROPE.
Friesland and Utrecht," and recommended to
the other Provinces that he be appointed Pro-
tector of all the Netherlands during the King's
absence.
Alva's reign of terror had failed so signally
that even he was discouraged and asked to be
recalled. It was his boast when he retired that
he had put eighteen thousand and six hundred of
the Netherlanders to death since they were de-
livered into his hands, above and beyond the
'horrible massacres by which he had half depopu-
lated every captured town. Under Alva's suc-
cessor, Don Louis de Requesens, a man of more
justice and liumanity, the struggle went on, ad-
versely, upon the whole, to the patriots, though
they triumphed gloriously in the famous defense
of Leyden. To win help from England, they
offered the sovereignty of their country to Queen
Elizabeth ; but in vain. They made no headway
in the southern provinces, where Catholicism
prevailed, and where the religious difference drew
people more to the Spanish side. But when
Requesens died suddenly, in tlie spring of 1576,
and the Spanish soldiery broke into a furious
mutiny, sacking Antwerp and other cities, then
the nobles of Flanders and Brabant applied to
the northern provinces for help. The result was
a treaty, called the Pacitication of Ghent, which
contemplated a general effort to drive the Span-
iards from the whole land. But not much came
of this confederacy ; the Catholic provinces never
co-operated with the Protestant provinces, and
the latter went their own way to freedom and
prosperity, while the former sank back, submis-
sive, to their chains.
For a short time after the death of Requesens,
Philip was represented in the Netherlands by his
illegitimate half-brother, Don John of Austria;
but Don John died in October, 1578, and then
came the great general, Alexander Farnese, Prince
of Parma, who was to try the patriots sorely by
his military skill. In 1579, the Prince of Orange
drew them more closely together, in the Union
of Utrecht, which Holland, Zealand, Gelderland,
Zutphen, Utrecht, Overyssel, and Groningen, sub-
scribed, and which was practically the founda-
tion of the Dutch republic, though allegiance
to Philip was not yet renounced. Tliis followed
two years later, in July, 1581, when the States
General, assembled at the Hague, passed a solemn
Act of Abjuration, which deposed Philip from
his sovereignty and transferred it to the Duke of
Anjou, a prince of the royal family of France,
wlio did nothing for the Provinces, and who died
soon after. At the same time, the immediate
sovereignty of Holland and Zealand was conferred
on the Prince of Orange.
In March, 1583, Philip made his first deliber-
ate attempt to procure the assassination of the
Prince. He had entered Into a contract for the
purpose, and signed it with his own hand. The
assassin employed failed only because the savage
pistol wound he inflicted, In the neck and jaw of
his victim, did not kill. The master-murderer,
at Madrid, was not discouraged. He launched
his assassins, one following the other, until six
had made their trial in two years. The sixth,
one Balthazar Gerard, accomplished that for
which lie was sent, and William the Silent, wise
statesman and admirable patriot, fell imder his
hand (July 10, 1584). Philip was so immeasur-
ably delighted at this success that he conferred
three lordships on the parents of the murderer.
William's son, Maurice, though but eighteen
years old, was immediately chosen Stadtholder
of Holland, Zealand and Utrecht, and High Ad-
miral of the Union. In the subsequent years of
the war, he proved himself a general of great ca-
pacity. Of the details of the war it is impossible
to speak. ' Its most notable event was the siege
of Antwerp, whose citizens defended themselves
against the Duke of Parma, with astonishing
courage and obstinacy, for many months. They
capitulated in the end on honorable terras; but
the prosperity of their city had received a blow
from which it never revived.
Once more the sovereignty of the Provinces was
offered to Queen Elizabeth of England, and once
more declined; but the queen sent her favorite,
tlie Earl of Leicester, with a few thousand men,
to help the struggling Hollanders (1585). This
was done, not in sj'mpathy with them or their
cause, but purely as a self-defensive measure
against Spain. The niggardliness and the vacil-
lations of Elizabeth, combined with the incom-
petency of Leicester, caused troubles to the Prov-
inces nearly equal to the benefit of the forces lent
them. Philip of Spain was now involved in his
undertakings with the Guises and the League in
France, and in his plans against England, and
was weakened in the Netherlands for some years.
Parma died in 1593, and Count Mansfield took
his place, succeeded in his turn by the Marquis
Spinola. The latter, at last, made an honest re-
port, that the subjugation of the United Prov-
inces was impracticable, and, Philip II. being
now dead, the Spanish government was induced
in 1607 to agree to a suspension of arms. A
truce for twelve years was arranged ; practically
it was the termination of the war of indepen-
dence, and practically it placed the United Prov-
inces among the nations, although the formal
acknowledgment of their independence was not
yielded by Spain until 1648.
England under Mary.
While the Netherlands had offered to Philip of
Spain a special field for his malice, there were
others thrown open to him which he did not
neglect. He may be said, in fact, to have whetted
his appetite for blood and for burned human
tlesh in England, whither he went, as a young
prince, in 1554, to marry his elderly second
cousin, Queen Mary. We may be sure that he
did not check the ardor of his consort, when she
hastened to re-establish the supremacy of the
Pope, and to rekindle the fires of religious perse-
cution. The two-hundred and seventy-seven her-
etics whom she is reckoned to have burned may
liave seemed to him, even then, an insignificant
handful. He quickly tired of her, if not of her
congenial work, and left her in 1555. In 1558
she died, and the Cliurch of Rome fell once more,
never to regain its old footing of authority.
England under Elizabeth.
Elizabeth, daughter of Anne Boleyn, who now
came to the throne, was Protestant by the neces-
sities of her position, whether doctrinally con-
vinced or no. The Catholics denied her legiti-
macy of birth, and disputed, therefore, her right
to the crown. She depended upon the Protes-
tants for her support, and Protestantism, either
active or passive, had become, without doulit,
the dominant faitli of the nation. But the mild
schism which formerly took most of its direction
1095
EUROPE.
Qxieen Elizabeth
and Mary Stuart.
EUROPE.
from Luther, had now been powerfully acted
upon by the influence of Calvin. Geneva had
been tlie refuge of many ministers and teachers
who fled from Mary's fires, and they returned to
spread and deepen in England the stern, strong,
formidable piety which Calvin evoked. These
Calvinistic Protestants now made themselves felt
as a party in the state, and were known ere long
by that name which the next century rendered
famous in English and American history — the
great name of the Puritans. They were not
satisfied with the stately, decorous, ceremonious
Church which Elizabeth reconstructed on the
pattern of the Church of Edward VI. At the
same time, no party could be counted on more
surely for the support of the queen, since the
hope of Protestantism in England depended upon
her, even as she was dependent upon it.
The Catholics, denying legitimacy to Eliza-
beth, recognized Mary Queen of Scots as the law-
ful sovereign of England. And Mary was, in
fact, the next in succession, tracing her lineage,
as stated before, to the elder sister of Henry VIII.
If Elizabeth had been willing to frankly acknowl-
edge Mary's heirship, failing heirs of her own
body, it seems ijrobable tliat the partisans of the
Scottish queen would have been quieted, to a
great extent. But Mary had angered her by
assuming, while in Prance, the arras and style of
Queen of England. She distrusted and disliked
her Stuart cousin, and, moreover, the whole idea
of a settlement of the succession was repugnant
to her mind. At the same time, she could not be
brought to marry, as her Protestant subjects
wished. She coquetted with the notion of mar-
riage through half her reign, but never to any
purpose.
Such were the elements of agitation and trouble
in England under Elizabeth. The history of well-
nigh half-a-century was shaped in almost all its
events by the threatening attitude of Catholicism
and its supporters, domestic and foreign, toward
the English queen. She was supported by the
majority of her subjects with staunch loyalty and
fidelity, even though she treated them none too
well, and troubled them in their very defense of
her by her whims and caprices. They identified
her cause with themselves, and took such pride
in her courage that they shut their eyes to the
many weaknesses that went with it. She never
grasped the affairs she dealt with in a broadly
capable way. She never acted on them with well
considered judgment. Her ministers, it is clear,
were never able to depend upon a reasonable ac-
tion of her mind. Her vanity or her jealousy
might put reason in eclipse at any moment, and
a skilful flatterer could make the queen as foolish
as a milkmaid. But she had a royal courage and
a royal pride of country, and she did make the
good and glory of England her aim. So she won
the afl'ection of all Englishmen whose hearts were
not in the keeping of the Pope, and no monarch
so arbitrary was ever more ardently admired.
Mary, Queen of Scots.
In 1567, Mary Stuart was deposed by her own
subjects, or forced to abdicate in favor of her in-
fant son, James. She had alienated the Scottish
people, first by her religion, and then by her sus-
pected personal crimes. Having married her
second cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, she
was accused of being false to him. Darnley re-
venged his supposed wrongs as a husband by
murdering her secretary, David Rizzio. In the
next year (1567) Darnley was killed; the hand of
the Earl of Bothwell appeared quite plainly in
the crime, and the queen's complicity was be-
lieved. She confirmed the suspicions against her-
self by marrying Bothwell soon afterwards. Then
her subjects rose against her, imprisoned her in
Loch Leven Castle, and made the Earl of Murray
regent of the Kingdom. In 1568 Mary escaped
from her Scottish prison and entered England.
From that time until her death, in 1587, she was
a captive in the hands of her rival. Queen Eliza-
beth, and was treated with slender magnanimity.
More than before, she became the focus of in-
trigues and conspiracies which threatened both
the throne and the life of Elizabeth, and a grow-
ing feeling of hostility to the wretched woman
was inevitable.
In 1570, Pope Pius V. issued against Elizabeth
his formal bull of excommunication, absolving
her subjects from their allegiance. 'This quick-
ened, of course, the activity of the plotters against
the queen and set treason astir. Priests from the
English Catholic Seminary at Douai, afterwards
at Rheims, began to make their appearance in the
country; a few Jesuits came over; and both were
active agents of the schemes on foot which con-
templated the seating of Mary Stuart on the throne
of Elizabeth Tudor. Some of these emissaries
were executed, and they are counted among the
martyrs of the Catholic Church, which is a seri-
ous mistake. The Protestantism of the sixteenth
century was quite capable of religious persecu-
tion, even to death ; but it has no responsibilities
of that nature in these Elizabethan cases. As a
matter of fact, the religion of the Jesuit sufferers
in the reign of Elizabeth was a mere incident at-
taching itself to a high political crime, which no
nation has ever forgiven.
The plotting went on for twenty years, keep-
ing the nation In unrest; while beyond it there
were thickening signs of a great project of inva-
sion in the sinister mind of Philip II. At last,
in 1586, the coolest councillors of Elizabeth per-
suaded her to bring Mary Stuart to trial for
alleged complicity in a conspiracy of assassina-
tion which had lately come to light. Convicted,
and condemned to death, Mary ended her sad
life on the scaffold, at Potheringay, on the 8th
of February, 1587. Whether guilty or guiltless
of any knowledge of what had been done in her
name, against the peace of England and against
the life of the English queen, it cannot be thought
strange that Protestant England took her life.
The Spanish Armada.
A great burst of wrath in Catholic Europe was
caused by the execution of Mary, and Philip of
Spain hastened forward his vast preparations for
the invasion and conquest of England. In 1588,
the "invincible armada," as it was believed to
be, sailed out of the harbors of Portugal and
Spain, and wrecked itself with clumsy imbecility
on the British and Irish coasts. It scarcely did
more than give sport to the eager English sailors
who scattered its helpless ships and hunted them
down. Philip troubled England no more, and
conspiracy ceased.
England at Sea.
But the undeclared, half-piratical warfare
which private adventurers had been carrying on
against Spanish commerce for many years now
1096
EUROPE.
Wars of Religion
in France.
EUEOPE.
acquired fresh energy. Drake, Hawkins, Fro-
bisbcr, Grenvil, Raleigh, were the heroic spirits
of this enterprising warfare; but they had many
fellows. It was the school of the future navy of
England, and the foundations of the British Em-
pire were laid down by those who carried it on.
Otherwise, Elizabeth had little war upon her
hands, except in Ireland, where the state of misery
and disorder had already been long chronic. The
first really complete conquest of the island was
accomplished by Lord Mountjoy between 1600
and 1603.
Intellectual England.
But neither the political troubles nor the naval
and military triumphs of England during the
reign of Elizabeth are of much importance, after
all, compared with the wonderful flowering of
the genius of the nation which took place in
that age. Shakespeare, Spenser, Bacon, Ben
Jonson, Marlowe, Hooker, Raleigh, Sidney, are
the great facts of Elizabeth's time, and it shines
with the luster of their names, the period most
glorious in English history.
The Religious Wars in France.
Wherever the stealthy arm of the influence of
Philip II. of Spain could reach, there the Catho-
lic reaction of his time took on a malignant
form. In France, it is quite probable that the
Catholics and the Huguenots, if left to them-
selves, would have come to blows ; but it is cer-
tain that the meddling fingers of the Spanish
king put fierceness and fury into the wars of re-
ligion, which raged from 1562 to 1596, and that
they were prolonged by his encouragement and
help.
Catherine de' Medici, to strengthen herself
against the Guises, after the death of Francis II.,
offered attentions for a time to the Huguenot
nobles, and encouraged them to expect a large
and lasting measui'e of toleration. She went so
far that the Huguenot influence at court, sur-
rounding the young king, became very seriously
alarming to Catholic onlookers, both at home and
abroad. Among the many remonstrances ad-
dressed to the queen-regent, the one which ap-
pears to have been decisive in its effect came
from Philip. He coldly sent her word that he
intended to interfere in France and to establish
the supremacy of the Catholic Church ; that he
should give his support for that purpose to any
true friend of the Church who might request it.
Whether Catherine had entertained an honest
purpose or not, in her dealing with the Hugue-
nots, this threat, with what lay behind it, put an
end to the hope of justice for them. It is true
that an assembly of notables, in January, 1563,
did propose a law which the queen put forth,
in what is known as the "Edict of January,"
whereby the Huguenots were given, for the first
time, a legal recognition, ceasing to be outlaws,
and were permitted to hold meetings, in the day-
time, in open places, outside of walled cities;
but their churches were taken away from them,
they were forbidden to build more, and they
could hold no meetings in walled towns. It was
a measure of toleration very different from that
which they had been led to expect; and even the
little meted out by this Edict of January was
soon shown to have no guarantee. AVithin three
months, the Duke of Guise had found an oppor-
tunity for exhibiting his contempt of the new
law, by ordering his armed followers to attack a
congregation at Vassy, killing fifty and wounding
two hundred of the peaceful worshippers. This
outrage drove the Huguenots to arms and the
civil wars began.
The frivolous Anthony, King of Navarre, had
been won back to the Catholic side. His staunch
wife, Jeanne d'Albret, with her young son, the
future Henry IV., and his brother, Louis, Prince
of Conde, remained true to their faith. Conde
was the chief of the party. Next to him in
rank, and first in real worth and weight, was the
noble Admiral Coligny. The first war was brief,
though long enough to end the careers of An-
thony of Navarre, killed in battle, and the Duke
of Guise, assassinated. Peace was made in 1563
through a compromise, which conceded certain
places to the Huguenots, wherein they might
worship God in their own way. But it was a
hollow peace, and the malicious finger of the
great master of assassins at JIadrid never ceased
picking at it. In 1.566, civil war broke out a
second time, continuing until 1.570. Its principal
battles were that of .Jarnac, in which Conde was
taken prisoner and basely assassinated by his cap-
tors, and that of Moncontour. The Huguenots
were defeated in both. After the death of Conde,
young Henry of Navarre, who had reached his
fifteenth year, was chosen to be the chief of the
party, with Coligny for his instructor in war.
Again peace was made, on a basis of slight
concessions. Henry of Navarre married the
King's sister, Margaret of Valois; prior to which
he and his mother took up their residence with
the court, at Paris, where Jeanne d'Albret soon
sickened and died. The Admiral Coligny ac-
quired, apparently, a marked influence over the
mind of the young king; and once more there
seemed to be a smiling future for the Reformed.
But damnable treacheries were hidden underneath
this fair showing. The most hideous conspiracy
of modern times was being planned, at the very
moment of the ostentatious peace-marriage of
the King of Navarre, and the chief parties to it
were Catherine de' Medici and the Guises, whose
evil inclinations in common had brought them
together at last. On the 32d of August, 1573,
Coligny was wounded by an assassiu, employed
by the widow and son of the late Duke of Guise,
whose death they charged against him, notwith-
standing his protestations of innocence. Two
days later, the monstrous and almost incredible
Massacre of St. Bartholomew's Day was begun.
Paris was full of Huguenots — the heads of the
party — its men of weight and influence — who
had been drawn to the capital by the King of
Navarre's marriage and by the supposed new
era of favor in which they stood. To cut these
off was to decapitate Protestantism in Frauce,
and that was the purpose of the infernal sclieme.
The weak-minded young king was not an original
party to the plot. When everything had been
planned, he was easily excited by a tale of pre-
tended Huguenot conspiracies, and his assent to
summary measures of prevention was secured.
A little after midnight, on the morning of Sun-
day, August 24, the signal was given, by Cath-
erine's order, which let loose a waiting swarm of
assassins, throughout Paris, on the victims who
had been marked for them. The Huguenots had
had no warning ; they were taken everywhere by
surprise, and they were easily murdered in their
beds, or hunted down In their hopeless flight.
1097
EUROPE.
Henry of Valois
and Henry' of Navarre.
EUROPE.
The noble Coligny, prostrated by the Tvound he
had received two days before, was killed in his
chamber, and his body flung out of the window.
The young Duke of Guise stood waiting in the
court below, to gloat on the corpse and to basely
spurn it with his foot.
The massacre in Paris was carried on through
two nights and two days ; and, for more than a
month following, the example of the capital was
imitated in other cities of France, as tlie news of
what were called "the Paris Matins" reached
them. The total number of victims in the king-
dom is estimated variously to have been between
twenty thousand and one "hundred thousand.
Henry of Navarre and the young Prince of
Coude escaped the massacre, but they saved their
lives by a hypocritical abjuration of their religion.
Tlie strongest town in the possession of the
Huguenots was La Rochelle, and great numbers
of their ministers and people of mark who sur-
vived the massacre now took refuge in that city,
with a considerable body of armed men. The
royal forces laid siege to the city, but made no
impression on its defences. Peace was conceded
in the end on terms which again promised the
Huguenots some liberty of worship. But there
w.is no sincerity in it.
In 1574, Charles IX. died, and his brother, the
Duke of Anjou, who had lately been elected
King of Poland, ran away from his Polish capi-
tal with disgraceful haste and secrecy, to secure
the French crown. He was the most worthless
of the Valois-Medicean brood, and the French
court in his reign attained its lowest depth of deg-
radation. The contending religions were soon
at war again, with the accustomed result, in
1576, of another short-lived peace. The Catho-
lics were divided into two factions, one fanatical,
following the Guises, the other composed of
moderate men, calling themselves the Politiques,
who hated the Spanish influence under which the
Guises were always acting, and who were willing
to make terms with the Huguenots. The Guises
and the ultra-Catholics now organized through-
out France a great oath-bound "Holy League",
which became so formidable in power that the
king took fright, put himself at the head of it,
and reopened war with the Reformed.
More and more, the conflict of religions became
confused with questions of politics and mixed
with personal quarrels. At one time, the king's
younger brother, the Duke of Alengon, had gone
over to the Huguenot side; but stayed only long
enough to extort from the court some appoint-
ments which he desired. The king, more de-
spised by his subjects than any king of France
before him had ever been, grew increasingly
jealous and afraid of the popularity and strength
of the Duke of Guise, who was proving to be a
man quite superior to his father in capability.
Guise, on his side, was made arrogant by his
sense of power, and his ambition soared high.
There were reasons for believing that he did not
look upon the throne itself as beyond his reach.
After 1584, when the Duke of Alenpon (Duke
of Anjou under his later title) died, a new politi-
cal question, vastl}' disturbing, was brought into
affairs. That death left no heir to the crown in
the Valois line, and the King of Navarre, of the
House of Bourbon, was now nearer in birth to
the throne than any other living person. Henry
had, long ere this, retracted his abjuration of
1572, had rejoined the Huguenots and taken his
place as their chief. The head of the Huguenots
was now the heir presumptive to the crown, and
the wretched, incapable king was being impelled
by his fear of Guise to look to his Huguenot heir
for support. It was a strange situation. In
1588 it underwent a sinister change. Guise and
his brother, the Cardinal, were both assassinated
by the king's bodj'-guard, acting under the
king's orders, in the royal residence at the Castle
of Blois. When tlie murder had been done, the
cowardly king spurned his dead enemy with
his foot, as Guise, sixteen years before, had
spurned the murdered Coligny, and said " I ar.i
King at last. " He was mistaken. His authority
vanished with the vile deed by which he expected
to reinvigorate it. Paris broke into open rebel-
lion. The League renewed its activity through-
out France. The king, abandoned and cursed
on all sides, had now no course open to him but
an alliance with Henry of Navan'e and the
Huguenots. The alliance was effected, and the
two Henrys joined forces to subdue insurgent
Paris. While the siege of the city was in prog-
ress (1589), Henry III. fell a victim, in his turn,
to the murderous mania of his depraved age and
court. He was assassinated by a fanatical monk.
Henry of Navarre.
Henry of Navarre now steps into the fore-
ground of French historj-, as Henry IV., lawful
King of France as well as of Navarre, and ready
to prove his roj'al title b)' a more useful reign
than the French nation had known since it
buried St. Louis, his last ancestor on the throne.
But his title was recognized at first by few out-
side the party of the Huguenots. The League
went openly into alliance with Philip of Spain,
who even half-stopped his war in the Netherlands
to send money and troops into France. The en-
ergies of his insignificant soul were all concen-
trated on the desire to keep the heretical Bear-
nese from the throne of France. But happily
his powers were no longer equal to his malice;
he was still staggering under the blow which de-
stroyed his great Armada.
Henr}' received some help in money from
Queen Elizabeth, and 5,000 English and Scotch
came over to join his army. He was an abler
general than any among his opponents, and he
made headway against them. His splendid vic-
tory at Ivry, on the 14th of March, 1590, inspir-
ited his followers and took heart from the League.
He was driven from his subsequent siege of
Paris hy a Spanish army, under the Duke of
Parma ; but the very interference of the Spanish
king helped to turn French feeling in Henry's
favor. On the 25th of July, 1593, he practically
extinguished the opposition to himself by his
final submission to the Church of Rome. It was
an easy thing for him to do. His religion sat
lightly on him. He had accepted it from his
mother; he had adhered to it — not faithfully —
as the creed of a party. He could give it up, in
exchange for the crown of France, and feel no
trouble of conscience. But the Reformed re-
ligion In France was really benefited by his
apostacy. Peace came to the kingdom, as the
consequence, — a peace of many years, — and the
Huguenots were sheltered in considerable reli-
gious freedom by the peace. Henry secured it to
them in 1598 by the famous Edict of Nantes,
which remained in force for nearly a hundred
years.
1098
EUROPE.
The Thirty Tears
War.
EUROPE.
The reign of Henry FV. was one of the satis-
factory periods in tlie life of France, so far as
concerns the material prosperity of the nation.
He was a man of strong, keen intellect, with
firmness of will and elasticity of temper, bnt
weak on the moral side. He was of those who
win admiration and friendship easily, and he re-
mains traditionally the most popular of French
kings. He had the genius for government
which so rarely coincides with royal birth. A
wise minister, the Duke of Sully, gave stability
to his measures, and between them they suc-
ceeded in remarkably improving and promoting
the agricultural and the manufacturing indus-
tries of France, effacing the destructive effects
of the long civil wars, and bringing economy and
order into the finances of the overburdened na-
tion. His useful career was ended by an assassin
in 1610.
Germany and the Thirty Years War.
The reactionary wars of religion in Germany
came half-a-oentury later than in France. While
the latter country was being torn by the long
civil conflicts which Henry IV. brought to an
end, the former was as nearly in the enjoyment
of religious peace as the miserable contentions in
the bosom of Protestantism, between Lutherans
and Calvinists (the latter more commonly called
"the Reformed "), would permit. On the abdi-
cation of Charles V., in 1556, he had fortunately
failed to bring about the election of his son Philip
to the imperial throne. His brother Ferdinand,
Archduke of Austria and King of Boliemia and
Hungary, was chosen Emperor, and that sover-
eign had too many troubles in his immediate do-
minions to be willing to invite a collision with
the Protestant princes of Germany at large. The
Turks had overrun Hungary and established
themselves in possession of considerable parts of
the country. Ferdinand obtained peace with the
redoubtable Sultan Suleiman, but only by pa_y-
ments of money which bore a strong likeness "to
tribute. He succeeded, through his prudent and
skilful policy, in making both the Hungarian
and the Bohemian crowns practically hereditary
in the House of Austria.
Dying in 1564, Ferdinand transmitted both
those kingdoms, with the Austrian Archduchy
and the imperial office, to his son. Maximilian II.,
the broadest and most liberal minded of his race.
Though educated in Spain, and in companion-
ship with his cousin, Philip II., Ma.ximilian ex-
hibited the most tolerant spirit that appears any-
where in his age. Perhaps it was the hatefulness
of orthodox zeal as exemplified in Philip which
drove the more generous nature of Maximilian
to revolt. He adhered to the Roman commu-
nion ; but he manifested so much respect for the
doctrines of the Lutheran that his father felt
called upon at one time to make apologies for
him to the Pope. Throughout his reign he held
himself aloof from religious disputes, setting an
example of tolerance and spiritual intelligence to
all his subjects, Lutherans, Calvinists and Catho-
lics alike, which ought to have influenced them
more for their good than it did. Under the shel-
ter of the toleration which Maximilian gave it.
Protestantism spread quickly over Austria, where
it had had no opportunity before ; revived the old
Hussite reform in Bohemia ; made great gains in
Hungary, and advanced in all parts of his domin-
ions except the Tyrol. The time permitted to it
for this progress was short, since Maximilian
reigned but twelve years. He died in 1576, and
his son Rudolph, who followed him, brought
evil changes upon the country in all things. He,
too, had been educated in Spain, but with a very
different result. He came back a creature of the
Jesuits; but so weakly wilful a creature that
even they could do little with him. Authority
of government went to pieces in his incompetent
hands, and at last, in 1606, a family conclave of
princes of the Austrian house began measures
which aimed at dispossessing Rudolph of his
various sovereignties, so far as possible, in favor
of his brother Matthias. Rudolph resisted with
some effect, and in the contests which ensued
the Protestants of Austria and Bohemia improved
their opportunity for securing an enlargement of
their rights. Matthias made the concession of
complete toleration in Austria, while Rudolph, in
Bohemia, granted the celebrated charter, called
the Letter of Majesty (1609), which gave entire
religious liberty to all sects.
These concessions were offensive to two princes,
the Archduke Ferdinand of Styria, and Duke
Maximilian of Bavaria, who had already taken
the lead in a vigorous movement of Catholic re-
action. Some proceedings on the part of Maxi-
milian, which the Emperor sanctioned, against
the Protestant free city of Donauw5rth, had
caused certain Protestant princes aAl cities, in
1608, to form a defensive Union. But the Elector
Palatine, who attached himself to the Reformed
or Calvinist Church, was at the head of this
Union, and the bigoted Lutherans, especially
the Elector of Saxony, looked with coldness
upon it. On the other hand, the Catholic states
formed a counter-organization — a Holy League
— which was more compact and effective. The
two parties being thus set in array, there rose
suddenly between them a political question of
the most disturbing character. It related to the
right of succession to an important duchy, that
of Juliers, Clfives, and Berg. There were several
powerful claimants, in both of the Saxon fam-
ilies, and including also the Elector of Bran-
denburg and the Palsgrave of Neuberg, two
members of the Union. As usual, the political
question took possession of the religious issue
and used it for its own purposes. The Protestant
Union opened negotiations with Henry IV. of
France, who saw an opportunity to weaken the
House of Austria and to make some gains for
France at the expense of Germany. A treaty
was concluded, and Henry began active prepara-
tions for campaigns in both Germany and Italy,
with serious intent to humble and diminish the
Austrian power. The Dutch came into the alli-
ance, likewise, and James I. of England prom-
ised his co-operation. The combination was
formidable, and might have changed very exten-
sively the course of events that awaited unhappy
Germany, if the whole plan had not been frus-
trated by the assassination of Henry IV., in 1610.
All the parties to the alliance drew back after
that event, and both sides waited.
In 1611, Rudolph was deposed in Bohemia, and
the following year he died. Matthias, already
King of Hungary, succeeded Rudolph in Bohe-
mia and in the Empire. But Matthias was
scarcely stronger in mind or body than his
Drother, and the same family pressure which had
pushed Rudolph aside now forced Matthias to
accept a coadjutor, in the person of the vigorous
1099
EUROPE.
The Thirty Tears
War.
EUROPE.
Ferdinand, Archduke of Styria. For the remain-
der of his reign Matthias was a cipher, and all
power in the government was exercised by Fer-
dinand. His bitter opposition to the tolerant
policy which had prevailed generally for half-a-
century was well understood. Hence, his rise to
supremacy in the Empire gave notice that the
days of religious peace were ended. The out-
break of civil war was not long in coming.
Beginning of the war in Bohemia.
It began in Bohemia. A violation of the Prot-
estant rights guaranteed by the Letter of Majesty
provoked a rising under Count Thurn. Two of
the king's councilors, with their secretary, were
flung from a high window of the royal castle,
and this act of violence was followed by more
revolutionary measures. A provisional govern-
ment of thirty Directors was set up and the
king's authority set wholly aside. The Protes-
tant Union gave prompt support to the Bohemian
insurrection and sent Count Mansfield with three
thousand soldiers to its aid. The Thirty Years
War was begun (1618).
Early in these disturbances, Matthias died
(1619). Ferdinand had already made his succes-
sion secure, in Austria, Bohemia and Hungary,
and the imperial crown was presently conferred
on him. But the Bohemians repudiated his
kingship and offered their crown to Frederick,
the Elector Palatine, lately married to the Prin-
cess Elizabeth, daughter of James I. of JEngland.
The Elector, persuaded, it is said, by his am-
bitious young wife, unwisely accepted the tempt-
ing bauble, and went to Prague to receive it.
But he had neither prudence nor energy to justifv
his bold undertaking. Instead of strengthening
himself for his contest with Ferdinand, he began
immediately to enrage his new subjects by press-
ing Calvinistic forms and doctrines upon them,
and by arrogantly interfering with their modes
of worship. His reign was so brief that he is
known in Bohemian annals as ' ' the winter king. "
A single battle, won by Count Tilly, in the ser-
vice of the Catholic League and of its chief,
Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria, ended his sover-
eignty. He lost his Electorate as well as his
kingdom, and was a wandering fugitive for the
remainder of his life. Bohemia was mercilessly
dealt with by the victorious Ferdinajid. Not
only was Protestantism crushed, and Catholicism
established as the exclusive religion, but the very
life of the country, intellectually and materially,
was extinguished ; so that Bohemia never again
stood related to the civilization of Europe as it
had stood before, when Prague was an important
center of learning and thought. To a less extent,
Austria suffered the same repression, and its
Protestantism was uprooted.
In this sketch it is unnecessary to follow the
details of the frightful Thirty Years War, which
began as here described. During the first years
it was carried on mainly by the troops of the
Catholic League, under Tilly, acting against Prot-
estant forces which had very little coherence or
unity, and which were led by Count Mansfield,
Christian of Anhalt, and other nobles, in consid-
erable independence of one another. In 163.5 the
first intervention from outside occurred. Chris-
tian IV. of Denmark took up the cause of threat-
ened Protestantism. As Duke of Schleswig-
Holstein, he was a prince of the Empire, and he
joined with other Protestant princes in condemn-
ing the deposition of the Elector-Palatine, whose
electorate had been conferred on Maximilian
of Bavaria. King Christian entered into an al-
liance with England and Holland, which powers
promised help for the reinstatement of the Elec-
tor. But the aid given was trifling, and slight
successes which Christian and his German allies
obtained against Tilly were soon changed to seri-
ous reverses.
Wallenstein.
For the first time during the war, the Emperor
now brought into the field an army acting in his
own name, and not in that of the League. It
was done in a singular manner — by contract, so
to speak, with a gr^at soldier and wealthy noble-
man, the famous Wallenstein. Wallenstein of-
fered to the Emperor the services of an army of
50,000 men, which he would raise and equip at
his own expense, and which should be maintained
without public cost — that is, by plunder. His
proposal was accepted, and the formidable body
of trained and powerfully handled brigands was
launched upon Germany, for the torture and de-
struction of every region in which it moved. It
was the last appearance in European warfare of
the "condottiere " of the Middle Ages. Wallen-
stein and Tilly swept all before them. The
former failed only before the stubborn town of
Stralsund, which defied his siege. Mansfield
and Christian of Anhalt both died in 1627. Peace
was forced upon the Danish king. The Protes-
tant cause was prostrate, and the Emperor de-
spised its weakness so far that he issued an
"Edict of Restitution," commanding the sur-
render of certain bishoprics and ecclesiastical
estates which had fallen into Protestant hands
since the Treaty of Passau. At the same time,
he yielded to the jealousy which Wallenstein's
power had excited, by dismissing that commander
from his service.
Gustavus Adolphus.
The time was an unfavorable one for such an
experiment. A new and redoubtable champion of
Protestantism had just appeared on the scene
and was about to revive the war. "This was
Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, who had
ambitions, grievances and religious sympathies,
all urging him to rescue the Protestant states of
Germany from the Austrian-Catholic despotism
which seemed to be impending over them. His
interference was jealously resented at first by
the greater Protestant princes. The Elector of
Brandenburg submitted to an alliance with him
only under compulsion. The Elector of Saxony
did not join the Swedish king until (1631) Tilly
had ravaged his territories with ferocity, burning
200 villages. When Gustavus had made his foot-
ing in the country secure, he quickly proved
himself the greatest soldier of his age. Tilly
was overwhelmed in a battle fought on the
Breitenfeld, at Leipsic. The following spring he
was again beaten, on the Lech, m Bavaria, and
died of wounds received in the battle. Mean-
time, the greater part of Germany was at the
feet of the Swedish king ; and a sincere co-opera-
tion between him and the German princes would
probably have ended the war. But small con-
fidence existed between these allies, and Riche-
lieu, the shrewd Cardinal who was ruling France,
had begun intrigues which made the Thirty
Years War profitable in tlie end to France. The
1100
EUROPE.
Peace of
Westphalia.
EUROPE.
victories of Gustavus seemed to bear little fruit.
Wallenstein was summoned once more to save
the Emperor's cause, and reappeared in tlie field
with 40,000 men. The heroic Swede fought liini
at Liitzen, on the 16th of November, 1633, and
routed him, but fell in the battle among the slain.
With the death of Gustavus Adolphus, the
possibility of a satisfactory conclusion of tlie
war vanished. The Swedish army remained in
Germany, under the military command of Duke
Bernhard of Saxe Weimar and General Horn,
but under the political direction of Axel Oxen-
stiern, the able Swedish Chancellor. On the Im-
perial side, Wallenstein again incurred distrust
and suspicion. His power was so formidable
that his enemies were afraid to let him live.
They plotted his death by assassination, and he
was murdered on the 25th of February, 1634.
The Emperor's son Ferdinand now took the com-
mand of the Imperial forces, and, a few months
later, having received reinforcements from Spain,
he had the good fortune to defeat the Swedes at
N5rdlingen.
The French in the War.
The Elector of Saxony, and other Protestant
princes, then made peace with the Emperor, and
the war was only prolonged by the intrigues of
Richelieu and for the aggrandizement of Prance.
In this final stage of it, when the original ele-
ments of contention, and most of the original
contestants, had disappeared, it lasted for yet
fourteen years. Ferdinand II. died in 1637, and
was succeeded by his son Ferdinand III. Duke
Bernhard died in 1639. In the later years of
the war, Piccolomini on the Imperial side, Baner,
Torstenson and Wrangel at the head of the
Swedes, and Turenne and Conde in command of
the French, were the soldiers who made great
names.
Destructiveness of the War.
In 1648, the long suffering of Germany was
eased by the Peace of AVestphalia. Years of
quiet, and of order fairly restored, would be
needed to heal the bleeding wounds of the coun-
try and revive its strength. From end to end, it
had been trampled upon for a generation by
armies which plundered and destroyed as they
passed. There is notliing more sickening in the
annals of war than the descriptions which eye-
witnesses have left of the misery, the horror, the
desolation of that frightful period in German
history. "Especially in the south and west,
Germany was a wilderness of ruins ; places that
were formerly the seats of prosperity were the
haunts of wolves and robbers for many a long
year. It is estimated that the population was
diminished by twenty, by some even by fifty, per
cent. The population of Augsburg was reduced
from 80,000 to 18,000; of Frankentlial, from
18,000 to 324 inhabitants. In Wurtemberg, in
1641, of 400,000 inhabitants, 48,000 remained; in
the Palatinate, in 1636, there were 201 pea.sant
farmers ; and in 1648, but a fiftieth part of the
population remained' (Hilusser).
The Peace of Westphalia.
By the treaties of Westphalia, the religious
question was settled with finality. Catholics,
Lutherans, and the Reformed (Calvinists), were
put on an equal footing of religious liberty.
Politically, the effects of the Peace were radical
and lasting in their injury to the German people.
The few bonds of Germanic unity which had
survived the reign of feudalism were dissolved.
The last vestige of autliority in the Empire was
destroyed. "From this time German}' long re-
mained a mere lax confederation of petty despot-
isms and oligarchies witli hardly any national
feeling. Its boundaries too were cut short in
various ways. The independence of the two free
Confederations at tlie two ends of the Empire,
those of Switzerland and the United Provinces,
wliicli had long been practically cut off from the
Empire, was now formally acknowledged. And,
what was far more important, the two foreign
kingdoms which had had the chief share in the
war, Prance and Sweden, obtained possessions
within the Empire, and moreover, as guarantors
or sureties of the peace, they obtained a general
right of meddling in its affairs." "Tlie right of
Prance to the "Three Lotharingian Bishoprics,'
which had been seized nearly a hundred years be-
fore, was now formally acknowledged, and, be-
sides this, the possessions and rights of the House
of Austria in Elsass, the German land between
the Rhine and the Vosges, called in Prance Al-
sace, were given to France. The free city of
Strasburg and other places in Elsass still re-
mained independent, but the whole of South
Germany now lay open to France. This was the
greatest advance that France had yet made at
the expense of the Empire. Within Germany
itself the Elector of Brandenburg also received
a large increase of territory " (Freeman).
Among tlie treaties which made up the Peace
of Westphalia was one signed by Spain, acknowl-
edging the independence of the United Provinces,
and renouncing all claims to them.
France under Richelieu.
The great gains of France from the Thirty
Years AVar were part of tlie fruit of bold and
cunning statesmanship which Richelieu had ri-
]5ened and plucked for that now rising nation.
For a time after the death of Henry IV., chaos
had seemed likely to return again in France. His
son, Louis XIII., was but nine years old. The
mother, Marie de' Medici, who secured the re-
gency, was a foolish woman, ruled by Italian
favorites, who made themselves odious to the
French people. As soon as the young king ap-
proached manhood, he put himself in opposition
to his mother and her favorites, under the in-
fluence of a set of rivals no more worthy, and
Prance was carried to the verge of civil war by
tlieir puerile hostilities. Happily there was
something in the weak character of Louis XIII.
which bent him under the influence of a really
great mind wlien circumstances had brought him
within its reach. Richelieu entered the King's
council in 1624. The king was soon an instru-
ment in his hands, and he ruled France, as though
the scepter was his own, for eigliteen years. He
was as pitiless a despot as ever set heel on a na-
tion's neck; but the power which he grasped
with what seemed to be a miserly and common-
place greed, was all gathered for the aggran-
dizement of the monarchy that he served. He
believed that the nation needed to have one
master, sole and unquestioned in his sovereignty.
That he enjoyed being that one master, in reality,
while he lived, is hardly doubtful ; but liis wliole
ambition is not so explained. He wrought ac-
cording to his belief for Prance, and the king,
1101
EUROPE.
Richelieu and
Mazarin.
EUROPE.
in his eyes, was the embodiment of France. He
erected the pedestal on which ' ' the grand mon-
arch " of the next generation posed with theatri-
cal effect.
Three things Richelieu did : 1. He enforced
the royal authority, with inexorable rigor, against
the great families and personages, who had not
learned, even under Henry IV., that they were
subjects in the absolute sense. 3. He struck
the Huguenots, not as a religious sect, but as a
political party, and peremptorily stopped their
growth of strength in that character, which had
clearly become threatening to the state. 3. He
organized hostility in Europe to the overbearing
and dangerous Austro-Spanish power, put France
at the head of it, and took for her the lion's
share of the conquests by which the Hapsburgs
were reduced.
Mazarin and the Fronde.
The great Cardinal died near the close of the
year 1643 ; and Louis XIU. followed him to the
grave in the succeeding May, leaving a son, Louis
XIV., not yet five years of age, under the re-
gency of his mother, Anne of Austria. The min-
ister. Cardinal Mazarin, who enjoyed the confi-
dence of the queen-regent, and who was sup-
posed to enjoy her affections as well, had been
Richelieu's disciple, and took the helm of gov-
ernment on Richelieu's recommendation. He
was an adroit politician, with some statesmanlike
sagacity, but he lacked the potent spirit by which
his master had awed and ruled every circle into
which he came, great or small. Mazarin had the
Thirty Years War to bring to a close, and he man-
aged the difficult business with success, wasting
nothing of the effect of the brilliant victories of
Conde and Turenne. But the war had been
very costly. Mazarin was no better financier
than Richelieu had been before him, and the bur-
dens of taxation were greater than wise manage-
ment would have made them. There was inev-
itable discontent, and Mazarin, as a foreigner,
was inevitably unpopular. With public feeling
in this state, the Court involved itself in a fool-
ish conflict with the Parliament of Paris, and
presently there was a Paris revolution and a civil
war afoot (1649). It was a strange affair of froth
and empty rages — this war of "The Fronde, "as
it was called — having no depth of earnestness
in it and no honesty of purpose anywhere visible
in its complications. The men and women wlio
sprang to a lead in it — the women more actively
and rancorously than the men — were mere actors
of parts in a great play of court intrigue, for the
performance of which unhappy France had lent
its grand stage. There seems to have been never,
in any other civil conflict which history describes,
so extraordinary a mixture of treason and lib-
ertinism, of political and amorous intrigue, of
heartlessness and frivolity, of hot passion and
cool selfishness. The people wlio fought most
and suffered most hardly appear as noticeable
factors in the contest. The court performers
amused themselves with the stratagems and
bloody doings of the war as they might have
done with the tricks of a masquerade.
It was in keeping witli the character of the
Frondeurs that they went into alliance, at last,
with Spain, and that, even after peace within the
nation had been restored, "the Great Conde" re-
mained in the Spanish service and fought against
his own countrymen. Mazarin regained control
of affairs, and managed them on the whole ably
and well. He brought about an alliance with
England, under Cromwell, and humbled Spain to
the acceptance of a treaty which considerably
raised the position of France among the Euro-
pean Powers. By this Treaty of the Pyrenees
(1659), the northwestern frontier of the kingdom
was both strengthened and advanced ; Lorraine
was shorn of some of its territory and prepared
for the absorption which followed after no long
time ; there were gains made on the side of the
Pyrenees; and, finally, Louis XIV. was wedded
to the infanta of Spain, with solemn renuncia-
tions on her part, for herself and her descendants,
of all claims upon the Spanish crown, or upon
Flanders, or Burgundy, or Charolais. Not a
claim was extinguished by these solemn renun-
ciations, and the Treaty of the Pyrenees is made
remarkable by the number of serious wars and
important events to which it gave rise.
Cardinal Mazarin died in 1661 and the govern-
ment was assumed personally by Louis XIV.,
then twenty-three years old.
England Under the Stuarts.
While Germany and France had, each in turn,
been disordered by extremely unlike civil wars,
one to the unmitigated devastation and prostra-
tion of the laAH, the other to the plain putting in
proof of the nothingness of the nation at large, as
against its monarchy and court, the domestic
peace of England had been ruffled in a very dif-
ferent way, and with very different effects.
The death of Queen Elizabeth united the crown
of England witli that of Scotland, on the head
of James, son of the unhappy Mary Stuart. In
England he was James I. , in Scotland James VI.
His character combined shrewdness in some direc-
tions with the most foolish simplicity in others.
He was not vicious, he was not in any particular a
bad man ; but he was exasperating in his opin-
ionated self-conceit, and in his gaueheries of mind
and body. The Englishmen of those days did
not love the Scots; and, all things considered,
we may wonder, perhaps, that James got on so
well as he did with his English subjects. He
had high notions of kingsliip, and a superlativ»e
opinion of his own king-craft, as he termed tlie
art of government. He scarcely deviated from
the arbitrary lines which Elizabeth had laid
down, though he Iiad nothing of Elizabeth's
popularity. He offended the nation by truckling
to its old enemy, the King of Spain, and pressing
almost shamefully for a marriage of his elder son
to the Spanisli infanta. The favorites he en-
riched and lavished honors upon were insolent
upstarts. His treatment of the growing Puritan-
ism in English religious feeling was contemptu-
ous. There was scarcely a point on which any
considerable number of his subjects could feel in
agreement with him, or entertain towards him
a cordial sentiment of loyalty or respect. Yet
his reign of twenty-two years was disturbed by
nothing more serious than the fatuous ' ' gun-
powder plot" (160.5) of a few discontented Catho-
lics. But his son had to suffer the retarded con-
sequences of a loyalty growing weak, on one side,
while royalty strained its prerogatives on the
other.
The reign of James I. witnessed the effective
beginnings of Englisli colonization in America, —
the planting of a durable settlement in Virginia
and the migration of the Pilgrim Fathers to New
1102
EUROPE.
England
under the Stuarts.
EUROPE.
England. The latter movement (1620) was one
of voluntary exile, produced by the hard treat-
ment inflicted on those "Separatists" or "Inde-
pendents " who could not reconcile themselves to
a state-established Church. Ten years later, the
Pilgrim movement, of Independents, was fol-
lowed by the greater migration of Puritans —
quite different in class, in character and in spirit.
Charles I.
James died in 1633, and the troubled reign of
his son, Charles I., began. Charles took over
from his father a full measure of popular dis-
content, along with numerous active springs in
operation for increasing it. The most productive
of these was the favorite, Buckingham, who
continued to be the sole counselor and minister
of the young king, as he had been of the older
one, and who was utterly hateful to England, for
good reasons of incapacity and general worth-
lessness. In the king himself, though he had
virtues, there was a coldness and a falsity of
nature which were sure to widen the breach be-
tween him and his people.
Faihng the Spanish marriage, Charles had
wedded (1634) a French princess, Henrietta Ma-
ria, sister of Louis XIII. The previous subser-
viency to Spain had then been followed by a
war with that country, which ca#e to Charles
among his inheritances, and which Buckingham
mismanaged, to the shame of England. In 1637
another war began, but this time with France,
on account of the Huguenots besieged at La
Rochelle. Again the meddlesome hand of Buck-
ingham wrought disaster and national disgrace,
and public indignation was greatly stirred.
When Parliament endeavored to call the in-
capable minister to account, and to obtain some
security for a better management of affairs, the
king dissolved it. Twice was this done, and
Charles and his favorite employed every arbi-
trary and questionable device that could be con-
trived for them, to raise money without need of
the representatives of the people. At length, in
1638, they were driven to face a third Parlia-
ment, in order to obtain supplies. By this time
the Commons of England were wrought up to a
high and determined assertion of their rights, as
against the Crown, and the Puritans had gained
a majority in the popular representation. In the
lower House of Parliament, therefore, the de-
mands of the king for money were met by a coun-
ter-demand for guarantees to protect the people
from royal encroachments on their liberties.
The Commons were resolute, and Charles gave
way to them, signing with mucli reluctance the
famous instrument known as the ' ' Petition of
Right," which pledged the Crown to abstain in
future from forced loans, from ta.xes imposed
without Parliamentary grant, from arbitrary im-
prisonments, without cause shown, and from
other despotic proceedings. In return for his
signature to the Petition of Right, Charles re-
ceived a grant of money ; but the Commons
refused to authorize his collection of certain
customs duties, called Tonnage and Poundage,
beyond a single year, and it began attacks on
Buckingham, — whereupon the king prorogued
it. Shortly afterwards Buckingham was assas-
sinated ; a second expedition to relieve Rochelle
failed miserably ; and early in 1639 Parliament
was assembled again. This time the Puritan
temper of the House began to show itself in
measures to put a stop to some revivals of an-
cient ceremony which had appeared in certain
churches. At the same time officers of the king,
who had seized goods belonging to a member of
the House, for non-payment of Tonnage and
Poundage, were summoned to the bar to answer
for it. The king protected them, and a direct
conflict of authority arose. On the 3d of March,
the king sent an order to the Speaker of the
House of Commons for adjournment; but the
Speaker was forcibly held in his chair, and not
permitted to announce the adjournment, until
three resolutions had been read and adopted, de-
nouncing as an enemy to the kingdom every
person who brought in innovations in religion,
or who advised the levying of Tonnage and
Poundage without parliamentary grant, or who
voluntarily paid such duties, so levied. This
done, the members dispersed ; the king dissolved
Parliament immediately, and his resolution was
taken to govern England thenceforth on his own
authority, with no assembly of the representa-
tives of the people to question or criticise him.
He held to that determination for eleven years,
during which long time no Parliament sat in
England, and the Constitution was practically
obliterated.
The leaders of the Commons in their recent
proceedings were arrested and imprisoned. Sir
John Eliot, the foremost of them, died in harsh
confinement within tlie Tower, and others were
held in long custody, refusing to recognize the
jurisdiction of the king's judges over things done
in Parliament.
Wentworth and Laud.
One man, of great ability, who had stood at the
beginning with Sir John Eliot, and acted with
the party which opposed the king, now went
over to the side of the latter and rose high in
royal favor, until he came in the end to be held
chiefly responsible for the extreme absolutism to
which the government of Charles was pushed.
This was Sir Thomas Wentworth, made Earl of
Strafford at a later day, in the tardy rewarding of
his services. But William Laud, Bishop of Lon-
don, and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury,
was the evil counselor of the king, much more
than Wentworth, in the earlier years of the dec-
ade of tyrannj'. It was Laud's part to organize
the system of despotic monarchy on its ecclesias-
tical side; to uproot Puritanism and all dissent,
and to cast religion for England and for Scotland
in one mould, as rigid as that of Rome.
For some years, the English nation seemed ter-
rorized or stupefied by the audacity of the com-
plete overthrow of its Constitution. The king
and his servants might easily imagine that the
day of troublesome Parliaments and of inconve-
nient laws was passed. At least in those early
years of their success, it can scarcely have oc-
curred to their minds that a time of accounting
for broken laws, and for the violated pledges of
the Petition of Right, might come at the end.
At all events they went their way with seeming
satisfaction, and tested, year by year, the patient
endurance of a people which has always been
slow to move. Their courts of Star Chamber and
of High Commission, finding a paramount law
in the will and pleasure of tlie king, imprisoned,
fined, pilloried, flogged and mutilated in quite
the spirit of the Spanish Inquisition, though they
did not burn. They collected Tonnage and
1103
EUROPE.
Civil War
in England.
Poundage without parliamentary consent, and
servile iudees enforced the payment. Ihey in-
vented a claim for " ship-money ". (m commuta-
tion of an ancient demand for ships to serve in
the King's navy) from inland towns and counties,
as well as from the commercial ports; and when
John Hampden, a squire in Buckinghamshire, re-
fused payment of the unlawful tax, their ohedient
iudges gave judgment against him And still
the people endured; but they were laying up in
memory many things, and gathering a store ot
reasons for the action that would by and by
be ''in
" Rebellion in Scotland.
At last, it was Scotland, not England, that
moved to rebel. Laud and the king had de-
termined to break down Presbyterianisni in the
northern kingdom and to force a Prayer Book on
the Scottish Church. There was a consequent
riot at St. Giles, In Edinburgh (1637); Jenny
Geddes threw her stool at the bishop, and Scot-
land presently was in revolt, signing a National
Covenant and defying the king. Charles at-
tempting to frighten the resolute Scots with an
army which he could not pay, was soon driven
to a treaty with them (1639) which he had not
honesty enough to keep. Wentworth who had
been Lord Deputy of Ireland since 1632, and
who had framed a model of absolutism in that
island for the admiration of his colleagues in
England, now returned to the king's side and
became his chief adviser. He counselled the
callin'' of a Parliament, as the only means by
which English help could be got for the restor-
ing of royal authority in Scotland. The Parlia-
ment was summoned and met in April, lb4U. At
once it showed a temper which alarmed the
kino- and he dissolved it in three weeks. _ Again
Charles made the attempt to put down his Scot-
tish subjects without help from an English Par-
liament, and again the attempt failed.
EUROPE.
Civil ■War.
The Long Parliament.
Then the desperate king summoned another
Parliament, which concentrated in itself, when it
came together, the suppressed rebellion that had
been in the heart of England for ten years, and
which broke his flimsy fabric of absolutism, al-
most at a single blow. It was the famous Long
Parliament of English history, which met in No-
vember 1640, and which ruled England for a
dozen years, until it gave way to the Cromwellian
dictatorship. It sent Laud and Strafford to the
Tower impeached the latter and brought him to
the block, within six months from the beginning
of its session; and the king gave up his minister
to the vengeance of the angry Commons with
hardly one honest attempt to protect him. Laud
waited in prison five years before he suffered the
same fate. The Parliament declared itself to be
indissoluble by any royal command; and the
king assented. It abolished the Star Chamber
and the Court of High Commission; and the
king approved. It swept ship-money, and forest
claims and all of Charles' lawless money-getting
devices into the limbo; and he put his signature
to its bills But all the time he was intriguing
with the Scots for armed help to overtlirow his
masterful English Parliament, and he was listen-
ino- to Irish emissaries who oflfered an army for
the same purpose, on condition that Ireland
should be surrendered to the Catholics.
Charles had arranged nothing on either of these
treacherous plans, nor had he gained anything yet
from the division between radicals and moderates
that was beginning to show itself in the popular
party, when he suddenly brought the strained
situation to a crisis, in January, 1643, by his
most foolish and arrogant act. He invaded the
House of Commons in person, with a large body
of armed men, for the purpose of arresting five
members — Pym, Hampden, Holies, Hazlerigg
and Strode — whom he accused of having nego-
tiated treasonably with the Scots in 1640. The
five members escaped ; the House appealed to the
citizens of London for protection; king and
Parliament began immediately to raise troops;
the nation divided and arrayed itself on the two
sides— most of the gentry, the Cavahers, sup-
porting the king, and most of the Puritan mid-
dle-class, wearing close-cut hair and receiving
the name Roundheads, being ranged in the party
of Parliament. Thev came to blows in October,
when the first battle was fought, at Edgehill.
In the early period of the war, the parliamen-
tary forces were commanded by the Earl of Essex ;
and Sir Thomas Fairfax was their general at a
later stage ; but tlie true leader on that side, tor
war and for politics alike, was soon found in
Oliver Cromwell, a member of Parliament, whose
extraordinary capacity was first shown in the
military organization of the Eastern Counties,
from which he came. After 1645, when the
army was remodeled, with Cromwell as second
in rank his real chieftainship was scarcely dis-
guised The decisive battle of the war was
fought that year at Naseby, where the king s
cause suffered an irrecoverable defeat.
The Presbyterians of Scotland had now allied
themselves with the English Roundheads on con-
dition that the Church of England should be re-
modeled in the Presbyterian form. The Puri-
tan majority in Parliament being favorable to
that form, a Solemn League and Covenant be-
tween the two nations had been entered into, m
1643 and an Assembly of Divmes was convened
at Westminster to frame the contemplated sys-
tem of the Church. But tlie Independents, who
disliked Presbyterianism, and who were more
tolerantly inclined in their views, had greatly in-
creased in numbers, and some of the stronger
men on the Parliament side, including Cromwell,
the strongest of all, were among them. Ihis
difference brought about a sharp struggle withm
the popular party for the control of the fruits ot
the triumph now beginning to seem secure
Under Cromwell, the Army became a powerful
organization of religious Independency, while
Parliament sustained Presbyterianism, and the
two stood against each other as rival powers in
At the beginning of the year 1646 the fortunes
of Charles had fallen very low. His partisan,
Montrose, in Scotland, had been beaten; his in-
trio-ues in Ireland, for the raising of a Catholic
army had only alarmed and disgusted his Eng-
lish friends; he was at the end of his resources,
and he gave himself up to the Scots. The latter,
in coniunction with the Presbyterian ma3ority in
Parliament, were willing to make terms with
him and restore him to his throne, on conditions
whiih included the signing of the Covenant
and the establishing of Presbyterianism in the
1104
EUEOPE.
Commonwealth, Pro-
tectorate, and Restoration.
EUROPE.
Churches of both kingdoms. He refused the
proposal, being dehided by a belief that the
quarrel of Independents and Presbyterians would
open his way to the recovery of power without
any concessions at all. The Scots then surren-
dered him to the English, and he was held in con-
finement by the latter for the next two years,
scheming and pursuing intrigues iu many direc-
tions, and convincing all who dealt with him that
his purposes were never straightforward — that
he was faithless and false to the core.
Ill-will and suspicion, meanwhile, were widen-
ing the breach between Parliament and the
Army. Political and religious agitators were
gaining influence in the latter and republican
ideas were spreading fast. At length (Decem-
ber, 1648), the Army took matters into its own
hands ; expelled from Parliament those members
who favored a reconciliation with the king, on
the basis of a Presbyterian establishment of the
Church, and England passed under military rule.
The "purged " Parliament (or rather the purged
House of Commons, which now set the House of
Lords aside, declaring itself to be the sole and
supreme power in the state) brought King
Charles to trial in the following month, before a
High Court of Justice created for the occasion.
He was convicted of treason, in making war
upon his subjects, and was beheaded on the 30tli
of January, 1649.
The Commonwealth and the Protectorate.
The king being thus disposed of, the House
of Commons proclaimed England a Common-
wealth, "without a King or House of Lords,"
took to itself the name of Parliament, and ap-
pointed an executive Council of State, forty-one
in number. The new government, in its first
year, had a rebellion in Ireland to deal with, and
sent Cromwell to the scene. He crushed it with
a merciless hand. The next year Scotland was
in arms, for the late king's son, now called
Charles II., who had entered the country, ac-
cepted Presbyterianism, and signed the Cove-
nant. Again Cromwell was the man for the oc-
casion, and in a campaign of two months he
ended the Scottish war, with such decision that
he had no more fighting to do on English or
Scottish soil while he lived. There was war
with the Dutch iul653, 1653 and 1654, over ques-
tions of trade, and the long roll of English naval
victories was opened by the great soldier-seaman,
Robert Blake.
But the power which upheld and carried for-
ward all things at this time was the power of
Oliver Cromwell, master of the Army, and, there-
fore, master of the Commonwealth. The surviv-
ing fragment of the Long Parliament was an
anomaly, a fiction; men called it "the Rump."
In April, 1653, Cromwell drove the members of
it from their chamber and formally took to him-
self the reins of government which in fact he had
been holding before. A few months later he re-
ceived from his immediate supporters the title of
Lord Protector, and an Instrument of Govern-
ment was framed, which served as a constitution
during the next three years. Cromwell was as
unwilling as Charles had been to share the gov-
ernment with a freely elected and representative
Parliament. The first House which he called to-
gether was dissolved at the end of five months
(1655), because it persisted in discussing a revision
of the constitution. His second Parliament,
1105
which he summoned the following year, required
to be purged by the arbitrary exclusion of about
a hundred members before it could be brought
to due submission. This tractable body then
made certain important changes in the constitu-
tion, by an enactment called the ' ' Humble Petition
and Advice." It created a second house, to take
the place of the House of Lords, and gave to the
Lord Protector the naming of persons to be life-
members of such upper house. It also gave to
the Protector the right of appointing his own
successor, a right which Cromwell exercised on
his death-bed, in 1658, by designating his son
Richard.
The responsible rule of Cromwell, from the ex-
pulsion of the Rump and his assumption of the
dignity of Lord Protector, covered only the
period of five years. But in that brief time he
made the world respect the power of England as
it had never been respected before. His govern-
ment at home was as absolute and arbitrary as
the government of the Stuarts, but it was infi-
nitely wiser and more just. Cromwell was a
statesman of the higher order; a man of vast
power, in intellect and will. That he did not
belong to the yet higher order of commanding
men, whose statesmanship is pure in patriotism
and uncolored by selfish aims, is proved by his
failure to even plan a more promising settlement
of the government of England than that which
left it, an anomalous Protectorate, to a man with-
out governing qualities, who happened to be his
son.
Restoration of the Stuarts.
Richard Cromwell was brushed aside after
eight months of an absurd attempt to play the
part of Lord Protector. The officers of the Army
and the resuscitated Rump Parliament, between
them, managed affairs, in a fashion, for almost a
year, and then they too were pushed out of the
way by the army which had been stationed in
Scotland, under General George Monk. By the
action of Monk, with the consent, and with more
than the consent, of England at large, the Stuart
monarchy was restored. Charles II. was invited
to return, and in May, 1660, he took his seat on
the re-erected throne.
The nation, speaking generally, was tired of a
military despotism; tired of Puritan austerity;
tired of revolution and political uncertainty ; —
so tired that it threw itself down at the feet of
the most worthless member of the most worthless
royal family in its history, and gave itself up to
him without a condition or a guarantee. For
twenty -five years it endured both oppression and
disgrace at his hands. It suffered him to make
a brothel of his Court; to empty the national
purse into the pockets of his shameless mistresses
and debauched companions ; to revive the eccle-
siastical tyranny of Laud; to make a crime of
the religious creeds and the worship of more than
half his subjects; to sell himself and sell the
honor of England to the king of France for a
secret pension, and to be in every possible way
as ignoble and despicable as his father had been
arrogant and false. When he died, in 1685, the
prospects of the English nation were not im-
proved by the accession of his brother, the Duke
of York, who became James II. James had more
honesty than his brother or his father; but the
narrowness and meanness of the Stuart race were
in his blood. He had made himself intolerable.
EUROPE.
William of Orange
and his House.
EUROPE.
to his subjects, both English and Scotch, by en-
tering the Catholic Church, openly, while Charles
was believed to have done the same in secret.
His religion was necessarily bigotry, because of
the smallness of his nature, and he opposed it to
the Protestantism of the kingdom with a kind of
brutal aggressiveness. In the first year of his
reign there was a rebellion undertaken, in the in-
terest of a bastard son of Charles II., called
Duke of Monmouth; but it was savagely put
down, first by force of arms, at Sedgemoor, and
afterwards by the " bloody assizes " of the ruth-
less Judge Jeffreys. Encouraged by this success
against his enemies James began to ignore the
' • Test Act, " which excluded Catholics from office,
and to suiTound himself by men of his own re-
ligion. The Test Act was an unrighteous law,
and the "Declaration of Indulgence" which
James issued, for the toleration of Catholics and
Dissenters, was just in principle, according to the
ideas of later times ; but the action of the king
with respect to both was, nevertheless, a gross
and threatening violation of law. England had
submitted to worse conduct from Charles II., but
its Protestant temper was now roused, and the
loyalty of the subject was consumed by the
fierceness of the Churchman's wrath. James'
daughter, Mary, and her husband, William,
Prince of Orange, were invited from Holland to
come over and displace the obnoxious father
from his throne. They accepted the invitation,
November, 1688; the nation rose to welcome
them; James fled, — and the great Revolution,
which ended arbitrary monarchy in England for-
ever, and established constitutional government
on clearly defined and lasting bases, was accom-
plished without the shedding of a drop of blood.
The House of Orange and the Dutch Republic.
William of Orange, who thus acquired a place
in the line of English kings, held, at the same
time, the nearly regal office of Stadtholder of
Holland ; but the office had not remained con-
tinuously in his family since William the Silent,
whose great-grandson he was. Maurice, the son
of the murdered William the Silent, had been
chosen to the stadtholdership after his father's
death, and had carried forward his father's work
with success, so far as concerned the liberation of
the United Provinces from the Spanish yoke.
He was an abler soldier than William, but not
his equal as a statesman, nor as a man. The
greater statesman of the period was John of
Barneveldt, between whom and the Stadtholder
an opposition grew up which produced jealousy
and hostility, more especially on the part of the
latter. A shameful religious conflict had arisen
at this time between the Calvinists, who num-
bered most of the clergy in their ranks, and a
dissenting body, led by Jacob Hermann, or Ar-
niinius, which protested against the doctrine of
predestination. Barneveldt favored the Armin-
ians. The Stadtholder, Jlaurice, without any
apparent theological conviction in the matter,
threw his whole weight of influence on the side
of the Calvinists; and was able, with the help of
the Calvinist preachers, to carry the greater part
of the common people into that faction. The
Arminians were everywhere put down as heretics,
barred from preaching or teaching, and otherwise
silenced and ill treated. It is a singular fact
that, at the very time of this outburst of C'al-
vinistic fury, the Dutch were exhibiting other-
wise a far more tolerant temper in religion than
any other people in Europe, and had thrown open
their country as a place of shelter for the perse-
cuted of other lands, — both Christian sectaries
and Jews. We infer, necessarily, that the bitter-
ness of the Calvinists against the Arminians was
more political than religious in its source, and
that the source is realh^ traceable to the fierce
ambition of Prince Maurice, and the passion of
the party which supported his suspicious politi-
cal aims.
Barneveldt lost influence as the consequence of
the Calvinistic triumph, and was exposed help-
lessly to the vindictive hatred of Prince Maurice,
who did not scruple to cause his arrest, his trial
and execution (1619), on charges which none be-
lieved. Maurice, whose memory is blackened by
this great crime, died in 1625, and was succeeded
by his half-brother, Frederic Henry. The war
with Spain had been renewed in 1631, at the end
of the twelve years truce, and more than willingly
renewed; for the merchant class, and the mari-
time interest in the cities which felt secure, pre-
ferred war to peace. Under a hostile flag they
pushed their commerce into Spanish and Portu-
guese seas from which a treaty of peace would
undoubtedly exclude them; and, so long as
Spanish American silver fleets were afloat, the
spoils of ocean war were vastly enriching. It
was during these years of war that the Dutch
got their footing on the farther sides of the world,
and nearly won the mastery of the sea which
their slower but stronger English rivals wrested
from them in the end. Not until the general
Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, was a final settle-
ment of issues between Spain and the United
Provinces brought about. The freedom and in-
dependence of the Provinces, as sovereign states,
was then acknowledged by the humbled Span-
iard, and favorable arrangements of trade were
conceded to them. The southern, Catholic
Provinces, which Spain had held, were retained in
their subjection to her.
Frederic Henry, the third Stadtholder, was suc-
ceeded in 1647 by his son, William II, The latter
wasted his short career of less than four years in
foolish plotting to revolutionize the government
and transform the stadtholdership into a mon-
archy, supported by France, for the help of
which country he seemed willing to pay any base
and treasonable price. Dying suddenly in the
midst of his scheming, he left an unborn son —
the future William III. of England — who came
into the world a week after his father had left it.
Under these circumstances the stadtholdership
was suspended, with strong feelings against the
revival of it, resulting from the conduct of Wil-
liam II. The lesser provinces then fell under
the domination of Holland — so much so that the
name of Holland began soon to be applied to the
confederation at large, and is very commonly
used with that meaning for a long subsequent
time. The chief minister of the Estates of Hol-
land, known as the Grand Pensionary, became
the practical head of the federal government.
After 1653 the office of Grand Pensionary was
filled by a statesman of high ability, John de
Witt, the chief end of whose policy appears to
have been the prevention of the return of
the House of Orange to power. The govern-
ment thus administered, and controlled by the
commercial class, was successful in promoting
the general prosperity of the provinces, and in
1106
EUROPE.
The rise of
Prussia,
EUROPE.
advancing their maritime importance and power.
It conducted two wars with England — one with
the Commonwealth and one with the restored
monarchy — and could claim at least an equal
share of the naval glory won in each. But it
neglected tlie land defense of the country, and
was found shamefully unprepared in 1672, when
the Provinces were attacked by a villainous com-
bination, formed between Louis XIV. of France
and his servile pensioner, Charles II. of England.
The republic, humbled and distressed by the
rushing conquests of the French, fixed its hopes
upon the young Prince of Orange, heir to the
prestige of a great historic name, and turned
its wrath against the party of De Witt. The
Prince was made Stadtholder, despite the oppo-
sition of John de Witt, and the latter, with his
brother Cornelius, was murdered by a mob at Am-
sterdam. William of Orange proved both wise
and heroic as a leader, and the people were roused
to a new energy of resistance by his appeals and
his example. They cut their dykes and flooded
the land, subjecting themselves to unmeasured
loss and distress, but peremptorily stopping the
French advance, until time was gained for awaken-
ing public feeling in Europe against the aggres-
sions of the unscrupulous French king. Then
William of Orange began that which was to be
his great and important mission in life, — the or-
ganizing of resistance to Louis XIV. Without
the foresight and penetration of French designs
which he evinced, — without his unflagging exer-
tions for the next thirty years, — without his diplo-
matic tact, his skill of management, his patience
in war, his obstinate perseverance, — it seems to
be a certainty that tlie ambitious "grand mon-
arch," concentrating the whole power of France
in himself, would have been able to break the
surrounding nations one by one, and they would
not have combined their strength for an effective
self-protection. The revolution of 1688-9 in
England, which gave the crown of that kingdom
to William, and his wife Mary, contributed greatly
to his success, and was an event nearly as impor-
tant in European politics at large as it was in
the constitutional history of Great Britain.
Germany after the Thirty Years War.
In a natural order of things, Germany should
have supplied the main resistance to Louis XIV.
and held his unscrupulous ambition in check.
But Germany had fallen to its lowest state of
political demoralization and disorder. The very
idea of nationality had disappeared. The Em-
pire, even collapsed to the Germanic sense, and
even reduced to a frame and a form, had almost
vanished from practical affairs. The numerous
petty states which divided the German people
stood apart from one another, in substantial in-
dependence, and were sundered by small jealous-
ies and distrusts. Little absolute principalities
they were, each having its little court, which
aped, in a little way, the grand court of the
grand monarch of France — central object of the
admiration and the envy of all small souls in its
time. Half of them were ready to bow down to
the splendid being at Versailles, and to be his
creatures, if he condescended to bestow a nod of
patronage and attention upon them. The French
king had more influence among them than their
nominal Emperor. More and more distinctly the
latter drew apart in his immediate dominions as
an Austrian sovereign ; and more and more com-
pletely Austrian interests and Austrian policy
became removed and estranged from the interests
of the Germanic people. The ambitions and the
cares of the House of Hapsburg were increasingly
in directions most opposite to the German side
of its relations, tending towards Italy and the
southeast; while, at the same time, the narrow
church influence which depressed the Austrian
states widened a hopeless intellectual difference
between them and the northern German people.
Brandenburg. — Prussia.
The most notable movements in dull Ger-
man affairs after the Peace of Westphalia were
those which connected themselves with the set-
tling and centering in Brandenburg of a nucleus
of growing power, around which the nationaliz-
ing of Germany has been a crystalizing process
ever since. The Mark of Brandenburg was one
of the earliest conquests (tenth century) of the
Germans from the Wends. Prussia, afterwards
united with Brandenburg, was a later conquest
(thirteenth century) from Wendish or Slavonic
and other pagan inhabitants, and its subjugation
was a missionary enterprise, accomplished by the
crusading Order of Teutonic Knights, under the
autliority and direction of the Pope. The Order,
which held the country for more than two cen-
turies, and ruled it badly, became degenerate,
and about the middle of the fifteenth century it
was overcome in war by Casimir IV. of Poland,
who took away from it the western part of its
territory, and forced it to do homage to him for
the eastern part, as a fief of the Polish crown.
Sixty years later, the Reformation movement in
Germany brought about the extinguishment of
the Teutonic Order as a political power. The
Grand Master of the Order at that time was
Albert, a Hoheuzollern prince, belonging to a
younger branch of the Brandenburg family. He
became a Lutheran, and succeeded in persuading
the Polish king, Sigismund I. , to transfer the sov-
ereignty of the East Prussian fief to him person-
ally, as a duchy. He transmitted it to his de-
scendants, who held it for a few generations ; but
the line became extinct in 1618, and the Duchy
of Prussia then passed to the elder branch of the
family and was united with Brandenburg. The
Mark of Brandenburg had been raised to the
rank of an Electorate in 1356 and had been ac-
quired by the Hohenzollern family in 1417. The
superior weight of the Brandenburg electors in
northern Germany may be dated from their ac-
quisition of the important Duchy of Prussia; but
they made no mark on affairs until the time of
Frederick William I. , called the Great Elector,
who succeeded to the Electorate in 1640, near the
close of the Thirty Years War. In the arrange-
ments of the Peace of Westphalia he secured
East Pomerania and other considerable additions
of territory. In 1657 he made his Duchy of
Prussia independent of Poland, by treaty with
the Polish king. In 1673 and 1674 he had the
courage and the independence to join the allies
against Louis XIV., and when the Swedes, in
alliance with Louis, invaded his dominions, he
defeated and humbled them at Fehrbellen, and
took from them the greater part of their Pome-
ranian territory. When the Great Elector died,
in 1688, Brandenburg was the commanding
North-German power, and the Hohenzollern
family had fully entered on the great career it
has since pursued.
1107
EUROPE.
Poland, Russia and
the Turks.
EUROPE.
Frederick William's son Frederick, with none
of his father's talent, had a pushing but shallow
ambition. He aspired to be a king, and circum-
stances made his friendship so important to the
Emperor Leopold I. that the latter, exercising
the theoretical super-sovereignty of the Caesars,
endowed liim with the regal title. He was made
King of Prussia, not of Brandenburg, because
Brandenburg stood in vassalage to the Empire,
while Prussia was an independent state.
Poland and Russia.
When Brandenburg and Prussia united began
to rise to importance, the neighboring kingdom
of Poland had already passed the climax of its
career. Under the Jagellon dynasty, sprung from
the Duke Jagellon of Lithuania, who married
Hedwig, Queen of Poland, in 1386, and united
the two states, Poland was a great power for
two centuries, and seemed more likely than Rus-
sia to dominate the Slavonic peoples of Europe.
The Russians at that time were under the feet of
the Mongols or Tartars, whose terrific sweep
westwards, from the steppes of Asia, had over-
whelmed them completely and seemed to bring
their independent history to an end. Slowlj' a
Russian duchy had emerged, having its seat of
doubtful sovereignty at Moscow, and being sub-
ject quite humbly to the Mongol Khan. About
1477 the Muscovite duke of that time, Ivan
Vasilovitch, broke the Tartar yoke and acquired
independence. But his dominion was limited.
The Poles and Lithuanians, now united, had
taken possession of large and important territories
formerly Russian, and the ^Muscovite state was
entirely cut off from the Baltic. It began, how-
ever, in the next century, under Ivan the Terri-
ble, first of the Czars, to make conquests south-
ward and south-eastward, from the Tartars,
until it had reached the Caspian Sea. The do-
minion of the Czar stretched northward, at tlie
same time, to the White Sea, at the single
port of which trade was opened with the Russian
country by English merchant adventurers in the
reign of Elizabeth. Late in the sixteenth cen-
tury the old line of rulers, descended from the
Scandinavian Ruric, came to an end, and after a
few years Michael Romanoff established the dy-
nasty which has reigned since his time.
As between the two principal Slavonic nations,
Russia was now gaining stability and weight,
while Poland had begun to lose both. It was a
fatal day for the Poles when, in 1573, on the
death of the last of the Jagellons, they made
their monarchy purely elective, abolishing the
restriction to one family which had previously
prevailed. The election was by the suffrage of
the nobles, not the people at large (who were
generally serfs), and the government became an
oligarchy of the most unregulated kind known
in history. The crown was stripped of power,
and the unwillingness of the nobility to submit
to any national authorit}', even that of its own
assembly, reached a point, about the middle of
the seventeenth century, at which anarchy was
virtually agreed upon as the desirable political
state. The extraordinary " liberum veto," then
made part of the Polish constitution, gave to
each single member of the assemblies of the
nobles, or of the deputies representing them, a
right to forbid any enactment, or to arrest the
whole proceedings of the body, by his unsupported
negative. This amazing prerogative appears to
have been exercised very rarely in its fullness;
but its theoretical existence effectually extin-
guished public spirit and paralyzed all rational
legislation. Linked with the singular feebleness
of the monarchy, it leaves small room for sur-
prise at the ultimate shipwreck of the Polish
state.
The royal elections at Warsaw came to be
prize contests at which all Europe assisted.
Every Court set up its candidate for the paltry
titular place ; every candidate emptied his purse
into the Polish capital, and bribed, intrigued,
corrupted, to the best of his ability. Once, at
least (1674), when the game was on, a sudden
breeze of patriotic feeling swept the traffickers
out of the diet, and inspired the election of a
national hero, John Sobieski, to whom Europe
owes much ; for it was he wlio drove back the
Turks, in 1683, when their last bold push into
central Europe was made, and when they were
storming at the gates of Vienna. But when
Sobieski died, in 1696, the old scandalous vendue
of a crown was re-opened, and the Elector of
Saxony was the buyer. During most of the last
two centuries of its history, Poland sold its
throne to one alien after another, and allowed
foreign states to mix and meddle with its affairs.
Of real nationality there was not much left to
extinguish when the time of extinction came.
There were patriots, and very noble patriots,
among the Poles, at all periods of their history ;
but it seems to have been the very hopelessness
of the state into which their country had drifted
which intensified their patriotic feeling.
Russia had acquired magnitude and strength
as a barbaric power, in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries ; but it was not until the reign
of Peter the Great, which opened in 1682, that
the great Slavonic empire began to take on a
European character, with European interests and
influences, and to assimilate the civilization of
the West. Peter may be said to have knotted
Russia to Europe at both extremities, by pushing
his dominions to the Baltic on the north and to the
Black Sea on the south, and by putting his own
ships afloat in both. From his day, Russia has
been steadily gathering weight in each of the
two continents over which her vast bulk of em-
pire is stretched, and moving to a mysterious
great destiny in time to come.
The Turks.
The Turks, natural enemies of all the Christian
races of eastern and southeastern Europe, came
practically to the end of their threatening career
of conquest about the middle of the sixteenth
century, when Suleiman the Magnificent died
(1566). He had occupied a great part of Hun-
gary ; seated a pasha in Buda ; laid siege to
Vienna ; taken Rhodes from the Knights of St.
John ; attacked them in Malta ; made an alliance
with the King of France; brought a Turkish
fleet into the western ^Mediterranean, and held
Europe in positive terror of an Ottoman domi-
nation for half a century. His son Selim added
Cyprus to the Turkish conquests; but was hum-
bled in the Mediterranean by the great Christian
victory of Lepanto, won by the combined fleets
of Spain, Venice and the Pope, under Don John
of Austria. After that time Europe had no great
fear of the Turk ; though he still fought hard
with the Venetians, the Poles, the Russians, the
Hungarians, and, once more, carried his arms
1108
EUROPE.
Wars
of Louis XrV.
EUROPE.
even to Vienna. But, on the whole, it was a
losing fight ; the crescent was on the wane.
Last glories of Venice.
In the whole struggle with the Ottomans,
through the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth
centuries, the republic of Venice bore a noble
part. She contested with them foot by foot the
Greek islands, Peloponnesus, and the eastern
shores of the Adriatic. Even after her commerce
began to slip from her control, and the strength
which came from it sank rapidly, she gave up
her eastern possessions but slowly, one by one,
and after stout resistance. Crete cost the Turks
a war of twenty-four years (IGlo-lGeO). Fifteen
years afterwards the Venetians gathered their
energies afresh, assumed the aggressive, and con-
quered the whole Peloponnesus, which they held
for a quarter of a century. Then it was lost
again, and the Ionian Islands alone remained
Venetian territory in the East.
Rise of the House of Savoy.
Of Italy at large, in the seventeenth century,
lying prostrate under the heavy hand of Spain,
there is no history to claim attention in so brief
a sketch as this. One sovereign family in the
northwest, long balanced on the Alps, in uncer-
tainty between a cis-Alpine and a trans-Alpine
destiny, but now clearly committed to Italian
fortunes, had begun to win its footing among the
noticeable smaller powers of the day by sheer
de.xterity of trimming and shifting sides in the
conflicts of the time. This was the House of
Savoy, whose first possessions were gathered in
the crumbling of the old kingdom of Burgundy,
and lay on both slopes of the Alps, commanding
several important passes. On the western and
northern side, the counts, afterwards dukes, of
Savoy had to contend, as time went on, with the
expanding kingdom of Prance and with the stout-
hearted communities which ultimately formed
the Swiss Confederacy. They fell back before
both. At one period, in the fifteenth century,
their dominion had stretched to the Saone, and
to the lake of Neufchatel, on both sides of it,
surrounding the free city of Geneva, which they
were never able to overcome, and the lake of
Geneva entire. Aftfer that time, the Savoyards
gradually lost territory on the Gallic side and won
compensations on the Italian side, in Piedmont,
and at the expense of Genoa and the duchy of
Milan. The Duke Victor Amadeus II. was the
most successful winner for his house, and he
made his gains by remarkable manoeuvering on
both sides of the wars of Louis XIV. One of
his acquisitions (1713) was the island kingdom of
Sicily, which gave him a royal title. A few
years later he exchanged it with Austria for the
island kingdom of Sardinia — a realm more de-
sirable to him for geographical reasons only.
The dukes of Savoy and princes of Piedmont
thus became kings of Sardinia, and the name of
the kingdom was often applied to their whole
dominion, down to the recent time when the
House of Savoy attained the grander kingship of
united Italy.
First wars of Louis XIV.
The wars of Louis XIV. gave little opportunity
for western and central Europe to make any
other history than that of struggle and battle,
invasion and devastation, intrigue and faithless
diplomacy, shifting of political landmarks and
traffic in border populations, as though they were
pastured cattle, for fifty years, in the last part of
the seventeenth century and the first part of the
eighteenth (1665-171.5). It will be remembered
that when this King of France married the In-
fanta of Spain, he joined in a solemn renuncia-
tion of all rights on her part and on that of her
children to such dominions as she might other-
wise inherit. But such a renunciation, with no
sentiment of honor behind it, was worthless, of
course, and Louis XIV., in his own esteem, stood
on a height quite above the moral considerations
that have force with common men. When PhUip
IV. of Spain died, in 1665, Louis promptly began
to put forward the claims which he had pledged
himself not to make. He demanded part of the
Netherlands, and Franche Comte — the old county
(not the duchy) of Burgundy — as belonging to
his queen. It was his good fortune to be served
by some of the greatest generals, military en-
gineers and administrators of the day — by Tu-
renne, Conde, Vauban, Louvois, and others — and
when he sent his armies of invasion into Flanders
and Franche Comte they carried all before them.
Holland took alarm at these aggressions which
came so near to her, and formed an alliance with
England and Sweden to assist Spain. But the
unprincipled English king, Charles II., was
easily bribed to betray his ally; Sweden was
bought over; Spain submitted to a treaty which
gave the Burgundian county back to her, and
surrendered an important part of the Spanish
Netherlands to France. Louis' first exploit of
national brigandage had thus been a glorious
success, as glory is defined in the vocabulary of
sovereigns of his class. He had stolen several
valuable towns, killed some thousands of people,
carried misery into the lives of some thousands
more, and provoked the Dutch to a challenge of
war that seemed promising of more glory of like
kind.
In 1673 he prepared himself to chastise the
Dutch, and his English pensioner, Charles II.,
with several German princes, joined him in the
war. It was this war, as related already, which
brought about the fall and the death of John de
Witt, Grand Pensionary of Holland ; which raised
William of Orange to the restored stadtholdership,
and which gave him a certain leadership of in-
fluence in Europe, as against the French king.
It was this war, likewise, which gave the Hohen-
zollerns their first great battle-triumph, in the
defeat of the Swedes, allies of the French, at
Fehrbellin. For Frederick William, the Great
Elector, had joined the Emperor Leopold and the
King of Spain in another league with Holland
to resist the aggressions of France ; while Sweden
now took sides with Louis. England was soon
withdrawn from the contest, by the determined
action of Parliament, which forced its king to
make peace. Otherwise the war became general
in western Europe and was frightful in the death
and misery it cost. Generally the French had
the most success. Turenne was killed in 1675
and Conde retired the same year ; but able com-
manders were found in Luxemburg and Crequi
to succeed them. In opposition to William of
Orange, the Dutch made peace at Nimeguen, in
1678, and Spain was forced to give up Franche
Comte, with another fraction of her Netherland
territories; but Holland lost nothing. xVgain
Louis XIV. had beaten and robbed his neighbors
1109
EUROPE.
Wars
of Louis XIV.
EUROPE.
with success, and was at the pinnacle of his
glory. France, it is true, was oppressed and
exhausted, but her king was a " grand monarch, "
and she must needs be content.
For a few years the grand monarch contented
himself with small fllchings of territory, which
kept his conscience supple and gave practice to
his sleight-of-hand. On one pretext and another
he seized town after town in Alsace, and, at last,
1681, surprised and captured the imperial free
city of Strasburg, in a time of entire peace. He
bombarded Genoa, took Avignon from the Pope,
bullied and abused feeble Spain, made large
claims on the Palatinate in the name of his
sister-in-law, but against her will, and did nearly
what he was pleased to do, without any effective
resistance, until after William of Orange had
been called to the English throne. That com-
pleted a great change in the European situation.
Revocation of the Edict of Nantes.
The change had already been more than half
brought about by a foul and foolish measure
which Louis had adopted in his domestic ad-
ministration. Cursed by a tyrant's impatience at
the idea of free thought and free opinion among
his subjects, he had been persuaded by Catholic
zealots near his person to revoke the Edict of
Nantes and revive persecution of the Huguenots.
This was done in 1685. The fatal effects with-
in France resembled those which followed the
persecution of the Moriscoes of Spain. The
Huguenots formed a large proportion of the best
middle class of the kingdom, — its manufacturers,
its merchants, its skilled and thrifty artisans.
Infamous efforts were made to detain them in the
country and there force them to apostacy or hold
them under punishment if they withstood. But
there was not power enough in the monarchy,
with all its absolutism, to enclose France in such
a wall. Vast numbers escaped — half a million
it is thought — carrying their skill, their
knowledge, their industry and their energy into
Holland, England, Switzerland, all parts of
Protestant Germany, and across the ocean to
America. France was half ruined by the loss.
The League of Augsburg.
At the same time, the Protestant allies in
Germany and the North, whom Louis had Iield in
subserviency to himself so long, were angered
and alarmed by his act. They joined a new de-
fensive league against him, formed at Augsburg,
in 1686, which embraced the Emperor, Spain,
Holland, and Sweden, at first, and afterwards
took in Savoy and other Italian states, along
with Germany almost entire. But the League
was miserably unprepared for war, and hardly
hindered the march of Louis' armies when he
suddenly moved them into the Rhenish electorates
in 1688. For the second time in his reign, and
under his orders, the Palatinate was fearfully
devastated with fire and sword. But this attack
on Germany, occupying thearmsof France, gave
William of Orange his opportunity to enter Eng-
land unopposed and take the English crown.
That accomplished, he speedily brought England
into the League, enlarging it to a "grand alli-
ance " of all western Europe against the danger-
ous monarch of Prance, and inspiring it with
some measure of his own energy and courage.
France had now to deal with enemies on every
side. They swarmed on all her frontiers, and
the strength and valor with which she met them
were amazing. For three years the French more
than held their own, not only in land-fighting,
but on the sea, where they seemed likely, for
a time, to dispute the supremacy of the English
and the Dutch with success. But the frightful
draft made on the resources of the nation, and
the strain on its spirit, were more than could be
kept up. The obstinacy of the king, and his in-
difference to the sufferings of his people, pro-
longed the war until 1697, but with steady loss
to the French of the advantages with which they
began. Two years before the end, Louis had
bought over the Duke of Savoy, by giving back
to him all that France had taken from his Italian
territories since Richelieu's time. When the
final peace was settled, at Ryswick, like surren-
ders had to be made in the Netherlands, Lor-
raine, and beyond the Rhine; but Alsace, with
Strasburg, was kept, to be a German graft on
France, until the sharp Prussian pruning knite,
in our own time, cut it away.
War of the Spanish Succession.
There were three years of peace after the
treaty of Ryswick, and then a new war — longer,
more bitter, and more destructive than those be-
fore it — arose out of questions connected with
the succession to the crown of Spain. Charles
II., last of the Austro-Spanish or Spanish-Haps-
burg kings, died in 1700, leaving no heir. The
nearest of his relatives to the throne were the
descendants of his two sisters, one of whom had
married Louis XIV. and the other the Emperor
Leopold, of the Austrian House. Louis XIV., as
we know, had renounced all the Spanish rights
of his queen and her issue ; but that renuncia-
tion had been shown already to be wasted paper.
Leopold had renounced nothing ; but he had re-
quired a renunciation of her Spanish claims from
the one daughter, Maria, of his Spanish wife,
and he put forward claims to the Spanish suc-
cession, on his own behalf, because his mother
had been a princess of that nation, as well as his
wife. He was willing, however, to transfer his
own rights to a younger son, fruit of a second
marriage, the Archduke Charles.
The question of the Spanish succession was
one of European interest and importance, and
attempts had been made to settle it two years
before the death of the Spanish king, in 1698,
by a treaty, or agreement, between France,
England, and Holland. By that treaty these
outside powers (consulting Spain not at all) un-
dertook a partition of the Spanish monarchy, in
what they assumed to be the interest of the
European balance of power. They awarded
Naples, Sicily, and some lesser Italian posses-
sions to a grandson of Louis XIV. , the Milanese
territory to the Archduke Charles, and the rest
of the Spanish dominions to an infant son of
Maria, the Emperor's daughter, who was mar-
ried to the elector of Bavaria. But the infant
so selected to wear the crown of Spain died soon
afterwards, and a second treaty of partition was
framed. This gave the Milanese to the Duke of
Lorraine, in exchange for his own duchy, which
he promised to cede to France, and the whole
remainder of the Spanish inheritance was con-
ceded to the Austrian archduke, Charles. In
Spain, these arrangements were naturally re-
sented, by both people and king, and the latter
was persuaded to set against them a will,
1110
EUROPE.
War of the
Spanish Succession.
EUROPE.
bequeathing all that he ruled to the younger
grandson of Louis XIV., Philip of Anjou, on
condition that the latter renounce for himself
and for his heirs all claims to the crown of
France. The inducement to this bequest was
the power which the King of Prance possessed
to enforce it, and so to preserve the unity of the
Spanish realm. That the argument and the
persuasion came from Louis' own agents, while
other agents amused England, Holland and
Austria with treaties of partition, is tolerably
clear.
Near the end of the year 1700, the King of
Spain died ; his will was disclosed ; the treaties
were as coolly ignored as the prior renunciation
had been, and the young French prince was sent
pompously into Spain to accept the proffered
crown. For a time, there was indignation in
Europe, but no more. William of Orange could
persuade neither England nor Holland to war,
and Austria could not venture hostilities without
their help. But that submissiveness only drew
from the grand monarch fresh displays of his
dishonesty and his insolence. Philip of Anjou's
renunciation of a possible succession to the
French throne, while occupying that of Spain,
was practically annulled. The government of
Spain was guided from Paris like that of a de-
pendency of France. Dutch and English com-
merce was injured by hostile measures. Move-
ments alarming to Holland were made on the
frontiers of the Spanish Netherlands. Finally,
when the fugitive ex-king of England, James
II., died at St. Germains, in September, 1701,
Louis acknowledged James' son, the Pretender,
as King of England. This insult roused the war
spirit in England which King William had striven
so hard to evoke. He had already arranged the
terms of a new defensive Grand Alliance with
Holland, Austria, and most of the German states.
There was no difficulty now in making It an offen-
sive combination.
But William, always weak in health, and
worn by many cares and harassing troubles, died
in March, 1703, before the war which he desired
broke out. His death made no pause in the
movement of events. Able statesmen, under
Queen Anne, his successor, carried forward his
policy and a great soldier was found, in the per-
son of John Churchill, Duke of Marlborough, to
command the armies of England and the Dutch.
Another commander, of remarkable genius.
Prince Eugene of Savoy, took service with the
Emperor, and these two, acting cordially to-
gether, humbled the overweening pride of Louis
XIV. in the later years of his reign. He had
worn out France by his long exactions. His
strong ministers, Colbert, Louvois and others,
were dead, and he did not find successors for them.
He had able generals, but none equal to Turenne,
Conde or Luxemburg, — none to cope with Marl-
borough and Prince Eugene. "The war was
■widespread, on a stupendous scale, and it lasted
for twelve years. Its campaigns were fought in
the Low Countries, in Germany, in Italy and in
Spain. It glorified the reign of Anne, in English
history, by the shining victories of Blenheim,
Ramilies, Oudeuarde and Malplaquet, and by
the capture of Gibraltar, the padlock of the
Mediterranean. The misery to which France
was reduced in the later years of the war was
probably the greatest that the much suffering
nation ever knew.
The Peace of Utrecht.
Louis sought peace, and was willing to go far
in surrenders to obtain it. But the allies pressed
him too hard in their demands. They would have
him not only abandon the Bourbon dynasty that
he had set up in Spain, but join them in over-
throwing it. He refused to negotiate on such
terms, and Fortune approved his resolution, by
giving decisive victories to his arms in Spain,
while dealing out disaster and defeat in every
other field. England grew weary of the war
when it came to appear endless, and Marlborough
and the Whigs, who had carried it on, were
ousted from power. The Tories, under Harley
and Bolingbroke, came into office and negotiated
tlie famous Peace of Utrecht (1713), to which all
the belligerents in the war, save tlie Emperor,
consented. The Emperor yielded to a supple-
mentary treaty, signed at Rastadt the next year.
These treaties left the Bourbon King of Spain,
Philip v., on his throne, but bound him, by fresh
renunciations, not to be likewise King of France.
The}' gave to England Gibraltar and Minorca, at
the expense of Spain, and Nova Scotia, New-
foundland and Hudson's Bay at the expense of
France. They took much more from Spain.
They took Sicily, which they gave to the Duke
of Savoy, with the title of King; they took
Naples, Milan, Mantua and Sardinia, which they
gave to Austria, or, more strictly speaking, to
the Emperor ; and they took the Spanish Nether-
lands, which they gave to Austria in the main,
with some liarrier towns to the Dutch. They
took from France her conquests on the right bank
of the Rhine ; but they left her in possession of
Alsace, with Strasburg and Landau. The great
victim of the war was Spain.
France at the death of Louis XIV.
Louis XIV. was near the end of his reign when
this last of the fearful wars which he caused
was brought to a close. He died in Septem-
ber, 1715, leaving a kingdom which had reasons to
curse his memory in every particular of its state.
He had foiled the exertions of as wise a minister,
Jean Colbert, as ever strove to do good to France.
He had dried the sources of national life as with
a searching and monstrous sponge. He had re-
pressed everything which he could not absorb in
his flaunting court, in his destroying armies,
and in himself. He had dealt with France as
with a dumb beast that had been given him to
bestride ; to display himself upon, before the gaze
of an envious world ; to be bridled, and spurred at
his pleasure, and whipped ; to toil for him and
bear burdens as he willed; to tread upon his
enemies and trample his neighbors' fields. It was
he, more than all others before or after, who
made France that dumb creature which suffered
and was still for a little longer time, and then
began thinking and went mad.
Charles XII. of Sweden.
While the Powers of western Europe were
wrestling in the great war of the Spanish Succes-
sion, the nations of the North and East were
tearing each other, at the same time, with equal
stubbornness and ferocity. The beginning of
their conflict was a wanton attack from Russia.
Poland and Denmark, on the possessions of
Sweden. Sweden, in the past century, had made
extensive conquests, and her territories, outside
1111
EUROPE.
Charles XII. of
Sweden.
EUROPE.
of the Scandinavian peninsula, were thrust pro-
vokingly into the sides of all these three neighbors.
There had been three Charleses on the Swedish
throne in succession, following Christina, the
daughter of Gustavus Adolphus. Queen Chris-
tina, an eccentric character, had abdicated in
1654, in order to join the Catholic Church, and
had been succeeded by her cousin, Charles X.
The six years reign of this Charles was one of
constant war with the Danes and the Poles, and
almost uniformly he was the aggressor. His
son and successor, Charles XI., suffered the great
defeat at Fehrbellin which gave prestige to
Brandenburg ; but he was shielded by the puis-
sant arm of Louis XIV., his ally, and lost no
territory. More successful in his domestic policy
than in his wars, he, both practically and for-
mally, established absolutism in the monarchy.
Inheriting from his father that absolute power,
while inheriting at the same time the ruthless
ambition of his grandfather, Charles XII. came
to the throne in 1697.
In the first two years of his reign, this extraor-
dinary young autocrat showed so little of his
character that his royal neighbors thought him a
weakling, and Peter the Great, of Russia, con-
spired with Augustus of Poland and Frederick
IV. of Denmark to strip him of those parts of his
dominion which they severally coveted. The
result was like the rousing of a lion by hunters
who went forth to pursue a hare. The young
Swede, dropping, instantly and forever, all
frivolities, sprang at his assailants before they
dreamed of finding him awake, and the game
was suddenly reversed. The hunters became the
hunted, and they had no rest for nine years from
the implacable pursuit of them which Charles
kept up. He defeated the Danes and the Rus-
sians in the first year of the war (1700). In 1703
he invaded Poland and occupied Warsaw ; in
1704 he forced the deposition of the Saxon King
of Poland, Augustus, and the election of Stanis-
laus Leczinski. Not yet satisfied, he followed
Augustus into his electorate of Saxony, and com-
pelled him there to renounce the Polish crown
and the Russian alliance. In 1708 he invaded
Russia, marching on Moscow, but turning aside
to meet an expected ally, Mazeppa the Cossack.
It was the mistake which Napoleon repeated a
century later. The Swedes exhausted themselves
in the march, and the Russians bided their time.
Peter the Czar had devoted eight years, since
Charles defeated him at Narva, to making sol-
diers, well-trained, out of the mob which that
fight scattered. When Charles had worn his
army down to a slender and disheartened force,
Peter struck and destroyed it at Pulto wa. Charles
escaped from the wreck and took refuge, with
a few hundreds of his guards, in the Turkish
province of Bessarabia, at Bender. In that
shelter, which the Ottomans hospitably accorded
to him, he remained for five j'ears, intriguing to
bring the Porte into war with his Muscovite
enemy, while all the fruits of his nine years of con-
quest in the North were stripped from him by
the old league revived. Augustus returned to
Poland and recovered his crown. Peter took
possession of Livonia, Ingria, and a great part
of Finland. Frederick IV. , of Denmark, attacked
Sweden itself. The kingless kingdom made a
valiant defense against the crowd of eager ene-
mies ; but Charles had used the best of its ener-
gies and its resources, and it was not strong.
Near the end of 1710, Charles succeeded in push-
ing the Sultan into war with the Czar, and the lat-
ter, advancing Into Moldavia, rashly placed him-
self in a position of great peril, where the Turks
had him really at their mercy. But Catherine, the
Czarina, who was present, found means to bribe
the Turkish vizier in command, and Peter escaped
with no loss more serious than the surrender of
Azov. That ended the war, and the hopes of
the Swedish king. But still the stubborn Charles
wearied the Porte with his importunities, until
he was commanded to quit the country. Even
then he refused to depart, — resisted when force
was used to expel him, and did not take his leave
until late in November, 1714, when he received
intelligence that his subjects were preparing to
appoint his sister regent of the kingdom and to
make peace with the Czar. That news hun-ied
him homeward ; but only for continued war. He
was about to make terms with Russia, and to
secure her alliance against Denmark, Poland and
Hanover, when he was killed during an invasion
of Norway, in the siege of Friedrickshall (Decem-
ber, 1718). The crown of Sweden was then con-
ferred upon his sister, but shorn of absolute
powers, and practically dependent upon the
nobles. All the wars in which Charles XII. had
involved his kingdom were brought to an end
by great sacrifices, and Russia rose to the place
of Sweden as the chief power in the North. The
Swedes paid heavily for the career of their
" Northern Alexander."
Alliance against Spain.
Before the belligerents in the North had quieted
themselves, those of the West were again in arms.
Spain had fallen under the influence of two eager
and restless ambitions, that of the queen, Eliza-
beth of Parma, and an Italian minister. Cardinal
Alberoni ; and the schemes into which these two
drew the Bourbon king, Philip V., soon ruptured
the close relations with France which Louis XIV.
had ruined his kingdom to bring about. To
check them, a triple alliance was formed (1717)
between France, England and Holland, — en-
larged the next year to a quadruple alliance by
the adhesion of Austria. At the outset of the
war, Spain made a conquest of Sardinia, and
almost accomplished the same in Sicily; but the
English crushed her navy and her rising com-
merce, while the French crossed the Pyrenees
with an army which the Spaniards could not
resist. A vast combination which Alberoni was
weaving, and which took in Charles XII., Peter
the Great, the Stuart pretender, the English
Jacobites, and the opponents of the regency in
France, fell to pieces when the Swedish king fell.
Alberoni was driven from Spain and all his plans
were given up. The Spanish king withdrew
from Sicily and surrendered Sardinia. The Em-
peror and the Duke of Savoy exchanged islands,
as stated before, and the former (holding Naples
already) revived the old Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies, while the latter became King of Sardinia.
War of the Polish Succession.
These disturbances ended, there were a few
years of rest in Europe, and then another war,
of the character peculiar to the eighteenth cen-
tury, broke out. It had its cause in the Polish
election of a king to succeed Augustus II. As
usual, the neighboring nations formed a betting
ring of onlookers, so to speak, and "backed"
1112
EUROPE.
War of the
Austrian Succession.
EUROPE.
their several candidates heavily. The deposed
and exiled king, Stanislaus Leczinski, who re-
ceived his crown from Charles XII. and lost it
after Pultowa, was the French candidate; for he
had married his daughter to Louis XV. Fred-
erick Augustus of Saxony, son of the late King
Augustus, was the Russian and Austrian candi-
date. The contest resulted in a double election
(1733), and out of that came war. Spain and
Sardinia .joined France, and the Emperor had no
allies. Hence the House of Austria suffered
greatly in the war, losing the Two Sicilies, which
went to Spain, and were conferred on a younger
son of the king, creating a third Bourbon mon-
archy. Part of the duchy of Milan was also
yielded by Austria to the King of Sardinia ; and
the Duke of Lorraine, husband of the Emperor's
daughter, Maria Theresa, gave up his duchy to
Stanislaus, who renounced therefor his claim on
the crown of Poland. The Duke of Lorraine
received as compensation a right of succession to
the grand duchy of Tuscany, where the Medi-
ceau House was about to expire. These were
the principal consequences, humiliating to Aus-
tria, of what is known as the First Family Com-
pact of the French and Spanish Bourbons.
War of Jenkins' Ear.
This alliance between the two courts gave en-
couragement to hostile demonstrations In the
Spanish colonies against English traders, who
were accused of extensive smuggling, and the
outcome was a petty war (1739), called "the War
of Jenkins' Ear."
War of the Austrian Succession.
Before these hostilities were ended, another
"war of succession," more serious than any be-
fore it, was wickedly brought upon Europe.
The Emperor, Charles VI., died in 1740, leaving
no son, but transmitting his hereditary domin-
ions to his eldest daughter, the celebrated Maria
Theresa, married to the ex-Duke of Lorraine.
Years before his death he had sought to provide
against any possible disputing of the succession,
by an Instrument known as the Pragmatic Sanc-
tion, to which he obtained, first, the assent of
the estates of all the provinces and kingdoms of
the Austrian realm, and, secondly, the guaranty
by solemn treaty of almost every European
Power. He died in the belief that he had estab-
lished his daughter securely, and left her to the
enjoyment of a peaceful reign. It was a pitiful
Illusion. He was scarcely in his grave before
half the guarantors of the Pragmatic Sanction
were putting forward claims to this part and
that part of the Austrian territories. The Elec-
tor of Bavaria, the Elector of Saxony (in his
wife's name) and the King of Spain, claimed the
whole succession; the two first mentioned on
grounds of collateral lineage, the latter (a Bour-
bon cuckoo in the Spanish-Hapsburg nest) as
being the heir of the Hapsburgs of Spain.
While these larger pretensions were still jos-
tling each other in the diplomatic stage, a minor
claimant, who said little but acted powerfully,
sent his demands to the Court of Vienna with an
army following close at their heels. Tliis was
Frederick II. of Prussia, presently known as
Frederick the Great, who resuscitated an obso-
lete claim on Silesia and took possession of the
province (1740-41) without waiting for debate. If,
nuywhere, there had been virtuous hesitations
before, his bold stroke ended them. France
could not see her old Austrian rival dismem-
bered without hastening to grasp a share. She
contracted with the Spanisli king and the Elec-
tor of Bavaria to enforce the latter's claims, and ta
take the Austrian Netherlands in prospect for com-
pensation, while Spain should find indemnity in
the Austro-Italian states. Frederick of Prussia,
having Silesia in hand, offered to join Maria
Theresa in the defense of her remaining domin-
ions ; but his proposals were refused, and he en-
tered the league against her. Saxony did the
same. England and Sardinia were alone in be-
friending Austria, and England was only strong
at sea. Maria Theresa found her heartiest sup-
port in Hungary, where she made a personal
a])peal to her subjects, and enlarged their con-
stitutional privileges. In 1743 the Elector of
Bavaria was elected Emperor, as Charles VII.
In the same year, JIaria Theresa, acting under
pressure from England, gave up the greater
part of Silesia to Frederick, by treaty, as a price
paid, not for the help he had offered at first, but
barely for his neutrality. He abandoned his
allies and withdrew from the war. His retire-
ment produced an immense difference in the con-
ditions of the contest. Saxony made peace at
the same time, and became an active ally on the
Austrian side. So rapidly did the latter then
recover their ground and the French slip back
that Frederick, after two years of neutrality,
became alarmed, and found a pretext to take up
arms again. The scale was now tipped to the
side on which he threw himself, but not immedi-
ately; and when, in 1745, the Emperor, Charles
VII., died suddenly, Maria Theresa was able to
secure the election of her husband, Francis of
Lorraine (or Tuscany), which founded the Haps-
burg-Lorraine dynasty on the imperial throne.
This was in September. In the following De-
cember Frederick was in Dresden, and Saxony —
the one effective ally left to the Austrians, since
England had withdrawn from the war in the
previous August — was at his feet. Maria The-
resa, having the Spaniards and the French still to
fight in Italy and the Netherlands, could do noth-
ing but make terms with the terrible Prussian
king. The treaty, signed at Dresden on Christ-
mas Day, 1745, repeated the cession of Silesia to
Frederick, with Gtlatz, and restored Saxony to
the humbled Elector.
Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle.
France and Spain, deserted the second time by
their faithless Prussian ally, continued the war
until 1748, when the influence of England and
Holland brought about a treaty of peace signed
at Aix-la-Chapelle. France gained nothing from
the war, but had suffered a loss of prestige, dis-
tinctly. Austria, besides giving up Silesia to
Frederick of Prussia, was required to surrender
a bit of Lombardy to the King of Sardinia, and
to make over Parma, Piacenza and Guastalla to
Don Philip of Spain, for a hereditary principal-
ity. Under the circumstances, the result to
Maria Theresa was a notable triumph, and she
shared with her enemy, Frederick, the fruitage
of fame harvested in the war. But antagonism
between these two, and between the interests and
ambitions which they respectively represented —
dynastic on one side and national on the other —
was henceforth settled and irreconcilable, and
could leave in Germany no durable peace.
1113
EUROPE.
The Seven Years
War.
EUROPE.
Colonial conflicts of France and England.
The peace was broken, not for Germany alone,
but for Europe and for almost the world at large,
in six 3'ears after the signing of the Treaty of Aix-
la-Chapelle. The rupture occurred first very far
from Europe — on the other sides of the globe, in
America and Hindostan, where England and
France were eager rivals in colonial conquest.
In America, they had quarreled since the Treaty
of Utrecht over the boundaries of Acadia, or
Nova Scotia, which that treaty transferred to
England. Latterly, they had come to a more
serious collision in the interior of the continent.
The English, rooting their possession of the At-
lantic seaboard by strong and stable settlements,
had been tardy explorers and slow in passing the
Alleganies to the region inland. On the other
hand, the French, nimble and enterprising in ex-
ploration, and in military occupation, but super-
ficial and artificial in colonizing, had pushed their
way by a long circuit from Canada, through the
great lakes to the head waters of the Ohio, and
were fortifying a line in the rear of the British
colonies, from the valley of the St. Lawrence to
the valley of the Mississippi, before the English
were well aware of their intent. Then the colo-
nists, Virginians and Pennsylvanians, took arms,
and the career of George Washington was begun as
leader of an expedition in 1754 to drive the French
from the Ohio. It was not successful, and a
strong force of regular troops was sent overnest
year by the British government, under Braddock,
to repeat the attempt. A frightful catastrophe,
worse than failure, came of this second undertak-
ing, and open war between France and England,
which had not yet been declared, followed soon.
This colonial conflict of England and France
fired the train, so to speak, which caused a great
explosion of suppressed hostilities in Europe.
The House of Hanover in England.
If the English crown had not been worn by a
German king, having a German principality to
defend, the French and English might have
fought out their quarrel on the ocean, and in the
wilderness of America, or on the plains of the
Camatic, without disturbing their continental
neighbors. But England was now under a new,
foreign-bred line of sovereigns, descended from
that daughter of James I., the princess Elizabeth,
who married the unfortunate Elector Palatine
and was queen of Bohemia for a brief winter
term. After William of Orange died, his wife,
Queen Mary, having preceded him to the grave,
and no children having been born to them, Anne,
the sister of Mary, had been called to the throne.
It was in her reign that the brilliant victories of
Marlborough were won, and in her reign that the
Union of Scotland with England, under one par-
liament as well as one sovereign, was brought
about. On Anne's death (1714), her brother, the
son of James II., called "the Pretender," was
still excluded from the throne, because of his
religion, and the next heir was sought and sum-
moned, in the person of the Elector George, of
Hanover, whose remote ancestress was Elizabeth
Stuart. George I. had reigned thirteen years,
and his son, George II., had been twenty-seven
years on the throne, when these quarrels with
France arose. Throughout the two reigns, until
1742, the English nation had been kept mostly
at peace, by the potent influence of a great min-
ister, Sir Robert Walpole, and had made a splen-
did advance in material prosperity and strength;
while the system of ministerial government,
responsible to Parliament and independent of the
Crown, which has been in later times the peculiar
feature of the British constitution, was taking
shape. In 1742, Walpole fell from power, and
the era of peace for England was ended. But
her new dynasty had been firmly settled, and po-
litically, industrially, and commercially, the na-
tion was so sound in its condition as to be well
prepared for the series of wars into which it
plunged. In the War of the Austrian Succession
England had taken a limited part, and with small
results to herself. She was now about to enter,
under the lead of the high-spirited and ambitious
Pitt, afterwards Earl of Chatham, the greatest
career of conquest in her history.
The Seven Years War.
As before said, it was the anxiety of George
II. for his electorate of Hanover which caused an
explosion of hostilities in Europe to occur, as
consequence of the remote fighting of French
and English colonists in America. For the
strengthening of Hanover against attacks from
France, he sought an alliance with Frederick of
Prussia. This broke the long-standing anti-
French alliance of England with Austria, and
Austria joined fortunes with her ancient Bourbon
enemy, in order to be helped to the revenge which
Maria Theresa now promised herself the pleas-
ure of executing upon the Prussian king. As
the combination finally shaped itself on the
French side, it embraced France, Austria, Rus-
sia, Sweden, Poland, Saxony, and the Palatinate,
and its inspiring purpose was to break Prussia
down and partition her territories, rather than to
support France against England. The agree-
ments to this end were made in secret; but
Frederick obtained knowledge of them, and
learned that papers proving the conspiracy
against him were in the archives of the Saxony
government, at Dresden. His action was decided
with that promptitude which so often discon-
certed his enemies. He did not wait to be at-
tacked by the tremendous league formed against
him, nor waste time in efforts to dissolve it, but
defiantly struck the first blow. He poured his
army into Saxony (August, 1756), seized Dresden
by surprise, captured the documents he desired,
and published them to the world in vindication
of his summary precipitation of war. Then,
blockading the Saxon army in Pirna, he pressed
rapidly into Bohemia, defeated the Austriaus at
Lowositz, and returned as rapidly, to receive the
surrender of the Saxons and to enlist most of
them in his own ranks. This was the European
opening of the Seven Tears War, wliich raged,
first and last, in all quarters of tlie globe.
In the second year of the war, Frederick gained
an important victory at Prague and suffered a
serious reverse at Kolin, which threw most of
Silesia into the hands of the Austriaus. Close
following that defeat came crushing news from
Hanover, where the incompetent Duke of Cum-
berland, commanding for his father, the English
King George, had allowed the French to force
him to an agreement which disbanded his army,
and left Prussia alone in the terrific fight.
Frederick's position seemed desperate; but his
energy retrieved it. He fought and defeated the
French at Rossbach, near Liitzen, on the 5th of
1114
r
=.m£l;x^.
EUROPE.
Russia and the
Czarinas.
EUROPE.
November, and the Austrians. at Leuthen, near
Breslau, exactly one month later. In the cam-
paigns of 1758, lie encountered the Russians
at Zorndorf, winning a bloody triumph, and he
sustained a defeat at Hochkirk, in battle with the
Austrians. But England had repudiated Cum-
berland's convention and recalled him ; English
and Hanoverian forces were again put into the
field, under the capable command of Prince
Frederick of Brunswick, who turned the tide in
that quarter against the French, and the results
of the year were generally favorable to Frederick.
In 1759, the Hanoverian army, under Prince
Ferdinand, improved the situation on that side ;
but the prospects of the King of Prussia were
clouded by heavy disasters. Attempting to push
a victory over the Russians too far, at Kuners-
dorf, he was terribly beaten. He lost Dresden,
and a great part of Saxony. In the next year he
recovered all but Dresden, which he wantonly
and inhumanly bombarded. The war was now
being carried on with great difficulty by all the
combatants. Prussia, France and Austria were
suffering almost etjually from exhaustion; the
misery among their people was too great to be
ignored ; the armies of each had dwindled. The
opponents of Pitt's war policy In England over-
came him, in October, 1761, whereupon he re-
signed, and the English subsidy to Frederick was
withdrawn. But that was soon made up to him
by the withdrawal of Russia from the war, at the
beginning of 1762, when Peter of Holstein, who
admired Frederick, became Czar. Sweden made
peace a little later. The remainder of the worn
and wearied fighters went on striking at each
other until near the end of the year.
Meantime, on the colonial and East Indian side
of it, this prodigious Seven Years "War, as a great
struggle for world-empire between England and
France, had been adding conquest to conquest
and triumph to triumph for the former. In 1759,
"Wolfe hacl taken Quebec and died on the Heights
of Abraham in the moment of victory. Another
twelve months saw the whole of Canada clear of
Frenchmen in arms. In the East, to use the
language of Macaulay, "conquests equalling in
rapidity and far surpassing in magnitude those
of Cortes and Pizarro, had been achieved." "In
the space of three years the English had founded
a mighty empire. The French had been defeat-
ed in every part of India. Chandernagore had
yielded toClive, Pondicherry to Coote. Through-
out Bengal, Bahar, Orissa, and the Carnatic, the
authority of the East India Company was more
absolute than that of Acbar or Aurungzebe had
ever been."
Treaties of Paris and Hubertsburg.
In February, 1763, two treaties of peace were
concluded, one at Paris, on the 10th, between
England, France and Spain (the latter Power
having joined France in the war as late as
January, 1763) ; the other at Hubertsburg, on the
15th, between Prussia and Austria. France gave
up to England all her possessions in North
America, except Louisiana (which passed to
Spain), and yielded Minorca, but recovered the
Philippines. She surrendered, moreover, consid-
erable interests in the "West Indies and in Africa.
The colonial aspirations of the French were cast
down by a blow that was lasting in its effect.
As between Prussia and Austria, the triumphs of
the peace and the glories of the war were won
entirely by the former. Frederick came out of
it, " Frederick the Great, " the most famous man
of his century, as warrior and as statesman, both.
He had defended his little kingdom for seven
years against three great Powers, and yielded
not one acre of its territory. He had raised
Prussia to the place in Germany from which her
subsequent advance became easy and almost in-
evitable. But the great fame he earned is spotted
with many falsities and much cynical indiflierence
to the commonest ethics of civilization. His
greatness is of that character which requires to
be looked at from selected standpoints.
Russia.
Another character, somewhat resembling that
of Frederick, was flow drawing attention on the
eastern side of Europe. Since the death of Peter
the Great, the interval in Russian history had
been covered by six reigns, with a seventh just
opening, and the four sovereigns who really ex-
ercised power were women. Peter's widow,
Catherine I., had succeeded him (1735) for two
years. His son, Alexis, he had put to death;
but Alexis left a son, Peter, to whom Catherine
bequeathed the crown. Peter II. died after a
brief reign, in 1730; and the nearest heirs were
two daughters of Peter the Great, Anne and
Elizabeth. But they were set aside in favor of
another Anne — Anne of Courland — daughter of
Peter the Great's brother. Anne's reign of ten
years was under the influence of German favorites
and ministers, and nearly half of it was occupied
with a Turkish War, in cooperation with Austria.
For Austria the war had most humiliating re-
sults, costing her Belgrade, all of Servia, part
of Bosnia and part of "Wallachia. Russia won
back Asov, with fortifications forbidden, and that
was all. Anne willed her crown to an infant
nephew, who appears in the Russian annals as
Ivan "VI. ; but two regencies were overthrown
by palace revolutions within little more than a
year, and the second one carried to the throne
that Princess Elizabeth, younger daughter of
Peter the Great, who had been put aside eleven
years before. Elizabeth, a woman openly
licentious and intemperate, reigned for twenty-
one years, during the whole important period
of the "War of the Austrian Succession, and almost
to the end of the Seven Years "War. She was
bitterly hostile to Frederick the Great, whose
sharp tongue had offended her, and she joined
Maria 'Theresa with eagerness in the great effort
of revenge, which failed. In the early part of
her reign, war with Sweden had been more suc-
cessful and had added South Finland to the
Russian territories. It is claimed for her domes-
tic government that the general prosperity of the
country was advanced.
Catherine II.
On the death of Elizabeth, near the end of the
year 1761, the crown passed to her nephew, Peter
of Holstein, son of her eldest sister, Anne, who
had married the Duke of Holstein. This prince
had been the recognized heir, living at the
Russian court, during the whole of Elizabeth's
reign. He was an ignorant boor, and he had be-
come a besotted drunkard. Since 1744 he had
been married to a young German princess, of
the Anhalt Zerbst family, who took the bap-
tismal name of Catherine when she entered the
Greek Church. Catherine possessed a superior
1115
EUROPE.
Catherine II. and
the Partition of Poland.
EUROPE.
intellect and a strong character ; but the vile court
into which she came as a young girl, bound to a
disgusting husband, had debauched her in morals
and lowered her to its own vileness. She gained
so great an ascendancy that the court was sub-
servient to her, from the time that her incapable
husband, Peter III., succeeded to the throne. He
reigned by sufferance for a year and a half, and
then (July, 1762) he was easily deposed and put
to death. In the deposition, Catlierine was the
leading actor. Of the subsequent murder, some
historians are disposed to acquit her. She did
not scruple, at least, to accept the benefit of both
deeds, which raised her, alone, to the throne of
the Czars.
Partition of Poland.
Peter III. , in his short reign, had made one im-
portant change in Russian policy, by withdraw-
ing from the league against Frederick of Prussia,
whom he greatly admired. Catherine found rea-
sons, quite aside from those of personal admira-
tion, for cultivating the friendship of the King
of Prussia, and a close understanding with that
astute monarch was one of the earliest objects of
her endeavor. She had determined to put an end
to the independence of Poland. As she first en-
tertained the design, there was probably no
thought of the partitioning afterwards contrived.
But her purpose was to keep the Polish kingdom
in disorder and weakness, and to make Russian
influence supreme in it, with views, no doubt,
that looked ultimately to something more. On
the death of the Saxon king of Poland, Augus-
tus III., in 1763, Catherine put forward a native
candidate for the vacant throne, in the person of
Stanislaus Poniatowsky, a Russianized Pole and a
former lover of herown. The King of Prussia sup-
ported her candidate, and Poniatowsky was duly
elected, with 10,000 Russian troops in Warsaw to
see that it was properly done. The Poles were
submissive to the invasion of their political in-
dependence ; but when Catherine, who sought to
create a Russian party in Poland by protecting
the members of the Greek Church and the Prot-
estants, against the intolerance of the Polish
Catholics, forced a concession of civil equality
to the former (1768), there was a wide-spread
Catholic revolt. In the fierce war which followed,
a band of Poles was pursued across the Turkish
border, and a Turkish town was burned by the
Russian pursuers. The Sultan, who professed
sympathy with the Poles, then declared war
against Russia. The Russo-Turkish war, in turn,
excited Austria, which feared Russian conquests
from the Turks, and another wide disturbance of
the peace of Europe seemed threatening. In the
midst of the excitement there came a whispered
suggestion, to the ear of the courts of Vienna and
St. Petersburg, that they severally satisfy their
territorial cravings and mutually assuage each
other's jealousy, at the expense of the crumbUng
kingdom of Poland. The whisper may have
come from Frederick II. of Prussia, or it may
not. There are two opinions on the point. From
whatever source it came, it found favorable con-
sideration at Vienna and St. Petersburg, and be-
tween February and August, 1773, the details of
the partition were worked out.
Poland was not yet extinguished. The kingdom
ivas only shorn of some 160,000 square miles of
territory, more than half of which went to Russia,
a third to Austria, and the remainder, less than
10,000 square miles, to Prussia. This last men-
tioned annexation %vas the old district of West
Prussia which the Polish king, Casimir IV., had
wrested from the Teutonic Knights in 146(5, be-
fore Brandenburg had aught to do with Prus-
sian lands or name. After three centuries,
Frederick reclaimed it.
The diminished kingdom of Poland showed
more signs of a true national life, of an earnest
national feeling, of a sobered and rational patriot-
ism, than had appeared in its former history.
The fatal powers monopolized by the nobles, the
deadly " liberum veto," the corrupting elective
kingship, were looked at in their true light, and in
May, 1791, a new constitution was adopted which
reformed those evils. But a few nobles opposed
the reformation and appealed to Russia, supply-
ing a pretext to Catherine on which she filled Po-
land with her troops. It was in vain that the
patriot Kosciusko led the best of his country-
men in a brave struggle with the invader. They
were overborne (1793-1794) ; the unhappy nation
was put in fetters, while Catherine and a new
King of Prussia, Frederick William II., arranged
the terms of a second partition. This gave to
Prussia an additional thousand square miles, in-
cluding the important towns of Danzig and
Thorn, while Russia took four times as much.
A year later, the small remainder of Polish ter-
ritory was dismembered and divided between
Russia, Prussia and Austria, and thus Poland dis-
appeared from the map of Europe as a state.
Russia as left by Catherine 11.
Meantime, in her conflicts with the Turks,
Catherine was extending her vast empire to the
Dneister and the Caucasus, and opening a passage
for her fleets from the Black Sea to the Mediter-
ranean. By treaty in 1774 she placed the Tartars
of the Crimea in independence of the Turks, and
so isolated them for easy conquest. In 1783 the
conquest was made complete. By the same
treaty she secured a right of remonstrance on be-
half of the Christian subjects of the Sultan, in
the Danubian principalities and in the Greek
Church at Constantinople, which opened many
pretexts for future interference and for war at
Russian convenience. The aggressions of the
strong-willed and powerful Czarina, and their
dazzling success, filled her subjects with pride,
and effaced all remembrance of her foreign origin
and her want of right to the seat which she filled.
She was ambitious to improve the empire, as well
as to expand it; for her liberal mind took in the
large ideas of that speculative age and was much
moved by them. She attempted many reforms ;
but most things that she tried to do for the bet-
tering of civilization and the lifting of the people
were done imperiously, and spoiled by the auto-
cratic method of the doing. In her later years,
her inclination towards liberal ideas was checked,
and the French Revolution put an end to it.
State of France in the Eighteenth Century.
In tracing the destruction of Poland and the
aggrandizement of Russia, we have passed the
date of that great catastrophe in France which
ended the old modern order of things, and intro-
duced a new one, not for France only, but for
Europe at large. It was a catastrophe toward
which the abused French people had been slowly
slipping for generations, pushed unrelentingly to
it by blind rulers and a besotted aristocracy. By
1116
EUROPE.
State of France before
the Revolution.
EUROPE.
nature a people ardent and lively in temper, hope-
ful and brave in spirit, full of intelligence, they had
been held down in dumb repression : silenced in
voice, even for the uttering of their complaints;
the national meeting of their representative States
suppressed for nearly two centuries ; taxes wrung
from them on no measure save the will of a
wanton-minded and ignorant king ; their beliefs
prescribed, their laws ordained, their courts of
justice commanded, their industries directed,
their trade hedged round, their rights and per-
missions in all particulars meted out to them by
the same blundering and irresponsible autocracy.
How long would they bear it ? and would their
deliverance come by the easing of their yoke, or
by the breaking of it? — were the only ques-
tions.
Their state was probably at its worst in the
later years of Louis XIV. That seems to be the
conclusion which the deepest study has now
reached, and the picture formerly drawn by
historians, of a society continually sinking into
lower miseries, is mostly put aside. The worst
state, seemingly, was passed, or nearly so, when
Louis XIV. died. It began to mend under his
despicable successor, Louis XV. (1715-1774), —
perhaps even during the regency of the profligate
Orleans (1715-1733). Why it mended, no his-
torian has clearly explained. The cause was not
in better government ; for the government grew
worse. It did not come from any rise in charac-
ter of the privileged classes ; for the privileged
classes abused their privileges with increasing
selfishness. But general influences were at work
in the world at large, stimulating activities of all
kinds, — industrj-, trade, speculation, combina-
tion, invention, experiment, science, philosophy,
— and whatever improvement occurred in the
material condition and social state of the common
people of France may find its explanation in
these. There was an augmentation of life in the
air of the eighteenth century, and France took
some Invigoration from it, despite the many
maladies in its social system and the oppressions
of government under which it bent.
But the difference between the France of
Louis XIV. and the France of Louis XVI. was
more in the people than in their state. If their
misery was a little less, their patience was less,
and by not a little. The stimulations of the age,
which may have given more effectiveness to labor
and more energy to trade, had likewise set think-
ing astir, on the same practical lines. Men whose
minds in former centuries would have labored
on riddles dialectical, metaphysical and theo-
logical, were now bent on the pressing problems
of daily life. The mysteries of economic science
began to challenge them. Every aspect of sur-
rounding society thrust questions upon them,
concerning its origin, its history, its inequalities,
Its laws and their principles, its government and
the source of authority in it. The so-called
"philosophers" of the age, Rousseau, Voltaire
and the encyclopiEdists — were not the only ques-
tioners of the social world, nor did the question-
ing all come from what they taught. It was the
intellectual epidemic of the time, carried into all
countries, penetrating all classes, and nowhere
with more diffusion ttian in France.
After the successful revolt of the English col-
onies in America, and the conspicuous blazoning
of the doctrines of political equality and popu-
lar self-government in their declaration of inde-
pendence and their republican constitution, the
ferment of social free-thinking in France was
naturally increased. The French had helped
the colonists, fought side by side with them,
watched their struggle with intense interest, and
all the issues involved in the American revolu-
tion were discussed among them, with partiality
to the republican side. Franklin, most republi-
can representative of the young republic, came
among them and captivated every class. He
recommended to them the ideas for which he
stood, perhaps more than we suspect.
Louis XVI. and his reign.
And thus, by many influences, the French peo-
ple of all classes except the privileged nobility,
and even in that class to some small extent, were
made increasingly impatient of their misgovern-
ment and of the wrongs and miseries going with
it. Louis XVI., who came to the throne in
1774, was the best in character of the Bourbon
kings. He had no noxious vices and no baleful
ambitions. If he had found right conditions
prevailing in his kingdom he would have made
the best of them. But he had no capacity for re-
forming the evils that he inherited, and no
strength of will to sustain those who had. He
accepted an earnest reforming minister with
more than willingness, and approved the wise
measures of economy, of equitable taxation, and
of emancipation for manufactures and trade,
which Turgot proposed. But when protected
interests, and the privileged order which fat-
tened on existing abuses, raised a storm of oppo-
sition, he weakly gave way to it, and dismissed
the man (1776) wlio might possibly have made
the inevitable revolution a peaceful one. Another
minister, the Genevan banker, Necker, who
aimed at less reform, but demanded economy,
suffered the same overthrow (1781). The waste,
the profligate expenditure, the jobbery, the
leeching of the treasury by high-born pension-
ers and sinecure office-holders, went on, scarcely
checked, until the beginnings of actual bank-
ruptcy had appeared.
The States-General.
Then a cry, not much heeded before, for the
convocation of the States-general of the king-
dom — the ancient great legislature of France,
extinct since the year 1614 — became loud and
general. The king yielded (1788). The States-
general was called to meet on the 1st of May,
1789, and the royal summons decreed that the dep-
uties chosen to it from the third estate — the
common people — should be equal in number to
the deputies of the nobility and the clergy to-
gether. So the dumb lips of France as a nation
were opened, its tongue unloosed. Its common
public opiniou and public feeling made articu-
late, for the first time in one hundred and sev-
enty-five years. And the word that it spoke
was the mandate of Revolution.
The States-general assembled at VersaUles on
the 5th of May, and a conflict between the third
estate and the nobles occurred at once on the
question between three assemblies and one.
Should the three orders deliberate and vote to-
gether as one body, or sit and act separately and
apart. The commons demanded the single as-
sembly. The nobles and most of the clergy re-
fused the union, in which their votes would be
overpowered.
1117
EUROPE.
Beginn ing of the
Revolution.
EUROPE.
The National Assembly.
After some weeks of dead-lock on this funda-
mental issue, the third estate brought it to
a summary decision, by boldly asserting its
own supremacy, as representative of the mass of
the nation, and organizing itself in the character
of the " National Assembly " of France. Under
that name and character it was joined by a con-
siderable part of the humbler clergy, and by
some of the nobles, — additional to a few, like
Mirabeau, who sat from the beginning with the
third estate, as elected representatives of the
people. The king made a weak attempt to annul
this assumption of legislative sufficiency on the
part of the third estate, and only hurried the ex-
posure of his own powerlessness. Persuaded
by his worst advisers to attempt a stronger dem-
onstration of the royal authority, he filled Paris
with troops, and inflamed the excitement, which
had risen already to a jiassionate heat.
Outbreak of the Revolution.
Necker, who had been recalled to the ministry
when the meeting of the States-general was de-
cided upon, now received his second dismissal
(July 11), and the news of it acted on Paris like
a signal of insurrection. The city next day was
in tumult. On the 14th the Bastile was attacked
and taken. The king's government vanished
utterly. His troops fraternized with the riotous
people. Citizens of Paris organized themselves
as a National Guard, on which every hope of
order depended, and Lafayette took command.
The frightened nobility began flight, first from
Paris, and then from the provinces, as mob vio-
lence spread over the kingdom from the capital.
In October there were rumors that the king had
planned to follow the "emigres" and take refuge
in Metz. Then occurred the famous rising of the
women ; their procession to Versailles ; the crowd
of men which followed, accompanied but not
controlled by Lafayette and his National Guards ;
the conveyance of the king and royal family to
Paris, where they remained during the subse-
quent year, practically in captivity, and at the
mercy of the Parisian mob.
Meanwhile, the National Assembly, negligent
of the dangers of the moment, while actual an-
archy prevailed, busied itself with debates on
constitutional theory, with enactments for the
abolition of titles and privileges, and with the
creating of an inconvertible paper money, based
on confiscated church lands, to supply the needs of
the national treasury. Meantime, too, the mem-
bers of the Assembly and their supporters outside
of it were breaking into parties and factions, di-
vided by their different purposes, principles and
aims, and forming clubs, — centers of agitation and
discussion, — clubs of the Jacobins, the Cordeliers,
the Feuillants and the like, — where fear, distrust
and jealousy were soon engendering ferocious
conflicts among the revolutionists themselves.
And outside of France, on the border where the
fugitive nobles lurked, intrigue was always ac-
tive, striving to enlist foreign help for King Louis
against his subjects.
The First Constitution.
In April, 1791, Mirabeau, whose influence had
been a powerful restraint upon the Revolution,
died. In June, the king made an attempt to
escape from his durance in Paris, but was cap-
tured at Varennes and brought back. Angry de-
mands for his deposition were now made, and a
tumultuous republican demonstration occurred,
on the Champ de Mars, which Lafayette and the
mayor of Paris, Bailly, dispersed, with bloodshed.
But republicanism had not yet got its footing.
In the constitution, which the Assembly com-
pleted at this time, the throne was left undis-
turbed. The king accepted the instrument, and
a constitutional monarchy appeared to have
quietly taken the place of the absolute monarchy
of the past.
The Girondists.
It was an appearance not long delusive. The
Constituent National Assembly being dissolved,
gave way to a Legislative Assembly (October,
1791) elected under the new constitution. In the
Legislative Assembly the republicans appeared
with a strength which soon gave them control of
it. They were divided into various gi-oups ; but
the most eloquent and energetic of these, coming
from Bordeaux and the department of the Gi-
ronde, fixed the name of Girondists upon the party
to which they belonged. The king, as a consti-
tutional sovereign, was forced presently to choose
ministers from the ranks of the Girondists, and
they controlled the government for several
months in the spring of 1793. The earliest use
they made of their control was to hurry the coun-
try into war with the German powers, which were
accused of giving encouragement to the hostile
plans of the emigres on the border. It is now a
well-determined fact that the Emperor Leopold
was strongly opposed to war with France, and
used all his influence for the preservation of
peace. It was revolutionary France which
opened the conflict, and it was the Girondists who
led and shaped the policy of wi^r.
Overthrowr of the Monarchy.
In the first encounters of the war, the undisci-
plined French troops were beaten, and Paris was
in panic. Measures were adopted which tlie king
refused to sanction, and he dismissed his Giron-
dist ministers. Lafayette, who was commanding
one division of the army in the field, approved the
king's course, and wrote an unwise letter to the
Assembly, intimating that the army would not
submit to a violation of the constitution. The
republicans were enraged. Everything seemed
proof to them of a treasonable connivance with
the enemies of France, to bring about the sub-
jugation of the country, and a forcible restora-
tion of the old regime, absolutism, aristocratic
privilege and all. On the 20th of June there was
another rising of the Paris mob, unchecked by
those who could, as yet, have controlled it. The
rioters broke into the Tuilcries and humiliated
the king and queen with insults, but did no vio-
lence. Lafayette came to Paris and attempted
to reorganize his old National Guard, for the de-
fense of the constitution and the preservation of
order, but failed. The extremists then resolved
to throw down the toppling monarchy at once,
by a sudden blow. In the early morning of
August 10, they expelled the Council-General of
the Municipality of Paris from the Hotel de Ville,
and placed the government of the city under the
control of a provisional Commune, with Dantou
at its head. At the same hour, the mob which
these conspirators held in readiness, and which
they directed, attacked the Tuileries and mas-
sacred the Swiss guard, while the king and the
1118
EUROPE.
The Reign of
Ten'or.
EUROPE.
royal family escaped for refuge to the Chamber
of the Legislative Assembly, near at hand. There,
in the king's presence, on a formal demand made
bj" the new self -constituted j\Iunicipality or Com-
mune of Paris, the Assembly declared his suspen-
sion from executive functions, and invited the
people to elect -without delay a National Conven-
tion for the revising of the Constitution. Com-
missioners, hastily sent out to the provinces and
the armies in the field, were received everywhere
with submission to the change of government,
except by Lafayette and his army, in and around
Sedan. The Marquis placed them under arrest
and took from his soldiers a new oath of fidelity
to the constitution and the king. But lie found
himself unsupported, and, yielding to the sweep
of events, he obeyed a dismissal by the new gov-
ernment from his command, and left France, to
wait in exile for a time when he might serve his
country with a conscience more assured.
The Paris Commune.
Pending the meeting of the Convention, the
Paris Commune, increased in number to two hun-
dred and eighty-eiglit, and dominated by Danton
and Robespierre, became the governing power in
France. The Legislative Assembly was subservi-
ent to it ; the kingless Ministry, which had Dan-
ton in association with the restored Girondists,
was no less so. It was the fierce vigor of the
Commune which caused the king and the royal
family to be imprisoned in the Temple ; which
instituted a special tribunal for the summary
trial of political prisoners ; whicli searched Paris
for "suspects," on the night of August 29-30,
gathered three thousand men and women into the
prisons and convents of the city, planned and
ordered the "September Massacres" of the fol-
lowing week, and thus thinned the whole number
of these " suspects" by a half.
Fall of the Girondists.
On the 22d of September the National Con-
vention assembled. The Jacobins who con-
trolled the Commune Tvere found to have carried
Paris overwhelmingly and all France largely
with them, in the election of representatives. A
furious, fanatical democracy, a bloodthirsty an-
archism, was in the ascendant. The republican
Girondists were now the conservative party in
the Convention. They struggled to hold their
ground, and very soon they were struggling for
their lives. The Jacobin fury was tolerant of
no opposition. What stood in its path, with no
deadlier weapon than an argument or an appeal,
must be, not merely overcome, but destroyed.
The Girondists would have saved the king from
the guillotine, but they dared not adopt his de-
fense, and their own fate was sealed when they
gave votes, under fear, which sent him in Janu-
ary to his death. Five months longer they con-
tended irresolutely, as a failing faction, with
their terrible adversaries, and then, in June, 1793,
they were proscribed and their arrest decreed.
Some escaped and raised futile insurrections in
the provinces. Some stayed and faced the death
which awaited them in the fast approaching
"reign of terror."
"The Mountain" and " the Terror."
The fall of the Girondists left the Jacobin
"Mountain" (so-called from the elevation of the
seats on which its deputies sat in the Conven-
tion) unopposed. Their power was not only
absolute in fact, but unquestioned, and they in-
evitably ran to riot in the exercise of it. The
same madness overcame them in the mass which
overcame Nero, Caligula, Caracalla, as individ-
uals ; for it is no more strange that the unnat-
ural and awful feeling of unlimited dominion
over one's fellows should turn the brain of a
suddenly triumphant faction, than that it should
madden a single shallow-minded man. The men
of "the Mountain" were not only masters of
France — except in La Vendee and the neighbor-
ing region south of the Loire, wliere an obstinate
insurrection had broken out — but the armies
which obeyed them had driven back the invad-
ing Germans, had occupied the Austrian Nether-
lands and taken possession of Savoy and Nice.
Intoxicated by these successas, the Convention
had proclaimed a crusade against all monarchi-
cal government, offering the help of France to
every people which would rise against existing
authorities, and declaring enmity to those who
refused alliance with the Revolution. Holland
was attacked and England forced to war. The
spring of 1793 found a great European coalition
formed against revolutionary France, and justi-
fied by the aggressions of the Jacobinical gov-
ernment.
For effective exercise of the power of the
.lacobins, the Convention as a whole proved too
large a body, even when it had been purged of
Girondist opposition. Its authority was now
gathered into the hands of the famous Commit-
tee of Public Safety, which became, in fact, the
Revolutionary Government, controlling the na-
tional armies, and the whole administration of
domestic and foreign affairs. Its reign was the
Reign of Terror, and the fearful Revolutionary
Tribunal, which began its bloody work with the
guillotine in October, 1793, was the chief instru-
ment of its power. Robespierre, Bar&re, St.
Just, Couthon, Billaud-Varennes, Collot d' Her-
bois and Carnot — the latter devoted to the busi-
ness of the war — were the controlling members
of the Committee. Danton withdrew from it,
refusing to serve.
In September, the policy of terrorism was
avowedly adopted, and, in the language of the
Paris Commune, "the Reign of Terror" became
' ' the order of the day. " The arraignment of
"suspects" before the Revolutionary Tribunal
began. On the 14th of October Marie Antoinette
was put on trial ; on the 16th she met her death.
On the 31st the twenty-one imprisoned Girondist
deputies were sent to the guillotine ; followed on
the 10th of November by the remarkable woman,
JIadame Roland, who was looked upon as the
real leader of their party. From that time until
the mid-summer following, the blood-madness
raged ; not in Paris alone, but throughout France,
at Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, Bordeaux, Nantes,
and wherever a show of insurrection and resis-
tance had challenged the ferocity of the Com-
missioners of the Revolutionary Government,
who had been sent into the provinces with un-
limited death-dealing powers.
But when Jacobinism had destroyed all ex-
terior opposition, it began very soon to break
into factions within itself. There was a pitch in
its excesses at wliich even Danton and Robes-
pierre became conservatives, as against Hebert
and the atheists of his faction. A brief struggle
ensued, and the Hebertists, in March, 1794, passed
1119
EUROPE.
Rise of Napoleon
Bonaparte.
EUROPE.
under the knife of the guillotine. A month later
Danton's enemies had rallied and he, with his
followers, went down before their attack, and
the sharp knife in the Place de la Revolution
silenced his bold tongue. Robespierre remained
dominant for a few weeks longer in the still
reigning Committee of Public Safety; but his
domination was already undermined by many
fears, distrusts and jealousies among his col-
leagues and throughout his party. His down-
fall came suddenly on the 27th of July. On the
morning of that day he was the dictator of the
Convention and of its ruling committee ; at night
he was a headless corpse, and Paris was shouting
with joy.
On the death of Robespierre the Reign of
Terror came quickly to an end. The reaction
was sudden and swift. The Committee of Pub-
lic Safety was changed; of the old members
only Carnot, indispensable organizer of war,
remained. The Revolutionary Tribunal was re-
modeled. The Jacobin Club was broken up.
The surviving Girondist deputies came back to
the Convention. Prosecution of the Terrorists
for their crimes began. A new struggle opened,
between the lower elements in Parisian and
French society, the sansculotte elements, which
had controlled the Revolution thus far, and
the middle class, the bourgeoisie, long cowed
and suppressed, but now rallying to recover its
share of power. Bourgeoisie triumphed in the
contest. The Sansculottes made their last effort
in a rising on the 1st Prairial (May 20, 1795)
and were put down. A new constitution was
framed which organized the government of the
Republic under a legislature in two chambers, —
a Council of Five Hundred and a Council of
Ancients, — with an executive Directory of Five.
But only one third of the legislature first as-
sembled was to be freely elected by the people.
The remaining two thirds were to be taken from
the membership of the existing Convention.
Paris rejected this last mentioned feature of the
constitution, while France at large ratified it.
The National Guard of Paris rose in insurrection
on the 13th Vendemiare (October 5), and it was
on this occasion that the young Corsican officer.
Napoleon Bonaparte, got his foot on the first
round of the ladder by which he climbed after-
wards to so great a height. Put in command of
the regular troops in Paris, which numbered only
5,000, against 30,000 of the National Guards, he
crushed the latter in an action of an hour. That
hour was the opening hour of his career.
The government of the Directory was insti-
tuted on the 27th of October following. Of its
five members, Carnot and Barras were the only
men of note, then or afterwards.
The war with the Coalition.
While France was cowering under "the
Terror," its armies, under Jourdan, Hoche, and
Pichegru, had withstood the great European
combination with astonishing success. The allies
were weakened by ill feeling between Prussia
and Austria over the second partition of Poland,
and generally by a want of concert and capable
leadership in their action. On the other side, the
democratic military sj'stem of the Republic, under
Carnot's keen eyes, was continually bringing
forward fresh soldierly talent to the front. The
fall of the Jacobins made no change in that vital
department of the administration, and the suc-
cesses of the French were continued. In the
summer of 1794 they carried the war into ■
Germany, and expelled the allies from the
Austrian Netherlands. Thence they invaded
Holland, and before the end of January, 1795,
they were masters of the country; the Stadt-
holder had fled to England, and a Batavian Re-
public had been organized. Spain had suffered
losses in battle with them along the Pyrenees,
and the King of Sardinia had yielded to them the
passes of the Maritime Alps. In April the King
of Prussia made peace with France. Before the
close of the year 1795 the revolt in La Vendee
was at an end ; Spain had made peace ; Pichegru
had attempted a great betrayal of the armies on
the Rhine, and had failed.
Napoleon in Italy.
This in brief was the situation at the opening
of the year 1796, when the "little Corsican
officer," who won the confidence of the new
government of the Directory by saving its con-
stitution on the 13th Vendemiare, planned the
campaign of the year, and received the command
of the army sent to Ital}'. He attacked the Sar-
dinians in April, and a single month sufficed to
break the courage of their king and force him to
a treaty of peace. On the 10th of ]May he de-
feated the Austrians at Lodi; on the 15th he was
in Milan. Lombardy was abandoned to him ; all
central Italy was at his mercy, and he began to
act the sovereign conqueror in the peninsula,
with a contempt for the government at Paris
which he hardly concealed. Two ephemeral re-
publics were created under his direction, the
Cisalpine, in Lombardy, and the Cispadane, em-
bracing Modena, Ferrara and Bologna. The
Papacy was shorn of part of its territories.
Every attempt made by the Austrians to shake
the hold which Bonaparte had fastened on the
peninsula only fixed it more firmly. In the
spring he began movements beyond the Alps,
in concert with Hoche on the Rhine, which
threatened Vienna itself and frightened Austria
into proposals of peace. Preliminaries, signed
in April, foreshadowed the hard terms of the
treaty concluded at Campo Formio in the fol-
lowing October. Austria gave up her Nether-
land provinces to France, and part of her Italian
territories to the Cisalpine Republic; but re-
ceived, in partial compensation, the city of
Venice and a portion of the dominions of the
Venetian state; for, between the armistice and
the treaty, Bonaparte had attacked and over-
thrown the venerable republic, and now divided
it with his humbled enemy.
France under the Directory.
The masterful Corsican, who handled these
great matters with the airs of a sovereign, may
have known himself already to be the coming
master of France. For the inevitable submission
again of the many to one was growing plain to
discerning eyes. The frightful school-teaching
of the Revolution had not impressed practical
lessons in politics on the mind of the untrained
democracy, so much as suspicions, distrusts, and
alarms. All the sobriety of temper, the confi-
dence of feeling, the constraining habit of pub-
lic order, without which the self-government of a
people is impracticable, were yet to be acquired.
French democracy was not more prepared for
republican institutions in 1797 than it had been
1120
EUROPE.
Tlie First Consul.
EUROPE.
in 1789. There was no more temperance in its
factions, no more balance between parties, no
more of a steadying potency in public opinion.
But it had been brought to a state of feeling
that would prefer the sinking of all factions un-
der some vigorous autocracy, rather than another
appeal of their quarrels to the guillotine. And
events were moving fast to a point at which
that choice would require to be made. The
summer of 1797 found the members of the Di-
rectory in hopeless conflict with one another and
with the legislative councils. On the 4th of
September a " coup d' etat," to which Bonaparte
contributed some help, purged both the Direc-
tory and the Councils of men obnoxious to the
violeHt faction, and e.xiled them to Guiana. Per-
haps the moment was favorable then for a soldier,
with the great prestige that Bonaparte had won,
to mount to the seat of power; but he did not so
judge.
The Expedition to Egypt.
He planned, instead, an expedition to Egypt,
directed against the British power in the East,
— an expedition that failed in every object it
could have, except the absence in which it kept
him from increasing political disorders at home.
He was able to maintain some appearance of
success, by his subjugation of Egypt and his in-
vasion of Syria ; but of harm done to England,
or of gain to France in the Mediterranean, there
was none ; since Nelson, at the battle of the Nile,
destroyed the French fleet, and Turkey was
added to the Anglo- Austrian coalition. The
blunder of the expedition, as proved by its
whole results, was not seen by the French peo-
ple so plainly, however, as they saw the growing
hopelessness of their own political state, and
the alarming reverses which their armies in
Italy and on the Rhine had sustained since Bona-
parte went away.
French Aggressions. — The new Coalition.
Continued aggressions on the part of the French
had provoked a new European coalition, formed
in 1798. In Switzerland they had overthrown
the ancient constitution of the confederacy, or-
ganizing a new Helvetic Republic on the Gallic
model, but taking Geneva to themselves. In
Italy they had set up a third republic, the
Roman, removing the Pope forcibly from his
sovereignty and from Rome. Every state with-
in reach had then taken fresh alarm, and even
Russia, undisturbed in the distance, was now
enlisted against the troublesome democracy of
France.
The unwise King of Naples, entering rashly
into the war before his allies could support him,
and hastening to restore the Pope, had been
driven (December, 1798) from his kingdom, which
underwent transformation into a fourth Italian
republic, the Parthenopeian. But this only
stimulated the efforts of the Coalition, and in
the course of the following year the French were
expelled from all Italy, saving Genoa alone, and
the ephemeral republics they had set up were ex-
tinguished. On the Rhine they had lost ground ;
but they had held their own in Switzerland, after
a fierce struggle with the Russian forces of Su-
warrow.
Napoleon in power.
When news of these disasters, and of the ripe-
ness of the situation at Paris for a new coup
'^ 1121
d' etat, reached Bonaparte, in Egypt, he deserted
his army there, leaving it, under Kleber, in a
helpless situation, and made his way back to
France. He landed at Frejus on the 9th of Octo-
ber. Precisely a month later, by a combination
with Sieyfes, a veteran revolutionist and maker
of constitutions, he accomplished the overthrow
of the Directory. Before the year closed, a
fresh constitution was in force, which vested
substantially monarchical powers in an execu-
tive called the First Consul, and the chosen First
Consul was Napoleon Bonaparte. Two asso-
ciate Consuls, who sat with him, had no pur-
pose but to conceal for a short time the real
absoluteness of his rule.
From that time, for fifteen years, the history
of France — it is almost possible to say the his-
tory of Europe — is the story of the career of the
extraordinary Corsican adventurer who took pos-
session of the French nation, with unparalleled
audacity, and wlio used it, with all that pertained
to it — iives, fortunes, talents, resources — in the
most prodigious and the most ruthless undertak-
ings of personal ambition that the modern world
has ever seen. He was selfishness incarnate ; and
he was the incarnation of genius in all those
modes of intellectual power which bear upon the
mastery of momentary circumstances and the
mastery of men. But of the higher genius that
might have worthily employed such vast powers,
— that might have enlightened and inspired a
really great ambition in the man, to make himself
an enduring builder of civilization in the world,
he had no spark. The soul behind his genius
was ignoble, the spirit was mean. And even on
the intellectual side, his genius had its narrow-
ness. His projects of selfishness were extraor-
dinary, but never sagacious, never far-sighted,
tlioughtfully studied, wisely planned. There is
no appearance in any part of his career of a
pondered policy, guiding him to a well-deter-
mined end in what he did. The circumstances
of any moment, whether on the battle-field or in
the political arena, he could handle with a swift
apprehension, a mastery and a power that may
never have been surpassed. But much com-
moner men have apprehended and have com-
manded in a larger and more successful way the
general sweep of circumstances in their lives.
It is that fact which belittles Napoleon in the
comparison often made between him and Coesar.
He was probably Ccesar's equal in war. But
who can imagine Cassar in Napoleon's place
committing the blunders of blind arrogance
which ruined the latter in Germany and Spain,
or making his fatuous attempt to shut Eng-
land, the great naval power, out of continental
Europe '?
His domestic administration was beneficial to
France in many ways. He restored order, and
maintained it, with a powerful hand. He sup-
pressed faction effectually, and eradicated for the
time all the political insanities of the Revolution.
He exploited the resources of the country with
admirable success ; for his discernment in such
matters was keen and his practical judgment was
generally sound. But he consumed the nation
faster than he gave it growth. His wars — the
wars in which Europe was almost unceasingly
kept by the aggression of his insolence and his
greed — were the most murderous, the most de-
vouring, that any warrior among the civilized
races of mankind has ever been chargeable with.
EUROPE.
Hie First Empire.
EUROPE.
His blood-guiltiness in these wars is tlie one
glaring fact which ought to be foremost in every
thought of them. But it is not. There is a
pitiable readiness in mankind to be dazzled and
cheated by red battle-lights, when it looks into
history for heroes; and few figures have been
glorified more illusively in the world's eye than
the marvelous warrior, the vulgar-minded adven-
turer, the prodigy of self -exalting genius, Napo-
leon Bonaparte.
In the first year of his Consulate, Bonaparte
recovered Italy, by the extraordinary Marengo
campaign, while Moreau won the victory of Ho-
henlinden, and the Treaty of Luneville was
brought about. Austria obtained peace again by
renewing the concessions of Campo Pormio, and
by taking part in a reconstruction of Germany,
under Bonaparte's dictation, which secularized
the ecclesiastical states, extinguished the freedom
of most of the imperial cities, and aggrandized
Bavaria, Wlirtemberg, Baden and Saxony, as
proteges and dependencies of France. England
was left alone in the war, with much hostile feel-
ing raised against her in Europe and America by
the arrogant use she had made of her mastery of
the sea. The neutral powers had all been em-
bittered by her maritime pretensions, and Bona-
parte now brought about the organization among
them of a Northern League of armed neutrality.
England broke it with a single blow, by Nel-
son's bombardment of Copenhagen. Napoleon,
however, had conceived the plan of starving
English industries and ruining British trade
by a "continental system" of blockade against
them, which involved the compulsory exclusion
of British ships and British goods from all
European countries. This impossible project
committed him to a desperate struggle for the
subjugation of Europe. It was the fundamen-
tal cause of his ruin.
The First Empire.
In 1802 the First Consul advanced his restora-
tion of absolutism in France a second step, by
securing the Consulate for life. A short inter-
val of peace with England was arranged, but
war broke out anew the following year, and the
English for a time had no allies. The French
occupied Hanover, and the Germans were quies-
cent. But in 1804, Bonaparte shocked Europe
by the abduction and execution of the Bourbon
prince. Due d'Enghien, and began to challenge
again the interference of the surrounding pow-
ers by a new series of aggressive measures.
His ambition had thrown off all disguises; he
had transformed the Republic of France into an
Empire, so called, and himself, by title, into an
Emperor, with an imposing crown. "The Cis-
alpine or Italian Republic received soon after-
wards the constitution of a kingdom, and he
took the crown to himself as King of Italy.
Genoa and surrounding territory (the Liguriau
Republic) were annexed, at nearly the same
time, to France; several duchies were declared
to be dependencies, and an Italian principality
was given to Napoleon's elder sister. The effect
produced in Europe by such arbitrary and ad-
monitory proceedings as these enabled Pitt, the
younger, now at the head of the English gov-
ernment, to form an alliance (1805), first with
Russia, afterwards with Austria, Sweden and
Naples, and finally with Prussia, to break the
yoke which the French Emperor had put upon
Italy, Holland, Switzerland and Hanover, and
to resist his further aggressions.
Austerlitz and Trafalgar.
The amazing energy and military genius of
Napoleon never had more astonishing proof
than in the swift campaign which broke this coali-
tion at Ulm and Austerlitz. Austria was forced to
another humiliating treaty, which surrendered
Venice and Venetia to the conqueror's new King-
dom of Italy ; gave up Tyrol to Bavaria ; yielded
other territory to Wurtemberg, and raised both
electors to the rank of kings, while making Baden
a grand duchy, territorially enlarged. Prussia was
dragged by force into alliance with France, and
took Hanover as pay. But England triumphed at
the same time on her own element, and Napoleon's
dream of carrying his legions across the Chan-
nel, as CiEsar did, was forever dispelled by Nel-
son's dying victory at Trafalgar. That battle,
which destroyed the combined navies of France
and Spain, ended hope of contending success-
fully with the relentless Britons at sea.
End of the Holy Roman Empire.
France was never permitted to learn the seri-
ousness of Trafalgar, and it put no check on the
vaulting ambition in Napoleon which now be-
gan to o'erleap itself. He gave free rein to his
arrogance in all directions. The King of Naples
was expelled from his kingdom and the crown
conferred on Joseph Bonaparte. Louis Bona-
parte was made King of Holland. Southern
Germany was suddenly reconstructed again.
The little kingdoms of Napoleon's creation and
the small states surrounding them were declared
to be separated from the ancient Empire, and
were formed into a Confederation of the Rhine,
under the protection of France. Warned by this
rude announcement of the precarious tenure of
his imperial title as the head of the Holy Roman
Empire, Francis II. resigned it, and took to him-
self, instead, a title as meaningless as that which
Napoleon had assumed, — the title of Emperor
of Austria. The venerable fiction of the Holy
Roman Empire disappeared from history on the
6th of August, 1806.
Subjugation of Prussia.
But while Austria had become submissive to
the offensive measures of Napoleon, Prussia be-
came now fired with unexpected, sudden wrath,
and declared war in October, 1806. It was a
rash explosion of national resentment, and the
rashness was dearlj' paid for. At Jena and
Auerstadt, Prussia sank under the feet of the
merciless conqueror, as helplesslj' subjugated as
a nation could be. Russia, attempting her res-
cue, was overcome at Eylau and Friedland ; and
both the vanquished powers came to terms with
the victor at Tilsit (July, 1807). The King of
Prussia gave up all his kingdom west of the
Elbe, and all that it had acquired in the second
and third partitions of Poland. A new German
kingdom, of Westphalia, was constructed for Na-
poleon's youngest brother, Jerome. A free state
of Danzig, dependent on France, and a Grand
Duchy of Warsaw, were created. The Russian
Czar, bribed by some pieces of Polish Prussia, and
by prospective acquisitions from Turkey and Swe-
den, became an all}' of Napoleon and an accom-
plice in his plans for the subjection of Europe.
He enlisted his empire in the "continental
1122
EUROPE.
Napoleo7i''s
Decline and Fall.
EUROPE.
system " against England, and agreed to the
enforcement of the decree which Napoleon is-
sued from Berlin, declaring the British islands
in a state of blockade, and prohibiting ti'ade
with them. The British government retorted by
its "orders in council," which blockaded in the
like paper-fashion all ports of France and of the
allies and dependencies of France. And so
England and Napoleon fought one another for
years in the peaceful arena of commerce, to the
exasperation of neutral nations and the destruc-
tion of the legitimate trade of the world.
The crime against Spain.
And now, having prostrated Germany, and cap-
tivated the Czar, Napoleon turned toward another
field, which had scarcely felt, as yet, his intrusive
hand. Spain had been in servile alliance with
France for ten years, while Portugal adhered
steadily to her friendship with Great I5ritain, and
now refused to be obedient to the Berlin Decree.
Napoleon took prompt measures for the punish-
ment of so bold a defiance. A delusive treaty
with the Spanish court, for the partition of the
small kingdom of the Braganzas, won permis-
sion for an army under Junot to enter Portugal,
through Spain. No resistance to it was made.
The royal family of Portugal quitted Lisbon,
setting sail for Brazil, and Junot took posses-
sion of the kingdom. But this accomplished
only half of Napoleon's design. He meant to
have Spain, as well ; and he found, in the miser-
able state of the country, his opportunity to
work out an ingenious, unscrupulous scheme for
its acquisition. His agents set on foot a revolu-
tionary movement, in favor of the worthless
crown prince, Ferdinand, against his equally
worthless father, Charles IV. , and pretexts were
obtained for an interference by French troops.
Charles was first coerced into an abdication;
then Ferdinand was lured to an interview with
Napoleon, at Bayonne, was made prisoner there,
and compelled in his turn to relinquish the
crown. A vacancy on the Spanish throne hav-
ing been thus created, the Emperor gathered at
Bayonne a small assembly of Spanish nota-
bles, who offered the seat to Joseph Bonaparte,
already King of Naples. Joseph, obedient to his
imperial brother's wish, resigned the Neapolitan
crown to Murat, his sister's husband, accepted
the crown of Spain, and was established at Mad-
rid with a French army at his back.
This was one of the two most ruinous of the
political blunders of Napoleon's life. He had
cheated and insulted the whole Spanish nation,
in a way too contemptuous to be endured even
by a people long cast down. There was a revolt
which did not spring from any momentary pas-
sion, but which had an obstinac}^ of deep feeling
behind that made effective suppression of it im-
possible. French armies could beat Spanish
armies, and disperse them, but they could not
keep them dispersed ; and they could not break
up the organization of a rebellion which or-
ganized itself in every province, and which went
on, when necessary, without any organization
at all. England sent forces to the peninsula, un-
der Wellington, for the support of the insurgent
Spaniards and Portuguese; and thenceforward,
to the end of his career, the most inextricable
difficulties of Napoleon were those in which he
had entangled himself on the southern side of
the Pyrenees.
The chastening of Germany.
The other cardinal blunder in Napoleon's con-
duct, which proved more destructive to him than
the crime in Spain, was his exasperating treatment
of Germany. There was neither magnanimity
on the moral side of him nor real wisdom on the
intellectual side, to restrain him from using his
victory with immoderate insolence. He put as
much shame as he could invent into the humilia-
tions of the German people. He had Prussia
under his heel, and he ground the heel upon her
neck with the whole weight of his power. The
consequence was a pain and a passion which
wrought changes like a miracle in the temper and
character of the abused nation. There were
springs of feeling opened and currents of na-
tional life set in motion that might never have
been otherwise discovered. Enlightened men
and strong men from all parts of Germany found
themselves called to Prussia and to the front of
its affairs, and their way made easy for them in
labors of restoration and reform. Stein and
Hardenburg remodeled the administration of the
kingdom, uprooted the remains of serfdom in it,
and gave new freedom to its energies. Scharn-
horst organized the military system on which
rose in time the greatest of military powers.
Humboldt planned the school system which edu-
cated Prussia beyond all her neighbors, in the
succeeding generations. Even the philosophers
came out of their closets and took part, as Fichte
did, in the stirring and uplifting of the spirit of
their countrymen. So it was that the outrages of
Napoleon in Germany revenged themselves, by
summoning into existence an unsuspected energy
that would be turned against him to destroy him,
in the end.
But the time of destruction was not yet come.
He had a few years of triumph still before him,
— of triu niph every where except in Portugal and
Spain. Austria, resisting him once more (1809),
was once more crushed at Wagram, and to such
submissiveness that it gave a daughter of the
imperial house in marriage to the parvenu
sovereign of France, next year, when he divorced
his wife Josephine. He was at the summit of
his renown that year, but already declining from
the greatest height of his power. In 1811 there
was little to change the situation.
The fall of Napoleon.
In 1813 the downfall of Napoleon was begun
by his fatal expedition to Russia. The next
year Prussia, half regenerated within the brief
time since Jena and Tilsit, went into alliance with
Russia, and the War of Liberation was begun.
Austria soon joined the alliance; and at Leipzig
(Oct. 18, 1813) the three nations shattered at last
the yoke of oppression that had bound Europe so
long. At the same time, the French armies in
Spain were expelled, and Wellington entered
France through the Pyrenees, to meet the allies
who pursued Napoleon across the Rhine. Forced
to abdicate and retire to the little island of Elba
(the sovereignty of which was ceded to him), he
remained there in quiet from May, 1814, until
March, 181-5, when he escaped and reappeared in
France. Army and people welcomed him. The
Bourbon monarchy, which had been restored by
the allies, fell at his approach. The king,
Louis XVIII., fled. Napoleon recovered his
throne and occupied It for a few weeks. But the
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The Holy Alliance.
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alliance -whicli had expelled him from it refused
to permit his recovery of power. The question
was settled finally at Waterloo, on the 18th of
June, when a British army under AVellington and
a Prussian army under Blilcher won a victory
which left no hope to the beaten Emperor. He
surrendered himself to the commander of a British
vessel of war, and was sent to confinement for
the remainder of his life on the remote island of
St. Helena.
The Congress of Vienna.
But Europe, delivered from one tyrannical
master, was now given over to several of them,
in a combination which oppressed it for a genera-
tion. The sovereigns who had united to de-
throne Napoleon, with the two emperors, of
Austria and Russia, at their head, and with the
Austrian minister, Metternich, for their most
trusted counselor, assumed first, in the Congress
of Vienna, a general work of political rearrange-
ment, to repair the Revolutionary and Napoleonic
disturbances, and then, subsequently, an authori-
tative supervision of European politics which
proved as meddlesome as Napoleon's had been.
Their first act, as before stated, was to restore
the Bourbon monarchy in France, indifferent to
the wishes of the people. In Spain, Ferdinand
had already taken the throne, when Joseph fled.
In Italy, the King of Sardinia was restored and
Genoa transferred to him ; Lombardy and Venetia
were given back to Austria; Tuscany, Modena
and some minor duchies received Hapsburg
princes ; the Pope recovered his States, and the
Bourbons returned to Naples and Sicily. In
Germany, the Prussian kingdom was enlarged
again by several absorptions, including part of
Saxony, but some of its Polish territory was
given to the Czar ; Hanover became a kingdom ;
Austria resumed the provinces which Napoleon
had conveyed to his Rhenish proteges; and,
finally, a Germanic Confederation was formed, to
take the place of the extinct Empire, and with
no more efflciency in its constitution. In the
Netherlands, a new kingdom was formed, to bear
the Netherland name, and to embrace Holland
and Belgium in union, with the House of Orange
on the throne.
The Holy Alliance.
Between the Czar, the Emperor of Austria, and
the King of Prussia, there was a personal agree-
ment that went with these arrangements of the
Congress of Vienna, and which was prolonged
for a number of years. In the public under-
standing, this was associated, perhaps wrongly,
with a written declaration, known as the Holy
Alliance, in which the three sovereigns set forth
their intention to regulate their foreign and do-
mestic policy by the precepts of Christianity,
and invited all princes to join their alliance for
the maintenance of peace and the promotion of
brotherly love. Whether identical as a fact with
this Holy Alliance or secreted behind it, there
was, and long continued to be, an undoubted
league between these sovereigns and others, which
had aims very different from the promotion of
brotherly love. It was wholly reactionary, hostile
to all political liberalism, and repressive of all
movements in the interest of the people. Met-
ternich was its skilful minister, and the deadly,
soulless system of beaureaucratlc absolutism
which he organized in Austria was the model of
government that it strove to introduce.
In Italy, the governments generally were re-
duced to the Austrian model, and the political
state of the peninsula, for forty years, was scarcely
better, if at all, than it had been under the Span-
ish rule in the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies.
Germany, as divided as ever, under a federal
constitution which federated nothing else so much
as the big and little courts and their reactionary
ideas, was profoundly depressed in political
spirit, while prospering materially and showing
notable signs of intellectual life.
France was not slow in finding that the restored
Bourbons and the restored emigres had forgotten
nothing and learned nothing, in the twenty-five
years of their exile. They put all their strength
into the turning back of the clock, trying to
make it strike again the hours in which the Rev-
olution and Napoleon had been so busy. It was
futile work; but it sickened and angered the
nation none the less. After all the stress and
struggle it had gone through, there was a strong
nation yet to resist the Bourbonism brought
back to power. It recovered from the exhaus-
tion of its wars with a marvellous quickness.
The millions of peasant land-owners, who were
the greatest creation of the Revolution, dug
wealth from its soil with untiring free arms, and
soon made it the most prosperous land in Europe.
Through country and city, the ideas of the Revo-
lution were in the brains' of the common people,
while its energies were in their brawn, and Bour-
bonism needed more wisdom than it_ ever pos-
sessed to reconcile them to its restoration.
Revolutions of 1820-1821.
It was not in France, however, but in Spain,
that the first rising against the restored order of
things occurred, Ferdinand VII. , when released
from his French imprisonment in 1814, was
warmly received in Spain, and took the crown
with quite general consent. He accepted the
constitution under which the country had been
governed since 1813, and made large lying prom-
ises of a liberal rule. But when seated on the
throne, he suppressed the constitution, restored
the Inquisition, revived the monasteries, called
back the expelled Jesuits, and opened a deadly
persecution of tlie liberals in Spanish politics.
No effective resistance to him was organized
until 1820, when a revolutionary movement took
form which forced the king, in March, to re-
establish the constitution and call different men
to his council. Portugal, at the same time,
adopted a similar constitution, and the exiled
king, John VI., returning now from Brazil, ac-
cepted it.
The revolution in Spain set fire to the discon-
tent that had smouldered in Italy. The latter
broke forth, in the summer of 1830, at Naples,
where the Bourbon king made no resistance to a
sudden revolt of soldiers and citizens, but yielded
the constitution they demanded at once. Sar-
dinia followed, in the next spring, with a rising
of the Piedmontese, requiring constitutional gov-
ernment. The king, Victor Emmanuel I. , who was
very old, resigned the crown to his brother, Charles
Felix. The latter refused the demands of the con-
stitutionalists and called upon Austria for help.
These outbreaks of the revolutionary spirit
were alarming to the sovereigns of the Holy
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Revolutions
of 1820 and 1830.
EUROPE.
Alliance and excited them to a vigorous ac-
tivity. They convened a Congress, first at
Troppau, in October, 1820, afterwards at Lay-
bach, and finally at Verona, to plan concerted
action for the suppressing of the popular move-
ments of the time. As tlie result of these con-
ferences, the congenial duty of restoring abso-
lutism in the Two Sicilies, and of helping the
King of Sardinia against his subjects, was im-
posed upon Austria and willingly performed ;
while the Bourbon court of France was solicited
to put an end to tlie bad example of constitu-
tional government in Spain. Both commissions
were executed with fidelity and zeal. Italy was
flung down and fettered again ; French troops oc-
cupied Spain from 1833 until 1837. England,
alone, protested against this flagrant policing of
Europe by the Holy Alliance. Canning, its spir-
ited minister, "called in the New World," as he
described his policy, "to redress the balance of
the old," by recognizing the independence of the
Spanish colonies in America, which, Cuba ex-
cepted, were now separated forever from the
crown of Spain. Brazil in like manner was cut
loose from the Portuguese crown, and assumed
the constitution of an empire, under Dom Pedro,
the eldest son of John VI.
Greek War of Independence.
These stifled revolutions in western Europe
failed to discourage a more obstinate insurrection
which began in the East, among the Cliristian
subjects of the Turks, in 1831. The Ottoman
government had been growing weaker and more
vicious for many years. Tlie corrupted and tur-
bulent Janissaries were the masters of the empire,
and a sultan who attempted, as Selim III. (1789-
1807) had done, to introduce reforms, was put to
death. Russia, under Alexander I., liad been
continuing to gain ground at the expense of the
Turks, and assuming more and more of a pat-
ronage of the Christian subjects of the Porte.
There seems to be little doubt that the rising be-
gun In 1821, which had its start in Moldavia, and
its first leader in a Greek, Ypsilanti, who had
been an oflicer in the Russian service, received
encouragement from the Czar. But Alexander
turned his back on it when the Greeks sprang to
arms and seriously appealed to Europe for help
in a war of national Independence. Tlie Congress
of Verona condemned the Greek rising, in com-
mon with that of Spain. Again, England alone
showed "Sympathy, but did notliing as a govern-
ment, and left the struggling Greeks to such help
as they might win from individual friends. Lord
Byron, with others, went to Greece, carrying
money and arms; and, generally, these volun-
teers lost much of their ardor in the Greek cause
when they came into close contact with its native
supporters. But the Greeks, however lacking in
liigh qualities, made an obstinate figlit, and held
their ground against the Turks, until the feeling
of sympathy with them had grown too strong in
England and in France for the governments of
tliose countries to be heedless of it. Moreover,
in Russia, Alexander I. had been succeeded (1835)
by the aggressive Nicholas, who had not patience
to wait for the slow crumbling of the Ottoman
power, but was determined to break it as sum-
marily as he could. He joined France and Eng-
land, therefore, in an alliance and in a naval
demonstration against the Turks (1827), which
had its result in the battle of Navarino. The
allies of Nicholas went no farther ; but he pur-
sued the undertaking, in a war which lasted until
the autumn of 1839. Turkey at the end of it
conceded the independence of Greece, and prac-
tically that of Wallachia and Moldavia. In 1830,
a conference at London established the Greek
kingdom, and in 1833 a Bavarian prince, Otho I.,
was settled on the throne.
Revolutions of 1830.
Before this result was reached, revolution in
western Europe, arrested in 1831-33, had broken
out afresh. Bourbonism had become unendura-
ble to France. Cliarles X. , who succeeded his
brother Louis XVIH. in 1821, showed not only a
more arbitrary temper, but a disposition more
deferential t« tlie Church than his predecessor.
He was fond of the Jesuits, whom his subjects
very commonly distrusted and disliked. He at-
tempted to put shackles on the press, and when
elections to the chamber of deputies went repeat-
edly against the government, he undertook prac-
tically to alter the suffrage by ordinances of his
own. A revolution seemed then to be the only
remedy that was open to the nation, and it was
adopted in July, 1830, the veteran Lafayette
taking the lead. Charles X. was driven to
abdication, and left France for England. The
crown was transferred to Louis Philippe, of
the Orleans branch of the Bourbon family, — sou
of the Philip figalite who joined the Jacobins
in the Revolution.
The July Revolution in France proved a signal
for more outbreaks in other parts of Europe than
had followed the Spanish rising of teu years
before.
Belgium broke away from the union with
Holland, which had never satisfied its people,
and, after some struggle, won recognized inde-
pendence, as a new kingdom, with Leopold of
Saxe Coburg raised to the throne.
Russian Poland, bearing the name of a consti-
tutional kingdom since 1815, but having the Czar
for its king and the Czar's brother for viceroy,
found no lighter oppression than before, and
made a hopeless, brave attempt to escape from
its bonds. The revolt was put down with un-
merciful severity, and thousands of the hapless
patriots went to exile In Siberia.
In Germany, there were numerous demonstra-
tions in the smaller states, which succeeded more
or less in extorting constitutional concessions;
but there was no revolutionary movement on a
larger scale.
Italy remained quiet in both the north and the
south, where disturbances had arisen before ; but
commotions occurred in the Papal states, and in
Modena and Parma, which required the arms of
Austria to suppress.
In England, the agitations of the continent
hastened forward a revolution which went far
beyond all other popular movements of the time
in the lasting importance of its effects, and which
exhibited in their first great triumjili the peace-
ful forces of the Platform and the Press.
England under the last two Georges.
But we have given little attention to affairs in
Great Britain during the past half century or
more, and need to glance backward.
Under the third of the Georges, there was dis-
tinctly a check given to the political progress
which England had been making since the
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Tlie Reform Era
in England,
EUROPE.
Revolution of 1688. The wilfulness of the king
fairly broke down, for a considerable period, the
system of responsible cabinet government which
had been taking shape and root under the two ear-
lier Hanoverians, and ministers became again, for
a time, mere mouthpieces of the royal will. The
rupture with the American colonies, and the un-
successful war which ended in their indepen-
dence, brought in another influence, adverse, for
the time being, to popular claims in government.
For it was not King George, alone, nor Lord
North, nor any small Tory faction, that prose-
cuted and upheld the attempt to make the colo-
nists in America submissive to "taxation with-
out representation. " The English nation at large
approved the war; English national sentiment
was hostile to the Americans in their indepen-
dent attitude, and the Whigs — the liberals then
In English politics — were a discredited and
weakened party for many years because of their
leaning to the American side of the questions in
dispute. Following close upon the American
war, came the French Revolution, which fright-
ened into Toryism great numbers of people who
did not by nature belong there. In England, as
everywhere else, the reaction lasted long, and
government was more arbitrary and repressive
than it could possibly have continued to be under
different circumstances.
Meantime extraordinary social changes had
taken place, which tended to mark more strongly
the petrifying of things in the political world.
The great age of mechanical invention had been
fully opened. Machines had begun to do the
work of human hands in every industry, and
steam had begun "to move the machines. The
organization of labor, too, had assumed a new
phase. The factory system had arisen ; and with
it had appeared a new growth of cities and towns.
Production was accelerated ; wealth was accu-
mulating more rapidly, and the distribution of
wealth was following different lines. The Eng-
lish middle class was rising fast as a money-
power and was gathering the increased energies
of the kingdom into its hands.
Parliamentary Reform in England.
But while the tendency of social changes had
been to increase vastly the importance of this
powerful middle class, the political conditions
had actually diminished its weight in public
affairs. In Parliament, it had no adequate rep-
resentation. The old boroughs, which sent mem-
bers to the House of Commons as they had sent
them for generations before, no longer contained
a respectable fraction of the " commons of Eng-
land," supposed to be represented in the House,
and those who voted in the boroughs were not
at all the better class of the new England of the
nineteenth century. Great numbers of the bor-
oughs were mere private estates, and tlie few
votes polled in them were cast by tenants who
elected their landlords' nominees. On the other
hand, the large cities and the numerous towns of
recent growth had either no representation in
Parliament, or they had equal representation
with the "rotten boroughs" which cast two or
three or half-a-dozen votes.
That the commons of England, with all the
gain of substantial strengtli tliey had been
making in the last half of the eighteentli century
and the first quarter of the nineteenth, endured
this travesty of popular representation so long
as until 1832, is proof of the potency of the con-
servatism wliich the French Revolution induced.
The subject of parliamentary reform had been
now and then discussed since Chatham's time;
but Toryism had always been able to thrust it
aside and bring the discussion to naught. At
last there came the day when the question would
no longer be put down. The agitations of 1830,
combined with a very serious depression of in-
dustry and trade, produced a state of feeling
which could not be defied. King and Parliament
yielded to the public demand, and the First Re-
form Bill was passed. It widened the suffrage
and amended very considerably the inequities of
the parliamentary representation; but both re-
forms have been carried much farther since, by
two later bills.
Repeal of the English Corn Laws.
The reform of Parliament soon brouglit a
broader spirit into legislation. Its finest fruits
began to ripen about 1838, when an agitation for
the repeal of the foolish and wicked English
"corn-laws " was opened by Cobden and Bright.
In the day of the "rotten boroughs," when the
landlords controlled Parliament, they imagined
that they had "protected" the farming interest,
and secured higher rents to themselves, by laying
heavy duties on the importation of foreign bread-
stuffs. A famous ' ' sliding scale " of such duties
had been invented, which raised the duties when
prices in the home market dropped, and lowered
them proportionately when home prices rose.
Thus the consumers were always deprived, as
much as possible, of any cheapening of their
bread which bountiful Nature might offer, and
paid a heavy tax to increase the gains of the
owners aud cultivators of land.
Now that other ' ' interests " besides the agri-
cultural had a voice in Parliament, and had be-
come very strong, they began to cry out against
this iniquity, and demand that the " corn laws"
be done away with. The famous "anti-corn-law
league," organized mainly by the exertions of
Richard Cobden, conducted an agitation of the
question which brought about the repeal of the
laws in 1846.
But the effect of the agitation did not end there.
So thorough and prolonged a discussion of the
matter had enlightened the English people upon
the whole question between "protection" and
free trade. The manufacturers and mechanics,
who had led the movement against protective
duties on food-stuffs, were brought to see that
they were handicapped more than protected by
duties on imports in their own departments of
production. So Cobden and his party continued
their attacks on the theory of " protection" until
every vestige of it was cleared from the English
statute books.
The Revolutions of 1848.
Another year of revolutions throughout Europe
came in 1848, and the starting point of excite-
ment was not, this time, at Paris, but, strangely
enough, in the Vatican, at Rome. Pius IX. had
been elected to the papal chair in 1846, and had
immediately rejoiced the hearts and raised the
hopes of the patriots in misgoverned Italy by his
liberal measures of reform and his promising
words. The attitude of the Pope gave encour-
agement to popular demonstrations in various
Italian states during the later part of 1847 ; and
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Revolutions of
1848.
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in January 1848 a formidable rising occurred in
Sicily, followed in February by another in
Naples. King Ferdinand II. was compelled to
change his ministers and to concede a constitu-
' tion, which he did not long respect.
Lombardy was slow this time in being kindled ;
but when the flame of revolution burst out it
was very fierce. The Austrians were driven first
from Milan (March, 1848), and then from city
after city, until they seemed to be abandoning
their Italian possessions altogether. Venice as-
serted its republican independence under the
presidency of Daniel Mauin. Charles Albert,
King of Sardinia, tliought the time favorable for
recovering Lombardy to himself, and declared
war against Austria. The expulsion of the Aus-
trians became the demand of the entire penin-
sula, and even the Pope, the Grand Duke of Tus-
cany, and the King of Naples were forced to
join the patriotic movement in appearance,
though not with sincerity. But the King of Sar-
dinia brought ruin ou the whole undertaking, by
sustaining a fatal defeat in battle at Custozza, in
July, 1848.
France had been for some time well prepared
for revolt, and was quick to be moved by the
first whisper of it from Italy. The short-lived
popularity of Louis Philippe was a thing of the
past. There was widespread discontent with
many things, and especially with the limited suf-
frage. The French people had the desire and
the need of something like that grand measure of
electoral reform which England secured so peace-
fully in 1833 ; but they could not reach it in the
peaceful way. The aptitude and the habit of
handling and directing the great forces of public
opinion effectively in such a situation were alike
wanting among them. There was a mixture,
moreover, of social theories and dreams in their
political undertaking, which heated the move-
ment and made it more certainly explosive. The
Parisian mob took arms and built barricades
on the 33d of February. The next day Louis
Philippe signed an abdication, and a week later
he was an exile in England. For the remainder
of the year France was strangely ruled : first by
a self-constituted provisional government, La-
martine at its head, which opened national work-
shops, and attempted to give employment and
pay to 135,000 enrolled citizens in need; after-
wards by a Constituent National Assembly, and
an Executive Commission, which found the na-
tional workshops a devouring monster, difficult
to control and hard to destroy. Paris got rid of
the shops in June, at the cost of a battle which
lasted four days, and in which more than 8,000
people were wounded or slain. In November a
republican constitution, framed by the Assembly,
was adopted, and on the lOtli of December Louis
Napoleon Bonaparte, son of Louis Bonaparte,
once King of Holland, and of Hortense Beau-
harnais, daughter of the Empress Josephine, was
elected President of the Republic by an enor-
mous popular vote.
The revolutionary shock of 1848 was felt
in Germany soon after the fall of the monarchy
in France. In March there was rioting in Berlin
and a collision with the troops, which alarmed
the king so seriously that he yielded promises to
almost every demand. Similar risings in other
capitals had about the same success. At Vienna,
the outbreak was more violent and drove both
Metternich and the Emperor from the city. In
the first flush of these popular triumphs there
came about a most hopeful-looking election of a
Germanic National Assembly, representative of
all Germany, and gathered at Frankfort, on the
invitation of the Diet, for a revision of the con-
stitution of the Confederation. But the Assembly
contained more learned scholars than practical
statesmen, and its constitutional work was wasted
labor. A Constituent Assembly elected in Prus-
sia accomplished no more, and was dispersed in
the end without resistance ; but the king granted
a constitution of his own framing. The revolu-
tionary movement in Germany left its effects, iu
a general loosening of the bonds of harsh gov-
ernment, a general broadening of political ideas,
a final breaking of the Metternich influence,
even iu Austria ; but it passed over the existing
institutions of the much-divided country with a
very light touch.
In Hungary the revolution, stimulated by the
eloquence of Kossuth, was carried to the pitch
of serious war. The Hungarians had resolved to
be an independent nation, and iu the struggle
which ensued they approached very near the
attainment of their desire ; but Russia came to
the help of the Hapsburgs, and the armies of the
two despotisms combined were more than the
Hungarians could resist. Their revolt was aban-
doned in August, 1849, and Kossuth, with other
leaders, escaped through Turkish territory to
other lands.
The suppression of the Hungarian revolt was
followed by a complete restoration of the despot-
ism and domination of the Austrians in Italy.
Charles Albert, of Sardinia, had taken courage
from the struggle in Hungary and had renewed
hostilities iu March, 1849. But, again, he was
crushingly defeated, at Novara, and resigned, in
despair, the crown to his son, Victor Emmanuel
II. Venice, which had resisted a long siege with
heroic constancy, capitulated in August of the
same year. The whole of Lombardy and Veuetia
was bowed once more under the merciless tyr-
anny of the Austrians, and savage revenges
were taken upon the patriots who failed to es-
cape. Rome, whence the Pope — no longer a
patron of liberal politics — had fled, and where
a republic had been once more set up, with Gari-
baldi and JIazzini in its constituent assembly,
was besieged and taken, and the republic over-
turned, by troops sent from republican France.
The Neapolitan king restored his atrocious abso-
lutism without help, by measures of the greatest
brutality,
A civil war in Switzerland, which occurred
simultaneously with the political collisions in
surrounding countries, is hardly to be classed
with them. It was rather a religious conflict,
between the Roman Catholics and their oppo-
nents. The Catholic cantons, united in a League,
called the Sonderbund.were defeated in the war;
the Jesuits were expelled from Switzerland in
consequence, and, in September, 1848, a new
constitution for the confederacy was adopted.
The Second Empire in France.
The election of Louis Napoleon to the Presi-
dency of the French Republic was ominous of a
disposition among the people to bring back a
Napoleonic regime, with all the falsities that it
might imply. He so construed the vote which
elected him, and does not seem to have been
mistaken. Having surrounded himself with
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Italy.
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unprincipled adventurers, and employed three
years of his presidency in preparations for the
attempt, lie executed a coup d' etat on the 2d of
December, dispersing the National Assembly,
arresting influential republicans, and submitting
to popular vote a new constitution which pro-
longed his presidency to ten years. This was
but the first step. A year later he secured a
"plebiscite" which made him hereditary Em-
peror of the French. The new Empire — the
Second Empire in France — was more vulgar,
more false, more fraudulent, more swarmingly a
nest of self-seeking and dishonest adventurers,
than the First had been, and with nothing of the
saving genius that was in the First. It rotted
for eighteen years, and then it fell, France
with it.
The Crimean War.
A certain respectability was lent to this sec-
ond Napoleonic Empire by the alliance of Eng-
land with it in 1854, against Russia. The Czar,
Nicholas, had determined to defy resistance in
Europe to his designs against the Turks. He
first endeavored to persuade England to join him
in dividing the possessions of "the sick man,"
as he described the Ottoman, and, that proposal
being declined, he opened on his own account a
quarrel with the Porte. France and England
joined forces in assisting the Turks, and the
little kingdom of Sardinia, from motives of far-
seeing policy, came into the alliance. The prin-
cipal campaign of the war was fought in the
Crimea, and its notable incident was the long
siege of Sebastopol, which the Russians de-
feuded until September, 1855. An armistice
was concluded the following January, and the
terms of peace were settled at a general conference
of powers in Paris the next March. The results of
the war were a check to Russia, but an improve-
ment of the condition of the Sultan's Christian
subjects. Moldavia and Wallachia were soon
afterwards united under the name of Roumania,
paying tribute to the Porte, but otherwise inde-
pendent.
Liberation and Unification of Italy.
The part taken by Sardinia in the Crimean
War gave that kingdom a standing in European
politics which had never been recognized before.
It was a measure of sagacious policy due to the
able statesman. Count Cavour, wlio had become
the trusted minister of Victor Emmanuel, the
Sardinian king. The king and his minister
were agreed in one aim — the unification of Italy
under the headship of the House of Savoy.
By her participation in the war with Russia,
Sardinia won a position which enabled her to
claim and secure admission to the Congress of
Paris, among the greater powers. At that con-
ference. Count Cavour found an opportunity to
direct attention to the deplorable state of affairs
in Italy, under the Austrian rule and influence.
No action by the Congress was taken ; but the
Italian question was raised in importance at
once by the discussion of it, and Italy was rallied
to the side of Sardinia as the necessary head of
any practicable movement toward liberation.
More than that : France was moved to sympathy
with the Italian cause, and Louis Napoleon was
led to believe that his throne would be strength-
ened by espousing it. He encouraged Cavour and
Victor Emmanuel, therefore, in an attitude toward
Austria which resulted in war (1859), and when the
Sardinians were attacked he went to their assis-
tance with a powerful force. At Magenta and
Solferino the Austrians were decisively beaten,
and the French emperor then abruptly closed
the war, making a treaty which ceded Lombardy
alone to Sardinia, leaving Venetia still under
the oppressor, and the remainder of Italy un-
changed in its state. For payment of the ser-
vice he had rendered, Louis Napoleon exacted
Savoy and Nice, and Victor Emmanuel was
compelled to part with the original seat of his
House.
■ There was bitter disappointment among the
Italian patriots over the meagerness of the fruit
yielded by the splendid victories of Magenta and
Solferino. Despite the treaty of Villafranca,
they were determined to have more, and they
did. Tuscany, Parma, Modena and Romagna
demanded annexation to Sardinia, and, after a
plebiscite, they were received (March, 1860) into
the kingdom and represented in its parliament.
In the Two Sicilies there was an intense longing
for deliverance from the brutalities of the Nea-
politan Bourbons. Victor Emmanuel could not
venture an attack upon the rotten kingdom, for
fear of resentments in France and elsewhere.
But the adventurous soldier. Garibaldi, now
took on himself the task of completing the lib-
eration of Italy. With an army of volunteers, he
first swept the Neapolitans out of Sicily, and
then took Naples itself, within the space of four
months, between May and September, 1860.
The whole dominion was annexed to what now
became the Kingdom of Italy, and which em-
braced the entire peninsula except Rome, garri-
soned for the Pope by French troops, and Vene-
tia, still held in the clutches of Austria. In
1862, Garibaldi raised volunteers for an attack
on Rome; but the unwise movement was sup-
pressed by Victor Emmanuel. Two years later,
the King of Italy brought about an agreement
with the French emperor to withdraw his garri-
son from Rome, and, after that had been done,
the annexation of Rome to the Italian kingdom
was a mere question of time. It came about
in 1870, after the fall of Louis Napoleon, and
Victor Emmanuel transferred his capital to the
Eternal City. The Pope's domain was then lim-
ited to the precincts of the Vatican.
The Austro-Prussian War.
The unification of Italy was the first of a re-
markable series of nationalizing movements
which have been the most significant feature of
the history of the last half of the nineteenth cen-
tury. The next of these movements to begin
was in Germany — the much divided country of
one peculiarly homogeneous and identical race.
Influences tending toward unification had been
acting on the Germans since Prussia rose to
superiority in the north. By the middle of the
century, the educated, military Prussia that was
founded after 1806 had become a power capable
of great things in capable hands ; and the capa-
ble "hands received it. In 1861, William I. suc-
ceeded his brother as king; in 1863, Otto von
Bismarck became his prime minister. It was a
remarkable combination of qualities and talents,
and remarkable results came from it.
In 1864, Prussia and Austria acted together in
taking Schleswig and Holstein, as German states,
from Denmark. The next year they quarreled
1128
EUROPE.
Germany and
France.
EUROPE.
over the administration of the duchies. In 1866,
they fought, and Austria was entirely vanquished
in a "seven weeks war." The superiority of
Prussia, organized by her great military admin-
istrator and soldier, Moltke, was overpowering.
Her rival was left completely at her mercy. But
Bismarck and his king were wisely magnani-
mous. They refrained from inflicting on the Aus-
trians a humiliation that would rankle and keep
enmities alive. They foresaw the need of future
friendship between the two powers of central
Europe, as against Russia on the one side and
France on the other, and they shaped their policy
to secure it. It sufficed them to have put Aus-
tria out of the German circle, forever; to have
ended the false relation in which the Hapsburgs
— rulers of an essentially Slavonic and Magyar
dominion — had stood towards Germany so
long.
Prussia now dominated the surrounding Ger-
man states so commandingly tliat the mode and
the time of their unification may be said to have
been within her own control. Hanover, Hesse-
Cassel, Nassau, Schleswig-Holstein, and Frank-
fort were incorporated in the Prussian kingdom
at once. Saxony and the other states of the
north were enveloped in a North German Con-
federation, with the King of Prussia for its he-
reditary president and commander of its forces.
The states of southern Germany were left un-
federated for the time being, but bound them-
selves by treaty to put their armies at the dis-
posal of Prussia. Thus Germany as a whole
was already made practically one power, under
the control of King William and his great min-
ister.
Final Expulsion of Austria from Italy.
The same war which unified Germany carried
forward the nationalization of Italy another step.
Victor Emmanuel had shrewdly entered into an
alliance with Prussia before the war began, and
attacked Austria in Venetia simultaneously with
tlie German attack on the Bohemian side. The
Italians were beaten at Custozza, and their navy
was defeated in the Adriatic ; but tlie victorious
Prussians exacted Venetia for them in the settle-
ment of peace, and Austria had no more footing
in the peninsula.
Austria-Hungary.
It is greatly to the credit of Austria, long
blinded and stupefied by the narcotic of abso-
lutism, that the lessons of the war of 1866 sank
deep into her mind and produced a very genuine
enlightenment. The whole policy of the court
of Vienna was changed, and with it the consti-
tution of the Empire. The statesmen of Hungary
were called into consultation with the statesmen
of Austria, and the outcome of their discussions
was an agreement which swept away the old
Austria, holding Hungary in subjection, and
created in its place a new power — a federal
Austria- Hungary — equalized in its two princi-
pal parts, and united under the same sovereign
■with distinct constitutions.
The Franco-German War.
The surprising triumph of Prussia in the Seven
Weeks War stung Louis Napoleon with a
jealousy which he could not conceal. He was
incapable of perceiving what it signified, — of
perfection in the organization of the Prussian
kingdom and of power in its resources. He was
under illusions as to the strengtli of his own Em-
pire. It had been honeycombed by the ras-
calities that attended and surrounded him, and
he did not know it. He imagined France to be
capable of putting a check on Prussian aggran-
dizement ; and he began very early after Sadowa
to pursue King WiUiam with demands which
were tolerably certain to end in war. When the
war came, in July, 1870, it was by his own
declaration ; yet Prussia was prepared for it and
Prance was not. In six weeks time from the
declaration of war, — in one month from the first
action, — Napoleon himself was a prisoner of war
in the hands of the Germans, surrendered at
Sedan, with the whole army wliich he personally
commanded ; the Empire was in collapse, and a
provisional government had taken the direction
of affairs. On the 30th of September Paris was
invested ; on the 28th of October Bazaine, with an
army of 150, 000 men, capitulated at Metz. A hope-
less attempt to rally the nation to fresh efforts of
defence in the interior, on the Loire, was valiantly
made imder the lead of Gambetta ; but it was too
late. When the year closed, besieged Paris was
at the verge of starvation and all attempts to re-
lieve the city had failed. On the 28th of January,
1871, an armistice was sought and obtained ; on
the 30th, Paris was surrendered and the Germans
entered it. The treaty of peace negotiated sub-
sequently ceded Alsace to Germany, with a fifth
of Lorraine, and bound France to pay a war in-
demnity of five milliards of francs.
The Paris Commune.
In February, 1871, the provisional " Govern-
ment of National Defense " gave way to a Na-
tional Assembly, duly elected under the pro-
visions of the armistice, and an executive was
instituted at Bordeaux, under the presidency of
M. Thiers. Early in March, the German forces
were withdrawn from Paris, and control of the
city was immediately seized by that dangerous
element — Jacobinical, or Red Republican, or
Communistic, as it may be variously described —
which always shows itself with promptitude and
power in the French capital, at disorderly times.
The Commune was proclaimed, and the national
government was defied. From the 2d of April
until the 28th of May Paris was again under siege,
this time by forces of the Frencli government,
fighting to overcome the revolutionists within.
The proceedings of the latter were more wantonly
destructive than those of the Terrorists of the
Revolution, and scarcely less sanguinary. The
Commime was suppressed in the end with great
severity.
The Third French Republic.
M. Thiers held the presidency of the Third Re-
public in France until 1873, when he resigned
and was succeeded by Marslial SlacMahon. In
1875 the constitution which has since remained,
with some amendments, in force, was framed
and adopted. In 1878 Marshal MacMahon gave
place to M. Jules Grevy, and the latter to M.
Sadi Carnot in 1887. Republican government
seems to be firmly and permanently established
in France at last. The country is in a prosper-
ous state, and nothing but its passionate desire
to recover Alsace and to avenge Sedan appears
threatening to its future.
1129
EUROPE.
The new German Empire.
England and
Ireland,
EUROPE.
While the army of the Germans was still be-
sieging Paris, and King William and Prince
Bismarck were at Versailles, in January, 1871,
the last act wliioh completed the unification and
nationalization of Germany was performed. This
was the assumption of the title of Emperor by
King William, in response to the prayer of the
princes of Germany and of the North German
Parliament. On the 16th of the following April,
a constitution for the German Empire was pro-
claimed.
The long and extraordinary reign of the Em-
peror William I. was ended by his death in 1888.
His son, Frederick III, was dying at the time of
an incurable disease, and survived his father only
three months. The son of Frederick III.,
William 11., signalized the beginning of his
reign by dismissing, after a few months, the
great minister. Count Bismarck, on whom his
strong grandfather had leaned, and who had
wrought such marvels of statesmanship and
diplomacy for the German race. What may lie
at the end of the reign which had this self-
suflBcient beginning is not to be foretold.
The Russo-Turkish War.
Since the Franco-German War of 1870-1871,
the peace of Europe has been broken but once by
hostilities within the European boundary. In
1875 a rising against the unendurable misrule of
the Turks began in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and
was imitated the next year in Bulgaria. Servia
and Montenegro declared war against Turkey
and were overcome. Russia then espoused the
cause of the struggling Slavs, and opened, in
1877, a most formidable new attempt to crush
the Ottoman power, and to accomplish her cov-
eted extension to the Mediterranean. From May
until the following January the storm of war
raged fiercely along the Balkans. The Turks
fought stubbornly, but they were beaten back,
and nothing but a dangerous opposition of feel-
ing among the other powers in Europe stayed
the hand of the Czar from being laid upon Con-
stantinople. The powers required a settlement
of the peace between Russia and Turkey to be
made by a general Congress, and it was held at
Berlin in June, 1878. Bulgaria was divided
by the Congress into two states, one tributary
to the Turk, but freely governed, the other
subject to Turkey, but under a Christian gov-
ernor. This arrangement was set aside seven
years later by a bloodless revolution, which
formed one Bulgaria in nominal relations of de-
pendence upon the Porte. This was the third
Important nationalizing movement within a
quarter of a century, and it is likely to go farther
in southeastern Europe, until it settles, perhaps,
"the Eastern question," so far as the European
side of it is concerned.
Bosnia and Herzegovina were given to Austria
by the Congress of Berlin ; the independence of
Roumania, Servia, and Montenegro was made
more complete ; the island of Cyprus was turned
over to Great Britain for administration.
Spain in the last half Century.
A few words will tell sufficiently the story of
Spain since the successor of Joseph Bonaparte
quitted the scene. Ferdinand VH. died in 1833,
and his infant daughter was proclaimed queen,
as Isabella II. , with her mother, Christina, regent.
Isabella's title was disputed by Don Carlos, the
late king's brother, and a civil war between Carl-
ists and Christinos went on for years. When
Isabella came of age she proved to be a dissolute
woman, with strong proclivities toward arbitrary
government. A liberal party, and even a re-
pulilican party, had been steadily gaining ground
in Spain, and the queen placed herself in contlict
with it. In 1868 a revolution drove her into
France. The revolutionists offered the crown to
a prince distantly related to the royal family of
Prussia. It was this incident that gave Louis
Napoleon a pretext for quarreling with the King
of Prussia in 1870 and declaring war. Declined
by the Hohenzollern prince, the Spanish crown
was then offered to Amadeo, sou of the King of
Italy, who accepted it, but resigned it again in
1873, after a reign of two years, in disgust with
the factions which troubled him. Castelar, the
distinguished republican orator, then formed a
republican government which held the reins for
a few months, but could not establish order in
the troubled land. The monarchy was restored
In December, 187-1, by the coronation of Alfonso
XII., son of the exiled Isabella. Since that time
Spain has preserved a tolerably peaceful and
contented state.
England and Ireland.
In recent years, the part which Great Britain
has taken in Continental affairs has been slight ;
and, indeed, there has been little in those affairs
to bring about important international relations.
In domestic politics, a single series of questions,
concerning Ireland and the connection of Ire-
land with the British part of the United King-
dom, has mastered the field, overriding all
others and compelling the statesmen of the day
to take them in hand. The sudden imperiousness
of these questions affords a peculiar manifesta-
tion of the political conscience in nations which
the nineteenth century has wakened and set astir.
Through all the prior centuries of their subjec-
tion, the treatment of the Irish people by the
English was as cruel and as heedless of justice
and right as the treatment of Poles by Russians
or of Greeks by Turks. They were trebly
oppressed: as conquered subjects of an alien
race, as religious enemies, as possible rivals in
production and trade. They were deprived of
political and civil rights ; they were denied the
ministrations of their priests ; the better employ-
ments and more honorable professions were
closed to them; the industries which promised
prosperity to their country were suppressed. A
small minority of Protestant colonists became
the recognized nation, so far as a nationality in
Ireland was recognized at all. When Ireland
was said to have a Parliament, it was the Parlia-
ment of the minority alone. No Catholic sat in
it; no Catholic was represented in it. Wlien
Irishmen were permitted to bear arms, they
were Protestant Irishmen only who formed the
privileged militia. Seven-tenths of the inhabi-
tants of the island were politically as non-exist-
ent as actual serfdom could have made thern.
For the most part they were peasants and their
state as such scarcely above the condition of
serfs. They owned no land; their leases were
insecure; the laws protected them in the least
possible degree ; their landlords were mostly of
the hostile creed and race. No country in
1130
EUROPE.
Ccmclusion.
EUROPE.
Europe showed conditions better calculated to
distress and degrade a people.
This was the state of things in Ireland until
nearly the end of the eighteenth century. In
1783 legislative independence was conceded ; but
the independent legislature was still the Parlia-
ment in which Protestants sat alone. In 1793
Catholics were admitted to the franchise; but
seats in Parliament were still denied to them and
they must elect Protestants to represent them.
In 1800 the Act of Union, creating the United
Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, ex-
tinguished the Parliament at Dublin and pro-
vided for the introduction of Irish peers and
members to represent Irish constituencies in the
greater Parliament at London; but still no
Catholic could take a seat in either House. Not
until 1829, after eighteen years of the tierce agi-
tation which Daniel O'Connell stirred up, were
Catholic disabilities entirely removed and the
people of that faith placed on an equal footing
with Protestants in political and civil rights.
O'Connell's agitation was not for Catholic
emancipation alone, but for the repeal of the Act
of Union and the restoration of legislative inde-
pendence and national distinctness to Ireland.
That desire has been hot in the Irish heart from
the day the Union was accomplished. After
O'Connell's death, there was quiet on the subject
for a time. The fearful famine of 1845-7 dead-
ened all political feeling. Then there was a re-
currence of the passionate animosity to British
rule which had kindled unfortunate rebellions
in 1798 and 1803. It produced the Fenian con-
spiracies, which ran their course from about 18.58
to 1867. But soon after that time Irish national-
ism resumed a more politic temper, and doubled
the energy of its eilorts by confining them to
peaceful and lawful ways. The Home Rule
movement, which began in 1873, was aimed at
the organization of a compact and well-guided
Irish party in Parliament, to press the demand
for legislative independence and to act with
united weight on lines of Irish policy carefully
laid down. This Home Rule party soon acquired
a powerful leader in Mr. Charles Parnell, and
was successful in carrying questions of reform in
Ireland to the forefront of English politics.
Under the influence of its great leader, Mr.
Gladstone, the Liberal party had already, before
the Home Rule party came into the field, begun
to adopt measures for the redress of Irish wrongs.
In 1869, the Irish branch of the Church of Eng-
land, calling itself the Church of Ireland, was
disestablished. The membership of that churcli
was reckoned to be one-tenth of the population ;
but it had been supported by the taxation of the
whole. The Catholics, the Presbyterians and
other dissenters were now released from this
unjust burden. In 1870, a Land Bill — the first
of several, which restrict the power of Irish land-
lords to oppress their tenants, and which protect
the latter, while opening opportunities of land-
ownership to them — was passed. The land
question became for a time more prominent than
the Home Rule question, and the party of Mr.
Parnell was practically absorbed in an Irish Na-
tional Land League, formed to force landlords to
a reduction of rents. The methods of coercion
adopted brought the League into collision with
the Liberal Government, notwithstanding the
general sympathy of the latter with Irish com-
plaints. For a time the Irish Nationalists went
into alliance with the English Conservatives ; but
in 1886 Mr. Gladstone became convinced, and
convinced the majority of his party, that just
and harmonious relations between Ireland and
Great Britain could never be established without
the concession of Home Rule to the fomier. A
bill which he introduced to that end was defeated
in the House of Commons and Mr. Gladstone re-
signed. In 1893 lie was returned to power, and
in September of the following year lie carried in
the House of Commons a bill for the transferring
of Irish legislation to a distinct Parliament at
Dublin. It was defeated, however, in the House
of Lords, and the question now rests in an un-
settled state. Mr. Gladstone's retirement from
the premiership and from the leadership of his
party, which occuiTed in March, 1894, may affect
the prospects of the measure; but the English
Liberals are committed to its principle, and it
appears to be certain that the Irish question will
attain some solution within no very long time.
Conclusion.
The beginning of the year 1894, when this is
written, finds Europe at peace, as it has been for
a number of years. But the peace is not of
friendship, nor of honorable confidence, nor of
good will. The greater nations are lying on
their arms, so to speak, watching one another
with strained eyes and with jealous hearts.
France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Russia, are
marshaling armies in the season of peace that,
not many years ago, would have seemed mon-
strous for war. E.xactions of military service
and taxation for military expenditure are pressed
upon their people to the point of last endurance.
The preparation for battle is so vast in its scale,
so unceasing, so increasing, so far in the lead
over all other efforts among men, that it seems
like a new affirmation of belief that war is the
natural order of the world.
And yet, the dread of war is greater in the
civilized world than ever before. The interests
and influences that work for peace are more
powerful than at any former time. The wealth
which war threatens, the commerce which it in-
terrupts, the industry which it disturbs, the in-
telligence which it offends, the humanity which
it shocks, the Christianity which it grieves, grow
stronger to resist it, year by year. The states-
man and the diplomatist are under checks of re-
sponsibility which a generation no older than
Palmerston's never felt. The arbitrator and the
tribunal of arbitration have become familiar
within a quarter of a century. The spirit of the
age opposes war with rising earnestness and in-
creasing force ; while the circumstance and fact
of the time seem arranged for it as the chief busi-
ness of mankind. It is a singular and a critical
situation ; the outcome from it is impenetrably
hidden.
Within itself, too, each nation is troubled with
hostilities that the world has not known before.
Democracy in politics is bringing in, as was in-
evitable, democracy in the whole social system;
and the period of adjustment to it, which we
are passing through, could not fail to be a period
of trial and of many dangers. The Anarchist,
the Nihilist, the Socialist in his many variations
— what are they going to do in the time that lies
before us ?
Europe, at the present stage of its history, is in
the thick of many questions ; and so we leave it
1131
EURYSEEDON.
EXCOMMUNICATIONS.
EURYMEDON, Battles of the (B. C. 466).
See Athens; B. C. 470-i66.
EUSKALDUNAC. See Basques.
EUTAW SPRINGS, Battle of (1781). See
United States of Am. : A. D. 178(>--1781.
EUTHYNI, The. See Logist^.
EUTYCHIAN HERESY. See Nestoriau
AKD Moxophtsite Controvt:rsy.
EUXINE, The.— Euxinus Pontus. or Pontus
Eu.xinus, the Black Sea, as named by the Greeks.
EVACUATION DAY.— The anniversary of
the evacuation of New York by the British, Nov.
25, 1783. See United States op Am. : A. D.
1783 (No%t;mbeh — December).
EVANGELICAL UNION OF GER-
MANY, The. See Germany: A. D. 1608-1618.
EVELYN COLLEGE. See Educatioit,
Modern: Reforms: A. D. 1804-1891.
EVER VICTORIOUS ARMY, The. See
China : A. D. 1850-1864.
EVESHAM, Battle of (1265).— The battle
which finished the civil war in England known
as the Barons' War. It was fought Aug. 3, 1265,
and Earl Simon de Montfort. the soul of the
popular cause, was slain, with most of his fol-
lowers. See England : X. D. 1216-1274.
EVICTIONS, Irish. See Irelaot>: A. D.
1886.
EXARCHS OF RAVENNA. See Rome:
A. D. 554-800.
EXARCHS OF THE DIOCESE. See
Primates.
EXCHEQUER.— EXCHEQUER ROLLS.
— EXCHEQUER TALLIES.— "The E.\--
chequer of the Norman kings was the court in
which the whole tiuancial business of the country
was transacted, and as the whole administration
of justice, and even the military organisation,
was dependent upon the fiscal oflicers, the whole
framework of society may be said to have passed
annually under its review. It derived its name
from the chequered cloth which covered the table
at which the accounts were taken, a name which
suggested to the spectator the idea of a game at
chess between the receiver and the payer, the
treasurer and the sheriff. . . . The record of the
business was preserved in three great rolls ; one
kept by the Treasurer, another by the Chancel-
lor, and a third by an officer nominated by the
king, who registered the matters of legal and
special importance. The rolls of the Treasurer
and Chancellor were duplicates; that of the
former was called from its shape the great roll
of the Pipe, and that of the latter the roll of the
Chancery. These documents are mostly still in
existence. The Pipe Rolls are complete from
the second year of Henry II. and the Chancellor's
Rolls nearly so. Of the preceding period only
one roll, that of the thirty -first year of Henry I.,
Is preserved, and this with Domesday book is the
most valuable store of information which exists
for the administrative history of the age. The
financial reports were made to the barons by the
sheriffs of the counties. At Easter and Michael-
mas each of these magistrates produced his own
accounts and paid in to the Exchequer such an
instalment or proffer as he could afford, retain-
ing in hand sufficient money for current expenses.
In token of receipt a tally was made ; a long piece
of wood in which a number of notches were cut,
marking the pounds, shillings, and pence re-
ceived ; this stick was then split down the mid-
dle, each half contained exactly the same num-
ber of notches, and no alteration could of course
be made without certain detection. . . . The fire
which destroyed the old Houses of Parliament is
said to have originated in the burning of the old
Exchequer tallies." — W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of
Eiig., ch. 11, sect. 126. — "The wooden 'tallies'
on which a large notch represented £1,000, and
smaller notches other suras, while a halfpenny
was denoted by a small round hole, were actually
in use at the Exchequer until the year 1824." —
Sir J. Lubbock, Preface to Hall's "Antiquities
and Curiosities of the Exchequer."
Axso Df: E. F. Henderson, Select Hist. Doc's
of the Middle Ages, hk. 1, no. 5. — See, also. Curia
Regis and Chess.
EXCHEQUER, Chancellor of the.— In the
reign of Henry III. , of England, ' ' was created the
ofilce of Chancellor of the Exchequer, to whom
the Exchequer seal was entrusted, and who with
the Treasurer took part in the equitable j urisdic-
tion of the Exchequer, although not in the com-
mon law jurisdiction of the barons, which ex-
tended itself as the legal fictions of pleading
brought common pleas into this court." — W.
Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng.. ch. 15, sect. 237.
EXCLUSION BILL, The. See Englaot):
A. D. 1679-1681.
EXCOMMUNICATIONS AND INTER-
DICTS. — "Excommunication, whatever opin-
ions may be entertained as to its religious effi-
cacy, was originally nothing more in appearance
than the exercise of a right which every society
claims, the expulsion of refractory members from
its body. No direct temporal disadvantages at-
tended this penalty for several ages; but as it
was the most severe of spiritual censures, and
tended to exclude the object of it, not only from
a participation in religious rites, but in a con-
siderable degree from the intercourse of Christian
society, it was used sparingly and upon the
gravest occasions. Gradually, as the church be-
came more powerful and more imperious, ex-
communications were issued upon every provoca-
tion, rather as a weapon of ecclesiastical warfare
than with any regard to its original intention.
. . . Princes who felt the inadequacy of their
own laws to secure obedience called in the assis-
tance of more formidable sanctions. Several ca-
pitularies of Charlemagne denounce the penalty
of excommunication against incendiaries or de-
serters from the army. Charles the Bald pro-
cured similar censures against his revolted vas-
sals. Thus the boundary between temporal and
spiritual offences grew every day less distinct;
and the clergy were encouraged to fresh encroach-
ments, as they discovered the secret of rendering
them successful. . . . The support due to church
censures by temporal judges is vaguely declared
in the capitularies of Pepin and Charlemagne.
It became in later ages a more established prin-
ciple in France and England, and, I presume, in
other countries. By our common law an excom-
municated person is incapable of being a witness
or of bringing an action ; and he may be detained
in prison until he obtains absolution. By the
Establishments of St. Louis, his estate or person
might be attached by the magistrate. These
actual penalties were attended by marks of ab-
horrence and ignominy still more calculated to
make an impression on ordinary minds. They
were to be shunned, like men infected with lep-
rosy, by their servants, their friends, and their
families. . . . But as excommunication, which
1132
EXCOMMUNICATIONS.
FACTORY LEGISLATION.
attacked only one and perhaps a hardened sinner,
was not always efficacious, the church had re-
course to a more comprehensive punishment.
For the offence of a nobleman she put a county,
for that of a prince his entire kingdom, under an
interdict or suspension of religious offices. No
stretch of her tyranny was perhaps so outra-
geous as this. During an interdict the churches
were closed, the bells silent, the dead unburied,
no rite but those of baptism and extreme unction
performed. The penalty fell upon those who
had neither partaken nor could have prevented
the offence; and the offence was often but a
private dispute, in which the pride of a pope or
bishop had been wounded. Interdicts were so
rare before the time of Gregory VII., that some
have referred them to him as their author ; in-
stances may however be found of an earlier
date."— H. HaUam, The Middle Ages, ch. 7, pt. 1.
Also in: M. Gosselin, 77/e Power of tlis Pope
in the Middle Ages, pt. 3, ch. 1, art. 3. — H. C.
Lea, Studies in Church Hist., pt. 3. — P. Schaff,
Uist. of the Christian Church, r. 4, ch. 8, sect. 86.
EXECUTIVE SESSIONS. See Congress
OF THE United St.\tes.
EXEGET./E, The. — Aboard of three per-
sons in ancient Athens "to whom application
might be made in all matters relating to sacred
law, and also, probably, with regard to the sig-
nificance of the Diosemia, or celestial phenomena
and other signs by which future events were
foretold." — G. F. Sch5mann, Antiq. of Greece:
The State, pt. 3, ch. 3.
EXETER, Origin of. — " Isca Damnoniorum,
Caer Wise, Exanceaster, Exeter, keeping essen-
tially the same name under all changes, stands
distinguished as the one great English city which
has, in a more marked way than any other, kept
its unbroken being and its unbroken position
throughout all ages. The Citj' on the Exe, in
all ages and in all tongues keeping its name as
the City on the Exe, allows of an easy definition.
... It is the one city [of England] in which we
can feel sure that human habitation and city life
have never ceased from the days of the early
Csesars to our own." — E. A. Freeman, Exeter,
eh. 1-3.
EXILARCH, The. See Jews : 7th Cen-
tury.
EXODUS FROM EGYPT, The. See
Jews: The Route of the Exodus.
EXPLORATION, African and Polar. See
Africa, and Polar.
EYLAU, Battle of (1807). See Germany:
A. D. 1806-1807.
EYRE, Governor, and the Jamaica insur-
rection. See Jamaica : A. D. 1865.
EYSTEIN I., King of Norway, A. D. 1116-
1123 Eystein II., 11.55-1157.
EZZELINO, OR ECCELINO DI RO-
MANO, The tyranny of, and the crusade
against. See Verona: A. D. 1236-1359.
F.
FABIAN POLICY.— FABIAN TACTICS.
— The policy pursued by Q. Fabius Maximus,
the Roman Dictator, called "the Cunctator" or
Lingerer, in his campaigns against Hannibal.
See Punic War, The Second.
FACTORY LEGISLATION, English.—
" During the 17th and 18th centuries, when the
skill of the workmen had greatly improved, and
the productiveness of labour had increased, vari-
ous methods were resorted to for the purpose
of prolonging the working day. The noontide
nap was first dispensed with, then other intervals
of rest were curtaDed, and ultimately artificial
light was introduced, which had the effect of
abolishing the difference between the short days
of winter and the long days of summer, thus
equalising the working day throughout the year.
The opening of the 19th century was signalised
by a new cry, namely, for a reduction in the
hours of labour ; this was in consequence of the
introduction of female and child labour into the
factories, and the deterioration of the workers as
a result of excessive overwork. . . . The over-
work of the young, and particularly the exces-
sive hours in the factories, became such crying
evils that in 1801 the first Act was passed to re-
strict the hours of labour for apprentices, who
were prohibited from working more than 12
hours a day, between six A. M. and nine P. M.,
and that provision should be made for teaching
them to read and write, and other educational
exercises. This Act further provided that the
mills should be whitewashed at least once a
year; and that doors and windows should be
made to admit fresh air. This Act was followed
by a series of commissions and committees of in-
quiry, the result being that it was several times
amended. The details of the evidence given be-
fore the several commissions and committees of
inquiry are sickening in the extreme ; the medical
testimony was unanimous in its verdict that the
children were physically ruined by overwork;
those who escaped with their lives were so crip-
pled and maimed that they were unable to main-
tain themselves in after life, and became paupers.
It was proven that out of 4,000 who entered the
factory before they were 30 years of age, only 600
were to be found in the mills after that age. By
Sir Robert Peel's Bill in 1819 it was proposed to
limit the hours to 11 per day with one and a half
for meals, for those under 16 years of age. But
the mill-owners prophesied the ruin of the manu-
facturers of the country — they could not compete
with the foreign markets, it was an interference
with the freedom of labour, the spare time given
would be spent in debauchery and riot, and that
if passed, other trades would require the same
provisions. The Bill was defeated, and the hours
fixed at 72 per week; the justices, that is to say
the manufacturers, were entrusted with the en-
forcement of the law. In 1825 a new law was
passed defining the time when breakfast and
dinner was to be taken, and fixing the time to
half an hour for the first repast, and a full hour
for dinner; the traditional term of apprentices
was dropped and the modern classification of
children and young persons was substituted,
and children were once more prohibited from
working more than 13 hours a day. But every
means was adopted to evade the law. . . . After
thousands of petitions, and numerous angry de-
bates in Parliament, the Act of 1833 was passed,
which limited the working hours of children to
48 hours per week, and provided that each child
should have a certain amount of schoolmg, and
with it factory inspectors were appointed to
113c
FACTORY LEGISLATION.
FALAISE.
enforce the law. But the law was not to come
Into operation until March 1, 1836, during which
time it had to be explained and defended in one
session, amended in a second, and made binding
in a third. After several Royal Commissions
and Inquiries by select committees, this Act has
been eight times amended, until the working
hours of children are now limited to sis per day,
and for young persons and women to 56 per
week ; these provisions with certain modifications
are now extended to workshops, and the whole
law is being consolidated and amended. . . .
The whole series of the Factory Acts, dating
from 43 George III, c. 73, to the 37 and 38 Vic-
toria 1874, forms a code of legislation, in regard
to working people, unexampled in any age and
unequalled in any country in the world. . . .
Outside Parliament efforts have been constantly
made to further reduce the working hours. " — G.
Howell, The Conflicts of Capital and Labour, pp.
298-301. — "The continental governments, of
course, have been obliged to make regulations
covering kindred subjects, but rarely have they
kept pace with English legislation. America
has enacted progressive laws so far as the condi-
tion of factoiy workers has warranted. It should
be remembered that the abuses which crept into
the system in England never existed in this coun-
try in any such degree as we know they did in
the old country. Yet there are few States in
America where manufactures predominate or
hold an important position in which law has not
stepped in and restricted either the hours of
labor, or the conditions of labor, and insisted
upon the education of factory children, although
the laws are usually silent as to children of agri-
cultural laborers. It is is not wholly in the pas-
sage of purely factory acts that the factory sys-
tem has influenced the legislation of the world.
England may have suffered temporarily from the
effects of some of her factory legislation, and the
recent reduction of the hours of labor to nine and
one-half per day, less than in any other country,
has had the effect of placing her works at a dis-
advantage; but, in the long run, England will
be the gainer on account of all the work she has
done in the way of legislative restrictions upon
labor. In this she has changed her whole policy.
Formerly trade must be restricted and labor al-
lowed to demoralize itself under the specious
plea of being free ; now, trade must be free and
labor restricted in the interests of society, which
means in the interest of good morals. The
factory system has not only wrought this change,
but has compelled the economists to recognize
the distinction between commodities and services.
There has been greater and greater freedom
of contract in respect to commodities, but the
contracts which involve labor have become
more and more completely under the authority
and supervision of the State. ' Seventy -five
years ago scarcely a single law existed in any
country for regulating the contract for services
in the interest of the laboring classes. At the
same time the contract for commodities was
everywhere subject to minute and incessant reg-
ulations' [Hon. F. A. Walker]. Factory legis-
lation in England, as elsewhere, has had for its
chief object the regulation of the labor of chil-
dren and women; but its scope has constantly
increased by successive and progressive amend-
ments until they have attempted to secure the
physical and moral well-being of the working-
man in all trades, and to give him every condi-
tion of salubrity and of personal safety in the
workshops. The excellent effect of factory leg-
islation has been made manifest throughout the
whole of Great Britain. ' Physically, the factory
child can bear fair comparison with the child
brouglit up in the fields,' and, intellectually,
progress is far greater with the former than with
the latter. Public opinion, struck by these re-
sults, has demanded the extension of protective
measures for children to every kind of industrial
labor, until parliament has brought under the
influence of these laws the most powerful in-
dustries. To carry the factory regulations and
those relative to schooling into effect, England
has an efficient corps of factory inspectors. The
manufacturers of England are unanimous in ac-
knowledging that to the activity, to the sense of
impartiality, displayed by these inspectors, is
due the fact that an entire application of the law
has been possible without individual interests
being thereby jeopardized to a very serious ex-
tent. ... In no other country is there so elab-
orate a code of factory laws as the ' British factory
and workshop act' of 1878 (41 Vict., chap. 16),
it being an act consolidating all the factory acts
since Sir Robert Peel's act of 1802." — C. D.
Wright, Factory Legislation (Tenth Census of the
XT. S., V. 2).
Also in: Mrst annual Bep't of the Factory In-
spectors of the State of New York, 1886, appendix.
— C. Knight, Popular Hist, of Encj., v. 8, ch. 22
and 37. — H. Martineau, Hist, of the Thirty Tears'
Peace, v. 3, pp. 513-515. — See, also, England:
A. D. 1833-1833.
FADDILEY, Battle of.— Fought success-
fully by the Britons with the West Saxons, on the
border of Cheshire, A. D. 583.— J. R. Green,
T/ie Making of England, p. 306.
FAENZA, Battle of (A. D. 542). See Rome:
A. D. 53.5-553.
FjESUL^E. See Florence, Origin and
Name.
FAGGING. See Education, Modern: Euro-
pean Countries.— England. — The Great Pub-
lic Schools.
FAGGIOLA, Battle of (1425). See Itai,t:
A. D. 1413-1447.
FAINEANT KINGS. See Franks: A. D.
511-753.
FAIR OAKS, Battle of. See United States
OP Am. : A. D. 1863 (Mat: Virginia).
FAIRFAX AND THE PARLIAMEN-
TARY ARMY. See England: A. D. 1645
(January — April), and (June); 1647 (April-
August) ; 1648 (November) ; 1649 (February).
FALAISE.— "The Castle [in Normandy]
where legend fixes the birth of William of Nor-
mandy, and where history fixes the famous hom-
age of William of Scotland, is a vast donjon of
the eleventh or twelfth century. One of the
grandest of those massive square keeps which I
have already spoken of as distinguishing the ear-
liest military architecture of Normandy crowns
the summit of a precipitous rook, fronted by an-
other mass of rock, wilder still, on which the can-
non of England were planted during Henry's
siege. To these rocks, these ' felsen, ' the spot
owes its name of Falaise. . . . Between these
two rugged heights lies a narrow dell. . . . The
dell is crowded with mills and tanneries, but the
mills and tanneries of Falaise have their share
in the historic interest of the place. ... In
1134
PALAISB.
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
every form which the story has taken in history
or legend, the mother of the Conqueror appears
as the daughter of a tanner of Faliiise." — E. A.
Freeman. Xnrman Conquest, ch. 8, sect. 1.
FAL AISE, Peace of (i 175). See Scotland :
A. D. 1174-1189.
FALK LAWS, The. See Gebmahy: A. D.
1873-1887.
FALKIRK, Battles of (1298 and 1746). See
Scotl.vnd: a. D. 1390-1305; and 1745-1746.
FAMAGOSTA: A. D. 1571.— Takenby the
Turks. See Turks: A. D. 1566-1571.
FAMILIA. — Roman slaves of one master
ivere collectively, called familia.
FAMILISTERE. See Social Movements:
A, D. 1859-1887.
FAMILY COMPACT, The First Bourbon.
See France: A. D. 1733 The Second. See
France: A. D. 1743 (October) The Third.
See Prance: A. D. 1761 (August).
FAMILY COMPACT IN CANADA, The.
See Canada: A. D. 1820-1837.
FAMINE, The Cotton. See England:
A. D. 1861-1865.
FAMINE, The Irish. See Ireland: A. D.
1845-1847.
FANARIOTS. See Phanaeiots.
FANEUIL HALL.— "The fame of Faneuil
Hall [Boston, ilass.] is as wide as the country
itself. It has been called the ' Cradle of Liberty,'
because dedicated by that early apostle of free-
dom, James Otis, to the cause of liberty, in a
speech delivered in the hall in March, 1763. . . .
Its walls have echoed to the voices of the great
departed in times gone by, and in every great
public exigency the people, with one accord, as-
sembled together to take counsel within its hal-
lowed precincts. . . . The Old Market-house
. . . existing in Dock Square in 1734, was de-
molished by a mob in 1736-37. There was con-
tention among the people as tQ whether they
would be served at their houses in the old way,
or resort to fixed localities, and one set of dispu-
tants took this summary method of settling the
question. ... In 1740, the question of the Mar-
ket-house being revived, Peter Faneuil proposed
to build one at his own cost on the town's land
in Dock Square, upon condition that the town
should legally authorize it, enact proper regula-
tions, and maintain it for the purpose named.
Mr. Faneuil's noble offer was courteously re-
ceived, but such was the division of opinion on
the subject that it was accepted by a majority
of only seven votes, out of 727 persons voting.
The building was completed in September, 1742,
and three days after, at a meeting of citizens,
the hall was formally accepted and a vote of
thanks passed to the donor. . . . The town voted
that the hall should be called Faneuil Hall for-
ever. . . . The original size of the building was
40 by 100 feet, just half the present width; the
hall would contain 1,000 persons. At the fire of
January 13, 1763, the whole interior was de-
stroyed, but the town voted to rebuild in March,
and the State authorized a lottery in aid of the
design. The first meeting after the rebuilding
was held on the 14th March, 1763, when James
Otis delivered the dedicatory address. In 1806
the Hall was enlarged in width to 80 feet, and
by the addition of a third story. " — S. A. Drake,
Old Landmarks of Boston, ch. 4.
FANNIAN LAW, The. See Orchian, Pan-
nian, DmiAN Laws,
FARM. See Perm.
FARMERS' ALLIANCE. See United
States op Am. : A. D. 1877-1891.
FARMER'S LETTERS.The. See United
States op Am. : A. I). 1767-1768.
FARNESE, Alexander, Duke of Parma, in
the Netherlands. See Netherlands: A. D.
1577-1581, to 1588-1593.
FARNESE, The House of. See Parma:
A. D. 154.5-1592.
FARRAGUT, Admiral David G.— Capture
of New Orleans. See United States of Am. :
A. D. 1862 (April: On the Mississippi) At-
tack on Vicksburg. See United States op
Am.: a. D. 1863 (May— .July; On the Missis-
sippi) Victory in Mobile Bay. See United
States OF Am. : A. D. 1864 (August: Alabama).
FARSAKH, OR FARSANG, The. See
Parasang.
FASCES. See Lictors.
FASTI. — "Dies Fasti were the days upon
which the Courts of Justice [in ancient Rome]
were open, and legal business could be trans-
acted before the Praetor ; the Dies Nefasti were
those upon which the Courts were closed. . . .
All days consecrated to the worship of the Gods
by sacrifices, feasts or games, were named Festi.
. . . For nearly four centuries and a-half after
the foundation of the city the knowledge of the
Calendar was confined to the Pontifices alone.
. . . These secrets which might be, and doubt-
less often were, employed for political ends, were
at length divulged in the year B. C. 314, by Cn.
Flavins, who drew up tables embracing all this
carefully-treasured information, and hung them
up in the Forum for the inspection of the pub-
lic. From this time forward documents of this
description were known by the uame of Fasti.
. . . 'These Fasti, in fact, corresponded very
closely to a modern Almanac. . . . The Fasti
just described have, to prevent confusion, been
called Calendaria, or Fasti Calendares, and must
be carefully distinguished from certain composi-
tions also named Fasti by the ancients. These
were regular chronicles in which were recorded
each year the names of the Consuls and other
magistrates, together with the remarkable events,
and the days on which they occurred. The most
important were the Annales Maximi, kept by the
Pontifex Maximus." — W. Ramsay, Manual of
Roman Antiq., ch. 11.
FATIMITE CALIPHS, The. See Ma-
hometan Conquest and Empire: A. D. 908-
1171 ; also. Assassins.
FAURE, President, Election. See France:
A. D. 1894-1895.
FEAST OF LIBERTY. See Greece: B. C.
479: Persian Wars. — Plat^a.
FEAST OF REASON, The. See France:
A. D. 1793 (November).
FEAST OF THE FEDERATION, The.
See France: A. D. 1789-1791.
FEAST OF THE SUPREME BEING,
The. See France: A. D. 1793-1794 (Novem-
ber — June).
FECIALES.— FETIALES. SeeFETUiES.
FEDELI. See Catt.vnl
FEDERAL CITY, The. See Washington
(City): A. D. 1791.
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF SWIT-
ZERLAND. See Constitution op the Swiss
Confederation.
1135
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
FEDERAL CONSTITUTION OF THE
UNITED STATES OF AM. See Constitu-
tion OP THE United States.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.— FEDER-
ATIONS. — " Two requisites seem necessary to
constitute a Federal Government in . . . its most
perfect form. On tiie one hand, each of the mem-
bers of the Union must be "wholly independent in
t hose matters which concern each member only.
On the other hand, all must be subject to a
common power in those matters which concern
the whole body of members collectively. Thus
each member will fix for itself the laws of its
criminal jurisprudence, and even the details of
its political constitution. And it will do this,
not as a matter of privilege or concession from
any higher power, but as a matter of absolute
right, by virtue of its inherent powers as an inde-
pendent commonwealth. But in all matters which
concern the general body, the sovereignty of the
several members will cease. Each member is
perfectly independent within its own sphere ; but
there is another sphere in which its independence,
or rather its separate existence, vanishes. It is
Invested with every right of sovereignty on one
class of subjects, but there is another class of sub-
jects on which it is as incapable of separate politi-
cal action as any province or city of a monarchy
or of an indivisible republic. . . . Four Federal
Commonwealths . . . stand out, in four different
ages of the world, as commanding, above all
others, the attention of students of political his-
tory. Of these four, one belongs to what is usu-
ally known as ' ancient,' another to what is com-
monly called ' mediaeval ' history ; a third arose in
the period of transition between mediaeval and
modern history ; the creation of the fourth may
have been witnessed by some few of those who are
still counted among living men. . . . These four
Commonwealths are, First, the Achaian League
[see Greece : B. C. 280-146] in the later days of
Ancient Greece, whose most flourishing period
comes within the third century before our era.
Second, the Confederation of the Swiss Cantons
[see Constitution op the Swiss Conpedera-
tion], which, with many changes in its extent
and constitution, has lasted from the thirteenth
century to our own day. Third, the Seven United
Provinces of the Netherlands [see Netherlands :
A. D. 1577-1581, and after], whose Union arose
in the War of Independence against Spain, and
lasted, in a republican form, till the war of the
French Revolution. Fourth, the United States
of North' America [see Constitution op the
United States op Am.], which formed a Fed-
eral Union after their revolt from the British
Crown under George the Third, and whose des-
tiny forms one of the most important, and cer-
tainly the most interesting, of the political prob-
lems of our own time. Of these four, three
come sufficiently near to the full realization of
the Federal idea to be entitled to rank among
perfect Federal Governments. The Achaian
League, and the United States since the adoption
of the present Constitution, are indeed the most
perfect developments of the Federal principle
which the world has ever seen. The Swiss Con-
federation, in its origin a Union of the loosest
kind, has gradually drawn the Federal bond
tighter and tighter, till, within our own times, it
has assumed a form which fairly entitles it to
rank beside Achaia and America. The claim of
the United Provinces is more doubtful; their
union was at no period of their republican being
so close as that of Achaia, America, and modern
Switzerland." — E. A. Freeman, Hist, of Federal
Oovernment, v. 1, pp. 3-6.
Classification of Federal Governments. —
" To the classification of federal governments
publicists have given great attention with unsat-
isfactory results. History shows a great variety
of forms, ranging from the lowest possible or-
ganization, like that of the Amphictyonic Coun-
cil [see Amphikttonic Council] to the highly
centralized and powerful German Empire. Many
writers deny that any fixed boundaries can be
described. The usual classification is, however,
into three divisions, — the Staatenstaat, or state
founded on states ; the Staatenbund, or union of
states — to which the term Confederacy nearly
corresponds; and the Bundesstaat, or united
state, which answers substantially to the term
federation as usually employed. The Staaten-
staat is defined to be a state in which the units
are not individuals, but states, and which, there-
fore, has no operation directly on individuals,
but deals with and legislates for its corporate
members ; they preserve undisturbed their powers
of government over their own subjects. The
usual example of a Staatenstaat is the Holy
Roman Empire [see Roman Empire, The Holy].
This conception ... is, however, illogical in
theory, and never has been carried out in prac-
tice. . . . Historically, also, the distinction is
untenable. The Holy Roman Empire had courts,
taxes, and even subjects not connected with the
states. In theory it had superior claims upon
all the individuals within the Empire ; in practice
it abandoned control over the states. The second
category is better established. JeUinek says:
' When states form a permanent political alli-
ance, of which common defence is at the very
least the purpose, with permanent federal organs,
there arises a Staatenbund.' This form of gov-
ernment is distinguished from an alliance by the
fact that it has permanent federal organs ; from
a commercial league by its political purpose;
from a Bundesstaat by its limited purpose. In
other words, under Staatenbund are included the
weaker forms of true federal government, in
which there is independence from other powers,
and, within the purposes of the union, indepen-
dence from the constituent states. . . . The •
Staatenbund form includes most of the federal
governments which have existed. The Greek
confederations (except perhaps the Lycian and
Achaean) and all the mediaeval leagues were of
this type : even the strong modern unions of the
United States, Germany, and Switzerland, have
gone through the Staatenbund stage in their
earlier history. Between the Staatenbund and
the more highly developed form, the Bundesstaat,
no writer has described an accurate boundary.
There are certain governments, notably those of
Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United
States, in which is found an elaborate and powerful
central organism, including federal courts ; to this
organism is assigned all or nearly all the common
concerns of the nation ; within its exclusive con-
trol are war, foreign affairs, commerce, colonies,
and national finances; and there is an efficient
power of enforcement against states. Such gov-
ernments undoubtedly are Bundesstaateu." — A.
B. Hart, Introd. to the Study of Federal Gov't
(Harvard Historical Monographu, no. 2), ch. 1.
1136
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
Greek Federations. — "Under the conditions
of the Grseco-Roman civic life there were but two
practicable methods of forming a great state and
diminishing the quantity of warfare. The one
method was conquest with incorporation, the
other method was federation. . . . Neither
method was adopted by the Greeks in their day
of greatness. The Spartan method of extending
its power was conquest without incorporation:
when Sparta conquered another Greek city, she
sent a harmost to govern it like a tyrant ; in other
words she virtually enslaved the subject city.
The efforts of Athens tended more in the direction
of a peaceful federalism. In the great Delian
confederacy [see Greece: B. C. 478^77, and
Athens: B. C. 466^54], which developed into
the maritime empire of Athens, the ^gean cities
were treated as allies rather than subjects. As
regards their local affairs they were in no way
interfered with, and could they have been repre-
sented in some Idnd of a federal council at Ath-
ens, the course of Grecian history might have
been wonderfully altered. As it was, they were
all deprived of one essential element of sover-
eignty, — the power of controlling their own
military forces. ... In the century following
the death of Alexander, in the closing age of
Hellenic independence, the federal idea appears
in a much more advanced stage of elaboration,
though in a part of Greece which had been held
of little account in the great days of Athens and
Sparta. Between the Achaian federation, framed
in 374 B. C, and the United States of America,
there are some interesting points of resemblance
which have been elaborately discussed by Mr.
Freeman, in his ' History of Federal Govern-
ment. ' About the same time the ^tolian League
[see jEtolian League] came into prominence
in the north. Both these leagues were instances
of true federal government, and were not mere
confederations; that is, the central government
acted directly upon all the citizens and not merely
upon the local governments. Each of these
leagues had for its chief executive officer a Gen-
eral elected for one year, with powers similar to
those of an American President. In each the
supreme assembly was a primary assembly at
which every citizen from every city of the league
had a right to be present, to speak, and to vote ;
but as a natural consequence these assemblies
shrank into comparatively aristocratic bodies.
In jEtolia, which was a group of mountain can-
tons similar to Switzerland, the federal union
was more complete than in Achaia, which was a
group of cities. ... In so far as Greece con-
tributed anything towards the formation of great
and pacific political aggregates, she did it through
attempts at federation. But in so low a state of
political development as that which prevailed
throughout the Mediterranean world in pre-
Christian times, the more barbarous method of
conquest with incorporation was more likely to
be successful on a great scale. This was well
illustrated in the history of Rome, — a civic com-
munity of the same generic type with Sparta and
Athens, but presenting specific differences of the
highest importance. . . . Rome early succeeded
in freeing itself from that insuperable prejudice
which elsewhere prevented the ancient city from
admitting aliens to a share in its franchise. And
In this victory over primeval political ideas lay
the whole secret of Rome's mighty career." — J.
Fiske, An^rican Political Ideas, led. 3.
Medisval Leagues in Germany. — "It is
hardly too much to say that the Lombard League
led naturally to the leagues of German cities.
The exhausting efforts of the Hohenstaufen Em-
perors to secure dominion in Italy compelled
them to grant privileges to the cities in Germany ;
the weaker emperors, who followed, bought sup-
port with new charters and privileges. The in-
ability of the Empire to keep the peace or to
protect commerce led speedily to the formation
of great unions of cities, usually commercial in
origin, but very soon becoming political forces of
prime importance. The first of these was the
Rhenish League, formed in 1354. The more im-
portant cities of the Rhine valley, from Basle to
Cologne, were the original members; but it
eventually had seventy members, including sev-
eral princes and ruling prelates. The league
had Colloquia, or assemblies, at stated intervals ;
but, beyond deciding upon a general policy, and
■ the assignment of military quotas, it had no legis-
lative powers. There was, however, a Kommis-
sion, or federal court, which acted as arbiter in
disputes between the members. The chief po-
litical service of the league was to maintain peace
during the interregnum in the Empire (1256-
1373). During the fourteenth century it fell
apart, and many of its members joined the Hansa
or Suabian League. ... In 1377 seventeen Sua-
bian cities, which had been mortgaged by the
Emperor, united to defend their liberties. They
received many accessions of German and Swiss
cities; but in 1388 they were overthrown by
Leopold III. of Austria, and all combinations of
cities were forbidden. A federal govenament
they cannot be said to have possessed ; but po-
litical, almost federal relations continued during
the fifteenth century. The similar leagues of
Frankfort and Wetterau were broken up about
the same time. Other leagues of cities and can-
tons were in a like manner formed and dissolved,
— -among them the leagues of Hauenstein and
Burgundy ; and there was a confederation in
Franche Comte, afterward French territory. All
the mediseval leagues thus far mentioned were
defensive, and had no extended relations beyond
their own borders. The great Hanseatic League
[see Hai^sa Towns], organized as a commercial
union, developed into a political and international
power, which negotiated and made war on its
own account with foreign and German sover-
eigns ; and which was for two centuries one of
the leading powers of Europe." — A. B. Hart,
Iiitrod. to the Study of Federal Gov't (Harvard
Historical Mon/fr/raphs, tw. 3), ch. 3.
Mediaeval League of Lombardy. — When
Frederick Barbarossa entered Italy for the fifth
time in 1163, to enforce the despotic sovereignty
over that country which tlie German kings, as
emperors, were then claiming (see Italy: A. D.
961-1039), a league of the Lombard cities was
formed to resist him. "Verona, Vicenza, Padua,
and Treviso, the most powerful towns of the
Veronese marches, assembled their consuls in
congress, to consider of the means of putting an
end to a tyranny which overwhelmed them. The
consuls of these four towns pledged themselves
by oath in the name of their cities to give
mutual support to each other in the assertion of
their former rights, and in the resolution to re-
duce the imperial prerogatives to the point at
which they were fixed under the reign of Henry
IV. Frederick, informed of this association.
113T
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
returned hastily into Northern Italy, to put it
down . . . but he soon perceived that the spirit
of liberty had made progress in the Ghibeline
cities as well as in those of the Guelphs. . . .
Obliged to bend before a people which he con-
sidered only as revolted subjects, he soon re-
nounced a contest so humiliating, and returned
to Germany, to levy an army more submissive to
him. Other and more pressing interests diverted
his attention from this object till the autumn of
1166. . . . When Frederick, in the month of
October, 1166, descended the mountains of the
Grisons to enter Italy by the territory of Brescia,
he marched his army directly to Lodi, without
permitting any act of hostility on the way. At
Lodi, he assembled, towards the end of Novem-
ber, a diet of the kingdom of Italy, at which he
promised the Lombards to redress the grievances
occasioned by the abuses of power by his podes-
tas, and to respect their just liberties; ... to
give greater weight to his negotiation, he
marched his army into Central Italy. . . . The
towns of the Veronese marches, seeing the
emperor and his army pass without daring to
attack them, became bolder: they assembled a
new diet, in the beginning of April, at the con-
vent of Pontida, between Jlilau and Bergamo.
The consuls of Cremona, of Bergamo, of Brescia,
of Mantua and Ferrara met there, and joined
those of the marches. The uuion of the Guelphs
and Ghibelines, for the common liberty, was
hailed with universal joy. The deputies of the
Cremonese, who had lent their aid to the destruc-
tion of Milan, seconded those of the Milanese
villages in imploring aid of the confederated
towns to rebuild the city of Milan. This con-
federation was called the League of Lombardy.
The consuls took the oath, and their constituents
afterwards repeated it, that every Lombard
should unite for tlie recovery of the common lib-
erty ; that the league for this purpose should last
twenty years ; and, finally, that they should aid
each other in repairing in common any damage
experienced in this sacred cause, by any one
member of the confederation : extending even to
the past this contract for reciprocal security, the
league resolved to rebuild Milan. . . . Lodi was
soon afterwards compelled, by force of arms, to
take the oath to the league ; while the towns of
Venice, Placentia, Parma, Modena, and Bologna
voluntarily and gladly joined the association." —
J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Italian Re-
publics, ch. 3. — In 1226 the League was revived
or renewed against Frederick II. (see Italy:
A. D. 1183-1350).— "Milan and Bologna took the
lead, and were followed by Piacenza, Verona,
Brescia, Faenza, Mantua, Vercelli, Lodi, Ber-
gamo, Turin, Alessandria, Vicenza, Padua, and
Treviso. . . . Nothing could be more unlike,
than the First and the Second Lombard Leagues,
That of 1167, formed against Frederick the First
after the most cruel provocation, was sanctioned
by the Pope, and had for its end the deliverance
of Lombardy. That of 1336, formed against
Frederick the Second, after no provocation re-
ceived, was discountenanced by the Pope, and
resulted in the frustration of the Crusade and in
sowing the germ of endless civil wars. This
year is fixed upon by the Brescian Chronicler as
the beginning of ' those plaguy factious of Guelf
and Ghibelline, which were so engrained into the
minds of our forefathers, that the}' have handed
them down as an heir-loom to their posterity.
never to come to an end.' " — T. L. Kington, Hist.
of Frederick the Second, t\ 1, ?j. 265-366.
Modern Federations. — "A remarkable phe-
nomenon of the last hundred years is the im-
petus that has been given to the development of
Federal institutions. There are to-day contem-
poraneously existing no less than eight distinct
Federal Governments. First and foremost is the
United States of America, where we have an ex-
ample of the Federal Union in the most perfect
form yet attained. Then comes Switzerland, of
less importance than the United States of Amer-
ica, but most nearly approaching it in perfection.
Again we have the German Empire [see Con-
stitution OP Germany], that great factor in
European politics, which is truly a Federal Union,
but a cumbrous one and full of anomalies. Next
in importance comes the Dominion of Canada
[see Constitution of Canada], which is the
only example of a country forming a Federal
Union and at the same time a colony. Lastly
come the Argentine Republic, Mexico, and the
States of Colombia and Venezuela [see Constitu-
tions]. This is a very remarkable list when we
consider that never before the present century did
more than two Federal Unions ever coexist, and
that very rarel}', and that even those unions
were far from satisfj'ing the true requirements
of Federation. Nor is this all. Throughout the
last hundred years we can mark a growing ten-
dency in countries that have adopted the Federal
type of Government to perfect that Federal type
and make it more truly Federal than before. In
the United States of America, for instance, the
Constitution of 1789 was more truly Federal than
the Articles of Confederation, and certainly since
the Civil War we hear less of State Rights, and
more of Union. It has indeed been remarked
that the citizens of the United States have be-
come fond of applying the words ' Nation ' and
' National ' to themselves in a manner formerly
unknown. We can mark the same progress in
Switzerland. Before 1789, Switzerland formed
a very loose system of Confederated States — in
1815, a constitution more truly Federal was de-
vised; in 1848, the Federal Union was more
firmly consolidated; and lastly, in 1874, such
changes were made in the Constitution that
Switzerland now presents a very fairly perfect
example of Federal Government. In Germany
we may trace a similar movement. In 1815, the
Germanic Confederation was formed ; but it was
only a system of Confederated States, or what
the Germans call Staatenbund ; but after various
changes, amongst others the exclusion of Austria
in 1866, it became, in 1871, a composite State or,
in German language, a Bundestaat. Beyond
this, we have to note a further tendency to
Federation. In the year 1886, a Bill passed the
Imperial Parliament to permit of the formation of
an Australasian Council for the purposes of form-
ing the Australasian Colonies into a Federation.
Then we hear of further aspirations for applying
the Federal system, as though there were some
peculiar virtue ortalismanic effect about it which
rendered it a panacea for all political troubles.
There has, also, been much talk about Imperial
Federation. Lastly, some people think they see
a simple solution of the Irish Question in the
application of Federation, particularly the Cana-
dian form of it, to Ireland. " — Federal Govern-
ment (Westminster Rev., May, 1888, pp. 573-574).
— "The federal is one of the oldest forms of
1138
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
government known, and its adaptability to the
largest as well as to the smallest states is shown
in all political formations of late years. States
iu the New and in the Old World, all in their
aggregation, alike show ever a stronger tendency
to adopt it. Already all the central states of
Europe are federal — Switzerland, Germany,
Austria [see AusTRi.\ : A. D. 1866-1867, and 1866-
1887] ; and if ever the various Sclav principalities
in south-eastern Europe — the Serb, the Alban-
ian, the Rouman, the Bulgar, and the Czech — are
to combine, it will probably be (as Mr. Freeman
so long ago as 1863 remarked) under a federal
form, — though whether under Russian or Aus-
trian auspices, or neither, remains to be seen.
... In the German lands from early ages there
has existed an aggregation of tribes and states,
some of them even of non-German race, each of
which preserved for domestic purposes its own
arrangements and laws, but was united with the
rest under one supreme head and central authority
as regards its relation to all external powers.
Since 1871 all the states of Germany ' form an
eternal union for the protection of the realm and
the care of the welfare of the German people.'
For legislative purposes, under the Emperor as
head, are the two Houses of Assembly; first,
the Upper House of the Federated States, con-
sisting of 63 members, who represent the indi-
vidual States, and thus as the guardian of State
rights, answers very closely to the Senate of the
American Union, except that the number of
members coming from each state is not uniform,
but apportioned. . . . Each German state has its
own local constitution and home rule for its in-
ternal affairs. Generally there are two chambers,
except in some of the smallest states, the popula-
tion of which does not much exceed in some cases
that of our larger towns. . . . Since 1867 the
Austro-Hungarian monarchy has been a political
Siamese twin, of which Austria is the one body,
and Hungary the other; the population of the
Austrian half is 34 millions, and that of Hungary
about 16 millions. Each of the two has its own
parliament ; the connecting link is the sovereign
(whose civil list is raised half by one and half by
the other) and a common army, navy, and diplo-
matic service, and another Over-parliament of 130
members, one-half chosen by the legislature of
Hungary, and the other half by the legislature
of Austria (the Upper House of each twin returns
twenty, and the Lower of each forty delegates
from their own number, who thus form a kind of
Joint Committee of the Four Houses). The juris-
diction of this Over-parliament is limited to
foreign affairs and war. . . . The western or
Austrian part of the twin ... is a federal gov-
ernment in itself. . . . Federated Austria con-
sists of seventeen distinct states. The German
element constitutes 36 per cent, of the inhabitants
of these, and the Sclav 57 per cent. There are a
few Magyars, Italians, and Roumanians. Each
of these seventeen states has its own provincial
parliament of one House, partly composed of ex-
officio members (the bishops and archbishops of
the Latin and Greek Churches, and the chancel-
lors of the universities), but chiefly of repre-
sentatives chosen by all the inhabitants who pay
direct taxation. Some of these are elected by
the landowners, others by the towns, others by
the trade-guilds and boards of commerce ; the re-
presentatives of the rural communes, however, are
elected by delegates, as in Prussia. They legis-
late concerning all local matters, county taxa-
tion, land laws and farming, education, public
worship, and public works. . . . Turning next
to the oldest federation in Europe, that of Swit-
zerland, which with various changes has survived
from 1308, though its present constitution dates
only from 1874, we find it now embraces three
nationalities — German, French, Italian. The
original nucleus of the State, however, was Ger-
man, and even now three-fourths of the popula-
tion are German. Tlie twenty-two distinct states
are federated under one president elected an-
nually, and the Federal Assembly of two cham-
bers. . . . Each of the cantons is sovereign and
independent, and has its own local parliament,
scarcely any two being the same, but all based
on universal suffrage. Each canton has its own
budget of revenue and expenditure, and its own
public debt." — J. N. Dalton, Tlw Federal States
of the World {Nineteenth Century, July, 1884).
Canadian Federation. — "A convention of
thirty-three representative men was held in the
autumn of 1864 in the historic city of Quebec,
and after a deliberation of several weeks the re-
sult was the unanimous adoption of a set of
seventy-two resolutions embodying the terms and
conditions on which the provinces through their
delegates agreed to a federal union in many re-
spects similar in its general features to that of
the United States federation, and in accordance
with the principles of the English constitution.
These resolutions had to be laid before the vari-
ous legislatures and adopted in the shape of ad-
dresses to the queen whose sanction was neces-
sary to embody the wishes of the provinces in an
imperial statute. ... In the early part of 1867
the imperial parliament, without a division, passed
the statute known as the ' British North America
Act, 1867,' which united in the first instance the
province of Canada, now divided into Ontario
and Quebec, with Nova Scotia and New Bruns-
\vick and made provisions for the coming iu of the
other provinces of Prince Edward Island, New-
fo mdland, British Columbia, and the admission
of Kupert's Land and the great North-west. Be-
tween 1867 and 1873 the provinces just named,
with the exception of Newfoundland, which has
persistently remained out of the federation, be-
came parts of the Dominion and the vast North-
west Territory was at last acquired on terms
eminently satisfactory to Canada and a new prov-
ince of great promise formed out of that immense
region, with a complete system of parliamentary
government. . . . When the terms of the Union
came to be arranged between the provinces in
1864, their conflicting interest had to be carefully
considered and a system adopted which would
always enable the Dominion to expand its limits
and bring in new sections until it should embrace
the northern half of the continent, which, as we
have just shown, now constitutes the Dominion.
It was soon found, after due deliberation, that
the most feasible plan was a confederation rest-
ing on those principles which experience of the
working of the federation of the United States
showed was likely to give guarantees of elasticity
and permanency. The maritime provinces had
been in the enjoyment of an excellent system of
laws and representative institutions for many
years, and were not willing to yield their local
autonomy in its entirety. The people of the
province of Quebec, after experience of a union
that lasted from 1841 to 1867, saw decidedly
1139
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
great advantages to themselves and their institu-
tions in having a provincial government under
their own control. The people of Ontario recog-
nized equal advantages in having a measure of
local government, apart from French Canadian
influences and interference. The consequence vpas
the adoption of the federal system, which now,
after twenty-six years' experience, we can truly
say appears on the whole well devised and equal
to the local and national requirements of the
people." — J. G. Bourinot, Federal Gov't in Can-
ada (Johns Hopkins Univ. Studies, 1th Series, nos.
; 10-13), led. 1-3.
Britannic Federation, Proposed. — "The great
change which has taken place in the public mind
in recent years upon the importance to the Em-
pire of maintaining the colonial connection found
expression at a meeting held at the Westminster
Palace Hotel in July 1884, under the guidance
of the Right Hon. W. E. Forster, who occupied
the chair. At that meeting — which was at-
tended by a large number of members of Parlia-
ment of both parties, and representatives of the
colonies — It was moved by the Right Hon. W.
H. Smith: 'That, in order to secure the perma-
nent unity of the Empire, some form of federa-
tion is essential.' That resolution was seconded
by the Earl of Rosebery, and passed unani-
mously. In November of the same year the Im-
perial Federation League was formed to carry
out the objects of that resolution ; and the sub-
ject has received considerable attention since.
... I believe all are agreed that the leading
objects of the Imperial Federation League are to
find means by which the colonies, the outlying
portions of the Empire, may have a certain voice
and weight and influence in reference to the
foreign policy of this country, in which they are
all deeply interested, and sometimes more deeply
interested than the United Kingdom itself. In
the next place, that measures may be taken by
which all the power and weight and influence
that these great British communities in Austral-
asia, in South Africa, and in Canada possess
shall be brought into operation for the strength-
ening and defence of the Empire. The discus-
sion of these questions has led to a great deal of
progress. We have got rid of a number of fal-
lacies that obtained in the minds of a good many
persons in relation to the means by which those
objects are to be attained. Most people have
come to the conclusion stated by Lord Rosebery
at the Mansion House, that a Parliamentary
Federation, if practicable, is so remote, that dur-
ing the coming century it is not likely to make
any very great advance. We have also got rid
of the fallacy that it was practicable to have a
common tariff throughout the Empire. It is
not, in my opinion, consistent with the constitu-
tion either of England or of the autonomous colo-
nies. The tariff of a country must rest of ne-
cessity mainly with the Government of the day,
and involves such continual change and altera-
tion as to make uniformity impracticable. . . .
I regard the time as near at hand when the great
provinces of Australasia will be confederated
under one Government. . . . AVhen that has been
done it will be followed, I doubt not, at a verj^
early day, by a similar course on the part of South
Africa, and then we shall stand in the position of
having three great dominions, commonwealths,
or realms, or whatever name is found most de-
sirable on the part of the people who adopt them
— three great British communities, each under
one central and strong Government. When that
is accomplished, the measure which the Marquis
ot Lome has suggested, of having the representa-
tives of these colonies during the term of their
ofiice here in London, practically Cabinet Minis-
ters, will give to the Government of England an
opportunity of learning in the most direct and
complete manner the vie ws and sentiments of each
of those great British communities in regard to
all questions of foreign policy affecting the colo-
nies. I would suggest that the representatives
of those three great British communities here in
London should be leading members of the Cabi-
net of the day of the country they represent, go-
ing out of ofiice when their Government is
changed. In that way they would always repre-
sent the country, and necessarily the views of
the party in power in Canada, in Australasia,
and in South Africa. That would involve no
constitutional change ; it would simply require
that whoever represented those dominions in
London should have a seat in their own Parlia-
ment, and be a member of the Administration."
— C. Tupper, Federatinu the Empire (Nimteenth
Cent., Oct., 1891). — "Recent expensive wars at
the Cape, annexations of groups of islands in the
neighbourhood of Australia, the Fishery and
other questions that have arisen, and may arise,
on the North American continent, have all com-
pelled us to take a review of our responsibilities,
in connection with our Colonies and to consider
how far, in the event of trouble, we may rely
upon tlieir assistance to adequately support the
commercial interests of our scattered Empire.
It is remarkable that, although the matters here
indicated are slowly coming to the surface, and
have provoked discussion, they have not been
forced upon the public attention suddenly, or by
any violent injury or catastrophe. The review
men are taking of our position, and the debates
as to how best we can make our relationships of
standing value, have been the natural outcome
of slowly developing causes and effects. Poli-
ticians belonging to both of the great parties in
the State have joined the Federation League.
The leaders have expressly declared that they do
not desire at the present moment to propound
any definite theories, or to push any premature
scheme for closer union of the Empire. The so-
ciety has been formed for the purpose of dis-
cussing any plans proposed for such objects.
The suggestions actually made have varied in
importance from comprehensive projects of uni-
versal commercial union and common contribu-
tions for a world-wide military and naval or-
ganization, to such a trivial proposal as the
personal recognition of distinguished colonists
by a nomination to the peerage." — The Mar-
quis of Lome, Imperial Federation, ch. 1. —
"Many schemes of federation have been pro-
pounded, and many degrees of federal union are
possible. Lord Rosebery has not gone further,
as yet, than the enunciation of a general princi-
ple. ' The federation we aim at (he has said) is
the closest possible union of the various self-
governing States ruled by the British Crown, con-
sistentlj' with that free development which is the
birthright of British subjects all over the world
— the closest union in sympathy, in external
action, and in defence.'. . . The representation
of the Colonies in the Privy Council lias been
viewed with favour, both by statesmen and by
]140
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
theoretical writers. Eari Grey has proposed the
appointment of a Federal Committee, selected
from the Privy Council, to advise with the Sec-
retary of State for the Colonies. The idea thus
shadowed forth has been worked out witli greater
amplitude of detail by Mr. Creswell, in an essay
to wliich the prize offered by the London Cham-
ber of Commerce was awarded. ' The Imperial
assembly which we want,' says Mr. Creswell,
' must be an independent body, constitutional in
its origin, representative in its ciiaracter, and
supreme in its decisions. Sucli a body we have
already in existence in the Privy Council. Its
members are chosen, irrespective of party con-
siderations, from among the most eminent of
those who have done service to the State. To
this body colonists of distinguished public service
could be elected. In constituting the Imperial
Committee of the Privy Council, representation
might be given to every part of the empire, in
proportion to the several contributions to expen-
diture for Imperial defence.' Tlie constitution
of a great Council of the Empire, with similar
functions in relation to foreign affairs to those
which are exercised in the United States by a
Committee of the Senate, is a step for which
public opinion is not yet prepared. In the mean-
while the utmost consideration is being paid at
the Foreign Office to Colonial feelings and inter-
ests. No commitments or engagements are taken
which would not be approved by Colonial opin-
ion. Another proposal which has been warmly
advocated, especially by the Protectionists, is
that for a customs-union between the Mother-
country and the Colonies. It cannot be said that
at the present time proposals for a customs-union
are ripe for settlement, or even for discussion, at
a conference of representatives from all parts of
the empire. The Mother-country has been com-
mitted for more than a generation to the princi-
ple of Free-trade. By our policy of free imports
of food and raw materials we have so cheapened
production that we are able to compete success-
fully with all comers in the neutral markets of
the world. ... It would be impossible to enter-
tain the idea of a reversal of our fiscal policy, in
however restricted a sense, without careful and
exhaustive inquiry. . . . Lord Rosebery has re-
cently declared that in his opinion it is impracti-
cable to devise a scheme of representation for
the Colonies in the House of Commons and
House of Lords, or in the Privy Council. The
scheme of an Imperial customs-union, ably put
forward by Jlr. Hoffmeyer at the last Colonial
Conference, he equally rejects. Lord Rosebery
would limit the direct action of the Imperial
Government for the present to conferences, sum-
moned at frequent intervals. Our first confer-
ence was summoned by the Government at the
instance of the Imperial Federation League. It
was attended by men of the highest distinction
in the Colonies. Its deliberations were guided by
Lord Knutsford with admirable tact and judg-
ment ; it considered many important questions of
common interest to the diflerent countries of the
empire; it arrived at several important decisions,
and it cleared the air of not a few doubts and
delusions. The most- tangible, the most impor-
tant, and the most satisfactory result of that con-
ference was the recognition by the Australian
colonies of the necessity for making provision
for the naval defence of their own waters by
means of ships, provided by the Government of
the United Kingdom, but maintained by the
Australian Governments. Lord Rosebery holds
that the question of Imperial Federation depends
for the present on frequent conferences. In his
speech at the Mansion House he laid down the
conditions essential to the success of conferences
in the future. They must be held periodically
and at stated intervals. The Colonies must send
the best men to represent them. The Govern-
ment of the Mother-country must invest these
periodical congresses with all the authority and
splendour which it is in their power to give. The
task to be accomplished will not be the produc-
tion of statutes, but the production of recom-
mendations. Those who think that a congress
that only meets to report and recommend has but
a neutral task before it, have a very Inadequate
idea of the influence whicli would be exercised
by a conference representing a quarter of the
human race, and the immeasurable opulence and
power that have been garnered up by the past
centuries of our history. If we have these con-
ferences, if they are allowed to discuss, as they
must be allowed to discuss, all topics which any
parties to these conferences should recommend to
be discussed. Lord Rosebery carmot apprehend
that they would be wanting in authority or in
weight. Lord Salisbury, in his speeches recently
delivered in reply to the Earl of Dunraven in the
House of Lords, and in reply to the deputation
of the Imperial Federation League at the Foreign
Office, has properly insisted on the chief practical
obstacle to a policy of frequent conferences. At-
tendance at conferences involves grave incon-
venience to Colonial statesmen. ... In appeal-
ing to the Imperial Federation League for some
practical suggestions as to tlie means by which
the several parts of the British Empire may be
more closely knit together. Lord Salisbury threw
out some pregnant hints. To make a united em-
pire both a ZoUverein and a Kriegsverein must
be formed. In the existing state of feeling in
the Mother-country a Zollverein would be a
serious difficulty. The reasons have been already
stated. A Kriegsverein was, perhaps, more prac-
ticable, and certainly more urgent. The space
which separates the Colonies from possible ene-
mies was becoming every year less and less a pro-
tection. We may take concerted action for de-
fence without the necessity for constitutional
changes which it would be difficult to carry
out." — Lord Brassey, Imperial Federation: An,
English View (Nineteenth Cent., Sept., 1891).
— "The late Mr. Forster launched under the
high-sounding title of the ' Imperial Federation
League,' a scheme by which its authors proposed
to solve all the problems attending the adminis-
tration of our colonial empire. From first to last
the authors of this scheme have never conde-
scended on particulars. 'Imperial federation,'
we were always told, was the only specific against
the disintegration of the Empire, but as to what
this specific really was, no information was
vouchsafed. ... It is very natural that the citi-
zens of a vast but fragmentary empire, whose
territorial atoms (instead of forming, like those
of the United States, a ' ring-fence ' domain) are
scattered over the surface of the globe, should
cast about for some artificial links to bind to-
gether the colonies we have planted, and 'the
thousand tribes nourished on strange religions
and lawless slaveries ' which we have gathered
under our rule. This anxiety has been naturally
1141
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
augmented by a chronic agitation for the aban-
donment of all colonies as expensive and useless.
For though there may be little to boast of in the
fact that Great Britain has in the course of less
than three centuries contrived by war, diplomacy,
and adventure, to annex about a fifth of the
globe, it can hardly be expected that she should
relinquish without an effort even the nominal
sway she still holds over her colonial empire.
Hence it comes to pass that any scheme which
seems to supply the needed links is caught up by
those who, possessing slight acquaintance with
the past history or the present aspirations of our
colonists, are simply looking out for some new
contrivance by which they may hope that an en-
during bond of union may be provided. ' Im-
perial federation ' is the last new ' notion ' which
has cropped up in pursuance of this object. . . .
Some clue ... to its objects and aims may be
gained by a reference to the earliest exposition by
Mr. Forster of his motives contained in his answer
five years ago to the question, ' Why was the
League formed at all ?' ' For this reason,' says
Mr. Forster, ' because in giving self-government
to our colonies we have introduced a principle
which must eventually shake off from Great
Britain, Greater Britain, and divide it into sepa-
rate states, which must, in short, dissolve the
union unless counteracting measures be taken to
preserve it.' Believing, as we do, that it has
only been by conceding to our larger groups of
colonies absolute powers of self-govermnent that
we have retained them at all, and that the secret
of our protracted empire lies in the fact of this
abandonment of central arbitrary power, the re-
tention of which has caused the collapse of all
the European empires which preceded us in the
path of colonisation, we are bound to enter our
emphatic protest against an assumption so utterly
erroneous as that propounded by Mr. Forster.
So far from believing that the permanent imion of
the British Empire is to be secured by ' measures
which may counteract the workings of colonial
self-government,' we are convinced that the only
safety for our Empire lies in the unfettered action
of that self-government which we have ourselves
granted to our colonies. It would almost seem
that for Lord Rosebery and his fellow workers
the history of the colonial empires of Portugal,
Spain, Holland, and France had been written in
vain. For if we ask why these colonial empires
have dwindled and decayed, the answer is simply
because that self-government which is the life of
British colonies was never granted to their depen-
dencies. There was a time when one hundred
and fifty sovereign princes paid tribute to the
treasury of Lisbon. For two hundred years,
more than half the South American continent
was an appanage of Spain. Ceylon, the Cape,
Guiana, and a vast cluster of trade factories in
the East were at the close of the seventeenth
century colonies of Holland; while half North
America, comprising the vast and fertile valleys
of the St. Lawrence, the Mississippi, and the Ohio,
obeyed, a little more than a century ago, the
sceptre of France. Neither Portugal, nor Spain,
nor Holland, nor France, has lacked able rulers
or statesmen, but the colonial empire of all these
states has crumbled and decayed. The excep-
tional position of Great Britain in this respect
can only be ascribed to the relinquishment of all
the advantages, political and commercial, ordi-
narily presumed to result to dominant states from
the possession of dependencies. . . . The ro-
mantic dreams of the Imperial Federation League
were in fact dissipated beforehand by the irrevo-
cable grant of independent legislatures to all
our most important colonies, and Lord Rose-
bery may rest assured that, charm he never so
wisely, they will not listen to his blandish-
ments at the cost of one iota of the political
privileges already conferred on them." — Im-
perial Federation (Edinburgh Rev., July, 1889). —
" 'Britannic Confederation' is defined to be an
union of ' the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, British North America, British
South Africa, and Australasia.' The West Indies
and one or two other British Dependencies seem
here to be shut out; but, at any rate, with
this definition we at least know where we are.
The terms of the union we are not told ; but, as
the word ' confederation ' is used, I conceive that
they are meant to be strictly federal. That is to
say, first of all, the Parliament of the United
Kingdom will give up its right to legislate for
British North America, British South Africa,
and Australasia. Then the Lj^nited Kingdom,
British North America, British South Africa and
Australasia will enter into a federal relation with
one another. They may enter either as single
members (States or Cantons) or as groups of
members. That is. Great Britain and Ireland
might enter as a single State of the Confedera-
tion, or England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales — or
possibly smaller divisions again — might enter
as separate States. Or Great Britain, Australia,
Canada, &c., might enter as themselves Leagues,
members oi a greater League, as in the old state
of things in Graublinden. I am not arguing for
or against any of these arrangements. I am only
stating them as possible. But whatever the
units are to be — Great Britain and Australia,
England and Victoria, or anything larger or
smaller — if the confederation is to be a real one,
each State must keep some powers to itself, and
must yield some powers to a central body. That
Central body, in which all the States must be rep-
resented in some way or other, will naturally
deal with all international matters, all matters
that concern the Britannic Confederation as a
whole. The legislatures of Great Britain and
Australia, England and Victoria, or whatever
the units fixed on may be, will deal only with
the internal affairs of those several cantons. Now
such a scheme as this is theoretically possible.
That is, it involves no contradiction in terms, as
the talk about Imperial Federation does. It
is purely federal ; there is nothing ' imperial '
about it. It is simply applying to certain politi-
cal communities a process which has been actu-
ally gone through by certain other political com-
munities. It is proposing to reconstruct a certain
political constitution after the model of certain
other political constitutions which are in actual
working. It is therefore something better than
mere talk and theory. But, because it is theo-
retically possible, it does not follow that it is
practically possible, that is, that it is possible in
this particular case. ... Of the federations ex-
isting at this time the two chief are Switzerland
and the United States of America. They differ
in this point, that one is verj' large and the other
very small; they agree in this, that the terri-
tory of both is continuous. But the proposed
Britannic Confederation will be scattered, scat-
tered over every part of the world. I know of
1142
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT.
PEHDERECHT.
no example in any age of a scattered confedera-
tion, a scattered Bundesstaat. The Hanse Towns
were not a Bundesstaat; they were hardly a
Staatenbund. Of the probable working of such
a body as that which is now proposed the experi-
ence of history can teach us nothing ; we can only
guess what may be likely. The Britannic Con-
federation will have its federal congress sitting
somewhere, perhaps at Westminster, perhaps at
Melbourne, perhaps at some Washington called
specially into being at some point more central
than either. . . . For a while their representa-
tives will think it grand to sit at Westminster ;
presently, as the spirit of equality grows, they
are not unlikely to ask for some more central
place ; they may even refuse to stir out of their
own territory. That is to say, they will find
that the sentiment of national unity, which they
undoubtedly have in no small measure, needs
some physical and some political basis to stand
on. It is hard to believe that States which are
united only by a sentiment, which have so much,
both political and physical, to keep them asun-
der, will be kept together for ever by a sentiment
only. And we must further remember that that
sentiment is a sentiment for the mother-country,
and not for one another. . . . Canada and Aus-
tralia care a great deal for Great Britain; we
may doubt whether, apart from Great Britain,
Canada and Australia care very much for one
another. There may be American States which
care yet less for one another; but in their
case mere continuity produces a crowd of inter-
ests and relations common to all. We may
doubt whether the confederation of States so
distant as the existing colonies of Great Brit-
ain, whether the bringing them into closer rela-
tions with one another as well as with Great
IBritain, will at all tend to the advance of a
common national unity among them. We may
doubt whether it will not be likely to bring out
some hidden tendencies to disunion among them.
... In the scattered confederation all questions
and parties are likely to be local. It is hard to
see what will be the materials for the formation
of great national parties among such scattered
elements." — E. A. Freeman, Tlis Physical and
Political Bases of National Unity {Britannic Con-
federation, ed. by A. S. White). — "I have the
greatest respect for the aspirations of the Im-
perial Federationists, and myself most earnestly
desire the moral unity of our race and its
partnership in achievement and grandeur. But
an attempt at formal Federation, such as is now
proposed, would in the first place exclude the
people of the United States, who form the largest
portion of the English-speakiag race, and in
the second place it would split us all to pieces.
It would, I am persuaded, call into play centrifu-
gal forces against which the centripetal forces
could not contend for an hour. What interests
of the class with which a Federal Parliament
would deal have Australia and Canada in com-
mon ? What enemy has either of them whom
the other would be inclined to fight ? Australia,
it seems, looks forward to a stniggle with the
Chinese for ascendency in that quarter of the
globe. Canada cares no more about a struggle
between the Australians and the Chinese at the
other extremity of the globe than the Australians
would care about a dispute between Canada and
her neighbours in the United States respecting
Canadian boundaries or the Fisheries Question.
The circumstances of the two groups of colonies,
to which their policy must conform, are totally
different. Australia lies in an ocean by herself;
Canada is territorially interlocked and commer-
cially bound up, as well as socially almost fused,
with the great mass of English-speaking popu-
lation which occupies the larger portion of her
continent. Australia again is entirely British.
Canada has in her midst a great block of French
population, constituting a distinct nationality,
which instead of being absorbed is daily growing
in intensity ; and she would practically be unable
to take part in any enterprise or support any
policy, especially any policy entailing an in-
crease of taxation, to which the French Can-
adians were opposed. Of getting Canada to
contribute out of her own resources to wars
or to the maintenance of armaments, for the
objects of British diplomacy in Europe or in
the East, no one who knows the Canadians can
imagine that there would be the slightest hope
The very suggestion, at the time of the Soudan
Expedition, called forth emphatic protests on all
sides. The only results of an experiment in for-
mal Federation, I repeat, would be repudiation
of Federal demands, estrangement and dissolu-
tion. " — Goldwin Smith, Straining the Silken
Tliread(Macmillan's Magazine. Avg., 1888).
European Federation. — " While it is obvious
that Imperial Federation of the British Empire
would cover many of the defects in our relation-
ship with the colonies, it is equally apparent that
it is open to the fatal objection of merely making
us a more formidable factor in the field of inter-
national anarchy. Suppose the colonies under-
took to share equitably the great cost of imperial
defence in the present state of things throughout
Europe — and that is a very large assumption —
England would be entirely dependent, in case of
war, for the supply of food on the fleet, any ac-
cident to which would place us at the enemy's
mercy. Even without actual hostilities, how-
ever, our additional strength would cause another
increase of foreign armaments to meet the case
of war with us. This process has taken place in-
variably on the increase of armaments of any
European state, and may be taken to be as certain
as that the sun will rise to-morrow. But all the
benefits accruing from Imperial Federation may
be secured by European Federation, plus a reduc-
tion of military liability, which Imperial Federa-
tion would not only not reduce, but increase.
There is nothing to prevent the self-governing
colonies from joining in a European Federation,
and thus enlarging the basis of that institution
enormously, and cutting off in a corresponding
degree the chance of an outbreak of violence in
another direction, which could not fail to have
serious consequences to the colonies at any rate."
• — C. D. Farquharson, Federation, the Polity of the
Future ( Westminster Rev. , Dec. , 1891), pp. 602-603.
FEDERALIST, The. See United States
OP Am. : A. D. 1787-1789.
FEDERALISTS, The party of the. See
United States op Am.: A. D. 1789-1792; also
1812; and 1814 (December): The Hartford
Convention.
FEDS.— CONFEDS. See Bots in Blue.
FEE. See FErDALisM.
FEHDERECHT.— The right of private war-
fare, or diffldation, exercised in mediaeval Ger-
many. See Landpreede.
1143
FEHRBELLIN.
FEUDAL AIDS.
FEHRBELLIN, Battle of (1675). See
Brandenburg: A. D. 1640-1688; and Scandi-
navian States (Sweden) : A. D. 1644-1697.
FEIS OF TARA. See Tara.
FELICIAN HERESY. See Adoptianibm.
FELIX v., Pope, A. D. 1439-1449 (elected
by the Council of Basle).
FENIAN MOVEMENT, The. See Ire-
land: A. D. 18D8-1867; and Canada: A. D.
1866-1871.
FENIAN : Origin of the Name. — An Irish
poem of the ninth centry called the Duan Eirean-
nach, or Poem of Ireland, preserves a mythical
story of the origin of the Irish people, according
to which they sprang from one Fenius Farsaidh
who came out of Scythia. Nel, or Niul, the son
of Fenius, travelled into Egypt and married
Scota, a daughter of Forann (Pharaoh). "Niul
had a son named Gaedhuil Glas, or Green Gael ;
and we are told that it is from him the Irish are
called Gaedhil (Gael) or Gadelians, while from
his mother is derived the name of Scoti, or Scots,
and from Fenius that of Feni or Fenians. " — M.
Haverty, Hist, of Ireland, p. 10. — From this legend
was derived the name of the Fenian Brotherhood,
organized in Ireland and America for the libera-
tion of the former from British rule, and which
played a disturbing but unsuccessful part in
Irish affairs from about 186.5 to 1871.
FEODORE. See Theodore.
FEODUM. See Feudalism.
FEOF. See Feudalism.
FEORM FULTUM. See Ferm.
FERDINAND, King of Portugal, A. D.
1367-1383 Ferdinand I., Emperor of Aus-
tria and King of Hungary and Bohemia, 183.5-
1848 Ferdinand I., Germanic Emperor,
1558-1564; Archduke of Austria, and King of
Hungary and Bohemia, 1536-1564 ; King of the
Romans, 1531-1558 Ferdinand I., King of
Aragon and Sicily, 1412-1416 Ferdinand I.,
King of Castile, 1035-1065; King of Leon,
1037-106.5 Ferdinand I., King of Naples,
1458-1494 Ferdinand II., Germanic Em-
peror and King of Bohemia and Hungary,
1619-1637 Ferdinand II., King of Aragon,
1479-1516; V. of Castile (King-Consort of
Isabella of Castile and Regent), 1474-1516;
II. of Sicily, 1479-1516; and III. of Naples,
1503-1516 Ferdinand II., King of Leon,
1157-1188 Ferdinand II., King of Naples,
1495-1496 Ferdinand II., called Bomba,
King of the Two Sicilies, 1830-1859 Ferdi-
nand III., Germanic Emperor, and King of
Hungary and Bohemia, 1637-1657 Ferdi-
nand III., King of Castile, 1317-1230; King of
Leon and Castile, united, 1230-1253 Fer-
dinand IV., King of Leon and Castile, 1395-
1312 Ferdinand IV., King of Naples, and
I. of the Two Sicilies, 1759-1806; and 181.5-
1825 Ferdinand VI., King of Spain, 1746-
1759 Ferdinand VII., King of Spain, 1808;
and 1814-1833.
FERI.(E. See Ludi.
FERM.— FIRM A.— FARM.— "A sort of
composition for all the profits arising to the king
[in England, Norman period] from his ancient
claims on the land and from the judicial proceed-
ings of the shire-moot; the rent of detached
pieces of demesne land, the remnants of the an-
cient folk-land ; the payments due from corporate
bodies and individuals for the primitive gifts,
the offerings made in kind, or the hospitality —
the feorm-fultum — which the kings had a right
to exact from their subjects, and which were be-
fore the time of Domesday generally commuted
for money ; the fines, or a portion of the fines,
paid in the ordinary process of the county courts,
and other small miscellaneous incidents. These
had been, soon after the composition of Domes-
day, estimated at a fixed sum, which was re-
garded as a sort of rent or composition at which
the county was let to the sherill and recorded in
the 'Rotulus Exactorious ' ; for this, under the
name of ferm, he answered annually ; if his re-
ceipts were in excess, he retained the balance
as his lawful profit, the wages of his service ; if
the proceeds fell below the ferm, he had to pay
the difference from his own purse. . . . The
farm, ferm, or flrma, the rent or composition for
the ancient feorm-fultum, or provision payable
in kind to the Anglo-Saxon kings. The history
of the word in its French form would be interest-
ing. The use of the word for a pecuniary pay-
ment is traced long before the Norman Con-
quest." — W. Stubbs, Const. Hist, of Eng., ch. 11,
sect. 126, and note.
FERNANDO. See Ferdinand.
FEROZESHUR, Battle of (1845). See
India: A. D. 1845-1849.
FERRARA : The House of Este. See Este.
A. D. 1275. — Sovereignty of the Pope con-
firmed by Rodolph of Hapsburg. See Ger-
many: A. D. 1373-1308.
A. D. 1597. — Annexation to the states of the
Church. — End of the house of Este. — Decay
of the city and duchy. See Papacy: A. D.
1597.
A. D. 1797.— Joined to the Cispadine Repub-
lic. See France: A. D. 1796-1797 (October-
April).
FERRY BRIDGE, Battle of (1461). See
England: A. D. 1455-1471.
FETIALES.— FECIALES.— " The duties
of the fecialea, or fetiales [among the Romans],
extended over every branch of international law.
They gave advice on all matters of peace or war,
and the conclusion of treaties and alliances. . . .
They fulfilled the same functions as heralds, and,
as such, were frequently entrusted with impor
tant communications. They were also sent on
regular embassies. To them was entrusted the
reception and entertainment of foreign envoys.
They were required to decide on the justice of a
war about to commence, and to proclaim and
consecrate it according to certain established for-
malities. . . . The College of Feciales consisted
of nearly twenty members, with a president, who
was called Pater Patratus, because it was neces-
sary that he should have both father and children
living, that he might be supposed to take greater
interest in the welfare of the State, and look
backwards as well as forwards. . . . Tlie name
of Feciales . . . still existed under the emperors,
as well as that of Pater Patratus, though only as
a title of honour, while the institution itself was
for ever annihilated ; and, after the reign of Ti-
berius, we cannot find any trace of it." — E. C.
G. Murray, Embassies and Foreign Courts, pp.
8-10. — See, also. Augurs.
FEUDAL AIDS.— "In theory the duty of
the noble vassal towards his lord was a purely
personal one and to commute it for a monej' pay-
1144
FEUDAL AIDS.
FEUDALISM.
ment was a degradation of the whole feudal re-
lation. The payment of money, especially if it
were a fixed and regular payment, carried with
it a certain ignoble idea against which, in the
form of state taxation, the feudal spirit re-
belled to the last. When the vassal agreed to
pay something to his lord, he called it, not a tax,
but an ' aid ' (auxilium), and made it generally
payable, not regularly, like the tax-bill of the
citizen, but only upon certain occasions — a
present, as it were, coming out of his good- will
and not from compulsion ; e. g., whenever a fief
was newly granted, when it changed its lord, and
sometimes when it changed its vassal, it was from
the beginning customary to acknowledge the in-
vestiture by a small gift to the lord, primarily as
a symbol of the grant; then, as the institution
grew and manners became more luxurious, the
gift increased in value and was thought of as an
actual price for the investiture, until finally, at
the close of our period, it suffered the fate of all
similar contributions and was changed into a
definite money payment, still retaining, however,
its early name of 'relief.' . . . The occasions for
levying the aids were various but always, in the-
ory, of an exceptional sort. The journey of a
lord to the court of his suzerain, or to Rome, or
to join a cru.sade, the knighting of his eldest
son, the marriage of his eldest daughter, and his
ransom from imprisonment are among the most
frequent of the feudal 'aids.' The right of the
lord to be entertained and provisioned, together
with all his following, was one of the most bur-
densome, and at the same time, most difficult to
regulate. Its conversion into a money-tax was,
perhaps for this reason, earlier than that of many
other of the feudal contributions." — E. Emerton,
Mediceval Europe, ch. 14.
FEUDAL TENURES.— "After the feudal
system of tenure had been fully established,
all lands were held subject to certain additional
obligations, which were due either to the King,
(not as sovereign, but as feudal lord) from the
original grantees, called tenants-in-chief (tenentes
in capite), or to the tenants-in-chief themselves
from their under tenants. Of these obligations
the most honourable was that of knight-service.
This was the tenure by which the King granted
out fiefs to his followers, and by which they in
turn provided for their own military retainers.
The lands of the bishops and dignified ecclesias-
tics, and of most of the religious foundations,
were also held by this tenure. A few exceptions
only were made in favour of lands which had
been immemorially held in frankalmoign, or free-
alms. On the grant of a fief, the tenant was
publicly invested with the land by a symbolical
or actual delivery, termed livery of seisin. He
then did homage, so called from the words used
in the ceremony: 'Je deveigne votre homme'
[' I become your man '].... In the case of a
subtenant (vavassor), his oath of fealty was
guarded by a reservation of the faith due to his
sovereign lord the King. For every portion of
land of the annual value of .£'20, which consti-
tuted a knight's fee [in England], the tenant was
bound, whenever required, to render the services
of a knight properly armed and accoutred, to
serve in the field forty days at his own expense.
. . . Tenure by knight-service was also subject
to several other incidents of a burdensome
character. . . . There was a species of tenancy
in chief by Grand Serjeanty, . . . whereby the
tenant was bound, instead of serving the King
generally in his wars, to do some special service
in his own proper person, as to carry the King's
banner or lance, or to be his champion, butler, or
other officer at his coronation. . . . Grants of
land were also made by the King to his inferior
followers and personal attendants, to be held by
meaner services. . . . Hence, probably, arose
tenure by Petit Serjeanty, though later on we
find that term restricted to tenure ' in capite ' by
the service of rendering yearly some implement
of war to the King. . . . Tenure in Free Socage
(which still subsists under the modern denomina-
tion of Freehold, and may be regarded as the
representative of the primitive alodial owner-
ship) denotes, in its most general and extensive
signification, a tenure by anj' certain and deter-
minate service, as to pay a fixed money rent, or
to plough the lord's land" for a fixed number of
days in the year. . . . Tenure in Burgage was
a kind of town socage. It applied to tenements
in any ancient borough, held by the burgesses,
of the King or other lord, by fixed rents or ser-
vices. . . . This tenure, which still subsists, is
subject to a variety of local customs, the most
remarkable of which is that of borough-English,
by which the burgage tenement descends to the
youngest instead of to the eldest son. Gavelkind
is almost confined to the county of Kent. . . .
The lands are held by suit of court and fealty, a
service in its nature certain. The tenant in
Gavelkind retained many of the properties of
alodial ownership : his lands were devisable by
will ; in case of intestacy they descended to all
his sons equally ; they were not liable to escheat
for felony . . . and they could be aliened by the
tenant at the age of fifteen. Below Free Socage
was the tenure in Villeinage, by which the agri-
cultural labourers, both free and servile, held the
land which was to them in lieu of money wages."
— T. P. Taswell-Langmead, Eng. Const. Hut.,
pp. 58-65.
FEUDALISM.— "Feudalism, the compre-
hensive idea which includes the whole govern-
mental policy of the French kingdom, was of
distinctly Frank growth. The principle which
underlies it may be universal ; but the historic
development of it with which the constitutional
history of Europe is concerned may be traced
step by step under Frank influence, from its first
appearance on the conquered soil of Roman Gaul
to its full development in the jurisprudence of
the Middle Ages. In the form which it has
reached at the Norman Conquest, it may be de-
scribed as a complete organisation of society
through the medium of land tenure, in which
from the king down to the lowest landowner all
are bound together by obligation of service and
defence : the lord to protect his vassal, the vassal
to do service to his lord ; the defence and service
being based on and regulated by the natiu'e and
extent of the land held by the one of the other.
In those states which have reached the territorial
stage of development, the rights of defence and
service are supplemented by the right of juris-
diction. The lord judges as well as defends his
vassal ; the vassal does suit as well as service to
his lord. In states in which feudal government
has reached its utmost growth, the political,
financial, judicial, every branch of public ad-
ministration, is regulated by the same conditions.
The central authority is a mere shadow of a
name. This institution had grown up from two
1145
FEUDALISM.
FEUDALISM.
great sources — the beneficium, and the practice
of commeudation, — and had been specially fos-
tered on Gallic soil by the existence of a subject
population which admitted of any amount of
extension in the methods of dependence. The
beneficiary system originated partly in gifts of
land made by the kings out of their own estates to
their kinsmen and servants, with a special under-
taking to be faithful ; partly in the surrender by
landowners of their estates to churches or power-
ful men, to be received back again and held by
them as tenants for rent or service. By the latter
arrangement the weaker man obtained the protec-
tion of the stronger, and he who felt himself in-
secure placed his title under the defence of the
church. By the practice of commendation, on
the other hand, the inferior put himself under the
personal care of a lord, but without altering his
title or divesting himself of his right to his es-
tate ; he became a vassal and did homage. . . .
The union of the beneficiary tie with that of
commendation completed the idea of feudal obli-
gation : the two-fold hold on the land, that of
the lord and that of the vassal, was supplemented
by the two-fold engagement, that of the lord to
defend, and that of the vassal to be faithful. A
third ingredient was supplied by the grants of
immunity by which in the Frank empire, as in
England, the possession of land was united with
the right of judicature: the dwellers on a feudal
property were placed under the tribunal of the
lord, and the rights which had belonged to the
nation or to its chosen head were devolved upon
the receiver of a fief. The rapid spread of the
system thus originated, and the assimilation of
all other tenures to it, may be regarded as the
work of the tenth century. . . . The word feu-
dum, fief, or fee, is derived from the German
word for cattle ; . . . the secondary meaning be-
ing goods, especially money ; hence property in
general." — W. Stubbs, Con«<. Hist, of Eng., ch. 9,
sect. 93, and rwtes {v. 1). — " Hardly any point in
the whole history of European institutions has
been the subject of so violent controversy as this
of the origin of Feudalism. . . . The first person
to represent what we may call the modern view
of the feudal system was Georg Waitz, in the
first edition of his History of the German Consti-
tution, in the years 1844-47. Waitz presented
the thing as a gradual growth during several
centuries, the various elements of which it was
composed growing up side by side without
definite chronological sequence. This view was
met by Paul Roth in his History of the Institu-
tion of the Benefice, in the year 1850. He main-
tained that royal benefices were unknown to the
Merovingian Franks, and that they were an in-
novation of the earliest Carolingians. They
were, so he believed, made possible by a grand
confiscation of the lands of the Church, not by
Charles Martel, as the earlier writers had believed,
but by his sons, Pippin and Karlraann. The
first book of Roth was followed in the year 1863
by another on Feudalism and the Relation of the
Subject to the State (Feudalitiit und Unterthan-
enverband), in which he attempted to show that
the direct subjection of the individual to the
government was not a strange idea to the early
German, but that it pervaded all forms of Ger-
manic life down to the Carolingian times, and
that therefore the feudal relation was a something
entirely new, a break in the practice of the Ger-
mans. In the years 1880-1885 appeared a new
edition of Waltz's History of the German Consti-
tution, in which, after acknowledging the great
services rendered by Roth to the cause of learn-
ing, he declares himself unable to give up his
former point of view, and brings new evidence in
support of it. Thus for more than thirty years
this question has been before the world of scholars,
and may be regarded as being quite as far from a
settlement as ever." — E. Emerton, An Introduc-
tion, to the Study of the Middle Ages, p. 236 {foot-
note). — "The latest investigations of Brunner
. . . have established the proof that feudalism
originated in consequence of the introduction of
cavalry service into the military system of the
Prankish kingdom, and that it retained its orig-
inal character until well on towards the close of
the Middle Ages. The Franks, like the Lom-
bards, learned the use of cavalry from the Moors
or Saracens. Charles Martel was led by his ex-
periences after the battle of Poictiers to the con-
clusion that only with the help of mounted armies
could these enemies be opposed with lasting suc-
cess. It was between 732 and 758 that the intro-
duction of cavalry service into the Prankish army
took place ; it had hitherto consisted mainly
of infantry. The attempt was first made, and
with marked success, in Aciuitaine and Septi-
mania ; almost contemporaneously also among
the Lombards. In order to place the secular
nobles in condition to fit out larger masses of
cavairy a forced loan from the church was car-
ried through by Charles Martel and his sons, it
being under the latter that the matter was first
placed upon a legal footing. The nobles re-
ceived ecclesiastical benefices from the crown and
regranted them in the way of sub-loans. The
custom of having a 'following' and the old ex-
isting relationships of a vassal to his lord fur-
nished a model for the responsibilities of those
receiving benefices at first and at second hand.
The secular ilobles became thus at once vassals
of the crown and lords (seigneurs) of those to
whom they themselves in turn made grants. The
duty of the vassals to do cavalry service was
based on the ' commendation ' : their fief was not
the condition of their doing service but their re-
ward for it. Hence the custom of denominating
the fief (Lehu) as a ' fee ' (feudura) — a designa-
tion which was first appUed in southern France,
and which in Germany, occasionally in the elev-
enth and even more frequently in the twelfth
century, is used side by side with the older term
' benefice,' until in the course of the first half of
the 13th century it completely displaces it. With
the further development of cavalry service that
of the feudal system kept regular pace. Already
in the later Carolingian period Lorraine and
Burgundy followed southern Prance and Italy in
becoming feudalized states. To the east of the
Rhine on the contrary the most floiu'ishing time
of cavalry service and of the feudal system falls
in the time of the Hohenstaufens, having im-
doubtedly been furthered by the Crusades. Here
even as late as the middle of the twelfth century
the horsemen preferred dismounting and fighting
with the sword because they could not yet man-
age their steeds and the regular cavalry weapons,
the shield and the spear, like their western neigh-
bors. But never in Germany did feudalism
make its way into daily life as far as it did in
Prance, where the maxim held true : ' nulle terre
sans seigneur.' There never was here a lack of
considerable allodial possessions, although occa-
1146
FEUDALISM.
FIELD OF LIES.
sionally, out of respect for the feudal theory,
these were put dowu as ' fiefs of the sun.' The
principle, too, was firmly maintained that a fief
granted from one's own property was no true fief ;
for so thoroughly was feudal law the law govern-
ing the realm that a true fief could only be founded
on the fief above it, in such manner that the king
was always the highest feudal lord. That was
the reason why a fief without homage, that is,
without the relationship of vassalage and the need
of doing military service for the state, could not
be looked upon as a true fief. The knight's fee
only (feudum militare) was such, and only a man
of knightly character, who united a knightly
manner of living with knightly pedigree, was
'perfect in feudal law,' — in possession, namely,
of full feudal rights or of the ' Heerschild.'
Whether or not he had been personally dubbed
knight made no difference ; the fief of a man who
was still a squire was also a true fief. . . . The
object of the feudal grant could be anything
which assured a regular emolument, — especially
land, tithes, rents, and other sources of income,
tolls and jurisdictions, churches and monasteries ;
above all, oflices of state. In course of time the
earlier distinction between the office and the fief
which was meant to go with the office ceased to
be made. . . . The formal course of procedure
when granting was a combination, exactly on the
old plan, of the act of commendation, now called
Hulde, which was the basis of vassalage, and the
act of conferring (investiture) which established
the real right of the man to the fief. . . . The
Hulde consisted in giving the hand (^the perform-
ing of mannschaft, homagium, hominium, Hulde)
often combined with the giving of a kiss and the
biking of an oath (the swearing of fldelitas or
Hulde) by which the man swore to be ' true, loyal
and willing ' as regarded his lord. The custom
earlier connected with commendation of present-
ing a weapon had lost its former significance and
had become merged in the ceremony of investi-
ture : the weapon had become a symbol of in-
vestitxire. . . . These symbols of investiture
were in part the same as in territorial law : the
glove, the hat, the cape, the staff, tlie twig ;
occasionally probably also a ring, but quite
especially the sword or spear. As regarded the
principalities it had quite early become the
custom to fasten a banner on the end of the spear
in token of the royal rights of supremacy that
were to be conferred. 'Thus the banner became
the sole symbol of investiture in the granting of
secular principalities and the latter themselves
came to be called 'banner fiefs.' The installa-
tion of the ecclesiastical princes by the king took
place originally without any distinction being
made between the oflace and the appanage of
the office. It was done by conferring the pas-
toral staff (ferula, virga pastoralis) of the former
bishop or abbot ; in the case of bishops since the
time of Henry III. by handing the ring and
crosier. In the course of the struggle concern-
ing the ecclesiastical investitures both sides came
to the conviction that a distinction could be made
between the appanaging of the church with sec-
ular estates and jurisdictions on the one hand,
and the office itself and the immediate appurte-
nances of the church — the so-called ' sacred ob-
jects ' on the other. A union was arrived at in
the Concordat of Worms which provided that for
the granting of the former (the so-called Regalia)
the secular symbol of the sceptre might replace
the purely ecclesiastical symbols. As this cus-
tom was retained even after the incorporation of
the ecclesiastical principalities in the feudalized
state-system, the ecclesiastical principalities, as
opposed to the secular banner-fiefs, were distin-
guished as 'sceptre-fiefs.' " — Schroder, Lehrbvch
der deutschen lieclUsr/eschichte (1889) pp. 381-388.
— " By the time at which we have arrived (the Ho-
henstaufen Period) the knights themselves, ' ordo
equestris major,' had come to form a class so
distinct and so exclusive that no outsiders could
enter it except in the course of three generations
or by special decree of the king. Only to those
whose fathers and grandfathers were of knightly
origin could fiefs now be granted ; only such
could engage in judicial combat, in knightly
sports and, above all, in the tournament or joust.
. . . Feudalism did much to awaken a moral
sentiment ; fidelity, truth and sincerity were the
suppositions upon wliich the whole system rested,
and a great solidarity of interests came to exist
between the lord and his vassals. The latter
might bring no public charges against their mas-
ter in matters affecting his life, limb or honor ;
on three grand occasions, in case of captivity,
the knighting of his son, the marriage of his
daughter, they were obliged to furnish him with
pecuniary aid. Knightly honor and knightly
graces come in the twelfth century to be a mat-
ter of fashion and custom ; a new and important
element, too, the adoration of woman, is intro-
duced. A whole literature arises that has to do
almost exclusively with knightly prowess and
with knightly love." — E. F. Henderson, A His-
tory of Oermany in the Middle Ages, pp. 424-435.
—See, also, Fiiancb : A. D. 987-1337.
FEUILLANTS, Club and Party of the.
See France : A. D. 1790, and 1791 (October).
FEZ : Founding of the city and kingdom.
See Edrisites.
FEZZAN. The Phazania of the ancient Ro-
mans ; a part of the Sahara region in northern
Africa which has been attached since 1842 to the
Turkish province of Tripoli.
FIANNA EIRINN.— The ancient militia of
Erin, famous in old Irish romance and song. —
T. Moore. IIi.9t. of Ireland, v. 1, c!i. 7.
FIDENiE. — An ancient city on the Tiber, at
war with Rome until the latter destroyed it,
B. C. 436.
FIEFS. See Feudal Tenures ; and Feu-
dalism.
FIELD OF LIES, The.— Ludwig, or Louis,
the Pious, son and successor of Charlemagne,
was a man of gentle character, and good inten-
tions — too amiable and too honest in his virtues
for the commanding of a great empire in times
so rude. He lost the control of his state, and
his family, alike. His own sons headed a suc-
cession of revolts against his authority. The
second of these insurrections occurred in the
year 833. Father and sons confronted one
another with hostile armies, on the plain of
Rothfeld, not far from Colmar in Alsace. In-
trigue instead of battle settled the controversy,
for the time being. The adherents of the old
emperor were all enticed away from him. To
signify the treacherous methods by which this
defection was brought about, the "Rothfeld"
(Red-field) on which it occurred received the
name of " Lligenfeld," or Field of Lies. — J. C. L.
de Sismondi, The French under the Carlovingians;
tr. by Bellingham, ch. 7.
1147
FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD.
FIJI ISLANDS.
FIELD OF THE CLOTH OF GOLD,
The. — The place of the famous meeting of Henry
VIII. of England with Francis I. of France,
which took place in the summer of 1520 [see
France: A. D. 1520-1523], is notable in history,
from the maenificence of the preparations made
for it, as The" Field of the Cloth of Gold. It was
at Guisnes, or between Guisnes and Arde, near
Calais (then English territory). "Guisnes and
its castle offered little attraction, and if possible
less accommodation, to the gay throng now to
be gathered within its walls. . . . But on the
castle green, within the limits of a few weeks,
and in the face of great difficulties, the English
artists of that day contrived a summer palace,
more like a vision of romance, the creation of
some fairy dream (if the accounts of eye-witnesses
of all classes may be trusted), than the dull
every-day reality of clay-born bricks and mortar.
No ' palace of art ' in these beclouded climates
of the "West ever so truly deserved its name. . . .
The palace was an exact square of 328 feet. It
was pierced on every side with oriel windows
and clerestories curiously glazed, the mullions
and posts of which were overlaid with gold.
An embattled gate, ornamented on both sides
with statues representing men in various atti-
tudes of war, arid flanked by an embattled tower,
guarded the entrance. From this gate to the
entrance of the palace arose in long ascent a
sloping dais or hall-pace, along which were
grouped ' images of sore and terrible counte-
nances,' in armour of argentine or bright metal.
At the entrance, under an embowed landing
place, facing the great doors, stood ' antique '
(classical) figures girt with olive branches. The
passages, the roofs of the galleries from place to
place and from chamber to chamber, were ceiled
and covered with white silk, fluted and embowed
with silken hanging of divers colours and braided
cloths, ' which showed like bullions of fine bur-
nished gold.' The roofs of the chambers were
studded with roses, set in lozenges, and diapered
on a ground of fine gold. Panels enriched with
antique carving and gilt bosses covered the
spaces between the windows; whilst all along
the corridors and from every window hung tap-
estry of silk and gold, embroidered with fig-
ures. ... To the palace was attached a spacious
chapel, still more sumptuously adorned. Its
altars were hung with cloth of gold tissue em-
broidered with pearls ; cloth of gold covered the
walls and desks. . . . Outside the palace gate,
on the greensward, stood a gilt fountain, of an-
tique workmanship, with a statue of Bacchus
' birlying the wine. ' Three runlets, fed by secret
conduits hid beneath the earth, spouted claret,
hypocras, and water into as many silver cups,
to quench the thirst of all comers. ... In long
array, in the plain beyond, 2,800 tents stretched
their white canvas before the eyes of the spec-
tator, gay with the pennons, badges, and devices
of the various occupants; whilst miscellaneous
followers, in tens of thousands, attracted by profit
or the novelty of the scene, camped on the grass
and filled the surrounding slopes, in spite of the
severity of provost-marshal and reiterated threats
of mutilation and chastisement. . . . From the 4th
of June, when Henry first entered Guisnes, the
festivities continued with unabated splendour
for twenty days. . . . The two kings parted on
the best of terms, as the world thought." — J. S.
Brewer, Beign of Henry VIII., ch. 12.
Also in : Lady Jackson, The Court of Fi-ance
in the \Qth Century, i: 1, ch. 11-12.— Miss Pardoe,
The Court and Reign of Francis I, v. 1, eh. 14.
FIESCO, Conspiracy of. See Genoa: A. D.
1528-1559.
FIESOLE. See Florence: Origin and
Najie.
FIFTEEN, The (Jacobite Rebellion). See
Scotland: A. D. 1715.
FIFTEENTH AMENDMENT, The. See
United States of Aji. : A. D. 1809-1870.
FIFTH MONARCHY MEN.— One of the
most extremely fanatical of the i)olitico-religious
sects or factions which rose in England during
the commonwealth and the Protectoral reign of
Cromwell, was that of the so-called Fifth Mon-
archy Men, of whom Major-General Harrison
was the chief. Their belief is thus described by
Carlyle: "The common mode of treating Uni-
■(•^rsal History, . . . not yet entirely fallen ob-
solete in this country, though it has been aban-
doned with much ridicule everywhere else for
half a century now, was to group the Aggregate
Transactions of the Human Species into Four
Monarchies : the Assyrian Monarchy of Nebuchad-
nezzar and Company ; the Pereian of Cyrus and
ditto; the Greek of Alexander; and lastly the
Roman. These I think were they; but am no
great authority on the subject. Under the dregs
of this last, or Roman Empire, which is maintained
yet by express name in Germany, ' Das heilige
Romische Reich,' we poor moderns still live.
But now say Major-General Harrison and a num-
ber of men, founding on Bible Prophecies, Now
shall be a Fifth Monarchy, by far Wie blessedest
and the only real one, — the Jlonarchy of Jesus
Christ, his Saints reigning for Him here on Earth,
— if not He himself, which is probable or pos-
sible, — for a thousand years, &c., &c. O
Heavens, there are tears for human destiny ; and
immortal Hope itself is beautiful because it is
steeped in Sorrow, and foolish Desire lies van-
quished under its feet ! They who merely laugh
at Harrison take but a small portion of his mean-
ing with them." — T. Carlyle, Oliver Cromwell's
Letters and Speeclies, pt. 8, speech 2. — The Fifth
Monarchy fanaticism, sternly repressed by Oliver
Cromwell, gave some signs of turbulence during
Richard Cromwell's protectorate, and broke out
in a mad way the year after the Restoration. The
attempted insurrection in London was headed by
one Venner, and was called Venner's Insurrec-
tion. It was easily put down. " It came as the
expiring flash of a fanatical creed, which had
blended itself with Puritanism, greatly to the
detriment of the latter; and, dying out rather
slowly, it left behind the quiet element of Mil-
lenarianism." — J. Stoughtou, Hist, of Religion in
Eng., jj. 3, ch. 4.
Also in : D. Masson, Life of John Milton, v. 5,
p. 16.
"FIFTY-FOUR FORTY OR FIGHT."
See Oregon: A. T>. 1S44-1846.
FIJI ISLANDS, The.— "The Fiji Group
comprises more than eighty inhabited islands in
the South Pacific, between longitude 176° east and
178° west, and latitude 16° and 21° south, and is
situated 1760 miles N.E. of Sydney, and 1175 N.
of Auckland. Viti Levu (or Big Fiji), the largest
island of the group, is half as large as Jamaica,
and larger than Cyprus ; the second island of
importance, Vanua Levu, is three times the size
of Mauritius, and ten times that of Barbadoes,
1148
FIJI ISLANDS.
FILL
and the aggregate area of the whole is greater
than all the British West Indies. . . .The coun-
try is well watered by numerous rivers, several
of them being of respectable size. The Rewa in
Viti Levu is navigable by vessels of light draught
for 50 miles, and on the banks of this river there
are thousands of acres of the richest alluvial flats,
with soil 14 or 15 feet deep. . . . The first
known European who mentions Fiji is the Dutch
navigator Tasman, who in 1643 passed between
the islands of Taviuni and Kaimea, and the
straits to this day bear his name. He christened
the group Priuce William's Islands. Captains
Cook, Bligh, and Wilson are among the early
discoverers who mention the group, ... In
1808 a brig called the Elisa was wrecked off the
reef of Nairai. and the escaped crew and passen-
gers, mostly runaway convicts from New South
Wales, found there were seven powerful chiefs
in the group, that of Verata being leader. The
sailors and convicts, however, under the com-
mand of a certain Charley Savage, took the side
of the Bau people [Bau being one of the small
islands of the group]. Powder and shot soon
settled the question of ascendancy, and since the
Elisa was lost Bau has retained it. The chief of
Bau at this time was a certain Na Ulivou, and
was a brave leader of men. So great was his
success that he was accorded the title of Vuni
Valu. ' Root of War,' or as some translators have
it, ' Source of Power,' — a distinction which has
since been hereditary in the chiefs of Bau. In-
ternecine fighting chiefly constituted the Fijian
life of those days, but the Vuni Valu of the time
maintained the position he had won. He died in
1839, and was succeeded by his brother Tanoa,
who, after a troubled reign, five years of which
were passed in exile, died on the 8th of Decem-
ber, 1853." — H. Stonehewer Cooper, Coral Lands,
V. 1, ch. 3 and 4. — "After 1835, two Wesleyan
missionaries, bold pioneers of civilisation, pene-
trated to the Fiji Islands. They found there a
frightful state of things ; wars, massacres, and
banquets of human flesh were the order of the
day. But they found there also a certain organi-
sation, a sort of customary law, fourteen king-
lets, statesmen, politicians, and persons whose
business it was to carry from tribe to tribe the
news of the day. . . . Among the great chiefs
of the Fijian archipelago, Thakombau [spelt,
after the orthography invented by the mission-
aries, Cakobau, which does not correspond with
the sound of the word] occupied the first rank,
thanks to his intelligence, his energy, and the
extent of his dominions. For greater personal
safety, he resided in the little island of Bau. He
succeeded even in getting himself proclaimed
King of Fiji by a certain number of great chiefs.
But an attempt of his to sub j ugate the other tribes
became the cause of his down fall. . . . The mis-
sionaries had endeavoured in vain to convert
him ; but this task was accomplished by the
King of Tonga. Thakombau, menaced by a
formidable coalition of Fijian chiefs, had applied
to King George of Tonga for assi.stauee. The
latter came at the head of an imposing force,
rescued the King of the Fijis, who was then be-
sieged in his small island, re-establi.shed his au-
thority, and enjoined him to embrace the faith
of the whites. He obeyed, and the other chiefs
followed his example. Thus it was that in 1857
('hristianity was introduced into the archipelago.
The second part of Thakombau' s reign was, so far
as he was personally concerned, an alternation of
ups and downs, but for his country, a period of
progress, inasmuch as the manners of the people
became more and more civilised, and cannibalism
gradually disappeared. The credit of this was,
as we have seen, in great part due to the mis-
sionaries, who had acquired a great influence in
political matters, and also to the English Con-
sulate, then recently established at Levuka. But
the wars continued, and the prestige of the king
declined ; so, following the advice of his white
friends, he endeavoured to get rid of the dangers
that surrounded him by granting his subjects a
constitution similar to "that which the American
missionaries had introduced in the Sandwich
Islands. But it appeared that the worthy Fiji-
ans were not yet ripe for these blessings. The
king's position got worse and worse, and in the
end became altogether untenable. One means
of escape alone remained : to cede his kingdom
to the British Crown, and this he did in 1874.
In the latter years of his reign, his two principal
advisers were his daughter, the Princess Andi-
quilla, and an English resident, Mr, Thurston.
. . . From his abdication to his death in 1883,
Thakombau lived a retired life, with his numer-
ous family, at his former capital, Bau, maintain,
ing the most friendly relations with the English
authorities, and sometimes giving them useful
advice. . . . For now [1884] nearly ten years
the Fijian Archipelago, including the group of
the Exploring Islands, has been under British
rule. It owes to that rule undeniable benefits :
a comparative degree of prosperity ; domestic
peace, notwithstanding tribal animosities which
in spite of restraint still continue in a latent
form ; perfect security of life and property ; in-
direct but effectual protection against the entice-
ments of kidnappers, and finally, an organisation
adapted as far as is possible to local traditions
and usages. ... A small body of troops, com-
posed exclusively of natives, protects the lives of
the Governor and his family, as well as his staff
and the white residents. Excepting the young
ofiicer who commands these raw recruits, there
is not an English military man in these islands.
And note this well: the coloured subjects of the
Queen form 98 per cent of the whole population
of the Archipelago. There are other wonders
which might be recorded. Nevertheless, it must
be confessed that the opinions expressed by
the old residents, who are best qualified to know
the country, differ amazingly. Some of them
ascribe the merit of the advantages already ob-
tained to the Government, others to the working
of the new constitution, to the missionaries, or
to the influence of Europeans. But there are
also those, not less entitled to speak . . . who
seriously maintain that the Pijians, so far from
having been savages, had attained a high degree
of civilisation before the introduction of Christian-
ity." — Baron von Hiibuer, Through the British Em-
pire, «. Z,pt. 5, ch. 3. — See, also, Tonga Islands.
FILL — A class of poets among the early Irish,
who practiced originally certain rites of incanta-
tion. Their art was called Filidecht. ' ' The bards,
who recited poems and stories, formed at first a
distinct branch from the Fill. According as the
true Filiducht fell into desuetude, and the Fill be-
came simply a poet, the two orders practically
coalesced and the names Fill and bard became
synonymous. ... In Pagan times and during
the Middle Ages the Irish bards, like the Gaulish
1149
FILL
FISHERIES.
ones, accompanied their recitation of poems on a
stringed instrument called a crut. . . . The bard
was therefore to the Fill, or poet, what the
Jogler was to the Troubadour." — W. K. Sulli-
van, Article, Celtic Literature, Encyc. Brit.
FILIBUSTER.— "The difference between a
filibuster and a freebooter is one of ends rather
than of means. Some authorities say that the
words have a common etymology; but others,
including Charlevoix, maintain that the filibuster
derived his name from his original occupation,
that of a cruiser in a ' flibote,' or ' Vly-boat,' first
used on the river Vly, in Holland. Yet another
writer says that the name was first given to the
gallant followers of Dominique de Gourgues,
who sailed from Finisten'e, or Finibuster, in
France, on the famous expedition against Fort
Carolme in 1567 [see Florida: A. D. 1567-1568].
The name, whatever its origin, was long current
in the Spanish as 'filibustero' before it became
adopted into the English. So adopted, it has
been used to describe a type of adventurer who
occupied a curious place in American history
during the decade from 1850 to 1860." — J. J.
Roche, The Story of the Filibusters, ch. 1. — See,
also, America: A. D. 1639-1700.
FILIBUSTERING EXPEDITIONS OF
LOPEZ AND WALKER. See Cuba: A. D.
1845-1860; and Nicaragua: A. D. 1855-1860.
FILIOQUE CONTROVERSY, The. —
"The Council of Toledo, held under King Rec-
cared, A. D. 589, at which the Visigothic Church
of Spain formally abjured Arianism and adopted
the orthodox faith, put forth a version of the
great creed of Nictea in which they had inter-
polated an additional clause, which stated that
the Holy Ghost proceeded from the Father ' and
from the Son ' (Filioque). Under what influence
the council took upon itself to make an addition
to the creed of the universal Church is unknown.
It is probable that the motive of the addition
was to make a stronger protest against the Arian
denial of the co-equal Godhead of the Son. The
Spanish Church naturally took a special interest
in the addition it had made to the symbol of
Nicsea, and sustained it in subsequent councils.
. . . The Frankish Church seems to have early
adopted it from their Spanish neighbours. . . .
The question was brought before a council held
at Aix in A. D. 809. . . . The council formally
approved of the addition to the creed, and Charles
[Charlemagne] sent two bishops and the abbot of
Corbie to Rome to request the pope's concurrence
in the decision. Leo, at a conference with the
envoys, expressed his agreement with the doc-
trine, but strongly opposed its insertion into the
creed. . . . Notwithstanding the pope's protest,
the addition was adopted throughout the Frank-
ish Empire. When the Emperor Henry V. was
crowned at Rome, A. D. 1014, he induced Pope
Benedict VIII. to allow the creed with the filio-
que to be chanted after the Gospel at High Mass;
so it came to be generally used in Rome ; and at
length Pope Nicholas I. insisted on its adoption
throughout the West. At a later period the con-
troversy was revived, and it became the ostensi-
ble ground of the final breach (A. D. 1054) be-
tween the Churches of the West and those of the
East." — E. L. Cutts, Gharlemayne, ch. 23. — "The
Filioque controversy relates to the eternal pro-
cession of the Holy Spirit, and is a continuation
of the trinitarian controversies of the Nicene age.
It marks the chief and almost the only important
dogmatic difference between the Greek and Latin
churches, . . . and has occasioned, deepened, and
perpetuated the greatest schism in Christendom.
The single word Filioque keeps the oldest, largest
and most nearly related churches divided since
the ninth century, and still forbids a reunion." —
P. Schaff, Hist, of the Ch. Church, ». 4, ch. 11,
sect. 107.
Also m: 6. B. Howard, The Schism betioeen
the Onental and Western Churches. — See, Chris-
tianity: A. D. 330-1054.
FILIPPO MARIA, Duke of Milan, A. D.
1413-1447.
FILLMORE, Millard.— Vice-Presidential
Election. — Succession to the Presidency. —
Administration. See United States op Am. :
A. D. 1848, to 1853.
FINE, The. — A clan or sept division of the
tribe in ancient Ireland.
FINGALL. See Normans. — Northmen:
8th-9th centuries; also, Ikbland: 9th-10th
centuries.
FINLAND: A. D. 1808-1810.— Conquest
by and peculiar annexation to Russia. — Con-
stitutional independence of the Finnish grand
duchy confirmed by the Czar. See Scandi-
navian States: A. D. 1807-1810.
FINN GALLS. See Ireland: 9th-10th
centuries.
FINNS. See Hungarians.
F I O D H-I N I S. See Ireland, The Name.
FIRBOLGS, The.— One of the races to which
Irish legend ascribes the settlement of Ireland ;
said to have come from Thrace. See Neme-
DiANS, and Ireland: The Primitive Inhabi-
tants.
FIRE LANDS, The. See Omo : A. D. 1786-
1796.
FIRMA. See Fkrm.
FIRST CONSUL OF FRANCE, The.
See France: A. D. 1799 (November — Decem-
ber).
FIRST EMPIRE (FRENCH), The. See
France: A. D. 1804-1805, to 1815.
FIRST-FRUITS. See Annates.
FIRST REPUBLIC (FRENCH), The.
See France: A. D. 1792 (September— Novem-
ber), to 1804-1805.
FISCALINI. See Slavery, Medleval;
France.
FISCUS, The.—" The treasury of the senate
[in the early period of the Roman empire] re-
tained the old republican name of the serarium ;
that of the emperor was denominated the fiscus,
a term which ordinarily signified the private
property of an individual. Hence the notion
rapidly grew up, that the provincial resources
constituted the emperor's private purse, and
when in process of time the control of the senate
over the taxes gave way to their direct adminis-
tration by the emperor himself, the national
treasury received the designation of fiscus, and the
idea of the empire being nothing else than Cfesar's
patrimony became fixed ineradicably in men's
minds." — C. Merivale, Hist, of the Romans, ch. 33.
FISHER, Fort, The capture of. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1864-1865 (December-
January: N. Carolina).
FISHERIES, North American: A. D. 1501-
1578. — The Portuguese, Norman, Breton and
Basque fishermen on the Newfoundland Banks.
See Newfoundland: A. D. 1501-1578.
1150
FISHERIES.
FISHERIES.
A. D. 1610-1655.— Growth of the English
interest. See Newfoundland: A. D. 1610-
1655.
A. D. 1620. — Monopoly granted to the Coun-
cil for New England. See New Engl.\nd:
A. D. 1630-1633.
A. D. 1660-1688.— The French gain their
footing in Newfoundland. See ISewfocind-
LA^D: A. D. 1660-1688.
A. D. 1713.- Newfoundland relinquished to
England, with fishing rights reserved to
France, by the Treaty of Utrecht. See New-
foundland: A. D. 1713.
A. D. 1720-1745.— French interests pro-
tected by the fortification of Louisbourg. See
Cape Breton: A. D. 1720-1 T-1.5.
A. D. 1748.— St. Pierre and Michelon islands
on the Newfoundland coast ceded to France.
See New England : A. D. 1745-1748.
A. D. 1763.— Rights secured to France on
the island of Newfoundland and in the Gulf of
St. Lawrence by the Treaty of Paris.— Articles
V. and VI. of the Treaty of Paris (1763), which
transferred Canada and all its islands from France
to England, are in the following language : "The
subjects of France shall have the liberty of fish-
ing and drying, on a part of the coasts of the
island of Newfoundland, such as it is specified in
the 13th Article of the Treaty of Utrecht; which
article is renewed and confirmed by the present
treaty (except what relates to the island of Cape
Breton, as well as to the other islands and coasts,
in the mouth and in the gulph of St. Laurence):
and his Britannic majesty consents to leave to
the subjects of the most Christian king the liberty
of fishing in the gulph of St. Laurence, on condi-
tion that the subjects of France do not exercise
the said fishery, but at the distance of three
leagues from all the coasts belonging to Great
Britain, as well those of the continent, as those
of the islands situated in the said gulph of St.
Laurence. And as to what relates to the fishery
on the coasts of the island of Cape Breton out of
the said gulph, the subjects of the most Christian
king shall not be permitted to exercise the said
fishery, but at the distance of 15 leagues from
the coasts of the island of Cape Breton ; and the
fishery on the coasts of Nova Scotia or Acadia,
and everywhere else out of the said gulph, shall
remain on the foot of former treaties. Art. VI.
The King of Great Britain cedes the islands of
St. Peter and Miquelon, in full right, to his most
Christian majesty, to serve as a shelter to the
French fishermen: and his said most Christian
majesty engages not to fortify the said islands;
to erect no buildings upon them, but merely for
the convenience of the fishery ; and to keep upon
them a guard of 50 men only for the police." —
Text of the Treaty {Parliamentary Hist., v. 15, p.
1^95).
A. D. 1778. — French fishery rights recog-
nized in the treaty between France and the
United States. See United States of Am •
A. D. 1778 (February).
A. D. 1783.— Rights secured to the United
States by the Treaty of Paris. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1783 (September).
A. D. 1814-1818.— Disputed rights of Ameri-
can fishermen after the War of i8i2.— Silence
of the Treaty of Ghent.— The Convention of
1818.— Under the Treaty of Paris (1783) "we
claimed that the liberty which was secured to the
inhabitants of the United States to take fish on
the coasts of Newfoundland, under the limitation
of not drying or curing the same on that island,
and also on the other coasts, bays, and creeks,
together with the limited rights of drying or
curing fish on the coasts of Nova Scotia, Magda-
len Islands, and Labrador, were not created or
conferred by that treaty, but were simply recog-
nized by it as already existing. They had been
enjoyed before the Revolution by the Americans
in common with other subjects of Great Britain,
and had, indeed, been conquered, from the French
chiefly, through the valor and sacrifices of the
colonies of New England and New York. The
treaty was therefore considered analogous to a
deed of partition. It defined the boundaries be-
tween the two countries and all the rights and
privileges belonging to them. We insisted that
the article respecting fisheries was therefore to be
regarded as identical with the possession of land
or the demarcation of boundary. We also
claimed that the treaty, being one that recog-
nized independence, conceded territory, and de-
fined boundaries, belonged to that class which is
permanent in its nature and is not affected by
subsequent suspension of friendly relations. The
English, however, insisted that this treaty was
not a unity; that while some of its provisions
were permanent, other stipulations were tempo-
rary and could be abrogated, and that, in fact,
they were abrogated by the war of 1812 ; that
the very difference of the language used showed
that while the rights of deep-sea fishing were
permanent, the liberties of fishing were created
and conferred by that treaty, and had therefore
been taken away by the war. These were the
two opposite views of the respective govern-
ments at the conferences which ended in the
treaty of Ghent, of 1814." No compromise ap-
pearing to be practicable, the commissioners
agreed, at length, to drop the subject from con-
sideration. "For that reason the treaty of
Ghent is entirely silent as to the fishery question
[see United States of Am. : A. D. 1814 (Decem-
ber)]. ... In consequence of conflicts arising
between our fishermen and the British authorities,
our point of view was very strongly maintained
by Mr. Adams in his correspondence with the
British Foreign Office, and finally, on October 20,
1818, Mr. Rush, then our minister at London,
assisted by Mr. Gallatin, succeeded in signing a
treaty, which among other things settled our
rights and privileges by the first article, as fol-
lows: . . . 'It is agreed between the high con-
tracting parties that the inhabitants of the said
United States shall have forever, in common with
the subjects of his Britannic Majesty, the liberty
of taking fish of any kind on that part of the
southern coast of Newfoundland which extends
from Cape Ray to the Rameau Islands ; on the
western and northern coasts of Newfoundland
from the said Cape Ray to the Qurpon Islands ;
on the shores of the Magdalen Islands, and also on
the coasts, bays, harbors, and creeks from Mont
Joly, on the southern coast of Labrador, to and
through the straits of Belle Isle, and thence north-
wardly indefinitely along the coast. And that
the American fishermen shall have liberty forever
to dry and cure fish in any of the unsettled bays,
harbors, and creeks in the southern part of New-
foundland herein-before described, and of the
coasts of Labrador ; but as soon as the same, or
any portion thereof, shall be settled, It shall not
be lawful for said fishermen to dry or cure fish
1151
FISHERIES.
FISHING CREEK.
at such portion, so settled, without previous
agreement for such purpose with the inhabitants,
proprietors, or possessors of the ground. And
the United States hereby renounces forever any
liberty heretofore enjoyed, claimed by the inhabi-
tants thereof to take, dry, or cure fish on or
within three marine miles of any of the coasts,
bays, creeks, or harbors of his Britannic Majes-
ty's dominions in America not included in the
above-mentioned limits. Provided, however,
That the American fishermen shall be permitted
to enter such bays or harbors for the purpose of
shelter, of repairing damages therein, of pur-
cliasing wood, and obtaining water, and for no
other purpose whatever. But they shall be under
such restrictions as shall be necessary to prevent
their taking, drying, or curing fish therein,
or in any other manner whatever abusing the priv-
ileges hereby secured to them. ' The American
plenipotentiaries evidently labored to obtain as
extensive a district of territory as possible for in-
shore fishing, and were willing to give up priv-
ileges, then apparently of small amount, but now
much more important, than of using other bays
and harbors for shelter and kindred purposes.
For that reason they acquiesced in omitting the
word ' bait ' in the first sentence of the proviso
after ' water. ' . . . The power of obtaining bait
for use in the deep-sea fisheries is one which our
fishermen were afterward very anxious to secure.
But the mackerel fisheries in those waters did not
begin until several years later. The only con-
tention then was about the cod fisheries." — E.
Schuyler, American Diplomacy, ch. 8. — Treaties
and Conventions between the United States and
other Powers {ed. of 1889), pp. 415-418.
A. D. 1854-1866. — Privileges defined under
the Canadian Reciprocity Treaty. See Takipp
Legislation (United States and Canada):
A. D. 18.54-1866.
A. D. 1871. — Reciprocal privileges adjusted
between Great Britain and the United States
by the Treaty of Washington. See Alabama
Claims: A. D. 1871.
A. D. 1877-1888.— The Halifax award.— Ter-
mination of the Fishery articles of the Treaty
of Washington. — The rejected Treaty of 1888.
— In accordance with the terms of articles 23 and
23 of the Treaty of Washington (see Alabama
Claims: A. D. 1871), a Commission appointed to
award compensation to Great Britain for the su-
perior value of the fishery privileges conceded to
the citizens of the United States by that treaty,
met at Halifa.\; on the 5th of June, 1877. The
United States was represented on the Commis-
sion by Hon. E. H. Kellogg, of Massachusetts,
and Great Britain by Sir Alexander F. Gault, of
Canada. The two governments having failed to
agree in the selection of the third Commissioner,
the latter was named, as the Treaty provided, by
the Austrian Ambassador at London, who desig-
nated M. Maurice Delfosse, Belgian Minister at
Washington. The award was made November
27, 1877, when, "by a vote of two to one, the
Commissioners decided that the United States was
to pay $5,500,000 for the use of the fishing priv-
ileges for 12 years. The decision produced pro-
found astonishment in the United States." Dis-
satisfaction with the Halifax award, and generally
with the main provisions of the Treaty of Wash-
ington relating to the fisheries, was so great in
the United States that, when, in 1878, Congress
appropriated money for the payment of the
award, it inserted in the bill a clause to the effect
that "Articles 18 and 21 of the Treaty between
the United States and Great Britain concluded on
the 8th of May, 1871, ought to be terminated at
the earliest period consistent with the provisions
of Article 33 of the same Treaty." " It is a curi-
ous fact that during the time intervening between
the signing of the treaty of Washington and the
Halifax award an almost complete change took
place in the character of the fisheries. The
method of taking mackerel was completely revo-
lutionized by the introduction of the purse-seine,
by means of which vast quantities of the fish
were captured far out in the open sea by enclos-
ing them in huge nets. . . . This change in the
method of fishing brought about a change in the
fishing grounds. . . . The result of this change
was very greatly to diminish the value of the
North-eastern Fisheries to the United States fisher-
men." On the 1st of July, 1883, " in pursuance of
instructions from Congress, the President gave the
required notice of the desire of the United States
to terminate the Fishery Articles of the Treaty of
Washington, which consequently came to an end
the 1st of July, 1885. The termination of the
treaty fell in the midst of the fishing season, and,
at the suggestion of the British Minister, Secre-
tary Bayard entered into a temporary arrange-
ment whereby the American fishermen were
allowed the privileges of the treaty during the
remainder of the season, with the understanding
that the President should bring the question be-
fore Congress at its next session and recommend
a joint Commission by the Governments of the
United States and Great Britain. " This was done ;
but Congress disapproved the recommendation.
The question of rights under former treaties, es-
pecially that of 1818, remained open, and became
a subject of much irritation between the United
States and the neighboring British American
provinces. The local regulations of the latter
were enforced with stringency and harshness
against American fishermen ; the latter solicited
and procured retaliatory legislation from Con-
gress. To end this unsatisfactory state of affairs,
a treaty was negotiated at Washington in Febru-
ary, 1888, by Thomas F. Bayard, Secretary of
State, WilUam L. Putnam and James B. Angell,
plenipotentiaries on the part of the United States,
and Joseph Chamberlain, M. P. , Sir L. S. Sack-
ville West and Sir Charles Tupper, plenipoten-
tiaries on the part of Great Britain, which treaty
was approved by the President and sent to the
Senate, but rejected by that body on the 21st of
August, by a negative vote of 30, against 27 in
its favor. — C. B. Elliott, The United States and
the North-eastern Fisheries, pp. 79-100.
Also in : J. H. De Ricci, The Fisheries Dis-
pute (\^%S).— Annual Ueport of United States
Commission of Fish and Fisheries for 1886. —
Corr. relative to proposed Fisheries Treaty (Senate
Ex. Doc, No. 113; 50«/t Cong., \st Sess.).— Doc's
and Proceedings of Halifax Comm'n (E. R Ex.
Doc, No. 89; Anth Cong., 2(Z Sess.).
FISHER'S HILL, Battle of. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1864 (August— October:
VlUGINIA).
FISHING CREEK, Battle of. See United
States op Am.: A. D. 1862 (January— Febru-
ART: Kentucky — Tennessee).
FISKE UNIVERSITY. See Education,
Modern : America : A. D. 1865-1881.
1152
PITCH.
FLAMENS
FITCH, John, and the beginnings of steam
navigation. See Steam Navu;ation.
FITZGERALD'S (LORDTHOMAS)RE-
BELLION IN IRELAND. See Ireland :
A. D. 1535-15.53.
FIVE ARTICLES OF PERTH, The. See
Scotland, A. D. 16is.
FIVE BLOODS, The. See Ireland : 13th-
14Tn Centuries.
FIVE BOROUGHS, The.— A confederation
of towns occupied by the Danes in England, in-
cluding Derby, Lincoln, Leicester, Nottingham
and Stamford, which played a part in the events
of the tenth and eleventh centuries. It after-
wards became Seven Boroughs by addition of
York and Chester.
FIVE FORKS, Battle of. See United
States op Am. : A. D. 1865 (March — April :
Virginia).
FIVE HUNDRED, The French Council of.
See France: A. D. 1795 (.June — September).
FIVE HUNDRED AT ATHENS, The.
See Athens : B. C. 510-.507.
FIVE MEMBERS, King Charles' attempt
against the. See England : A. D. 164'3 (Janu-
ary).
FIVE MILE ACT, The. See England:
A. D. 1662-1065.
FIVE NATIONS OF INDIANS, The.—
The five original tribes of the Iroquois Confeder-
acy, — the Mohawks, Oneidas, Onondagas, Cayu-
gas, and Senecas, — were commonly called bj'
the English the Five Nations. Subsequently, in
1715, a sixth tribe, the Tuscaroras, belonging to
the same stock, was admitted to the confederacy,
and its members were then known as the Si.t
Nations. See American Aborigines : Iroquois
Confederacy, and Iroquois Tribes of the
South.
FIVE THOUSAND, The. See Athens:
B. C. 413-111.
FIVE YEARS' TRUCE, The. See
Athens : B. C. 460-149,
FLAG, The American. — At the outbreak of
the revolt of the colonies, a variety of devices
appeared on the flags borne by the Continental
troops. A pine tree seems to have been the fa-
vorite New England emblem ; a coiled serpent,
with the motto, "Beware," or "Don't tread on
me," was that of the South. A representation
of the thirteen colonies by alternate red and
white stripes on a flag is said to have been made
first at Washington's headquarters, Cambridge,
on the 2d of .January, 1776. The blue field of
white stars, in the corner (the part of a flag called
"the union"), was introduced, by order of
Cougre.ss, on the 14th of June, 1777. There
seems to be no doubt that the first flag, thus de-
termined by law to be the fl.ag of the United
States, was made by Mrs. Betsey Ross, an up-
holsterer, on Arch street, Philadelphia, and, ac-
cording to tradition, Washington pencilled the
plan of it. The first military use of the flag is
claimed to have been at Fort Stanwix (now
Rome, N. Y.), when the fort was besieged in
August, 1777. The banner was improvised on
that occasion, out of a red petticoat, a white
shirt, and Col. Gansevoort's blue cloak. In 1818,
Congress decided that the number of stripes in
the flag should thereafter be the original thirteen,
but that the stars in " the union ' should increase
in number with the growing number of the
states.
FLAG, The British. — In the national flag of
the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland
the rectangular red cross of St. George (original
emblem of England), the diagonal white cross of
St. Andrew (emblem of Scotland), and the red
diagonal cross of St. Patrick (emblem of Ireland)
are ingeniously united, on a blue field, so that
each is shown. This constitutes w-hat is some-
times called the "royal jack," .sometimes the
" union jack," covering for some uses the whole
flag, and for others, only the upper left-hand
corner of a red or blue ensign.
FL AGE LL ANTS.— "Although the
Church's forgiveness for sin might now [14th
century] be easily obtained in other ways, still
flagellation was not only greatly admired among
the religious, but was also held in such high es-
timation by the common people, that in case of
any calamity or plague, they thought they could
propitiate the supposed wrath of God in no more
efl'ectual manner than by scourging, and proces-
sions of scourgers ; just as though the Church's
ordinary means of atonement were insufficient
for extraordinary cases, . . . Clement VI. put
an end to the public processions of Flagellants,
which were already widely prevalent ; but pen-
ance by the scourge was only thus forced into
couceaiinent. . . . Thus there now rose heretical
Flagellants, called also by the common name of
Beghards. . . . When the Whitemen (Bianchi)
[see White Penitents], scourging themselves
as they went, descended from the Alps into Italy,
they were received almost everywhere with en-
thusiasm by the clergy and the people : but in the
Papal territory death was prepared for their
leader, and the rest accordingly disperst them-
selves." — J. C. L. Gieseler, Oomyendium of
Ecclesiastical Hist., sect. 123 {v. 4). — "Divided
into companies of male and female devotees, un-
der a leader and two masters, they stripped them-
selves naked to the waist, and publicly scourged
themselves, or each other, till their shoulders
were covered with blood. This expiatory cere-
mony was repeated every morning and afternoon
for thirty- three days, equal in number to the
years which Christ is thought to have lived upon
earth. . . . The Flagellants appeared first in Hun-
gary : but missionary societies were soon formed,
and they hastened to impart the knowledge of
the new gospel to foreign nations. . . . A colony
reached England, and landed in London. . . .
The missionaries made not a single proselyte."
— J. Lingard, Hist, of Enqland. v. 4, ch. 1.
FLAMENS. — FLAMINES.— " The ponti-
fices, like several other priestly brotherhoods [of
ancient Rome] . . . had sacrificial priests (fa-
mines) attached to them, whose name was de-
rived from 'flare' (to blow the fire). The num-
ber of flamines attached to the pontifices was
fifteen, the three highest of whom, . . . viz,, the
Flamen Dialis, Martialis, and Quirinalis, were
always chosen from old patrician families. . . .
Free from all civil duties, the Flamen Dialis,
with his wife and children, exclusively devoted
himself to the service of the deity. His house
. . . lay on the Palatine hill. His marriage was
dissoluble by death only ; he was not allowed to
take an oath, mount a horse, or look at an army.
He was forbidden to remain a night away from
his house, and his hand touched nothing unclean,
for which reason he never approached a corpse
or a burial-place, ... In the daytime the Fla-
i men Dialis was not allowed to take off his head-
73
1153
FLAMENS.
FLANDERS.
dress, and he was obliged to resign his office in
case it fell off by accident. In his belt he carried
the sacrificial knife, and in his hand he held a
rod, in order to keep off the people on his way
to the sacrifice. For the same purpose he was
preceded by a lictor, who compelled everybody
on the way "to lay down his work, the flamen not
being allowed to see the business of daily life."
— E. Guhl and W. Koner, Life of the Greeks and
Romans, aect. 103.— See Augurs.
FLAMINIAN WAY. See Rome: B. C.
295—191
FLAMINIUS, The defeat of. See Punic
Wae, The Second.
FLANDERS: A. D. 863.— Creation of
the County. — Judith, daughter of Charles the
Bald, of France (not yet called France), and a
twice widowed queen of England, though hardly
yet out of her girlhood (she had wedded Ethel-
wulf and Ethelbald, father and son, in succes-
sion), took a mate, at last, more to her liking, by
a runaway match with one of her father's forest-
ers, named Baudouin, or Baldwin, Bras-de-fer.
This was in 862. King Charles, in his wrath,
caused the impudent forester to be outlawed and
excommunicated, both ; but after a year of inter-
cession and mediation he forgave the pair and
established them in a suitable fief. Baudouin
was made Count or Marquis of Flanders. "Pre-
viously to Baudouin 's era, Flanders or ' Flandria '
is a designation belonging, as learned men con-
jecture, to a Gau or Pagus, afterwards known as
the Franc de Bruges, and noticed only in a sin-
gle charter. Popularly, the name of Flanders
had obtained with respect to a much larger sur-
rounding Belgic country. . . . The name of
' Flanders ' was thus given to the wide, and in a
degree indefinite tract, of which the Forester
Baudouin and his predecessors had the official
range or care. According to the idiom of the
Middle Ages, the term ' Forest ' did not exactly
convey the idea which the word now suggests,
not being applied exclusively to wood-land, but
to any wild and unreclaimed region. . . . Any
etymology of the name of Flamingia, or Flan-
ders, which we can guess at, seems intended to
designate that the land was so called from being
half-drowned. Thirty-five inundations, which
afficted the country at various intervals from
the tenth to the sixteenth century, have entirely
altered the coast-line; and the interior features
of the country, though less affected, have been
much changed by the diversions which the river-
courses have sustained. . . . Whatever had been
the original amplitude of the districts over which
Baudouin had any control or authority, the boun-
daries were now enlarged and defined. Kneeling
before Charles-Ie-Chauve, placing his hands be-
tween the hands of the Sovereign, he received
his ' honour ' : — the Forester of Flanders was
created Count or Marquis. All the countries
between the Scheldt, the Somme and the sea,
became his benefice ; so that only a narrow and
contested tract divided Baudouin's Flanders from
Normandy. According to an antient nomen-
clature, ten counties, to wit, Theerenburch, Arras,
Boulogne, Guisnes, Saint-Paul, Hesdin, Blande-
mont, Bruges, Harlebec, and Tournay, were
comprehended in the noble grant which Bau-
douin obtained from his father-in-law." — Sir F.
Palgrave, Uist. of Normandy and of England,
bk. 1, ch. 4.
A. D. 1096.— The Crusade of Count Robert.
See Crusades: A. D. 1O9G-1O90.
A. D. 1201-1204. — The diverted Crusade of
Count Baldwin and the imperial crown he won
at Constantinople. See Crusades; A. D. 1301-
120.3; and Byzantine Empire : A. D. 1304-1305.
A. D. 1214. — Humbled at the battle of Bou-
vines. See Boimj;Es.
13th Century. — The industry, commerce and
wealth of the Flemings. — "In the 13th cen-
tury, Flanders was the most populous and the
richest country in Europe. She owed the fact
to the briskness of her manufacturing and com-
mercial undertakings, not only amongst her
neighbours, but throughout Southern and East-
ern Europe. . . . Cloth, and all manner of woolen
stuffs, were the principal articles of Flemish pro-
duction, and it was chiefly from England that
Flanders drew her supply of wool, the raw ma-
terial of her industry. Thence arose between
the two countries commercial relations which
could not fail to acquire political importance.
As early as the middle of the 13th century, sev-
eral Flemish towns formed a society for found-
ing in England a commercial exchange, which
obtained great privileges, and, under the name
of the Flemish hanse of London, reached rapid
development. The merchants of Bruges had
taken the initiative in it; but soon all the towns
of Flanders — and Flanders was covered with
towns — Ghent, Lille, Ypres, Courtrai, Fumes,
Alost, St. Omer, and Douai, entered the confed-
eration, and made unity as well as extension of
liberties in respect of Flemish commerce the ob-
ject of their joint efforts. Their prosperity be-
came celebrated; and its celebrity gave it in-
crease. It was a burgher of Bruges who was
governor of the hanse of London, and he was
called the Count of the Hanse. The fair of
Bruges, held in the month of May, brought
together traders from the whole world. ' Thither
came for exchange,' saj's the most modem and
most enlightened historian of Flanders (Baron
Kervyn de Lettenhove, ' Histoire de Flandre, "
t. ii., p. 300), 'the produce of the North and
the South, the riches collected in the pilgrimages
to Novgorod, and those brought over by the
caravans from Samarcand and Bagdad, the pitch
of Norway and the oils of Andalusia, the furs of
Russia and the dates from the Atlas, the metals
of Hungary and Bohemia, the figs of Granada,
the honey of Portugal, the wax of Morocco, and
the spice of Egypt; whereby, says an ancient
manuscript, no land is to be compared in mer-
chandise to the land of Flanders. "... So much
prosperity made the Counts of Flanders very
puissant lords. 'Marguerite II., called "the
Black," Countess of Flanders and Hainault, from
1244 to 1280, was extremely rich,' says a chroni-
cler, ' not only in lands, but in furniture, jewels,
and money ; . . . insomuch that she kept up the
state of queen rather than countess. ' Nearly all
the Flemish towns were strongly organised com-
munes, in which prosperity had won liberty, and
which became before long small republics, suf-
ficiently powerful not only for the defence of their
municipal rights against the Counts of Flanders,
their lords, but for offering an armed resistance
to such of the sovereigns their neighbours as at-
tempted to conquer them or to trammel them in
their commercial relations, or to draw upon their
wealth by forced contributions or by plunder. "
— F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of France, ch. 18.
1154
FLANDERS.
FLANDERS.
Ai.so IN : J. Hutton, James and PJiilip Van
Arteveld. pt. 1, ch. 2. See, also, Trade.
A. D. 1299-1304. — The war with Philip the
Fair. — As the Flemings advanced in wealth and
consequence, the feudal dependence of their
country upon the French crown grew increasingly
irksome and oppressive to them, and their atti-
tude towards France became one of conlirmcd
hostility. At the same time, they were drawn to
a friendly leaning towards England by common
commercial interests. This showed itself de-
cisively on the occasion of the quarrel that arose
(A. D. 129.5) between Philip IV., called the Fair,
and Edward I. of England, concerning the rule of
the latter iu Aquitaine or Guienne. The French
king found allies in Scotland ; the English king
found allies in Flanders. An alliance of mar-
riage, iu fact, had been arranged to take place
between king Edward and the daughter of Guy
de Dampierre, count of Flanders ; but Philip con-
trived treacherously to get possession of the per-
sons of the count and his daughter and imprisoned
them both at Paris, declaring the states of the
count to be forfeited. In 1399 the two kings
settled their quarrel and abandoned their allies
on both sides — Scotland to the tender mercies of
Edward, and Flanders to the vengeance of the
malignant king Philip the Fair. The territory
of the Flemings was annexed to the crown of
France, and Jacques de Chatillon, uncle of the
queen, was appointed governor. Before two
years had passed the impatient Flemings were
in furious revolt. The insurrection began at
Bruges, May 18, 1303, and more than 3,000
Frenchmen in that city were massacred in the
first rage of the insurgents. This massacre was
called the Bruges Matins. A French army entered
Flanders to put down the rising and was con-
fronted at Courtrai (July 11, A. D. 1303) by the
Flemish militia. The latter were led by young
Guy of Dampierre and a few knights, who dis-
mounted to fight on equal terms with their fel-
lows. "About 20,000 militia, armed only with
pikes, which they employed also as implements
of husbandry, resolved to abide the onset of 8,000
Knights of gentle blood, 10,000 archers, and
30,000 foot-soldiers, animated by the presence
and directed by the military skill of Robert
Count of Artois, and of Raoul de Nesle, Con-
stable of France. Courtrai was the object of
attack, and the Flemings, anxious for its safety,
arranged themselves on a plain before the town,
covered in front by a canal." An altercation
which occurred between the two French com-
manders led to the making of a blind and
furious charge on the part of the French horse-
men, ignorant and heedless of the canal, into
which they plunged, horses and riders together,
in one inextricable mass, and where, in their
helplessness, they were slain without scruple
by the Flemings. "Philip had lost his most
experienced Generals, and the flower of his
troops ; but his obstinacy was unbending. " In
repeated campaigns during the next two years,
Philip strove hard to retrieve the disaster of
Courtrai. He succeeded, at last (A. D. 1304),
in achieving, with the help of the Genoese, a
naval victory in the Zuruck-Zee, followed by a
victory, personally his own, at Mons-en-Puelle,
in September of the same year. Then, finding
the Flemings as dauntlessly ready as ever to re-
new the fight, he gave up to their obstinacy and
acinowledged the independence of the county.
A treaty was signed, in which "the indepen-
dence of Flanders was acknowledged under its
Count, Robert de Bethune (the eldest son of Guy
de Dampierre), who, together with his brothers
and all the other Flemish prisoners, was to be
restored to liberty. The Flemings, on the other
hand, consented to surrender those districts be-
yond the Lys in which the French language was
vernacularly spoken ; and to this territory were
added the cities of Douai, Lille, and their depen-
dencies. They engaged, moreover, to furnish
by instalments 200,000 livres in order to cover
the expenses which Philip had incurred by their
invasion." — E. Sraedley, Hist, of Prance, pt. 1,
ch. 7.
Also in: J. Hutton, James and Philip Van
Arteveld, pt. 1, ch. 2-3. — J. Michelet, Hist, of
France, bk. 5, ch. %.
A. D. 1314. — Dishonesty of Philip of France.
— Philip was one of the most treacherous of
princes, and his treaty with the Flemings did
not secure them against him. "The Flemings,
who had paid the whole of the money stipulated
by the treaty of 1305, demanded the restitution
of that part of Flanders which had been given
up as a pledge ; but Philippe refused to restore
it on the plea that it had been given to him ab-
solutely and not conditionally. He commenced
hostilities [A. D. 1314] by seizing upon the
counties of Nevers and Rethel, belonging to the
count of Flanders and his eldest son, who replied
by laying siege to Lille." Philippe was making
great exertions to raise money for a vigorous
prosecution of the war, when he died suddenly,
Nov. 35, 1314, as the result of an accident in
hunting. — T. Wright, Hist, of Fi'ance, v. 1, bk.
2, ch. 2.
A. D. 1328.— The Battle of Cassel.— The
first act of Philip of Valois, King of France, after
his coronation in 1338, was to take up the cause
of his cousin, Louis de Nevers, Count of Flanders,
who had been driven from his territories by the
independent burghers of Bruges, Ypres, and
other cities, and who had left to him no town
save Ghent, in which he dared to appear. The
French king "gathered a great host of feudal
lords, who rejoiced in the thought of Flemish
spoil, and marched to Arras, and thence onwards
into Flanders. He pitched his tent under the
hill of Cassel, ' with the fairest and greatest host
in the world ' around him. The Flemish, under
Glaus Dennequin, lay on the hill-top : thence they
came down all unawares in three columns on the
French camp in the evening, and surprised the
King at supper and all but took him. The
French soon recovered from the surprise; 'for
God would not consent that lords should be dis-
comfitted by such riffraff': they slew the Flem-
ish Captain Dennequin, and of the rest but few
escaped ; ' for they deigned not to flee,' so stub-
bom were those despised weavers of Flanders.
This little battle, with its great carnage of Flem-
ish, sufficed to lay all Flanders at the feet of its
count." — G. W. Kitchin, Hist, of Pi'ance, bk. 4,
cJi. 1. — " Sixteen thousand Flemings had marched
to the attack in three divisions. Three heaps of
slain were counted on the morrow in the French
lines, amounting altogether to 13,000 corpses;
and it is said that Louis . . . inflicted death upon
10,000 more of the rebels."— E. Smedley, Hist,
of France, pt. 1, ck. 8.
Also in : Froissart (Johnes), Chronicles, bk. 1,
ch. 21-32.
1155
FLANDERS, 1335-1337.
Jcu^ques
Van Arteveld.
FLANDERS, 1379-1381.
A. D. 1335-1337. — The revolt under
Jacques Van Arteveld. — The alliance with
England. — The most important measure by
which Edward III. of England prepared himself
lor the invasion of France, as a claimant of the
French crown [See France: A. D. 1328-1339]
was the securing of an alliance with the Flem-
ish burghers. This was made easy for him by
his enemies. "The Flemings happened to have
!i count who was wholly French — Louis de
jSTevers — who was only count through the
battle of Cassel and the humiliation of his
country, and who resided at Paris, at the court
of Philippe de Valois. Without consulting his
subjects, he ordered a general arrest of all the
English throughout Flanders ; on which Edward
liad all the Flemings in England arrested. The
commerce, which was the life-blood of each
country, was thus suddenly broken off. To
attack the English through Guyenne and Flan-
ders was to wound them In their most sensible
parts, to deprive them of cloth and wine. They
sold their wool at Bruges, in order to buy wine
at Bordeaux. On the other hand, without
English wool, the Flemings were at a stand-
still. Edward prohibited the exportation of
wool, reduced Flanders to despair, and forced
her to fling herself into his arms. At first, a crowd
of Flemish workmen emigrated into England,
whither they were allured at any cost, and by
every kind of flattery and caress. ... I take it
that the English character has been seriously
modified by these emigrations, which went on
during the whole of the fourteenth century.
Previously, we find no indications of that
patient Industry which now distinguishes the
English. By endeavouring to separate Flanders
and England the French king only stimulated
Flemish emigration, and laid the foundation of
England's manufactures. Meanwhile, Flanders
did not resign herself. The towns burst into
insurrection. They had long hated the count,
either because he supported tlie country against
the monopoly of the towns, or because he ad-
mitted the foreigners, the Frenchmen, to a share
of their commerce. The men of Ghent, who
undoubtedly repented of having withheld their
aid from those of Ypres and of Bruges at the
battle of Cassel, chose, in 1337, as their leader,
the brewer, Jacquemart Artaveld. Supported by
the guilds, and, in particular, by the fullers and
clothiers, Artaveld organized a vigorous tyranny.
He assembled at Ghent the men of the three
great cities, ' and showed them that they could
not live without the king of England ; for
all Flanders depended on cloth-making, and,
without wool, one could not make cloth ; there-
fore he recommended them to keep the English
king their friend.' " — J. Michelet, Hist, of France,
bk. 6, ch. 1.
Also in F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of
France, ch. 20. — J. Hutton, James and Philip
Van Artevelde, pt. 3. — .J. Froissart, Chronicles
{Johnes's trans.), bk. 1, ch. 29.
A. D. 134s. — The end of Jacques Van
Artaveld. — "Jacob von Artaveld, the citizen
of Ghent that was so much attached to the
king of England, still maintained the same
despotic power over all Flanders. He had prom-
ised the king of England, that he would give
him the inheritance of Flanders, invest his son
the prince of Wales with it, and make it a duchy
instead of an earldom. Upon which account
the king was, at this period, about St. John the
Baptist's day, 1345, come to Sluys, with a nu-
merous attendance of barons and knights. He
had brought the prince of Wales with him, in
order that Jacob von Artaveld's promises might
be realized. The king remained on board his
fleet in the harbour of Sluys, where he kept his
court. His friends in Flanders came thither to
see and visit him ; and there were many confer-
ences between the king and Jacob Von Artaveld
on one side, and the councils from the different
capital towns on the other, relative to the agree-
ment before mentioned. . . . When on his return
he [Van Artaveld] came to Ghent about mid-
day, the townsmen who were informed of the
hour he was expected, had assembled in the
street that he was to pass through ; as soon as
they saw him, they began to murmur, and put
their heads close together, saying, ' Here comes
one who is too much the master, and wants to
order in Flanders according to his will and
pleasure, which must not be longer borne. ' With
this they had also spread a rumour through the
town, that Jacob von Artaveld had collected all
the revenues of Flanders, for nine years and
more. ... Of this great treasure he had sent
part into England. This information inflamed
those of Ghent with rage; and, as he was riding
up the streets, he perceived that there was some-
thing in agitation against him; for those who
were wont to salute him very respectfully, now
turned their backs, and went into their houses.
He began therefore to suspect all was not as
usual ; and as soon as he had dismounted, and
entered his hotel, he ordered the doors and win-
dows to be shut and fastened. Scarcely had his
servants done this, when the street which he in-
habited was filled from one end to the other with
all sorts of people, but especially by the lowest
of the mechanics. His mansion was surrounded
on every side, attacked and broken into by force.
Those within did all they could to defend it, and
killed and wounded many : but at last they could
not hold out against such vigorous attacks, for
three parts of the town were there. When Jacob
von Artaveld saw what efforts were making, and
how hardly he was pushed, he came to a window ;
and, with his head uncovered, began to use hum-
ble and fine language. . . . When Jacob von
Artaveld saw that he could not appease or calm
them, he shut the window, and intended getting
out of his house the back way, to take shelter in
a church adjoining; but his hotel was already
broke into on that side, and upwards of four
hundred were there calling out for him. At last
he was seized by them, and slain without mercy:
his death-stroke was given him by a sadler, called
Thomas Denys. In this manner did Jacob von
Artaveld end his days, who in his time had been
complete master of Flanders. Poor men first
raised him, and wicked men slew him," — J.
Froissart (Johnes), Chronicles, bk. 1, eh. 115 (b. 1).
A. D. 1379-1381. — The revolt of the White
Hoods. — "We will . . . speak of the war in
Flanders, which began about this time [A. D.
1379]. The people were very murderous and
cruel, and multitudes were slain or driven out
of the country. The country itself was so much
ruined, that it was said a himdred years would
not restore it to the situation it was in before the
war. Before the commencement of these wars
in Flanders, the country was so fertile, and
everything in such abundance, that it was mar-
1156
FLANDERS, 1379-1381.
Revolt of the
White Hoods.
FLANDERS, 1382.
vellous to see ; and the inhabitants of the prin-
cipal towns lived in very grand state. You
must know that this war originated in the pride
and hatred that several of the chief towns bore
to each other: those of Ghent against Bruges,
and others, in like manner, vying with each
other through envy. However, this could not
have created a war without the consent of their
lord, the earl of Flanders, who was so much
loved and feared that no one dared anger him. "
It is in these words that the old court chronicler,
Froissart, begins his fully detailed and graphic
narrative of the miserable years, from 1379 to
1384, during which the communes of Flanders
were at war with one another and at war with
their worthless and oppressive count, Luis de
Maele. The picturesque chronicle is colored
with the prejudices of Froissart against the
Flemish burghers and in favor of their lord;
but no one can doubt that the always turbulent
citizens were jealous of rights which the always
rapacious lord never ceased to encroach upon.
As Froissart tells the story, the outbreak of war
began with an attempt on the part of the men
of Bruges, to dig a canal which would divert the
waters of the river Lys. When those of Ghent
had news of this unfriendly undertaking, they
took counsel of one John Yoens, or John Lyon,
a burgher of much cunning, who had formerly
been in favor with the count, but whom his ene-
mies had supplanted. " When he [John Lyon]
was prevailed on to speak, he said: 'Gentlemen,
if you wish to risk this business, and put an end
to it, you must renew an ancient custom that
formerly subsisted in the town of Ghent: I
mean, you must first put on white-hoods, and
choose a leader, to whom every one may look,
and rally at his signal.' This harangue was
eagerly listened to, and they all cried out, ' We
will have it so, we will have it so ! now let us
put on white-hoods.' White-hoods were directly
made, and given out to those among them who
loved war better than peace, and had nothing to
lose. John Lyon was elected chief of the White
Hoods. He very willingly accepted of this office,
to avenge himself on his enemies, to embroil
the towns of Ghent and Bruges with each other
and with the earl their lord. He was ordered,
as their chief, to march against the pioneers and
diggers from Bruges, and had with him 200
such people as preferred rioting to quiet." —
Froissart (Johnes) Chronicles, bk. 2, ch. 36-103 —
When the White Hoods had driven the ditchers
of Bruges from their canal, they returned to
Ghent, but not to disband. Presently the jealous
count required them to lay aside the peculiar
badge of their association, which they declined
to do. Then Count Louis sent his bailiff into
Ghent with 200 horsemen, to arrest John Lyon,
and some others of his band. The AVhite Hoods
rallied, slew the bailiff and drove his posse from
the town; after which unmistakable deed Ghent
and the count were distinctly at war. The city
of the White Hoods took prompt measures to
secure the alliance and support of its neighbors.
Some nine or ten thousand of its citizens
marched to Bruges, and partly by persuasion,
partly by force, partly by the help of the popu-
lar party in the town, they effected a treaty of
friendship and alliance — which did not endure,
however, very long. Courtray, Damme, Tpres
and other cities joined the league and it soon
presented a formidable array. Oudenarde,
11
strongly fortified, by the count, became the key
of the situation, and was besieged by the citizen-
miiitia. In the midst of the siege, the Duke of
Burgundy, son-in-law of the count, made suc-
cessful efforts to bring about a peace (Dec. 1379).
' 'The count promised to forget the past and return
to his residence in Ghent. This peace, however,
was of short duration ; and the count, after pass-
ing only two or three days in Ghent, alleged some
cause of dissatisfaction and returned to Lille, to
recommence hostilities, in the course of which,
with the assistance of the richer citizens, he
made himself master of Bruges. Another peace
was signed in the August of 1380, which was no
more durable than the former, and the count re-
duced Ypres; and, at the head of an army of
60,000 men, laid siege to Ghent itself, the chief
and soul of the popular confederacy, in the
month of September. But the citizens of Ghent
defended themselves so well that he was obliged
to raise the siege in the middle of November, and
agree to a truce. This truce also was broken by
the count's party, the war renewed in the begin-
ning of the year 1381, and the men of Ghent
experienced a disastrous defeat In the battle of
Nevelle towards the middle of May. It was a
war of extermination, and was carried on with
extreme ferocity. . . . Ghent itself, now closely
blockaded by the count's troops, was only saved
by the great qualities of Philip Van Artevelde
[son of Jacques Van Arteveld, of the revolution
of 1337], who, by a sort of peaceful revolution,
was placed at the head of affairs [Jan. 25, 1381].
The victory of Beverholt, in which the count
was defeated with great slaughter, and only es-
caped with difHculty, made the town of Ghent
again master of Flanders." — T. Wright, Hist, of
France, bk. 2, ch. 8.
Also in J. Hutton, James and Philip Van
Artereld. ch. 14-16. — W. C. Taylor, Remlutiotis,
Insurrections and Conspiracies of Europe, v. 2,
ch. 7-9.
A. D. 1382. — The rebellion crushed. — By
the marriage of Philip, Duke of Burgundy, to
the daughter and heiress of the Count of Flan-
ders, that powerful French prince had become
interested in the suppression of the revolt of the
Flemish burghers and the restoration of the
count to his lordship. His nephew, the young
king of France, Charles VI., was easily per-
suaded to undertake a campaign to that end,
and an army of considerable magnitude was
personally led northwards by the monarch of
fourteen years. "The object of the expedition
was not only to restore to the Count of Flanders
his authority, but to punish the turbulent com-
mons, who stirred up those of France to imitate
their example. Froissart avows it to have been
a war between the commons and the aristocracy.
The Flemings were commanded by Artaveldt,
son of the famous brewer, the ally of Edward
III. The town of Ghent had been reduced to
the extreme of distress and famine by the count
and the people of Bruges, who supported him.
Artaveldt led the people of Ghent in a forlorn
hope against Bruges, defeated the army of the
count, and broke into the rival town, which he
took and plundered. After this disaster, the
count had recourse to France. The passage of
the river Lys, which defended Flanders, was
courageously undertaken, and effected with
some hazard by the French. The Flemings
were rather dispirited by this first success:
57
FLAJI^DERS, 1383.
Under the Duke of
Burgundy.
FLANDERS, 1383.
nevertheless, they assembled their forces; and
the two armies of French knights and Flemish
citizens met at Rosebecque [or Roosebeck],
between Ypres and Courtray. The 27th of
November, 1383, was the day of battle. Arta-
veldt had stationed his army on a height, to
await the attack of the French, but their im-
patience forced him to commence. Forming
his troops into one solid square, Artaveldt led
them against the French centre. Froissart
compares their charge to the lieadlong rush of a
wild boar. It broke the opposite line, penetrat-
ing into its ranks: but the wings of the French
turned upon the flank of the Flemings, which,
not having the advantage of a charge or im-
pulse, were beaten by the French men at arms.
Pressed upon one another, the Flemings had
not room to fight: they were hemmed in, sur-
rounded, and slaughtered : no quarter was asked
or given; nearly 30,000 perished. The 9,000
Ghentois that had marched under their banner
were counted, to a man, amongst the slain:
Artaveldt, their general, was among the fore-
most who had fallen. Charles ordered his body
to be hung upon a tree. It was at Courtray,
very near to the field where this battle was
fought, that Robert of Artois, with a French
army, had perished beneath the swords of the
Flemings, nearly a century previous. The gilded
spurs of the French knights still adorned the
walls of the cathedral of Courtray. The victory
of Rosebecque in the eyes of Charles had not
sufficiently repaid the former defeat : the town
of Co'u-tray was pillaged and burnt; its famous
clock was removed to Dijon, and formed the
third wonder of this kind in France, Paris and
Sens alone possessing similar ornaments. The
battle of Rosebecque proved more unfortunate for
the communes of France than for those of Flan-
ders. Ghent, notwithstanding her loss of 9,000
slain, did not yield to the conqueror, but held out
the war for two years longer ; and did not finally
submit until the Duke of Burgundy, at the
death of their count, guaranteed to the burghers
the full enjoyment of their privileges. The king
avenged himself on the mutinous city of Paris;
entered it as a conqueror ; took the chains from
the streets and unhinged the gates : one hundred
of the citizens were sent to the scaffold ; the
property of the rich was confiscated ; and all the
ancient and most onerous taxes, the gabelle, the
duty on sales, as well as that of entry, were
declared by royal ordinance to be established
anew. The principal towns of the kingdom
were visited with the same punishments and
exactions. The victory of Rosebecque over-
threw the commons of France, which were
crushed under the feet of the young monarch
and his nobles." — E. E. Crowe, Hist, of France,
ch. 4.
Also in Sir J. Froissart (Johnes) Chronicles,
bk. 3, ch. 111-130.— J. Michelet, Hist, of liVance,
bk. 7, ch. 1 (b. 2).— F. p. Guizot, Popular Hist,
of France, ch. 28 (v. 3).
A. D. 1383. — The Bishop of Norwich's Cru-
sade. — The crushing defeat of the Flemings at
Roosebeke produced alarm in England, where
the triumph of the French was quickly felt to be
threatening. "English merchants were expelled
from Bruges, and their property was confiscated.
Calais even was in danger. The French were at
Dunkirk and Gravelines, and might by a sudden
dash on Calais drive the English out." There
had been aid from England promised to Van Ar-
tevelde, but the promise had only helped on the
ruin of the Ghent patriot by misleading him.
No help had come when he needed it. Now,
when it was too late, the English bestirred them-
selves. For some months there had been on foot
among them a Crusade, which Pope Urban VI.
had proclaimed against the supporters of the
rival Pope Clement VII. — the "Schismatics."
France took the side of the latter and was counted
among the Schismatics. Accordingly, Pope Ur-
ban's Crusade, so far as the English people could
be moved to engage in it. was now directed
against the French in Flanders. It was led by
the Bishop of Norwich, who succeeded in rous-
ing a very considerable degree of enthusiasm in
the country for the movement, despite the ear-
nest opposition of Wyclif and his followers. The
crusading army assembled at Calais in the spring
of 1383, professedly for a campaign in France ;
but the Bishop found excuses for leading it into
Flanders. Gravelines was first attacked, carried
by storm, and its male defenders slaughtered to
a man. An army of French and Flemings, en-
countered near Dunkirk, was routed, with fear-
ful carnage, and the whole coast, including Dun-
kirk, fell into the hands of the English. Then
they laid siege to Ypres, and there their disas-
ters began. The city held out with stubbornness
from the 9th of June until the 10th of August,
when the baffled besiegers — repulsed in a last
desperate assault which they had made on tlie
8th — marched away. "Ypres might rejoice, but
the disasters of the long siege proved final. Her
stately faubourgs were not rebuilt, and she has
never again taken her former rank among the
cities of Flanders." In September a powerful
French army entered Flanders, and the English
crusaders could do nothing but retreat before it,
giving up Cassel ( which the French burned ), then
Bergues, then Bourbourg, after a siege, and,
finally, setting fire to Gravelines and abandoning
that place. " Gravelines was utterly destroyed,
but the French soon began to rebuild it. It was
repeopled from the surrounding country, and
fortified strongly as a menace to Calais." The
Crusaders returned to Englaud " 'dripping with
blood and disgracing their country. Blessed be
God who confounds the proud,' says one sharp
critic, who appears to have been a monk of Can-
terbury." — G. M. Wrong, The Crusade of
MCCCLXXXIII.
Also in Sir .1. Froissart, (.lohnes) Chronicles
bk. 3, ch. 130-145 (e. 1-2).
A. D. 1383 — Joined to the Dominions of the
Duke of Burgundy. — " Charles V. [of France]
had formed the design of obtaining Flanders
for his brother Philip. Duke of Burgundy, after-
wards known as Philip the Bold — by marrying
him to Margaret [daughter and heiress of Louis
de Maele, count of Flanders]. To gain the good
will of the Communes, he engaged to restore the
three bailiwicks of Lille, Douai, and Orchies
as a substitute for the 10,000 livres a year prom-
ised to Louis de Maele and his successors in 1351,
as well as the towns of Peronne. Crfivecoeur, Ar-
leiix and Chateau-Chinon, assigned to him in
13.58. ... On the 13th May, 1369, the 'Lion
of Flanders ' once more floated, after an interval
of half a century, over the walls of Lille, Douai,
and Orchies, and at the same time Flemish gar-
risons marched into St. Omer, Aire, Bethune and
Hesdin. The marriage ceremony took place at
1158
FLANDERS.
FLORENCE.
Ghent on the 19th of June." The Duke of
Burgundy waited fourteen years for the heritage
of his wife. In January, 1383, Count Louis died,
and Flanders was added to the great and grow-
ing dominion of the new Burgundian house. —
J. Hutton, James and Philip can Artecdd, ch.
14 and 18.
See Burgundy (The Fbench Dtjkedom):
A. D. 1364.
A. D. 1451-1453.— Revolt against the Bur-
gundian Gabelle. See Ghent: A. D. 14.51-
1453.
A. D. 1477.— Severance from Burgundy. —
Transference to the Austrian House by mar-
riage of Mary of Burgundy. See Nether-
lands: A. D. 1477.
A. D. 1482-1488.— Resistance to Maximil-
ian. See Netherlands: A. D. 1483-1493.
A. D. 1494-1588.— The Austro-Spanish sov-
ereignty and its oppressions.— The great
revolt and its failure in the Flemish provinces.
See Netherlands: A. D. 1494-1519, and after.
A. D. 1529. — Pretensions of the king of
France to Suzerainty resigned. See Italy:
A. D. 1527-1539.
A. D. 1539-1540.— The unsupported revolt
of Ghent. See Ghent: A. D. 1.539-1540.
A. D. 1594-1884.— Later history. See Neth-
erlands: A. D. 1594-1609, to 1830-1884.
FLATHEAD INDIANS, The. See Ameri-
can Aborigines : Flatheads.
FLAVIA CiESARIENSIS. See Britain:
A. D. 323-337.
FLAVIAN AMPHITHEATRE, The. See
Colossedm.
FLAVIAN FAMILY, The.— "We have
designated the second period of the [Roman]
Empire by the name of the Flavian family — the
family of Vespasian [Titus Flavius Vespasian].
The nine Emperors who were successively in-
vested with the purple, in the space of the 123
years from his accession, were not all, however,
of Flavian race, even by the rites of adoption,
which in Rome was become a second nature;
but the respect of the world for the virtues of
Flavius Vespasian induced them all to assume
his name, and most of them showed themselves
worthy of such an affiliation. Vespasian had
been invested with the purple at Alexandria, on
the 1st of July, A. D. 69; he died in 79. His
two sons reigned in succession after him;
Titus, from 79 to 81 ; Domitian, from 81 to 96.
The latter having been assassinated, Nerva, then
an old man, was raised to the throne by the
Senate (A. D. 96-98). He adopted Trajan (98-
117); who adopted Adrian (117-138). Adrian
adopted Antoninus Pius (138-161); who adopted
Marcus Aurelius (161-180); and Commodus suc-
ceeded his father, Marcus Aurelius (180-192).
No period in history presents such a succession
of good and great men upon any throne : two
i monsters, Domitian and Commodus, interrupt
and terminate it. "—J. C. L. Sismondi, Fall of the
Roman Empire, ch. 2.
FLEETWOOD, OR BRANDY STA-
TION, Battle of. See United States op Am. :
A. D. 1863 (June: Vibqinla).
FLEIX, The Peace of. See France: A. D.
1578-1580.
FLEMINGS.— Flemish. See Flanders.
FLEMISH GUILDS. See Guilds op
Flanders.
FLEURUS, Battle of (1622). See Nether-
lands: A. D. 1621-1633.
FLEURUS, Battle of (1690). See France:
A. D. 1689-1690.
FLEURUS, Battle of (1794). See France:
A. D. 1794 (March— July).
FLODDEN, Battle of (A. D. 1513). See
Scotland: A. D. 1513.
FLORALIA, The. See Ludl
FLORE AL, The month. See France: A.
D. 1793 (October).
FLORENCE.
Origin and Name: "Faesulse was situated
on a hill above Florence. Florentine traditions
call it the metropolis of Florence, which would
accordingly be a colony of Fajsulae ; but a state-
ment in Machiavelli and others describes Florence
as a colony of Sulla, and this statement must
have been derived from some local chronicle.
Psesulae was no doubt an ancient Etruscan town,
probably one of the twelve. It was taken in the
war of Sulla [B. C. 82-81]. ... My conjecture
is, that Sulla not only built a strong fort on the
top of the hill of FiEsulae, but also the new
colony of Florentia below, and gave to it the
'ager Faesulanus.'"— B. G. Niebuhr, Lects. on
Ancient Ethnog. and Geog. v. 2, p. 228. — "We
can reasonably suppose that the ancient trading
nations may have pushed their small craft up
the Arno to the present site of Florence, and
thus have gained a more immediate communica-
tion with the flourishing city of Piesole than
they could through other ports of Etruria, from
whatever race its people might have sprung.
Admitting the high antiquity of Fiesole, the
imagined work of Atlas, and the tomb of his
celestial daughter, we may easily believe that a
market was from very early times established in
the plain, where both by land and water the
rural produce could be brought for sale without
ascending the steep on which that city stood.
Such arrangements would naturally result from
the common course of events, and a more con-
venient spot could scarcely be found than the
present site of Florence, to which the Arno ia
still navigable by boats from its mouth, and at
that time perhaps by two branches. ..." There
were,' says Villani, ' inhabitants round San Gio-
vanni, because the people of Fiesole held their
market there one day in the week, and it was
called the Field of Mars, the ancient name : how-
ever it was always, from the first, the market
of the Fiesolines, and thus it was called before
Florence existed.' And again: 'The Praetor
1159
FLORENCE.
The
City Republic.
FLORENCE, 12TH CENTURY.
Florinus, with a Roman army, encamped beyond
the Arno towards Fiesole and luid two small
villages there, . . . where the people of Fiesole
one day in the week held a general market with
the neighbouring towns and villages. ... On
the site of this camp, as we are also assured by
Villani, was erected the city of Florence, after
the capture of Fiesole by Pompey, Csesar, and
Martins ; but Leonardo Aretiuo, following
Malespini, asserts that it was the work of
Sylla's legions, who were already in possession
of Fiesole. . . . The variety of opinions almost
equals the number of authors. ... It may be
reasouably concluded that Florence, springing
originally from Fiesole, finally rose to the rank
of a Roman colony and the seat of provincial
government; a miniature of Rome, with its
Campus Martins, its Capitol, Forum, temple of
Mars, aqueducts, baths, theatre and amphi-
theatre, all erected in imitation of the ' Eternal
City ; ' for vestiges of all these are still existing
either in name or substance. The name of
Florence is as dark as its origin, and a thousand
derivations have confused the brains of anti-
quarians and their readers without much enlight-
ening them, while the beautiful Giagiolo or
Iris, the city's emblem, still clings to her old
grey walls, as if to assert its right to be con-
sidered as the genuine source of her poetic
appellation. From the profusion of these
flowers that formerly decoratad the meads
. between the rivers Mugnone and Arno, has
sprung one of the most popular opinions on the
subject ; for a white plant of the same species
having shown itself amongst the rising fabrics,
the incident was poetically seized upon and the
Lily then first assumed its station in the crimson
banner of Florence. " — H. E. Napier, Florentine
History, bk. 1, ch. 1.
A. D, 406.— Siege by Radagaisus.— Deliv-
erance by Stilicho. See Rome : A. D. 404-408.
12th Century. — Acquisition of republican in-
dependence. — "There is . . . an assertion by
Villani. that Florence contained ' twenty-two
thousand fighting men, without counting the old
men and children,' about the middle of the sixth
century ; and modern statisticians have based on
this statement an estimate which would make the
population of the city at that period about sixty-
one thousand. There are reasons too for believ-
ing that very little difference in the population
took place during several centuries after that
time. Then came the sudden increase arising
from the destruction, more or less entire, of Pie-
sole, and the incorporation of its inhabitants with
those of the newer city, which led to the build-
ing of the second walls. . . . An estimate taking
the inhabitants of the city at something between
seventy and eighty thousand at the period re-
specting which we are inquiring [beginning of
the 13th century] would in all probability be not
very wide of the mark. The government of the
city was at that time lodged in the hands of
magistrates exercising both legislative and ad-
ministrative authority, called Consuls, assisted
by a senate composed of a hundred citizens of
worth — buoni uomini. These Consuls ' guided
everything, and governed the city, and decided
causes, and administered justice. ' They remained
in office for one year. How long this form of
government had been established in Florence is
uncertain. It was not in existence in the year
897; but it was in activity in 1103. From 1138
we have a nearly complete roll of the names of
tlie consuls for each year down to 1219. . . .
The first recorded deeds of the young community
thus governed, and beginning to feel conscious
and proud of its increasing strength, were char-
acteristic enough of the tone of opinion and senti-
ment which prevailed within its walls, and of
the career on which it was entering. ' In the
year 1107,' says Malispini, 'the city of Florence
being much increased, the Florentines, wishing
to extend their territory, determined to make war
against any castle or fortress which would not
be obedient to them. And in that year they took
by force Monte Orlando, which belonged to cer-
tain gentlemen who would not be obedient to the
city. And they were defeated, and the castle
was destroyed.' These ' gentlemen,' so styled by
the civic historian wlio thus curtly records the
destruction of their home, in contradistinction to
the citizens who by no means considered them-
selves such, were the descendants or representa-
tives of those knights and captains, mostly of
German race, to whom the Emperors had made
grants of the soil according to the feudal practice
and system. They held directly of the Empire,
and in no wise owed allegiance or obedience of
any sort to the community of Florence. But
they occupied almost all the country around the
rising city ; and the citizens ' wanted to extend
their territory.' Besides, these territorial lords
were, as has been said, gentlemen, and lived as
such, stopping wayfarers on the highways, levy-
ing tolls in the neighbourhood of their strong-
holds, and in many ways making themselves dis-
agreeable neighbours to peaceable folks. . . . The
next incident on the record, however, would
seem to show that peaceful townsfolk as well as
marauding nobles were liable to be overrun by
the car of manifest destiny, if they came in the
way of it. ' In the same year, ' says the curt old
historian, ' the men of Prato rebelled against the
Florentines; wherefore they went out in battle
against it, and took it by siege and destroyed it. '
Prato rebelled against Florence! It is a very
singular statement ; for there is not the shadow
of a pretence put forward, or the smallest ground
for imagining that Florence had or could have
claimed any sort of suzerainty over Prato. . . .
The territorial nobles, however, who held castles
in the district around Florence were the principal
objects of the early prowess of the citizens; and
of course offence against them was offence against
the Emperor. . . . In 1113, accordingly, we find
an Imperial vicar residing in Tuscany at St.
Miniato ; not the convent-topped hill of that
name in the immediate neighbourhood of Flor-
ence, but a little mountain city of the same name,
overlooking the lower Valdarno, about half way
between Florence and Pisa. . . . There the Im-
perial Vicars perched themselves hawk-like, with
their Imperial troops, and swooped down from
time to time to chastise and bring back such
cities of the plain as too audaciously set at naught
the authority of the Emperor. And really these
upstart Florentines were taking the bit between
their teeth, and going on in a way that no Im-
perial Vicar could tolerate. ... So the indig-
nant cry of the harried Counts Cadolingi, and of
several other nobles holding of the Empire, whose
houses had been burned over their heads by these
audacious citizens, went up to the ears of ' Mes-
ser Ruberto,' the Vicar, in San Miniato. "Where-
upon that noble knight, indignant at the wrong
IIGO
FLORENCE, 12TH CENTURY.
Ouelfs and
OhtbelUnes.
FLORENCE, 1315-1350.
done to his fellow nobles, as well as at the offence
against the authority of his master the Emperor,
forthwith put lance in rest, called out his men, and
descended from his mountain fortress to take
summary vengeance on the audacious city. On
his way thither he had to pass through that very
gorge where the castle of Monte Orlando had
stood, and under the ruins of the house from
which the nohle vassals of the Empire had been
harried. . . . There were the leathern-jerkined
citizens on the very scene of their late misdeed,
come out to oppose the further progress of the
Emperor's Vicar and his soldiers. And there,
as the historian writes, with curiously impassi-
ble brevity, ' the said Messer Ruberto was dis-
comfited and killed.' And nothing further is
heard of him, or of any after consequences re-
sulting from tlie deed. Learned legal antiquaries
Insist much on the fact, that the independence of
Florence and the other Communes was never
' recognised ' by the Emperors ; and they are no
doubt perfectly accurate in saying so. One
would think, however, that that unlucky Vicar
of theirs, Messer Ruberto, must have ' recog-
nised ' the fact, though somewhat tardily. " — T.
A. TroUope, Hist, of the Commonwealth of Flor-
ence, hk. 1, ch. 1 (b. 1). — Countess Matilda, the
famous friend of Pope Gregory VIL, whose wide
dominion included Tuscany, died in 1115, be-
queathing her vast possessions to the Church (see
Papacy: A. D. 1077-1103). " In reality she was
only entitled thus to bequeath her allodial lands,
the remainder being imperial fiefs. But as it
was not always easy to distinguish between the
two sorts, and the popes were naturally anxious
to get as much as they could, a fresh source of
contention was added to the constant quarrels
between the Empire and the Church. ' Henry
IV. immediately despatched a representative into
Tuscany, who under the title of Marchio, Judex,
or Praeses, was to govern the Marquisate in his
name.' ' Nobody, 'says Professor Villari, 'could
legally dispute his right to do this: but the op-
position of the Pope, the attitude of the towns
which now considered themselves independent
and the universal confusion rendered the Mar-
quis's authority illusory. The imperial repre-
sentatives had no choice but to put themselves at
the head of the feudal nobility of the contado
and imite it into a Germanic party hostile to the
cities. In the documents of the period the mem-
bers of this party are continually described as
Teutonici. ' By throwing herself in this j uncture
on the side of the Pope, and thus becoming the
declared opponent of the empire and the feudal
lords, Florence practically proclaimed her in-
dependence. The grandi, having the same in-
terests with the working classes, identified them-
selves with these; became their leaders, their
consuls in fact if not yet in name. Thus was
the consular commune born, or, rather, thus did
it recognize itself on reaching manhood ; for born,
in reality, it had already been for some time, only
so quietly and unconsciously that nobody had
marked its origin or, until now, its growth. The
first direct consequence of this self-recognition
was that the rulers were chosen out of a larger
number of families. As long as Matilda had
chosen the oflicers to whom the government of
the town was entrusted, the Uberti and a few
others who formed their clan, their kinsmen, and
their connections had been selected, to the ex-
clusion of the mass of the citizens. Now more
people were admitted to a share in the adminis-
tration : the ofBces were of shorter duration, and
out of those selected to govern each family had
its turn. But those who had formerly been
privileged — the Uberti and others of the same
tendencies and influence — were necessarily dis-
contented with this state of things, and there are
indications in Villani of burnings and of tumults
such as later, when the era of faction fights had
fairly begun, so often desolated the streets of
Florence." — B. Duffy, The Tuscan Republics, ch.
6.— See Italy: A. D. 1056-1152.
A. D. 1215-1250. — The beginning, the causes
and the meaning of the strife of the Guelfs
and Ghibellines. — Nearly from the beginning of
the 13th century, all Italy, and Florence more
than other Italian communities, became distracted
and convulsed by a contest of raging factions.
" The main distinction was that between Ghibel-
lines and Guelphs — two names in their origin
far removed from Italy. They were first heard
in Germany in 1140, when at Winsberg in Suabia
a battle was fought between two contending
claimants of the Empire ; the one, Conrad of
HohenstaufEen, Duke of Franconia, chose for his
battle-cry 'Waiblingen,' the name of his patri-
monial castle in Wilrtemburg ; the other, Henry
the Lion, Duke of Saxony, chose his own family
name of ' Welf , ' or ' W51f . ' Conrad proved vic-
torious, and his kindred to the fourth ensuing
generation occupied the imperial throne; yet
both war-cries survived the contest which gave
them birth, lingering on in Germany as equiva-
lents of Imperialist and anti-Imperialist. By a
process perfectly clear to philologists, they were
modified in Italy into the forms Ghibellino and
Guelfo; and the Popes being there the great
opponents of the Emperors, an Italian Guelph
was a Papalist. The cities were mainly Guelph ;
the nobles most frequently Ghibelline. A private
feud had been the means of involving Florence
in the contest." — M. F. Rossetti, A Shadow of
Dante, ch. 3. — "The Florentines kept themselves
united till the year 1315, rendering obedience to
the ruling power, and anxious only to preserve
their own safety. But, as the diseases which at-
tack our bodies are more dangerous and mortal
in proportion as they are delayed, so Florence,
though late to take part in the sects of Italy, was
afterwards the more afflicted by them. The
cause of her first division is well known, having
been recorded by Dante and many other writers;
I shall, however, briefly notice it. Amongst the
most powerful families of Florence were the
Buondelmonti and the Uberti; next to these were
the Amidei and the Donati. Of the Donati
family there was a rich widow who had a daugh-
ter of exquisite beauty, for whom, in her own
mind, she had fixed upon Buondelmonti, a young
gentleman, the head of the Buondelmonti family,
as her husband ; but either from negligence, or
because she thought it might be accomplished at
any time, she had not made known her intention,
when it happened that the cavalier betrothed
himself to a maiden of the Amidei family. This
grieved the Donati widow exceedingly ; but she
hoped, with her daughter's beauty, to disturb
the arrangement before the celebration of the
marriage ; and from an upper apartment, seeing
Buondelmonti approach her house alone, she de-
scended, and as he was passing she said to him,
' I am glad to learn you have chosen a wife,
although I had reserved my daughter for you';
1161
FLOBENCE, 1315-1250.
Guflfs Olid
Ghibellines.
FLORENCE, 1348-1278.
and, pushing the door open, presented her to his
view. The cavalier, seeing the beauty of the
girl, . . . became inflamed with such an ardent
desire to possess her, that, not thinking of the
promise given, or the injury he committed in
breaking it, or of the evils which his breach of
faith might bring upon himself, said, ' Since you
have reserved her for me, I should be very un-
grateful indeed to refuse her, being yet at liberty
to choose ' ; and without any delay married her.
As soon as the fact became known, the Amidei
and the Uberti, whose families were allied, were
filled with rage," and some of them, lying iu
wait for him, assassinated him as he was riding
through the streets. " This murder divided tLie
whole city; one party espousing the cause of the
Buondelmonti, the other that of the Uberti ; and
. . . they contended with each other for many
years, without one being able to destroy the
other. Florence continued in tliese troubles till
the time of Frederick II., who, being king of
Naples, endeavoured to strengthen himself against
the church ; and, to give greater stability to his
power in Tuscany, favoured the Uberti and their
followers, who, with his assistance, expelled the
Buondelmonti ; thus our city, as all the rest of
Italy had long time been, became divided into
Guelphsand Ghibellines. " — N. Machiavelli, Hist.
of Florence, bk. 2, ch. 1. — "Speaking generallj'.
the Ghibellines were the party of the emperor.
and. the Guelphs the party of the Pope; the
Ghibellines were on the side of authority, or
sometimes of oppression, the Guelphs were on
the side of liberty and self-government. Again,
the Ghibellines were the supporters of an univer
sal empire of which Italy was to be the head, the
Guelphs were on the side of national life and
national individuality. ... If these definitions
could be considered as exhaustive, there would
be little doubt as to the side to which our sympa-
thies should be given. . . . We should . . . ex-
pect all patriots to be Guelphs, and the Ghibel-
line party to be composed of men who were too
spiritless to resist despotic power, or too selfish
to surrender it. But, on the other hand, we
must never forget that Dante was a Ghibelline. "
— O. Browning, Ouelphs and OhibelUiies, ch. 2.
— See, also, Italy: A. D. 1215.
A. D. 1248-1278.— The wars of a genera-
tion of the Guelfs and Ghibellines. — In 1248,
the Ghibellines, at the instigation of Frederick
II. , and with help from his German soldiery, ex-
pelled the Guelfs from the city, after desperate
fighting for several days, and destroyed the man-
sions of their chiefs, to the number of 38. In
1250 there was a rising of the people — of the
under-stratum which the cleavage of parties
hardly penetrated — and a popular constitution
of government was brought into force. At the
same time, the high towers, which were the strong-
holds of the contending nobles, were thro wn do wn.
An attempt was then made by the leaders of the
people to restore peace between the Ghibellines
and the Guelfs, but the effort was vain ; where-
upon the Guelfs (in January, 1251) came back
to the city, and tlie Ghibellines were either
driven away or were shut up iu their city castles,
to which they had retired when the people rose.
In 1258 the restless Ghibellines plotted with
Manfred, King of the Two Sicilies, to regain pos-
session of Florence. The plot was discovered,
and the enraged people drove the last lingerers
of the faction from their midst and pulled down
their palaces. The great palace of the Uberti
family, most obnoxious of all, was not only
razed, but a decree was made that no building
should ever stand again on its accursed site.
The exiled Ghibellines took refuge at Siena, and
there plotted again with King Manfred, who
sent troops to aid them. The Florentines did
not wait to be attacked, but marched out to meet
them on Sienese territory, and suffered a terrible
defeat at Montaperti (September 4, 1360), in the
battle that Dante refers to, ' ' which coloured the
river Arbiared. " " ' On that day,' says Villani,
. . . ' was broken and destroyed the old popu-
lar government of Florence, which had existed
for ten years with so great power and dignity,
and had won so many victories.' Few events
have ever left a more endurable impression on
the memory of a people than this great battle be-
tween two cities and parties animated both of
them by the most unquenchable hatred. The
memory of that day has lasted through 600
years, more freshly perhaps in Siena than in
Florence. " As a natural consequence of their de-
feat at Montaperti, the Guelfs were again forced to
fly into exile from Florence, and this expatriation
included a large number of even the commoner
people. " So thorough had been the defeat, so
complete the Ghibelline ascendency resulting
from it, that in every city the same scene on a
lesser scale was taking place. Many of the
smaller towns, which had always been Guelph
in their sympathies, were now subjected to Ghi-
belline despotism. One refuge alone remained
in Tuscany — Lucca. . . . And thither the
whole body of the expatriated Guelphs betook
themselves. . . . The Ghibellines entered Flor-
ence in triumph on the 16th of September, three
days after their enemies had left it. . . . The
city seemed like a desert. The gates were stand-
ing open and unguarded ; the streets were
empty ; the comparatively few Inhabitants who
remained, almost entirely of the lowest class of
the populace, were shut up in their obscure
dwellings, or were on their knees in the churches.
And what was worse, the conquerors did not
come back alone. They had invited a foreign
despot to restore order ; " and so King Manfred's
general, Giordano da Anglona, established Count
Guido Novello in Florence as Manfred's vicar.
"All the constitutional authorities established
by the people, and the whole frame-work of the
former government, were destroyed, and the
city was ruled entirely by direction transmitted
from the King's Sicilian court." There were
serious proposals, even, that Florence itself
should be destroyed, and the saving of the noble
city from that untimely fate is credited to one
patriotic noble, of the t berti family, who with-
stood the proposition, alone. "The Ghibelline
army marched on Lucca, and had not much mcffe
difficulty in reducing that city. The govern-
ment was put into Ghibelline hands, and Lucca
became a Ghibelline city like all the rest of Tus-
cany. The Lucchese were not required by the
victors to turn their own Guelphs out of the city.
But it was imperatively insisted on that every
Guelph not a native citizen should be thrust
forth from the gates." The unfortunate Flor-
entines, thus made homeless again, now found
shelter at Bologna, and presently helped their
friends at Modena and Reggio to overcome
the Ghibellines in those cities and recover con-
trol. But for five years their condition was one
1162
FLORENCE, 1248-1378.
Florentine Con-
stitution.
FLORENCE. 1289.
of wretchedness. Then Charles of Anjou was
brought into Italy (1265) by the Pope, to snatch
the crown of the Two Sicilies from King Man-
fred, and succeeded in his undertaking. — See
Italy (Southekn) : A. D. 1250-1268. The prop
of the Ghibellines was broken. Guido Novello
and his troopers rode away from Florence ; 800
French horsemen, sent by the new Angevine king,
under Guy de Montfort, took their places; the
Guelfs swarmed in again — the Ghibellines
swarmed out; the popular constitution was
restored, with new features more popular than
before. In 1273 there was a great attempt made
by Pope Gregory X. in person, to reconcile the
factions in Florence; but it had so little suc-
cess that the Holy Father left the city in disgust
and pronounced it under interdict for three
years. In 1278 the attempt was renewed with
somewhat better success. "'And now, says
Villani, ' the Ghibellines were at liberty to re-
turn to Florence, they and their families. . . .
And the said Ghibellines had back again their
goods and possessions ; except that certain of the
leading families were ordered, for the safety of
the city, to remain for a certain time beyond the
boundaries of the Florentine territory. ' In fact,
little more is heard henceforward of the Ghibel-
lines as a faction within the walls of Florence.
The old name, as a rallying cry for the Tory or
Imperialist party, was still raised here and there
in Tuscany; and Pisa still called herself Ghibel-
line. But the stream of progress had run past
them and left them stranded." — T. A. Trollope,
Sist. of the Commonwealth of Florence, bk. 1, ch.
4-5, and bk. 3, ch. 1 (v. 1).
Also in N. Machiavelli, Florentine Histories,
bk. 1. — J. C. L. de Sismondi, Hist of the Italian.
Republics, ch. 4.
A. D. 1250-1293. — Development of the popu-
lar constitution of the Commonwealth. —
"When it became clear that the republic was to
rule itself henceforth untrammelled by imperial
interference, the people [in 1350] divided them-
selves into six districts, and chose for each dis-
trict two Ancients, who administered the gov-
ernment in concert with the Potesta and the
Captain of the People. The Ancients were
a relic of the old Roman municipal organization.
. . . The body of the citizens, or the popolo,
were ultimately sovereigns in the State. Assem-
bled under the banners of their several companies,
they formed a parlamento for delegating their
own power to each successive government.
Their representatives, again, arranged in two
councils, called the Council of the People and
the Council of the Commune, under the presi-
dency of the Captain of the People and the
Potesta, ratified the measures which had previ-
ously been proposed and carried by the executive
authority or signoria. Under this simple State
system the Florentines placed themselves at the
head of the Tuscan League, fought the battles
of the Church, asserted their sovereignty by
issuing the golden florin of the republic, and
flourished until 1366. In that 'year an important
change was effected in the Constitution. The
whole population of Florence consisted, on the
one hand, of nobles or Graudi, as they wore
called in Tuscany, and on the other hand
of working people. The latter, divided into
traders and handicraftsmen, were distributed in
guilds called Arti ; and at that time there were
seven Greater and five Lesser Arti, the most
influential of all being the Guild of the Wool
Merchants. These guilds had their halls for
meeting, their colleges of chief officers, their
heads, called Consoli or Priors, and their flags.
In 1366 it was decided that the administration of
the commonwealth should be placed simply and
wholly in the hands of the Arti, and the Priors
of these industrial companies became the lords or
Signory of Florence. No inhabitant of the city
who had not enrolled himself as a craftsman in
one of the guilds could exercise any function of
burghership. To be scioperato, or without
industry, was to be without power, without rank
or place of honour in the State. The revolution
which placed the Arts at the head of the repub-
lic had the practical effect of excluding the
Grandi altogether from the government. . . .
In 1293, after the Ghibellines had been defeated
in the great battle of Campaldino, a series of
severe enactments, called the Ordinances of Jus-
tice, were decreed against the unruly Grandi.
All civic rights were taken from them ; the
severest penalties were attached to their slight-
est infringement of municipal law ; their titles to
land were limited ; the privilege of living within
the city walls was allowed them only under
galling restrictions ; and last not least, a supreme
magistrate, named the Gonfalonier of Justice,
was created for the special purpose of watching
them and carrying out the penal code against
them. Henceforward Florence was governed
exclusively by merchants and artisans. The
Grandi hastened to enroll themselves in the
guilds, exchanging their former titles and dig-
nities for the solid privilege of burghership.
The exact parallel to this industrial constitution
for a commonwealth, carrying on wars with
emperors and princes, holding haughty captains
in its pay, and dictating laws to subject cities,
cannot, I think, be elsewhere found in history.
It is as unique as the Florence of Dante and
Giotto is unique." — J. A. Symonds, Florence and
tlie Medici (Sketches and Studies in Italy, ch. 5).
Also in C. Balbo, Life and Times of Dante, «.
1, Int. — A. Von Reumont, Lorenzo de Medici, bk.
1, ch. 1.
A. D. 1284-1293. — War with Pisa. See
Pisa: A. D. 1063-1293
A. D. 1289. — The victory of Campaldino..
and the jealousy among its heroes. — In 1289
the Ghibellines of Arezzo having expelled the
Guelfs from that city, the Florentines made war in
the cause of the latter and won a great victory
at Campaldino. This "raised the renown and the
military spirit of the Guelf party, for the fame
of the battle was very great ; the hosts contained
the choicest chivalry of either side, armed and
appointed with emulous splendour. The fight-
ing was hard, there was brilliant and con-
spicuous gallantry, and the victory was com-
plete. It sealed Guelf a.scendency. The
Ghibelline warrior-bishop of Arezzo fell, with
three of the Uberti, and other Ghibelline chiefs.
.... In this battle the Guelf leaders had won
great glory. The hero of the day was the
proudest, handsomest, craftiest, most winning,
most ambitious, most unscrupulous Guelf noble
in Florence — one of a family who inherited the
spirit and recklessness of the proscribed Uberti.
and did not refuse tlie popular epithet of
' Malefami ' — Corso Donati. He did not come
back from the fleld of Campaldino, where he
1163
FLOREISTCE, 1389.
Dante and the
Factio^w,
FLORENCE, 1301-1313.
had won the battle by disobeying orders, with
any increased disposition to yield to rivals, or
court the populace, or respect other men's
rights. Those rivals, too — and they also had
fought gallantly in the post of honour at
Campaldino — were such as he hated from his
soul — rivals whom he despised, and who yet
were too strong for him [the family of the
Cerchi]. His blood was ancient, they were
upstarts; he was a soldier, they were traders;
he was poor, they the richest men in Florence.
. . . They had crossed him in marriages, bar-
gains, inheritances. . . . The glories of
Campaldino were not as oil on these troubled
waters. The conquerors flouted each other all
the more fiercely in the streets on their return,
and ill-treated the lower people with less
scruple." — R. W. Church, Dante and Other
Essays, pp. 27-81.
Also in C. Balbo, Life and Times of Dante,
ft. 1, cU. 6 (». 1).
A. D. 1295-1300. — New factions in the city,
and Dante's relations to them.^The Bianchi
and the Neri (Whites and Blacks).— Among
the Nobles "who resisted the oppression of the
people, Corso Donati must have been the chief,
but he did not at first come forward ; with one
of his usual stratagems, however, he was the
cause of a new revolution [January, 1295], which
drove Giano della Bella, the leader of the
people, from the city. . . . Notwithstanding
the fall of Giano, the Nobles did not return into
power. He was succeeded as a popular leader
by one much his Inferior, one Pecora, surnamed,
from his trade, the Butcher. New disputes arose
between the nobles and the people, and between
the upper and lower ranks of the people itself.
Villani tells us that, in the year 1295, ' many
families, who were neither tyrannical nor power-
ful, withdrew from the order of the nobles, and
enrolled themselves among the people, diminish-
ing the power of the nobles and increasing that
of the people. ' Dante must have been precisely
one of those nobles ' who were neither tyrannical
nor powerful;' and ... it is certain that he
was among those who passed over from their
own order to that of the Popolani, by being
matriculated in one of the Arts. In a register
from 1297 to 1300, of the Art of the physicians
and druggists, the fifth of the seven major Arts,
he is found matriculated in these words : ' Dante
d'Aldighiero degli Aldighieri poeta fiorentino.'
. . . Dante, by this means, obtained office under
the popular government. . . . The new factions
that arose in Florence, in almost all Tuscany,
and in some of the cities in other parts of Italy,
were merely subdivisions of the Guelf party ;
merely what, in time, happens to every faction
after a period of prosperity, a division of the
ultras and of the moderates, or of those who
hold more or less extravagant views. . . . All
this happened to the Guelf party in a very few
years, and the Neri and Bianchi, the names of
the two divisions of that party, which had
arisen in 1300, were no longer mentioned ten
years afterwards, Imt were again lost in the
primitive appellations of Guelfs and Ghibellines.
Thus this episode would possess little interest,
and would be scarcely mentioned in the history
of Italy, or even of Florence, had not the name
of our sublime Poet been involved in it ; and,
after his love, it is the most important circum-
stance of his life, and the one to which he most
frequently alludes in his Commedia. It thus
becomes a subject worthy of history. . . .
Florentine historians attribute Corso Donati's
hatred towards Vieri de Cerchi to envy. . . .
This envy arose to such a height between Dante's
neighbours in Florence that he has rendered it
immortal. 'Through envy,' says Villani, 'the
citizens began to divide into factions, and one of
the principal feuds began in the Sesto dello Scan-
dalo, near the gate of St. Pietro, between the
families of the Cerchi and the Donati [from which
latter family came Dante's wife]. . . . Messer
Vieri was the head of the House of the Cerchi, and
he and his house were powerful in affairs, possess-
ing a numerous kindred ; they were very rich
merchants, for their company was one of the
greatest in the world. ' " 'The state of animosity
between these two families ' ' was existing in
Florence in the beginning of 1300, when it was
increased by another rather similar family
quarrel that had arisen in Pistoia. . . . ' There
was in Pistoia a family which amounted to more
than 100 men capable of bearing arms ; it was
not of great antiquity, but was powerful,
wealthy, and numerous ; it was descended from
one Cancellieri Notaio, and from him they had
preserved Cancellieri as their family name.
From the children of the two wives of this man
were descended the 107 men of arms that have
been enumerated ; one of the wives having been
named Madonna Bianca, her descendants were
called Cancellieri Bianchi (White Cancellieri);
and the descendants of the other wife, in opposi-
tion, were called Cancellieri Neri (Black Can-
cellieri).'" Between these two branches of the
family of the Cancellieri there arose, some time
near the end of the thirteenth century, an im-
placable feud. "Florence . . . exercised a
supremacy over Pistoia .... and fearing that
these internal dissensions might do injury to the
Guelf party, she took upon herself the lordship
or supremacy of that city. The principal Can-
cellieri, both Bianchi and Neri, were banished
to Florence itself; 'the Neri took up their abode
in the house of the Frescobaldi, beyond the
Arno ; the Bianchi at the house of the Cerchi, in
the Garbo, from being connected with them by
kindred. But as one sick sheep infects another,
and is injurious to the tiock, so this cursed seed
of discord, that had departed from Pistoia and
had now entered Florence, corrupted all the
Florentines, and divided them into two parties.'
. . . The Cerchi, formerly called the Forest
party (parte selvaggia), now assumed the name
of Bianchi ; and those who followed the Donati
were now called Neri. . . . ' There sided with
[the Bianchi, says Villani] the families of the
Popolani and petty artisans, and all the Ghibel-
lines, whether Nobles or Popolani.' . . . Thus
the usual position in which the two parties stood
was altered; for hitherto the Nobles had almost
always been Ghibellines, and the Popolani
Guelfs; but now, if the Popolani were not
Ghibellines, they were at least not such strong
Guelfs as the nobles. Sometimes these parties are
referred to as White Guelfs and Black Guelfs."
— C. Balbo, Life and Times of Dante, eh. 10.
Also ts H. E. Napier, Florentine History, bk.
1, ch. 14 (i). 1).— N. Machiavelli, Tlie Florentine
Histories, bk\ 3.
A. D. 1301-1313.— Triumph of the Neri. —
Banishment of Dante and his party. — Down-
fall and death of Corso Donati.— "In the year
1164
FLORENCE, 1301-1313.
Banishment of
Dante.
FLORENCE, 1341-1343.
1301, a serious affray took place between the
two parties [the Bianchi and the Neri] ; the
whole city was in arms ; the law, and the
authority of the Signoria, among wliom was
the poet Dante Alighieri, was set at naught by
the great men of each side, while the best
citizens looked on with fear and trembling.
The Donati, fearing that unaided they would
not be a match for their adversaries, proposed
that they should put themselves under a ruler
of the family of the king of France. Such a
direct attack on the independence of the state
was not to be borne by the Signoria, among
whom the poet had great influence. At his
instigation they armed the populace, and with
their assistance compelled the heads of the con
tending parties to lay down their arms, and sent
into exile Messer Donati and others who had
proposed the calling in of foreigners. A sentence
of banishment was also pronounced against the
most violent men of the party of the Bianchi, most
of whom, however, were allowed, under various
pretences, to return to their country. The party
of the Donati in their exile carried on those
intrigues which they had commenced while at
home. They derived considerable assistance
from the king of France's brother, Charles of
Valois, whom Pope Boniface had brought into
Italy. That prince managed, by means of
promises, which he subsequently violated, to
get admission for himself, together with several
of the Neri, and the legate of the pope, into
Florence. He then produced letters, generally
suspected to be forgeries, charging the leaders
of the Bianchi with conspiracy. The popularity
of the accused party had already been on the
wane, and after a violent tumult, the chief men
among them, including Dante, were obliged to
leave the city ; their goods were confiscated, and
their houses destroyed. . . . From this time
Corso Donati, the head of the faction of the
Neri, became the chief man at Florence. The
accounts of its state at this period, taken from
the most credible historians, warrant us in think-
ing that the severe invectives of Dante are not
to be ascribed merely to indignation or resent-
ment at the harsh treatment he had received.
. . . The city was rent by more violent dis-
sensions than ever. There were now three
distinct sources of contention— the jealousy
between the people and the nobles, the disputes
between the Bianchi and the Neri, and those
between the Ghibellines and the Guelfs. It was
In vain that the legate of Pope Benedict, a man
of great piety, went thither for the sake of try-
ing to restore order. The inhabitants showed
how little they respected him by exhibiting a
scandalous representation of hell on the river
Arno ; and, after renewing his efforts without
success, he cursed the city and departed [1302].
The reign of Corso Donati ended like that of
most of those who have succeeded to power by
popular violence. Six years after the banish-
ment of his adversaries he was suspected, not
without reason, of endeavouring to make him-
self independent of constitutional restraints.
The Siguori declared him guilty of rebellion.
After a protracted resistance he made his escape
from the city, but was pursued and taken at
Rovesca [1308]. When he was led captive
by those among whom his authority had lately
been paramount, he threw himself under his
horse, and, after having been dragged some
distance, he was dispatched by one of the cap-
tors. . . . The party that had been raised by
Corso Donati continued to hold the chief power
at Florence even after the death of their chief.
The exiled faction, in the words of one of their
leaders, . . . had not learned the art of return-
ing to their country as well as their adversaries.
Four years after the events alluded to, the
Emperor, Henry VII., made some negotiations
in their favour, which but imperfectly succeeded.
The Florentines, however, were awed when he
approached their city at the head of his army;
and in the extremity of their danger they
implored the assistance of King Robert of
Naples, and made him Lord of their city for the
space of five years. The Emperor's mysterious
death [August 34, 1313] at Buonconvento freed
them from their alarm." — W. P. Urquhart, Life
and Times of Pi-ancesco Sforza, bk. 1, ch. 3 (i>. 1).
Also in Mrs. Oliphant, The Makers of Florence,
ch. 3. — B. Duffy, 2'Ae Tuscan Republics, ch. 13.
A. D. 1310-1313. — Resistance to the Em-
peror, Henry VII. — Siege by the imperial army.
See Italy: A. D. 1310-1313.
A. D. 1313-1328. — Wars with Pisa and with
Castruccio Castracani, of Lucca. — Disastrous
battles of Montecatini and Altopascio. See
Italy: A. D. 1313-1330.
A. D. 1336-1338. — Alliance with Venice
against Mastino della Scala. See Vebona:
A. D. 1260-1338.
A. D. 1341-1343. — Defeat by the Pisans
before Lucca. — The brief tyranny of the
Duke of Athens. — In 1341, Mastino della Scala,
of Verona, who had become master of Lucca in
1335 by treachery, offered to sell that town to the
Florentines. The bargain was concluded; "but
it appeared to the Pisans the signal of their own
servitude, for it cut off all communication
between them and the Ghibelines of Lombardy.
They immediately advanced their militia into
the Lucchese states to prevent the Florentines
from taking possession of the town ; vanquished
them in battle, on the 3d of October, 1341, under
the walls of Lucca ; and, on the 6th of July fol-
lowing, took possession of that city for them-
selves. The people of Florence attributed this
train of disasters to the incapacity of their magis-
trates. ... At this period, Gauttier [Walter]
de Brienne, duke of Athens, a French noble, but
born in Greece, passed through Florence on his
way from Naples to France. The duchy of
Athens had remained in his family from the con-
quest of Constantinople till it was taken from
his father in 1313. ... It was for this man the
Florentines, after their defeat at Lucca, took a
sudden fancy. . . . On the 1st of August, 1343,
they obliged the signoria to confer on him the
title of captain of justice, and to give him the
command of their militia." A month later, the
duke, by his arts, had worked such a ferment
among the lower classes of the population that
they "proclaimed him sovereign lord of Florence
for his life, forced the public palace, drove from
it the gonfalonier and the priori, and installed
him there in their place. . . . HappUy, Florence
was not ripe for slavery : ten months sufficed for
the duke of Athens to draw from it 400,000
golden florins, which he sent either to France or
Naples ; but ten months sufficed also to undeceive
all parties who had placed any confidence in
him," and by a universal rising, in July, 1348,
1165
FLORENCE, 1341-1343.
The Great Plague.
FLORENCE, 1858.
he was driven from the city. — J. C. L. de Sis-
mondi. Hist, of the Italian Republics, ch. 6.
At, an IN: T. A. TroUope, Hist, of tM Common-
veaWi of Florence, bk. 3, ch. 4 (i). 2).
14th Century. — Industrial Prosperity of the
City. — "John Villani has given us an ample and
precise account of the state of Florence in the
earlier part of the 14th century. The revenue
of the Republic amounted to 300,000 florins, a
sum which, allowing for the depreciation of the
precious metals, was at least equivalent to 600, -
000 pounds sterling ; a larger sum than England
and Ireland, two centuries ago, yielded annually
to Elizabeth — a larger sum than, according to
any computation which we have seen, the Grand
Duke of Tuscany now derives from a territory of
much greater extent. The manufacture of wool
alone employed 300 factories and 30,000 work-
men. The cloth annually produced sold, at an
average, for 1,200,000 florins; asum fairly equal,
in exchangeable value, to two millions and a
half of our money. Pour hundred thousand
florins were annually coined. Eighty banks con-
ducted the commercial operations, not of Flor-
ence only, but of all Europe. The transactions
of these establishments were sometimes of a
magnitude which may surprise even the contem-
poraries of the Barings and the Rothschilds.
Two houses advanced to Edward the Third of
England upwards of 300,000 marlis, at a time
when the mark contained more silver than 50
shillings of the present day, and when the value
of silver was more than quadruple of what it
now is. The city and its environs contained 170,-
000 inhabitants. In the various schools about
10,000 children were taught to read; 1,300 studied
arithmetic; 600 received a learned education.
The progress of elegant literature and of the fine
arts was proportioned to that of the public pros-
perity. . . . Early in the 14th century came forth
the Divine Comedy, beyond comparison the great-
est work of imagination which had appeared since
the poems of Homer. The following generation
produced indeed no second Dante: but it was
eminently distinguished by general intellectual
activity. The study of the Latin writers had
never been wholly neglected in Italy. But Pe-
trarch introduced a more profound, liberal, and
elegant scholarship; and communicated to his
countrymen that enthusiasm for the literature,
the history, and the antiquities of Rome, which
divided his own heart with a frigid mistress and
a more frigid Muse. Boccaccio turned their at-
tention to the more sublime and graceful models
of Greece." — Lord Macaulay, Machiavelli {Essays,
V. 1).
A. D. 1348.— The Plague.— " In the year then
of our Lord 1348, there happened at Florence,
the finest city in all Italy, a most terrible plague ;
which, whether owing to the influence of the
planets, or that it was sent from God as a just
punishment for our sins, had broken out some
years before in the Levant, and after passing
from place to place, and making incredible havoc
all the way, had now reached the west. There,
spite of all the means that art and human fore-
sight could suggest, such as keeping the city
clear from filth, the exclusion of all suspected
persons, and the publication of copious instruc-
tions for the preservation of health ; and notwith-
standing manifold humble supplications offered
to God in processions and otherwise ; it began to
show itself in the spring of the aforesaid year, in
a sad and wonderful manner. Unlike what had
been seen in the east, where bleeding from the
nose is the fatal prognostic, here there appeared
certain tumours in the groin or under the arm-
pits, some as big aa a small apple, others as an
egg ; and afterwards purple spots in most parts
of the body : in some cases large and but few in
number, in others smaller and more numerous —
both sorts the usual messengers of death. To the
cure of this malady, neither medical knowledge
nor the power of drugs was of any effect. . . .
Nearly all died the third day from the first ap-
pearance of the symptoms, some sooner, some
later, without any fever or other accessory symp-
toms. What gave the more virulence to this
plague, was that, by being communicated from
the sick to the hale, it spread daily, like fire when
it comes in contact with large masses of combusti-
bles. Nor was it caught only by conversing with,
or coming near the sick, but even by touching
their clothes, or anything that they had before
touched. . . . These facts, and others of the like
sort, occasioned various fears and devices amongst
those who survived, all tending to the same un-
charitable and cruel end; which was, to avoid
the sick, and everything that had been near them,
expecting by that means to save themselves. And
some holding it best to live temperately, and to
avoid excesses of all kinds, made parties, and shut
themselves up from the rest of the world. . . .
Others maintained free living to be a better pre-
servative, and would baulk no passion or appetite
they wished to gratify, drinking and revelling
incessantly from tavern to tavern, or in private
houses (which were frequently found deserted by
the owners, and therefore common to every one),
yet strenuously avoiding, with all this brutal in-
dulgence, to come near the infected. And such,
at that time, was the public distress, that the
laws, human and divine, were no more regarded;
for the ofiicers to put them in force being either
dead, sick, or in want of persons to assist them,
every one did just as he pleased. . . . I pass over
the little regard that citizens and relations showed
to each other ; for their terror was such that a
brother even fled from a brother, a wife from her
husband, and, what is more uncommon, a parent
from his own child. . . . Such was the cruelty
of Heaven, and perhaps of men, that between
March and July following, according to authen-
tic reckonings, upwards of 100,000 souls perished
in the city only ; whereas, before that calamity,
it was not supposed to have contained so many
inhabitants. What magnificent dwellings, what
noble palaces, were then depopulated to the last
inhabitant!" — G. Boccaccio, The Decameron,
iiitrod. — See, also. Black Death.
A. D. 1358. — The captains of the Guelf Party
and the " Ammoniti." — "The magistracy called
the ' Capitani di Parte Guelf a,' — the Captains of
the Guelph party, — was instituted in the year
1267; and it was remarked, when the institution
of it was recorded, that the conception of a mag-
istracy avowedly formed to govern a community,
not only by the authority of, but in the interest
of one section only of its members, was an extra-
ordinary proof of the unfitness of the Florentines
for self-government, and a forewarning of the
infallible certainty that the attempt to rule the
Commonwealth on such principles would come
to a bad ending. In the year 1358, a little less
than a century after the first establishment of
this strange magistracy, it began to develop the
1166
FLORENCE, 1358.
Tumult of the
Ciompi.
FLORENCE, 137&-1427.
mischievous capabilities inherent in the nature
of it, in a very alarming manner. ... In 1358
this magistracy consisted of four members. . . .
These men, 'born,' says Ammirato, 'for the
public ruin, under pretext of zeal for the Guelph
cause "... caused a law to be passed, according
to which any citizen or Florentine subject who
had ever held, or should thereafter hold, any
office in the Commonwealth, might be either
openly or secretly accused before the tribunal of
the Captains of the Guelph Party of being Ghi-
belline, or not genuine Guelph. If the accusa-
tion was supported by six witnesses worthy of
belief, the accused might be condemned to death
or to fine at the discretion of the Captains. . . .
It will be readily conceived that the passing of
such a law, iu a city bristling with party hatreds
and feuds, was the signal for the commencement
of a reign of terror. " The citizens proscribed
were "said to be 'admonished'; and the con-
demnations were called 'admonitions'; and
henceforward for many years the ' araraonizioni '
[or ' ammoniti '] play a large part in the domestic
history and political struggles of Florence." — T.
A. Trollope, Hist, of the Commonwealth of Flor-
ence, bk. 3, ch. 7 (v. 2).
Also m: H. E. Napier, Florentine History,
ch. 23 (v. 2).
A. D. 1359-1391. — The Free Company of Sir
John Hawkwood and the wars with Pisa,
with Milan, and with the Pope. See Italy:
A. D. 1343-1393.
A. D. 1375-1378. — War with the Pope in
support of the oppressed States of the Church.
— The Eight Saints of War. — A terrible ex-
communication. — In 1375, the Florentines be-
came engaged in war with Pope Gregory XI.,
supporting a revolt of the States of the Church,
which were heavily oppressed by the representa-
tives of their papal sovereign (see Papacy: A. D.
1352-1378). "Nevertheless, so profoundly rev-
erenced was the church that even the sound
of war against a pope appeared to many little
less than blasphemy : numbers opposed on this
pretence, but really from party motives alone."
But ' ' a general council assembled and declared
the cause of liberty paramount to every other
consideration ; the war was affirmed to be rather
against the injustice and tyranny of foreign gov-
ernors than the church itself. . . . All the eccle-
siastical cities then groaning under French op-
pression were to be invited to revolt and boldly
achieve their independence. These spirited reso-
lutions were instantly executed, and on the 8th
of August 1375 Alessandro de' Bardi [and seven
other citizens] . . . were formed into a supreme
council of war called 'Gli Otto della Guerra';
and afterwards, from their able conduct, 'Gli
Otto Santl della Guerra ' [The Eight Saints of
War] ; armed with the concentrated power of
the whole Florentine nation in what regarded
war." A terrible sentence of excommunication
was launched against the Florentines by the
Pope. "Their souls were solemnly condemned
to the pains of hell ; fire and water were Inter-
dicted ; their persons and property outlawed in
every Christian land, and they were finally de-
clared lawful prey for all who chose to sell,
plunder, or kill them as though they were mere
slaves or infidels." — H. E. Napier, Florentine
History, bk. 1, ch. 36 (0. 2).
A. D. 1378-1427. — Completer democratizing
of the commonwealth. — The Tumult of the
Ciompi. — First appearance of the Medici in
Florentine history. — • Though the reign of the
Duke of Athens lasted rather less than a year,
" it bore important fruits ; for the tyrant, seeking
to support himself upon the favour of the com-
mon people, gave political power to the Lesser
Arts at the expense of the Greater, and confused
the old State-system by enlarging the democracy.
The net result of these events for Florence was,
first, that the city became habituated to rancor-
ous party-strife, involving exiles and proscrip-
tions, and, secondly, that it lost its primitive
social hierarchy of classes. . . . Civil strife now
declared itself as a conflict between labour and
capital. The members of the Lesser Arts, crafts-
men who plied trades subordinate to those of the
Greater Arts, rose up against their social and
political superiors, demanding a larger share ki
the government, a more equal distribution of
profits, higher wages, and privileges that should
place them on an absolute equality with the
wealthy merchants. It was in the year 1378 that
the proletariate broke out into rebellion. Pre-
vious events had prepared the way for this re-
volt. First of all, the republic had been demo-
cratised through the destruction of the Grand!
and through the popular policy pursued to gain
his own ends by the Duke of Athens. Secondly,
society had been shaken to its very foundation by
the great plague of 1348 . . . nor had 30 years
sufficed to restore their relative position to grades
and ranks confounded by an overwhelming ca-
lamity. . . . Rising in a mass to claim their
privileges, the artisans ejected the Signory from
the Public Palace, and for awhile Florence was
at the mercy of the mob. It is worthy of notice
that the Medici, whose name is scarcely known
before this epoch, now come for one moment to
the front. Salvestro de' Medici was Gonfalonier
of Justice at the time when the tumult first broke
out. He followed the faction of the handicrafts-
men, and became the hero of the day. I cannot
discover that he did more than extend a sort of
passive protection to their cause. Yet there is
no doubt that the attachment of the working
classes to the house of Medici dates from tliis
period. The rebellion of 1378 is known in Flor-
entine history as the Tumult of the Ciompi. The
name Ciompi strictly means the Wool-Carders.
One set of operatives in the city, and that the
largest, gave its title to the whole body of the
labourers. For some months these craftsmen
governed the republic, appointing their own
Signory and passing laws in their own interest ;
but, as is usual, the proletariate found itself in-
capable of sustained government. The ambition
and discontent of the Ciompi foamed themselves
away, and industrious workingmen began to see
that trade was languishing and credit on the wane.
By their own act at last they restored the gov-
ernment to the Priors of the Greater Arti. Still
the movement had not been without grave con-
sequences. It completed the levelling of classes,
which had been steadily advancing from the first
in Florence. After the Ciompi riot there was no
longer not only any distinction between noble
and burgher, but the distinction between greater
and lesser guilds was practically swept away.
. . . The proper political conditions had been
formed for unscrupulous adventurers. Florence
had become a democracy without social organi-
sation. . . . The time was come for the Albizzi
to attempt an oligarchy, and for the Medici to
1167
FLORENCE, 1378-1427.
Rise of the Medici.
FLORENCE, 1390-1402.
begin the enslavement of the State. The Con-
stitution of Florence offered many points of
weakness to the attacks of such intriguers. In
the first place it was in its origin not a political
but an industrial organisation — a simple group
of guilds invested with the sovereign authority.
... It had no permanent head, like the Doge
of Venice, no fixed senate like the Venetian
Grand Council ; its chief magistrates, the Signory,
were elected for short periods of two months,
and their mode of election was open to the gravest
criticism. Supposed to be chosen by lot, they
were really selected from lists drawn up by the
factions in power from time to time. These fac-
tions contrived to exclude the names of all but
their adherents from the bags, or 'borse,' in
which the burghers eligible for election had to
be inscribed. Furthermore, it was not possible
for this shifting Signory to conduct affairs re-
quiring sustained effort and secret deliberation ;
therefore recourse was being continually had to
dictatorial Commissions. The people, summoned
in parliament upon the Great Square, were asked
to confer plenipotentiary authority upon a com-
mittee called Balia [see Balia op Florence],
who proceeded to do what they chose in the
State ; and who retained power after the emer-
gency for which they were created passed away.
... It was through these [and other specified]
defects that the democrac}' merged gradually
into a despotism. The art of the Medici consisted
in a .scientific comprehension of these very imper-
fections, a methodic use of them for their own
purposes, and a steady opposition to any at-
tempts made to substitute a stricter system. . . .
Florence, in the middle of the 14th century, was
a vast beehive of industry. Distinctions of rank
among burghers, qualified to vote and hold office,
were theoretically unknown. Highly educated
men, of more than princely wealth, spent their
time in shops and counting-houses, and trained
their sons to follow trades. Military service at
this period was abandoned by the citizens ; they
preferred to pay mercenary troops for the con-
duct of their wars. Nor was there, as in Venice,
any outlet for their energies upon the seas. Flor-
ence had no navy, no great port — she only kept
a small fleet for the protection of her commerce.
Thus the vigour of the commonwealth was con-
centrated on itself; while the influence of citi-
zens, through their affiliated trading-houses, cor-
respondents, and agents, extended like a network
over Europe. . . . Accordingly we find that out
of the very bosom of the people a new plutocratic
aristocracy begms to rise. . . . These nobles of
the purse obtained the name of ' Popolani Nobili ' ;
and it was they who now began to play at high
stakes for the supreme power. . . . The opening
of the second half of the 14th century had been
signalised by the feuds of two great houses, both
risen from the people. These were the Albizzi
and the Ricci." The Albizzi triumphed, in the
conflict of the two houses, and became all-power-
ful for a time in Florence ; but the wars with the
Visconti, of Milan, in which they engaged the
city, made necessary a heavy burden of taxa-
tion, which they rendered more grievous by dis-
tributing it unfairly. "This Imprudent financial
policy began the ruin of the Albizzi. It caused
a clamour in the city for a new system of more
just taxation, which was too powerful to be re-
sisted. The voice of the people made itself
loudly heard ; and with the people on this occa-
sion sided Giovanni de' Medici. This was in
1427. It is here that the Medici appear upon
that memorable scene where in the future they
are to play the first part. Giovanni de' Medici
did not belong to the same branch of his family
as the Salvestro who favoured the people at the
time of the Ciompi Tumult. But he adopted the
same popular policy. To his sons Cosimo and
Lorenzo he bequeathed on his death-bed the rule
that they should invariably adhere to the cause
of the multitude, found their influence on that,
and avoid the arts of factious and ambitious
leaders." — J. A. Symonds, Flm-ence and the
Medici {Sketches and Studies in Italy, ch. 5).
Also m : A. von Reumont, Lorenzo de" Medici,
bk. 1, ch. 2 (I'. 1).— T. A. Trollope, Hist, of the
Comnionwealth of Florence, bk. 4-5 («. 2).
A. D. 1390-1402.— War with Gian Galeazzo
Visconti, Duke of Milan.— "Already in 1386,
the growing power of Giangaleazzo Visconti,
the tenth duke of Milan of that family, began to
give umbrage, not only to all the sovereign
princes, his neighbours, but also to Florence [see
Milan: A. D. 1377-1447]. . . . Florence . . .
had cause enough to feel uneasy at the progress
of such a man in his career of successful invasion
and usurpation; — Florence, no more specially
than other of the free towns around her, save
that Florence seems always to have thought that
she had more to lose from the loss of her liberty
than any of the other cities . . . and felt always
called upon to take upon herself the duty of
standing forward as the champion and supporter
of the principles of republicanism and free gov-
ernment. . . . The Pope, Urban VI., added
another element of disturbance to the condition
of Italy. For in his anxiety to recover sundry
cities mainly in Umbria and Roraagna ... he
was exceedingly unscrupulous of means, and
might at any moment be found allying himself
with the enemies of free government and of the
old Guelph cause in Italy. Venice, also, having
most improvidently and unwisely allied herself
with Visconti, constituted another element of
danger, and an additional cause of uneasiness
and watchfulness to the Florentine government.
In the spring of 1388, therefore, a board of ten,
' Dieci di Balia, ' was elected for the general
management of ' all those measures concerning
war and peace which should be adopted by the
entire Florentine people.'" The first war with
Visconti was declared by the republic in May,
1390, and was so successfully conducted for the
Florentines by Sir John Hawkwood that it ter-
minated in a treaty signed January 26, 1392,
which boimd the Duke of Milan not to meddle
in any way with the affairs of Tuscany. For
ten years this agreement seems to have been tol-
erably well adhered to ; but in 1402 the rapacious
Duke entered upon new encroachments, which
forced the Florentines to take up arms again.
Their only allies were Bologna and Padua (or
Francesco Carrara of Padua), and the armies of
the three states were defeated in a terribly bloody
battle fought near Bologna on the 26th of June.
"Bologna fell into the hands of Visconti. Great
was the dismay and terror in Florence when the
news . . . reached the city. It was neither more
nor less than the fall, as the historian says, of the
fortress which was the bulwark of Florence.
Now she lay absolutely open to the invader."
But the invader did not come. He was stricken
with the plague and died, in September, and
1168
FLORENCE, 1390-1402.
Commerce, Wealth
and Culture.
FLORENCE, 1433-1464.
Florence and Italy were saved from the tyranny
which he had seemed able to extend over the
whole. — T. A. Trollope, Hist, of the Common-
wealth of Florence, bk. 4, ch. 4-5 (». 2).
I4th-i5th Centuries. — Commercial enter-
prise, industrial energy, wealth and culture of
the city. — "During the 14th and 15th centuries
Florentine wealth increased in an extraordinary
degree. Earlier generations had compelled the
powerful barons of the district to live in the city ;
and even yet the exercise of the rights of citizen-
ship was dependent on having a residence there.
The influx of outsiders was, however, much more
owing to the attractions offered by the city,
whether in business, profession, or pleasure, than
to compulsion. . . . The situation of the city is
not favorable to the natural growth of commerce,
especially under the conditions which preceded
the building of railroads. At a considerable dis-
tance from the sea, on a river navigable only for
very small craft, and surrounded by hills which
rendered difficult the construction of good roads,
— the fact that the city did prosper so marvel-
lously is in itself proof of the remarkable energy
and ability of its people. They needed above
all things a sea-port, and to obtain a good one
they waged some of their most exhausting
wars. Their principal wealth, however, came
through their fiiiaucial operations, which extended
throughout Europe, and penetrated even to Mo-
rocco and the Orient. Their manufactures also,
especially of wool and silk, brought in enormous
returns, and made not only the fortunes but also,
in one famous case at least, the name of the
families engaged in them. Their superiority
over the rest of Christendom in these pursuits
was but one side of that remarkable, universal
talent which is the most astonishing feature of
the Florentine life of that age. With the hardi-
hood of youth, they were not only ready but
eager to engage in new enterprises, whether at
home or abroad. ... As a result of their energy
and ability, riches poured into their coffers, — a
mighty stream of gold, in the use of which they
showed so much judgment, that the after world
has feasted to our day, and for centuries to come,
will probably continue to feast without satiety
on the good things which they caused to be made,
and left behind them. Of all the legacies for
which we have to thank Florence, none are so
well known and so universally recognized as the
treasures of art created by "her sons, many of
which yet remain within her walls, the marvel
and delight of all who behold them. As the
Florentines were ready to try experiments in poli-
tics, manufactures, and commerce, so also in all
branches of the fine arts they tried experiments,
left the old, beaten paths of their forefathers, and
created something original, useful, and beautiful
for themselves. Christian art from the time of
the Roman Empire to Cimabue had made com-
paratively little progress ; but a son of the Flor-
entine fields was to start a revolution which
should lead to the production of some of the most
marvellous works which have proceeded from
the hand of man. The idea that the fine arts are
more successfully cultivated under the patronage
of princes than under republican rule is very
widespread, and is occasionally accepted almost
as a dogma ; but the history of Athens and of
Florence teaches us without any doubt that the
two most artistic epochs in the history of the
world have had their rise in republics. . . . Some
74
1169
writers, dazzled by the splendors of the Medici,
entirely lose sight of the fact that both Dante
and Petrarch were dead before the Medici were
even heard of, and that the greatest works, at
least in architecture, were all begun long before
they were leaders in Florentine affairs. That
family did much, yes very much, for the advance-
ment of art and letters ; but they did not do all
or nearly all that was done in Florence. . . .
Though civil discord and foreign war were very
frequent, Florentine life is nevertheless an illus-
tration rather of what Herbert Spencer calls the
commercial stage of civilization, than of the war-
like period. Her citizens were above all things
merchants, and were generally much more will-
ing to pay to avoid a war than to conduct one.
They strove for glory, not in feats of arms, but
in literary contests and in peaceful emulation in
the encouragement of learning and the tine arts."
— W. B. Scaife, Florentine Life. pp. 16-19. See,
also, Tu.\DE, and ^Ioney and Bankino.
A. D. 1405-1406. — Purchase and conquest
of Pisa. See Italy: A. D. 1402-1406.
A. D. 1409-1411. — League against and v^ar
with Ladislas, King of Naples. See Italy
(Southern): A. D. 1386-1414.
A. D. 1423-1447.— War with the Duke of
Milan. — League with Venice, Naples, and
other States. See Italy: A. D. 1413-1447.
A. D. 1433-1464.— The ascendancy of Cos-
imo de' Medici. — In 1433, Cosmo, or Cosimo de'
Medici, the son of Giovanni de' Medici, was the
recognized leader of the opposition to the oli-
garchy controlled bj' Rinaldo de' Albizzi. Cosmo
inherited from his father a large fortune and a
business as a merchant and banker which he
maintained and increased. "He lived splen-
didly; he was a great supporter of all literary
men, and spent and distributed his great wealth
amongst his fellow citizens. He was courteous
and liberal, and was looked upon with almost
unbounded respect and affection by a large party
in the state. Rinaldo was bent upon his ruin,
and in 1433, when he had a Signoria devoted to
his party, he cited Cosmo before the Council,
and shut him up in a tower of the Public Palace.
Great excitement was caused by this violent
step, and two days after the Signoria held a par-
liament of the people. The great bell of the city
was tolled, and the people gathered round the
Palace. Then the gates of the Palace were
thrown open, and the Signoria, the Colleges of
Arts, and the Gonfaloniere came forth, and asked
the people if they would have a Balia. So a
Balia was appointed, the names being proposed
b}' the Signoria, to decide on the fate of Cosmo.
At first it was proposed to kill him, but he was
only banished, much against the will of Rinaldo,
who knew that, if he lived, he would some day
come back again. The next year the Signoria
was favourable to him ; another Balia was ap-
pointed ; the party of the Albizzi was banished,
and Cosmo was recalled. He was received with
a greeting such as men give to a conqueror, and
was hailed as the ' Father of his Country. ' 'This
triumphant return gave the Medici a power in
the Republic which they never afterwards lost.
The banished party fled to the court of the Duke
of Milan, and stirred him up to war against the
city." — W. Hunt, Hist, of Italy, ch. 6, sect. 5. —
" Cosimo de' Medici did not content himself with
rendering his old opponents harmless; he took
care also that none of his adherents should become
FLORENCE, 1433-1464.
The Medici.
FLORENCE, 1458-1459.
too powerful and dangerous to him. There-
fore, remarks Francesco Guicciardini, lie retained
the Signoria, as well as the taxes, in his hand,
in order to be able to promote or oppress indi-
viduals at -will. In other things the citizens en-
joyed greater freedom and acted more according
to their own pleasure than later, in the days of
liis grandson, for he let the reins hang loose if he
was only sure of his own position. It was just
in this "that his great art lay, to guide things
according to his will, and yet to make his parti-
sans believe that he shared his authority with
them. ... ' It is well known ' remarks [Guicciar-
dini] . . . ' how much nobility and wealth were
destroyed by Cosimo and his descendants by
taxation. The Medici never allowed a fixed
method and legal distribution, but always re-
served to themselves the power of bearing
heavily upon individuals according to their
pleasure. ... He [Cosimo] maintained great
reserve in his whole manner of life. For a quar-
ter of a century he was the almost absolute di-
rector of the State, but he never assumed the
show of his dignity. . . . The ruler of the Flor-
entine State remained citizen, agriculturist, and
merchant. In his appearance and bearing there
was nothing which distinguished him from
others. ... He ruled the money market, not only
in Italy, but throughout Europe. He had banks
in all the western countries, and his experience
and the excellent memory which never failed
him, with his strong love of order, enabled him
to guide everything from Florence, which he
never quitted after 1438." The death of Cosimo
occurred on the 1st day of August, 1464. — A.
von Reumont, Lorenzo de' Medici, bk. 1, ch. 6 and
8 (v. 1). — "The last troubled days of the Floren-
tine democracy had not proved quite unpro-
ductive of art. It was the time of Giotto's un-
disputed sway. Many works of which the 15th
century gets the glory because it finished them
were ordered and begun amidst the confusion
and terrible agitation of the demagogy. . . .
Under the oligarch}', in the relative calm that
came with oppression, a taste for art as well as
for letters began to develop in Florence as else-
where." But "Cosimo de' Medicis had rare
good fortune. In his time, and under his rule,
capricious chance united at Florence talents as
numerous as they were diverse — the universal
Brunelleschi, the polished and elegant Ghiberti,
the rough and powerful Donatello, the suave
Angelico, the masculine Masaccio. . . . Cosimo
lived long enough to see the collapse of the ad-
mirable talent which flourished upon the banks
of the Arno, and soon spread throughout Italy,
and to feel the void left by it. It is true his
grandson saw a new harvest, but as inferior to
that which preceded it, as it was to that which
followed it."— F.-T. Perrens, Hist, of Florence,
1434-1531, bk. 1, ch. 6.
A. D. 1450-1454. — Alliance with Francesco
Sforza, of Milan, and war with Venice, Na-
ples, Savoy, and other States. See Milan:
A. D. 1447-1 4r)4.
A. D. 1458-1469. — Lucas Pitti, and the build-
ing of the Pitti Palace. — Piero de' Medici and
the five agents of his tyranny. — Until 1455,
Cosmo de' Medici shared the government of
Florence in some degree with Neri Capponi, an
able statesman, who had taken an eminent part
in public affairs for many years — during the
domination of the Albizzi, as well as afterwards.
" When Neri Capponi died, the council refused to
call a new parliament to replace the balia, whose
power expired on the 1st of July, 1455. . . . The
election of the signoria was again made fairly by
lot, . . . the contribu.tions were again equitablj'
apportioned, — the tribunals ceased to listen to
the recommendations of those who, till then, had
made a traffic of distributive justice." This re-
covery of freedom in Florence was enjoyed for
about three years; but when, in 14.58, Lucas
Pitti, "rich, powerful, and bold," was named
gonfalonier, Cosmo conspired with him to reim
pose the yoke. "Pitti assembled the parlia-
ment ; but not till he had filled all the avenues
of the public square with soldiers or armed
peasants. The people, menaced and trembling
within this circle, consented to name a new
balia, more violent and tyrannical than any of
the preceding. It was composed of 352 persons,
to whom was delegated all the power of the re-
public. They exiled a great number of the
citizens who had shown the most attachment to
liberty, and they even put some to death."
When, in 1463, Cosmo's second son, Giovanni,
on whom his hopes were centered, died, Lucas
Pitti ' ' looked on himself henceforth as the only
chief of the state. It was about this time that
he undertook the building of that magnificent
palace which now [1833] forms the residence of
the grand-dukes. The republican equality was
not only offended by the splendour of this regal
dwelling; but the construction of It afforded
Pitti an occasion for marking his contempt of
liberty and the laws. He made of this building
an asylum for all fugitives from justice, whom
no public officer dared pursue when once he
[they'?] took part in the labour. At the same
time individuals, as well as communities, who
would obtain some favour from the republic,
knew that the only means of being heard was to
offer Lucas Pitti some precious wood or marble
to be employed In the construction of his palace.
When Cosmo de' Medici died, at his country-
house of Careggi. on the 1st of August, 1464,
Lucas Pitti felt himself released from the control
imposed by the virtue and moderation of that
great citizen. . . . His [Cosmo's] son, Pietro de'
Sledici, then 48 years of age, supposed that he
should succeed to the administration of the re-
public, as he had succeeded to the wealth of his
father, by hereditary right : but the state of his
health did not admit of his attending regularly
to business, or of his inspiring his rivals with
much fear. To diminish the weight of affairs
which oppressed him, he resolved on withdraw-
ing a part of his immense fortune from com-
merce ; recalling all his loans made in partner-
ship with other merchants ; and laying out this
money in land. But this unexpected demand of
considerable capital occasioned a fatal shock to
the commerce of Florence ; at the same time that
it alienated all the debtors of the house of Medici,
and deprived it of much of its popularity. The
death of Sforza, also, which took place on the
8th of March, 1466, deprived the Medicean
party of its firmest support abroad. . . . The
friends of liberty at Florence soon perceived that
Lucas Pitti and Pietro de' Medici no longer
agreed together; and they recovered courage
when the latter proposed to the council the call-
ing of a parliament, in order to renew the balia,
the power of which expired on the 1st of Sep-
tember, 1465; his proposition was rejected. The
1170
FLORENCE, 1458-1469.
Lorenzo
the Magnificent.
FLORENCE, 1469-1492.
magistracy began again to be drawn by lot
from among tlie members of the party victorious
in 1434. This return of liberty, however, was
but of short duration. Pitti and Medici were
reconciled : they agreed to call a parliament, and
to direct it in concert; to intimidate it, they sur-
rounded it with foreign troops. But Medici, on
the nomination of the balia, on the 2d of Septem-
ber, 1466, found means of admitting his own
partisans only, and excluding all those of Lucas
Pitti. The citizens who had shown any zeal for
liberty were all exiled. . . . Lucag Pitti ruined
himself in building his palace. His talents were
judged to bear no proportion to his ambition :
the friends of liberty, as well as those of Medici,
equally detested him ; and he remained deprived
of all power in a city which he had so largely
contributed to enslave. Italy became filled with
Florentine emigrants: every revolution, even
every convocation of parliament, was followed
by the exile of many citizens. ... At Florence,
the citizens who escaped proscription trembled to
see despotism established in their republic ; but
the lower orders were in general contented, and
made no attempt to second Bartolomeo Coleoni,
when he entered Tuscany, in 1467, at the head
of the Florentine emigrants, who had taken him
into their pay. Commerce prospered ; manufac-
tures were carried on with great activity ; high
wages supported in comfort all who lived by
their labour; and the Medici entertained them
with shows and festivals, keeping them in a sort
of perpetual carnival, amidst which the people
soon lost all thought of liberty. Pietro de'
Medici was always in too bad a state of health
to exercise in person the sovereignty he had
usurped over his country ; he left it to five or six
citizens, who reigned in his name. . . . They
not only transacted all business, but appropriated
to themselves all the profit ; they sold their in-
fluence and credit ; they gratified their cupidity
or their vengeance ; but they took care not to act
in their own names, or to pledge their own re-
sponsibility ; they left that to the house of
Medici. Pietro, during the latter months of his
life, perceived the disorder and corruption of his
agents. He was afflicted to see his memory thus
stained, and he addressed them the severest
reprimands ; he even entered into correspondence
with the emigrants, whom he thought of recall-
ing, when he died, on the 2d of December, 1469.
His two sons, Lorenzo and Giuliano, the elder
of whom was not 21 years of age, . . . given
up to all the pleasures of their age, had yet no
ambition. The power of the state remained in
the hands of the five citizens who had exercised
it under Pietro." — J. C. L. de Sismondi, Hist, of
the Italian Republics, eh. 11.
A. D. 1469-1492. — The conspiracy of the
Pazzi. — The government of Lorenzo the Mag-
nificent. — The death of liberty. — The golden
age of letters and art. — "Lorenzo inherited his
grandfather's political sagacity and far surpassed
him in talent and literary culture. In many
respects too he was a very different man. Cosimo
never left his business office ; Lorenzo neglected
it, and had so little commercial aptitude that he
was obliged to retire from business, in order not
to lose his abundant patrimony. Cosimo was
frugal in his personal expenses and lent freely to
others; Lorenzo loved splendid living, and thus
gained the title of the Magnificent ; he spent im-
moderately for the advancement of literary men ;
he gave himself up to dissipation which ruined
his health and shortened his days. His manner
of living reduced him to such straits, that he had
to sell some of his possessions and obtain money
from his friends. Nor did this suffice; for he
even meddled with the public money, a thing
that had never happened in Cosimo's time. Very
often, in his greed of unlawful gain, he had the
Florentine armies paid by his own bank ; he also
appropriated the sums collected in the Monte
Comune or treasury of the public debt, and those
in the Jloute delle JTanciulle where were marriage
portions accumulated by private savings —
money hitherto held sacred by all. Stimulated
by. the same greed, he, in the year 1472 joined
the Florentine contractors for the wealthy alum
mines of Volterra, at the moment in which that
city was on the verge of rebellion in order to free
itself from a contract which it deemed unjust.
And Lorenzo, with the weight of his authority,
pushed matters to such a point that war broke
out, soon to be followed by a most cruel sack of
the unhappy city, a very unusual event in
Tuscany. Forall tins he was universally blamed.
But he was excessively haughty and cared for no
man ; he would tolerate no equals, would be first
in everything — even in games. He interfered
in all matters, even in private concerns and in mar-
riages : nothing could take place without his con-
sent. In overthrowing the powerful and exalt-
ing men of low condition, he showed none of the
care and precaution so uniformly observed by
Cosimo. It is not then surprising if his enemies
increased so fast that the formidable conspiracy
of the Pazzi broke out on the 26th April 1478.
In this plot, hatched in the Vatican itself where
Sixtus IV. was Lorenzo's determined enemy,
many of the mightiest Florentine families took
part. In the cathedral, at the moment of the
elevation of the Host, the conspirators' daggers
were unsheathed. Giuliano dei Medici was
stabbed to death, but Lorenzo defended himself
with his sword and saved his own life. The tumult
was so great that it seemed as though the walls
of the church were shaken. The populace rose to
the cry of ' Palle ! Palle ! ' the Medici watchword,
and the enemies of the Medici were slaughtered
in the streets or hung from the windows of the
Palazzo Vecchio. There, among others, were
seen the dangling corpses of Archbishop Salviati
and of Francesco Pazzi, who in their last strug'
gles had gripped each other with their teeth and
remained thus for some time. More than seventy
persons perished on that day, and Lorenzo, tak-
ing advantage of the opportunity, pushed mat-
ters to extremity by his confiscations, banish-
ments, and sentences of death. Thereby his
power would have been infinitely increased if
Pope Sixtus IV., blinded by rage, had not been
induced to excommunicate Florence, and make
war against it, in conjunction with Ferdinand of
Aragon. On this Lorenzo, without losing a
moment, went straight to Naples, and made the
king understand how much better it served his
interests that Florence should have but one ruler
instead of a republican government, always lia-
ble to change and certainly never friendly to
Naples. So he returned with peace re-established
and boundless authority and popularity. Now
indeed he might have called himself lord of the
city, and it must have seemed easy to him to
destroy the republican govermnent altogether.
I With his pride and ambition it is certain that he
1171
FLORENCE, 1469-1493.
Lorenzo
the Magnificent.
FLORENCE, 1469-1492.
had an intense desire to stand on the same level
with the other princes and tyrants of Italy, the
more so as at that moment success seemed en-
tirely within his grasp. But Lorenzo showed
that his political shrewdness was not to be
blinded by prosperity, and knowing Florence
well, he remained firm to the traditional policy
of his house, that of dominating the Republic,
while apparently respecting it. He was well de-
tei-mined to render his power solid and durable ;
but to that end he had recourse to a most inge-
nious reform, by means of which, without aban-
doning the old road, he thoroughly succeeded in
his object. In place of the usual five-yearly
Balia, he instituted, in 1480, the Council of
Seventy, which renewed itself and was like a
permanent Balia with still wider power. This,
composed of men entirely devoted to his cause,
secured the government to him forever. By this
Council, say the chroniclers of the time, liberty
was wholly buried and undone, but certainly the
most important affairs of the State were caiTied
on in it by intelligent and cultivated men, who
largely promoted its material prosj^erity. Flor-
ence still called itself a republic, nominally the
old institutions were still in existence, but all
this seemed and was nothing but an empty
mockery. Lorenzo, absolute lord of all, might
certainly be called a tyrant, surrounded by lack-
eys and courtiers. . . . Yet he dazzled all men
by the splendour of his rule, so that [Guicciar^
dini] observes, that though Lorenzo was a tyrant,
' it would be impossible to imagine a better and
more pleasing tyrant.' Industry, commerce,
public works had all received a mighty impulse.
In no city in the world had the civil equality of
modern States reached the degree to which it had
attained not merely in Florence itself, but in its
whole territory and throughout all Tuscany.
Administration and secular justice proceeded
regularly enough in ordinary cases, crime was di-
minished, and, above all, literary culture had be-
come a substantial element of the new State.
Learned men were emploj'ed in public oflices,
and from Florence spread a light that illuminated
the world. . . . But Lorenzo's policy could found
nothing that was permanent. Unrivalled as a
model of sagacity and prudence, it promoted in
Florence the development of all the new elements
of which modern society was to be the outcome,
without succeeding in fusing them together; for
his was a policy of equivocation and deceit,
directed by a man of much genius, who had no
higher aim than his own interest and that of his
family, to which he never hesitated to sacrifice
the interests of his people." — P. Villari, Machia-
velli and his Times, ch. 3, sect. 2 (». 1). — "The
state of Florence at this period was very remark-
able. The most Independent and tumultuous
of towns was spellbound under the sway of
Lorenzo de' Medici, the grandson of Cosimo who
built San Marco; and scarcely seemed even to
recollect its freedom, so absorbed was it in the
present advantages conferred by ' a strong gov-
ernment," and solaced by shows, entertainments,
festivals, pomp, and display of all kinds. It was
the very height of that classic revival so famous
in the later history of the world, and the higher
classes of society, having shaken themselves
apart with graceful contempt from the lower,
had begun to frame their lives according to a
pagan model, leaving the other and much big-
ger half of the world to pursue its superstitions
undisturbed. Florence was as near a pagan city
as it was possible for its rulers to make it. Its
intellectual existence was entirely given up to
the past; its days were spent in that worship of
antiquity which has no power of discrimination,
and deifies not only the wisdom but the triviali-
ties of its golden epoch. Lorenzo reigned in the
midst of a lettered crowd of classic parasites and
flatterers, writing poems which his courtiers
found better than Alighieri's, and surrounding
himself with those eloquent slaves who make a
prince's name more famous than arms or victories,
and who have still left a prejudice in the minds
of all literature-loving people in favour of their
patron. A man of superb health and physical
power, who can give himself up to debauch all
night without interfering with his power of
working all day, and whose mind is so versatile
that he can sack a town one morning and dis-
course upon the beauties of Plato the next, and
weave joyous ballads through both occupations
— gives his flatterers reason when they applaud
him. The few righteous men in the city, the
citizens who still thought of Florence above
all, kept apart, overwhelmed by the tide which
ran in favour of that leading citizen of Florence
who had gained the control of the once high-
spirited and freedom-loving people. Society
had never been more dissolute, more selfish, or
more utterly deprived of any higher aim. Bar-
ren scholarship, busy over grammatical ques-
tions, and elegant philosophy, snipping and
piecing its logical systems, formed the top dres-
sing to that half-brutal, half-superstitious igno-
rance which in such communities is the general
portion of the poor. The dilettante world
dreamed hazily of a restoration of the worship
of the pagan gods; Cardinal Bembo bade his
friend beware of reading St. Paul's epistles, lest
their barbarous style should corrupt his taste;
and even such a man as Pico delta Mirandola
declared the ' Divina Commedia ' to be inferior
to the ' Canti Carnascialeschi ' of Lorenzo de'
Medici. . . . Thus limited intellectually, the age
of Lorenzo was still more hopeless morally, full
of debauchery, cruelty, and corruption, violat-
ing oaths, betraying trusts, believing in nothing
but Greek manuscripts, coins, and statues, caring
for nothing but pleasure. "This was the world
in which Savonarola found himself. " — Jlrs. Oli-
phant, T/ie Makers of Florence, ch. 9. — "Terrible
municipal enmities had produced so much evil
as to relax ancient republican energy. After so
much destruction repose was necessary. To an-
tique sobriety and gravity succeed love of
pleasure and the quest of luxury. The bel-
ligerent class of great nobles were expelled and
the energetic class of artisans crushed. Bourgeois
rulers were to rule, and to rule tranquilly. Like
the Medicis, their chiefs, they manufacture,
trade, bank and make fortunes in order to expend
them in intellectual fashion. War no longer
fastens its cares upon them, as formerly, with a
bitter and tragic grasp ; they manage it through
the paid bands of condottieri, and these as cun-
ning traflickers, reduce it to cavalcades; when
they slaughter each other it is by mistake ; his-
torians cite battles in which three, and sometimes
only one soldier remains on the field. Diplomacy
takes the place of force, and the mind expands
as character weakens. Through this mitigation
of war and through the establishment of princi-
palities or of local tyraunies, it seems that Italy,
1172
FLORENCE, 1469-1493.
Lorenzo
the Magnificent.
FLORENCE, 1490-1498.
like tlie great European monarchies, had just at-
tained to its equilibrium. Peace is partially
established and the useful arts germinate in all
directions upon an improved social soil like a
good harvest on a cleared and well-ploughed
field. The peasant is no longer a serf of tlie glebe,
but a metayer; he nominates his own municipal
magistrates, possesses arms and a communal
treasury ; he lives in enclosed bourgs, the houses
of which, built of stone and cement, are large,
convenient, and often elegant. Near Florence
he erects walls, and near Lucca he constructs
turf terraces in order to favor cultivation.
Lombardy has its irrigations and rotation of
crops; entire districts, now so many deserts
around Lombardy and Rome, are still inhabited
and richly productive. In the upper class the
bourgeois aud the noble labor since the chiefs of
Florence are hereditary bankers and commercial
interests are not endangered. Marble quarries
are worked at Carrara, and foundry fires are
lighted in the JIaremmes. AVc find in the cities
manufactories of silk, glass, paper, books, flax,
wool and hemp ; Italy alone produces as much as
all Europe and furnishes to it all its luxuries.
Thus diffused commerce and industry are not
servile occupations tending to narrow or debase
the mind. A great merchant is a pacific general,
whose mind expands in contact with men and
things. Like a military chieftain he organizes
expeditions and enterprises and makes discover-
ies. . . . The Medicis possess sixteen banking-
houses in Europe ; they bind together through
their business Russia and Spain, Scotland and
Syria; they possess mines of alum throughout
Italy, paying to tlie Pope for one of them a hun-
dred thousand florins per annum ; they entertain
at their court representatives of all the powers of
Europe and become the councillors and modera-
tors of all Italy. In a small state like Florence,
and in a country without a national army like
Italy, such an influence becomes ascendant in and
through itself; a control over private fortunes
leads to a management of the public funds, and
without striking a blow or using violence, a private
individual finds himself director of the state.
. . . These banking magistrates are liberal as well
as capable. In thirty-seven years the ancestors of
Lorenzo expend si.x hundred and sixty thousand
florins in works of charity and of public utility.
Lorenzo himself is a citizen of the antique stamp,
almost a Pericles, capable of rushing into the arms
of his enemy, the king of Naples, in order to avert,
through personal seductions and eloquence, a
war which menaces the safety of his country.
His private fortune is a sort of puljlic treasury,
and his palace a second hotel-de-ville. He en-
tertains the learned, aids them with his purse,
makes friends of them, corresponds with them,
defrays the expenses of editions of their works,
purchases manuscripts, statues and medals, pat-
ronizes promising young artists, opens to them
his gardens, his collections, his house and his
table, and with that cordial familiarity and that
openness, sincerity and simplicity of heart which
place the protected on a footing of equality
with the protector as man to man and not as
an inferior in relation to a superior. This is the
representative man whom his contemporaries all
accept as the accomplished man of the century,
no longer a Farinata or an Alighieri of ancient
Florence, a spirit rigid, exalted and militant to
its utmost capacity, but a balanced, moderate
and cultivated genius, one who, through the
genial sway of his serene and beneficent intellect,
binds up into one sheaf all talents and all beauties.
It is a pleasure to see them expanding around
him. On the one hand writers are restoring and,
on the other, constructing. From the time of
Petrarch Greek and Latin manuscripts are sought
for, and now they are to be exhumed in the con-
vents of Italy, Switzerland, Germany and France.
They are deciphered and restored with the aid of
the savants of Constantinople. A decade of
Livy or a treatise by Cicero, is a precious gift
solicited by princes; some learned man passes
ten years of travel in ransacking distant libraries
in order to find a lost book of Tacitus, while the
sixteen authors rescued from oblivion by the
Poggios are counted as so many titles to immor-
tal fame. . . . Style again becomes noble and
at the same time clear, and the health, joy and
serenity diffused through antique life re-enters
the human mind with the harmonious propor-
tions of language aud the measured graces of
diction. From refined language they pass to
vulgar language, and the Italian is born by the
side of the Latin. . . . Here in the restored
paganism, shines out epicurean gaity, a deter-
mination to enjoy at any and all hours, and that
instinct for pleasure which a grave philosophy
and political sobriety had thus far tempered and
restrained. With Pulci, Berni, Bibiena, Ariosto,
Bandelli, Aretino, and so many others, we soon
see the advent of voluptuous debauchery and
open skepticism, and later a cynical unbounded
licentiousness. These joyous and refined civiliza-
tions based on a worship of pleasure and intel-
lectuality — Greece of the fourth centur}^, Pro-
vence of the twelfth, and Italy of the sixteenth
— were not enduring. Man in these lacks some
checks. After sudden outbursts of genius and
creativeness he wanders away in the direction of
license and egotism; the degenerate artist and
thinker makes room for the sophist and the dilet-
tant. But in this transient brilliancy his beauty
was charming. ... It is in this world, again
become pagan, that painting revives, and the
new tastes she is to gratify show beforehand the
road she is to follow ; henceforth she is to decorate
the houses of rich merchants who love antiquity
and who desire to live daintily." — H. A. Taine,
Italy, Floreric-e and Venice, hk. 3, ch. 2.
Also in : A. von Reumont, Lorenzo de' Medici.
— AV. Roscoe, Life of Lorenzo de' Medici.- — F.-T.
Perrens, Hist, of Florence, 1434^1531, bk. 2, ch.
2-6.
A. D. 1490-1498. — The preaching of Savona-
rola. — The coming of Charles VIII. of France,
and expulsion of the Medici. — The great re-
ligious revival and Christianization of the
Comraonvsrealth. — Conflict with the Church
and fall of Savonarola. — Girolamo, or Jerome
Savonarola, a Dominican monk, born at Ferrara
in 1452, educated to be a physician, but led by
early disgust with the world to renounce his in-
tended profession and give himself to the religous
life, was sent to the convent of St. JIark, in
Florence, in 1490, when he had reached the age
of 87. " He began his career as a reader and
lecturer, and his lectures, though only intended
for novices, drew a large audience. He then
lectured in the garden of the cloister, under a
large rosebush, where many Intellectual men
came from the city to hear him. At length he
began to preach in the Church of St. Mark's, and
117;
FLORENCE, 1490-1498.
Savonarola.
FLORENCE, 1490-1498.
his subject was the Apocalypse, out of which he
predicted the restoration of the Church in Italy,
which he declared God would bring about by a
severe visitation. Its influence upon his hearers
was overpowering; there was no room in the
church for the brethren; his fame spread abroad,
and he was next appointed to preach the sermons
in the cathedral. . . . Amid the luxurious,
tcsthetic, semi-pagan life of Florence, in the ears
of the rich citizens, the licentious youth, the
learned Platonists, he denounced the revival of
paganism, the corruptions of the Church, the
ignorance and consequent slavery of the people,
and declared that God would visit Italy with
some terrible punishment, and that it would
soon come. He spoke severe words about the
priests, declared to the people that the Scriptures
were the only guides to salvation ; that salvation
did not come from external works, as the Church
taught, but from faith in Christ, from giving up
the heart to Him, and if He forgave sin, there
was no need for any other absolution. Scarcely
had he been a year in Florence when he was made
prior of the monastery. There was a custom in
vogue, a relic of the old times, for every new
prior to go to the king or ruler and ask his favour.
This homage was then due to Lorenzo di Medici,
but Savonarola declared he would never submit
to It, saying — 'From whom have I received my
office, from God or Lorenzo ? Let us pray for
grace to the Highest.' Lorenzo passed over this
slight, being anxious to acquire the friendship
of one whom he clearly saw would exert great
influence over the Florentines. Burlaraaclii, his
contemporary biographer, tells us that Lorenzo
tried all kinds of plans to win the friendship of
Savonarola : he attended the church of St. Mark ;
listened to his sermons ; gave large sums of money
to him for the poor ; loitered in the garden to at-
tract his attention — but with little success. Sa-
vonarola treated him with respect, gave his money
away to the poor, but avoided him and denounced
him. Another plan was tried : five distinguished
men waited on Savonarola, and begged him to
spare such elevated persons in his sermons, to
treat more of generalities, and not to foretell the
future. They received a prophetic answer: 'Go
tell your master, Lorenzo, to repent of his sins,
or God will punish him and his. Does he threaten
me with banishment ? Well, I am but a stranger,
and he is the first citizen in Florence, but let him
know that I shall remain and he must soon de-
part ! ' What happened shortly after caused the
people to begin to regard Savonarola as a prophet,
and won him that terrible fame which caused his
downfall. . . . Lorenzo died on the 8th April,
1493, and from that time Savonarola becomes
more prominent. He directed his exertions to
the accomplishment of three objects — the refor-
mation of his monastery, the reformation of the
Florentine State, and the reformation of the
Church. He changed the whole character of his
monastery. . . . Then he proceeded to State
matters, and in this step we come to the problem
of his life — was he a prophet or a fanatic 1 Let
the facts speak for themselves. Lorenzo was
succeeded by his son Pietro, who was vastly in-
ferior to his father in learning and statesmanship.
His only idea appears to have been a desire to
imite Florence and Naples into one principality;
this created for him many enemies, and men be-
gan to fancy that the great house of Medici
would terminate with him. So, it appears,
thought Savonarola, and announced the fact at
first privately amongst his friends; in a short
time, however, he began to prophecy their down-
fall publicly. During the years 1493 and 1494,
he was actively engaged in preaching. In Ad-
vent of the former year, he began his thirteea
sermons upon Noah's Ark. In 1493 he preached
the Lent sermons at Bologna, and upon his return
he began preaching in the cathedral. In these
sermons he predicted the approaching fall of the
State to the astonishment of all his hearers, who
had not the slightest apprehension of danger:
' The Lord has declared that His sword shall
come upon the land swiftly and soon.' This was
the burden of a sermon preached on Advent
Sunday, 1493. At the close of 1493, and as the
new year approached, he spoke out more plainly
and definitely. He declared that one should
come over the Alps who was called, like Cyrus, of
whom Jeremiah wrote ; and he should, sword in
hand, wreak vengeance upon the tyrants of Italy.
. . . His preaching had always exerted a mar-
vellous influence upon people, as we shall here-
after note, but they could not understand the
cause of these predictions. The city was at
peace; gay and joyous as usual, and no fear was
entertained; but towards the end of the year
came the fulfilment. Charles VIII., King of
France, called into Italy by Duke Ludovico of
Milan, came over the Alps with an immense
army, took Naples, and advanced on Florence.
The expulsion of the Medici from Florence soon
followed. Pietro, being captured, signed an
agreement to deliver up all his strongholds to
Charles VIII., and to pay him 300,000 ducats
[see Italy: A. D. 1494-1496]. The utmost in-
dignation seized the Florentines when they heard
of this treaty. The Signori sent heralds to
Charles, to negociate for milder terms, and their
chief was Savonarola, who addressed the King
like a prophet, begged him to take pity on Italy,
and save her. His words had the desired eiiect.
Charles made more easy terms, and left it to the
Florentine people to settle their own State. In
the meantime Pietro returned, but he found
Florence in the greatest excitement — the royal
palace was closed ; stones were thrown at him ;
he summoned his guards, but the people took to
arms, and he was compelled to fly to his brothers
Giovanni and Giuliauo. The Signori declared
them to be traitors, and set a price upon their
heads. Their palace and its treasures fell into
the hands of the people. The friends of the
Medici, however, were not all extinct; and as a
discussion arose which was likely to lead to a
struggle, Savonarola summoned the people to
meet under the dome of St. Mark. ... In
fact, the formation of the new State fell upon
Savonarola, for the people looked up to him as
an inspired prophet. He proposed that 3,300
citizens should form themselves into a general
council. Then they drew lots for a third part,
who for six months were to act together as an
executive body and represent the general coun-
cil, another one-third for the next three months,
and so on ; so that every citizen had his turn in
the council every eighteen months. They ulti-
mately found it convenient to reduce the number
to 80 — in fact, Savonarola's Democracy was rap-
idly becoming oligarchic. Each of these 80 rep-
resentatives was to be 40 years of age; they
voted with black and white beans, six being a
legal majority. But the Chief of the State was
1174
FLORENCE, 1490-1498.
Savonarola.
FLORENCE, 1498-1500.
to be Christ ; He was to be the new monarch.
His next step was to induce them to proclaim a
general amnesty, in which he succeeded only
through vigorously preaching to them that for-
giveness was sweeter than vengeance — that free-
dom and peace were more loving than strife and
hatred. ... He was now at the height of his
power ; his voice ruled the State ; he is the only
instance in Europe of a monk openly leading a
republic. The people regarded him as something
more than human : they knew of his nights spent
in prayer; of his long fasts; of his unbounded
charity. . . . Few preachers ever exerted such
influence upon the minds of crowds, such a
vitalizing influence ; he changed the whole char-
acter of Florentine society. Libertines abandoned
their vices ; the theatres and taverns were empty ;
there was no card playing, nor dice throwing;
the love of fasting grew so general, that meat
could not be sold ; the city of Florence was God's
city, and its government a Theocracy. There
was a custom in Florence, during Carnival time,
for the children to go from house to house and
bid people give up their cherished pleasures;
and so great was the enthusiasm at this period
that people gave up their cards, their dice and
backgammon boards, the ladies their perfumed
waters, veils, paint-pots, false hair, musical in-
struments, harps, lutes, licentious tales, especi-
ally those of Boccaccio, dream books, romances,
and popular songs. All this booty was gathered
together in a heap in the market place, the people
assembled, the Signori took their places, and
children clothed in white, with olive branches on
their heads, received from them the burning
torches, and set fire to the pile amid the blast of
trumpets and chant of psalms, which were con-
tinued till the whole was consumed. . . . His
fame had now reached other countries ; foreign-
ers visited Florence solely for the purpose of see-
ing and hearing him. The Sultan of Turkey
allowed his sermons to be translated and circu-
lated in his dominions. But in the midst of his
prosperity his enemies were not idle : as he pro-
gressed their jealousy increased: his preaching
displeased them, terrified them, and amongst
these the most bitter and virulent were the young
sons of the upper classes: they called his follow-
ers ' howlers ' (Piagnoni), and so raged against
him that they gained the name, now immortalised
in history, of the Arrabiati (the furies): this
party was increased by the old friends of the
Medici, who called him a rebel and leader of the
lower classes. Dolfo Spini, a young man of
position and wealth, commanded this party, and
used every effort to destroy the reputation of
Savonarola, to incite the people against him, and
to ruin him. They bore the name of ' Compag-
nacci ' ; they wrote satires about the Piagnoni ;
they circulated slanders about the monk who was
making Florence the laughing stock of Europe :
but Savonarola went on his way indifferent to
the signs already manifesting themselves amongst
his countrymen, ever most sensitive to ridicule.
He also strove to reform the Church; he deline-
ated the Apostolic Church as a model upon which
he would build up that of Florence. . . . By
this time, the intelligence of his doings, and the
gist of his preaching and writing, which had
been carefully transmitted to Rome by his ene-
mies, began to attract the attention of the Pope,
Alexander VI. , who tried what had frequently
proved an infallible remedy, and offered Savona-
rola a Cardinal's hat, which he at once refused.
He was then invited to Rome, but thought it
prudent to excuse himself. When the contro-
versy between him and the Pope appeared to ap-
proach a crisis, Savonarola took a step which
somewhat hurried the catastrophe. He wrote to
the Kings of France and Spain, and the Emperor
of Germany, to call a General Council to take
into consideration the Reform of the Church.
One of these letters reached the Pope, through a
spy of Duke Ludovico Moro, of Milan, whom
Savonarola had denounced. The result was the
issue of a Breve (October, 1496), which forbade
him to preach. 'The Pope then ordered the Con-
gregation of St. Mark to be broken up and amal-
gamated with another. For a time Savonarola,
at the advice of his friends, remained quiet; but
at this last step, to break up the institution he
had established, he was aroused to action. He
denounced Rome as the source of all the poison
which was undermining the constitution of the
Church; declared that its evil fame stunk in
men's nostrils. The Pope then applied to the
Signori to deliver up this enemy of the Church,
but to no purpose. The Franciscans were ordered
to preach against him, but they made no impres-
sion. Then came the last thunderbolt ; a Bann
was issued (12th May, 1497), which was an-
nounced by the Franciscans. During the time
of his suspension and his excommunication,
many things happened which tended to his down-
fall, although his friends gathered round him:
the rapid change of ministry brought in turn
friends of the Medici to the helm; they intro-
duced the young Compagnacci into the Council,
and gradually his enemies were increasing in the
Government to a strong party." The fickle
Florentine mob now took sides with them against
the monk whom it had recently adored, and on
the 7th of April, 1498, in the midst of a raging
tumult, Savonarola was taken into custody by
the Signori of the city. With the assent of the
Pope, he was subjected seven times to torture
upon the rack, to force from him a recantation
of all that he had taught and preached, and on
the 23d of May he was hanged and burned,
in company with two of his disciples. — O. T.
Hill, Introd. to Savonarola's " Triumph of the
Oross."
Also m: P. Villari, Hist, of Savonarola and
Ms Times. — Mrs. Oliphant, The Makers of Flor-
ence. — H. H. Milman, Savotuirola, Erasynus, and
other Essays. — George Eliot, Bomola. — H. Grimm,
Life of Michael Angela, v. 1, ch. Z-^.
A. D. 1494-1509. — The French deliverance
of Pisa and the long war of reconquest. See
Piba: a. D. 1494-1509.
A. D. 1498-1500. — Threatened by the Med-
ici, on one side, and Caesar Borgia on the
other. — An new division of parties. — "After
the death of Savonarola things changed with such
a degree of rapidity that the Arrabbiati had not
time to consider in what manner they could re-
strict the government; but they soon became
convinced that the only salvation for the Repub-
lic was to adopt the course which had been rec-
ommended by the Friar. Piero and Giuliano dei
Medici were in fact already in the neighbourhood
of Florence, supported by a powerful Venetian
army. It became, therefore, absolutely necessary
for the Arrabbiati to unite with the Piagnoni, in
order to defend themselves against so many dan-
gers and so many enemies. By great good fortune.
1175
FLORENCE, 1498-1500.
Mtdicean Tyranny.
FLORENCE, 1503-1569.
the Duke of Milan, from jealousy of the Vene-
tians, came to their assistance to ward off the
danger ; but who could trust to his friendship —
who could place any reliance on his fidelity 1
As to Alexander Borgia, he who had held out
such great hopes, and had made so many prom-
ises, in order to get Savonarola put to death, no
sooner was his object attained than he gave full
sway to his unbridled passions. It seemed as if
the death of the poor Friar had released both the
Pope and his son, Duke Valentino, from all re-
straints upon their lusts and ambition. The Pope
formed intimate alliances with Turks and Jews,
a thing hitherto unheard of. He, in one year, set
up twelve cardinals' hats for sale. The history
of the incests and murders of the family of Bor-
gia is too well known to render it necessary for
us to enter into any detailed account of them
here. The great ob j ect of the Pope was to form
a State for his son iu the Romagua; and so great
was the ambition of Duke Valentino, that he
contemplated extending his power over the whole
of Italy, Tuscany being the first part he meant
to seize upon. With that view he was always
endeavouring to create new dangers to the Re-
public ; at one time he caused Arezzo to rise
against it ; at another time he threatened to bring
back Piero de' Medici ; and he was continually
ravaging their territory. The consequence was,
that the Florentines were obliged to grant him
an annual subsidy of 36,000 ducats, under the
name of condotta (military pay) ; but even that
did not restrain him from every now and then,
under various pretexts, overrunning and laying
waste their territory. Thus did Alexander Bor-
gia fulfil those promises to the Republic by which
they had been induced to murder Savonarola.
The Arrabbiati were at length convinced that to
defend themselves against the IVIedici and Borgia,
their only course was to cultivate the alliance
with France, and unite in good faith with the
Piagnoni. Thus they completely adopted the
line of policy which Savonarola had advised ; and
the consequence was, that their affairs got order
and their exertions were attended with a success
far beyond what could have been anticipated."
— P. Villari, Hist, of Savonarola and of 7ns Times,
«. 2, conclusion. — "A new division of parties
may be said to have taken place under the three
denominations of ' Palleschi ' [a name derived
from the watchword of the Mediceans, ' palle,
palle,' which alluded to the well-known balls in
the coat of arms of the Medici family], ' Otti-
mati,' and 'Popolani.' The first . . . were for
the Medici and themselves. . . . The ' Ottomati '
were in eager search for a sort of visionary gov-
ernment where a few of the noblest blood, the
most illustrious connexions and the greatest
riches, were to rule Florence without any regard
to the Jledici. . . . The Popolani, who formed
the great majority, loved civic liberty, therefore
were constantly watching the Medici and other
potent and ambitious men." — H. E. Napier, Flnr-
entine History, hk. 2, ch. 8 (1>. 4).
A. D. 1502-1569. — Ten years under Piero
Soderini. — Restoration of the Medici and their
second expulsion. — Siege of the city by the
imperial army. — Final surrender to Medicean
tyranny. — Creation of the Grand Duchy of
Tuscany. — "In 1502, it was decreed that the
Gonfalonier should hold office for life — should
be in fact a Doge. To tliis important post of
permanent president Piero Soderini was ap-
pointed ; and in his hands were placed the chief
affairs of the republic. . . . During the ten
years which elapsed between 1502 and 1513,
Piero Soderini administered Florence with an out-
ward show of great prosperity. He regained
Pisa, and maintained an honourable foreign
policy in the midst of the wars stirred up by the
League of Cambray. Meanwhile the young
princes of the house of Medici had grown to
manhood in exile. The Cardinal Giovanni was
37 in 1512. His brother Giuliano was 33. Both
of these men were better fitted than their brother
Piero to fight the battles of the family. Gio-
vanni, in particular, had inherited no small por-
tion of the Medicean craft. During the troubled
reign of Julius II. he kept very quiet, cementing
his connection with powerful men in Rome, but
making no effort to regain his hold on Florence.
Now the moment for striking a decisive blow had
come. After the battle of Ravenna in 1512, the
French were driven out of Italy, and the Sforzas
returned to Milan [see Italy: A. D. 1510-1513];
the Spanish troops, under the Viceroy Cardona,
remained masters of the coimtry. Following
the camp of these Spaniards, Giovanni de' Medici
entered Tuscany in August, and caused the res-
toration of the Medici to be announced in Flor-
ence. The people, assembled by Soderini, re-
solved to resist to the uttermost. . . . Yet their
courage failed on August 29th, when news reached
them of the capture and the sack of Prato.
Prato is a sunny little city a few miles distant
from the walls of Florence, famous for the
beauty of its women, the richness of its gardens,
and the grace of its buildings. Into this gem of
cities the savage soldiery of Spain marched in
the bright autumnal weather, and turned the
jjaradise into a hell. It is even now impossible
to read of what they did in Prato without shud-
dering. Cruelty and lust, sordid greed for gold,
and cold delight in bloodshed, could go no
further. Giovanni de' Medici, by nature mild
and voluptuous, averse to violence of all kinds,
had to smile approval, while the Spanish Viceroy
knocked thus with mailed hand for him at the
door of Florence. The Florentines were para-
l3'sed with terror. They deposed Soderini and
received the Medici. Giovanni and Giuliano
entered their devastated palace in the Via Larga,
abolished the Grand Council, and dealt with the
republic as they listed. ... It is not likely that
they would have succeeded in maintaining their
authority — for they were poor and ill-supported
by friends outside the city — except for one most
lucky circumstance: that was the election of
Giovanni de' Medici to the Papacy in 1513. The
creation of Leo X. spread satisfaction through-
out Ital_y. . . . Florence shared in the general
rejoicing. ... It seemed as though the Repub-
lic, swayed by him, might make herself the first
city in Italy, and restore the glories of her Guelf
ascendency upon the platform of Renaissance
statecraft. There was now no overt opposition to
the Medici in Florence. How to govern the city
from Rome, and how to advance the fortunes of
his brother Giuliano and his nephew Lorenzo
(Piero's son, a young man of 21), occupied the
Pope's most serious attention. For Lorenzo, Leo
obtained the Duchy of Urbino and the hand of a
French princess. Giuliano was named Gonfa-
lonier of the Church. He also received the French
title of Duke of Nemours and the hand of Fili-
berta. Princess of Savoy. . . . Giulio, the Pope's
1176
FLORENCE, 1503-1569.
FLORIDA, 153S-1542.
bastard cousin, was made cardinal. ... To Lor-
enzo, Duke of Urbino, the titular head of the
family, was committed the government of Flor-
ence. . . . Florence now for the first time saw a
regular court establislied in her midst, with a
prince, who, though he bore a foreign title, was
in fact her master. The joyous days of Lorenzo
the Magnificent returned. . . . But this pros-
perity was no less brief than it was brilliant. A
few years sufficed to sweep off all the chiefs of
the great house. Giuliauo died in 1516, leaving
only a bastard son, Ippolito. Lorenzo died in
1519, leaving a bastard sou, Alessandro, and a
daughter, six days old, who lived to be the
Queen of France. Leo died in 1521. There re-
mained now no legitimate male descendants from
the stock of Cosimo. The honours and preten-
sions of the Medici devolved upon three bastards,
— on the Cardinal Giulio, and the two boys,
Alessandro and Ippolito. Of these, Alessandro
was a mulatto, his mother having been a Moorish
slave in the Palace of Urbino ; and whether his
father was Giulio, or Giuliano, or a base groom,
was not known for certain. To such extremities
were the Medici reduced. . . . Giulio de' Medici
was left in 1531 to administer the State of Flor-
ence single-handed. He was archbishop, and he
resided in the city, holding it with the grasp of
an absolute ruler. . . . In 1533, the Pope, Adrian
VI. , expired after a short papacy, from which
he gained no honour and Italy no profit. Giulio
hurried to Rome, and, by the clever use of his
large influence, caused himself to be elected with
the title of Clement VIL" Then followed the
strife of France and Spain — of Francis I. and
Charles V. — for the possession of Italy, and the
barbarous sack of Rome in 1537 (see Italy:
A. D. 1533-1537, 1537, and 1537-1529). "When
the Florentines knew what was happening in
Rome, they rose and forced the Cardinal Pas-
serini [whom the Pope had appointed to act as
bis vicegerent in the government of Florence] to
depart with the Medicean bastards from the city.
. . . The whole male population was enrolled in a
militia. The Grand Council was reformed, and
the republic was restored upon the basis of 1495.
Niccolo Capponi was elected Gonfalonier. The
name of Christ was again registered as chief of
the commonwealth — to such an extent did the
memory of Savonarola still sway the popular
imagination. The new State hastened to form
an alliance with France, and Malatesta Baglionl
was chosen as military Commander-in-Chief.
Meanwhile the city armed itself for siege —
Michel Angelo Buonarroti and Francesco da San
Gallo undertaking the construction of new forts
and ramparts. These measures were adopted
with sudden decision, because it was soon known
that Clement had made peace with the Emperor,
and that the army which had sacked Rome was
going to be marched on Florence. . . . On Septem-
ber 4 [1539], the Prince of Orange appeared before
the walls, and opened the memorable siege. It
lasted eight months, at the end of which time,
betrayed by their generals, divided among them-
selves, and worn out with delays, the Florentines
capitulated. . . . The long yoke of the Medici
had undermined the character of the Florentines.
This, their last glorious struggle for liberty, was
but a flash in the pan — a final flare up of the
dying lamp. . . . What remains of Florentine
history may be briefly told. Clement, now the
undisputed arbiter of power and honour in the
city, chose Alessandro de' Medici to be prince.
Alessandro was created Duke of Civitil di Penna,
and married to a natural daughter of Charles V.
Ippolito was made a cardinal." Ippolito was
subsequently poisoned by Alessandro, and Ales-
sandro was murdered by another kinsman, who
suffered assassination in his turn. ' ' When Ales-
sandro was killed in 1539, Clement had himself
been dead five years. Thus the whole posterity
of Cosimo de' Medici, with the exception of
Catherine, Queen of Franco [daughter of Lor-
enzo, Duke of Urbino, the son of Piero de'
Medici], was utterly extinguished. But the
Medici had struck root so firmly in the State, and
had so remodelled it upon the type of tyranny,
that the Florentines were no longer able to do
without them. The chiefs of the Ottimati se-
lected Cosimo," a descendant from Lorenzo,
brother of the Cosimo who founded the power
of the House. "He it was who obtained [1569]
the title of Grand Duke of Tuscany from the
Pope — a title confirmed by the Emperor, forti-
fied by Austrian alliances, and transmitted
through his heirs to the present century." — J. A.
Symonds, Sketches and studies in Italy, ch. 5
{Florence and the Medici).
Also in: H. Grimm, Life of MicJiael Angelo,
ch. 8-15 (v. 1-3).— T. A. TroUope, Sist. of the
Commomoealth of Florence, bk. 9, ch. 10, bk. 10
(v. 4). — H. E. Napier, Florentine History, v. 4-5.
— W. Roscoe, Life and Pontificate of Leo X.,ch. 9-
23 (v. 1-2). — P. Villari, Machiavelli and his Times,
V. 3-1.
A. D. 1803. — ■ Becomes the capital of the
kingdom of Etruria. See Gekmany: A. D.
1801-1803.
A. D. 1865. — Made temporarily the capital
of the kingdom of Italy. See Italt: A. D.
1862-1866.
FLORES. See Malay Aughipelago.
FLORIDA: The aboriginal inhabitants.
See American Aborigines ; Apalaciies ; JIdsk-
HOGEAN FaIULY; SeMINOLES; TiMUQDANAN
Family.
A. D. 1512. — Discovery and Naming by
Ponce de Leon. See America: A. D. 1513.
A. D. 1528-1542. — The expeditions of Nar-
vaez and Hernando de Soto. — Wide Spanish
application of the name Florida. — "The voy-
ages of Garay [1519-1533] and Vasquez de Ayl-
ion [1530-1536] threw new light on the discoveries
of Ponce, and the general outline of the coasts of
Florida became known to the Spaniards. Mean-
while, Cortes had conquered Mexico, and the fame
of that iniquitous but magnificent exploit rang
through all Spain. Many an impatient cavalier
burned to achieve a kindred fortune. To the ex-
cited fancy of the Spaniards the unknown laud of
Florida seemed the seat of surpassing wealth, and
Pamphilo de Narvaez essayed to possess himself
of its fancied treasures. Landing on its shores
[1528], and proclaiming destruction to the In-
dians unless they acknowledged the sovereignty
of the Pope and the Emperor, he advanced into
the forests with 300 men. Nothing could exceed
their sufferings. Nowhere could they find the
gold they came to seek. The village of Appa-
lache, where they hoped to gain a rich booty,
offered nothing but a few mean wigwams. The
horses gave out and the famished soldiers fed
1177
FLORIDA, 1538-1543.
Hernando
de Soto's Conquest.
FLORIDA, 1563-1563.
upon their flesh. The men sickened, and the
Indians unceasingly harassed their march. At
length, after 280 leagues of wandering, they
found themselves on the northern shore of the
Gulf of Mexico, and desperately put to sea in
such crazy boats as their skill and means could
construct. Cold, disease, famine, thirst, and the
fury of the waves, melted them away. Narvaez
himself perished, and of his wretched followers
no more than four escaped, reaching by land,
after years of vicissitude, the Christian settle-
ments of New Spain. . . . Cabega de Vaca was
one of the four who escaped, and, after living
for years among the tribes of Mississippi, crossed
the River Mississippi near Memphis, journeyed
westward by the waters of the Arkansas and Red
River to New Mexico and Chihuahua, thence to
Cinaloa on the Gulf of California, and thence to
Mexico. The narrative is one of the most re-
markable of the early relations. . . . The inte-
rior of the vast country then comprehended under
the name of Florida still remained unexplored.
. . . Hernando de Soto . . . companion of Pi-
zarro in the conquest of Peru . . . asked and
obtained permission [1537] to conquer Florida.
While this design was in agitation, Cabefa de
Vaca, one of those who had survived the expe-
dition of Narvaez, appeared in Spain, and for
purposes of his own spread abroad the mischiev-
ous falsehood that Florida was the richest coun-
try yet discovered. De Soto's plans were em-
braced with enthusiasm. Nobles and gentlemen
contended for the privilege of joining his stan-
dard ; and, setting sail with an ample armament,
he landed [May, 1539] at the Bay of Espiritu
Santo, now Tampa Bay, in Florida, with 620
chosen men, a band as gallant and well appointed,
as eager in purpose and audacious in hope, as
ever trod the shores of the New World. . . . The
adventurers began their march. Their story has
been often told. For month after month and
year after year, the procession of priests and
cavaliers, cross-bowmen, arquebusiers, and In-
dian captives laden with the baggage, still wan-
dered on through wild and boundless wastes,
lured hither and thither by the ignis-fatuus of
their hopes. They traversed great portions of
Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi, everywhere
inflicting and enduring misery, but never ap-
proaching their phantom El Dorado. At length,
in the third year of their journeying, they
reached the banks of the Mississippi, 133 years
before its second [or third ?] discovery by Mar-
quette. . . . The Spaniards crossed over at a
point above the mouth of the Arkansas. They
advanced westward, but found no treasures,^
nothing indeed but hardships, and an Indian
enemy, furious, writes one of their officers, 'as
mad dogs.' They heard of a country towards
the north where maize could not be cultivated
because the vast herds of wild cattle devoured it.
They penetrated so far that they entered the
range of the roving prairie-tribes. . . . Finding
neither gold nor the South Sea, for both of which
they had hoped, they returned to the banks of
the Mississippi. De Soto . . . fell into deep
dejection, followed by an attack of fever, and
soon after died miserably [May 31, 1542]. To
preserve his body from the Indians his followers
sank it at midnight in the river, and the sullen
waters of the Mississippi buried his ambition and
his hopes. The adventurers were now, with few
exceptions, disgusted with the enterprise, and
longed only to escape from the scene of their
miseries. After a vain attempt to reach Mexico
by land, they again turned back to the Jlissis-
sippi, and labored, with all the resources which
their desperate necessity could suggest, to con-
struct vessels in which they might make their
way to some Christian settlement. . . . Seven
brigantiues were finished and launched ; and,
trusting their lives on board these frail vessels,
they descended the Mississippi, running the
gauntlet between hostile tribes who fiercely at-
tacked them. Reaching the Gulf, though not
without the loss of eleven of their number, they '
made sail for the Spanish settlement on the River
Panuco, where they arrived safely, and where
the inhabitants met them with a cordial welcome.
Three hundred and eleven men thus escaped
with life, leaving behind them the bones of their
comrades, strewn broadcast through the wilder-
ness. De Soto's fate proved an insufficient warn-
ing, for those were still found who begged a
fresh commission for the conquest of Florida;
but the Emperor would not hear them. A more
pacific enterprise was undertaken by Cancello
[or Cancer], a Dominican monk, who with several
brother-ecclesiastics undertook to convert the
natives to the true faith, but was murdered in
the attempt. . . . Not a Spaniard had yet gained
foothold in Florida. That name, as the Spaniards
of that day understood it, comprehended the
whole country extending from the Atlantic on
the east to the longitude of New Mexico on the
west, and from the Gulf of Mexico and the River
of Palms indefinitely northward towards the
polar Sea. This vast territory was claimed by
Spain in right of the discoveries of Columbus,
the grant of the Pope, and the various expedi-
tions mentioned above. England claimed it in
right of the discoveries of Cabot, while France
could advance no better title than might be de-
rived from the voyage of Verrazano and vague
traditions of earlier visits of Breton adventurers."
— F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in ihe J\'ew
World, ch. 1.
Also ln: T. Irving, Conquest of Florida by
De Soto. — Discovery and Conquest of Terra Flor-
ida ; written by a Gentleman of Elvas (Hakliiyt
Soe.). — J. W. Monette, Discovery and Settlement
of the Mississippi Valley, ch. 1-4. — J. G. Shea,
Ancient Florida {Narrative and Critical Hist, of
Am., v. 3, ch. 4).
A. D. 1562-1563. — First colonizing; attempt
of the French Huguenots. — About the middle
of the 16th century, certain of the Protestants of
France began to turn their thoughts to the New
World as a possible place of refuge from the per-
secutions they were suffering at home. "Some
of the French sea-ports became strong-holds of
the Huguenots. Their most prominent sup-
porter, Coligny, was high admiral of France.
These Huguenots looked toward the new coun-
tries as the proper field in which to secure a re-
treat from persecution, and to found a new re-
ligious commonwealth. Probablj' many of the
French ' corsarios ' following the track of the
Portuguese and Spaniards to the West Indies
and the coasts of Brazil, were Huguenots. . . .
The first scheme for a Protestant colony in the
new world was suggested by Admiral Coligny in
1554, and intended for the coast of Brazil, to
which an expedition, under Durand de Villegagn-
on, was sent with ships and colonists. This expe-
dition arrived at the Bay of Riodc Janeiro iu 1555
1178
FLORIDA, 1562-1563.
Huguenot
Colon ization.
FLORIDA, 1564-1565.
and founded there the first European settlement.
It was followed the next year by another expedi-
tion. But the whole enterprise came to an end
by divisions among the colonists, occasioned by
the treacherous, despotic, and cruel proceedings
of its commander, a reputed Catholic. The col-
ony was finally subverted by the Portuguese,
who, in 1560, sent out an armament against it,
and took possession of the Bay of Rio de Janeiro.
. . . After the unfortunate end of the French en-
terprise to South America, Admiral Coligny, who
may be styled the Raleigh of France, turned his
attention to the eastern shores of North America ;
the whole of which had become known in France
from the voyage of Yerrazano, and the French
expeditions to Canada and the Banks of New-
foundland." In Februarj', 1563, an expedition,
fitted out by Coligny, sailed from Havre de Grace,
under Jean Ribault, with Rene de Laudonnifere
forming one of the company. Ribault arrived on
the Florida coast in the neighborhood of the
present harbor of St. Augustine, and thence
sailed north. ' ' At last, in about 33° 30' N. he
found an excellent broad and deep harbor, which
he named Port Royal, which probably is the
present Broad River, or Port Royal entrance.
. . . He found this port and the surrounding
country so advantageous and of such ' singular
beauty," that he resolved to leave here a part of
his men in a small fort. ... A pillar with the
arms of France was therefore erected, and a fort
constructed, furnished with cannon, ammunition,
and provisions, and named ' Chariest ort. ' Thirty
volunteers were placed in it, and it became the
second European settlement ever attempted upon
the east coast of the United States. Its position
was probably not far from the site of the present
town of Beaufort, on Port Royal River. Having
accomplished this, and made a certain captain,
Albert de la Pieria, ' a soldier of great experience, '
commander of Charlesfort, he took leave of his
countrymen, and left Port Royal on the 11th day
of June," arriving in France on the 20th of July.
"On his arrival in France, Ribault found the
country in a state of great commotion. The
civil war between the Huguenots and the Catho-
lics was raging, and neither the king nor the
admiral had time to listen to Ribault's solicita-
tions, to send relief to the settlers left in ' French
Florida.' Those colonists remained, therefore,
during the remainder of 1562, and the following
■winter, without assistance from France ; and
after many trials and sufferings, they were at last
forced, in 1563, to abandon their settlement and
the new country." Having constructed a ship,
with great difficulty, they put to sea ; but suf-
fered horribly on the tedious voyagej from want
of food and water, until they were rescued by an
English vessel and taken to England. — J. G.
Kohl, Hist, of the Discovery of Maine (Maine
Hist. Soc. Coll., 2d series, v. 1), ch. 11.
Also IN: F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in
tlie New World, ch. 3. — Father Charlevoix, Hist,
of NexD France ; trans, by J. O. Shea, bk. 8 {v. 1).
— T. E. V. Smith, Villegaignon (Am. Soc. of Ch.
Hist., V. 3).
A. D. 1564-1565.— The second Huguenot
colony, and the cry in Spain against it. —
"After the treacherous peace between Charles
IX. and the Huguenots, Coligny renewed his
solicitations for the colonization of Florida. The
king gave consent; in 1564 three ships were con-
ceded for the service ; and Laudonnifire, who, in
the former voyage, had been upon the American
coast, a man of great intelligence, though a sea-
man rather than a soldier, was appointed to lead
forth the colony. ... A voyage of 60 days
brought the fleet, by the way of the Canaries and
the Antilles, to the shores of Florida in June.
The harbor of Port Royal, rendered gloomy by
recollections of misery, was avoided; and, after
searching the coast, and discovering places which
were so full of amenity that melancholy itself
could not but change its humor as it gazed, the
followers of Calvin planted themselves on the
banks of the river Jlay [now called the St. John's],
near St. John's bluff. They sung a psalm of
thanksgiving, and gathered courage from acts of
devotion. The fort now erected was called Caro-
lina. . . . The French were hospitably welcomed
by the natives ; a monument, bearing the arms
of Prance, was crowned with laurels, and its base
encircled with baskets of corn. What need is
there of minutely relating the simple manners of
the red men, the dissensions of rival tribes, the
largesses offered to the strangers to secure their
protection or their alliance, the improvident
prodigality with which careless soldiers wasted
the supplies of food ; the certain approach of
scarcity ; the gifts and the tribute levied from the
Indians by entreaty, menace or force ? By de-
grees the confidence of the red men was ex-
hausted; they had welcomed powerful guests,
who promised to become their benefactors, and
who now robbed their humble granaries. But
the worst evil in the new settlement was the
character of the emigrants. Though patriotism
and religious enthusiasm had prompted the ex-
pedition, the inferior class of the colonists was a
motley group of dissolute men. Mutinies were
frequent. The men were mad with the passion
for sudden wealth; and in December a party,
under the pretence of desiring to escape from
famine, compelled LaudonniSre to sign an order
permitting their embarkation for New Spain.
No sooner were they possessed of this apparent
sanction of the chief than they began a career of
piracy against the Spaniards. Tlie act of crime
and temerity was soon avenged. The pirate
vessel was taken, and most of the men disposed
of as prisoners or slaves. The few that escaped
In a boat sought shelter at Fort Carolina, where
LaudonniSre sentenced the ringleaders to death.
During these events the scarcity became extreme ;
and the friendship of the natives was forfeited
by unprofitable severity. March of 1565 was
gone, and there were no supplies from France ;
April passed away, and the expected recruits
had not arrived ; May brought nothing to sustain
the hopes of the exiles, and they resolved to at-
tempt a return to Europe. In August, Sir John
Hawkins, the slave merchant, arrived from the
"West Indies. He came fresh from the sale of a
cargo of Africans, whom he had kidnapped with
signal ruthlessness ; and he now displayed the
most generous sympathy, not only furnishing a
liberal supply of provisions, but relinquisliing a
vessel from his own fleet. The colony was on
the point of embarking when sails were descried.
Ribault had arrived to assume the command,
bringing with him supplies of every kind, emi-
grants with their families, garden-seeds, imple-
ments of husbandry, and the various kinds of
domestic animals. The French, now wild with
joy, seemed about to acquire a home, and Cal-
vinism to become fixed in the inviting regions of
1179
FLORIDA, 1564-1565.
The Spanish
Massacre.
FLORIDA, 1565.
Florida. But Spain had never abandoned her
claim to that territory, where, if she had not
planted colonies, she had buried many hundreds
of her bravest sons. . . . There had appeared at
the Spanish court a commander well fitted for
reckless acts. Pedro Melendez [or Menendez]
de Aviles . . . had acquired wealth in Spanish
America, which was no school of benevolence,
and his conduct there had provoked an inquiry,
which, after a long arrest, ended in his convic-
tion. . . . Philip II. suggested the conquest and
colonization of Florida ; and in May, 1565, a com-
pact was framed and confirmed by which Melen-
dez, who desired an opportunity to retrieve his
honor, was constituted the hereditary governor
of a territory of almost unlimited extent. On
his part he stipulated, at his own cost, in the
following May, to invade Florida with 500 men ;
to complete its conquest within three years; to
explore its currents and channels, the dangers of
its coasts, and the depth of its havens ; to estab-
lish a colony of at least 500 persons, of whom 100
should be married men; with 12 ecclesiastics,
besides four Jesuits. . . . Meantime, news ar-
rived, as the French writers assert through the
treachery of the court of France, that the Hugue-
nots had made a plantation in Florida, and that
Ribault was preparing to set sail with re-en-
forcements. The cry was raised that the here-
tics must be extirpated; and Melendez readily
obtained the forces which he required." — G.
Bancroft, Sist. of the U. S. {author's last rev.),
pt. 1, ch. 4.
Also in : G. R. Fairbanks, Hist, of Florida, ch.
7-8.— W. 6. Simms, Hist, of S. Carolina, bk. 1.
A. D. 1565.— The Spanish capture of Fort
Caroline and massacre of the Huguenots. —
Founding of St. Augustine. — "The expedi-
tion under jNIenendez consisted of an army of
3,600 soldiers and officers. He sailed straight
for Florida, intending to attack Fort Caroline
with no delay. In fact he sighted the mouth of
the port [Sept. 4, 1565] two months after start-
ing; but, considering the position occupied by
the French ships, he judged it prudent to defer
the attack, and make it, if possible, from the
land. A council of war was held in Fort Caro-
line, presided over by Ribaut. LaudonniSre pro-
posed that, while Ribaut held the fort with the
ships, he, with his old soldiers, who knew the
country well, aided by the Floridans as auxil-
iaries, should engage the Spaniards in tlie woods,
and harass them by perpetual combats in laby-
rinths to which they were wholly unaccustomed.
The advice was good, but it was not followed.
Ribaut proposed to follow the Spanisli fleet with
his own — lighter and more easily handled — fall
on the enemy when the soldiers were all disem-
barked, and, after taking and burning the ships,
to attack the army. In the face of remonstrances
from all the officers, he persisted in this project.
Disaster followed the attempt. A violent gale
arose. Tlie French ships were wrecked upon the
Floridan coast; the men lost their arms, their
powder, and their clothes ; they escaped with their
bare lives. There was no longer the question of
conquering the Spaniards, but of saving them-
selves. The garrison of Caroline consisted of 150
soldiers, of whom 40 were sick. The rest of the
colony was composed of sick and wounded Prot-
estant ministers, workmen, ' roj'al commission-
ers, ' and so forth. Laudonnifcrc was in command.
They awaited the attack for several days, yet the
Spaniards came not. They were wading miser-
ably through the marshes in the forests, under
tropical rains, discouraged, and out of heart."
But when, at length, the exhausted and despair-
ing Spaniards, toiling tlirough the marshes, from
St. Augustine, where they had landed and es-
tablished their settlement, reached the French
fort (Sept. 20), "there was actually no watch on
the ramparts. Three companies of Spaniards
simultaneously rushed from the forest, and at-
tacked the fortress on the south, the west and the
south-west. There was but little resistance from
the surprised garrison. There was hardly time
to grasp a sword. About 20 escaped by flight,
including the Captain, Laudonnifire ; the rest
were every one massacred. None were spared
except women and children under fifteen ; and,
in the first rage of the onslauglit, even these were
murdered with the rest. There still lay in the
port three ships, commanded by Jacques Ribaut,
brother [son] of the unfortunate Governor. One
of these was quickly sent to the bottom by
the cannon of the fort ; the other two cut their
cables, and slipped out of reach into the road-
stead, where they lay, waiting for a favourable
wind, for three days. They picked up the fugi-
tives who had been wandering half-starved in
the woods, and then set sail from this unlucky
land. . . . There remained, however, the little
army, under Ribaut, which had lost most of its
arms in the wreck, and was now wandering along
the Floridan shore. " When Ribaut and his men
reached Fort Caroline and saw the Spanish flag
flying, they turned and retreated southward.
Not many days later, they were intercepted by
Menendez, near St. Augustine, to which post he
had returned. The first party of the French
who came up, 200 in number, and who were in
a starving state, surrendered to the Spaniard, and
laid down their arms. "They were brought
across the river in small companies, and their
hands tied behind their backs. On landing,
they were asked if they were Catholics. Eight
out of the 200 professed allegiance to that
religion; the rest were all Protestants. Men-
endez traced out a line on the ground with his
cane. The prisoners were marched up one
by one to the line; on reaching it, they were
stabbed. Next day, Ribaut arrived with the rest
of the army. The same pourparlers began. But
this time a blacker treachery was adopted." An
officer, sent by Menendez, pledged his honor to
the French that the lives of all should be spared
if they laid down their arms. "It is not clear
how many of the French accepted the conditions.
A certain number refused them, and escaped into
the woods. What is certain is, that Ribaut, with
nearly all his men, were tied back to back, four
together. Those who said they were Catholics,
were set on one side ; the rest were all massacred
as they stood. . . . Outside the circle of the
slaughtered and the slaughterers stood the priest,
Mendoza, encouraging, approving, exhorting the
butchers." — W. Besant, Gaspard de Coligny, ch.
7. — The long dispatch in which Menendez re-
ported his fiendish work to the Spanish king has
been brought to light in the archives at Seville, and
there is this endorsement on it, in the hand-writ-
ing of Philip II. : "Say to him that, as to those
he has killed, he has done well ; and as to those
he has saved, they shall be sent to the galleys."
— F. Parkman, Pioneers of France in the New
World, ch. 7-8.
1180
FLORIDA, 1565.
Revenge of
Dominic de Gourgues.
FLORIDA, 1779-1781.
Also in : C. W. Baird, Hist, of the Huguenot
Emigration to Am., ■c. 1, introd.
A. D. 1567-1568. — The vengeance of Dom-
inic de Gourgues. — "As might have been ex-
pected, all attempts to rouse the French court
into demanding redress were vain. Spain, above
all other nations, knew the arts by which a cor-
rupt court might be swayed, and the same in-
trigues which, fifty years later, sent Raleigh to
the block and well-nigh ended the young colony
of Virginia, now kept France quiet. But though
the court refused to move, an avenger was not
wanting. Dominic de Gourgues had already
known as a prisoner of war the horrors of the
Spanish galleys. Whether he was a Huguenot
is uncertain. Happily in France, as the history
of that and all later ages proved, the religion of
the Catholic did not necessarily deaden the feel-
ings of the patriot. Seldom has there been a
deed of more reckless daring than that which
Dominic de Gourgues now undertook. With the
proceeds of his patrimony he bought three small
ships, manned by eighty sailors and a hundred
men-at-arms. He then obtained a commission as
a slaver on the coast of Guinea, and in the sum-
mer of 1567 set sail. With these paltry resources
he aimed at overthrowing a settlement which had
already destroyed a force of twenty times his
number, and which might have been strengthened
in the interval. . . . To the mass of his followers
he did not reveal the true secret of his voyage
till he had reached the West Indies. Theu he
disclosed his real purpose. His men were of the
same spirit as their leader. Desperate though
the enterprise seemed, De Gourgues' only diffi-
culty was to restrain his followers from undue
haste. Happily for their attempt, they had allies
on whom they had not reckoned. The tickle
savages had at first welcomed the Spaniards, but
the tyranny of the new comers soon wrought a
change, and the Spaniards in Florida, like the
Spaniards in every part of the New World, were
looked on as hateful tyrants. So when De Gour-
gues landed he at once found a ready body of
■ allies. . . . Three days were spent in making
1 ready, and then De Gourgues, with a liundred
and si.xty of his own men and his Indian allies,
marched against the enemy. In spite of the hos-
tility of the Indians, the Spaniards seem to have
taken no precaution against a sudden attack.
Menendez himself had left the colony. The
Spanish force was divided between three forts,
and no proper precautions were taken for keep-
ing up the communications between them. Each
was successively seized, the garrison slain or
made prisoners, and, as each fort fell, those in
the next could only make vague guesses as to the
extent of the danger. Even when divided into
three the Spanish force outnumbered that of De
Gourgues, and savages with bows and arrows
would have counted for little against men with tire
arms and behind walls. But after the downfall of
the first fort a panic seemed to seize the Spaniards,
and the French achieved an almost bloodless vic-
tory. After the death of Ribault and his follow-
ers nothing could be looked for but merciless re-
taliation, and De Gourgues copied the severity,
though not the perfidy of his enemies. The very
details of Menendez' act were imitated, and the
trees on which the prisoners were hung bore the
inscription: 'Not as Spaniards, but as traitors,
robbers, and murderers.' Five weeks later De
Gourgues anchored under the walls of Rochelle.
. . . His attack did not wholly extirpate the
Spanish power in Florida. Menendez received
tlie blessing of the Pope as a chosen instrument
for the conversion of the Indians, returned to
America and restored his settlement. As before,
he soon made the Indians his deadl}' enemies.
The Spanish settlement held on, but it was not
till two centuries later that its existence made
itself remembered by one brief but glorious epi-
sode in the history of the English colonies." — J.
A. Doyle, The English in America : Virginia, &c.,
ch. 5.
Also in: W. W. Dewhurst, Hist, of St. Augus-
tine, Fla., ch. 9.
A. D. 1628. — Claimed by France, and placed,
with New France, under the control of the
Company of the Hundred Associates. See
Canada: A. D. 161G-1628.
A. D. 1629. — Claimed in part by England and
embraced in the Carolina grant to Sir Robert
Heath. See America: A. D. 1629.
A. D. 1680. — Attack on the English of Caro-
lina. See South Carolina: A. D. 1680.
A. D. 1702. — Adjustment of western boun-
dary vrith the French of Louisiana. See Louisi-
ana: A. D. 1698-1713.
A. D. 1740. — Unsuccessful attack on St.
Augustine by the English of Georgia and
Carolina. See Georgia: A, D. 1738-1743.
A. D. 1763 (February). — Ceded to Great
Britain by Spain in the Treaty of Paris. See
Seven Years W.\r.
A. D. 1763 (July). — Possession taken by the
English. — "When, in July [1763], possession
was taken of Florida, its inhabitants, of every
age and sex, men, women, children, and servants,
numbered but 3,000; and, of these, the men were
nearly all in the paj^ of the Catholic king. The
possession of it had cost him nearly $230,000 an-
nually ; and now it was accepted by England as
a compensation for Havana. Most of the people,
receiving from the Spanish treasury indemnity
for their losses, had migrated to Cuba, taking
with them the bones of their saints and the ashes
of their distinguished dead. The western prov-
ince of Florida extended to the Mississippi, on
the line of latitude of 31°. On the 20th of Octo-
ber, the French surrendered the post of Mobile,
with its brick fort, which was fast crumbling to
ruins. A month later, the slight stockade at
Tombigbee, in the west of the Chocta country,
was delivered up. In a congress of the Cataw-
bas, Cherokees, Creeks, Chicasas, and Choctas,
held on the lOtli of November, at Augusta, the
governors of Virginia and the colonies south of
it were present, and the peace with the Indians
of the South and South-west was ratified." — G.
Bancroft, Hist, of the V. S. {Autlwr's last rev.), v.
8, p. 64.
A. D. 1763 (October). — English provinces,
East and West, constituted by the King's
proclamation. See Northtwest Territory of
THE U. S. OP Am. : A. D. 1763.
A. D. 1779-1781. — Reconquest of West
Florida by the Spanish commander at New
Orleans. — "In the summer of 1779 Spain had
declared war against Great Britain. Galvez [the
Spanish commander at New Orleans] discovered
that the British were planning the surprise of
New Orleans, and, under cover of preparations
for defense, made haste to take the offensive.
Four days before the time he had appointed to
move, a hurricane destroyed a large number of
1181
FLORIDA, 1779-1781.
Boundary
question.
FLORIDA, 1810-1813.
houses in the town, and spread ruin to crops iind
dwellings up and down the 'coast,' and sunk his
gun flotilla. . . . Repairing his disasters as best
he could, and hastening his ostensibly defensive
preparations, he marched, on the 22d of August,
1779, against the British forts on the Mississippi.
His . . . little army of 1,434 men was without
tents, other military furniture, or a single en-
gineer The gun fleet followed in the river
abreast of their line of march along its shores,
carr3'ing one 24-, five 18-, and four 4-pounders.
With this force, in the space of about three
weeks. Fort Bute on bayou Manchac, Baton
Rouge and Fort Panmure, 8 vessels, 556 regu-
lars, and a number of sailors, militia-men, and
free blacks, fell into the hands of the Spaniards.
The next year, 1780, re-enforced from Havana,
Galvez again left New Orleans by way of the
Balize with 3,000 men, regulars, militia, and free
blacks, and on the 15th of March took Fort
Charlotte on Mobile river. Galvez next con-
ceived the much larger project of taking Pensa-
cola. Failing to secure re-enforcements from
Havana by writing for them, he sailed to that
place in October, to make his application in per-
son, intending to move with them directly on the
enemy. After many delays and disappointments
he succeeded, and early in March, 1781, appeared
before Pensacola with a ship of the line, two
frigates, and transports containing 1,400 soldiers
well furnished with artillery and ammunition.
Here he was joined by such troops as could be
spared from Mobile, and by Don Estevan Mir6
from New Orleans, at the head of the Louisiana
forces, and on the afternoon of the 16th of
March, though practically unsupported by the
naval fleet, until dishonor was staring its jealous
commanders in the face, moved under hot fire,
through a passage of great peril, and took up a
besieging position. ... It is only necessary to
state that, on the 9th of May, 1781, Pensacola,
with a garrison of 800 men, and the whole
of West Florida, were surrendered to Galvez.
Louisiana had heretofore been included under
one domination with Cuba, but now one of the
several rewards bestowed upon her governor was
the captain-generalship of Louisiana and West
Florida."— 6. E. Waring, Jr., and G. W. Cable,
Hist, of JVeio Orleans {U. S. Tenth Census, v. 19).
Also in : C. Gayarre, Hist, of Louisiana :
Spanish Domination, ch. 3.
A. D. 1783-1787.— The question of bounda-
ries between Spain and the United States, and
the question of the navigation of the Missis-
sippi. — "By the treaty of 1783 between Great
Britain on the one part and the United States and
her allies, France and Spain, on the other, Great
Britain acknowledged the independence of the
colonies, and recognized as a part of their south-
ern boundary a line drawn due east from a point
in the Mississippi River, in latitude 31° north, to
the middle of the Appalachicola ; and at the same
time she ceded to Spain by a separate agreement
the two Floridas, but without defining their
northern boundaries. This omission gave rise
to a dispute between Spain and the United States
as to their respective limits. On the part of Spain
it was contended that by the act of Great Britain,
of 1764, the northern boundary of West Florida
had been fixed at the line running due east from
the mouth of the Yazoo to the Chattahoochee,
and that all south of that line had been ceded to
her ; whilst on the other hand, the United States
as strenuously maintained that the act fixing and
enlarging the limits of West Florida was super-
seded by the recent treaty, which extended their
southern boundary to the 81st degree of north
latitude, a hundred and ten miles further south
than the line claimed by Spain. Spain, however,
had possession of the disputed territory by right
of conquest, and evidently had no intention of
giving it up. She strengthened her garrisons
at Baton Rouge and Natchez, and built a fort at
Vicksburg, and subsequently one at New Mad-
rid, on the Missouri side of the Mississippi, just
below the mouth of the Ohio ; and of the latter
she made a port of entry where vessels from the
Ohio were obliged to land and declare their car-
goes. She even denied the right of the United
States to the region between the Mississippi and
the Alleghany Mountains, which had been ceded
to them by Great Britain, on the ground that the
conquests made by Governor Galvez, of West
Florida, and by Don Eugenio Pierre, of Fort St.
Joseph, 'near the sources of the Illinois,' had
vested the title to all this country in her ; and she
insisted that what she did not own was possessed
by the Indians, and could not therefore belong
to the United States. Even as late as 1795, she
claimed to have bought from the Chickasaws the
bluffs which bear their name, and which are situ-
ated on the east bank of the Mississippi some
distance north of the most northerly boundary
ever assigned by Great Britain to West Florida.
Here, then, was cause for ' a very pretty quarrel,'
and to add to the ill feeling which grew out of
it, Spain denied the right of the people of the
United States to the ' free navigation of the Mis-
sissippi,' — aright which had been conceded to
them by Great Britain with all the formalities
with which she had received it from France. . . .
What was needed to make the right of any value
to the people of the Ohio valley was the addi-
tional right to take their produce into a Spanish
port. New Orleans, and either sell it then and
there, or else store it, subject to certain condi-
tions, until such time as it suited them to trans-
fer it to sea-going vessels. This right Spain
would not concede ; and as the people of the Ohio
valley were determined to have it, cost what
it might, it brought on a series of intrigues be-
tween the Spanish governors of Louisiana and
certain influential citizens west of the Alleghanies
which threatened the stability of the American
Union almost before it was formed." — L. Carr,
Missouri, ch. 4.
Also in: E. Schuyler, American Diplomacy,
ch. 6.
A. D. 1810-1813. — Continued occupation of
West Florida by the Spaniards. — Revolt of
the inhabitants. — Possession taken by the
Americans from the Mississippi to the Per-
dido.— "The success of the French in Spain,
and the probability of that kingdom being obliged
to succumb, had given occasion to revolutionary
movements in several of the Spanish American
provinces. This example . . . had been followed
also in that portion of the Spanish province of
West Florida bordering on the Mississippi. The
inhabitants, most of whom were of British or
American birth, had seized the fort at Baton
Rouge, had met in convention, and had proclaimed
themselves independent, adopting a single star
for their flag, the same symbol afterward assumed
by the republic of Texas. Some struggles took
place between the adherents of the Spanish
1182
FLORIDA, 1810-1813.
First Seminole
War.
FLORIDA, 1816-1818.
connection and these revolutionists, who were also
threatened with attack from Mobile, still held by
a Spanish garrison. In this emergency they ap-
plied, tlirough Holmes, governor of the Missis-
sippi Territory, for aid and recognition by the
United States. . . . The president, however, pre-
ferred to issue a proclamation, taking possession
of the east bank of the Mississippi, occupation of
which, under the Louisiana treaty, had been so
long delayed, not, it was said, from any defect
of title, but out of conciliatory views toward
Spain. . . . Claiborne, governor of the Orleans
Territory, then at Washington, was dispatched
post-haste to take possession." The following
January Congress passed an act in secret session
"authorizing the president to take possession as
well of East as of West Florida, under any ar-
rangement which had been or might be entered
into with the local authorities ; or, in case of any
attempted occupation by any foreign govern-
ment, to take and to maintain possession by force.
Previously to the passage of this act, the occupa-
tion of the east bank of the Mississippi had been
already completed by Governor Claiborne; not,
however, without some show of resistance. . . .
Captain Gaines presently appeared before Mobile
with a small detachment of American regulars,
and demanded its surrender. Colonel Cushing
Boon arrived from New Orleans with several gun-
boats, artillery, and a body of troops. The boats
were permitted to ascend the river toward Fort
Stoddard without opposition. But the Spanish
commandant refused to give up Mobile, and no
attempt was made to compel him." By an act
of Congress passed in April, 1812, "that part of
Florida recently taken possession of, as far east
as Pearl River, was annexed to the new state
[of Louisiana]. The remaining territory, as far
as the Perdido, though Mobile still remained in
the hands of the Spaniards, was annexed, by
another act, to the Mississippi Territory." A year
later, in April, 1813, General Wilkinson was in-
structed to take possession of Mobile, and to oc-
cupy all the territory claimed, to the Perdido,
which he accordingly did, without bloodshed.—
R. Hildreth, ITist. of the U. S., 2d series, eh. 23,
24, 26 (i\ 3).
A. D. I8i6-i8i8. — The fugitive negroes and
the first Seminole War. — Jackson's campaign.
— "The tranquillity of Monroe's administration
was soon seriously threatened by the renewal of
trouble with the Southern Indians [the Seminoles,
and the refugee Creeks], . . . The origin of the
difficulty was twofold: first, the injustice which
has always marked the treatment of Indian tribes
whose lands were coveted by the whites; and
secondly, the revival of the old grievance, that
Florida was a refuge for the fugitive slaves of
Georgia and South Carolina. . . . The Seminoles
had never withheld a welcome to the Georgia
negro who preferred their wild freedom to the
lash of an overseer on a cotton or rice plantation.
The Georgians could never forget that the grand-
children of their grandfathers' fugitive slaves
were roaming about the Everglades of Florida.
... So long as there were Seminoles in Florida,
and so long as Florida belonged to Spain, just so
long would the negroes of Georgia find an asylum
ia Florida with the Seminoles. ... A war with
the Indians of Florida, therefore, was always
literally and emphatically a slave-hunt. A re-
clamation for fugitives was always repulsed by
the Seminoles and the Spaniards, and, as they
could be redeemed in no other way, Georgia was
always urging the Federal Government to war."
— W. C. Bryant and S. H. Gay, Popular Hist, of
the U. 8., V. 4, ch. 10.— During the Warof 1812-
14, the English, who were permitted by Spain to
make use of Florida with considerable freedom,
and who received no little assistance from the
refugee negroes and Creek Indians, "had built a
fort on the Appalachicola River, about 15 miles
from its mouth, and had collected there an im-
mense amount of arms and ammunition. . . .
When the war ended, the English left the arms
and ammunition in the fort. The negroes seized
the fort, and it became known as the ' Negro
Fort. ' The authorities of the United States sent
General Gaines to the Florida frontier with
troops, to establish peace on the border. The
Negro Fort was a source of anxiety both to the
military autliorities and to the slave-owners of
Georgia, " and a pretext was soon found — whether
valid or not seems uncertain — for attacking it.
"A hot shot penetrated one of the magazines,
and the whole fort was blown to pieces, July 27,
1816. There were 300 negro men, women and
children, and 20 Choctaws in the fort; 270 were
killed. Only three came out unhurt, and these
were killed by the allied Indians. . . . During
1817 there were frequent collisions on the frontiers
between Whites and Indians. ... On the 20th
of November, General Gaines sent a force of 250
men to Fowltown, the headquarters of the chief
of the ' Redsticks.' or hostile Creeks. They ap-
proached the town in the early morning, and
were fired on. An engagement followed. The
town was taken and burned. . . . The Indians
of that section, after this, began general hostili-
ties, attacked the boats which were ascending
the Appalachicola, and massacred the persons in
them. ... In December, on receipt of intelli-
gence of the battle at Fowltown and the attack
on the boats, Jackson was ordered to take com-
mand in Georgia. He wrote to President Monroe :
' Let it be signified to me through any channel
(say Mr. J. Rhea) that the possession of the
Ploridas would be desirable to the United States,
and in sixty day s it will be accomplished. ' Much
was afterwards made to depend on this letter.
Monroe was 111 when it reached Washington, and
he did not see or read it until a year afterwards,
when some reference was made to it. Jackson
construed the orders which he received from Cal-
houn with reference to this letter. ... He cer-
tainly supposed, however, that he had the secret
concurrence of the administration in conquering
Florida. . . . He advanced through Georgia with
great haste and was on the Florida frontier in
Jliirch, 1818. He . . . immediately advanced
to St. Mark's, which place he captured. On his
way down the Appalachicola he found the In-
dians and negroes at work in the fields, and un-
conscious of any impending attack. Some of
them fled to St. Mark's. His theory, in which
he supposed that he was supported by the ad-
ministration, was that he was to pursue the In-
dians until he caught them, wherever they might
go ; that he was to respect Spanish rights as far
as he could consistently with that purpose ; and
that the excuse for his proceedings was that
Spain could not police her own territory, or re-
strain the Indians. Jackson's proceedings were
based on two positive b\it arbitrary assumptions:
(1) That the Indians got aid and encourage-
ment from St. Mark's and Pensacola. (This the
1183
FLORIDA, 1816-1818.
FLUSHING.
Spaniards alway.s denied, but perhaps a third as-
sumption of Jacksou might be mentioned : that
the word of a Spanish official was of no value.) (2)
That Great Britain kept paid emissaries employed
in Florida to stir up trouble for the United
States. This latter assumption was a matter of
profound belief generally in tlie United States."
Acting upon it with no hesitation, Jackson caused
a Scotch trader named Arbuthnot, whom he found
at St. jNIark's, and an English ex-lieutenant of
marines, Ambrister by name, who was taken
prisoner among the Seminoles, to be condemned
by court martial and executed, although no sub-
stantial evidence of their being in any way an-
swerable for Indian hostilities was adduced.
" It was as a mere incident of his homeward
march that Jackson turned aside and captured
Pensacola, May 24, 1818, because he was told that
some Indians had taken refuge there. He de-
posed the Spanish government, set up a new one,
and established a garrison. He then continued
his march homewards. " Jackson's performances
in Florida were the cause of grave perplexities
to his government, which finally determined "that
Pensacola and St. Mark's should be restored to
Spain, but that Jackson's course should be ap-
proved and defended on the grounds that he
pursued his enemy to his refuge, and tliat Spain
could not do the duty which devolved on her."
— W. G. Sumner, Andrew Jackson as a public
man, ch. 3.
Also in : J. Parton, Life of Andrew Jackson,
t>. 2, ch. 31-39.— J. R. Giddings, The Exiles of
Florida, ch. 1-4.
A. D. 1819-1821. — Cession by Spain to the
United States. — "Jackson's vigorous proceed-
ings in Florida would seem not to have been
without effect. Pending the discussion in Con-
gress on his conduct, the Spanish minister, under
new instructions from home, signed a treaty for
the cession of Florida, in extinction of the various
American claims, for the satisfaction of which
the United States agreed to pay to the claimants
$5,000,000. The Louisiana boundary, as fixed
by tills treaty, was a compromise between the
respective offers heretofore made, though lean-
ing a good deal to the American side : the Sabine
to the 82d degree of north latitude ; thence a
north meridian line to tlie Red River ; the course
of that river to the 100th degree of longitude
east [? west] from Greenwich ; thence north by
that meridian to the Arkansas ; up that river to
its head, and to the 42d degree of north latitude ;
and along that degree to the Pacific. This treaty
was immediately ratified by the Senate," but it
was not until February, 1821, that the ratifica-
tion of the Spanish, government was received. —
R. Hildreth, Hist, of the IT. S., 2d series, ch.
31-32 {v. 3).
Also in: J. T. Morse, John Quincy Adams,
pp. 109-125.- — Treaties and Conventions bet. tlie
V. S. and other countries {ed. of 1889), pp. 1016-
1022.
A. D. 1835-1843.— The Second Seminole
War. — "The conflict with the Seminoles was
one of the legacies left by Jackson to Van Buren ;
it lasted as long as the Revolutionary War, cost
thirty millions of dollars, and baffled the efforts
of several generals and numerous troops, who
had previously shown themselves equal to any
in the world. ... As is usually the case in In-
dian wars there had been wrong done by each
side ; but in this instance we were the more to
blame, although the Indians themselves were far
from being merely harmless and suffering inno-
cents. The Seminoles were being deprived of
their lands in pursuance of the general policy of
removing all the Indians west of the Mississippi.
They had agreed to go, under pressure, and
influenced, probablj-, by fraudulent representa-
tions; but they declined to fulfill tlieir agree-
ment. If they had been treated wisely and
firmly they might probably have been allowed
to remain without serious injury to the sur-
rounding whites. But no such treatment was
attempted, and as a result we were plunged in
one of the most harassing Indian wars we ever
waged. In their gloomy, tangled swamps, and
among the unknown and untrodden recesses of
the everglades, the Indians found a secure asy-
lum ; and they issued from their haunts to burn
and ravage almost all the settled parts of Florida,
fairly depopulating five counties. . . . The great
Seminole leader, Osceola, was captured only by
deliberate treachery and breach of faith on our
part, and the Indians were worn out rather than
conquered. This was partly owing to their
remarkable capacities as busli-fighters, but infi-
nitely more to the nature of their territory. Our
troops generally fought with great bravery ; but
there is very little else in the struggle, either as
regards its origin or the manner in which it was
carried on, to which an American can look back
with any satisfaction." — T. Roosevelt, Life of
Tliomas H. Benton, ch. 10.
Also in : J. R. Giddings, Th^ Exiles of Florida,
ch. 7-21.— J. T. Sprague, The Florida IKar.- See,
also, American Aborigines; Seminoles.
A. D. 1845. — Admission into the Union. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1845.
A. D. i86i (January). — Secession from the
Union. See United States of Am. ; A. D.
1861 (January — February).
A. D. 1862 (February — April). — Temporary
Union conquests and occupation. — Discour-
agement of Unionists. See United States op
Am.; a. D. 1862 (February — April: Georgia
— Florida).
A. D. 1864. — Unsuccessful National attempt
to occupy the State. — Battle of Olustee. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1864 (January —
February ; Florida).
A. D. 1865 (July). — Provisional government
set up under President Johnson's plan of Re-
construction. See United St.\tes op Am. :
A. D. 1865 (M.\Y— July).
A. D. 1865-1868. — Reconstruction. See
United States op Am. : A. D. 1865 (May' —
July), and after, to 1868-1870.
FLORIN, The.— ' The Republic of Florence,
in the year 1252, coined its golden florin, of 34
carats fine, and of the weight of one drachm. It
placed the value under the guarantee of pub-
licity, and of commercial good faith; and that
coin remained unaltered, as the standard for all
other values, as long as the republic itself en-
dured." — J. C. L. deSismondi, Hist, of the Italian
Jiepnhlics. ch. 4.
FLOTA, The. See Peru; A. D. 1550-1816.
FLOYD, JOHN B., Treachery of. See
United States op Am. ; A. D. 1860 (December).
FLUSHING : A. D. 1807.- Ceded to France.
See France: A. D. 1807-1808 (November —
February.
1184
FLUSHING
FORMOSA.
A. D. 1809. — Taken and abandoned by the
English. See Engl.4.nd: A. D. 1809 'Jui.y —
December).
♦
FOCKSHANI, Battle of (1789). See Turks:
A. D. 1776-1T92.
FODHLA. See Ireland : The Name.
FCEDERATI. — The bodies of barbarians
taken into the military service of the Roman em-
pire, during the period of its decline, serving
under their hereditary chiefs, were designated
by the name of foederati (confederates or allies).
— T. Hodgkin, The dynasty of Theodosius, ch. 4.
FOIX, Rise of the Counts of. See Bur-
gundy : A. D. 103-3.
The house in Navarre. See Navarre : A. D.
1443-1531.
FOLCLAND. — FOLKLAND . — Public
land, among the early English. " It comprised
the whole area that was not at the original allot-
ment assigned to individuals or communities,
and that was not subsequently divided into es-
tates of bookland [bocland]. The folkland was
the standing treasury of the country ; no alien-
ation of any part of it could be made without
the consent "of the national council ; but it might
be allowed to individuals to hold portions of it
subject to rents and other services to the state."
— W. Stubbs, C'oiiM. Hist, of Eng., ch. 5, sect. 36.
— The theory here stated is questioned by Prof.
VinogradoU, who says : "I venture to suggest
that folkland need not mean the land owned by
the people. Bookland is land that is held by
bookright ; folkland is land that is held by folk-
right. The folkland is what our scholars have
called ethel, and alod, and family-land, and
yrfeland ; it is land held under the old restrictive
common-law, the law which keeps land in fami-
lies, as contrasted with land which is held under
a book, under a ' privilegium,' modelled on
Roman precedents, expressed in Latin words,
armed with ecclesiastical sanctions, and making
for free alienation and individualism." — P. Vino-
gradoflf, Folkland (English Hist. Rev., Jan., 1893).
Also in: J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in Eng.,
bk. 1, ch. 11. — See, also, Alod.
FOLIGNO, Truce of. See France: A. D,
1800-1801 (June— February).
FOLKLAND. See Folcland.
FOLKMOOT. See Hundred ; also Shike ;
also Witenagemot ; also Township and Town-
Mketing, The New England.
FOLKTHING. — FOLKETING.The. See
Scandinavian States (Denmark — Iceland) :
A. D. 1849-1874.
FOLKUNGAS, The. See Scandinavian
States: A. D. 1018-1397.
FOMORIANS, OR FORMORIANS, The.
— A people mentioned in Irish legends as sea-
rovers. See Ireland : The Primitive Inhab-
itants : also, Nemedians.
FONTAINE FRANCAISE, Battle of
(1595). See France : A. D.'l593-ir)98.
FONTAINEBLEAU: A. D. 1812-1814.—
Residence of the captive Pope. See Papacy:
A. D. 1808-1814.
FONTAINEBLEAU, Treaties of (1807).
See Portugal : A. D. 1807, and Spain : A. D.
1807-1808 (1814). See France : A. D. 1814
(March — April).
75 1185
FONTAINEBLEAU DECREE, The. See
France: A. D. 1806-1810.
FONTARABIA, Siege and Battle (1638).
See Spain : A. D. 1637-1640.
FONTENAILLES, OR FONTENAY,
Battle of, A. D. 841. — In the civil war between
the three grandsons of Charlemagne, which re-
sulted in the jjailition of his empire and the
definite separation of Germany and France, the
decisive battle was fought, June 35, 841, at
Fontenailles, or Fontenay (Fontanetum), near
Auxerre.
FONTENOY, Battle of (1745). See Nether
lands (Austrian Provinces): A. D. 1745.
FOOT, The Roman. — ^"The unit of linea;
measure [with the Romans] was the Pes, which
occupied the same place in the Roman system as
the Foot does in our own. According to the
most accurate researches, the Pes was equal to
about 11.64 inches imperial measure, or .97 of an
English foot. The Pes being supposed to repre-
sent the length of the foot in a well proportioned
man, various divisions and multiples of the Pes
were named after standards derived from the
human frame. Thus : Pes ^ 16 Digiti, i. e.
finger-breadths, [or] 4 Palmi, i. e. hand-breadths ;
Sesquipes = l cubitus, i. e. length from elbow to
extremity of middle finger. The Pes was also
divided into 13 Pollices, i. e. thumb-joint-lengths,
otherwise called Unciae (whence our word
'inch')." — W. Ramsay, ManualofBomanAntiq.,
ch. 13.
FOOTE, Commodore. — Gun-boat campaign
on the western rivers. See United Status op
Am.: a. D. 1863 (January — February : Ken-
tucky — Tennessee) ; (March— April : On the
Mississippi).
FORBACH, OR SPICHERN, Battle of.
See France : A. D. 1870 (July— August).
FORCE BILL, The. See United States
op Am. : A D. 1871 (April).
FORESTERS, Order of. See Insuk.'INCE.
FORESTS, Charter of. See England:
A. D. 1316-1374.
FORLI, Battle of (1423). See Italy : A. D.
1413-1447.
FORMOSA. — "Fonnosa, or Taiwan, as it is
called by the Chinese, is about 400 miles south
of the mouth of the Yang-tse, and 100 from the
mainland of China. It lies between 35° 30' and
31° 50' north latitude, is nearly 340 miles long,
by an average of 75 miles wide, and has an area
of about 13.000 square miles. It is remarkable
for its beauty and fertility, and also for the
variety of its products. It was formerly at-
tached to the province of Fohkien, and governed
by a resident commissioner ; but since the Franco-
Chinese War, during which the French, under
Admiral Courbet, were foiled in their efforts to
take possession of it, it has been erected into an
independent province by imperial decree, and is
now [1887] governed by Liu Ming-Ch'uan, an
able and progressive man, with the title and al-
most unlimited authority of governor-general.
The island was once in the possession of the
Spaniards, who called it Formosa (beautiful), but
did not colonize it. It then passed into the
hands of the Dutch, who built Fort Zealandia,
and established a trading-post on the southwest
coast, near the present city of Taiwan-fu, and
another known as the Red Fort, at Tamsui, on
the northwest coast. But the Dutch in turn
abandoned the island about the year lOGO, im-
FORMOSA
FORUM ROMANUM.
mediately after which it was occupied aad colo-
nized by the Chinese from Amoy and other
points on the coast of Fohkien. The population
is now estimated by the governor-general at 4,-
000,000 Chinese and 60,000 savages, but the first
figures are doubtless much too large. The sav-
ages are a fine race of men of the Malay or
Polynesian type, who hold nearly all the east
coast and the mountain-region, covering over
one half the island. They live mostly by hunt-
ing and fishing, or upon the natural products of
the forest, and cultivate but little land." — J. H.
Wilson, China, ch. 18. — In 1874, in order to ob-
tain redress for a murder of Japanese sailors by
savages on the eastern coast of Formosa, the
Japanese Government imdertook to take posses-
sion of the southern part of Formosa, asserting
that it did not belong to China because she either
would not or could not govern its savage inhab-
itants. By the intervention of the British min-
ister. Sir T. F. Wade, war was prevented, the
Japanese withdrawing and the Chinese remain-
ing in control : but the former still coveted the
island, and finally secured it, as one of the re-
sults of their war with China, in 1 894-3. — S. W.
Williams, The Middle Kingdom, ch. 36, «. 2.
FORNUOVA. Battle of (1495). See Italy:
A. D. 1494-1496.
FORREST, GENERAL, Cavalry Opera-
tions of. See United Statks of Am. : A. D.
1863-1863 (Dec— Jan.: Tenn.); 1863 (Feb.—
Apr.: Tenn.); 1863-1864 (Dec— Apr.: Tenn.—
Miss.); 1864 (Apk- : Tenn.); 1864 (Sept.— Oct.:
Ga.).
FORT EDWARD.— FORT ERIE.—
FORT FISHER, ETC. See Edward, Fort ;
Erie, Fort, Etc
FORTRENN, Men of.— A Pictish people in
early Scottish history.
FORTY FORT. See United States of
Am. : A. D, 1778 (July).
FORTUNATE ISLANDS. See Canary
Islands, Discovery of.
FORTY-FIVE, The.— The.Jacobite rebellion
of 1745 is often referred to as "the Forty-five."
See Scotland : A. D. 1745.
FORTY-SHILLING FREEHOLDERS.
See England : A. D. 1884-1885.
FORUM, The Julian, and its extensions. —
"From the entrance of the Suburra branched
out the long streets which penetrated the hollows
between the Quirinal, Viminal, and Esquiline to
the gates pierced in the mound of Servius. It
was in this direction that Ca;sar effected the first
extension of the Forum, by converting the site
of certain streets into an open space which he
surrounded with arcades, and in the centre of
which he erected his temple of Venus. By the
side of the Julian Forum, or perhaps in its rear,
Augustus constructed a still ampler inclosure,
which he adorned with the temple of Mars the
Avenger. S\icceeding emperor.s . . . continued
to work out the same idea, till the Argiletum on
the one hand, and the saddle of the Capitoline
and Quirinal, e.^cavated for the purpose, on the
other, were both occupied by the.se constructions,
the dwellings of the populace being swept away
before them ; and a space running nearly parallel
to the length of the Roman Forum, and exceed-
ing it in size, was thus devoted to public use.
extending from the pillar of Trajan to the basilica
of Constantine." — C. Merivale, Hiit. of the lio-
mans, ch. 40.
FORUM BOARIUM AND VELABRUM
OF ANCIENT ROME, The.— " The Vela-
brum, the Forum Boarium, the Vicus Tuscus,
and the Circus Maximus are names rich in remi-
niscences of the romantic youth and warlike
manhood of the Roman people. The earliest
dawn of Roman history begins with the union of
the Capitoline and Palatine hills into one city.
In those far-distant times, however, no popula-
tion was settled in the Velabrum or Circus val-
ley ; for, as we have seen, until the drainage
was permanently provided for by the cloacis,
these districts were uninhabited swamps ; and
the name Velabrum itself is said to have been
derived from the boats used in crossing from one
hill to the other. Perhaps such may not have
been the case with the Forum Boarium, which lay
between the Velabrum and the river. . . . The
limits of the Forum Boarium can be clearly de-
fined. It w^as separated from the Velabrum at
the Arch of the Goldsmiths. . . . On the south-
eastern side the Carceres of the Circus, and
the adjoining temple on the site of S. Maria in
Cosmedin, bounded the district, on the western
the Tiber, and on the northwestern the wall of
Servius. . . . The immediate neighbourhood of
the river, the Forum, the Campus Martius, and
the Palace of the Caesars would naturally render
this quarter one of the most crowded thorough-
fares of Rome. . . . The Forum itself, which
gave the name to the distinct, was probably an
open space surrounded by shops and public
buildings, like the Forum Romanum, but on a
smaller scale. In the centre stood the bronze
figure of a bull, brought from ^Silgina, either as
a symbol of the trade in cattle to which the place
owed its name, or, as Tacitus observes, to mark
the supposed spot whence the plough of Romu-
lus, drawn by a bull and a cow, first started in
tracing out the Palatine pomoerium." — R Burn,
Borne and the Catiipaqna, ch. 12.
FORUM GALLORUM, Battle of (B, C.
43). See Rome : B. C. 44^3.
FORUM JULII . — A Roman colony and naval
station (modern Frejus) founded on the Mediter-
ranean coast of Gaul by Augustus.
FORUM ROMANUM, The.— " The older
Forum, or Forum Romanum, as it was called to
distinguish it from the later Fora, which were
named after their respective builders [Forum of
Julius Cresar, of Augustus, of Nerva, of Ves-
pasian, of Trajan, etc.], was an open space of an
oblong shape, which extended in a south-easterly
direction from near the depression or intermon-
tium between the two summits of the Capitoline
Hill to a point opposite the still extant temple of
Antoninus and Faustina, . . . Round this con-
fined space were grouped the most important
buildings of Republican Rome." — R. Burn, Rome
and the Campagna, ch. 6, pt. 1. — "Forum, in
the literal sense of the word merely a market-
place, derives its name 'a ferendo,' (from bring
ing, getting, purchasing). . . . Narrow is the
arena on which so great a drama was enacted in
the Republican and Imperial City ! the ascer-
tainable measurements of this region, according
to good authorities, being 671 English feet in the
extreme length, 303 in the extreme breadth, and
117 feet at the narrower, the south-eastern, side.
. . . The Forum, as an enclosed public place
amidst buildings, and surrounded by graceful
porticos, may be said to have owed its origin to
Tarquinius Priscus, between the years 616 and
1186
FORUM ROMANUM.
FRANCE, A. D. 843.
578 B. C."— C. I. Hemaus, RUtoric and Mbnu-
inental Rome, ch. 6.
Ai.so rx : R. Lanciani, Ancient Home, pp.75-82.
FORUM TREBONII, Battle of (A. D.2SI).
See GoTiis, First lNVA>iioNs of tue Roman
Empihio.
FOSI, The. See Chauci.
FOSSA. See Castra,
FOSSE, The. — One of the great Roman
roads iu Britain, which mu from Liucohi south-
westwardly into Cornwall. See Roman Ruads
IN Britain.
FOSTAT. — The original name of Cairo,
Egypt, signifying "the Encampment." See
Mahomktax Conquest : A. D. 640-64G.
FOTHERINGAY CASTLE, Mary Stu-
art's execution at. See Scotland : A. D. 1561-
1568 ; and England : A. D. 1585-1.58T.
FOUNTAIN OF YOUTH.Poncede Leon's
quest of the. Sec America: A. D. 1513.
FOUR HUNDRED AND FIVE THOU-
SAND AT ATHENS. See Athens: B. C.
413-tll.
FOUR HUNDRED AT ATHENS, The.
See Athens : B. C. 594.
FOUR MASTERS, The.— Four Irish an-
tiquaries of the 17th century, who compiled the
mi.^ed collection of legend aiid history called the
'•Annals of the Kingdom of Ireland," are com-
monly known as the Four Masters. They were
Michael O'CIery, a lay brother of the order of
St. Francis ; Conaire O'Clery, brother of Michael ;
Cucogry or Peregrine O'Clery, head of the Tir-
connell sept of the OClerys, to which Michael
and Conaire belonged ; and Ferfeasa O'Mulconry,
of whom nothing is known, except that he was
a native of the county of Roscommon. The
" Annals" of the Four Masters have been trans-
lated into English from the Irish tongue by John
O'Donovan. — .J. O'Donovan, Introd. to Annals
of the Kingdom of Ireland by the Four Moxters.
FOUR MILE STRIP, Cession of the. See
Pontiac's War.
FOURIERISM. See Social Movements:
A. D. 1833-1847, and 1841-1847.
FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1805-1866 (De-
cember—April) ; 1866 (June); 1866-1867 (Oc-
tober — March).
The enforcement of. See United States op
Am. : A. D. 1871 (April).
FOURTH OF JULY.— The anniversary of
the adoption of the American Declaration of In-
dependence. See United States op Am. : A. D.
1776 (July).
FOWEY, Essex's surrender at. See Eng-
land : A. D. 1644 (August — September).
FOWLTOWN, Battle of (1817). See
Flokida: a. D. 1816-1818.
FOX AND NORTH COALITION, The.
See England: A. D. 1782 ; 1783; and 1783-1787
FOX INDIANS, The. See Ameuican Abo-
rigines : Algonquian Family, and Sacs, &c.—
For an account of the massacre of Fox Indians at
Detroit in 1712, see Canada : A. D. 1711-1713.
—For an account of the Black Hawk War, see
Illinois : A. D. 1832.
FRANCE.
Gallic and Roman. See Gaul; and Tjiade :
Ancient.
A. D. 481-843.— Under the Franks.— Divis-
ion of Charlemagne's Empire. See Franks.
A. D. 841-911.— Ravages and settlements of
the Northmen. See Normans: A. D. 841 to
876-911.
9th Century. — Introduction of the modern
name. — At the time of the division of the empire
of Charlemagne between his three grand-sons,
which was made a definite and lasting political
separation by the Treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843,
"the people of the West [western Europe] had
come to be divided, with more and more distinct-
ness, into two classes, those composed of Franks
and Germans, who still adhered to the Teutonic
dialects, and those, composed of Franks, Gallo-
Romans, and Aquitanians, who used the Romance
dialects, or the patois which had grown out of a
corrupted Latin. The former clung to the name
of Germans, while the latter, not to lose all share
in the glory of the Prankish name, began to call
themselves Franci, and their country Francia
Nova, or New France. . . . Francia was the
Latin name of Frankenland, and had long before
been applied to the dominions of the Franks on
both sides of the Rhine. Their country was
then divided into East and West Francia; but in
the time of Karl the Great [Charlemagne] and
Ludwig Pious, we find the monk of St. Gall
using the terms Francia Nova, in opposition to
the Francia, 'qusediciturantiqua. ' " — P. Godwin,
Hist, of France: Ancient Oaul. eh. 18, loith note.
— "As for the mere name of Francia, like other
names of the kind, it shifted its geographical
use according to the wanderings of the people
from whom it was derived. After many such
changes of meaning, it gradually settled down as
the name for those parts of Germany and Gaul
where it still abides. There are the Teutonic or
Austrian [or Austrasian] Francia, part of which
still keeps the name of Franken or Franconia,
and the Romance or Neustrian Francia, which
by various annexations has grown into modern
France."— E. A. Freeman, Historical Oeog. of
Europe, v. 1, ;;. 121.— "As late as the reign of
Frederick Barbarossa, the name of Frank was
still used, and used too with an air of triumph, as
equivalent to the name of German. The Kings
and kingdoms of this age had indeed no fixed
titles, because all were still looked on as mere
portions of the great Prankish realm. Another
step has now been taken towards the creation of
modern France; but the older state of things
has not yet wholly passed away. Germany has
no definite name ; for a long time it is ' Francia
Orientalis,' ' Francia Teutonica ' ; then it becomes
' Regnum Teutonicum, ' ' Regnum Teutonicorum. '
But it is equally clear that, within the limits
of that Western or Latin France, Francia and
Francus were fast getting their modern meanings
of Prance and Frenchmen, as distinguished from
Frank or German."— E, A. Freeman, The Franks
and the Gauls (Historical Essays, 1st series, no. 7).
A. D. 843.— The kingdom of Charles the
Bald. — The first actual kingdom of France (Fran-
cia Nova — Francia Occidentalis), was formed
in the partition of the empire of Charlemagne be-
tween his three grandsons, by the Treaty of Ver-
dun, A. D. 843. It was assigned to Charles,
1187
FRANCE, A. D. 843.
Founding of the
Capetian Monarchy.
FRANCE, A. D. 877-987.
called "the Bald," and comprised the Neustria
of the older Frank divisions, together with Aqui-
taine. It "had for its eastern boundarj-, the
Meuse, the Saone and the Rhone ; which, never-
theless, can only be understood of the Upper
Meuse, since Brabant was certainly not comprised
in it " ; and it extended southwards beyond tlie
Pyrenees to the Ebro. — H. Hallam, The Middle
Ages, ch. 1, pt. 1, foot-note. — "Charles and his
successors have some claim to be accounted
French. They rule over a large part of France,
and are cut away from their older connexion with
Germany. Still, in reality they are Germans and
Franks. They speak German, they yearn after
the old imperial name, they have no national
feeling at all. On the other hand, the great lords
of Neustria, as it used to be called, are ready to
move in that direction, and to take the first steps
towards a new national life. They cease to
look back to the Rhine, and occupy themselves
in a continual struggle with their kings. Feudal
power is founded, and with it the claims of the
bishops rise to their highest point. But we have
not yet come to a kingdom of France. ... It
was no proper Frencli kingdom ; but a dying
branch of the Empire of Charles tlie Great. . . .
Charles the Bald, entering on his part of the
Caroling Empire, found three large districts
which refused to recognise liim. These were
Aquitaine, whose king was Pippin II. : Septi-
mania, in the hands of Bernard; and Brittany
under Nominoe. He attempted to reduce them ;
but Brittany and Septimania defied him, while
over Aquitaine he was little more than a nominal
suzerain." — G. W. Kitchin, Ilist. of France, v. 1,
bk. 2, pi. 2, ch. 5.
Also nsr : E. A. Freeman, Hist. Oeog. of Europe,
ch. 6, sect. 1. — See, also, Franks (Carolinoian
Empire): A. D. 814-963.
A. D. 86 1. — Origin of the duchy and of the
house of Capet. — In 861, Charles the Bald, king
of that part of the dismembered empire of Char-
lemagne which grew into the kingdom of France,
was struggling with many difficulties : defending
himself against the hostile ambition of his
brother, Louis the German ; striving to establish
his authority in Brittany and Aquitaine ; harried
and harassed by Norse pirates ; surrounded by
domestic treachery and feudal restiveness. All
of his many foes were more or less in league
against him, and the soul of their combination
appears to have been a certain bold adventurer — •
a stranger of uncertain origin, a Saxon, as some
say — who bore the name of Robert the Strong.
In this alien enemy. King Charles, who never
lacked shrewdness, discovered a possible friend.
He opened negotiations with Robert the Strong,
and a bargain was soon made which transferred
the sword and the energy of the potent mercen-
ary to the service of the king. " Soon after, a
Placitum or Great Council was held at Com-
pifegne. In this assembly, and by the assent of
the Optimates, the Seine and its islands, and tliat
most important island Paris, and all the country
between Seine and Loire, were granted to Robert,
the Duchy of France, though not yet so called,
moreover the Angevine Marches, or County of
Outre-Maine, all to be held by Robert-le-Fort as
barriers against Nortlimen and Bretons, and by
whicli cessions the realm was to be defended.
Only a portion of this dominion owned the obedi-
ence of Charles: the Bretons were in their own
coimtry, tlie Northmen in the country they were
making their own ; the grant therefore was a
license to Robert to win as much as he could, and
to keep his acquisitions should he succeed. . . .
Robert kept the Nortlimen in check, yet only by
incessant exertion. He inured the future kings
of France, his two young sons, Eudes and Rob-
ert, to the tug of war, making them his com-
panions in his enterprises. Tlie banks of the
Loire were particularly guarded by him, for here
the principal attacks were directed." Robert the
Strong fought valiantly, as he had contracted to
do, for five years, or more, and then, in an un-
lucky battle with the Danes, one summer day in
866, he fell. " Thus died the first of tlie Capets."
All the honors and possessions which he had
received from tlie king were then transferred, not
to his sons, but to one Hugh, Count of Bur-
gundy, who became also Duke or Marquis of
France and Count of Anjou. Twenty years
later, however, the older son of Robert, Eudes,
turns up in history again as Count of Paris, and
nothing is known of tlie means by which the
family, soon to become royal, had recovered its
footing and its importance. — Sir P. Palgrave,
Hist, of Xonnandi/ and Enghind. bk. 1. ch. 3 (r. 1).
A. D. 877-987.— The end of the Carolingian
monarchy and the rise of the Capetian. —
Charles the Bald died in 877 and was succeeded
by liis son Louis, called "the Stammerer," who
reigned only two years. His two sons, Louis
and Carloman, were joint kings for a short space,
struggling with the Northmen and losing the
provinces out of which Duke Boson of Provence,
brother-in-hiw of Charles the Bald, formed the
kingdom of Aries. Louis died in 882 and Carlo-
man two years afterwards; thereupon Cliarles,
surnamed "the Fat," king of Lombardy and
Germany, and also emperor (nephew of Charles
the Bald), became likewise king of France, and
briefly reunited under liis feebly handled sceptre
the greater part of the old empire of Charle-
magne. When he died, in 888, a party of the
nobles, tired of Iiis race, met and elected Count
Eudes (or Odo), the valiant Count of Paris, who
had just defended his city with obstinate courage
against the Northmen, to be their king. The
sovereignty of Eudes was not acknowledged by
the nation at large. His opponents found a
Carling to set up against liim, in the person of
the boy Charles, — -youngest son of Louis "the
Stammerer," born after his father's death, — who
appears in history as Charles "the Simple."
Eudes, after some years of war, gave up to
Charles a small domain, between the Seine and
the Meuse, acknowledged his feudal superiority
and agreed that the whole kingdom should be
surrendered to him on his (Eudes') death. In
accordance with this agreement, Charles the
Simple became sole king in 898, when Eudes
died, and the country which acknowledged his
nominal sovereignty fell into a more distracted
state than ever. Tlie Northmen established them-
selves in permanent occupation of the country
on the lower Seine, and Charles, iu 911, made a
formal cession of it to their duke, Rollo, thus
creating the great ducliy of Normandy. In 932
the nobles grew once more disgusted with the
feebleness of their king and crowned Duke
Robert, brother of the late king Eudes, driving
Charles into his stronghold of Laon. The Nor-
mans came to Cliarles' help and his rival Robert
was killed in a battle. But Charles was de-
feated, was inveigled into the hands of one of the
1188
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>--x
FRANCE, A. D. 877-987.
The
Early Capetians.
FRANCE, A. D. 987-1337.
rebel Lords — Herbert of Vermandois — and kept
a prisoner until he died, in 929. One Rodolf
of Burgundy had been chosen king, meantime,
and reigned until his death, in 936. Then le-
gitimacy triumphed again, and a young son of
Charles the Simple, who liad been reared in Eng-
land, was sent for and crowned. This king —
Louis IV. — liis son, Lothair, and his grandson,
Louis v., kept possession of tlie shaking throne
for half-a-century ; but their actual kingdom was
much of the time reduced to little more than the
royal city of Laon and its immediate territories.
\\ hen Louis died, in 987, leaving no nearer heir
lliau Ills uncle, Cliarlcs, Duke of Lorraine, tlicic
was no longer any serious attempt to keep up
the Carolingian line. Hugh, Duke of France
— whose grandfather Robert, and whose grand-
uncle Eudes had been crowned kings, before
him, and whose father, "Hugh the Great," had
been the king-maker of the period since — was
now called to the throne and settled him-
self firmly in the seat which a long line of his
descendants would hold. He was known as
Hugh Capet to his contemporaries, and it is
thought that he got the name from his wearing
of the hood, cap, or cape of St. Martin — he be-
ing the abbot of St. Martin at Tours, in addition
to his other high dignities. — G. W. Kitchin,
Hist, of France, v. 1, bk. 2, pt. 2, ch. 5/ bk. 3,
ch. 1.
Also in : Sir F. Palgrave, Hist, of Normandy
and England, bk. 1, ch. .5 (». 1). — C. F. Keary,
The Vikings in Western Chri.Hendom, ch. 11 arid
13-1.5. — Sec, also, L.\ON.
A. D. 987.— Accession of Hugh Capet.— The
kingdom of the early Capetians. — "On the
accession of the third race [the Capetians], France,
properly so called, only comprised the territory
between the Somme and the Loire; it was
bounded by the counties of Flanders and Ver-
mandois on the north ; by Normandy and Brit-
tany on the west; by the Champagne on the
east ; by the duchy of Aquitaine on the south.
The territory within these bounds was the duchy
of France, the patrimonial possession of the
Capets, and constituted the royal domain. The
great fiefs of the crown, in addition to the duchy
of France, were the duchy of Normandy, the
duchy of Burgundy, nearly the who^le of" Flan-
ders, formed into a county, the county of Cham-
pagne, the duchy of Aquitaine, and the county
of Toulouse. . . . The sovereigns of these vari-
ous states were the great vassals of the crown
and peers of France ; Lorraine and a portion of
Flanders were dependent on the Germanic crown,
while Brittany was a fief of the duchy of Nor-
mandy. . . . The county of Barcelona beyond
the Alps was also one of the great fiefs of the
crown of France." — E. de Bonnechose, Hist, of
Prance: second epoch, bk. 1, ch. 2. — "With the
exception of the Spanish March and of part of
Flanders, all these states have long been fully
incorporated with the French monarchy. But
we must remember that, under tlie earlier French
Kings, the connexion of most of these provinces
with their nominal suzerain was even looser than
the connexion of the German princes after the
Peace of Westphalia with the Viennese Emper-
ors. A great French Duke was as independent
within his own dominions as an Elector of Sax-
ony or Bavaria, and there were no common in-
stitutions, no Diet or assembly of any kind, to
bring him into contact either with his liege lord
or with his fellow-vassals. Aquitaine and Tou-
louse . . . seem almost to have forgotten that
there was any King of the French at all, or at
all events that tliey had anj'tliing to do with
him. They did not often even pay him the com-
pliment of waging war upon liim, a mode of
recognition of his existence which was constantly
indulged in by their brethren of Normandy and
Flanders." — E. A. Freeman, The Pranks and
tlie Gauls (Historical Essays, \st scries, no. 7). —
"When France was detached from the Empire
in the ninth century, of all tliree imperial regions
she was the one which seemed least likely to
form a nation. There was no unity in the coun-
try west of the Sclicldt, the Meuse, and the
Rhone. Various principalities, duchies, or coun-
ties were here formed, but each of them was
divided into secular fiefs and ecclesiastical terri-
tories. Over these fiefs and territories the au-
thority of the duke or tlie count, which was sup-
posed to represent that of tlie king, was exercised
only in case tliese seigneurs had sufficient power,
derived from their own personal estates. Desti-
tute of domains and almost starving, the king, in
official documents, asked what means he might
find on which to live with some degree of de-
cency. From time to time, amid this chaos, he
discussed the theory of his authority. He was a
lean and solemn phantom, straying about among
living men who were ver}' rude and energetic.
The phantom kept constantly growing leaner, but
royalty did not vanish. People were accustomed
to its existence, and tlie men of those days could
not conceive of a revolution. By the election of
Hugh Capet, in 987, royalty became a reality,
because the king, as Duke of Francia, had lands,
money, and followers. It would be out of place
to seek a plan of conduct and a methodical line
of policy in the actions of tlie Capetians, for they
employed simultaneously every sort of expedi-
ent. During more than three centuries they had
male offspring ; thus the chief merit of the dynasty
was that it endured. As always happens, out of
the practice developed a law; and this happy
accident produced a lawful hereditary succession,
which was a great element of strength. More-
over the king had a whole arsenal of rights : old
rights of Carolingian royalty, preserving the re-
membrance of imperial power, which the study
of the Roman law was soon to resuscitate, trans-
forming these apparitions into formidable reali-
ties; old rights conferred by the coronation,
which were impossible to define, and hence in-
contestable ; and rights of suzerainty, newer and
more real, which were definitely determined and
codified as feudalism developed and which,
joined to the other rights mentioned above,
made the king jiroprietor of France. These are
the elements that Capetian royalty contributed
to the play of fortuitous circumstances." — E.
Lavisse, General View of the Political History of
Europe, ch. 3. — See, also, Twelve Peers of
France.
A. D. 987-1327.— The Feudal Period.— "The
period in the history of France, of which we are
about to write, began with the consecration of
Hugues Capet, at Reims, the 3rd of July, 987,
but it is a period which would but improperly
take its name from the Capetians ; for throughout
this time royalty was, as it were, annihilated in
France; the social bond was broken, and the
country which extends from the Rhine to the
Pyrenees, and from the English Channel to the
1189
FRANCE, A. D. 987-1327. The Com,,
FRANCE, 12-13TH CENTURIES.
Gulf of Lyon, was governed by a confederation
of princes rarely under the influence of a com-
mon will, and united only by the Feudal System,
While France was confederated under feudal
administration, the legislative power was sus-
pended. Hugues Capet and liis successors, until
the accession'of St. Louis, had not the right of
making laws ; the nation had no diet, no regu-
larly constituted assemblies whose authority it
acknowledged. The Feudal System, tacitly
adopted, and developed by custom, was solely
acknowledged by the numerous sovereigns wlio
divided the provinces among themselves. It re-
placed the social bond, the monarch, and the
legislator. . . . The period . . . is therefore like
a long interregnum, during which the royal au-
thority was suspended, although the name of
king was always preserved. He who bore this
title in the midst of a republic of princes was
only distinguished from them by some honorary
prerogative, and he e,xercised over them scarcely
any authority. Until very near the end of the
11th century, these princes were scarcely less
numerous than the castles which covered France.
No authority was acknowledged at a distance,
and every fortress gave its lord rank among the
sovereigns. The conquest of England by the
Normans broke the equilibrium between the
feudal lords; one of the confederate princes, be-
come a king in 1066, gradually extended, until
1179, his domination over more than half of
France ; and although it was not he who bore
the title of king of the French, it may be imag-
ined that in time the rest of the country would
also pass under liis yoke. Philip the August and
his son, during the forty-si.x last years of the
same period, reconquered almost all the fiefs
which the English kings had united, brought the
other great vassals back to obedience, and
changed the feudal confederation wliich had
ruled France into a monarchy, which incorpo-
rated the Feudal System in its constitution." — J.
C. L. de Sismondi, France Under the Feudal
System {tr. by W. Belli nc/ham), ch. 1. — "The
feudal period, that is, the period when the feudal
system was the dominant fact of our country,
... is comprehended between Hugh Capet and
Philippe de Valois, that is, it embraces the 11th,
12th and 13th centuries. ... At the end of the
10th century, royalty and the commons were not
visible, or at all events scarcely visible. At the
commencement of the 14th century, royalty was
the head of the state, the commons were the body
of the nation. The two forces to which the
feudal system was to succumb had then attained,
not, indeed, their entire development, but a de-
cided preponderance. . . . With the 14th cen-
tury, the character of war changed. Then began
the foreign wars; no longer a vassal against
suzerain, or vassal against vassal, but nation
against nation, government against government.
On the accession of Philippe de Valois, the great
wars between the French and the English broke
out — the claims of the kings of England, not
upon any particular fief, but upon the whole
land, and upon the throne of France — and they
continued up to Louis XI. They were no longer
feudal, but national wars; a certain proof that
the feudal period stopped at this limit, that an-
other society had already commenced." — F. P.
Guizot, Hist, of Civilization, 2d course, led. 1.
A. D. 996. — Accession of King Robert II.
A. D. 1031. — Accession of King Henry I.
A. D. 1060. — Accession of King Philip I.
A. D. 1096. — Departure of the First Cru-
saders. See CRUS.A.DES : A. D. 10i)6-10il!).
A. D. 1 100. — The extent of the kingdom. —
"When Louis [VI. J was adopted by his father
in 1100, the crown had as its own domain only
the county of Paris, Hurepoi.x, the Gatiuais, the
Orleanis, half the county of Sens, the French
Vexin, and Bourges, together with some ill-
defined rights over the episcopal cities of Hheims,
Beauvais, Laon, Noyon, Soissons, Amiens. And
even within these narrow limits the royal power
was but thinly spread over the surface. The
barons in their castles were in fact independent,
and oppressed the merchants and poor folk as
they would. The king had also acknowledged
rights of suzerainty over Champagne, Burgundy,
Normandy, Brittany, Flanders, and Boulogne ;
but, iu most cases, the only obedience the feudal
lords stooped to was that of duly performing the
act of homage to the king on first succession to
a fief. He also claimed suzerainty, which was
not conceded, over the South of France ; over
Provence and Lorraine he did not even put forth
a claim of lordship."— G. W. Kitchin, Hist, of
France, v. 1, bk. 3, ch. 5.
i2-i3th Centuries. — Rise of the Privileged
Bourgeoisies and the Communes. — The
double movement of Urban Emancipation. —
" The 12th and 13th centuries Siiw the production
of that marvelous movement of emancipation
which gave liberty to serfs, created privileged
bourgeoisies and independent communes, caused
new cities and fortresses to issue from the earth,
freed the corporations of merchants and artisans,
in a word placed at the first stroke, beside roy-
alty, feudality and the church, a fourth social
force destined to absorb one day the three others.
While the cultivator of the soil passed by en-
franchisement from the category of things sold or
given away into that of tlie free people (the only
ambition permitted to the defenseless unfortunates
who inhabited isolated farms or uuwalled vil-
lages), the population grouped in the urban cen-
ters tried to limit or at least to regulate the in-
tolerable exploitation of which it was the object.
The bourgeois, that is to say the inhabitants of
walled cities, born under the shelter of a donjon
or an abbey, and the citoyens of the ancient
episcopal cities, rivaled each other in efforts to
obtiiin from the seigneurial power a condition
more endurable in "point of taxation, and the
suppression of the most embarrassing hindrances
to their conunerce and manufactures. These in-
habitants of towns and cities constituted, if only
by being grouped together, a force with which
feudality was very so"(:)n obliged to reckon. Di-
vided, besides, into merchants' societies and com.
panics of workmen, they found within themselves
the germ of organization which permitted col-
lective resistance. The seigneur, intimidated,
won by an offer of money, or decided by the
thought that his domination would be more
lucrative if the city became more prosperous,
made the concessions which were asked of him.
Thanks to a favorable concurrence of circum-
stances, charters of franchises were multiplied in
all parts of France. At the end of the 12th cen-
tury, the national territory, in the north as well
as the south, was covered with these privileged
cities or bourgeoisies, which, while remaining
administered, judicially and politically, by
seigneurial officers, had acquired, in matters
1190
FRANCE, 13-13TH CENTURIES.
The
Communes.
FRANCE, ia-13TH CENTURIES.
financial, commercial and industrial, the liberties
necessary to their free development. Feudality
very soon found such an advantage iu regulat-
ing thus the e.vploitatiou of tlie bourgeois, that it
took the initiative itself in creating, in the unin-
habited parts of its domains, privileged cities,
complete in all their parts, designed to become
so many centers of attraction for foreigners. It
is the innumerable bourgeoisies and ' villes
neuves' which represent the normal form of
urban emancipation. Certain centers of popula-
tion obtained at the first stroke the most exten-
sive civil and financial liberties; but, in the ma-
jority of cases, the bourgeois could win their
franchises only bit by bit, at the price of heavy
pecuniary sacrifices, or as the result of an admir-
able perseverance in watching for opportunities
and seizing them. The history of the privileged
cities, whose principal virtue was a long pa-
tience, offers nothing moving or dramatic. . . .
But the spectacle of these laborious masses per-
sisting, in obscurity and silence, in the demand
for their right to security and well-being, does
not the less merit all our attention. What forces
Itself upon the meditations of the historian, in
the domain of municipal institutions, is just the
progress, slow and obscure, but certain, of the
dependent bourgeoisie. . . . Thedevelopmentof
the seigneurial cities oilers such a variety of
aspects, their progressive and regular conquests
were so important in the constitution of our
rights public and private, that too much care
and effort cannot be devoted to retracing mi-
nutely their course. This history is more than
any other that of the origin of our third estate.
It was in the privileged cities, to which the
great majority of the urban population belonged,
that it began its political education. The city
charters constituted the durable lower stratum of
its first liberties. In other words tlie third estate
did not issue suddenly from the more or less
revolutionary movement which gave birth to the
independent communes : it owes its formation
and its progress above all to this double pacific
evolution : the possessors of fiefs enfranchising
their bourgeoisie and the latter passing little by
little entirely from the seigneurial government
under that of royalty. This was not the opinion
which prevailed at the time when the founder of
the science of municipal institutions, Augustin
Thierry, published in the ' Courrier Fran(;-ais '
his admirable ' Lettres' on the revolutions of the
communes. The commune, a city dowered with
judicial and political privileges, which conferred
upon it a certain independence, administered by
its elected magistrates, proud of its fortified in-
closure, of its belfry, of its militia, — the com-
mune passed at that time as the pre-eminent type
of the free city of the middle ages. That great
movement of urban and rural emancipation
which stirred the France of the ISth cent\iry to
its very depths was personified in it. So the
commune concentrated historical interest upon
itself, leaving in the shade all other forms of popu-
lar evolution. Guizot, who had the sense of
truth rather than that of the picturesque, tried
to combat this exclusive tendency. In the bril-
liant lessons that he gave at the Sorbonne on the
history of the origins of the third estate, he
showed, with his customary clearness, that the
development of the bourgeois class was not ac-
complished by any single method ; tliat the pro-
gress realized in the cities where the commmunal
1
regime had never succeeded in establishing itself
must also be taken into account. The impres-
sion left by the highly colored and dramatic re-
citals of Augustin Thierry remained for a long
time the stronger. . . . Contemporary science
has not only assigned to itself the mission of
completing "the work of the historians of the
Restoration : it has desired also to improve it by
rectifying, upon many points, the exaggerated
opinions and false judgments of which the his-
tor\' of our urban institutions was at first the
victim. It has been perceived that the com-
munal movement properly so called did not
have, upon the destinies of the popular class, the
decisive, preponderant influence wliich was at-
tributed to it 'a priori.' The commune, a bril-
liant but ephemeral form of the emancipation of
the bourgeoisie, has been set back little by little
into its true place. It is now no longer regarded
as an essential manifestation of our fir.st demo-
cratic aspirations. One might be tempted to
see on the contrary, in that collective seigneury,
often hostile to the other social elements, im-
pregnated with the spirit of ' particularisme,'
made for war and agitated without cessation by
warlike passions, an original but tardy product
of the feudal principle. . . . We must be re-
signed to a fact in regard to which nothing can
be done : the absence of documents relative to
the municipal constitution of cities and towns
during four hundred years, from the 7th century
to the 11th. From all appearances, this enor-
mous hiatus will never be overcome. . . . Facts
being lacking, scholars have had recourse to con-
jecture. Some among them have supposed that
the principal characteristics of the Gallo-Roman
municipalities were perpetuated during this
period. At bottom, their hypothesis rests prin-
cipally upon analogies of names. . . . From
the point of view of positive science, the Ger-
manic origin of the communes is not more
easy of demonstration. ... It is even doubtful
whether the essential element of the communal
institution, the confederation formed by the in-
habitants, under the guaranty of the mutual
oath, belongs exclusively to the customs of the
Germans. The theory of Augustin Thierry,
which made of the commune a special applica-
tion of the Scandinavian gilde, has been judged
too narrow by contemporary scholars. They
have reproached him with reason for having lo-
calized an institution which belongs entirely to
the Germanic race. But the principle of asso-
ciation, applied in the cities, is not a fact purely
German. . . . Association is a fact which is
neither Germanic nor Roman ; it is universal,
and is produced spontaneously among all peo-
ples, in all social clas.ses, wlien circumstances
exact and favor its appearance. The communal
revolution then is a national event. The com-
mune was born, like other forms of popular
emancipation, from the need which the inhabi-
tants of the cities had of substituting a limited
and regulated exploitation for the arbitrary ex-
ploitation of which they were the victims. Such
is the point of departure of the institution. We
must always return to the definition of it given
by Guibert de Nogent. It is true as a basis,
although it does not embrace all the characteris-
tics of the object defined: 'Commune! new
name, detestable name ! By it the ccnsitaires are
freed from all service in consideration of a sim-
ple annual tax ; by it they are condemned, for
191
FRANCE, 12-13TH CENTURIES.
The
Communes.
FRANCE, 13-13TH CENTURIES.
the infraction of the law, only to a penalty
legally determined ; by it, they cease to be sub-
jected to the other pecuniary charges by which
the serfs are overwhelmed.' At certain points,
this limitation of the seigneurial power was
made amicably, by pacific transaction between
the seigneur and his bourgeois. Elsewhere, an
icisurrcction, more or less prolonged, was neces-
sary iu order to establish it. When this popular
movement had as a result, not only the assuring
to the people the most necessary liberties which
were demanded, but besides that of abating to
their advantage the political position of the mas-
ter, by taking from him a part of his seigneurial
prerogatives, there arose not only a free city,
but a commune, a bourgeois seigneury, invested
with a certain political and judicial power. This
definition of the commune implies that originally
it was not possible to establish it otherwise than
by a pressure exerted, more or less violently,
upon the seigneurial authority. We have the
direct proof of it for some of our free municipali-
ties; but it is presvunable tliat many other com-
munes whose primitive history we do not know
have owed equally to force the winning of their
first liberties. . . . We dO not mean that, in the
first period of the history of urban emancipation,
all the communes, without exception, were
obliged to pass tliroughthe phase of insurrection
or of open resistance. There were some which
profited (as the cities of the Flemish region in
1127) by a combination of exceptional circum-
stances to attain political liberty without striking
a blow. Among these circumstances must be
mentioned in the first rank the prolonged va-
cancy of an episcopal see and the disappearance
of a laic lord, dead without direct heir, leaving
a succession disputed by numerous competitors.
But ordinarily, the accession of the bourgeoisie
to the rank of political power did not take place
pacifically. Either the seigneur struggled against
his rebellious subjects, or he feared the struggle
and bent before the accomplished fact. In all
cases it was necessary that the people were con-
scious of their power and imposed their will.
This is proven by the dramatic episodes which
the narrations of Augustin Thierry have forever
rendered celebrated. . . . Later, in the decline
of the 12th century, it must be recognized that
the opinion of the dominant class ceased to be as
hostile to the communes. When the conviction
had been acquired that the popular movement
was irresistible, it was tolerated -. the best means
even were sought to derive advantage from it.
The Church always remained upon the defen-
sive ; but the king and the great feudal lords
perceived that in certain respects the commime
might be a useful instrument. They accepted
then the communal organization, and they even
came to create it where it was not spontaneously
established. But it is easy to convince one's self
that the communes of this category, those which
owe their creation to the connivance or even to
the initiative of the seigneur, did not possess the
same degree of independence as the communes
of the primitive epoch, founded by insurrection.
On the whole, the communal revolution was only
one of the aspects of the vast movement of
political and social reaction which the excesses
of the feudal regime engendered everywhere
from the 11 th to the 14th century. . . . One
would like to possess the text of one of those
oaths by which the bourgeois of the northern
communes bound themselves together, for the
first time, with or without the consent of their
seigneur, in the most ancient period of the com-
munal evolution. It would be of the highest in-
terest for the historian to know how they set
about it, what words were pronoimced to form
what the contemporary writers called a ' con-
juration,' a 'conspiration,' a 'confederation.'
No document of this natiu'e and of that primi-
tive epoch has come down to us. . . . The sum
total of the sworn bourgeois constituted the com-
mune. The commune was most often called
'communia,' but also, with varying termination,
'commuua,' 'communio,' 'communitas.' Prop-
erly speaking and especially with reference to
the origin, the name commune was given not
to tlie city, but to the association of the inhabi-
tants who had taken oath. For this reason also
the expression 'commune juree' was used.
Later the acceptation of the word was enlai'ged ;
it designated the city itself, considered as a geo-
graphical unit. . . . The members of the com-
mime, those who formed part of the sworn asso-
ciation, were properly called ' the sworn (jf the
commune.' 'jurati conmiunie,' or, by abridg-
ment, 'the sworn,' 'jurati.' They were desig-
nated also by the expression: 'the men of the
commune,' or, ' those who belong to the com-
mune,' 'qui sunt de communia.' They were
also entitled 'bourgeois.' 'burgeuses,' more
rarely, 'bourgeois jures': .sometimes also 'voi-
sins,' 'vicini.' or even 'friends,' 'amici.'. . .
We are far from having complete light on the
question as to what conditions were exacted
from those who entered the communal associa-
tion, and to what classes of persons the access to
the bourgeoisie was open or interdicted. The
variety of local usages, and above all the im-
possibility of finding texts which apply to the
most ancient period of urban emancipation, will
always embarrass the historian. To find upon
these matters clear documents, developed and
precise, we must come down, generally, to the
end of the 13th century or even to the century
following, that is to say, to the epoch of the
decadence of the communal regime. . . . The
bourgeois could not be diseased, that is to say,
undoubtedly, tainted with an incurable malady,
and especially a contagious malady, as leprosy.
. . . The communal law excluded also bastards.
On this point it was in accord with the cus-
tomary law of a very great number of French
regions. . . . They refused also to receive into
their number inhabitants encumbered with debts.
The condition of debtor constituted in effect a
kind of servitude. He no longer belonged to
himself; his goods might become the property
of the creditor, and he could be imprisoned. . . .
With still more reason does it ajjpear inadmis-
sible that tlie serf should be called to benefit by
the commune. The question of urban serfdom,
in its relations with the communal institution, is
extremely obscure, delicate and complex. Tliere
are however two facts in regard to which aflirma-
tion is allowable. It cannot be doubted that at
the epoch of the formation of the communes, at
the opening of the 13th century, there were no
longer any serfs in many of the urban centers.
It may be held also as certain that the desire to
bring about the disappearance of this serfdom
was one of the principal motives which urged
the inhabitants to claim their independence. . . .
The inhabitant who united all the conditions
1192
FRANCE, 12-13TH CENTURIES.
The
Communes.
FRANCE, 1180-1334.
legally required for admission to the bourgeoisie
was besides obliged to pay a town-due (' droit
d'entree'). . . . If it was not always easy to en-
ter a communal body, neither could one leave it
as easily as might have been desired. The ' issue
de commune ' exacted the performance of a cer-
tain number of troublesome formalties. ... So,
it was necessary to pay to become a communist,
and to pay yet more in order to cease to be one.
The bourgeois was riveted to his bourgeoisie. . . .
Up to this point we have examined only half the
problem of the formation of the commune, ap-
proaching it on its general side. There remains
the question whether all the popular element
which existed in the city formed part of the body
of bourgeoisie, and whether the privileged class,
that of the nobles and clergy, was not excluded
from it. . . . We shall have to admit as a gen-
eral rule, that the nobles and the clergy while
taking oath to the commune, did not in reality
enter it. What must be rejected, is the sort of
absolute, inviolable rule which has been formed
on this opinion. In the middle ages especially
there was no rule without exception. . . . The
commune was an institution rather ephemeral.
As a really independent seigneury, it scarcely
endured more than two centuries. The excesses
of the communists, their bad financial adminis-
tration, their intestine divisions, the hostility of
the Church, the onerous patronage of the ' haut
suzerain,' and especially of the king ; such were
the immediate causes of this rapid decadence.
The communes perished victims of their own
faults, but also of the hate of the numerous ene-
mies interested in theirdownfall. . . . The prin-
cipal cause of the premature downfall of the
communal regime is without any doubt the con-
siderable development of the monarchical power
in France at the end of the 13th century. The
same force which annihilated feudality, to the
profit of the national unit, was also that which
caused the prompt disappearance of the inde-
pendence of the bourgeois seigneuries. With its
privileges and its autonomy, the commune im-
peded the action of the Capetains. Those quar-
relsome and restless republics had no reason for
existence, in the midst of the peaceful and obedi-
ent bourgeoisie upon which royalty had laid its
hand. The commune then was sacrificed to the
monarchical iuterest. In Italy and in Germany,
the free cities enjoyed their independence much
longer, by reason of the absence of the central
power or of its weakness." — Achille Luchaire,
Les Communes Fra7ii;aises a Vepoque des Capetiens
directs (trans, from the Prench), pp. 1-16, 45-56,
65, and 288-290.
A. D. iioi. — Disastrous Crusade of French
princes and knights. See Crus.^des : A. D.
llUl-1103.
A. D. 1106-1119. — War with Henry I. of
England and Normandy. See England : A. D.
1087-113.).
A. D. 1108-1180. — The reigns of Louis VI.,
Louis VII. and accession of Philip II. — Gain
and loss of Aquitaine. — "Louis VI., or 'the
Fat' was the first able man whom the line of
Hugh Capet had produced since it mounted the
throne. He made the first attempt at curbing
the nobles, assisted by Suger, the Abbot of St.
Denys. The only possibility of doing this was
to obtain the aid of one party of nobles against
another ; and when any unusually flagrant oilence
had been committed, Louis called together the
nobles, bishops, and abbots of his domain, and
obtained their consent and assistance in making
war on the guilty man, and overthrowing his
castle, thus, in some degree, lessening the sense
of utter impunity which had caused so many
violences and such savage recklessness. He also
permitted a few of the cities to purchase the
right of self-government. . . . The royal au-
thority had begun to be respected by 1137, when
Louis'VI. 'died, having just effected the marriage
of his son, Louis VII.. with Eleanor, the heiress
of the Dukes of Aquitaine — thus hoping to
make the crown really more powerful than the
great princes who owed it homage. At this time
lived the great St. Bernard. Abbot of Clairvaux,
who had a wonderful influence over men's
minds. . . . Bernard roused the young king
Louis VII. to go on the second crusade [see
Crusades: A. D. 1147-1149], which was imder-
taken by the Emperor and the other princes of
Europe to relieve the distress of the kingdom of
Palestine. . . . Though Louis did reach Palestine,
it was with weakened forces ; he could effect
nothing by his campaign, and Eleanor, who had
accompanied him, seems to have been entirely
corrupted by the evil habits of the Franks set-
tled in the East. Soon after his return, Louis
dissolved his marriage ; and Eleanor became the
wife of Henry, Count of Anjou, who soon after
inherited the kingdom of England as our Henry
II., as well as the duchy of Normandy, and be-
trothed his third son to the heiress of Brittany
[see Aquitaine: A. D. 1137-1152]. Eleanor's
marriage seemed to undo all that Louis VI. had
done in raising the royal power ; for Henry com-
pletely overshadowed" Louis, whose only resource
was in feeble endeavoiws to take part against
him in his many family quarrels. The whole
reign of Louis the Young, the title that adhered
to him on account of his simple, childish nature,
is only a record of weakness and disaster, till he
died in 1180. . . . Powerful in fact as Henry II.
was, it was his gathering so large a part of
France under his rule which was. in the end. to
build up the greatness of the French kings. Wliat
had held them in check was the existence of the
great fiefs or provinces, each with its own line
of dukes or counts, and all practically indepen-
dent of the king. But now nearly all the prov-
inces of southern and western France were
gathered into the hand of a single ruler ; and
though he was a Frenchman in blood, yet, as he
was King of England, this ruler seemed to his
French subjects no Frenchman, but a foreigner.
They began therefore to look to the French king
to free them from a foreign ruler ; and the son
of Louis VII., called Philip Augustus, was ready
to take advantage of their disposition." — C. M.
Yonge, Hist, of France {Hist. Primers), ch. 1,
sect. 6-7.
A. D. 1180-1224. — The kingdom extended
by Philip Augustus. — Normandy, Maine and
Anjou recovered from the English kings. —
When the king of England became possessed
of more than one-half of France, "one might
venture perhaps to conjecture that the sceptre
of France would eventually have passed from
the Capets to the Plantagenets, if the vexa-
tious quarrel witli Becket at one time, and the
successive rebellions fomented by Louis at a later
period, had not embarrassed the great talents
and ambitious spirit of Henry. But the scene
quite changed when Philip Augustus, son of
1193
FBANCE, 1180-1224.
Saint Louis.
FRANCE, 1226-1270.
Louis VIL, came upon the stage [A. D. 1180].
No prince comparable to him in systematic am-
bition and military enterprise had reigned in
France since Charlemagne. From his reign the
French monarchy dates the recovery of its lustre.
He wrested from the count of Flanders the Ver-
mandois (that part of Picardy which borders on
the Isle of France and Champagne), and subse-
quently, the County of Artois. But the most
important conquests of Philip were obtained
against the kings of England. Even Richard I.,
with all his prowess, lost ground in struggling
against an adversary not less active, and more
politic, than himself. But when John not only
took possession of his brother's dominions, but
confirmed his usurpation by the murder, as was
very probably surmised, of the heir, Philip, art-
fully taking advantage of the general indigna-
tion, summoned him as his vassal to the court of
his peers. John demanded a safe-conduct. Will-
ingly, said Philip ; let him come unmolested.
And" return ? inquired the English envoy. If the
judgment of his peers permit him, replied the
king. By all the saints of France, he exclaimed,
when further presseii, he shall not return unless
acquitted. . . . John, not appearing at his sum-
mons, was declared guilty of felony, and his
fiefs confiscated. The execution of this sentence
was not intrusted toa dilatory arm. Philip poured
his troops into Normandy, and took town after
town, while the king of England, infatuated by
his own wickedness and cowardice, made hardly
an attempt at defence. In two years [A. D. 1203-
1204] Normandy, Maine, and Anjou were irre-
coverably lost. Poitou and Guienne resisted
longer ; but the conquest of the first was com-
pleted [A. D. 1334] bv Louis VIII., successor of
Philip."— H. Ua\\nm,'nemdflle Ages, ch. 1. pt. 1.
Also in: K. Norgate, England under the An-
gerin Kings, v. 2, ch. 9. — See, also, Engl.\jjd :
A. D. 130.5 : and Anjou : A. D. 1206-1443.
A. D. 1188-1190. — Crusade of Philip Augus-
tus. See Crusades: A. D. 1188-1193.
A. D. 1201-1203. — The Fifth Crusade, and
its diversion against Constantinoole. See
Crusades : A. 1). 1201-1303.
A. D. 1209-1229. — The Albigensian wars
and their effects. See Albigenses.
A. D. 1212. — The Children's Crusade. See
Crus.\des : A. D. 1313.
A. D. 1214. — Nationalizing effects of the
Battle of Bouvines. See Bouvines.
A. D. 1223. — Accession of King Louis VIII.
A. D. 1226-1270. — Reign and character of
Louis IX. (Saint Louis). — His great civilizing
work and influence. — "Of the forty-four years
of St. Louis' reign, nearly fifteen, with a" long
interval of separation, pertained to the govern-
ment of Queen Blanche of Castillo, rather than
that of the king her son. Louis, at his accession
in 1326, was only eleven ; and he remained a
minor up to the age of twenty-one, in 1236, for
the time of majority in the case of royalty was
not yet specially and rigorously fi.xed. During
those ten years Queen Blanche governed France ;
not at all, as is commonly asserted, with the
official title of regent, but simply as guardian of
the king her son. ... It was not until twenty-
two years had passed, in 1248, that Louis, on
starting for the crusade, ofl5cially delegated to his
mother the kingly authority, and that Blanche,
during her son's absence, really governed with
the title of regent. . . . During the first period
of his government, and so long as her son's mi-
nority lasted, Queen Blanche had to grapple with
intrigues, plots, insiu-rectious, and open war ;
and, what was still worse for her, with the in-
sults and calumnies of the crown's great vassals,
burning to seize once more, under a woman's
government, the independence and power which
had been effectually disputed with them by
Philip Augustus. Blanche resisted their at-
tempts, at one time with open and persevering
energy, at another dexterously with all the tact,
address, and allurements of a woman. Though
she was now forty years of age she was beauti-
ful, elegant, attractive, full of resources and of
grace. . . . The malcontents spread the most
odious scandals about her. . . . Neither in the
events nor in the writings of the period is it easy
to find anything which can authorize the accu-
sations made by the foes of Queen Blanche. . . .
What St. Louis really owed to his mother, and it
was a great deal, was the steady triumph which,
whether by arms or by negotiation, Blanche
gained over the great vassals, and the preponder-
ance which, amidst the struggles of the feudal
system, she secured for the kingship of her son
in his minority. . . . AVhen Louis reached his
majority, his entrance upon personal exercise of
the kingly power produced no change in the
conduct of public affairs. . . . The kingship of
the son was a continuance of the mother's gov-
ernment." — G. Masson, St. Lonis, pp. 44-56. —
"The fundamental institution upon which all
the social edifice rested, in the time of Saint
Louis, was royalty. But this royalty, from the
double point of view of theory and practice, was
very different from what it had been originally.
In principle it was the divine right, that is, it
was an emanation from the Most High, and the
king held of no other seigneur. This is what the
feudal maxim expressed after its fashion : ' The
king holds only of God and his sword.'. . .
Royalty was transmitted by heredity, from
father to son, and by primogeniture. However,
this heredity, which had formerly needed a sort
of election to confirm it, or at least popular ac-
clamation, needed now to be hallowed by the
unction of the church. Consecration, joined to
the privilege of being the eldest of the royal
race, made the king. ... It must not be thought
however that the ideas of the time attributed to
the hereditary principle a force absolute and su-
perior to all interests. . . . The royal power,
besides, had not yet a material force sufficiently
great to dominate everywhere as absolute mas-
ter. Under the two first lines, it was exercised
in the same degree over all points of the terri-
tory ; from the accession of the third, on the
contrary, it was only a power of two degrees,
having a very unequal action according to the
territory and the locality. A part of France
composed the royal domaiu ; it was the patri-
mony of the Capetian house, increased by con-
quest or successive acquisitions. There, the king
exercised an authority almost without limit ; he
was on his own ground. All the rest formed
duchies, counties, or seigneuries of different
sorts, possessed hereditarily by great vassals,
more or less independent originally. Here the
king was only the suzerain ; he had scarcely any
rights excepting to homage, to military service,
to pecuniary assistance in certain stated cases,
and to some privileges called royal, as that of
coining money. The entire royal policy, from
1194
FRANCE 1326-1270.
Saint Louis,
FRANCE, 1226-1270.
Philip Augustus to Louis XL. consisted in sljil-
fully increasing the first of these parts by absorb-
ing little by little the second. . . . The posses-
sions of the crown . . . formed two or three
separate groups, cut up in the most fantastic
fashion, and connected only as the result of long
effort. All the rest of the kingdom was com-
posed of great fiefs escaping the direct action of
royalty, and themselves subdivided into lesser
fiefs, which complicated infinitely the hierarchy
of persons and lands. The principal were the
counties of Flanders, Boulogne, Saint Pol, Pon-
thieii, Aumale, Eu, Soissons, Dreux, Montford-
I'Amaury ; the bishoprics of Tournai, Beauvais,
Noyon, Laon, Lisieux, Reims, Langres, Chalons,
the titularies of which were at the same time
counts or seigneurs; the vast county of Cham-
pagne, uniting those of Rethel, Grandpre, Roucy,
Brienne, Joigny and the county Porcien ; the
duchy of Burgundy, so powerful and so exten-
sive : the counties of Nevers, Tonnerre, Auxerre,
Beaujeu, Forez, Auvergne : the seigneury of
Bourbon ; the counties of Blois and of Chartres ;
the county or duchy of Brittany ; Guienne, and,
before 1271, the county of Toulouse ; the bishop-
rics of Albi, Cahors, Mende, Lodfive, Agde,
Maguelonne, belonging temporally as well as
spiritually to their respective bishops ; finally
the seigneury of Montpellier, holding of the last
of these bishoprics. To which must yet be added
the appanages given by Louis VIIL to his
younger sons, that is, the counties of Artois,
Anjou, Poitiers, with their dependencies. . . .
So when the government of the kingdom at this
epoch is spoken of, it must be understood to
mean that of only the least considerable part of
the territory, — that is, of the part which was
directly submitted to the authority of the king.
In this part the sovereign himself exercised the
power, assisted, as ordained by the theories ex-
amined above, by auxiliaries taken from the
nation. There were neither ministers nor a
deliberative corps, properly speaking ; however
there was very nearly the equivalent. On one
side, the great officers of the crown and the royal
council, on the other the parliament and the
chamber of accounts (exchequer), or at least their
primitive nucleus, constituted the principal ma-
chinery of the central government, and had, each,
its special powers. The great officers, of whom
there had at first been five, were only four from
the reign of Philip Augustus, who had suppressed
the seneschal owing to the possibility of his be-
coming dangerous by reason of the progressive
extension of his jurisdiction ; they were the
bouteiller, who had become the administrator of
the royal expenditure ; the chambrier, elevated
to the care of the treasury ; the connetable, a
kind of military superintendent ; and the chan-
celier, who had the disposition of the royal seal.
These four personages represented in a certain
degree, secretaries of state. The two latter had
a preponderant influence, one in time of peace,
the other in time of war. To the chancellor be-
longed the drawing up and the proper execution
(legalization) of the royal diplomas ; this power
alone made him the arbiter of the interests of all
private individuals. As to the constable, he had
the chief direction of the army, and all those
who composed it, barons, knights, paid troops,
owed him obedience. The king, in person, had
the supreme command ; but he frequently al-
lowed the constable to exercise it, and, in order
not to impose too heavy a burden upon him, or
rather to prevent his taking a too exclusive
authority, he had appointed as coadjutors two
• marechaux de France ' who were second in
command. . . . The king's council had not yet
a very fixed form. Saint Louis submitted im-
portant questions to the persons about him,
clerics, knights or men of the people ; but he
chose these advisers according to the nature
of the questions, having temporary counsellors
rather than a permanent council. Among these
counsellors some were more especially occupied
with justice, others with finance, others with
political affairs. These three categories are the
germ of the parliament, of the exchequer, and of
the council of state ; but they then formed an
indistinct ensemble, called simply the king's
court. They were not completely separated so
as to form independent institutions initil the
time of Philippe le Bel. . . . The superior juris-
diction is represented by the parliament. The
organization of this famous body was begun in
the lifetime of Philip Augustus. Under the
reign of this prince [Saint Louis], and notably
as a result of his absence, the ' cour du roi ' had
begim to render more and more frequent de-
cisions. The section which was occupied with
judicial affairs, appears to have taken on, in the
time of Saint Louis, an individual and indepen-
dent existence. Instead of following the sover-
eign and meeting when he thought it expedient,
it became sedentary. . . . The date at which
the series of the famous registers of the parlia-
ment, known under the name of Olim, begins
may be considered that of the definitive creation
of this great institution. It will be remarked
that it coincides with the general reform of the
administration of the kingdom undertaken by
the good king on his return from Syria. . . .
From its birth the parliament tended to become,
in the hands of royalty, a means of domination
over the great vassals. Not only were the
seigneurs insensibly eliminated from it, to the
advantage of the clergy, the lawyers, and the
officers of the crown, but by a series of skilful
victories, its action was extended little by little
over all the fiefs situated outside the royal do-
main, that is, over all France. It is again Saint
Louis who caused this great and decisive ad-
vance toward the authority of the suzerain. He
brought it about especially by the abolition of
the judicial duel and by the multiplication of
appeals to the parliament. ... As for the ap-
peals, the interdiction of 'fausser jugement'
(refusal to submit to the sentence pronounced)
was not the only cause of their multiplication.
Many of the great vassals were led to bring their
affairs before the king's court, either on account
of the confidence inspired by the well known
equity of Saint Louis, or by the skill of the
royal agents, who neglected no opportunity to
cause the acceptance of the arbitration of the
crown ; and those who did not resign themselves
to it were sometimes compelled to do so. The
appeals of their subjects naturally took the same
route ; however, they continued" to employ the
medium of the sene'schal's court or that of the
bailli, while those of the barons and the princes
of the blood went directly to Paris. No general
law was promulgated in regard to the matter.
Royaltywas content to recover little by little,
by partial measures, the superior jurisdiction
formerly usurped by the feudality. . . Above
1195
FRANCE, 1226-1270.
Saint Louis.
FRANCE, 1326-1270.
and outside of the parliament justice was ren-
dered by the kiug iu person. . . . Saint Louis,
always thoughtful of the interests of the lowly,
had a liking for this expeditious manner of ter-
minating suits. Nearly every morning, he sent
two or three members of his council to inquire,
at the palace gate, if there were not some private
individuals there wishing to discuss their affairs
before him ; from this came the name ' plaids de
la porte' given to this kind of audience. If his
counsellors could not bring the parties to an
agreement, he called the latter into his own room,
examined their case with his scrupulous impar-
tiality, and rendered the final sentence himself
on the spot. Joinville, who took part more than
once in these summary judgments, thus describes
to us their very simple mechanism. ' The king
had his work regulated in such a way, that mon-
seigneur de Nesle and the good count de Sois-
sous, and the rest of us who were about him,
who had heard our masses, want to hear the
" plaids de la porte," which are now called " re-
quetcs " (petitions). And when he returned from
the monastery, he sent for us, seated himself at
the foot of his bed, made us all sit around him,
and asked us if there were any cases to despatch
which could not be disposed of without him;
and we named them to him. and he sent for the
parties and asked them : Why do you not take
what our people offer you ? And they said :
Sire, because they offer us little. Then he said
to them : You should take what they are willing
to give you. And the saintly man labored in
this way, with all his might to set them in a just
aud reasonable path.' Here the great peace-
maker is clearly seen ; private individuals as
well as princes, he desired to reconcile all, make
all agree. These patriarchal audiences often had
for theater the garden of the palace or the wood
of Vincennes." — A. Lecoyde la Marche, La
France sous Saint Louis et sous Philippe le Hardi,
liv. 1, eh. 2, and liv. 3, eh. 1 and .3. — "St. Louis
struck at the spirit of the Middle Age, and
therein insured the downfall of its forms and
•whole embodiment. He fought the last battles
against feudalism, because, by a surer means
than battling, he took, and unconsciously, the
life blood from the opposition to the royal au-
thority. Unconsciously, we say ; he did not
look on the old order of things as evil, and try
to introduce a better ; he did not selfishly con-
tend for the extension of his own power ; he was
neither a great reformer, nor a (so-called) wise
king. He undermined feudalism, because he
hated injustice; he warred with the Middle Age,
because he could not tolerate its disregard of
human rights ; and he paved the way for Philip-
le-bel's struggle with the papacy, because he
looked upon religion and the church as instru-
ments for man's salvation, not as tools for worldly
aggrandizement. He is, perhaps, the only mon-
arch on record who failed in most of what he
undertook of active enterprise, who was under
the control of the prejudices of his age, who was
a true conservative, who never dreamed of effect-
ing great social changes, — and who yet, by his
mere virtues, his sense of duty, his power of con-
science, made the mightiest "and most vital re-
forms. One of these reforms was the abolition
of the trial by combat. . . . It is not our purpose
to follow Louis either in his first or second
crusade." [See Crus.^des : A. D. 1248-1 2.')4.]
On returning, in 1254, from his first crusade.
' ' scarce had he landed, before he began that course
of legislation which continued until once more he
embarked. ... In his first legislative action,
Louis proposed to himself these objects, — to put
an end to judicial partiality, to prevent needless
and oppressive imprisoninent for debt, to stop
unfounded criminal prosecutions, and to mitigate
the horrors of legalized torture. In connection
with these genei-al topics, he made laws to bear
oppressively upon the Jews, to punish prostitu-
tion and gambling, and to diminish intemper-
ance. Aud it is worthy of remark, that this last
point was to be attained by forbidding innkeep-
ers to sell to any others than travellers, — a mea-
sure now (six hundrt>d years later) under dis-
cussion in some parts of our Union, with a view to
the same end. But the wish which this rare mon-
arch had to recompense all who had been wronged
by himself and forefathers was the upper-
most wish of his soul. . . . Commissioners were
sent into every province of the kingdom to exam-
ine each alleged case of royal injustice, aud with
power in most instances to make instant restitu-
tion. He himself went forth to hear and judge
in the neighborhood of his capital, and as far
north as Normandy. ... As he grew yet older,
the spirit of generosity grew stronger daily in his
bosom. He would have no hand in the affairs
of Europe, save to act, wherever he could, as
peacemaker. INIany occasions occurred where all
urged him to profit by power aud ashow of right,
a naked legal title, to possess himself of valuable
fiefs; but Louis shook his head sorrowfully and
sternly, aud did as his inmost soul told him the law
of God directed. . . . There had been for some
reigns back a growing disposition to refer cer-
tain questions to the king's tribunals, as being
regal, not baronial questions. Louis the Ninth
gave to this disposition distinct form and value,
and, under the influence of the baron-hating
legists, he so ordained, in conformity with the
Roman law, that, under given circumstances, al-
most any case might be referred to his tribunal.
This, of course, gave to the king's judgment-seat
and to him more of influence than any other step
ever taken had done. . . . It . . . threw at once
the balance of power into the royal hands. . . .
It became necessary to make the occasional sitting
of the king's council or parliament, which exer-
cised certain judicial functions, permanent; and
to change its composition, by diminishing the
feudal and increasing the legal or legist element.
Thus everywhere, in the barons' courts, the
king's court, and the central parliament, the
Roman, legal, organized element began to pre-
dominate over the German, feudal, barbaric ten-
dencies, and the foundation-stones of modern
society were laid. But the just soul of Louis
and the prejudices of his Romanized counsellors
were not arrayed against the old Teutonic bar-
barism alone, with its endless private wars and
judicial duels; they stood equally opposed to the
extravagant claims of the Roman hierarchy. . . .
The first calm, deliberate, consistent opposition
to the centralizing power of the great see was
that offered by its truest friend and most honest
ally, Louis of France. From 1260 to 1268, step
by" step was taken by the defender of the liberties
of the Galilean church, luitil. in the year last
named, he published his 'Pragmatic Sanction'
[see below]." — Saint Louis of ?>ance (North
American Review, April, 1846).— See, also. Par
LIAMENT OF PaKIS.
1196
FRANCE, 1252.
Philip TV., and
Pope Boniface VIII.
FRANCE, 1285-1314
A. D. 1252. — The Crusading movement of
the Pastors. See Ckusades : A. D. 1252.
A. D. 1266. — Acquisition of the kingdom of
Naples or the Two Sicilies by Charles of An-
jou, the king's brother. See It.\ly (Soutiiekx):
A. D. 1250-1268.
A. D. 1268. — The Pragmatic Sanction of St.
Louis. — Assertion of the rights of the Galli-
can Church. — "The coutinual usurpations of
the popes produced the celebrated Pragmatic
Sanction of St. Louis [about A. D. 1268]. This
edict, the authority of which, though probably
without cause, has been sometimes disputed, con-
tains three important provisions; namely, that
all prelates and other patrons shall enjoy their
full rights as to the collation of benefices, ac-
cording to the canons ; that churches shall possess
freely their rights of election ; and that no tax or
pecuniary exaction shall be levied by the pope,
without consent of the king and of the national
church. We do not find, however, that the
French government acted up to the spirit of this
ordinance. " — H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, ch. 7,
pt. 2. — "This Edict appeared either during the
last year of Clement IV., ... or during the
vacancy in the Pontificate. ... It became the
barrier against which the encroachments of the
ecclesiastical power were destined to break ; nor
was it swept away till a stronger barrier had
arisen in the unlimited power of the French
crown." It "became a great Charter of Inde-
pendence to the Galilean Church." — H. H. Mil-
man, Hist, of Latin Christianity, hk. 11, ch. 4
{V. 5).
A. D. 1270-1285. — The sons of St. Louis. —
Origin of the Houses of Valois and Bourbon.
— St. Louis left several sons, the elder of whom
succeeded him as Philippe III., and his youngest
son was Robert, Count of Clermont and Lord of
Bourbon, the ancestor of all the branches of the
House of Bourbon. Philippe III. died in 1285,
when he was succeeded by his son, Philippe IV.
A younger son, Charles, Count of Valois, was
the ancestor of the Valois branch of the royal
family.
A. D. 1285-1314.— Reign of Philip IV.— His
conflict -with the Pope and his destruction of
the Templars. — Philippe IV., called "leBel"
(the Handsome), came to the throne on the death
of his father, Philippe "le Hardi," in 1285. He
was presently involved in war with Edward I. of
England, who crossed to Flanders in 1297, in-
tending to invade Fi-ance, but was recalled by
the revolt in Scotland, under Wallace, and peace
was made in 1303. The Flemings, who had pro-
voked Philippe by their alliance with the Eng-
lish, were thus left to suffer his resentment.
They bore themselves valiantly in a war which
lasted several years, and inflicted upon the knights
of France a fearful defeat at Courtrai, in 1302,
In the end, the French king substantially failed
in his designs upon Flanders (see Fl.^kders:
A. D. 1299-1304). " It is probable that this long
struggle would have been still protracted, but
for a general quarrel which had sprung up some
time before its close, between the French king
and Pope Boniface VIII., concerning the [taxa-
tion of the clergy and the] right of nomination
to vacant bishoprics within the dominions of
Philippe. The latter, on seeing Bernard Saissetti
thrust into the Bishropric of Panders by the
pontiff's sole authority, caused the Bishop to be
arrested by night, and, after subjecting him to
various indignities, consigned him to prison on a
charge of treason, heresy, and blasphemy. Boni-
face remonstrated against this outrage and vio-
lence in a bull known in history, by its opening
words ' Ausculta, fill,' in which he asserted his
power 'over nations and kingdoms, to root out
and to pull down, to destroy and to throw down,
to build and to plant,' and concluded by inform-
ing Philippe that he had summoned all the su-
perior clergy of France to an assembly at Rome
on the 1st of the following November, in order
to deliberate on the remedies for such abuses as
those of which the king had been guilty. Phi-
lippe, by no means intimidated by this measure,
convoked a full and early assembly of the three
estates of his kingdom, to decide upon the con-
duct of him whom the orthodox, up to that time,
had been in the habit of deeming infallible. This
(10th April 1302) was the first meeting of a
Parliament, properly so called, in France. . . .
The chambers unanimously approved and ap-
plauded the conduct of the king, and resolved to
maintain the honour of the crown and the nation
from foreign insult or domination ; and to mark
their decision more conclusively, they concurred
with the sovereign in prohibiting the clergy from
attending the Pope's summons to Rome. The
papal bull was burned as publicly as possible.
. . . The Pope, alarmed at these novel and bold
proceedings, sought instantly to avert their con-
sequences by soothing explanations ; but Philippe
would not now be turned aside from his course.
He summoned a convocation of the Galilean prel-
ates, in which by the mouth of William de No-
garet, his chancellor, he represented the occupier
of St. Peter's chair as the father of lies and an
evil-doer; and he demanded the seizure of this
pseudo-pope, and his imprisonment until he could
he. brought before a legitimate tribunal to receive
the punishment due to his numerous crimes.
Boniface now declared that the French king was
excommunicated, and cited him by his confessor
to appear in the papal court at Rome within
three months, to make submission and atonement
for his contumacy. . . . While this unseemly
quarrel . . . seemed to be growing interminable
in its complexities, the daring of a few men
opened a shorter path to its end than could have
been anticipated. William of Nogaret associat-
ing to him Sciarra Colonna, a noble Roman, who,
having been driven from his native city by Boni-
face and subjected to various hardships, had
found refuge in Paris, passed, with a train of
three hundred horsemen, and a much larger body
of picked infantry, secretly into Italy, with the
intention of surprising the Pope at his summer
residence in his native town of Anagni. . . . The
papal palace was captured after a feeble resis-
tance, and the cardinals and personal attendants
of the Pontiff fled for their lives. . . . The Con-
dottieri . . . dragged the Pope from his throne,
and conveying him into tlie street, mounted him
upon a lean horse without saddle or bridle, with
his head to the animal's tail, and thus conducted
him in a sort of pilgrimage through the town.
He was then consigned prisoner to one of the
chambers of his palace and placed under guard ;
while the body of his cajjlors dispersed them-
selves through the splendid apartments in eager
pursuit of plunder. Three days were thus occu-
pied ; but at the end of that time the . . . people
of Anagni . . . took arms in behalf of their fel-
low-townsman and spiritual father, and falling
1197
FRANCE, 1285-1314.
Destruction of the
Templars.
FRANCE, 1314-1328.
upon the French while still indulging in the
licence of the sack, drove Nogaret and Colonna
from their quarters, and either expelled or mas-
sacred the whole of their followers. " The Pope
returned to Korae in so great a rage that his
reason gave way, and soon afterwards he was
found dead in his bed. "The scandal of these
proceedings throughout Christendom was im-
mense; and Philippe adopted every precaution
to avert evil consequences from himself by pay-
ing court to Benedict XI. who succeeded to the
tiara. This Pope, however, though he for some
time temporised, could not be long deaf to the
loud voices of the clergy which called for pun-
ishment upon the oppressors of the church. Ere
he had reigned nine months he found himself
compelled to excommunicate the plunderers of
Anagni ; and a few days afterwards he perished,
under circumstances which leave little doubt of
his having been poisoned. . . . The king of
France profitted largely by the crime ; since, be-
sides gaining time for the subsidence of excite-
ment, he was subsequently enabled, by his in-
trigues, to procure the election of a person
pledged not only to grant him absolution for all
past offences, but to stigmatise the memory of
Boniface, to restore the deposed Colonna to his
honours and estates, to nominate several French
ecclesiastics to the college of cardinals, and to
grant to the king the tenths of the Gallican
church for a term of five years. The pontiff who
thus seems to have been the first of his race to
lower the pretensions of his office, was Bertrand
de Goth, originally a private gentleman of Ba-
zadors, and subsequently promoted to the Archi-
episcopal See of Bordeaux. He assumed the
title of Clement V. , and after receiving investi-
ture at Lyons, fixed the apostolic residence at
Avignon, where it continued, under successive
occupants, for a period, the length of which
caused it to be denominated by the Italians the
Babylonian captivity. This quarrel settled,
Philippe engaged in another undertaking, the
safe-conduct of which required all his skill and
unscrupulousness. This important enterprise
was no less than the destruction and plunder of
the military order of Knights Templars. . . .
Public discontent . . . had, by a variety of cir-
cumstances, been excited throughout the realm.
Among the number of exactions, the coin had
been debased to meet the exigencies of the state,
and this obstructing the operations of commerce,
and inflicting wrongs to a greater or less extent
upon all classes, every one loudly complained of
injustice, robbery and oppression, and in the end
several tumults occurred, in which the residence
of the king himself was attacked, and the whole
population were with difficulty restrained from
insurrection. In Burgundy, Champagne, Artois
and Forez, indeed, the nobles, and burgess class
having for the first time made common cause of
their grievances, spoke openly of revolt against
the royal authority, unless the administration
should be reformed, and equity be substituted in
the king's courts for the frauds, extortions and
malversations, which prevailed. The sudden
death of Philippe — owing to a fall from his horse
while hunting the wild boar in the forest of Fon-
tainebleau — on the 29th of November, 1314, deliv-
ered the people from their tyrant, and the crown
from the consequences of a general rebellion.
Pope Clement, the king's firm friend, had gone to
his last account on the 20th of the preceding
April. Louis X. , le Hutin (the Quarrelsome), as-
cended the throne at the mature age of twenty-
five." — G. M. Bussey and T. Gaspey, Pictorial
Hist, of Prance, v. 1, ch. 4. — See, also. Papacy:
A.D. 1394-1348, and Templars: A.D, 1307-1314.
A. D. 1314-1328. — Louis X., Philip V.,
Charles IV. — Feudal reaction. — Philip-le-Bel
died in 1314. " Witli the accession of his son,
Louis X., so well surnamed Hutin (disorder,
tumult), comes a violent reaction of the feudal,
local, provincial spirit, which seeks to dash in
pieces the still feeble fabric of unity, demands
dismemberment, and claims chaos. The Duke of
Brittany arrogates the right of judgment without
appeal ; so does the exchequer of Rouen. Amiens
will not have the king's sergeants subpoena before
the barons, or his j^rovosts remove any prisoner
from the town's jurisdiction. Burgundy and
Nevers require the king to respect the privileges
of feudal justice. . . . The common demand of
the barons is that the king shall renounce all in-
termeddling with their men. . . . The young
monarch grants and signs all ; there are only
three points to which he demurs, and which he
seeks to defer. The Burgundian barons contest
with him the jurisdiction over the rivers, roads,
and consecrated places. The noljles of Cham-
pagne doubt the king's right to lead them to
war out of their own province. Those of Amiens,
with true Picard impetuosity, recjuire without
any circumlocution, that all gentlemen may war
upon each other, and not enter into securities,
but ride, go, come, and be armed for war, and pay
forfeit to one another. . . . The king's reply to
these absurd and insolent demands is merely:
' We will order examination of the registers of
my lord St. Louis, and give to the said nobles
two trustworthy persons, to be nominated by
our council, to verify and inquire diligently into
the truth of the said article.' The reply was
adroit enough. The general cry was for a re-
turn to the good customs of St. Louis : it being
forgotten that St. Louis had done his utmost to
put a stop to private wars. But by thus invok-
ing the name of St. Louis, they meant to express
their wish for the old feudal independence — for
the opposite of the quasi-legal, the venal, and
pettifogging government of Philippe-le-Bel. The
barons set about destroying, bit by bit, all the
changes introduced by the late king. But they
could not believe him dead so long as there sur-
vived his Alter Ego, his mayor of the palace,
Enguerrand de Marigny, who, in the latter years
of his reign, had been coadjutor and rector of the
kingdom, and who had allowed his statue to be
raised in the palace by the side of the king's.
His real name was Le Portier; but along with
the estates lie bought the name of Marigny. . . .
It was in the Temple, in the very spot where
Marigny had installed his master for the spolia-
tion of the Templars, that the young king Louis
repaired to hear the solemn accusation brought
against him. His accuser was Philippe-le-Bel's
brother, the violent Charles of Valois, a busy
man, of mediocre abilities, who put himself at
the head of the barons. ... To effect his de-
struction, Charles of Valois had recourse to the
grand accusation of the day, which none could
surmount. It was discovered, or presumed, that
Marigny 's wife or sister, in order to effect his
acquittal, or bewitch the king, had caused one
Jacques de Lor to make certain small figures:
'The said Jacques, thrown into prison, hangs
1198
FRANCE, 1314-1328.
End of the direct
Capetian line.
FRANCE, 1314-1328.
himself in despair, and then his wife, and Enguer-
rand's sisters are thrown into prison, and Enguer-
rand himself, condemned before the knights . . .
is hung at Paris on the thieves' gibbet.' . . .
Marigny's best vengeance was that the crown,
so strong in his care, sank after him into the
most deplorable weakness. Louis-le-Hutin, need-
ing money for the Flemish war, treated as equal
with equal, with the city of Paris. The nobles
of Champagne and Picardy hastened to take
advantage of the right of private war which they
had just reacquired, and made war on the coun-
tess of Artois, without troubling themselves
about the judgment rendered by the king, who
had awarded tliis flef to her. All the barons
had resumed the privilege of coining ; Charles of
Valois, the king's imcle, setting them the ex-
ample. But instead of coining for their own
domains only, conformably to the ordinances
ot Philippe-le-Hanli and Philippe-Ie-Bel, they
minted coin by wliolesale, and gave it currency
throughout the kingdom. On this, tlie king had
perforce to arouse himself, and return to the ad-
ministration of Marigny and of Pliilippe-le-Bel.
He denounced the coinage of the barons, (Novem-
ber tile 19th, 1315;) ordained tliat it should pass
current on their own lands only ; and fixed the
value of the royal coin relatively to thirteen
different coinages, which thirty-one bishops or
barons had the right of minting on their own
territories. In St. Louis's time, eighty nobles
had enjoyed this right. The young feudal king,
humanized by the want of money, did not dis-
dain to treat with serfs and witli Jews. ... It is
curious to see the son of Philippe-le-Bel admit-
ting serfs to liberty [see Sl.wery, Mediaeval :
France] ; but it is trouble lost. The merchant
vainly swells his voice and enlarges on the worth
of his merchandise ; the poor serfs will have none
of it. Had they buried in the ground some bad
piece of money, they took care not to dig it up
to buy a bit of parchment. In vain does the king
wax wroth at seeing them dull to the value of the
boon offered. At last, he directs tlie commission-
ers deputed to superintend the enfranchisement,
to value the property of such serfs as preferred
' remaining in the sorriness (chetivete) of slavery,'
and to tax them ' as sufficiently and to sucli ex-
tent as the condition and wealth of the individu-
als may conveniently allow, and as the neces-
sity of our war requires.' But with all this it
is a grand spectacle to see proclamation made
from the throne itself of the imprescriptible
right of every man to libert}'. Tlie serfs do not
buy this right, but they will remember both the
royal lesson, and the dangerous appeal to
which it instigates against the barons. The
short and obscure reign of Pliilippe-le-Long
[Philip v., 1316-1333] is scarcely less important
as regards the public law of France, than even
that of Philippe-le-Bel. In the first place, his
accession to the throne decides a great question.
As Louis Hutin left his queen pregnant, his
brother Philippe is regent and guardian of the
future infant. This child dies soon after its
birth, and Philippe proclaims himself king to the
prejudice of a daughter of his brother's; a step
which was the more surprising from the fact that
Philippe-le-Bel had maintained the right of fe-
male succession in regard to Franche-Comte and
Artois. The barons were desirous that daughters
should be excluded from inheriting fiefs, but that
they should succeed to the throne of France ; and
their chief, Charles of Valois, favored his grand-
niece against his nephew Philippe. Philippe
assembled the States, and gained his cause,
which, at bottom, was good, by absurd reasons.
He alleged in his favor the old German law of
the Franks, which excluded daughters from the
Salic land; and maintained that the crown of
France was too noble a fief to fall into hands used
to the distaff (' pour tomber en quenouille') — a
feudal argument, the effect of which was to ruin
feudality. . . . By thus rejecting the right of
the daughters at the very moment it was gradu-
ally triumphing over the fiefs, the crown ac-
quired its character of receiving always without
ever giving ; and a bold revocation, at this time,
of all donations made since St. Louis's day,
seems to contain the principle of the inalienable-
ness of the royal domain. Unfortunately, the
feudal spirit which resumed strength under the
Valois in favor of private wars, led to fatal
creations of appanages, and founded, to the
advantage of the different branches of the royal
family, a princely feudality as embarrassing to
Charles VI. and Louis XI. , as the other had been
to Philippe-le-Bel. Tins contested succession
and disaifection of the barons force Philippe-le-
Long into the paths of Philippe-le-Bel. He flat-
ters the cities, Paris, and, above all, the Uni-
versity, — the grand power of Paris. He causes
his barons to take the oath of fidelity to him, in
presence of the masters of the university, and
with their approval. He wishes his good cities
to be provided with armories; their citizens to
keep their arms in a sure place ; and appoints
them a captain in each bailiwick or district,
(March the 12th, 1816). . . . Praiseworthy be-
ginnings of order and of government brought no
relief to the sufferings of the people. During
the reign of Louis Hutin, a horrible mortality
had swept off, it was said, the third of the popu-
lation of the North. The Flemish war had ex-
hausted the last resources of the country. . . .
Men's imaginations becoming excited, a great
movement took place among the people. As in
the days of St. Louis, a multitude of poor people,
of peasants, of shepherds or pastoureaux, as they
were called, flock together and say that they
seek to go beyond the sea. that they are destined
to recover tlie Holy Land. . . . They wended
their way towards the South, everywhere mas-
sacring the Jews ; whom the king's oflicers vainly
tried to protect. At last, troops were got to-
gether at Toulouse, who fell upon the Pastour-
eaux, and hanging them up by twenties and
thirties the rest dispersed. . . . Philippe-le-Long
. . . was seized with fever in the course of the
same year, (A. D. 1331,) in the mouth of August,
without his physicians being able to guess its
cause. He languished five months, and died.
. . . HisbrotherCharles [Charles IV., 1323-1338]
succeeded him, without bestowing a thought
more on the rights of Philippe's daughter, than
Philippe had done to those of Louis's daughter.
The period of Charles's reign is as barren of facts
with regard to France, as it is rich in them re-
specting Germany, England, and Flanders. The
Flemings imprison their count. The Germans
are divided between Frederick of Austria and
Lewis of Bavaria, who takes his rival prisoner at
Muhldorf. In the midst of the universal divi-
sions, France seems strong from the circumstance
of its being one. Charles-le-Bel interferes in
favor of the count of Flanders. He attempts,
1199
FRANCE, 1314-1328.
The House of
Valois.
FRANCE, 1328-1339.
with the pope's aid, to make himself emperor;
and his sister, Isabella, makes herself actual
queen of England by the murder of Edward II.
. . . Charles-le-Bel . . . died almost at the same
time as Edward, leaving only a daughter ; so that
he was succeeded by a cousin of his. All that
fine family of princes who had sat near their
father at the Council of Vienne was extinct. In
the popular belief, the curses of Boniface had
taken effect. . . . This memorable epoch, which
depresses England so low, and in proportion,
raises Prance so high, presents, nevertheless, in
the two countries two analogous events. In Eng-
land, the barons have overthrown Edward II. In
France, the feudal party places on the throne the
feudal branch of the Valois." — J. Michelet, Ilis-
tory of France, bk. 5-6 (». 1). — See, also, Valois,
The House op.
A. D. 1314-1347. — The king's control of the
Papacy in its contest with the emperor. See
Germ.vnt: a. D. 1814-1347.
A. D. 1328. — The extent of the royal domain.
— The great vassals. — The possessions of
foreign princes in France. — On the accession of
the House of Valois to the French throne, in the
person of Philip VI. (A. D. 1326), the royal do-
main had acquired a great increase of extent. In
the two centuries since Philip I. it had gained,
"by conquest, by confiscation, or by inheritance,
Berry, or the Viscounty of Bourges, Normandy,
Maine, Anjou, Poitou, Valois, Vermandois, the
counties of Auvergne, and Boulogne, a part of
Champagne and Brie, Lyonnais, Angoumois,
Marche, nearly the whole of Languedoc, and,
lastly, the kingdom of Navarre, which belonging
in her own right to queen Jeanne, mother of the
last three Capetians [Jeanne, heiress of the king-
dom of Navarre and of the counties of Cham-
pagne and Brie, was married to Philip IV., and
was the mother of Louis X. , Philip V. and Charles
IV.], Charles IV. united with the crown. But
the custom among the kings of giving apanages
or estates to the princes of their house detached
afresh from the domain a great part of the re-
united territories, and created powerful princely
houses, of which the chiefs often made themselves
formidable to the monarchs. Among these great
houses of the Capetian race, the most formidable
were: the house of Burgundy, which traced
back to king Robert ; the house of Dreux, issue
of a son of Louis the Big, and which added b}' a
marriage the duchy of Brittany to the county of
that name; the house of Anjou, issue of Charles,
brother of Saint Louis, which was united in 1390
with that of Valois; the house of Bourbon, de-
scending from Robert, Count of Clermont, sixth
son of Saint Louis; and the house of Alengon,
which traced back to Philip III., and possessed
the duchy of Alen9on and Perche. Besides
these great princely houses of Capetian stock,
which owed their grandeur and their origin to
their apanages, there were many others which
held considerable rank in France, and of which
the possessions were transmissible to women;
while the apanages were all masculine fiefs. The
most powerful of these houses were those of
Flanders, PenthiSvre, Chatillon, Montmorency,
Brienne, Coucy, Vendome, Auvergne, Foix, and
Armagnac. "The vast possessions of the two last
houses were in the country of the Langue d'Oc.
The counts of Foix were also masters of Beam,
and those of Armagnac possessed Fezensac,
Rouergue, and other large seigniories. Many
foreign princes, besides, had possessions in
France at the accession of the Valois. The king
of England was lord of Ponthieu, of Aunis, of
Saintonge, and of the duchy of Aquitaine ; the
king of Navarre was count of Evreux, and pos-
sessor of many other towns in Normandy ; the
king of Majorca was proprietor of the seigniory
of Montpellier; the duke of Lorraine, vassal of
the German empire, paid homage to the king of
France for many fiefs that he held in Champagne ;
and, lastly, the Pope possessed the county Ve-
naissin, detached from Provence." — E. de Bonne-
chose, Ilist. of France, v. 1, p. 224.
A. D. 1328. — Accession of King Philip VI.
A. D. 1328. — The splendor of the Monarchy
on the eve of the calamitous wars. — "Indis-
putably, the king of France [Philip VI., or
Philip de Valois] was at this moment [A. D. 1328]
a great king. He had just reinstated Flanders in
its state of dependence on him. The king of
England had done him homage for his French
provinces. His cousins reigned at Naples and in
Hungary. He was protector of the king of Scot-
land, He was surrounded by a court of kings —
by those of Navarre, Majorca, Bohemia; and the
Scottish monarch was often one of the circle.
The famous John of Bohemia, of the house of
Luxembourg, and father to the emperor Charles
IV., declared that he could not live out of Paris,
' the most chivalrous residence in the world.' He
fluttered over all Europe, but ever returned to
the court of the great king of France — where
was kept up one constant festival, where jousts
and tournaments ever went on, and the romances
of chivalry, king Arthur and the round table,
were realized." — J. Michelet, Hist, of France, bk.
6, ch. 1.
A. D. 1328-1339. — The claim of Edward III.
of England to the French crown. — "History
tells us that Philip, king of France, surnamed the
Fair, had three sons, beside his beautiful daugh-
ter Isabella, married to the king of England [Ed-
ward II.]. These three sons were very hand-
some. The eldest, Lewis, king of Navarre during
the lifetime of his father, was called Lewis Hutin
[Louis X.] ; the second was named Philip the
Great, or the Long [Philip V.]; and the third,
Charles [Charles IV.]. All these were kings of
France, after their father Philip, by legitimate
succession, one after the other, without having by
marriage any male heirs ; yet, on the death of the
last king, Charles, the twelve peers and barons of
France did not give the kingdom to Isabella, the
sister, who was queen of England, because they
said and maintained, and still do insist, that the
kingdom of France is so noble that it ought not
to go to a woman ; consequentl_y neither to Isa-
bella, nor to her son, the king of England [Ed-
ward III.] ; for they liold that the son of a woman
cannot claim any right of succession, where that
woman has none herself. For these reasons the
twelve peers and barons of France unanimously
gave the kingdom of France to the lord Philip of
Valois, nephew to king Philip, and thus put aside
the queen of England, who was sister to Charles,
the late king of Prance, and her son. Thus, as
it seemed to many people, the succession went
out of the right line ; which has been the occasion
of the most destructive wars and devastations of
countries, as well in France as elsewhere, as you
will learn hereafter ; the real object of this his-
tory being to relate the great enterprises and
deeds of arms achieved in these wars, for from
1200
□nnnn
i S 5 ~
h
•
FRANCE, 1328-1339.
Beginning of the
Hundred Years War.
FRANCE, 1347-1848.
the time of good Charlemagne, king of France,
never were such feats performed. " — J. Froissart,
Chronicles {Mines'), bk. 1, ch. 4. — " From the mo-
ment of Charles IV. 's death [A. D. 1328], Edward
III. of England buoyed himself up with a notion
of his title to the crown of France, in right of his
mother Isabel, sister to the three last kings. We
can have no hesitation in condemning the injus-
tice of this pretension. Whether the Salic law
■were or were not valid, no advantage could be
gained by Edward. Even if he could forget the
express or tacit decision of all France, there stood
in his way Jane, the daughter of Louis X., three
[daughters] of Philip the Long, and one of
Charles the Fair. Aware of this, Edward set up
a distinction, that, although females were ex-
cluded from succession, the same rule did not
apply to their male issue ; and thus, though his
mother Isabel could not herself become queen of
France, she might transmit a title to him. But
this was contrary to the commonest rules of in-
heritance ; and if it could have been regarded at
all, Jane had a son, afterwards the famous king
of Navarre [Charles the Bad], who stood one de-
gree nearer to the crown than Edward. It is as-
serted in some French authorities that Edward
preferred a claim to the regency immediately
after the decease of Charles the Fair, and that
the States-General, or at least the peers of
France, adjudged that dignity to Philip deVa-
lois. Whether this be true or not, it is clear that
he entertained projects of recovering his right as
early, though his 3'outh and the embarrassed cir-
cumstances of his government threw insuperable
obstacles in the way of their execution. He did
liege homage, therefore, to Philip for Guienne,
and for several years, while the affairs of Scot-
land engrossed his attention, gave no signs of
meditating a more magnificent enterprise. As he
advanced in manhood, and felt the consciousness
of his strength, his early designs grew mature,
and produced a series of the most important and
interesting revolutions in the fortunes of France. "
— H. Hallam, The Middle Ages, ch. 1, pt. 1.— See,
also, Salic Law: Application to the Regal
Succession in France.
A. D. 1337-1360. — The beginning of the
" Hundred Years War."— It was not until 1337
that Edward III. felt prepared to assert formally
his claim to the Freucli crown and to assume the
title of King of France. In July of the follow-
ing year he began undertakings to enforce his
pretended right, by crossing with a considerable
force to the continent. He wintered at Antwerp,
concerting measures with the Flemings, who
had espoused his cause, and arranging an alli-
ance with the emperor-king of Germany, whose
name bore more weight than his arms. In 1339
a formal declaration of hostilities was made and
the long war — the Hundred Years War, as it has
been called — of English kings for the sover-
eignty of France, began. " Tliis great war may
well iDe divided into five periods. The first ends
with the Peace of Bretigny in 1360 (A. D. 1337-
1360), and includes the great days of Crecy [1346]
and Poitiers [1356], as well as the taking of
Calais : the second runs to the death of Charles
the Wise in 1380; these are the days of Du Gues-
clin and the English reverses: the third begins
with the renewal of the war under Henry V. of
England, and ends with the Regency of the Duke
of Bedford at Paris, including the field of Azin-
court [1415] and the Treaty of Troyes (A. D.
'•^ 1201
1415-1422): the fourth is the epoch of Jeanne
Dare and ends with the second establishment of
the English at Paris (A. D. 1428-1431): and the
fifth and last runs on to the final expulsion of the
English after the Battle of Castillon in 1453.
Thus, though it is not uncommonly called the
Hundred Years War, the struggle really ex-
tended over a period of a hundred and sixteen
years." — G. W. Kitchin, Hist, of France, bk. 4,
ch. 1-7. — "No war had broken out in Europe,
since the fall of the Roman Empire, so memora-
ble as that of Edward III. and his successors
against France, whether we consider its duration,
its object, or the magnitude and variety of its
events. It was a struggle of one hundred and
twenty years, interrupted but once by a regu-
lar pacification, where the most ancient and ex-
tensive dominion in the civilised world was the
prize, twice lost and twice recovered in the con-
flict. . . . There is, indeed, ample room for na-
tional exultation at the names of Crecy, Poitiers
and Azincourt. So great was the disparity of
numbers upon those famous days, that we cannot,
with the Frencli historians, attribute the discom-
fiture of their hosts merely to mistaken tactics
and too impetuous valour. . . . These victories,
and the qualities that secured them, must chiefly
be ascribed to the freedom of our constitution,
and to the superior condition of the people. Not
the nobility of England, not the feudal tenants,
won the battles of Crecy and Poitiers ; for these
were fully matched in the ranks of France ; but
the yeomen who drew the bow with strong and
steady arms, accustomed to use it in their native
fields, and rendered fearless by personal com-
petence and civil freedom. . . . Yet the glorious
termination to which Edward was enabled, at
least for a time, to bring the contest, was rather
the work of fortune than of valour and prudence.
Until the battle of Poitiers [A. D. 1356] he had
made no progress tovvards the conquest of France.
That country was too vast, and his army too
small, for such a revolution. The victory of
Crecy gave him nothing but Calais. . . . But at
Poitiers he obtained the greatest of prizes, by
taking prisoner the king of France. Not only
the love of freedom tempted that prince to ran-
som himself by the utmost sacrifices, but his cap-
tivity left France defenceless and seemed to an-
nihilate the monarchy itself. . . . There is no
afliiction which did not fall upon France during
this miserable period. . . . Subdued by these
misfortunes, though Edward had made but slight
progress towards the conquest of the country,
the regent of France, afterwards Charles V.,
submitted to the peace of Bretigni [A. D. 1360].
By this treat}', not to mention less important
articles, all Guienne, Gascony, Poitou, Saintonge,
the Limousin, and the Angoumois, as well as
Calais, and the county of Ponthieu, were ceded
in full sovereignty to Edward; a price abun-
dantly compensating his renunciation of the title
of France, which was the sole concession stipu-
lated in return." — H. Hallam, The Middle Ages,
ch. 1, pt. 2.
Also in: J. Froissart, Chronicles {Johnes'
trans.), bk. 1, ch. 1-212. — W. Longman, Hist, of
Edward III., ■«. 1, ch. 6-23. —F. P. Guizot,
Popular Hist, of Francs, ch. 20. — D. F. Jamison,
Life and Times of Bert rand du Guesclin, v. 1, ch.
4^10. — See, also, Poitiers, Battle of.
A. D. 1347-1348.— The Black Plague.—
"Epochs of moral depression are those, too, of
FRANCE, 1347-13-18.
Step?ten Marcel.
FRANCE, 1356-1358.
great mortality. ... In the last years of Phil-
ippe de Valois' reign, the depopulation was rapid.
The misery and physical suffering which pre-
vailed were insufficient to account for it ; for they
had not reached the extreme at which they sub-
sequently arrived. Yet, to adduce but one in-
stance, the population of a single town, Nar-
bonne, fell off in the space of four or five years
from the year 1399, by 500 families. Upon this
too tardy diminution of the human race followed
extermination, — the great black plague, or pesti-
lence, which at once heaped up mountains of
dead throughout Christendom. It began in Pro-
vence, in the year 13-47, on All Saints' Day, con-
tinued sixteen months, and carried off two-thirds
of the inhabitants. The same wholesale destruc-
tion befell Languedoc. At Montpellier, out of
twelve consuls, ten died. At Narbonne, 30,000
persons perished. In several places, there re-
mained only a tithe of the inhabitants. All that
the careless Froissart says of this fearful visita-
tion, and that only incidentallj', is — ' For at this
time there prevailed throughout the world gener-
ally a disease called epidemy, which destroyed a
third of its inhabitants. ' This pestilence did not
break out in the north of the kingdom until Au-
gust, 1348, where it first showed itself at Paris
and St. Denys. So fearful were its ravages at
Paris, that, according to some, 800, according to
others, 500, daily sank under it. ... As there
was neither famine at the time nor want of food,
but, on the contrary great abundance, this plague
was said to proceed from infection of the air and
of the springs. The Jews were again charged
•with this, and the people cruelly fell upon them."
— J. Michelet, Hist, of France, bk. 6, ch. 1. — See
Black De.\th.
A. D. 1350.— Accession of King John II.
, A. D. 1356-1358.— The States-General and
Etienne Marcel. — "The disaster of Poitiers
[1356] excited in the minds of the people a senti-
ment of national grief, mixed with indignation
and scorn at the nobility who had fled before an
army so inferior in number. Those nobles who
passed through the cities and towns on their re-
turn from the battle were pursued with impreca-
tions and outrages. The Parisian bourgeoisie,
animated with enthusiasm and courage, took
upon itself at all risks the charge of its own de-
fense ; whilst the eldest son of the king, a j-outh
of only nineteen, who had been one of the first
to fly, assumed the government as lieutenant of
his father. It was at the summons of this prince
that the states assembled again at Paris before
the time which they had appointed. The same
deputies returned to the number of 800, of whom
400 were of the bourgeoisie ; and the work of
reform, rudely sketched in the preceding session,
was resumed under the same influence, with an
enthusiasm which partook of the character of
revolutionary impulse. The assembly com-
menced by concentrating its action in a committee
of twenty-four members, deliberating, as far as
appears, without distinction of orders; it then
intimated its resolutions under the form of peti-
tions, which were as follow: The authority of
the states declared supreme in all affairs of ad-
ministration and finance, the impeachment of all
the counsellors of the king, the dismissal in a
body of the oflicers of justice, and the creation
of a council of reformers taken from the three
orders; lastly, the proliibition to conclude any
truce without the assent of the three states, and
the right on their part to re-assemble at their own
will without a royal summons. The lieutenant
of the king, Charles Duke of Normandy, exerted
in vain the resources of a precocious ability to
escape these imperious demands; he was com-
pelled to yield everything. The States governed
in his name ; but dissension, springing from the
mutual jealousy of the different orders, was soon
introduced into their body. The preponderating
influence of the bourgeois appeared intolerable
to the nobles, who, in consequence, deserted the
assembly and retired home. The deputies of the
clergy remained longer at their posts, but they
also withdrew at last ; and, under the name of
the States-General, none remained but the repre-
sentatives of the cities, alone charged with all
the responsibilities of the reform and the affairs
of the kingdom. Bowing to a necessity of cen-
tral action, they submitted of their own accord
to the deputation of Paris ; and soon, by the ten-
dency of circumstances, and in consequence of
the hostile attitude of the Regent, the question
of supremacy of the states became a Parisian
question, subject to the chances of a popular
emeute and the guardianship of the municipal
power. At this point appears a man whose
character has grown into historical importance
in our days from our greater facilities of under-
standing it, Etienne [Stephen] Marcel, ' prevot
des marchands ' — • that is to say, mayor of the
municipality of Paris. This echevin of the 14th
century, by a remarkable anticipation, designed
and attempted things which seem to belong only
to recent revolutions. Social unity, and admin-
istrative uniformity; political rights, co-exten-
sive and equal with civil rights ; the principle of
public authority transferred from the crown to
the nation ; the States-General changed, under
the influence of the third order, into a national
representation; the will of the people admitted
as sovereign in the presence of the depositary of
the royal power; the influence of Paris over the
provinces, as the head of opinion and centre of
the general movement ; the democratic dictator-
ship, and the influence of terror exercised in the
name of the common weal ; new colours assumed
and carried as a sign of patriotic union and sym-
bol of reform ; the transference of royalty Itself
from one branch of the family to the other, with
a view to the cause of reform and the interest of
the people — such were the circumstances and
the scenes which have given to our own as well
as the preceding century their political char-
acter. It is strange to find the whole of it com-
prised in the three years over which the name of
the Prevot ^Marcel predominates. His short and
stormy career was, as it were, a premature at-
tempt at the grand designs of Providence, and
the mirror of the bloody changes of fortune
through which those designs were destined to
advance to their accomplishment under the im-
pulse of human passions. Marcel lived and died
for an idea — that of hastening on, by the force
of the masses, the work of gradual equalisation
commenced by the kings themselves; but it was
his misfortune and his crime to be unrelenting in
carrying out his convictions. To the impetuosity
of a tribune who did not shrink even from murder
he added the talent of organization; he left in
the grand city, which he had ruled with a stern
and absolute sway, powerful institutions, noble
works, and a name which two centuries after-
wards his descendants bore with pride as a title
1202
FRANCE, 1356-1358.
The Jacquerie.
PRANCE, 1358.
of nobility." — A. Thierry, Formation and Prog-
ress of the Tiers Etat. v. 1, ch. 2. — See, also,
States-General of France in the 14th Cen-
tury.
A. D. 1358. — The insurrection of the Jac-
querie. — " The miseries of France weighed more
and more heavily on the peasantry ; and none
regarded them. They stood apart from the
cities, knowing little of them ; tlie nobles despised
them and robbed them of their substance or their
labour. ... At last the peasantry (May, 1358),
weary of their woes, rose up to work their own
revenge and ruin. They began in the Beauvais
country and there fell on the nobles, attacking
and destroying castles, and slajnng their inmates:
it was the old unvarying story. They made
themselves a kind of king, a man of Clermont in
the Beauvoisin, named William Callet. Frois-
sart imagines that the name ' Jacques Bonhomme '
meant a particular person, a leader in these ris-
ings. Froissart however had no accurate knowl-
edge of the peasant and his ways. Jacques Bon-
homme was tlie common nickname, the ' Giles '
or ' Hodge ' of France, the name of the peasant
generally ; and from it such risings as this of
1358 came to be called the 'Jacquerie,' or the dis-
turbances of the ' Jacques. ' The nobles were soon
out against them, and the whole land was full of
anarchy. Princes and nobles, angry peasants
with their 'iron shod sticks and knives,' free-
lances, Englisli bands of pillagers, all made up
a scene of utter confusion : ' cultivation ceased,
commerce ceased, security was at an end.' The
burghers of Paris and Meaux sent a force to help
the peasants, wlio were besieging the fortress at
Meau.x, held by the nobles ; these were suddenly
attacked and routed by the Captal de Buch and
the Count de Foix, ' then on their return from
Prussia. ' The King of Navarre also fell on them,
took by stratagem their leader Callet, tortured
and hanged him. In six weeks the fire was
quenched in blood." — G. W. Kitchin, History of
France, ch. 3, sect. 3. — " Froissard relates the
horrible details of the Jacquerie witli the same
placid interest which characterises his descrip-
tions of battles, tournaments, and the pageantry
of chivalry. The charm and brilliancy of his
narrative have long popularised his injustice and
his errors, which are self-apparent when com-
pared with the authors and chroniclers of his
time. . . . The chronicles contemporary of the
Jacquerie confine themselves to a few words on
the subject, although, with the exception of the
Continuator of Nangis, they were all hostile to
the cause of the peasants. The private and local
documents on the subject say very little more.
The Continuator of Nangis has drawn his infor-
mation from various sources. He takes care to
state that he has witnessed almost all he relates.
After describing the sufferings of the peasants,
he adds that the laws of justice authorised them
to rise in revolt against the nobles of Prance.
His respected testimony reduces the insurrection
to comparatively small proportions. The hun-
dred thousand Jacques of Froissard are reduced
to something like five or six thousand men, a
number much more probable when it is considered
that the insurrection remained a purely local one,
and that, in consequence of the ravages we have
mentioned, the whole open country had lost about
two-thirds of its inhabitants. He states very
clearly that the peasants killed indiscriminately,
and without pity, men and children, but he does
not say anything of those details of atrocity re-
lated by Froissard. He only alludes once to a
report of some outrages offered to some noble
ladies ; he speaks of it as a vague rumour. He
describes the insurgents, after the first explosion
of their vindictive fury, as pausing — amazed
at their own boldness, and terrified at their own
crimes, and the nobles, recovering from their ter-
ror, taking immediate advantage of this sudden
torpor and paralysis — assembling and slaughter-
ing all, innocent and guilty, burning houses and
villages. If we turn to other writers contem-
porary with the Jacquerie, we find that Louvet,
author of the ' History of the District of Beauvais, '
does not say much on the subject, and evinces
also a sympathy for the peasants: the paucity
of his remarks on a subject represented by Frois-
sard as a gigantic, bloody tragedy, raises legiti-
mate doubts as to the veracity of the latter.
There is another authority on the events of that
period, which may be considered as more weighty,
in consequence of its ecclesiastical character ; it
is the ' cartulaire, ' or journal of the Abbot of
Beauvais. . . . There is no trace in it of the horror
and indescribable terror . . . [the rising] must
have inspired if the peasants had committed the
atrocities attributed to them by the feudal his-
torian, Froissard. On the contrary, the ven-
geance of the peasants falls into the shade, as it
were, in contrast with the merciless reaction of
the nobles, along with the sanguinary oppression
of the English. The writer of the 'Abbey of
Beauvais,' and the anonymous monk, ' Continu-
ator of Nangis,' concur with each other in their
account of the Jacquerie. Their judgments are
similar, and they manifest the same moderation.
Their opinions, moreover, are confirmed by a
higher authority, a testimony that must be con-
sidered as indisputable, namely, the letters of
amnesty of the Regent of France, which are all
preserved; they bear the date of 10th August
1358, and refer to all the acts committed on the
occasion of the Jacquerie. In these he proves
himself more severe upon the reaction of the
nobles than on the revolt of the peasants. . . .
There is not the slightest allusion to the mon-
strosities related by Froissard, which the Regent
could not have failed to stigmatise, as he is well
known for having entertained an unscrupulous
hatred to any popular movement, or any claims
of the people. The manner, on the contrary, in
which the Jacquerie are represented in this official
document, is full of signification ; it represents
the men of the open country assembling spou-
taneously in various localities, in order to de-
liberate on the means of resisting the English,
and suddenly, as with a mutual agreement,
turning fiercely on the nobles, who were the
real cause of their misery, and of the disgrace of
France, on the days of "Crecy and Poitiers. . . .
It has also been forgotten that many citizens
took an active part in the Jacquerie. The great
chronicles of France state that the majority were
peasants, labouring people, but that there were
also among them citizens, and even gentlemen,
who, no doubt, were impelled by personal hatred
and vengeance. Many rich men joined the peas-
ants, and became their leaders. 'The bourgeoisie,
in its struggles with royalty, could not refuse to
take advantage of such a diversion ; and Beau-
vais, Senlis, Amiens, Paris, and Meaux accepted
the Jacquerie. Moreover, almost all the poorer
classes of the cities sympathised with the revolted
1203
FRANCE. 1358.
Du Guesclin and
the Black Prince.
FRANCE, 1380-1415.
peasants. The Jacquerie broke out on the 21st
of May 1358, and not in November 1357, as errone-
ously stated by Froissard, in the districts around
Beauvais and Clermont-sur-Oise. The peasants,
merely armed with pikes, sticks, fragments of
their jjloughs, rushed on their masters, murdered
their families, and burned down their castles.
The country comprised between Beauvais and
Melun was the principal scene of this war of ex-
termination. . . . The Jacquerie had commenced
on the 21st of May. On the 9th of June ... it
was already terminated. It was, therefore, in
reality, an insurrection of less than three weeks'
duration. The reprisals of the nobles had al-
ready commenced on the 9th of June, and con-
tinued through the whole of July, and the greater
part of August. Froissard states that the Jac-
querie lasted over si.x weeks, thus comprising in
his reckoning three weeks of tlie ferocious ven-
geance of the nobles, and casting on Jacques
Bonhomme the responsibility of the massacres of
which he had been the victim, as well as those
he had committed in his furious despair." — Prof.
De Vericour, The Jacquerie (Royal Hist. Soc,
Transactions, v. 1).
Also in : Sir J. Froissart, Chronicles (Johnes'
trans.), bk. 1, ch. 181.
A. D. 1360-1380. — English conquests re-
covered. — ■ The Peace of Bretigny brought little
peace to France or little diminution of the
troubles of the kingdom. In some respects there
was a change for the worse introduced. The
armies which had ravaged the country dissolved
into plundering bands which afflicted it even
more. Great numbers of mercenaries from both
sides were set free, who gathered into Free Com-
panies, as they were called, under leaders of fit
recklessness and valor, and swarmed over the
land, warring on all prosperity and all the peace-
ful industries of the time, seeking booty wherever
it might be found [see It.a.ly: A. D. 1343-1393].
Civil war, too, was kept alive by the intrigues
and conspiracies of the Navarrcse king, Charles
the Bad; and war in Brittany, over a disputed
succession to the dukedom, was actually stipu-
lated for, by French and English, in their treaty
of general peace. But when the chivalric but
hapless King John died, in 1864, the new king,
Charles V., who had been regent during his
captivity, developed an unexpected capacity for
government. He brought to the front the fa-
mous Breton warrior Du Guesclin — rough, igno-
rant, unchivalric — but a fighter of the first order
in his hard-fighting day. He contrived with
adroitness to rid France, mostly,, of the Free
Companies, by sending them, with Du Guesclin
at their head, into Spain, where they drove Peter
the Cruel from the throne of Castile, and fought
the English, who undertook, wickedly and fool-
ishly, to sustain him. The Black Prince won a
great battle, at Najara or Navarette (A. D. 1367),
took Du Guesclin prisoner and restored the cruel
Pedro to his throne. But it was a victory fatal
to English interests in France. Half the army
of the English prince perished of a pestilent fever
before he led it back to Aquitaine, and he him-
self was marked for early death by the same
malady. He had been made duke of Aquitaine,
or Guienne, and held the government of the coun-
try. The war in Spain proved expensive; he
taxed his Gascon and Aquitanian subjects
heavily. He was ill, irritable, and treated them
harshly. Discontent became widely spread, and
the king of France subtly stirred it up until he
felt prepared to make use of it in actual war.
At last, in 1368, he challenged a rupture of the
Peace of Bretigny by summoning King Edward,
as his vassal, to answer complaints from Aqui-
taine. In April of the next year he formally de-
clared war and opened hostilities the same day.
His cunning policy was not to fight, but to waste
and wear the enemy out. Its wisdom was well-
proved by the result. Day by day the English
lost ground ; the footing they had gained in
France was found to be everywhere insecure.
The dying Black Prince achieved one hideous
triumph at Limoges, where he slew 3,00(1 peo-
ple to punish a revolt ; then he was carried
home to end his days in England. In 1376 he
died, and one year later his father, King Ed-
ward, followed him to the grave, and a child
of eleven (Richard II.) came to the Eit-" '1
throne. But the same calamity befell France in
1380, when Charles the Wise died, leaving an
heir to the throne only twelve years of age. In
both kingdoms the minority of the sovereign
gave rise to factious intrigues and distracting
feuds. The war went on at intervals, with fre-
quent truces and armistices, and with little re-
sult beyond the animosities which it kept alive.
But the English possessions, by this time, had
been reduced to (ialais and Guines, with some
small parts of Aquitaine adjoining the cities of
Bordeaux and Bayonne. And thus, it may be
said, the situation was prolonged through a
generation, until Henry V. of England resumed
afresh the undertaking of Edward III. — P. P.
Guizot, Popular Hist, of France, ch. 23.
Also in: J. Michelet, Hist, of France, bk. 6,
di. 4.— T. Wright, Hist, of France, bk. 2, ch. 6.
— E. A. Freeman, Historical Oeog. of Europe, ch.
9. — D. F. Jamison, Life and Times of Bii Quesdin.
— Froissart, Chronicles {Johnes' tram.), bk. 1. —
See Sp.«n: A. D. 1366-1369.
A. D. 1364. — Accession of King Charles V.
A. D. 1378. — Acquisitions 'in the Rhone
valley legally conferred by the Emperor. See
Burgundy: A. D. 1137-1378.
A. D. 1380. — Accession of King Charles VI.
A. D. 1380-1415. — The reign of the Dukes.
— The civil war of Armagnacs and Burgundi-
ans. — "Charles VI. had arrived at the age of
eleven years and some months when his father
died [A. D. 1380]. His three paternal uncles.
the Dukes of Anjou, Berry, and Burgundy, and
his maternal uncle, the Duke of Bourbon, dis-
puted among themselves concerning his guardian-
ship and the regenc)'. They agreed to eman-
cipate the young King immediately after his
coronation, which was to take place during the
year, and the regency was to remain until that
period in the hands of the eldest, the Duke of
Anjou. " But the Duke of Anjou was soon after-
wards lured into Italy by the fatal gift of a claim
to the crown of Naples [see Italy : A. D. 1343-
1389], and perished in striving to realize it. The
surviving uncles misgoverned the country be-
tween them until 1389, when the young king
was persuaded to throw off their yoke. The
nation rejoiced for three years in the experience
and the prospect of administrative reforms ; but
suddenly, in July, 1393, the young king became
demented, and "then commenced the third and
fatal epoch of that disastrous reign. The fac-
tion of the dukes again seized power," but only
to waste and afflict the kingdom by dissensions
1204
FRANCE, 1380-1415.
Burgundians and
Armagiiacs.
FRANCE, 1415.
among themselves. The number of the rival
dukes was now increased by tlie addition of the
Duke of Orleans, brother of' the king, who
showed himself as ruthless and rapacious as any.
"Charles was still considered to be reigning;
each one sought in turn to get possession of him,
and each one watched his lucid moments in
order to stand well in power. His flaslies of
reason were still more melancholy than his fits
of delirium. Incapable of attending to his af-
fairs, or of having a will of his own, always sub-
servient to the dominant party, he appeared to
employ his few glimmerings of reason only in
sanctioning the most tyrannical acts and the most
odious abuses. It was in this manner that the
kingdom of France was governed during twenty-
eight years." In 1404, the Duke of Burgundy,
Philip tiie Bold, having died, the Duke of Or-
leans acquired supreme authority and exercised
it most oppressively. But the new Duke of Bur-
gundy, John the Fearless, made his appearance
on the scene ere long, arriving from his county
of Flanders with an army and threatening civil
war. Terms of peace, however, were arranged
between the two dukes and an apparent recon-
ciliation took place. On the very next day the
Duke of Orleans was assassinated (A. D. 1407),
and the Duke of Burgundy openly proclaimed
his instigation of the deed. Out of that treacher-
ous murder sprang a war of factions so deadly
that France was delivered by it to foreign con-
quest, and destroyed, we may say, for the time
being, as a nation. The elder of the young
princes of Orleans, sons of the murdered duke,
had married a daugliter of Count Bernard of Ar-
magnac, and Count Bernard became the leader
of the party which supported them and souglit
to avenge them, as against the Duke of Bur-
gundy and his party. Hence the former ac-
quired the name of Armagnacs ; the latter were
called Burgundians. Armagnac led an army
of Gascons [A. D. 1410] and threatened Paris,
"where John the Fearless caressed the vilest
populace. Burgundy relied on the name of the
king, whom he held in his power, and armed
in the capital a corps of one hundred young
butchers or horse-knackers, who, from John Ca-
boche, their chief, took the name of Cabochiens.
A frightful war, interrupted by truces violated
on both sides, commenced between the party of
Armagnac and that of Burgundy. Both sides
appealed to the English, and sold France to
them. The Armagnacs pillaged and ravaged
the environs of Paris with un-heard-of cruelties,
while the Cabochiens caused the capital they
defended to tremble. The States-General, con-
voked for the first time for thirty years, were
dumb — witliout courage and without strength.
The Parliament was silent, the university made
itself the organ of the populace, and the butchers
made the laws. They pillaged, imprisoned and
slaughtered with impunity, according to their
savage fury, and found judges to condemn their
victims. . . . The reaction broke out at last.
Tired of so many atrocities, the bourgeoisie took
up arms, and shook off the yoke of the horse-
knackers. The Dauphin was delivered by them.
He mounted on horseback, and, at the head of
the militia, went to the Hotel de Ville, from
which place he drove out Caboche and his brig-
ands. The counter revolution was established.
Burgundy departed, and the power passed to
the Armagnacs. The princes re-entered Paris,
and King Charles took up the oriflamme (the
royal standard of France), to make war against
Jolm the Fearless, whose instrument he had
been a short time before. His army was victori-
ous. Burgundy submitted, and the treaty of
Arras [A. D. 1415] suspended the war, but not
the executions and tlie ravages. Henry V.,
King of England, judged this a propitious mo-
ment to descend upon France, which had not a
vessel to oppose the invaders. " — E. de Bonne-
chose, Hist. ofM-ance, v. 1, pp. 266-379.
Also in : E. de Monstrelet, Chronicles (JoTines'
trans.), v. 1, hk. 1, ch. 1-140.— T. Wright, Hist.
of Prance, bk. 3, ch. 8-9.
A. D. 1383. — Pope Urban's Crusade against
the Schismatics. See Flanders: A. D. 1383.
A. D. 1396. — The sovereignty of Genoa
surrendered to the king. See Genoa: A. D.
1381-1433.
A. D. 1415. — The Hundred Years War re-
newed by Henry V. of England. — ' ' When Henry
V. resolved to recover what he claimed as the in-
heritance of his predecessors, he had to begin, it
may be said, the work of conquest over again.
Allies, however, he had, whose assistance he was
to find very useful. The dynasty of De Mont-
fort had been established in possession of the
dukedom of Britanny in a great measure by Eng-
lish help, and though the relations between the two
countries had not been invariably friendly since
that time, the sense of this obligation, and, still
more powerfully, a jealous fear of the French
king, inclined Britanny to the English alliance.
The Dukes of Burgundy, though they had no
such motives of gratitude towards England,
felt a far stronger hostility towards France. The
feud between the rival factions which went
by the names of Burgundians and Armagnacs
had now been raging for several years; and
though the attitude of the Burgundians varied
— at the great struggle of Agincourt they were
allies, though lukewarm and even doubtful allies,
of the French — they ultimately ranked them-
selves decidedly on Henry's side. In 1414, then,
Henry formally demanded, as the heir of Isa-
bella, mother of his great-grandfather Edward,
the crown of France. This claim the French
princes wholly refused to consider. Henry then
moderated his demands so far, at least, as to allow
Charles to remain in nominal possession of his
kingdom ; but . . . France was to cede to Eng-
land, no longer as a feudal superior making a
grant to a vassal, but in full sovereignty, the prov-
inces of Normandy, Maine, and Anjou, together
with all that was comprised in the ancient duchy
of Aquitaine. Half, too, of Provence was
claimed, and the arrears of the ransom of King
John, amounting to 1,300,000 crowns, were also
to be paid. Finally, the French king was to
give his youngest daughter, Katharine, in mar-
riage to Henry, with a portion of 3, 000, 000 crowns.
The French ministers offered, in answer, to yield
the duchy of Aquitaine, comprising the prov-
inces of Anjou, Gascony, Guienne, Poitou, and
to give the hand of the princess Katharine with a
dowry of 600,000 crowns. " Negotiations went on
through several months, with small chance of suc-
cess, while Henry prepared for war. His prepa-
rations were completed in the summer of 1415,
and on the 11th of August in that year he set
sail from Southampton, with an army of 6,000
men-at-arms and 34,000 archers, very completely
equipped, and accompanied with camion and
1205
FRANCE, 1415.
Battle
of Agincourt,
FRANCE, 1415-1419.
other engines of war. Landing in the estuary of
the Seine, the invaders first captured tlie impor-
tant Norman seaport of Harfleur, after a siege of
a month, and expelled the inhabitants from the
town. It was an important acquisition; but it
had cost the English heavily. They were ill-
supplied with food ; they had suffered from much
rain; 2,000 had died of an epidemic of dy.sentery.
The army was in no condition for a forward
movement. " The safest course would now have
been to return at once ; and this seems to have
been pressed upon the king by the majority of
his counsellors. But this prudent advice did
not approve itself to Henry's adventurous temper.
. . . He determined ... to make what may be
called a military parade to Calais. This involved
a march of not less than 150 miles through a
hostile country, a dangerous, and, but that one
■who cherishes such designs as Henry's must make
a reputation for daring, a useless operation ; but
the king's determined will overcame all opposi-
tion." Leaving a strong garrison at Harfleur,
Henry set out upon his march. Arrived at the
Somme, his further progress was disputed, and he
was forced to make a long detour before he could
effect a crossing of the river. On the 24th of Octo-
ber, he encountered tlie French army, strongly
posted at the village of Azincour or Agincourt,
barring the road to Calais; and there, on the
morning of the 25th, after a night of drenching
rain, the great battle, which shines with so daz-
zling a glory in English history, was fought.
There seems to be no doubt that the English were
greatly outnumbered by the French — according
to Monstrelet they were but one to six ; but the
masses on the French side were unskilfully
handled and no advantage was got from them.
The deadly shafts of the terrible English archers
built such a rampart of corpses in their front that
it actually sheltered them from the charge of
the French cavalrj'. "Everywhere the French
were routed, slain, or taken. The victory of the
English was complete. . . The French loss was
enormous. Monstrelet giv.es a long list of the
chief princes and nobles who fell on that fatal
field. . . . "We are disposed to trust his estimate,
which, including princes, knights and men-at-
arms of every degree, he puts at 10,000. . . .
Only 1,600 are .said to have been 'of low de-
gree. ' . . . The number of knights and gentle-
men taken prisoners was 1,500. Among them
were Charles, Duke of Orleans, and the Duke of
Bourbon, both princes of the blood-royal. . . .
Brilliant as was the victory which Henry had
won at Agincourt, it had, it may be said, no im-
mediate results. . . . The army resumed its in-
terrupted march to Calais, which was about forty
miles distant. At Calais a council of war was
held and the resolution to return to England
unanimously taken. A few days were allowed
for refreshment, and about the middle of Novem-
ber the army embarked. " — A. J. Church, Henry
the Fifth, ch. 6-10.
Also in : E. de Monstrelet, Ghronicles {Johnes'
tram.), v. 1, bk. 1, ch. 140-149.— J. E. Tyler, Henry
of Monmouth, ch. 19-23.— G :M. Towle, History
of Henry V., ch. 7-8. — Lord Brougham, Hist, of
Eng. and France under the House of Lancaster. —
C. M. Yonge, Camcjs from Eng. Hist. : second
series, c. 24-26.
A. D. 1415-1419.— Massacre of Armagnacs.
— The murder of the Duke of Burgundy. —
" The captivity of so many princes of the blood
as had been taken prisoner at Agincourt might
have seemed likely at least to remove some of
the elements of discord ; but it so happened
that the captives were the most moderate and
least ambitious men. The gentle, poetical Duke
of Orleans, the good Duke of Bourbon, and
the patriotic and gallant Arthur de Richemont,
had been taken, while the savage Duke of Bur-
gundy and the violent Gascon Count of Ar-
magnac. Constable of France, remained at the
head of their hostile factions. . . The Count
d'Armagnac now reigned supreme; no prince
of the blood came to the councils, and the king
and dauphin were absolutely in his hands. . .
The Duke of Burgundy was, however, advanc-
ing with his forces, and the Parisians were always
far more inclined to him than to the other party.
. . . For a whole day's ride round the environs
of the city, every farmhouse had been sacked or
burnt. Indeed, it was said in Paris a man had
only to be called a Burgundian, or anywhere
else in the Isle of France an Armagnac, to be
instantly put to death. All the soldiers who
had been posted to guard Normandy and Picardy
against the English were recalled to defend
Paris against the Duke of Burgundy ; and Henry
V. could have found no more favourable moment
for a second expedition." The English king
took advantage of his opportunity and landed in
Normandy August 1, 1417, finding nobody to
oppose him in the field. The factions were em-
ployed too busily in cutting each other's throats, —
especially after the Burgundians had regained
possession of Paris, which they did in the follow-
ing spring. Thereupon the Parisian mob rose
and ferociously massacred all the partisans of
Armagnac, while the Burgundians looked and
approved. " The prison was forced ; Armagnac
himself was dragged out and slain in the court.
. . . The court of each prison became a slaughter-
house; the prisoners were called down one by
one, and there murdered, till the assassins were
up to their ankles in blood. The women were
as savage as the men, and dragged the corpses
about the streets in derision. The prison slaughter
had but given a passion for further carnage ; and
the murderers broke open the houses in search of
Armagnacs, killing not only men, but women,
children, and even new-born babes, to whom in
their diabolical frenzy they refused baptism, as
being little Armagnacs. The massacre lasted
from four o'clock on Sunday morning to ten
o'clock on Monday Some say that 3,000 per-
ished, others 1,600, and the Duke of Burgundy's
servants reported the numbers as only 400."
Meantime Henry V. was besieging Rouen, and
starving Paris by cutting off the supplies for
which it depended on the Seine. In August
there was another rising of the Parisian mob and
another massacre. In January, 1419, Rouen sur-
rendered, and attempts at peace followed, both
parties making a truce with the English invader.
The imperious demands of King Henry finally
impelled the two French factions to draw to-
gether and to make a common cause of the de-
fiverance of the kingdom. Xt least that was the
profession with which the Dauphin and the
Duke of Burgundy met, in July, and went
through the forms of a reconciliation. Perhaps
there were treacherous intentions on both sides.
On one side the treachery was consummated a
month later (Sept. 10, 1419), when, a second
meeting between Duke John the Fearless and
1206
FRANCE, 1415-1419.
Conquests
of Henry V.
FRANCE, 1429-1431.
the Dauphin taking place at the Bridge of Mon-
tereau, the Duke was basely assassinated in the
Dauphin's presence. This murder, by which the
Armagnacs, who controlled the young Dauphin,
hoped to break their rivals down, only kindled
afresh the passions which were destroying France
and delivering it an easy prey to foreign con-
quest. — C. M. Yonge, Cameos from Eng. Hist.,
second series, c. 28-29.
Also in : E. de llonstrelet. Chronicles (Jolmes'
trails.), V. 1, bk. 1, ch. 150-211.— J. Michelet,
Hist, of Franct', bk. 9, ch. 2.
A. D. 1417-1422. — Burgundy's revenge. —
Henry the Fifth's triumph. — Two kings in
Paris. — The Treaty of Troyes. — Death of
Henry. — "Whilst civil war was . . . penetrat-
ing to the very core of the kingship, foreign war
was making its way again into the kingdom.
Henry V., after the battle of Agiucourt, had
returned to London, and had left his army to re-
pose and reorganize after its sufferings and its
losses. It was not until eighteen months after-
wards, on the 1st of August, 1417, that he landed
at Touques, not far from Honfleur, with fresh
troops, and resumed his campaign in France.
Between 1417 and 1419 he successively laid siege
to nearly all the towns of importance in Nor-
mandy, to Caen, Bayeux, Falaise, Evreux, Cou-
tances, Laigle, St. L6, Cherbourg, &c. , &c. Some
he occupied after a short resistance, others were
sold to him by their governors ; but when, in the
month of July, 1418, he undertook the siege of
Rouen, he encountered there a long and serious
struggle. Rouen had at that time, it is said, a
population of 150,000 souls, which was animated
by ardent patriotism. The Roueunese, on the
approach of the English, had repaired their
gates, their ramparts, and their moats; had de-
manded reinforcements from the King of France
and the Duke of Burgundy; and had ordered
every person incapable of bearing arms or pro-
curing provisions for ten months to leave the
city. Twelve thousand old men, women and
children were thus expelled, and died either
round the place or whilst roving in misery over
the neighbouring country. . . . Fifteen thousand
men of city-militia, 4,000 regular soldiers, 300
spearmen and as many archers from Paris, and
it is not quite known how many men at-arms
sent by the Duke of Burgundy, defended Rouen
for more than five months amidst all the usual
sufferings of strictly-besieged cities." On the
13th of January, 1419, the town was surrendered.
"It was 215 years since Philip Augustus had
won Rouen by conquest from John Lackland,
King of England." After this great success
there were truces brought about between all
parties, and much negotiation, which came to
nothing — except the treacherous murder of the
Duke of Burgundy, as related above. Then the
situation changed. The son and successor of the
murdered duke, afterwards known as Philip the
Good, took sides, at once, with the English king
and committed himself to a war of revenge, in-
different to the fate of France. "On the 17th of
October [1419] was opened at Arras a congress
between the plenipotentiaries of England and
those of Burgundy. On the 20th of November a
special truce was granted to the Parisians, whilst
Henry V., in concert with Duke Philip of Bur-
gundy, was prosecuting the war against the dau-
phin. On the 3d of December the bases were laid
of an agreement between the Englisli and the
Burgundians. The preliminaries of the treaty,
which was drawn up in accordance with these
bases, were signed on the 9th of April, 1420, by
King Charles VI. [now controlled by the Bur-
gundians], and on the 20th communicated at
Paris by the chancellor of France to the parlia-
ment." " On the 20th of May following, the treaty,
definitive and complete, was signed by Henry V.
and promulgated at Troyes. By this treaty of
Troyes, Princess Catherine, daughter of the King
of France, was given in marriage to King Henry ;
Charles VI. was guaranteed his possession of the
French crown while he lived ; on his death, ' ' the
crown and kingdom of France, with all their
rights and appurtenances," were solemnly con-
veyed to Henry V. of England and his heirs, for-
ever. "The revulsion against the treaty of
Troyes was real and serious, even in the very
heart of the party attached to the Duke of Bur-
gundy. He was obliged to lay upon .several of
his servants formal injunctions to swear to this
peace, which seemed to them treason. ... In
the duchy of Burgundy the majority of the
towns refused to take the oath to the King of
England. The most decisive and the most help-
ful proof of this awakening of national feeling
was the ease experienced by the dauphin, who
was one day to be Charles VII. , in maintaining
the war which, after the treaty of Troyes, was,
in his fatlier's and his mother's name, made upon
him by the King of England and the Duke of
Burgundy. This war lasted more than three
years. Several towns, amongst others, Melun,
Crotoy, Meaux, and St. Riquier, offered an ob-
stinate resistance to the attacks of the English
and Burgundians. . . . It was in Perche, Anjou,
Maine, on the banks of the Loire, and in Southern
France, that the dauphin found niost of his enter-
prising and devoted partisans. The sojourn made
by Henry V. at Paris, in December, 1430, with
his wife. Queen Catherine, King Charles VI.,
Queen Isabel, and the Duke of Burgundy, was
not, in spite of galas and acclamations, a sub-
stantial and durable success for him. . . . To-
wards the end of August, 1432, Henry V. fell
ill ; and, too stout-hearted to delude himself as
to his condition, he . . . had himself removed to
Vincennes, called his councillors about him, and
gave them his last royal instructions. . . . He
expired on the 31st of August, 1432, at the age
of thirty-four." — F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of
France, ch. 23. — At Paris, "the two sovereigns
[Henry V. and Charles VI.] kept distinct courts.
That of Henry was by far the most splendidly
equipped and numerously attended of the two.
He was the rising sun, and all men looked to
him. All offices of trust and profit were at his
disposal, and the nobles and gentlemen of Prance
flocked into his ante-chambers." — A. J. Church,
Henry the Fifth, ch. 15.
Also in : E. de Monstrelet, Chronicles (Johnes'
trans.), v. 1, bk. 1, ch. 171-264.— J. Michelet. Hist,
of France, bk. 9, ch. 2-3.
A. D. 1422. — Accessionof King Charles VII.
A. D. 1429-1431. — The Mission of the Maid.
— " France divided — two kings, two regencies,
two armies, two governments, two nations, two
nobilities, two systems of justice — met face to
face: father, son, mother, uncles, nephews, citi
zens, and strangers, fought for the right, the soil,
the throne, the cities, the spoil and the blood
of the nation. The King of England died at
Vincennes [August 31, 1432], and was shortly
1207
FRANCE, 1429-1431.
Jeanne d\irc, the
Maid of Orleans.
FRANCE, 1429-1431.
followed [October 22] by Charles VI., father of
the twelve children of Isabel, leaving the king-
dom to the stranger and to ruin. The Duke of
Bedford insolently took possession of the Re-
gency in the name of England, pursued the
handful of nobles who wished to remain French
with the dauphin, defeated them at the battle of
Verneuil [August 17, 1424], and e.xiled the queen,
who had become a burden to the government
after having been an instrument of usurpation.
He then concentrated the armies of England,
France and B\u-gundy round Orleans, which was
defended by some thousands of the partisans of
the dauphin, and which comprised almost all that
remained of the kingdom of France. The land
was everywhere ravaged by the passing and re-
passing of these bands — sometimes friends,
sometimes enemies — driving each other on, wave
after wave, like the billows of the Atlantic ;
ravaging crops, burning towns, dispersing, rob-
bing, and ill-treating the population. In this dis-
organization of the country, the young dauphin,
sometimes awakened by the complaints of his
people, at others absorbed in the pleasures nat-
ural to his age, was making love to Agnes Sorel
in the castle of Loches. . . . Such was the state
of the nation when Providence showed it a
savior in a child." — A. de Lamartine, Memoirs of
Celebrated Characters : Joan of Arc. — The child
was Jeanne D'Arc, or Joan of Arc, better known
in history as the Maid of Orleans, — daughter of
a husbandman who tilled his own few acres at
the village of Domremy. in Upper Lorraine.
Research in recent years has brought to light
more than was formerly known of the family
and the circumstances of the heroic Maid,
' ' Jacques d'Arc and Isabel'e de Vouthon had
three sons, Jacquemin, Jean, and Pierre, and two
daughters, the elder named Catherine, the
younger Jeanne or rather Jeannette, she who
was by her heroism to immortalize her line.
Two documents . . . prove with evidence that
Jaccpies d'Arc figured in the first rank of the
notables of Domremy. In the first of these,
dated Ma.xey-sur-Meuse, October 7. 1433. he is
styled ' doyen ' of that village, and by this title
comes immediately after the mayor and alder-
men. 'In general,' says M. Edward Bouvalot,
speaking of the villages in the region of the
Mouse governed by the famous charter of Beau-
mont in Argonne, 'there is but one doyen or
sergeant in each village, who convokes the
bourgeois to the electoral assemblies and to the
sittings of the court ; it is he also who convokes
the mayor, .aldermen and the men of the com-
mune to their reunions, either periodical or
special ; it is he who cries the municipal resolu-
tions and ordinances ; it is he who commands the
day and night watch : it is he who has charge of
prisoners. Among the privileges which he en-
joys must be cited the exemption from the taxes
(deniers) of the bourgeoisie. At Linger, he has
the same territorial advantages as the clerk of
the commune.' It is seen by various documents
that the doyens were also charged with the col-
lection of the ' failles,' ' rentes ' and ' rcdevances,'
and that they were appointed to supervise bread,
wine and other commodities as well as to test
weights and measures. In the second document,
drawn up at Vaucouleurs March 31, 1427,
Jacques d'Arc appears as the agent of the in-
habitants of Domremy in a suit of great impor-
tance which they then had to sustain before
Robert de Baudricoiirt, captain of Vaucouleurs.
. . . Like the legendary beech of her native vil-
lage, the childhood of the virgin of Domremy
sprang out of a soil full of vigor and was in the
main haunted by beneficent fairies. Born in a
fertile and smiling corner of the earth, the issue
of an honest family, whose laborious mediocrity
was elevated enough to touch nobility when en-
nobling itself by alms-giving, and humble enough
to remain in contact with all the poor ; endowed
by nature with a robust body, a sound intelli-
gence and an energetic spirit, the little Jeannette
d'Arc became under these gentle influences all
goodness and all love." — S. Luce. Jeanne d'Are
a Domremy (tr. from the French), ch. 2-3. — Of
the visions of the pious young maiden — of the
voices she heard — of the conviction which came
upon her that she was called by God to deliver
her country — and of the enthusiasm of faith
with which she went about her mission until all
people bent to her as the messenger and minister
of God — the story is a familiar one to all. In
April, 1429, Joan was sent by the king, from
Blcis, with 10,000 or 12,000 men, to the succour
of Orleans, where Dunois. the Bastard of Or-
leans, was in command. She reformed the army,
purged it of all vile followers, and raised its
confidence to that frenzied pilch which nothing
can resist. On the 8th of May the English
abandoned the siege and Orleans was saved.
"Joan wasted no time in vain triumphs. She
brought back the victorious army to the dauphin,
to assist him in reconquering city after city of
his kingdom. The dauphin and the queens re-
ceived her as the messenger of God, who had
found and recovered the lost keys of the kirg-
dom. ' I have only another year.' she remarki d,
with a sad presentiment, which seemed to indi-
cate that her victory led to the scaffold ; ' I must
therefore set to work at once.' She begged the
dauphin to go and be crowned at Rheims, al-
though that city and the intermediate provinces
were still in the power of the Burgundians, Flem-
ings, and English." Counsellors and generals
opposed ; but the sublime faith of the Maid over-
came all opposition and all difficulties. The
king's route to Rheims was rapidly cleared of his
enemies. At Patay (June 18, 1429) the English
suffered a heavy defeat and their famous soldier,
Lord Talbot, was taken prisoner. Troyes, Cha-
lons and Rheims opened their gates. ' ' "The Duke
of Bedford, the regent, i-cmained trembling in
Paris. ' All our misfortunes,' he wrote to the
Cardinal of Winchester, ' are owing to a young
witch, who. by her sorcery, has restored the cour-
age of the French.' . . . The king was crowned
[July 17, 1429], and .Joan's mission was accom-
plished. 'Noble king,' said .she, embracing his
knees in the Cathedral after the coronation, ' now
is accomplished the will of God, which com-
manded me to bring you to this city of Rheims
to receive your holy unction — now that you at
last are king, and that the kingdom of France is
yours.' . . . From that moment a great depres-
sion, and a fatal hesitation seem to have come
over her. The king, the people, and the army,
to whom she had given victory, wished her to
remain always their prophetess, their guide, and
their enduring miracle. But she was now only
a weak woman, lost amid courts anil camps, and
she felt her weakness beneath her armor. Her
heart alone remained courageous, but had ceased
to be inspired." She urged an attack on Paris
1208
FRANCE, 1439-1431.
Jeanne d' Arc, the
Maid of Orleans.
FRANCE, 1429-1431.
(Sept. 8, 1439) and experienced her first failure,
being grievously wounded in the assault. The
following spring, Conipi^gne being besieged, she
entered the town to take part in the defence. The
same evening (May 24, 1430) she led a sortie
which was repulsed, and she was taken prisoner
in the retreat. Some think she was betrayed by
the commandant of the town, who ordered the
raising of the drawbridge just as her horse was
being spurred upon it. Once in the hands of her
enemies, the doom of the unfortunate Maid was
sealed. Sir Lionel de Ligny, her captor, gave
his prisoner to the count of L\isembourg, who
yielded her to the Duke of Burgundy, who sur-
rendered her to the English, who delivered her
to the Inquisition, by which she was tried, con-
demned and burned to death, at Houen, as a witch
(May 30, 1431). ''It was a compk'.x crime, in
which each party got rid of responsibility, but in
which the accusation rests with Paris [the Uni-
versity of Paris was foremost among the pur-
suers of the wonderful Maid], the cowardice with
Luxembourg, the sentence with the Inquisition,
the blame and punishment with England, and
the disgrace and ingratitude with France. This
bartering about Joan by her enemies, of whom
the fiercest were her countrymen, had lasted six
months. . . . During these six months, the in-
fluence of this goddess of war upon the troops of
Charles VII. — her spirit, which still guided the
carap and council of the king — the patriotic,
though superstitious, veneration of the people,
which her captivity only doubled, — and, lastly,
the absence of the Duke of Burgundy. ... all
these causes had brought reverse after reverse
upon the English, and a series of successes to
Charles VII. Joan, although absent, triumphed
everywhere." — A. dcLamartine, Memoirs of Cele-
brated Characters: Joan of Arc. — "It seems
natural to ask what steps the King of France had
taken ... to avert her doom. We hear nothing
of any attempt at rescue, of any proposal for
ransom ; neither the most common protest against
her trial . . . nay, not even after her death, one
single expression of regret ! Charles continued
to slumber in his delicious retreats beyond the
Loire, engrossed by dames of a very different
character from Joan's. . . . Her memory on the
other hand was long endeared to the French
people, and long did they continue to cherish a
romantic hope that she might still survive. So
strong was this feeling, that in the year 1436 ad-
vantage was taken of it by a female impostor,
who pretended to be Joan of Arc escaped from
her captivity. ... Of Joan's person no authen-
tic resemblance now remains. A statue to her
memory had been rais jd upon the bridge at Or-
leans, at the sole charge ... of the matrons
and maids of that city ; this probably preserved
some degree of likeness, but unfortunately per-
ished, in the religious wars of the sixteenth cen-
tury. There is no portrait extant ; the two
earliest engravings are of 160(5 and 1613, and
they greatly differ." — Lord Mahon, Hist. Essays,
pp. 53-57. — " A few days before her death, when
urged to resume her woman's dress, she said :
' When I shall have accomplished that for which
I was sent from God, I will take the dress of a
woman.' Yet, in one sense her mission did end
at Rheims. The faith of the people still fol-
lowed her, but her enemies — not the English,
but those in the heart of the court of Charles —
began to be too powerful for her We may,
indeed, conceive what a hoard of envy and
malice was gathering in the hearts of those hard-
ened politicians at seeing themselves supeiseded
by a peasant girl. They, accustomed to dark
and tortuous ways, could not comprehend or
coalesce with the divine simplicity of her designs
and means. A successful intrigue was formed
against her. It was resolved to keep her still in
the camp as a name and a figure, but to take
from her all power, all voice in the direction of
affairs. So accordingly it was done. . . . Her
ways and habits during the year she was in arms
are attested by a multitude of witnesses. Dunois
and the Duke of Alen^on bear testimony to what
they term her extraordinary talents for war, and
to her perfect fearlessness in action ; but in all
other things she was the most simple of creatures.
She wept when she first saw men slain in battle,
to think that they should have died without con-
fession. She wept at the abominable epithets
which the English heaped upon her ; but she was
without a trace of vindictiveness. ' Ah, Glaci-
das, Glacidas ! ' she said to Sir William Glasdale
at Orleans, ' you have called me foul names ;
but I have pity upon your soul and the souls of
your men. Surrender to the King of Heaven ! '
And she was once seen, resting the liead of a
wounded Englishman on her lap, comforting and
consoling him. In her diet she was abstemious
in the extreme, rarely eating until evening, and
then for the most part, only of bread and 'water
sometimes mixed with wine. In the field she
slept in her armom-, but when she came into a
city, she always sought out some honourable
matron, under whose protection she placed her-
self, and there is wonderful evidence of the at-
mosphere of purity which she diffused around
her, her very presence banishing from men's
hearts all evil thoughts and wishes. Her con-
versation, when it was not of the war, was en-
tirely of religion. She confessed often, and re-
ceived communion twice in the week. ' And it
was her custom,' says Dunois, 'at twilight every
day, to retire to the church and make the bells
be rung for half an hour, and she gathered the
mendicant religious who followed the King's
army, and made them sing an antiphon of the
Blessed Mother of God.' From presumption, as
from superstition, she was entirely free. When
women brought her crosses and chaplets to bless,
she said : ' How can I bless them ? Your own
blessing would be as good as mine.'" — J.
O'Hagan, Joan of Arc. pp. 61-66.— "What is to
be thought of her ? What is to be thought of
the poor shepherd girl from the hills and forests
of Lorraine, that — like the Hebrew shepherd
boy from the hills and forests of Judea — rose
suddenly out of the quiet, out of the safety, out
of the religious inspiration, rooted in deep pas-
toral solitudes, to a station in the van of armies,
and to the more perilous station at the right hand
of kings ? The Hebrew boy inaugurated his
patriotic mission by an act, by a victorious act,
such as no man could deny. But so did the girl
of Lorraine, if we read her story as it was read
by those who saw lier nearest. Adverse armies
bore witness to the boy as no pretender ; but so
they did to the gentle girl. Judged by the voices
of all who saw them from a station of" good-will,
both were found true and loyal to any promises
involved in their first acts. Enemies it was that
made the difference between their subsequent
fortunes. The boy rose to a splendour, and a
1209
FRANCE, 1429-1431.
Expulsion of the
English.
FRANCE, 1438.
noonday prosperity, both personal and public,
that rang through the records of his people, and
became a by-word amongst his posterity for a
thousand years, until the sceptre was departing
from Judah. The poor, forsaken girl, on the con-
trary, drank not lierself from that cup of rest
which she had secured for France. . . . This
pure creature — pure from every suspicion of
even a visionary self-interest, even as she was
pure in senses more obvious — never once did this
holy child, as regarded hereelf, relax from her
belief in the darkness that was travelling to meet
her. She might not preligure the very manner
of her death ; she saw not in vision, perhaps, the
aerial altitude of the fiery scaffold, the spectators
without end on every road pouring into Rouen
as to a coronation, the surging smoke, the volley-
ing flames, the hostile faces all around, the pity-
ing eye that lurked but here and there, until
nature and imperishable truth broke loose from
artificial restraints ; — these might not be apparent
through the mists of the hurrying future. But
the voice that called her to death, that she heard
for ever." — T. De Quincey, Joan of Arc. {Collected
Writings, ». 5). — A discussion of doubts that have
been raised concerning the death of Joan at the
stake will be found in Octave Delepierre's His-
torical Difficulties and Contested Events, ch. 8.
Also m: J. Michelet, Hist, of France, hk. 10.
— E. de Monstrelet, Chronicles {Johnes' trans.),
bk. 2, ch. 57-105.— H. Parr, Life arul Heath of Joan
of Arc. — J. Tuckey, Joan of Arc. — Mrs. A. E.
Bray, Joan of Arc.
A. D. 1431-1453. — The English expelled.—
"In Joan of Arc the English certainly destroyed
the cause of their late reverses. But the impulse
had been given, and the crime of base vengeance
could not stay it. Fortune declared every where
and in every way against them. In vain was
Henry VI. brought to Paris, crowned at Notre
Dame, and made to exercise all the functions of
royalty in court and parliament. The duke of
Burgundy, disgusted with the English, became
at last reconciled to Cliarles, who spared no sacri-
fice to win the support of so powerfvd a subject.
The amplest possible amends were made for the
murder of the late duke. The towns beyond
the Somme were ceded to Burgundy, and the
reigning duke [but not his successors] was ex-
empted from all homage towards the king of
France. Such was the famous treaty of Arras
[Sept. 21, 1435], which restored to Charles his
throne, and deprived the English of all hopes of
retaining their conquests in the kingdom. The
crimes and misrule of the Orleans faction were
forgotten ; popularity ebbed in favour of Charles.
. . . One of the gates of Paris was betrayed by
the citizens to the constable and Dunois [April,
1436]. Willoughby, the governor, was obliged
to shut himself up in the Bastile with his garri-
son, from whence they retired to Rouen. Charles
VII. entered his capital, after twenty years' ex-
clusion from it, in November, 1437. Thencefor-
ward the war lost its serious character. Charles
was gradually established on his throne, and the
struggle between the two nations was feebly
carried on, broken merely by a few sieges and
enterprises, mostly to the disadvantage of the
English. . . . There had been frequent endeav-
ours and conferences towards a peace between
the French and English. The demands on either
side proved irreconcilable. A truce was however
concluded, in 1444, which lasted four years; it
was sealed by the marriage of Henry VI. with
Margaret of Anjou, daughter of Rene, and
granddaughter of Louis, who had perished while
leading an ami}' to the conquest of Naples. . . .
In 1449 the truce was allowed to expire. The
quarrels of York and Lancaster had commenced,
and England was unable to defend her foreign
possessions. Normandy was invaded. The gal-
lant Talbot could not preserve Rouen with a dis-
affected population, and Charles recovered with-
out loss of blood [1449] the second capital of his
dominions. The only blow struck by the Eng-
lish for the preservation of Normandy was at
Fourmigny near Bayeux. . . . Normandy was
for ever lost to the English after this action or
skirmish. The following year Guyenne was in-
vaded by the count de Dunois. He met with no'
resistance. The great towns at that day had
grown wealthy, and their maxim was to avoid a
siege at all hazards. " Lord Talbot was killed in
an engagement at Castillon (1450), and "with
that hero expired the last hopes of his country
in regard to France. Guyenne was lost [A. D.
1453] as well as Normandy, and Calais remained
to England the only fruit of so much blood spilt
and so many victories achieved." — E. E. Crowe,.
Hist, of France, v. 1, ch. 4.
Also ik: J. Michelet, Hist, of France, bk. 11.
— E. de Monstrelet, Chronicles {Johnei' trails.),
bk. 2, ch. 109, **. 3, ch. 65.— See, also, Aqui-
taine: a. D. 1360-1453.
A. D. 1438. — Pragmatic Sanction of Charles
VII. — Reforming decrees of the Council of
Basel adopted for the Gallican church. — After
the rupture between the reforming Council of
Basel and Pope Eugenius IV. (see Papacy: A. D.
1431-1448), Charles VII. of France "determined
to adopt in his own kingdom such of the decrees
of the Council as were for his advantage, see-
ing that no opposition could be made by the
Pope. Accordingly a Synod was summoned at
Bourges on May 1, 1438. The embassadors of
Pope and Council urged their respective causes.
It was agreed that the King should write to Pope
and Council to stay their hands in proceeding
against one another ; meanwhile, that the refor-
mation be not lost, some of the Basel decrees
should be maintained in France by royal authority.
The results of the s_vnod's deliberation were laid
before the King, and on July 7 were made bind-
ing as a pragmatic sanction on the French Church.
The Pragmatic Sanction enacted that General
Councils were to be held every ten years, and
recognised the authority of the Council of Basel.
The Pope was no longer to reserve any of the
greater ecclesiastical appointments, but elections
were to be dul}' made by the rightful patrons.
Grants to benefices in expectancy, ' whence all
agree that many evils arise,' were to cease, aa
well as reservations. In all cathedral churches,
one prebend was to be given to a theologian who
had studied for ten years in a university, and who
was to lecture or preach at least once a week.
Benefices were to be conferred in future, one-
third on graduates, two-thirds on deserving
clergy. Appeals to Rome, except for important
causes, were forbidden. The number of Cardi-
nals was to be 24, each of the age of 30 at least.
Annates and first-fruits were no longer to be paid
to the Pope, but only the necessary legal fees on
institution. Regulations were made for greater
reverence in the conduct of Divine service;
prayers were to be said by the priest in an audible
1210
FRANCE, 1438.
Genesis
of Absolutism.
FRANCE, 1461.
voice; mummeries in cliurches were forbidden,
and clerical concubinage was to be punished
by suspension for tliree montlis. Such were the
chief reforms of its own special grievances,
which France wished to establish. It was the
first step in the assertion of the rights of national
Churches to arrange for tliemselves the details
of their own ecclesiastical organisation." — M.
Creighton, Jlist. of the Papacy during the Period
of the Reformation, hk. 8. eh. 9 (r. 2).
A. D. 1447. — Origin of the claims of the
house of Orleans to the duchy of Milan. See
MiL.w: A. D. 1447-1454.
A. D. 1453-1461. — The reconstructed king-
dom. — The new plant of Absolutism. — "At
the expulsion of tlie English, France emerged
from the chaos with an altered character and
new features of government. The royal author-
ity and supreme jurisdiction of the parliament
were universally recognised. Yet there was a
tendency towards insubordination left among the
great nobility, arising in part from tlie remains
of old feudal privileges, but still more from that
lax administration which, in the convulsive strug-
gles of the war, had been suffered to prevail. In
the south were some considerable vassals, the
houses of Foix, Albret, and Armagnac, who, on
account of their distance from the seat of empire,
had always maintained a very independent con-
duct. The dukes of Britany and Burgundy were
of a more formidable character, and might rather
be ranked among foreign powers than privileged
subjects. The princes, too, of the royal blood,
who, during the late reign, had learned to partake
or contend for the management, were ill-inclined
towards Charles VII., himself jealous, from old
recollections of their ascendancy. They saw that
the constitution was verging rapidly towards an
absolute monarchy, from the direction of which
they would studiously be excluded. This ap-
prehension gave rise to several attempts at re-
bellion during the reign of Charles VII., and to
the war, commonly entitled, for the Public AVeal
('du bicn public'), under Louis XI. Among the
pretenses alleged by the revolters in each of
these, the injuries of the people were not for-
gotten ; but from the people they received small
support. Weary of civil dissension, and anxious
for a strong government to secure them from
depredation, the French had no inducement to
intrust even their real grievances to a few mal-
content princes, whose regard for the common
good they had much reason to distrust. Every
circumstance favoured Charles VII. and his son
in the attainment of arbitrary power. The coun-
try was pillaged by military ruffians. Some of
these had been led by the dauphin to a war in
Germany, but the remainder still infested the
high roads and villages. Charles established
his companies of ordonnauce, the basis of the
French regular army, in order to protect the
country from such depredators. They consisted
of about nine thousand soldiers, all cavalry, of
whom fifteen hundred were heavy-armed ; a force
not very considerable, but the first, except mere
body-guards, which had been raised in any part
of Europe as a national standing array. These
troops were paid out of the produce of a per-
manent tax, called the taille ; an innovation still
more important than the former. But the pres-
ent benefit cheating the people, now prone to
submissive habits, little or no opposition was
made, except in Guienne, the inhabitants of
which had speedy reason to regret the mild gov-
ernment of England, and vainly endeavoured to
return to its protection. It was not long before
the new despotism exhibited itself in its harshest
character. Louis XI. , son of Charles VII. , who
during his father's reign, had been connected
with the discontented princes, came to the throne
greatly endowed with those virtues and vices
which conspire to the success of a king. " — H.
Hallam, The Middle Ages, eh. 1, p«. 2.
A. D. 1458-1461. — Renewed submission of
Genoa to the King, and renewed revolt. See
Genoa: A. D. 14.58-1464.
A. D. 1461. — Accession of King Louis XI. —
Contemporary portrait of him by Commines. —
"Of all the princes that I ever knew, the wisest
and most dexterous to extricate himself out of
any danger or difficulty iu time of adversity,
was our master King Louis XI. He was the
humblest in his conversation and habit, and the
most painful and indefatigable to win over any
man to his side that he thought capable of doing
him either mischief or service : though he was
often refused, he would never give over a man
that he wished to gain, but still pressed and con-
tinued his insinuations, promising him largely,
and presenting him with such sums and honours
as he knew would gratify his ambition ; and for
such as he had discarded in time of peace and
prosperity, he paid dear (when he had occasion
for them) to recover them again ; b\it when he
had once reconciled them, he retained no enmity
towards them for what had passed, but employed
them freely for the future. He was naturally
kind and indulgent to persons of mean estate, and
hostile to all great men who had no need of him.
Never prince was so conversable, nor so inquisi-
tive as he, for his desire was to know everybody
he could ; and indeed he knew all persons of any
authority or worth in England, Spain, Portugal
and Italy, iu the territories of the Dukes of Bur-
gundy and Bretagne, and among his own sub-
jects; and by those qualities he preserved the
crown upon his head, which was in much danger
by the enemies he had created to himself upon
his accession to the throne. But above all, his
great bounty and liberality did him the greatest
service : and .yet, as he behaved himself wisely in
time of distress, so when he thought himself a
little out of danger, though it were but by a truce,
he would disoblige the servants and officers of his
court by mean and petty ways, which were little
to his advantage; and as for peace, he could
hardly endure the thoughts of it. He spoke
slightingly of most people, and rather before
their faces, than behind their backs, unless
he was afraid of them, and of that sort there
were a great many, for lie was naturally some-
what timorous. When he had done himself any
prejudice by his talk, or was apprehensive he
should do so, and wished to make amends, he
would say to the person whom he had disobliged,
' I am sensible my tongue has done me a great
deal of mischief ; but, on the other hand, it has
sometimes done me much good; however, it is
but reason I should make some reparation for
the injury.' And he never used this kind of
apologies to any person, but he granted some fa-
vour to the person to whom he made it, and it was
always of considerable amount. It is certainly a
great blessing from God upon any prince to have
experienced adversity as well as prosperity, ^ood
as well as evil, and especially if the good outweighs
1211
FRANCE, 1461.
Louis XL
FRANCE, 1461.
the evil, as it did in the king our master. I
am of opinion that the troubles he was involved
in, in his youth, when he fled from his father,
and resided six years together with Philip Duke
of Burgundy, were of great service to him ; for
there he learned to be complaisant to such as he
had occasion to use, which was no slight advan-
tage of adversity. As soon as he found himself
a powerful and crowned king, his mind was
wholly bent upon revenge; but he quickly found
the inconvenience of this, repented by degrees of
his indiscretion, and made sufQcient reparation
for his folly and error, by regaining those he had
injured, as shall be related hereafter. Besides,
I am very confident that if his education had not
been different from the usual education of such
nobles as I have seen in France, he could not so
easily have worked himself out of his troubles ;
for they are brought up to nothing but to make
themselves ridiculous, both in their clothes and
discourse ; they have no knowledge of letters ; no
wise man is suffered to come near them, to im-
prove their understandings ; they have governors
who manage their business, but they do nothing
themselves. " — Such is the account of Louis XI.
which Philip de Commines gives in one of the
early chapters of his delightful Memoirs. In a
later chapter he tells naively of the king's suspi-
cions and fears, and of what he suffered, at the
end of his life, as the penalty of his cruel and
crafty dealings with his subjects: "Some five
or six months before his death, lie began to sus-
pect everybody, especially those who were most
capable and deserving of the administration of
affairs. He was afraid of his son, and caused
him to be kept close, so that no man saw
or discoursed with him, but by his special
command. At last he grew suspicious of his
daughter, and of his son-in-law the Duke of
Bourbon, and required an account of what persons
came to speak with them at Plessis, and broke up
a council which the Duke of Bourbon was hold-
ing there, by his order. . . . Behold, then, if he
had caused many to live under him in continual
fear and apprehension, whether it was not re-
turned to him again; for of whom could lie
be secure when he was afraid of his son-in-law,
his daughter, and his own son? I speak this not
only of him, but of all other princes who desire
to be feared, that vengeance never falls on them
till they grow old, and then, as a just penance,
they are afraid of everybody themselves; and
what grief must it have been to this poor
King to be tormented with such terrors and pas-
sions? He was still attended by his physician.
Master James Coctier, to wliom in five months'
time he had given fifty-four thousand crowns in
ready money, besides the bishopric of Amiens
for his nephew, and other great otiices and
estates for himself and his friends ; yet this doctor
used him very roughly indeed ; one would not
have given such outrageous language to one's
servants as he gave the King, who stood in such
awe of him, that he durst not forbid him his
presence. It is true he complained of his impu-
dence afterwards, but he durst not change him as
he had done all the rest of his servants ; because
he had told him after a most audacious manner
one day, ' I know well that some time or other
you will dismiss me from court, as you have done
the rest; but be sure (and he confirmed it with a
great oath) you shall not live eight days after it' ;
with which expression the King was so terrified,
that ever after he did nothing but flatter and
bribe him, which must needs have been a great
mortification to a prince who had been humbly
obeyed all his life by so many good and brave
men. The King had ordered several cruel
prisons to be made ; some were cages of iron,
and some of wood, but all were covered with iron
plates both within and without, with terrible
locks, about eight feet wide and seven high ; the
first contriver of them was the Bishop of Verdun,
who was immediately put in the first of them
that was made, where he continued fourteen
years. Many bitter curses he has had since for
his invention, and some from me as I lay in one
of them eight months together in the minority
of our present King. He also ordered heavy
and terrible fetters to be made in Germany, and
particularly a certain ring for the feet, which
was extremely hard to be opened, and fitted like
an iron collar, with a thick weighty chain, and a
great globe of iron at the end of it, most un-
reasonably heavy, which engines were called the
King's Nets. ... As in his time this barbarous
variety of prisons was invented, so before he
died he himself was in greater torment, and more
terrible apprehension than those whom he had
imprisoned ; which I look upon as a great mercy
towards him, and as a part of his purgatory;
and I have mentioned it here to show that
there is no person, of what station or dignity
soever, but suffers some time or other, either
publicly or privately, especially if he has caused
other people to suffer. The King, towards the
latter end of his days, caused his castle of Plessis-
les-Tours to be encompassed with great bars of
iron in the form of thick grating, and at the four
corners of the house four sparrow-nests of iron,
strong, massy, and thick, were built. The grates
were without the wall on the other side of the
ditch, and sank to the bottom. Several spikes of
iron were fastened into the wall, set as thick by
one another as was possible, and each furnished
with three or four points. He likewise placed
ten bow-men in the ditches, to shoot at any man
that durst approach the castle before the opening
of the gates ; and he ordered they should lie in
the ditches, but retire to the sparrow-nests upon
occasion. He was sensible enough that this for-
tification was too weak to keep out an army, or
any great body of men, but he had no fear of
such an attack ; his great apprehension was, that
some of the nobility of his kingdom, having in-
telligence within, might attempt to make them-
selves masters of the castle by night. . . . Is it pos-
sible then to keep a prince (with any regard to his
quality) in a closer prison than he kept himself?
The cages which were made for other people were
about eight feet square ; and he (though so great
a monarch) had but a small court of the castle to
walk in, and seldom made use of that, but gen-
erally kept himself in the gallery, out of which
he went into the chambers on his way to mass,
but never passed through the court. ... I have
not recorded these things merely to represent our
master as a suspicious and mistrustful prince;
but to show, that by the patience which he ex-
pressed in his sufferings (like those which he in-
flicted on other people), they may be looked upon,
in my judgment, as a punishment which our
Lord inflicted upon him in this world, in order
to deal more mercifully with him in the next,
as well in regard to those things before-mentioned
as to the distempers of his body, which were
1212
FRANCE, 1461.
Louis XI.
FRANCE, 1461-1468.
great and painful, and much dreaded by him be-
fore they came upon him ; and, likewise, that those
princes who may be his successors, may learn by
his example to be more tender and indulgent to
their subjects, and less severe in their punish-
ments than our master had been : although I will
not censure him, or say I ever saw a better
prince; for though he oppressed his subjects
himself he would never see them injured by any-
body else." — Philip de Commines, Memmrs, bk.
1, ch. 10, andhk. 6, ch. 11.
A. D. 1461-1468.— The character and reign
of Louis XI.— The League of the Public Weal.
— "Except St. Louis, he [Louis XL] was the
first, as, indeed (with the solitary exception of
Louis Philippe), he is still the only king of Prance
whose mind was ever prepared for the duties of
that high station by any course of severe and
systematic study. Before he ascended the throne
of his ancestors he had profoundly meditated
the great Italian authors, and the institutions
and maxims of the Italian republics. From those
lessons he had derived a low esteem of his fellow-
men, and especially of those among them upon
whom wealth, and rank, and power had de-
scended as an hereditary birthright. ... He
clearly understood, and pursued with inflexible
steadfastness of purpose the elevation of his
country and the grandeur of his own royal house
and lineage ; but he pursued them with a torpid
imagination, a cold heart, and a ruthless will.
He regarded mankind as a physiologist contem-
plates the living subjects of his science, or as a
chess-player surveys the pieces on his board.
... It has been said of Louis XI. , that the ap-
pearance of the men of the Revolution of 1789
first made him intelligible. . . . Louis was the
first of the terrible Ideologists of France — of
that class of men who, to enthrone an idolized
idea, will offer whole hecatombs of human sacri-
fices at the shrine of their idol. The Idea of
Louis was that of levelling all powers in the
state, in order that the administration of the
affairs, the possession of the wealth, and the en-
joyment of the honours of his kingdom might
be grasped by himself and his successors as their
solitary and unrivalled dominion. . . . Before
his accession to the throne, all the great fiefs into
which France had been divided under the earlier
Capetian kings had, with the exception of Bre-
tagne, been either annexed to the royal domain,
or reduced to a state of dependence on the crown.
But, under the name of Apanages, tliese ancient
divisions of the kingdom into separate princi-
palities had reappeared. The territorial feudal-
ism of the Middle Ages seemed to be reviving in
the persons of the younger branches of the royal
house. The Dukes of Burgundy had thus become
the rulers of a state [see Burgundy: A. D. 1467]
which, under the government of more politic
princes, might readily, in fulfillment of their
desires, have attained the rank of an independent
kingdom. The Duke of Bretagne, still asserting
the peculiar privileges of his duchy, was rather
an ally than a subject of the king of France.
Charles, Duke of Berri, the brother of Louis, as-
pired to the possession of the same advantages.
And these three great territorial potentates, in
alliance with the Due de Bourbon and the Comte
de St. Pol, the brothers-in-law of Louis and
of his queen, united together to form that con-
federacy against him to wliich they gave tlie very
inappropriate title of La Ligue du Bien Public.
It was, however, a title which recognized the
growing strength of the Tiers Etat, and of that
public opinion to which the Tiers Etat at once
gave utterance and imparted authority. Selfish
ambition was thus compelled to assume the mask
of patriotism. The princes veiled their insatiable
appetite for their own personal advantages under
the popular and plausible demands of adminis-
trative reforms — of the reduction of imposts —
of the government of the people by their repre-
sentatives — and, consequently, of the convoca-
tion of the States-General. To these pretensions
Louis was unable to make any effectual resis-
tance." An indecisive but bloody battle was
fought at Montlehery, near Paris (July 16, 146.5),
from which both armies retreated with every ap-
pearance of defeat. The capital was besieged
ineffectually for some weeks by the League;
then the king yielded, or seemed to do so, and
the Treat}' of Conflans was signed. "He as-
sented, in terms at least, to all the demands of
his antagonists. He granted to the Duke of
Berri the duchy of Normandy as an apanage
transmissible in perpetuity to his male heirs. . . .
The confederates then laid down their aims.
The wily monarch bided his time. He had be-
stowed on them advantages which he well knew
would destroy their popularity and so subvert
the basis of their power, and which he also knew
the state of public opinion would not allow them
to retain. To wrest those advantages from their
hands, it was only necessary to comply with
their last stipulation, and to convene the States-
General. They met accordingly, at Tours, on
the 6th of April, 1468." As Louis had antici-
pated — or, rather, as he had planned — the
States-General cancelled the grant of Normandy
to the Duke of Berri (which the king had been
able already to recover possession of, owing to
quarrels between the dukes of Berri and Brit-
tany) and, generally, took away from the princes
of the League nearly all that they had extorted
in the Treaty of Conflans. On the express invi-
tation of the king they appointed a commission
to reform abuses in the government — which
commission " attempted little and effected noth-
ing" — and, then, having assisted the cunning
king to overcome his threatening nobles, the
States-General were dissolved, to meet no more
while Louis XI. occupied the throne. In a des-
perate situation he had used the dangerous
weapon against his enemies with effect; he was
too prudent to draw it from the sheath a second
time. — Sir J. Stephen, Lect's on the Hist, of
France, led. 11. — "The career of Louis XI. pre-
sents a curious problem. How could a ruler
whose morality fell below that of Jonathan AVild
yet achieve some of the greatest permanent re-
sults of patriotic statesmanship, and be esteemed
not only by himself but by so calm an observer
as Commines the model of liingly virtue ? As to
Louis's moral character and principles, or want
of principle, not a doubt can be entertained.
To say he committed the acts of a villain is to
fall far short of the truth. ... He possessed a
kind of religious belief, but it was a species of
religion which a respectable heathen would have
scorned. He attempted to bribe heaven, or rather
the saints, just as he attempted to win over his
Swiss allies — that is, by gifts of money. . . .
Yet this man, who was daunted by no cruelty,
and who could be bound by no oath save one,
did work which all statesmen must admire, and
1213
FRANCE, 1461-1468.
Louis XI.
FRANCE, 1461-1468.
■which French patriots must fervently approve.
He was the creator of modem France. When he
came to the throne it seemed more than likely
that an utterly selfish and treacherous nobility
would tear the country in pieces. The English
still threatened to repeat the horrors of their in-
vasions. The House of Burgundy overbalanced
the power of the crown, and stimulated lawless-
ness throughout the whole country. The peas-
antry were miserably oppressed, and the middle
classes could not prosper for want of that rule of
law which is the first requisite for civilization.
When Louis died, the existence of Prance and
the power of the French crown was secured:
' He had extended the frontiers of his kingdom ;
Picardy, Provence, Burgundy, Anjou, Maine,
Roussillon had been compelled to acknowledge
the immediate authority of the crown.' He had
crushed the feudal oligarchy ; he had seen his
most dangerous enemy destroyed by the resis-
tance of the Swiss; he had baffled the attempt to
construct a state which would have imperilled
the national existence of France ; he had put an
end to all risk of English Invasion ; and he left
France the most powerful country in Europe.
Her internal government was no doubt oppres-
sive, but, at any rate, it secured the rule of law ;
and his schemes for her benefit were still unfin-
ished. He died regretting that he could not
carry out his plans for the reform of the law and
for the protection of commerce; and, in the
opinion of Commines, if God had granted him
the grace of living five or six years more, he
would greatly have benefited his realm. He
died commending his soul to the intercession of
the Virgin, and the last words caught from his
lips were : ' Lord, in thee have I trusted ; let me
never be confounded. ' Nor should this be taken
as the expression of hopeless self-delusion or
gratuitous hypocrisy. In the opinion of Com-
mines, uttered after the king's death, 'he was
more wise, more liberal, and more virtuous in
all things than any contemporary sovereign.'
The expressions of Commines were, it may be
said, but the echo of the low moral tone of the
age. This, no doubt, is true; but the fact
that the age did not condemn acts which, taken
alone, seem to argue the utmost depravity, still
needs explanation. The matter is the more
worthy of consideration because Louis represents,
though in an exaggerated form, the vices and
virtues of a special body of rulers. He was the
incarnation, so to speak, of kingcraft. The word
and the idea it represents have now become
out of date, but for about two centuries — say,
roughly, from the middle of the seventeenth cen-
tury — the idea of a great king was that of a
monarch who ruled by means of cunning, in-
trigue, and disregard of ordinary moral rules. We
here come across the fact which explains both
the career and the reputation of Louis and of
others, such as Henry VII. of England, who
were masters of kingcraft. The universal feel-
ing of the time, shared by subjects no less than
by rulers, was that a king was not bound by the
rules of morality, and especially by the rules of
honesty, which bind other men. Until you real-
ize this fact, nothing is more incomprehensible
than the adulation lavished by men such as
Bacon or Casaubon on a ruler such as James I.
. . . The real puzzle is to ascertain how this
feeling that kings were above the moral law came
into existence. The facts of history afford the
necessary explanation. When the modem Euro-
pean world was falling into shape the one thing
required for national prosperity was the growth
of a power which might check the disorders of
the feudal nobility, and secure for the mass of
the people the blessings of an orderly govern-
ment. The only power which, in most cases,
could achieve this end, was the crown. In Eng-
land the monarchs put an end to the wars of
the nobility. In France the growth of the mon-
archy secured not only internal quiet, but pro-
tection from external invasion. In these and in
other cases the interest of the crown and the in-
terest of the people became for a time identical.
. . . Acts which would have seemed villainous
when done to promote a purely private interest,
became mere devices of statesmanship when per-
formed in the interest of the public. "The maxims
that the king can do no wrong, and that the
safety of the people is the highest law, blended
together in the minds of ambitious rulers. The
result was the production of men like Louis
XI."— A. V. Dicey, Willert's Louis XL {TM
Nation, Dec. 7, 1876). — "A careful examina-
tion of the reign of Louis the Eleventh has
particularly Impressed upon me one fact, that
the ends for which he toiled and sinned through-
out his whole life were attained at last rather by
circumstances than by his labours. The supreme
object of all his schemes was to crush that most
formidable of all his foes. Burgundy. And yet
had Charles confined his ambition within reason-
able limits, had he possessed an ordinary share
of statecraft, and, above all, could he have con-
trolled those fiery passions, which drove him to
the verge of madness, he would have won the
game quite easily. Louis lacked one of the es-
sential qualities of statecraft — patience ; and was
wholly destitute of that necessity of ambition —
boldness. An irritable restlessness was one of
the salient points of his character. His courtiers
and attendants were ever intriguing to embroil
him in war, 'because,' says Comines, 'the nature
of the King was such, that unless he was at war
with some foreign prince, he would certainly
find some quarrel or other at home with his ser-
vants, domestics, or officers, for his mind must
be always working.' His mood was ever chang-
ing, and he was by turns confiding, suspicious,
avaricious, prodigal, audacious, and timid. He
frequently nullified his most crafty schemes by
impatience for the result. He would sow the
seed with the utmost care, but he could not wait
for the fructification. In this he was false to the
practice of those Italian statesmen who were
avowedly his models. It was this irritable rest-
lessness which brought down upon him the
hatred of all classes, from the noble to the serf;
for we find him at one time cunningly bidding for
popularity, and immediately afterwards destroy-
ing all he had gained by some rash and incon-
siderate act. His extreme timidity hampered
the execution of all his plans. He had not even
the boldness of the coward who will fight when
all the strength is on his own side. Constantly
at war, during a reign of twenty-two years there
were fought but two battles, Montlhery and
Guingette, both of which, strange to say, were
undecided, and both of which were fought against
his will and counsel. ... He left France larger
by one-fourth than he had inherited it; but
out of the five provinces which he acquired,
Proven9e was bequeathed him, Roussillon was
1214
TRANCE, 1461-1468.
LouU XI.
FRANCE, 1492-1515.
pawned to him by the usurping King of Navarre,
and Burgundy was won for him by the Swiss.
His triumphs were much more the result of for-
tune than the efforts of his own genius." — Lotiis
the Eleventh (Temple Bar, v. 46, py>. 523-524).
Aiso IN : J. Michelet, Hist, of France, bk. 13.
—P. F. Willert, The Reign of Louis XL— 3. F.
Kirk, Hist, of Charles the Bold, bk. 1, ch. 4-6. —
P. de Coramines, Memoirs, bk. 1. — E. de Monstre-
let. Chronicles {Johnes' trans.), bk. 3, ch. 99-153.
A. D. 1467-1477.— The troubles of Louis XI.
with Charles the Bold, of Burgundy. — Death
of the Duke and Louis' acquisition of Bur-
gundy. See Burgundy: A. D. 1467-1468, to
1477.
A. D. 1483. — The kingdom as left by Louis
XL— Louis XI., who died Aug. 30, A. D. 1483,
"had joined to the crown Berry, the apanage of
his brother, Provence, the duchy of Burgundy,
Anjou, Maine, Ponthieu, the counties of Auxerre,
of Macon, Charolais, the Free County, Artois,
Marche, Armagnac, Cerdagne, and Roussilon.
. . . The seven latter provinces did not yet re-
main irrevocably united with France : one part
was given anew in apanage, and the other part
restored to foreign sovereigns, and only returned
one by one to the crown of France. . . . The
principal work of Louis XI. was the abasement
of the second feudality, which had raised itself
on the ruins of the first, and which, without him,
would have replunged France into anarchy. The
chiefs of that feudality were, however, more for-
midable, since, for the most part, they belonged
to the blood royal of France. Their powerful
houses, which possessed at the accession of that
prince a considerable part of the kingdom, were
those of Orleans, Anjou, Burgundy, and Bour-
bon. They found themselves much weakened at
his death, and dispossessed in great part, as we
have seen in the history of the reign, by confis-
cations, treaties, gifts or heritages. By the side
of these houses, which issued from that of France,
there were others whose power extended still, at
this period, in the limits of France proper, over
vast domains. Those of Luxembourg and La
Mark possessed great wealth upon the frontier of
the north ; that of Vaudemont had inherited Lor-
raine and the duchy of Bar ; the house of La
Tour was powerful in Auvergne ; in the south
the houses of Foix and Albert ruled, the first in
the valley of Ariege, the second between the
Adour and the Pyrenees. In the west the house
of Brittany had guarded its independence ; but
the moment approached when this beautiful
province was to be forever united with the
crown. Lastly, two foreign sovereigns held
possessions in France; the Pope had Avignon
and the county Venaissin ; and the Duke of Savoy
possessed, between the Rhone and the Saone,
Bugey and Valromey. The time was still dis-
tant when the royal authority would be seen
freely exercised through every territory com-
prised in the natural limits of the kingdom. But
Louis XI. did much to attain this aim, and after
him no princely or vassal house was powerful
enough to resist the crown by its own forces, and
to put the throne in peril." — E. de Bonnechose,
Hist, of IPrance, ■». 1, pp. 315-318, and foot-note.
A. D. 1483. — Accession of King Charles
VIII.
A. D. 1485-1487.— The League of the
Princes. — Charles VIII. , son and successor of
Louis XI., came to the throne at the age of thir-
teen, on the death of his father in 1483, His
eldest sister, Anne, married to the Lord of Beau-
jeu, made herself practically regent of the
kingdom, by sheer ability and force of character,
and ruled during the minority, pursuing the
lines of her father's policy. The princes of the
blood-royal, with the Dukes of Orleans and Bour-
bon at their head, formed a league against her.
They were supported by many nobles, including
Philip de Commines, the Count of Dunois and
the Prince of Orange. They also received aid
from the Duke of Brittany, and from Maximilian
of Austria, who now controlled the Netherlands.
Anne's general. La Tremouille, defeated the
league in a decisive battle (A. D. 1487) near St.
Aubin du Cormier, where the Duke of Orleans,
the Prince of Orange, and many nobles and
knights were made prisoners. The Duke and
the Prince were sent to Anne, who shut them up
in strong places, while most of their companions
were summarily executed. — E. de Bonnechose,
Hist, of Prance, v. 1, bk. 3, ch. 3.
Also in: F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of
France, ch. 26.
A. D. 1491.— Brittany, the last of the great
fiefs, united to the crown. — The end of the
Feudal System. See Brittany: A. D. 1491.
A. D. 1492-1515.— The reigns of Charles
VIII. and Louis XII.— Their Italian Expedi-
tions and Wars. — The effects on France. —
Beginning of the Renaissance. — Louis XI. was
succeeded by his son, Charles VIII., a boy of
thirteen years, whose elder sister Anne governed
the kingdom ably until he came of age. She
dealt firmly with a rebellion of the nobles and
suppressed it. She frustrated an intended mar-
riage of Anne of Brittany with Maximilian of
Austria, which would have drawn the last of the
great semi-independent fiefs into a dangerous re-
lationship, and she made Charles instead of his
rival the husband of the Breton heiress. When
Charles, who had little intelligence, assumed the
government, he was excited with dreams of mak-
ing good the pretensions of the Second House of
Anjou to the Kingdom of Naples. Those pre-
tensions, which had been bequeathed to Louis
XL, and which Charles VIII. had now inherited,
had the following origin: "In the eleventh
century, Robert Guiscard, of the Norman family of
Hauteville, at the head of a band of adventurers,
took possession of Sicily and South Italy, then
in a state of complete anarchy. Roger, the son
of Robert, founded the Kingdom of the Two
Sicilies under the Pope's suzerainty. In 1189 the
Guiscard family became extinct, whereupon the
German Emperor laid claim to tlie kingdom in
right of his wife Constance, daugliter of one of
the Norman kings. The Roman Pontiffs, dread-
ing such powerful neigbours, were adverse to
the arrangement, and in 1254 King Conrad, be-
ing succeeded by his son Conradin, still a minor,
furnished a pretext for bestowing the crown of
the Two Sicilies on Charles d'Aujou, brother of
St. Louis. Manfred, guardian of the boy Con-
radin, and a natural son of the Emperor Frede-
rick II., raised an army against Charles d'Anjou,
but was defeated, and fell in the encounter of
1266. Two years later. Prince Conradin was
cruelly beheaded in Naples. Before his death,
however, he made a will, by which he invested
Peter III. of Aragon, son-in-law of Manfred, with
full power over the Two Sicilies, exhorting him
to avenge his death [see Italy: A. D. 1250-1268].
1215
FRANCE, 1493-1515.
Italian Wars of
Charles VIII. and Louis XII.
FRANCE, 1492-1515.
This bequest -svas the origin of the rivalry be-
tween the houses of Aragon and Anjou, a rivalry
which developed into open antagonism when the
island of Sicily was given up to Peter of Aragon
and his descendants, while Charles d' Anjou still
held Naples for himself and his heirs [see Italy :
A. D. 1283-1300]. In 1435 Joan II., Queen of
Naples, bequeathed her estates to Alfonso V. of
Aragon, surnamed the 3Iaguanimous, to the ex-
clusion of Louis III. of Anjou. After a long and
bloody struggle, Alfonso succeeded in driving
the Anjou dynasty out of Naples [see Italy:
A. D. 1343-1389, and 1386-1414]. Louis III. was
the last representative of this once-powerful
family. He returned to France, survived his
defeat two-and-twenty years, and by his will left
all his rights to the Count of Maine, his nephew,
who, on his death, transferred them to Louis XI.
The wily Louis was not tempted to claim tliis
worthless legacy. His successor, Charles VIII.,
less matter-of-fact, and more romantic, was be-
guiled into a series of brilliant, though sterile,
expeditions, disastrous to national interests, neg-
lecting the Flemish provinces, the liege vassals
of France, and thoroughly French at heart.
Charles VIII. put himself at the head of his
nobles, made a triumphal entry into Najiles and
returned without having gained an inch of
territory [see Italy : A. D. 1493-1494, and 1494-
1496]. De Commines judges the whole affair a
mystery ; it was, in fact, one of those dazzling
and chivalrous adventures with which the French
delighted to astonish Europe. Louis XII., like
Charles VIII. [whom he succeeded in 1498], pro-
claimed his right to Naples, and also to the
Duchy of Milan, inherited from his grandmother,
Valentine de Visconti. These pretended rights
were more than doubtful. The Emperor Wen-
ceslas, on conferring the duchy on the Viscontis,
excluded women from the inheritance, and both
Louis XI. and Charles VIII. recognised the va-
lidity of the Salic law in Milan by concluding an
alliance with the Sforzas. The seventeen years
of Louis XII. 's reign was absorbed in these
Italian wars, in which the French invariably be-
gan by victory, and as invariably ended in de-
feat. The League of Cambrai, the Battles of
Agnadel, Ravenna, Novara, tlie Treaties of Gre-
nada and Blois, are the principal episodes of this
unlucky campaign." — C. Coignet, Francis the
First and His I'imes, ch. 3. — See, also, Italy:
A.D. 1499-1500.— " The warriors of France came
back from Italy with the wonders of the South
on their lips and her treasures in their hands.
They brought with them books and paintings,
they brought with them armour inlaid with gold
and silver, tapestries enriched with precious
metals, embroidered clothing, and even liousehold
furniture. Distributed by many hands in many
different places, each precious thing became a
separate centre of initiative power. The chateaux
of the country nobles boasted the ti'easures which
had fallen to the share of their lords at Genoa or
at Naples; and the great women of the court
were eager to divide the spoil. The contagion
spread rapidly. Even in the most fatastic mo-
ment of Gothic inspiration, the French artist
gave evidence that his right hand obeyed a na-
tional instinct for order, for balance, for com-
pleteness, and that his eye preferred, in obedience
to a national predilection, the most refined har-
monies of colour. Step by step he had been feel-
ing his way ; now, the broken link of tradition was
again made fast ; the workmen of Paris and the
workmen of Athens joined hands, united by the
genius of Italy. It must not, however, be sup-
posed that no intercourse had previously existed
between France and Italy. The roads by Nar-
bonne and Lyons were worn by many feet. The
artists of Tours and Poitiers, the artists of Paris
and Dijon, were alike familiar witli the path to
Rome. But an intercourse, liitherto restricted,
was rendered by the wars of Charles VIII. all
but universal. . . . Cruelly as the Italians had
suffered at the hands of Charles VIII. they still
looked to France for help ; they knew that though
they had been injured they had not been betrayed.
But the weak and generous impulses of Charles
VIII. found no place in the councils of his suc-
cessors. . . . The doom of Italy was pronounced.
Substantially the compact was this. Aided by
Borgia, the French were to destroy the free
cities of the north, and in return France was to
aid Borgia in breaking the power of tlie inde-
pendent nobles who yet resisted Papal aggres-
sion in the south. In July 1499 the work began.
At first the Italians failed to realise what had
taken place. When the French army entered the
Milanese territory the inhabitants fraternised with
the troops, Milan, Genoa, Pavia opened their
gates with joy. But in a few months the course
of events, in the south, aroused a dread anxiety.
There, Borgia, under the protection of the French
king, and with the assistance of tlie French arms,
was triumphantly glutting his brutal rage and
lust, whilst Frenchmen were forced to look on
helpless and indignant. Milan, justly terrified,
made an attempt to throw herself on the mercy
of her old ruler. To no purpose. Louis went
back over the Alps, leaving a strong hand and a
strong garrison in Milan, and dragging with him
the unfortunate Louis Sforza, a miserable proof
of the final destruction of the most brilliant court
of Upper Italy. . . . By the campaign of 1507,
the work, thus begun, was consummated. The
ancient spirit of independence still lingered in
Genoa, and Venice was not yet crushed. There
were still fresh laurels to be' won. In this Holy
War the Pope and the Emperor willingly joined
forces with France. . . . The deathblow was
first given to Genoa. She was forced, Marot
tells us, ' la corde au coul, la glaive sous la
gorge, implorer la clemence de ce prince. ' Ven-
ice was next traitorously surprised and irrepa-
rably injured. Having thus brilliantly achieved
the task of first destroying the lettered courts,
and next the free cities of Italy, Louis died, be-
queathing to Fran9ois I. the shame of fighting
out a hopeless struggle for supremacy against
allies who, no longer needing help, had combined
to drive the French from the field. There was,
indeed, one other duty to be performed. The
shattered remains of Italian civilisation might be
collected, and Paris might receive the men whom
Italy could no longer employ. The French re-
turned to France empty of honour, gorged with
plunder, satiated with rape and rapine, boasting
of cities sacked, and garrisons put to the sword.
They had sucked the lifeblood of Italy, but her
death brought new life to France. The impetus
thus acquired by art and letters coincided with
a change in political and social constitutions.
The gradual process of centralisation which had
begun with Louis XI. transformed the life of the
whole nation. . . . The royal court began to
take proportions hitherto unknown. It gradually
]216
FRANCE, 1493-1515.
Renaissance
and Refonnation.
FRANCE, 1513-1515.
became a centre which gathered together the
rich, the learned, and the skilled. Artists, who
had previously been limited in training, isolated
in life, and narrowed in activity by the rigid con-
servative action of the great guilds and corpora-
tions, were thus brought into immediate contact
with the best culture of their day. For the
Humanists did not form a class apart, and their
example incited those with whom they lived to
effort after attainments as varied as their own,
whilst the Court made a rallying point for all,
which gave a sense of countenance and protection
even to those who might never hope to enter
it. . . . Emancipation of the individual is the
watchword of the sixteenth century ; to the artist
it brought relief from the trammels of a caste
thraldom, and the ceaseless efforts of the Human-
ists find an answer even in the new forms seen
slowly breaking through the sheath of Gothic
art." — Mrs. Mark Pattison, The Renaissance of
Art in France, v. 1, eh. 1.
i6th Century. — Renaissance and Reforma-
tion. — "The first point of difference to be noted
between the Renaissance in France and the Re-
naissance in Italy is one of time. Roughly speak-
ing it may be said that France was a hundred
years behind Italy. . . . But if the French Re-
naissance was a later and less rapid growth, it
was infinitely hardier. The Renaissance litera-
ture in Italy was succeeded by a long period of
darkness, which remained unbroken, save by fit-
ful gleams of light, till the days of Alfieri. The
Renaissance litei-ature in France was the prelude
to a literature, which, for vigour, variety, and
average excellence, has in modern times rarely,
if ever, been surpassed. The reason for this su-
periority on the part of France, for the fact that
the Renaissance produced there more abiding
and more far-reaching results, may be ascribed
partly to the natural law that precocious and
rapid growths are always less hardy than later
and more gradual ones, partly to the character
of the French nation, to its being at once more
intellectual and less imaginative than the Italian,
and therefore more influenced by the spirit of
free inquiry than by the worship of beauty;
partly to the greater unity and vitality of its po-
litical life, but in a large measure to the fact that
in France the Renaissance came hand in hand
with the Reformation. . . . We must look upon
the Reformation as but a fresh development of
the Renaissance movement, as the result of the
spirit of free inquiry carried into theology, as a
revolt against the authority of the Roman Church.
Now the Renaissance in Italy preceded the Ref-
ormation by more than a century. There is no
trace in it of any desire to criticise the received
theology. ... In France on the other hand the
new learning and the new religion, Greek and
heresy, became almost controvertible terms. Le-
ffevre d' Staples, the doyen of French humanists,
translated the New Testament into French in
1534: the Estiennes, the Hebrew scholar Fran-
9ois Vatable, Turnfebe, Ramus, the great surgeon
Ambroise Pare, the artists Bernard Palissy and
Jean Goujon were all avowed protestants; while
Clement Marot, Bude, and above all Rabelais,
for a time at least, looked on the reformation
with more or less favour. In fact so long as the
movement appeared to them merely as a revolt
against the narrowness and illiberality of monas-
tic theology, as an assertion of the freedom of
the human intellect, the men of letters and cul-
" 1217
ture with hardly an exception joined hands with
the reformers. It was only when they found
that it implied a moral as well as an intellectual
regeneration, that it began to wear for some of
them a less congenial aspect. This close connexion
between the Reformation and the revival of learn-
ing was, on the whole, a great gain to France.
It was not as in Germany, where the stronger
growth of the Reformation completely choked
the other. In France they met on almost equal
terms, and the result was that the whole move-
ment was thereby strengthened and elevated
both intellectually and morally. . . . French hu-
manism can boast of a long roll of names honour-
able not only for their high attainments, but also
for their integrity and purity of life. Robert Es-
tienne, Turnfibe, Ramus, Cujas, the Chancellor
de I'Hopital, Estienne Pasquier, Thou, are men
whom any country would be proud to claim for
her sons. And as with the humanists, so it was
with the Renaissance generally in France. On
the whole it was a manly and intelligent move-
ment. . . . The literature of the French Renais-
sance, though in point of form it is far below
that of the Italian Renaissance, in manliness and
vigour and hopefulness is far superior to it. It
is in short a literature, not of maturity, but of
promise. One has only to compare its greatest
name, Rabelais, with the greatest name of the
Italian Renaissance, Ariosto, to see the difference.
How formless 1 how crude I how gross ! how full
of cumbersome details and wearisome repetitions
is Rabelais 1 How limpid! how harmonious is
Ariosto I what perfection of style, what delicacy
of touch 1 He never wearies us, he never offends
our taste. And yet one rises from the reading
of Rabelais with a feeling of buoyant cheerful-
ness, while Ariosto in spite of his wit and gaiety
is inexpressibly depressing. The reason is that
the one bids us hope, the other bids us despair;
the one believes in truth and goodness and in the
future of the human race, the other believes in
nothing but the pleasures of the senses, which
come and go like many-coloured bubbles and
leave behind them a boundless ennui. Rabelais
and Ariosto are true types of the Renaissance as
it appeared in their respective countries." — A.
Tilley, Tfie Literature of the French Renaissance,
ch. 2.
A. D. 1501-1504. — Treaty of Louis XII. with
Ferdinand of Aragon for the partition of
Naples.— French and Spanish conquest.—
Quarrel of the confederates, and war. — The
Spaniards in possession of the Neapolitan
domain. See Italy: A. D. 1501-1504.
A. D. 1504. — Norman and Breton fishermen
on the Newfoundland banks. See Newfound-
land: A. D. 1501-1578.
A. D. 1504-1506. — Thetreatiesof Blois, with
Ferdinand and Maximilian, and the abroga-
tion of them. — Relinquishment of claims on
Naples. See Italy; A. D. 1504-1506.
A. D. 1507. — Revolt and subjugation of
Genoa. See Genoa: A. D. 1500-1507.
A. D. 1508-1509. — The League of Cambrai
against Venice. See Venice: A. D. 1508-1509.
A. D. 1510-1513. — The breaking up of the
League of Cambrai. — The Holy League formed
by Pope Julius II. against Louis XII.— The
French expelled from Milan and all Italy. See
Italy: A. D. 1510-1513.
A. D. 1513-1515. — English invasion under
Henry VIII.— The Battle of the Spurs.— Mar-
FRANCE, 1513-1515.
Francis I.
FRANCE, 1515.
riage of Louis XII. with Mary of England. —
The King's death.— Accession of Francis I.—
"The long preparations of Henry VIII. of Eng-
land for the invasion of France [in pursuance of
the ' Holy League ' against Louis XII., formed by
Pope Julius II. and renewed by Leo X.,— see
Italy: A. D. 1510-1513] being completed, that
king, in the summer of 1513, landed at Calais,
whither a great part of his army had already
been transported. The oflfer of 100,000 golden
crowns easily persuaded the Emperor to promise
his assistance, at the head of a body of Swiss
and Germans. But at the moment Henry was
about to penetrate into France, he received the
excuses of Maximilian, who, notwithstanding a
large advance received from England, found him-
self unable to levy the promised succours. Noth-
ing disheartened by this breach of faith, the King
of England had already advanced into Artois;
when the Emperor, attended by a few German
nobles, appeared in the English camp, and was
cordially welcomed by Henry, who duly appre-
ciated his military skill and local knowledge. A
valuable accession of strength was also obtained
by the junction of a large body of Swiss, who,
encouraged by the victory of Novara, had already
crossed the Jura, and now marched to the seat of
war. The poverty of the Emperor degraded him
to the rank of a mercenary of England; and
Henry consented to grant him the daily allow-
ance of 100 crowns for his table. But humiliat-
ing as this compact was to Maximilian, the King
of England reaped great benefit from his pres-
ence. A promiscuous multitude of Germans had
flocked to the English camp, in hopes of partak-
ing in the spoil ; and the arrival of their valiant
Emperor excited a burst of enthusiasm. The
siege of Terouenne was formed : but the bravery
of the besieged baffled the efforts of the allies ;
and a month elapsed, during which the English
sustained severe loss from frequent and success-
ful sorties. By the advice of the Emperor, Henry
resolved to risk a battle with the French, and the
plain of Guinegate was once more the field of
conflict [August 18, 1513]. This spot, where
Maximilian had formerly struck terror into the
legions of Louis XI. , now became the scene of a
rapid and undisputed victory. The French were
surprised by the allies, and gave way to a sud-
den panic ; and the shameful flight of the cavalry
abandoned the bravest of their leaders to the
hands of their enemies. The Duke of Longue-
ville, La Palisse, Imbercourt, and the renowned
Chevalier Bayard, were made prisoners ; and the
ridicule of the conquerors commemorated the in-
glorious flight by designating the rout as the
Battle of the Spurs. The capture of Terouenne
immediately followed ; and the fall of Tournay
soon afterwards opened a splendid prospect to
the King of England. Meanwhile the safety of
France was threatened in another quarter. A
large body of Swiss, levied in the name of Maxi-
milian but paid with the gold of the Pope, burst
into Burgundy; and Dijon was with difficulty
saved from capture. From this danger, how-
ever, France was extricated by the dexterous ne-
gotiation of Tremouille ; and the Swiss were in-
duced to withdraw. . . . Louis now became
seriously desirous of peace. He made overtures
to the Pope, and was received into favour upon
consenting to renounce the Council of Pisa. He
conciliated the Kings of Aragon and England by
proposals of marriage; he offered his second
daughter Reuee to the young Charles of Spain;
and his second Queen, Anne of Bretainy, being
now dead, he proposed to unite himself with
Mary of England, the favourite sister of Henry.
. . . But though peace was made upon this foot-
ing, the former of the projected marriages never
took place: the latter, however, was magnifi-
cently solemnized, and proved fatal to Louis.
The amorous King forgot his advanced age in
the arms of his young and beautiful bride ; his
constitution gave way under the protracted fes-
tivities consequent on his nuptials; and on the
1st of January, 1515, Louis XII. was snatched
from his adonng people, in his 53d year. He
was succeeded by his kinsman and son-in-law,
Francis, Count of AngoulSme, who stood next
in hereditary succession, and was reputed one of
the most accomplished princes that ever mounted
the throne of Prance." — Sir R. Comyn, Hist, of
the Western Empire, ch. 38 («. 2).
Also in: J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry
VIII., ch. 1. — L. von Ranke, Hist, of tlie Latin
and Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, bk. 3, ch.
4, sect. 7-8.
A. D. 1515. — Accession of Francis I. — His
invasion of Italy. — The Battle of Marignano.
— "Francois I. was in his 31st year when he
ascended the throne of France. His education
in all manly accomplishments was perfect, and
... lie manifested ... an intelligence which
had been carefully cultivated. . . . Unfortu-
nately his moral qualities had been profoundly
corrupted by the example of his mother, Louise
of Savoy, a clever and ambitious woman, but
selfish, unscrupulous, and above all shamelessly
licentious. Louise had been an object of jealousy
to Anne of Britauy, who had always kept her in
the shade, and she now snatched eagerly at the
prospect of enjoying power and perhaps of reign-
ing in the name of her son, whose love for his
mother led him to allow her to exercise an in-
fluence which was often fatal to the interests of
his kingdom. . . . Charles duke of Bourbon,
who was notoriously the favoured lover of Louise,
was appointed to the oflice of constable, which
had remained vacant since 1488 ; and one of her
favourite ministers, Antoine Duprat, first presi-
dent of the parliament of Paris, was entrusted
with the seals. Both were men of great capacity ;
but the first was remarkable for his pride, and the
latter for his moral depravity. The first cares
of the new king of France were to prepare for
war. . . . Unfortunately for his country, Fran-
(;ois I. shared in the infatuation which had drag-
ged his predecessors into the wars in Italy ; and
all these warlike preparations were designed for ,
the reconquest of Milan. He had already inti-
mated his design by assuming at his corona-
tion the titles of king of Prance and duke of
Milan. ... He entered into an alliance with
Charles of Austria, prince of Castile, who had
now reached his majority and assumed the
government of the Netherlands. ... A treaty
between these two princes, concluded on the 24th
of March, 1515, guaranteed to each party not
only the estates they held or which might sub-
sequently descend to them, but even their con-
quests. . . . The republic of Venice and the
king of England renewed the alliances into which
they had entered with the late king, but Ferdi-
nand of Aragon refused even to prolong the truce
unless the whole of Italy were included in it,
and he entered into a separate alliance with the
1218
FRANCE, 1515.
Francis I. in Italy.
FRANCE, 1515-1518.
emperor, the duke of Milan, and the Swiss, to op-
pose the designs of the French liing. The efforts
of Francois I. to gain over the Swiss had been
defeated by the influence of tlie cardinal of Sion.
Yet the pope, Leo X., hesitated, and avoided
compromising himself witli either part}-. In
the course of the month of July [1515], the most
formidable army which had j'ct been led from
France into Ital)' was assembled in the district
between Grenoble and Embrun, and the king,
after entrusting the regency to his mother, Louise,
with unlimited powers, proceeded to place him-
self at its head. "— T Wright, Hist, of France, bk.
3, ch. 1 (». 1). — "The passes in Italy had already
been occupied by the Swiss under their captain
general Galeazzo Visconti. Galeazzo makes
their number not more than 6,000. . . . They
were posted at Susa, commauding the two roads
from Mont Cenis and Geneva, by one of which
the French must pass or abandon their artillery.
In this perplexity it was proposed by Triulcio to
force a lower passage across the Cottian Alps lead-
ing to Saluzzo. The attempt was attended with
almost insurmountable difficulties. . . . But the
French troops with wonderful spirits and alacrity
. . . were not to be baffled. They dropped their
artillery by cables from steep to steep ; down
one range of mountains and up another, until
five days had been spent in this perilous enter-
prise, and they found themselves safe in the
plains of Saluzzo. Happily the Swiss, secure in
their position at Susa, had never dreamed of the
possibility of such a passage. . . . Prosper
Colonna, who commanded in Italy for the Pope,
was sitting down to his comfortable dinner at
Villa Franca, when a scout covered with dust
dashed into his apartment announcing that the
French had crossed the Alps The next minute
the town was filled with the advanced guard,
under the Sieur d'Ymbercourt and the celebrated
Bayard. The Swiss at Susa had still the advan-
tage of position, and might have hindered the
passage of the main body of the French; but
they had no horse to transport their artillery,
were badly led, and evidently divided in their
councils. They retired upon No vara," and to
Milan, intending to effect a junction with the
viceroy of Naples, who advanced to Cremona.
On the morning of the 13th of September, Car-
dinal Scheimer harangued tlie Swiss and urged
them to attack the French in their camp, which
was at Marignauo, or Melignano, twelve miles
away. His fatal advice was acted on with ex-
citement and haste. "The day was hot and
dusty. The advanced guard of the French was
under the command of the Constable of Bourbon,
whose vigilance defeated any advantage the
Swiss might otherwise have gained by the sud-
denness and rapidity of their movements. At
nine o'clock in the morning, as Bourbon was sit-
ting down at table, a scout, dripping with water,
made his appearance. He had left Milan only a
few hours before, had waded the canals, and
came to announce the approach of the enemy.
. . . The Swiss came on apace; they had disen-
cumbered themselves of their hats and caps, and
thrown off their shoes, the better to fight with-
out slipping. They made a dash at the French
artillery, and were foiled after hard fighting.
... It was an autumnal afternoon ; the sun had
gone down; dust and niglit-fall separated and
confused the combatants. The French trumpets
sounded a retreat ; both armies crouched down
in the darkness within cast of a tennis-ball of
each other. . . . Where they fought, there each
man laid down to rest when darkness came on,
within hand-grip of his foe. " The next morning,
"the autumnal mist crawled slowly away, and
once more exposed the combatants to each other's
view. The advantage of the ground was on the
side of the French, Thej' were drawn up in a
valley protected by a ditch full of water. Though
the Swiss had taken no refreshment that night,
they renewed the fight with unimpaired animosity
and vigour. . . . Francis, surroimded by a body
of mounted gentlemen, performed prodigies of
valour. The night had given him opportunity
for the better arrangement of his troops ; and as
the day wore on, and the sun grew hot, the
Swiss, though 'marvellously deliberate, brave,
and obstinate,' began to give way. The arrival
of the Venetian general, D'Alviano, with fresh
troops, made the French victorj' complete. But
the Swiss retreated inch b}' inch with the greatest
deliberation, carrying off their great guns on their
shoulders. . . . The French were too exhausted
to follow. And their victory had cost them dear ;
for the Swiss, with peculiar hatred to the French
gentry and the lance-knights, had shown no
mere)'. They spared none, and made no prison-
ers. The glory of the battle was great. . . .
The Swiss, the best troops in Europe, and hitherto
reckoned invincible . . . had been the terror and
scourge of Italy, equally formidable to friend
and foe, and now their prestige was extinguished.
But it was not in these merely military aspects
that the battle of Marignano was important. No
one who reads the French chronicles of the times,
can fail to perceive that it was a battle of opin-
ions and of classes even more than of nations ; of
a fierce and rising deraocratical element, now
rolled back for a short season, only to display it-
self in another form against royalty and nobility;
— of the burgher classes against feudality. . . .
The old romantic element, overlaid for a time by
the political convulsions of the last century, had
once more gained the ascendant. It was to
blaze forth and revive, before it died out entirely,
in the Sydneys and Raleighs of Queen Elizabeth's
reign ; it was to lighten up the glorious imagina-
tion of Spenser before it faded into the dull
prose of Puritan divinity, and the cold grey
dawn of inductive philosophy. But its last great
battle was the battle of Marignano." — J. S.
Brewer, TJie Reign of Henry VIII., v. 1, ch. 3.
Also in: Miss Pardee, Court and Reign of
IVancis I., v. 1, c7t. 6-7. — L. Larchey, Hist, of
Bayard, bk. 3, ch. 1-3.
A. D. 1515-1518. — Francis I. in possession
of Milan. — His treaties with the Swiss and
the Pope. — Nullification of the Pragmatic
Sanction of Charles VII. — The Concordat of
Bologna. — " On the 15th of September, the day
after the battle [of Marignano], the Swiss took
the road back to their mountains. Francis I.
entered Milan in triumph. Maximilian Sforza
took refuge in the castle, and twenty days after-
wards on the 4th of October, surrendered, con-
senting to retire to France, with a pension of
30,000 crowns, and the promise of being rec-
ommended for a cardinal's hat, and almost con-
soled for his downfall ' by the pleasure of being
delivered from the insolence of the Swiss, the
exactions of the Emperor Maximilian, and the
rascalities of the Spaniards. ' Fifteen years after-
wards, in June, 1530, he died in oblivion at
1219
FRANCE, 1515-1518.
FRANCE, 1515-1547.
Paris. Francis I. regained possession of all
-Milaness, adding thereto, with the pope's con-
•sent, the duchies of Parma and Piacenza, which
had been detached from it. . . . Two treaties,
one of November 7, 1515, and the other of No-
vember 39, 1516, re-established not only peace,
but perpetual alliance, between the King of
France and the thirteen Swiss Cantons, with
stipulated conditions in detail. Whilst these ne-
gotiations were in progress, Francis I. and Leo
X. , by a treaty published at Viterbo, on the 13th
of October, proclaimed their hearty reconcilia-
tion. The pope guaranteed to Francis I. the
duchy of Milan, restored to him those of Parma
and Piacenza, and recalled his troops which were
still serving against the Venetians." At the same
time, arrangements were made for a personal
meeting of the pope and the French king, which
took place at Bologna in December, 1515. "Fran-
cis did not attempt to hide his design of recon-
quering the kingdom of Naples, which Ferdinand
the Catholic had wrongfully usurped, and he
demanded the pope's countenance. The pope did
not care to refuse, but he pointed out to the king
that everything foretold the very near death of
King Ferdinand; and 'Your Majesty,' said he,
' will then have a natural opportunity for claim-
ing your rights ; and as for me, free, as I shall
then be, from my engagements with the King
of Arragon in respect of the crown of Naples, I
shall find it easier to respond to your majesty's
wish.' The pope merelj' wanted to gain time.
Francis, putting aside for the moment the king-
dom of Naples, spoke of Charles VII. 's Pragmatic
Sanction [see above: A. D. 1438], and the neces-
sity of putting an end to the difficulties wliich
had arisen on this subject between the court of
Rome and the Kings of France, his predecessors.
'As to that,' said the pope, 'I could not grant
what your predecessors demanded; but be not
uneasy; I have a compensation to propose to
you which will prove to you how dear your in-
terests are to me.' The two sovereigns had,
without doubt, already come to an understanding
on this point, when, after a three days' interview
with Leo X. , Francis I. returned to Milan, leav-
ing at Bologna, for the purpose of treating in
detail the affair of the Pragmatic Sanction, his
chancellor, Duprat, who had accompanied him
during all this campaign as his adviser and ne-
gotiator. . . . The popes . . . had all of them
protested since the days of Charles VII. against
the Pragmatic Sanction as an attack upon their
rights, and had demanded its abolition. In 1461,
Louis XI. . . . had yielded for a moment to tlie
demand of Pope Pius II., whose countenance he
desired to gain, and had abrogated the Pragmatic ;
but, not having obtained wliat he wanted thereby,
and having met with strong opposition in the
Parliament of Paris to his concession, he had let
it drop without formally retracting it. . . .
This important edict, then, was still vigorous in
1515, when Francis I., after his victory at Me-
legnano and his reconciliation with the pope,
left Chancellor Duprat at Bologna to pursue the
negotiation reopened on tliat subject. The ' com-
pensation,' of which Leo X., on redemanding the
abolition of the Pragmatic Sanction, had given a
peep to Francis I., could not fail to liave charms
for a prince so little scrupulous, and for his still
less scrupulous chancellor. The pope proposed
that the Pragmatic, once for all abolislied, should
be replaced by a Concordat between llie two sov-
ereigns, and that this Concordat, whilst putting
a stop to the election of the clergy by the faith-
ful, should transfer to the king the riglit of nom-
ination to bishoprics and other great ecclesiastical
offices and benefices, reserving to the pope the
right of presentation of prelates nominated by
the king. This, considering the condition of
society and government in the 16th century, in
the absence of political and religious liberty, was
to take away from the church her own existence,
and divide her between two masters, without
giving her, as regarded either of them, any
other guarantee of independence than the mere
chance of their dissensions and quarrels. . . .
Francis I. and his chancellor saw in the proposed
Concordat nothing but the great increment of
influence it secured to them, by making all the
dignitaries of the church suppliants at first and
then clients of the kingship. After some diffi-
culties as to points of detail, the Concordat was
concluded and signed on the 18th of August,
1516. Five months afterwards, on the 5th of
February, 1517, the king repaired in person to
Parliament, to which he had summoned many
prelates and doctors of the University. The
Chancellor explained the points of the Concordat.
. . . The king ordered its registration, ' for the
good of his kingdom and for quittance of the
promise he had given the pope. ' " For more than
a year the Parliament of Paris resisted the royal
order, and it was not until the 22d of March,
1518, that it yielded to the king's threats and
proceeded to registration of the Concordat, with
forms and reservations "which were evidence
of compulsion. The other Parliaments of France
followed with more or less zeal . . . the exam-
ple shown by that of Paris. The University
was heartily disposed to push resistance farther
than had been done bj' Parliament." — F. P.
Guizot, Popular Hist, of France, ch. 28 (». 4). —
" The execution of the Concordat was vigorously
contested for years afterwards. Cathedrals and
monastic chapters proceeded to elect bishops and
abbots under the provisions of the Pragmatic
Sanction ; and every such case became a fresh
source of exasperation between the contending
powers. . . . But the Parliament, though clam-
ouring loudly for the ' Gallican liberties,' and
making a gallant stand for national independence
as against the usurpations of Rome, was unable
to maintain its ground against the overpowering
despotism of the Crown. The monarchical au-
thority ultimately achieved a complete triumph.
In 1527 a peremptory royal ordinance prohibited
the courts of Parliament from taking further
cognisance of causes affecting elections to con-
sistorial benefices and conventual priories; and
all such matters were transferred to the sole juris-
diction of the Council of State. After this the
agitation against the Concordat gradually sub-
sided. But although, in virtue of its compulsory
registration by the Parliament, the Concordat
became part of the law of the land, it is certain
that the Gallican Church never accepted this
flagrant invasion of its liberties. " — W. H. Jervis,
Hint, of the Church of France, v. 1, pp. 109-110.
A. D. 1515-1547. — The institution of the
Court. — Its baneful influence. — " Francis I. in-
stituted the Court, and this had a decisive influ-
ence upon the manners of the nobility. Those
lords, whose respect royalty had difficulty in
keeping when they were at their castles, having
come to court, prostrated themselves before the
1220
FRANCE, 1515-1547.
The Court
of Francis I.
FRANCE, 1516-1517.
throne, and yielded obedience with their whole
hearts. A few words will describe this Court.
The king lodged and fed in his own large palace,
which was fitted for the purpose, the fiower of
the French nobility. Some of these lords were
in his service, under the title of officers of his
household — as chamberlains, purveyors, equer-
ries, &c. Large numbers of domestic offices
were created solely as an excuse for their pres-
ence. Others lived there, without duties, sim-
ply as guests. All these, besides lodging and
food, had often a pension as well. A third class
were given only a lodging, and provided their
own table ; but all were amused and entertained
with various pleasures, at the expense of the
king. Balls, carousals, stately ceremonials,
grand dinners, theatricals, conversations inspired
by the presence of fair women, constant inter-
course of all kinds, wliere each could choose for
himself, and where the refined and literary found
a place as well as tlie vain and profligate, — such
was court life, a truly different thing from the
monotonous and brutal existence of the feudal lord
at his castle in the depths of his province. So,
from all sides, nobles flocked to court, to gratify
both the most refined tastes and the most degraded
passions. Some came hoping to make their for-
tune, a word from the king sufficing to enrich a
man ; others came to gain a rank in the army, a
lucrative post in the finance department, an
abbey, or a bishopric. From the time kings
held court, it became almost a law, that nothing
should be granted to a nobleman who lived be-
yond its pale. Those lords who persisted in
staying on their own estates were supposed to
rail against the administration, or, as we of the
present would express it, to be in opposition.
' They must indeed be men of gross minds who
are not tempted by tlie polish of the court ; at
all events it is very insolent in them to show so
little wish to see their sovereign, and enjoy the
honor of living under his roof.' Such was
almost precisely the opinion of the king in re-
gard to the provincial nobility. . . . Ambition
drew the nobles to court; ambition, society, and
dissipation kept them there. To incur the dis-
pleasure of their master, and be exiled from
court was, first, to lose all hope of advancement,
and then to fall from paradise into purgatory.
It killed some people. But life was much more
expensive at court than in the castles. As in all
society where each is constantly in the presence
of his neighbor, there was unbounded rivalry as
to who should be most brilliant, most superb.
The old revenues did not suffice, while, at the
same time, the inevitable result of the absence
of the lords was to decrease them. Whilst the
expenses of the noblemen at Chambord or Ver-
sailles were steadily on the increase, his iaten-
dant, alone and imrestrained upon the estate,
filled his own pockets, and sent less money every
quarter, so that, to keep up the proper rank, the
lord was forced to beg a pension from the king.
Low indeed was the downfall of the old pride
and feudal independence I The cjuestion was
how to obtain these pensions, ranks, offices, and
favors of all kinds. The virtues most prized and
rewarded by the kings were not civic virtues, —
capacity, and services of value for the public
good; what pleased them was, naturally, devo-
tion to their person, blind obedience, flattery,
and subservience." — P. Lacombe, A Sfwrt His-
tory of tlie French People, ch. 23.
A. D. 1516-1517. — Maximilian's attempt
against Milan. — Diplomatic intrigues. — The
Treaty of Noyon.^After Francis I. had taken
possession of Milan, and while Pope Leo X. was
making professions of friendship to him at Bo-
logna, a scheme took shape among the French
king's enemies for depriving him of his conquest,
and the pope was privy to it. " Henry VIIL
would not openly break the peace between Eng-
land and France, but he offered to supply Maxi-
milian with Swiss troops for an attack upon
Milan. It was useless to send money to Maxi-
milian, who would have spent it on himself";
but troops were hired for the emperor by the
English agent. Pace, and "at the beginning of
!March [1516] the joint army of Maximilian and
the Swiss assembled at Trent. On March 24 they
were within a few miles of Milan, and their suc-
cess seemed sure, when suddenly Maximilian
found that his resources were exhausted and re-
fused to proceed ; next day he withdrew his
troops and abandoned his allies. . . . The expe-
dition was a total failure ; yet English gold had
not been spent in vain, as the Swiss were pre-
vented from entirely joining the French, and
Francis \. was reminded that his position in Italy
was by no means secure. Leo X., meanwhile, in
the words of Pace, ' had played marvellously
with both hands in this enterprise. ' . . . England
was now the chief opponent of the ambitious
schemes of France, and aimed at bringing about
a league with Maximilian, Charles [who had just
succeeded Ferdinand of Spain, deceased January
23, 1516], tlie Pope, and the Swiss, But Charles's
ministers, chief of whom was Croy, lord of Chi-
evres, had a care above all for the interests of
Flanders, and so were greatly under the influence
of France. . . . France and England entered
into a diplomatic warfare over the alliance with
Charles. First, England on April 19 recognised
Charles as King of Spain, Navarre, and the Two
Sicilies ; then Wolsey strove to make peace be-
tween Venice and Maximilian as a first step
towards detaching Venice from its French alli-
ance." On the other hand, negotiations were
secretly carried on and (August 13) " the treaty
of Noyon was concluded between Francis I. and
Charles. Charles was to marry Louise, the
daughter of Francis I., an infant of one year old,
and receive as her dower the French claims on
Naples; Venice was to pay Maximilian 200,000
ducats for Brescia and Verona ; in case he refused
this offer and continued the war, Charles was at
liberty to help his grandfather, and Francis I. to
help the Venetians, without any breach of the
peace now made between them. ... In spite of
the efforts of England, Francis I. was every-
where successful in settling his difficulties. On
November 29 a perpetual peace was made at Fri-
burg between France and the Swiss Cantons ; on
December 3 the treaty of Noyon was renewed,
and Maximilian was included in its provisions.
Peace was made between him and Venice by the
provision that Maximilian was to hand over Ve-
rona to Charles, who in turn should give it up to
the King of France, who delivered it to the
Venetians; Maximilian in return received 100,000
ducats from Venice and as much from France.
The compact was duly carried out : ' On Febru-
ary 8, 1517,' wrote the Cardinal of Sion, ' Verona
belonged to the Emperor; on the 9th to the King
Catholic; on the 15th to the French; on the 17th
to the Venetians. ' Such was the end of the wars
1221
FRANCE, 1516-1517.
Francis I. and
Charles V.
FRANCE. 1523-1525.
that had arisen from the League of Cambrai.
After a struggle of eight years the powers that
had confederated to destroy Venice came together
to restore lier to her former place. Venice might
well exult in this reward of her long constancy,
her sacrifices and her disasters." — M. Creighton,
Mst. of the Papacy, during tlie Period of the Ref-
ormation, bk. 5, ch. 19 {v. 4).
Also en : J. S. Brewer, The Reign of Henry
VIIL, ch. 4-6 (p. 1).
A. D. 1519. — Candidacy of Francis I. for the
Imperial crown. See Ger>i.\nv: A. D. lolO,
A. D. 1520-1523. — Rivalry of Francis I. and
Charles V. — The Emperor's successes in Italy
and Navarre. — Milan again taken from France.
— The vyrongs and the treason of the Con-
stable of Bourbon. — "With their candidature
for the Imperial crown, burst forth the inextin-
guishable rivalry between Francis I. and Charles
V. The former claimed Naples for himself and
Navarre for Henry d'Albret: the Emperor de-
manded the Milanese as a fief of the Empire, and
the Duchy of Burgundy. Their resources were
about equal. If the empire of Charles were more
extensive the kingdom of France was more com-
pact. The Emperor's subjects were richer, but
his authority more circumscribed. Tiie reputa-
tion of the French cavalry was not inferior to
that of the Spanish infantry. Victory would be-
long to the one who should win ov'er the King of
England to his side. . . . Both gave pensions to
his Prime Jlinister, Cardinal Wolsey ; they each
asked the hand of his daughter >Iary, one for
the dauphin, the other for himself. Ifrancis I.
obtained from him an interview at Calais, and
forgetting tliat he wished to gain his favour,
eclipsed him by his elegance and magnificence
[see Field of the Cloth of Gold]. Charles
v., more adroit, had anticipated this interview
by visiting Henry VIII. in England. He had
secured Wolsey by giving him hopes of the tiara.
. . . Everything succeeded with the Emperor.
He gained Leo X. to his side and thus obtained
sufficient influence to raise his tutor, Adrian of
Utrecht, to the papacy [on the death of Leo,
Dec. 1, 1521]. The French penetrated into Spain,
but arrived too late to aid the rising there [in
Navarre, 1531]. The governor of the Milanese,
Lautrec, who is said to have exiled from Milan
nearly half its inhabitants, was driven out of
Lombardy [and the Pope retook Parma and Pla-
centia]. He met with the same fate again in the
following year: the Swiss, who were ill-paid,
asked either for dismissal or battle, and allowed
themselves to be beaten at La Bicoque [April 29,
1522]. The money intended for the troops had
been used for other purposes by the Queen-
mother, who hated Lautrec. At the moment
when Francis I. was thinking of re-entering Italy,
an internal enemy threw France into the utmost
danger. Francis had given mortal offence to the
Constable of Bourbon, one of those who had
most contributed to the victory of Marignan.
Charles, Count of Montpensier and Dauphin of
Auvergne, held hy virtue of his wife, a grand-
daughter of Louis XL, the Duchy of Bourbon,
and the counties of Clermont, La Marche and
other domains, which made hini the first noble in
the kingdom. On the death of his wife, the
Queen-mother, Louise of Savoy, who had wanted
to marry the Constable and had been refused by
him, resolved to ruin him. She disputed with
him this rich inheritance and obtained from her
son that tlie property should be provisionally
sequestered. Bourbon, exasperated, resolved to
pass over to tlie Emperor (1523). Half a century
earlier, revolt did not mean disloyalty. The
most accomplished knights in France, Dunoisand
John of Calabria, had joined the 'League for the
public weal.' . . . But now it was no question of
a revolt against the king ; such a thing was im-
possible in France at this time. It was a con-
spiracy against the very existence of France that
Bourbon was plotting with foreigners. He
promised Charles V. to attack Burgundy as soon
as Francis I. had crossed the Alps, and to rouse
into revolt five provinces of which he believed
himself master; the kingdom of Provence was to
be re-established in his favour, and France, par-
titioned between Spain and England, would have
ceased to exist as a nation. He was soon able to
enjoy the reverses of his country." — J. Miclielet,
Summary of Modern Hist,, ch. 6." — " Henry VIII.
and Charles V. were both ready to secure the
services of the ex -Constable. He decided in
favour of Charles as the more powerful of the
two. . . . These secret negotiations were carried
on in the spring of 15'23, while Francis I. (having
sent a sufficient force to protect his northern
frontier) was preparing to make Italy the seat of
war. AVith this object the king ordered a ren-
dezvous of the army at Lyons, in the beginning
of September, and having arranged to pass
through Moulins on his way to join the forces,
called upon the Constable to meet him there and
to proceed with him to Lyons. Already vague
rumours of an understanding between the Em-
peror and Bourbon had reached Francis, who
gave no credence to them ; but on his way M. de
Breze, Senesclial of Normandy, attached to the
Court of Louise of Savoy, sent such precise de-
tails of the affair by two Norman gentlemen in
the Constable's service that doubt was no longer
possible." Francis accordingly entered Moulins
with a considerable force, and went straight to
Bourbon, who feigned illness. The Constable
stoutly denied to the king all the charges which
the latter revealed to him, and Francis, who was
strongly urged to order his arrest, refused to do
so. But a few days later, when the king had
gone forward to Lyons, Bourbon, pretending to
follow him, rode away to his strong castle of Chan-
telles, from whence he wrote letters demanding
the restitution of his estates. As soon as his
flight was known, Francis sent forces to seize
him; but the Constable, taking one companion
with him, made his way out of the kingdom in
disguise. Escaping to Italy, he was there placed
in command of tlie imperial army. — C. Coignet,
Francis I. and his Times, ch. 4.
Also in: Miss Pardoe, The Court and Reign
of Francis I., v. 1, ch. 14-19. — See, also, Aus-
tria: A. D. 1519-1555.
A. D. 1521. — Invasion of Nav,arre. See Na-
vakre; A. D. 1442-1521.
A. D. 1521-1525. — Beginning of the Protes-
tant Reform movement. See Papacy: A. D.
1521-153.5.
A. D. 1523-1524. — First undertakings in the
New World. — Voyages of Verrazano. See
America: A. D. 1523-1524.
A. D. 1523-1525. — The death of Bayard. —
Second invasion of Italy by Francis I. — His
defeat and capture at Pavia. — " Bonnivet. the
personal enemy of Bourbon, was now entrusted
with the command of the French army. He
1222
FRANCE. 1523-1535.
Defeat and Capture
of Francia I.
FRANCE, 1523-1525.
marched without opposition into the Milanese,
and might have taken the capital liad he pushed
on to its gates. Having by irresolution lost it,
he retreated to winter quarters behind the Tesino.
The operations of the English in Picardy, of the
imperialists in Champagne, and of the Spaniards
near the Pyrenees, were equally insignificant.
The spring of 1524 brought on an action, if the
attack of one point can be called such, which
proved decisive for the time. Bonnivet advanced
rashly beyond the Tesino. The imperialists,
commanded by four able generals, Launoi, Pes-
cara, Bourbon, and Sforza, succeeded in almost
cutting off his retreat. They at the same time
refused Bonnivet's offer to engage. They hoped
to weaken him by famine. Tlie Swiss first mur-
mured against the distress occasioned by want
of precaution. They deserted across the river;
and Bonnivet, thus abandoned, was obliged to
make a precipitate and perilous retreat. A
bridge was hastily flung across the Sessia, near
Romagnano ; and Bonnivet, with his best knights
and gensdarmerie, undertook to defend the pas-
sage of the rest of the army. The imperial-
ists, led on by Bourbon, made a furious attack.
Bonnivet was wounded, and he gave his place
to Bayard, who, never entrusted with a high
command, was always chosen for that of a
forlorn hope. The brave Vandenesse was soon
killed ; and Bayard himself received a gun-shot
through the reins. The gallant chevalier, feeling
his wound mortal, caused himself to be placed
in a sitting posture beneath a tree, his face to
the enemy, and his sword fixed in guise of a cross
before him. The constable Bourljon, who led
the imperialists, soon came up to the dying Bay-
ard, and expressed his compassion. ' Weep not for
me,' said the chevalier, 'but for thyself. Idle
in performing my duty; thou art betraying
thine. ' Nothing marks more strongly the great
rise, the sudden sacro-sanctity of the royal author-
ity in those days, than the general horror which
the treason of Bourbon excited. . . . The fact is,
that this sudden horror of treason was owing, in
a great measure, to the revived study of the clas-
sics, in which treason to one's country is uni-
versally mentioned as an impiety and a crime
of the deepest dye. Feudality, with all its
oaths, had no such horror of treason. . . . Bon-
nivet had evacuated Italy after this defeat at Ro-
magnano. Bourbon's animosity stimulated him
to pusli his advantage. He urged the emperor
to invade France, and recommended the Bourbon-
nais and his own patrimonial provinces as those
most advisable to invade. Bourbon wanted to
raise his friends in insurrection against Francis ;
but Charles descried selfishness in this scheme of
Bourbon, and directed Pescara to march with the
constable into the south of France and lay siege
to Marseilles. . . . Marseilles made an obstinate
resistance," and the siege was ineffectual. " Fran-
cis, in the meantime, alarmed by the invasion, had
assembled an army. He burned to employ it,
and avenge the late affront. The king of Eng-
land, occupied with the Scotch, gave him respite
in the north ; and he resolved to employ this by
marching, late as the season was, into Italy.
His generals, who by this time were sick of war-
ring beyond the Alps, opposed the design ; but not
even the death of his queen, Claude, could stop
Francis. He passed Mount Cenis ; marched upon
Milan, whose population was spiritless and
broken by the plague, and took it without resis-
tance. It was then mooted whether Lodi or Pavia
should be besieged. The latter, imprudently,
as it is said, was preferred. It was at this time
that Pope Clement VII., of the house of Medici,
who had lately succeeded Adrian, made the most
zealous efforts to restore peace between the
monarchies. He found Charles and his generals
arrogant and imwilling to treat. The French,
said they, must on no account be allowed a foot-
ing in Italy. Clement, impelled by pique towards
the emperor, or generosity to Francis, at once
abandoned the prudent policy of his predecessors,
and formed a league with the French king, to
whom, after all, he brought no accession of force.
This step proved afterwards fatal to the city of
Rome. The siege of Pavia was formed about
the middle of October [1524]. Antonio de Ley va,
an experienced officer, supported by veteran
troops, commanded in the town. The fortifica-
tions were strong, and were likely to hold for a
considerable time. By the month of January the
French had made no progress ; and the impatient
Francis despatched a considerable portion of his
army for the invasion of Naples, hearing that the
country was drained of troops. This was a gross
blunder, which Pescara observing, forbore to
send any force to oppose the expedition. He
knew that the fate of Italy would be decided
before Pavia. Bourbon, in the mean time, dis-
gusted with the jealousies and tardiness of the
imperial generals, employed the winter in raising
an army of lansquenets on his own account.
From the duke of Savoy he procured funds; and
early in the year 1525 the constable joined Pescara
at Lodi with a fresh army of 12,000 mercenaries.
They had, besides, some 7,000 foot, and not more
than 1,500 horse. With these they marched to
the relief of Pavia. Francis had a force to op-
pose to them, not only inferior in numbers, but
so harassed with a winter's siege, that all the
French generals of experience counselled a re-
treat. Bonnivet and his young troop of courtiers
were for fighting; and the monarch hearkened
to them. Pavia, to the north of the river,
was covered in great part by the chateau and
walled park of Mirabel. Adjoining this, and
on a rising ground, was the French camp, extend-
ing to the Tesino. Through the camp, or through
the park, lay the only ways by which the im-
perialists could reacli Pavia. The camp was
strongly entrenched and defended by artillery,
except on the side of the park of Mirabel, with
which it communicated." On the night of Feb-
ruary 23, the imperialists made a breach in the
park wall, through which they pressed next
morning, but were driven back with heavy loss.
"This was victory enough, could the French
king have been contented with it. But the im-
patient Francis no sooner beheld his enemies in
rout, than he was eager to chase them in person,
and complete the victory with his good sword.
He rushed forth from his entrenchments at the
head of his gensdarmerie, flinging himself be-
tween the enemy and his own artillery, whicli
was thus masked and rendered useless. The
imperialists rallied as soon as they found them-
selves safe from the fire of the cannon, " and the
French were overwhelmed. "The king . . .
behind aheap of slain, defended himself valiantly ;
so beaten and shattered, so begrimed with blood
and dust, as to be scarcely distinguishable, not-
withstanding his conspicuous armour. He had
received several wounds, one in the forehead ;
1223
FRANCE, 1523-1525.
Captivity of
Francis I.
FRANCE, 1525-1526.
ami his horse, struck with a ball in the head,
reared, fell back, and crushed him with his
weight: still Francis rose, and laid prostrate
several of the enemies that rushed upon him. " But
presently he was recognized and was persuaded
to surrender his sword to Lannoi, the viceroy of
Naples. "Such was the signal defeat that put
an end to all French conquests and claims in
Italy." — E. E. Crowe, Hist, of France , v. 1, ch. 6.
Also in : W. Robertson, Hist, of the Iteifjn of
Charles V., bk. i {v. 2).— J. S. Brewer, Eeign of
Henri/ VIIL. ch. 21 (b. 2).— H. G. Smith, Romance
of History, ch. 6.
A. D. 1525-1526. — The captivity of Francis
I. and his deliberate perfidy in the Treaty of
Madrid. — The captive king of France was lodged
in the castle at Pizzighitone. " Instead of bear-
ing his captivity with calmness and fortitude, he
chafed and fretted under the loss of his wonted
pleasures ; at one moment he called for death to
end his woes, while at another he was ready to
sign disastrous terms of peace, meaning to break
faith so soon as ever he might be free again. . . .
France, at first stupefied by the mishap, soon be-
gan to recover hope. The Regent, for all her
vices and faults, was proud and strong; she
gathered what force she could at Lyons, and
looked round for help. . . . Not only were there
anxieties at home, but the frontiers were also
threatened. On the side of Germany a popular
movement [' the Peasant War'], closely connected
with the religious excitement of the time, pushed
a fierce and cruel rabble into Lorraine, whence
they proposed to enter France. But they were
met by the Duke of Guise and the Count of Vau-
demont, his brother, at the head of the garrisons
of Burgundy and Champagne, and were easily
dispersed. It was thought that during these
troubles Lannoy would march his army, flushed
with victory, from the Po to the Rhone. . . .
But Lannoy had no money to pay his men, and
could not undertake so large a venture. Mean-
while negociations began between Charles V. and
the King ; the Emperor demanding, as ransom,
that Bourbon should be invested with Provence
and Dauphiny, joined to his own lands in Au-
vergne, and should receive the title of king ; and
secondly that the Duchy of Burgundy should be
given over to the Emperor as the inheritor of the
lands and rights of Charles the Bold. But the
King of France would not listen for a moment.
And now the King of England and most of the
Italian states, alarmed at the great power of the
Emperor, began to change sides. Henry VIIL
came fii-st. He signed a treaty of neutrality with
the Regent, in which it was agreed that not even
for the sake of the King's deliverance should any
part of France be torn from her. The Italians
joined in a league to restore the King to liberty,
and to secure the independence of Italy: and
Turkey was called on for help. . . . The Em-
peror now felt that Francis was not in secure
keeping at Pizzighitone. . . . He therefore gave
orders that Francis should at once be removed to
Spain." The captive king "was set ashore at
Valencia, and received with wonderful welcome:
dances, festivals, entertainments of every kind,
served to relieve his caj^tivity ; it was like a res-
toration to life ! But this did not suit the views
of the Emperor, who wished to weary the King
into giving up all thought of resistance: he
trusted to his impatient and frivolous character;
his mistake, as he found to his cost, lay in think-
ing that a man of such character would keep his
word. He therefore had him removed from Va-
lencia to JIadrid, where he was kept in close and
galling confinement, in a high, dreary chamber,
where he could not even see out of the windows.
This had the desired effect. The King talked of
abdicating ; he fell ill of ennui, and was like to
die : but at last he could hold out no longer, and
abandoning all thought of honourable action,
agreed to shameful terms, consoling himself with
a private protest against the validity of the deed,
as having been done under compulsion." — -G. W.
Kitchin, Hist, of Prance, v. 2, bk. 2, ch. 5.— "By
the Treaty of Madrid, signed January 14th, 1526,
Francis ' restored ' to the Emperor the Duchy of
Burgundy, the county of Charolais, and some
other smaller fiefs, without reservation of any
feudal suzerainty, which was also abandoned
with regard to the counties of Flanders and Ar-
tois. the Emperor, however, resigning the towns
on the Somme, which had been held by Charles
the Bold. The French King also renounced his
claims to the kingdom of Naples, the Duchy of
Milan, the county of Asti, and the city of Genoa.
He contracted an offensive and defensive alliance
with Charles, undertaking to attend him with an
army when he should repair to Rome to receive
the Imperial crown, and to accompany him in
person whenever he should march against the
Turks or heretics. He withdrew his protection
from the King of Navarre, the Dukeof Gelder-
land, and the La Jlarcks; took upon himself the
Emperor's debt to England, and agreed to give his
two eldest sons as hostages for the execution of
the treaty. Instead, however, of the independent
kingdom which Bourbon had expected, all that
was stipulated in his favour was a free pardon
for him and his adherents, and their restoration
in their forfeited domains. . . . The provisions
of the above treaty Francis promised to execute
on the word and honour of a king, and by an
oath sworn with his hand upon the holy Gospels:
yet only a few hours before he was to sign this
solemn act, he had called his plenipotentiaries, to-
gether witli some French nobles, secretaries, and
notaries, into his chamber, where, after exacting
from them an oath of secrecy, he entered into a
long discourse touching the Emperor's harshness
towards him, and signed a protest, declaring that,
as the treaty he was about to enter into had been
extorted from him by force, it was null and void
from the beginning, and that he never intended
to execute it: thus, as a French writer has ob-
served, establishing by an authentic notarial act
that he was going to commit a perjury. " Treaties
have often been shamefully violated, yet it would
perhaps be impossible to parallel this gross and
deliberate perjury. In March, Francis was con-
ducted to the Spanish frontier, where, on a boat
in mid-stream of the Bidassoa, "he was ex-
changed for his two sons, Francis and Henry,
who were to remain in Spain, as hostages for the
execution of the treaty. The tears started to his
eyes as he embraced his children, but he con-
signed them without remorse to a long and dreary
e.xile." As speedily as possible after regaining
his liberty, Francis assembled the states of his
kingdom and procured from them a decision
" tliat the King could not alienate the patrimony
of France, and that the oath which he had taken
in his captivity did not abrogate the still more
solemn one which had been administered to him at
his coronation. " After which he deemed liimself
1224
FRANCE, 1525--1536.
Reneived War.
FRANCE, 1532-1547.
discharged from the obligations of his treaty,
and had no tliought of surrendering liimself again
a prisoner, as lie was honourably bound to do. —
T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 2, ch. 5
(V. 1).
Also in: A. B. Cochrane, Francis I. in Cap-
tivity. — W. Robertson, Eist. of the Reign of
Charles V.,bk. 4 (c. 2).— C. Coignet, Francis I.
and his Times, ch. 5-8.
A. D. 1526-1527. — Holy League with Pope
Clement VII. against Charles V. — Bourbon's
attack on Rome. See Italy: A. D. 1533-1537,
and 1537.
A. D. 1527-1529. — New alliance against
Charles V. — Early successes in Lombardy. —
Disaster at Naples. — Genoa and all posses-
sions in Italy lost. — The humiliating Peace of
Cambrai. SeelT.^LY: A. D. 1537-1539.
A. D. 1529-1535.— Persecution of the Prot-
estant Reformers and spread of their doctrines.
See Papacy; A. D. 1.531-1535.
A. D. 1531. ^Alliance with the Protestant
princes of the German League of Sraalkalde.
See Germany: A. D. 1530-1533.
A. D. 1532. — Final reunion of Brittany with
the crown. See Bkitt.\ny: A. D. 1533.
A. D. 1532-1547. — Treaty with the Pope. —
Marriage of Prince Henry with Catherine
de' Medici. — Renewed war with Charles V. —
Alliance with the Turks. — Victory at Ceri-
soles. — Treaty of Crespy. — Increased persecu-
tion of Protestants. — Massacre of Waldenses.
— War with England, — Death of Francis I. —
" The ' ladies' peace ' . . . lasted up to 1536; in-
cessantly troubled, however, by far from pacific
symptoms, proceedings and preparations. In
October, 1533, Francis I. had, at Calais, an inter-
view with Henry VIII., at which they contracted
a private alliance, and undertook ' to raise be-
tween them an army of 80,000 men to resist the
Turk.'" But when, in 1535, Charles V. attacked
the seat of the Barbary pirates, and took Tunis,
Francis "entered into negotiations with Soliman
II., and concluded a friendly treaty with him
against what was called 'the common enemjf.'
Francis had been for some time prejjaring to re-
sume his projects of conquest in Italy; he had
effected an interview at Marseilles, in October,
1533, with Pope Clement VII., who was almost
at the point of death, and it was there that the
marriage of Prince Henry of France with Cathe-
rine de' Jledici [daughter of Lorenzo, Duke of
Urbino, and granddaughter of Piero do' Medici]
was settled. Astonishment was expressed that
the pope's niece had but a very moderate dowrj',
'You don't see, then,' said Clement VII. 's am-
bassador, 'that she brings France three jewels of
great price, Genoa, Milan and Naples 1 ' When
this language was reported at the court of Charles
v., it caused great irritation there. In 1536 all
these combustibles of war exploded ; in the month
of February, a French array entered Piedmont,
and occupied Turin ; and, in the month of July,
Charles V. in person entered Provence at the
head of 50,000 men. Anne de Montmorency, havr
ing received orders to defend southern France,
began by laying it waste in order that the enemy
might not be able to live in it. . . . Montmorency
made up his mind to defend, on the whole coast
of Provence, only Marsedles and Aries ; he pulled
down the ramparts of the other towns, which
were left exposed to the enemy. For two months
Charles V. prosecuted this campaign without a
fight, marching through the whole of Provence
an army which fatigue, shortness of provisions,
sickness, and ambuscades were decimating in-
gloriously. At last he decided upon retreating.
... On returning from his sorry expedition,
Charles V. learned that those of his lieutenants
whom he had charged with the conduct of a simi-
lar invasion in the north of France, in Picardy,
had met with no greater success than he himself
in Provence." A truce for three months was
soon afterwards arranged, and in June, 1538,
through the mediation of Pope Paul III. , a treaty
was signed at Nice which extended the truce to
ten years. Next month the two sovereigns met
at Aigues-Mortes and exchanged many assurances
of friendship." — F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of
FYance, ch. 28 (v. 4). — In August, 1539, a revolt
at Ghent "called Charles V. into Flanders; he
was then in Spain, and his shortest route was
through France. He requested permission to
cross the kingdom, and obtained it, after having
promised the Constable Jlontmorency that he
would give the investiture of Milan to the second
son of the King. His sojourn in France was a
time of expensive ffites, and cost the treasury
four millions ; yet, in the midst of his pleasures,
the Emperor was not without uneasiness. . . .
Francis, however, respected the rights of hospi-
tality ; but Charles did not give to his son the
investiture of Milan. The King, indignant, ex-
iled the constable for having trusted the word of
the Emperor without exacting his signature, and
avenged himself by strengthening his alliance
with the Turks, the most formidable enemies of
the empire. . . . Thehatredof the twomonarchs
was carried to its height by these last events;
they mutually outraged each other by injurious
libels, and submitted their differences to the
Pope. Paul III. refused to decide between them,
and they again took up arms [1543]. The King
invaded Luxembourg, and the Dauphin Rou-
sillou ; and while a third army in concert with
the Mussulmans besieged Nice [1543], the last
asylum of the dukes of Savoy, by land, the
terrible Barbarossa, admiral of Soliman, attacked
it by sea. The town was taken, the castle alone
resisted, and the siege of it was raised. Bar-
barossa consoled himself for this check by ravag-
ing the coasts of Italy, where he made 10,000
captives. The horror which he inspired recoiled
on Francis I., his all}', whose name became odi-
ous in Italy and Germany. He was declared the
enemy of the empire, and the Diet raised against
him an army of '34,000 men, at the head of which
Charles V. penetrated into Champagne, while
Henry VIII., coalescing with the Emperor, at-
tacked Picardy with 10,000 English. The battle
of Cerisoles, a complete victory, gained during
the same year [April 14,1544], in Piedmont, by
Francis of Bourbon, Duke d'Enghien, against
Gast, general of the Imperial troops, did not stop
this double and formidable invasion. Charles V.
advanced almost to Chateau-Thierry. But dis-
cord reigned in his army ; he ran short of jjro-
visions, and could easily have been surrounded ;
he then again promised Milan to the Duke of
Orleans, the second son of the King. This
promise irritated the Dauphin Henry, who was
afraid to see his brother become the head of a
house as dangerous for France as had been that
of Burgundy ; he wished to reject the offer of the
Emperor and to cut off his retreat. A rivalry
among women, it is said, saved Charles V. . . .
1225
FRANCE, 1532-1547.
Persecution
of Protestants.
FRANCE, 1534-1560.
The war was terminated almost immediately
afterwards [1544] by the treaty of Crespy in
Valois. The Emperor promised his daughter to
the Duke of Orleans, witli the Low Countries
and Franche-Comte, or one of his nieces, with
Milan. Francis restored to the Duke of Savoy
the greater part of the places that he held in
Piedmont ; he renounced all ulterior pretensions
to the kingdom of Naples, the duchy of Milan,
and likewise to the sovereignty of Flanders and
Artois; Charles, on his part, gave up the duchy
of Burgundy. This treaty put an end to the
rivalry of the two sovereigns, which had ensan-
guined Europe for 25 years. The death of the
Duke of Orleans freed the Emperor from dis-
possessing himself of Milan or the Low Coun-
tries ; he refused all compensation to the King,
but the peace was not broken. Francis I. profited
by it to redouble his severity with regard to the
Protestants. A population of many thousands
of Waldenses, an unfortunate remnant from the
religious persecutions of the 13th century, dwelt
upon the confines of Provence, and the County
Venaissin, and a short time back had entered
into communion with the Calvinists. The King
permitted John Mesuier, Baron d'Oppfede, first
president of the Parliament of Ai.\, to execute
[1546] a sentence delivered against them five
years previously by the Parliament. John d'Op-
pfide himself directed this frightful execution.
Twenty-two towns or villages were burned and
sacked; the inhabitants, surprised during the
night, were pursued among the rocks by the
glare of the flames which devoured their houses.
The men perished by executions, but the women
were delivered over to terrible violences. At
Cabri^res, the principal town of the canton, 700
men were murdered in cold blood, and all the
women were burnt ; lastly, according to the tenor
of the sentence, the houses were rased, the woods
cut down, the trees in the gardens torn up, and
in a short time this country, so fertile and so
thickly peopled, became a desert and a waste.
This dreadful massacre was one of the principal
causes of the religious wars which desolated
France for so long a time. . . . The war con-
tinued between [Henry VIIL] and Francis I.
The English had taken Boulogne, and a French
fleet ravaged the coasts of England, after taking
possession of the Isle of Wight [1545]. Hostili-
ties were terminated by the treaty of Guines
[1547], which the two kings signed on the edge
of their graves, and it was arranged that Boulogne
should be restored for the sum of 3,000,000 of
gold crowns. . . . Henry VIII. and Francis I.
died in the same year [1547]." — E. de Bonne-
chose, Hist, of France, v. 1, pp. 363-367.
Also in: W. Robertson, Hist, of the Reign of
Charles V., bk. 6-9 (». 3).— J. A. Froude, Hist, of
England, ch. 30-23 iv. 4).
A. D. 1534-1535. — The voyages of Jacques
Cartier and the taking possession of Canada.
See Americ.\: A, D. 1534-1.535.
A. D. 1534-1560.— Persecution of the Prot-
estants. — Their organization. — Their num-
bers. — " Francis L had long shrunk from perse-
cution, but having once begun he showed no
further hesitation. During the remainder of his
reign and the whole of that of his son Henry 11.
(1534-1.5.59) the cruelty of the sufferings inflicted
on the Reformers increased with the number of
the victims. At first they were strangled and
burnt, then burnt alive, then hung in chains to
roast over a slow fire. . . . The Edict of Chateau-
briand (1551), taking away all right of appeal
from those convicted of heresy, was followed by
an attempt to introduce an Inquisition on the
model of that of Spain, and when this failed
owing to the opposition of the lawyers, the
Edict of CompiSgne (1.557) denounced capital
punishment against all who in public or private
professed any heterodox doctrine. It is a com-
monplace that persecution avails nothing against
the truth — that the true Church springs from
the blood of martyrs. Yet the same cause
which triumphed over persecution in France
was crushed by it in Spain and in the Walloon
Netherlands. Was it therefore not the truth?
The fact would rather seem to be, that there is
no creed, no sect which cannot be extirpated by
force. But that it may prevail, persecution
must be without respect of persons, universal,
continuous, protracted. Not one of these condi-
tions was fulfilled in France. The opinions of
the greater nobles and princes, and of those who
were their immediate followers, were not too
narrowly scanned, nor was the persecution
equally severe at all times and in all places.
Some governors and judges and not a few of the
higher clergy inclined to toleration. . . . The
cheerful constancy of the French martyrs was
admirable. Men, women and children walked to
execution singing the psalms of Marot and the
Song of Simeon. This boldness confounded
their enemies. Hawkers distributed in every
part of the country the books issued from the
press of Geneva and which it was a capital
offence even to possess. Preachers taught openly
in the streets and market-places. . . . The in-
creasing numbers of their converts and the high
position of some among them gave confidence to
the Protestants. Delegates from the reformed
congregations of France were on their way to
Paris to take part in the deliberations of the first
national Synod on the very day (April 3, 1559)
when the peace of Cateau Cambresis was signed,
a peace which was to be the prelude to a vigor-
ous and concerted effort to root out heresy on
the part of the kings of France and Spain. The
object of the meeting was twofold: first to draw
up a detailed profession of faith, which was sub-
mitted to Calvin — there was, he said, little to
add, less to correct — secondly to determine the
' ecclesiastical discipline ' of the new Church.
The ministers were to be chosen by the elders
and deacons, but approved by the whole congre-
gation. The affairs of each congregation were
placed under the control of the Consistory, a
court composed of the pastors, elders and dea-
cons ; more important matters were reserved for
the decision of the provincial ' colloques ' or
synods, which were to meet twice a year, and in
which each church was represented by its pastor
and at least one elder. Above all was the na-
tional Synod also composed of the clergy and of
representative laymen. This organisation was
thoroughly representative and popular, the
elected delegates of the congregatious, the elders
and deacons, preponderated in all the governing
bodies, and all ministers and churches were de-
clared equal. The Reformed cliurches, which,
although most numerous in the South, spread
over almost the whole country, are said at this
time to liave counted some 400,000 members
(1559). These were of almost all classes, except
perhaps the lowest, although even among the
1226
PRANCE, 1534-1560.
Henry 11. and
the Guises.
FRANCE, 1547-1559.
peasantry there were some martyrs for the faith. "
On the accession of Charles IX., in 1560, "a
quarter of the inhabitants of France were, it was
said, included in the 3,500 reformed congrega-
tions. This is certainly an exaggeration, but it
is probable that the number of the Protestants
was never greater than during the first years of
the reign of Charles IX. . . . The most probable
estimate is that at the beginning of the wars of
religion the Huguenots with women and chil-
dren amounted to some 1,500,000 souls out of a
population of between fifteen and twenty mil-
lions. But in this minority were included about
one-fourth of the lesser nobility, the country
gentlemen, and a smaller proportion of the great
nobles, the majority of the better sort of towns-
people in many of the most important towns,
such as Caen, Dieppe, Havre, Nantes, La
Rochelle, Nimes, Montpellier, Montauban, Cha-
lons, Macon, Lyons, Valence, Limoges and Gre-
noble, and an important minority in otlier places,
such as Rouen, Orleans, Bordeaux and Toulouse.
The Protestants were most numerous in the
South-west, in Poitou, in the Marche, Limousin,
Angoumois and Perigord, because in those dis-
tricts, which were the seats of long-established
and flourishing manufactures, the middle classes
were most prosperous, intelligent and educated.
It is doubtful whether the Catholics were not in
a large majority, even where the superior posi-
tion, intelligence and vigour of the Huguenots
gave them the upper hand. Only in some parts
of the South-west and of Dauphiny do the bulk
of the population appear to have been decidedly
hostile to the old religion. During the course
of the Civil War the Protestants came to be more
and more concentrated in certain parts of the
country, as for instance between the Garonne and
the Loire." — P. F. Willert, Henry of Navarre
and the Huguenots in Prance, cli. 1.
A. D. 1541-1543. — Jacques Cartier's last ex-
plorations in Canada. See America: A. D.
1541-1603.
A. D. 1541-1564. — The rise and influence of
Calvinism. See Geneva: A. D. 15.36-1564.
A. D. i547.^Accession of King Henry II.
A. D. 1547-1559. — The rise of the Guises.
— Alliance with the German Protestants. —
Wars with the emperor, and with Sp,ain and
England. — Acquisition of Les Trois Evech^s,
and of Calais. — Unsuccessful campaign in
Italy. — Battle and siege of St. Quentin. —
Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis. — "The son of
Francis I., who in 1.547 ascended the throne
under the title of Henry II., was told by his
dying father to beware of the Guises. . . . The
Guises were a branch of the ducal House of Lor-
raine, which, although the dukedom was a fief
of the German empire, had long stood in intimate
relations with the court and nobility of France.
The founder of the family was Claude, a younger
son of Rene II., Duke of Lorraine, who, being
naturalised in France in 1505, rendered himself
conspicuous in the wars of Francis I., and was
created first Duke of Guise. He died in 1550,
leaving five daughters and si.\ sons. His eldest
daughter, Mary, became the wife of James V. of
Scotland, and mother of Mary Queen of Scots.
The sons were all men of extraordinary energy
and ambition, and their united influence was, for
a number of years, more than a match for that
of the crown. Francis, second Duke of Guise,
acquired, while still a young man, extraordinary
renown as a military commander, by carrying
out certain ambitious designs of France on a
neighbouring territory. ... As is well known,
French statesmen have for many centuries
cherished the idea that the natural boundary of
France on the east is the Rhine, from its mouth
to its source, and thence along the crest of the
Alps to the Mediterranean. ... To begin the
realisation of the idea, advantage was taken of
the war which broke out between the Emperor
Charles V. and his Protestant subjects in North
Germany [see Germany: A. D. 1546-1553]. Al-
though the Protestants of France were persecuted
to the death, Henry II., with furtively ambitious
designs, offered to defend the Protestants of Ger-
many against their own emperor; and entered
into an alliance in 1551 with Maurice of Saxony
and other princes, undertaking to send an army
to their aid. As bases of his operations, it was
agreed that he might take temporary military
possession of Toul, Verdun, and Metz, three
bishoprics [forming a district called the Trois
Evgches], each with a portion of territory lying
within the area of the duchy of Lorraine, but
held as distinct fiefs of the German empire —
such, in fact, being fragments of Lothair's king-
dom, which fell to Germany, and had in no shape
been incorporated with France. It was stipu-
lated that, in occupying these places, the French
were not to interfere with their old connection
with the empire. The confidence reposed in the
French was grievously abused. All the stipula-
tions went for nothing. In 1553, French troops
took possession of Toul and Verdun, also of
Nancy, the capital of Lorraine, treating the
duchy, generally, as a conquered country. See-
ing this, Metz shut her gates and trusted to her
fortifications. To procure an entrance and secure
possession, there was a resort to stratagems which
afford a startling illustration of the tricks that
French nobles at that time could be guilty of in
order to gain their ends. The French com-
mander, the Constable Montmorency, begged to
be allowed to pass through the town with a few
attendants, while his army made a wide circuit
on its route. The too credulous custodiers of
the city opened the gates, and, to their dismay,
the whole Frencli forces rushed in, and began
to rule in true despotic fashion. . . . Thus was
Jletz secured for France in a way which modern
Frenchmen, we should imagine, can hardly think
of without shame. Germany, however, did not
relinquish this important fortress without a strug-
gle. Furious at its loss, the Emperor Charles V.
proceeded to besiege it with a large army. The
defence was undertaken by the l5uke of Guise,
assisted by a body of French nobility. After an
investment of four months, and a loss of 30,000
men, Charles was forced to raise the siege, Jan-
uary 1, 1553, all his attempts at the capture of
the place being effectually baffled." — W. Cham-
bers, France: its History and Revolutions, ch. 6. —
"The war continued during the two following
years ; but both parties were now growing weary
of a contest in which neither achieved any de-
cisive superiority " ; and the emperor, having ne-
gotiated an armistice, resigned all his crowns to
his son, Philip II., and his brother Ferdinand
(October, 1555). "Meantime Pope Paul IV., who
detested the Spaniards and longed for tlie com-
plete subversion of their power in the Peninsula,
entered into a league with the French king
against Philip ; Francis of Guise was encouraged
1227
FRANCE, 1547-1559.
&ui^e*s Campaign
in Italy.
FRANCE, 1559.
in his favorite project of effecting a restoration
of tlie crown of Naples to liis own family, as the
descendants of Rene of Anjou ; and in Decem-
ber, 1556, an army of 16,000 men, commanded
by the Duke of Guise, crossed the Alps, and,
marching direct to Rome, prepared to attack the
Spanish viceroy of Naples, the celebrated Duke
of Alva. In April, 1557, Guise advanced into
the Abruzzi, and besieged Civitella ; but here he
encountered a determined resistance, and, after
sacrificing a great part of his troops, found it ne-
cessary to abandon the attempt. He retreated
toward Rome, closely pursued by the Duke of
Alva; and the result was that "the expedition
totally failed. Before his army could recover
from the fatigues and losses of their fruitless
campaign, the French general was suddenly re-
called by a dispatch containing tidings of urgent
importance from the north of France. The
Spanish army in the Netherlands, commanded b}'
the Duke of Savoy, having been joined by a body
of English auxiliaries under the Earl of Pem-
broke, had invaded France and laid siege to St.
Quentin. This place was badly fortified, and
defended by a feeble garrison under the Admiral
de Coligny. Montmorency advanced with the
main army to re-enforce it, and on the 10th of
August rashly attacked the Spaniards, who out-
numbered his own troops in the proportion of
more than two to one, and inflicted on him a fatal
and irretrievable defeat. The loss of the French
amounted, according to most accounts, to 4,000
slain in the field, while at least an equal number
remained prisoners, including the Constable him-
self. Tlie road to Paris lay open to the victors.
. . . The Duke of Savoy was eager to advance;
but the cautious Philip, happily for France, re-
jected his advice, and ordered him to press the
siege of St. Quentin. That town made a desper-
ate resistance for more than a fortnight longer,
and was captured by storm on the 37th of August
[1557]. . . . Philip took possession of a few other
neighbouring fortresses, but attempted no serious
movement in prosecution of his victorj^. . . .
The Duke of Guise arrived from Italy early in
October, to the great joy of the king and the na-
tion, and was immediately created lieutenant-
general of the kingdom, with powers of almost
unlimited extent. He applied himself, with his
utmost ability and perseverance, to repair the late
disasters; and with such success, that in less than
two months he was enabled to assemble a fresh
and well-appointed arm}' at Compi^gne. Resolv-
ing to strike a vigorous blow before the enemy
could reappear in the field, he detached a division
of his army to make a feint in the direction of
Luxemburg ; and, rapidly marching westward
with the remainder, presented himself on the 1st
of January, 15.58, before the walls of Calais. . . .
The French attack was a complete surprise; the
two advanced forts commanding the approaches
to the town were bombarded, and surrendered on
the 3d of January; three days later the castle
was carried by assault ; and on the 8th, the gov-
ernor. Lord Wentworth, was forced to capitulate.
. . . Guines, no longer tenable after the fall of
Calais, shared the same fate on the 21st of Jan-
uary ; and thus, within the short space of three
weeks, were the last remnants of her ancient do-
minion on the Continent snatched from the grasp
of England — possessions which she had held for
upward of 300 years. . . . This remarkable ex-
ploit, so flattering to the national pride, created
universal enthusiasm in France, and carried to
the highest pitch the reputation and popularity
of Guise. From this moment his influence be-
came paramount ; and the marriage of the dau-
phin to the Queen of Scots, which was solemnised
on the 2-lth of April, 1558, seemed to exalt the
house of Lorraine to a still more towering pinna-
cle of greatness. It was stipulated by a secret
article of the marriage-contract that the sover-
eignty of Scotland should be transferred to
France, and that the two crowns should remain
united forever, in case of the decease of Mary
without issue. Toward the end of the year ne-
gotiations were opened with a view to peace."
They were interrupted, however, in Novem-
ber, 1558, by the death of Queen Mary of Eng-
land, wife of Philip of Spain. "When the con-
gress reassembled at Le Cateau-Cambresis, in
February, 1559, the Spanish ministers no longer
maintained the interests of England; and Eliza-
beth, thus abandoned, agreed to an arrangement
which virtually ceded Calais to France, though
with such nominal qualifications as satisfied the
sensitiveness of the national honour. Calais was
to be restored to the English at the end of eight
years, with a penalty, in case of failure, of 500,-
000 crowns. At the same time, if any hostile
proceedings should take place on the part of
England against France within the period speci-
fied, the queen was to forego all claim to the ful-
fillment of the article." The treaty between
France and England was signed April 3, 1559,
and that between France and Spain the follow-
ing day. By the latter, "the two monarchs
mutually restored their conquests in Luxemburg,
the Netherlands, Picardy, and Artois; France
abandoned Savoy and Piedmont, with the excep-
tion of Turin and four other fortresses [restoring
Philibert Emanuel, Duke of Savoy, to his domin-
ions — see S-Woy and Piedmont: A. D. 1559-
1580] ; she evacuated Tuscany, Corsica, and Mont-
ferrat, and yielded up no less than 189 towns or
fortresses in various parts of Europe. By way
of compensation, Henry preserved the district of
the ' Trois Eveches ' — Toul, Metz, and Verdun —
and made the all-important acquisition of Calais.
This pacification was sealed, according to cus-
tom, by marriages" — Henry's daughter Eliza-
beth to Philip of Spain, and his sister Marguerite
to the Duke of Savoy. In a tournament, at
Paris, which celebrated these marriages, Henry
received an injury from the lance of Montgom-
ery, captain of his Scottish guards, which caused
his death eleven days afterwards — July 10,
1559. — W. H. Jervis, Student's Hist, of France,
ch. 15.
Also in : J. L. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch
Republic, pt. 1, ch. 3-3 (v. 1). — Lady Jackson,
Th^ Court of Prance in tlie \Qth Century, v. 2, ch.
9-30. — L. von Ranke, Civil Wars and Monarchy
in France, Idth and nth Centuries, eh. 6 (o. 1).
A. D. 1548. — Marriage of Antoine de Bour-
bon to Jeanne d'Albret, heiress of Navarre.
SeeN-VVARRE; A. D. 1528-1.503.
A. D. 1552. — Alliance with the Turks. See
Italy (Southern-): A. D. 1528-1570.
A. D. 1554-1565. — Huguenot attempts at
colonization in Brazil and in Florida, and their
fate. See Florida: A. D. 1562-1563; 1564-
1565; 1565, and 1567-1.568.
A. D. 1558-1559. —Aid given to revolt in
Corsica. See Genoa: A. D. 1528-15.59.
A. D. 1559. — Accession of King Francis II.
122s
FRANCE, 1559-1561.
Catharine de' Medici
and the Guises.
FRANCE, 1559-1561.
A. D. 1559-1561.— Francis II., Charles IX.,
the Guises and Catharine de' Medici. — The
Conspiracy of Araboise.— Rapid spread and
organization of Protestantism. — Rise of the
Huguenot party. — Disputed origin of its name.
— Henry II. "had been married from political
motives to the niece of Clement VII., Catharine
de Medici. This ambitious woman came to
France conscious that the marriage was a politi-
cal one, mentally a stranger to her husband ; and
such she always remained. This placed her from
the first in a false position. The King was in-
fluenced by any one rather than by his wife; and
a by no means charming mistress, Diana of
Poitiers, played her part by the side of and above
the Queen. . . . Immediately after the death of
her husband, in 1559, she [Catharine] greedily
grasped at power. The young King, Francis
II., was of age when he entered his fourteenth
year. There could therefore be no legal regency,
though there might be an actual one, for a weakly
monarch of sixteen was still incompetent to gov-
ern. But she was thwarted iu her first grasp at
power. Under Francis I. , a family [the Guises —
see above] previously unknown in French history
had begun to play a prominent part. . . . The
brothers succeeded in bringing about a political
marriage which promised to throw the King, who
was mentally a child, entirely into their hands.
Their sister Mary had been married to James V.
of Scotland, whose crown was then rather an in-
significant one, but was now beginning to gain
importance. The issue of this marriage was a
charming girl, who was destined for the King's
wife. She was betrothed to him without his
consent when still a child. The young Queen
was Mary Stuart. Her misfortunes, her beauty,
and her connection with European history, have
made her a historical personage, more conspicu-
ous indeed for what she suffered tlian for what
she did ; her real Importance is not commensu-
rate with the position she occupies. This, then,
was the position of the brothers Guise at court.
The King was the husband of their niece ; both
were children in age and mind, and therefore
doubly required guidance. The brothers, Francis
and Charles, had the government entirely in their
hands; the Duke managed the army, the Cardinal
the finances and foreign affairs. Two such lead-
ers were the mayors of the palace. The whole
constitution of the court reminds us of the ' rois
faineants' and the office of major-domo under the
Carlovingians. Thus, just when Catharine was
about to take advantage of a favourable moment,
she saw herself once more eclipsed and thrust
aside, and that by insolent upstarts of whom one
thing only was certain, that they possessed un-
usual talents, and that their consciences were
elastic in the choice of means. It was not only
from Catharine that the supremacy of the Guises
met with violent opposition, but also from Prot-
estantism, the importance of which was greatly
increasing in France. ... In the time of Henry
II., in spite of all the edicts and executions. Prot-
estantism had made great progress. ... In the
spring of 1559, interdicted Protestantism had
secretly reviewed its congregations, and at the
first national synod drawn up a confession of
faith and a constitution for the new Church.
Preachers and elders had appeared from every
part of France, and their eighty articles of 28th
May, 1559, have become the code of laws of
French Protestantism. The Calviuistic principle
of the Congregational Church, with choice of its
own minister, deacons, and elders; a consistory
which maintained strict discipline in matters of
faith and morals . . . was established upon French
soil, and was afterwards publicly accepted by the
whole party. The more adherents this party
gained in the upper circles, the bolder was its at-
titude; there was, indeed, no end to the execu-
tions, or to the edicts against heresy, but a spirit
of opposition, previously unknown, had gradually
gained ground. Prisoners were set free, the con-
demned were rescued from the hands of the exe-
cutioners on the way to the scaffold, and a plan
was devised among the numerous fugitives in
foreign lands for producing a turn in the course
of events by violent means. La Renaudie, a re-
formed nobleman from Perigord, who had sworn
vengeance on the Guises for the execution of his
brother, had, with a number of other persons of
his own way of thinking, formed a plan for at-
tacking the Guises, carrying off the King, and
placing him under the guardianship of the Bour-
bon agnates. . . . The project was betrayed; the
Guises succeeded in placing the King in security
in the Castle of Amboise ; a number of the con-
spirators were seized, another troop overpowered
and dispersed on their attack upon the castle, on
the 17th of March, 1560; some were killed, some
taken prisoners and at once executed. It was
then discovered, or pretended, that the youngest
of the Bourbon princes [see BonRBON, House
op], Louis of Conde, was implicated in the con-
spiracy [known as the Conspiracy or Tumult of
Amboise]. . . . The Guises now ventured, in
contempt of French historical traditions, to im-
prison this prince of the blood, this agnate of the
reigning house ; to summon him before an arbi-
trary tribunal of partisans, and to condemn him
to death. . . . This affair kept all France in sus-
pense. All the nobles, although strongly in-
fected with Huguenot ideas, were on Conde's
side ; even those who condemned his religious
opinions made his cause their own. Tliey justly
thought that if he fell none of them would be
safe. In the midst of this ferment, destiny in-
terposed. On the 5th of December, 1560, Francis
II. died suddenly, and a complete change took
place. His death put an end to a net-work of
intrigues, which aimed at knocking the rebellion,
political and religious, on the head. . . . During
this confusion one individual had been watching
the course of events with the eagerness of a beast
ready to seize on its prey. Catharine of Medici
was convinced that the time of her dominion had
at length arrived. . . . Francis II. was scarcely
dead when she seized upon the person and the
power of Charles IX. He was a boy of ten years
old, not more promising than his eldest brother,
sickly and weakly like all the sons of Henry 11.,
more attached to his mother than the others, and
he had been neglected by the Guises. . . . One
of her first acts was to liberate Conde ; this was a
decided step towards reconciliation with the
Bourbons and the Protestants. The whole situa-
tion was all at once changed. The court was
ruled by Catharine ; her feverish tliirst for power
was satisfied. The Guises and their adherents
were, indeed, permitted to remain in their oflSces
and posts of honour, in order not fatally to offend
them; but their supremacy was destroyed, and
the new power was based upon the Queen's
understanding with the heads of the Huguenot
party." — L. Hausser, The Period of the R^orma-
1229
FRANCE, 1559-1561.
The Huguenots.
FRANCE, 1560-1563.
Hon, 1517 to 1648, ch. 25. — "The recent commo-
tion had disclosed the existence of a body of
malcontents, in part religious, in part also politi-
cal, scattered over the whole kingdom and of
unascertained numbers. To its adherents the
name of Huguenots was now for the first time
given. What tlie origin of this celebrated ap-
pellation was, it is now perhaps impossible to
discover. ... It has been traced back to the
name of the Eidgenossen or ' confederates,' under
which the party of freedom figured in Geneva
when the authority of the bishop and duke was
overthrown; or to the 'Roy Huguet,' or ' Hu-
guon,' a hobgoblin supposed to haunt the vicinity
of Tours, to whom the superstitious attributed
the nocturnal assemblies of the Protestants ; or to
the gate ' du roy Huguon ' of the same city, near
which those gatherings were wont to be made.
Some of their enemies maintained the former ex-
istence of a diminutive coin known as a ' hugue-
not,' and asserted that the appellation, as applied
to the reformed, arose from their ' not being
worth a huguenot,' or farthing. And some of
their friends, with equal confidence and no less
improbability, declared that it was invented be-
cause the adherents of the house of Guise secretly
put forward claims upon the crown of France in
behalf of that house as descended from Charle-
magne, whereas the Protestants loyally upheld
the riglits of the Valois sprung from Hugh Capet.
In the diversity of contradictory statements, we
may perhaps be excused if we suspend our judg-
ment. . . . Not a week had passed after the con-
spiracy of Amboise before the word was in every-
body's mouth. Few knew or cared whence it
arose. A powerful party, whatever name it
might bear, had sprung up, as it were, in a night.
. . . No feature of the rise of the Reformation
in France is more remarkable than the sudden
impulse which it received during the last year
or two of Henry II. 's life, and especially within
the brief limits of the reign of his eldest son. . . .
There was not a corner of the kingdom where the
number of incipient Protestant churches was not
considerable. Provence alone contained 60,
whose delegates this year met in a synod at the
blood-stained village of Meriudol. In large tracts
of countrj' the Huguenots had become so numer-
ous that they were no longer able or disposed to
conceal their religious sentiments, nor content to
celebrate their rites in private or nocturnal as-
semblies. This was particularly the case in
Normandy, in Languedoc, and on the banks of
the Rhone." — H. M. Baird, Si/tt. of the Rise of
the Huguenots, bk. 1, ch. 10 (e. 1).
Also IN: C. M.Yonge, Cameos from Eng. Hist.,
Atli series, c. 29.
A. D. 1560. — Accession of King Charles IX.
A. D. 1560-1563. — Changed policy of Catha-
rine de' Medici. — Delusive favors to the Hu-
guenots. — The Guises and the Catholics again
ascendant. — The massacre of Vassy. — Out-
break of civil war. — Battle of Dreux. — Assas-
sination of Guise. — Peace and the Edict of
Amboise. — "Catherine de Medici, now regent,
thought it wisest to abandon the policy which
had till then prevailed under the influence of the
Guises, and while she confirmed the Lorraine
princes in the important offices they held, she
named, on the other hand, Antoine de Bourbon
[king of Navarre] lieutenant-general of the king-
dom, and took Michel de I'Hopital as her chief
adviser. . . . Chancellor de I'Hopital, like the
Regent, aimed at the destruction of the parties
which were rending the kingdom asunder ; but
his political programme was that of an honest
man and a true liberal. A wise system of re-
ligious toleration and of administrative reform
would, he thought, restore peace and satisfy all
true Frenchmen. 'Let us,' he said, 'do away
with the diabolical party-names which cause
so many seditions — Lutherans, Huguenots, and
Papists; let us not alter the name of Christians.'
. . . The edicts of Saint Germain and of January
(1562) were favourable to the Huguenots. Re-
ligious meetings were allowed in rural districts;
all penalties previously decreed against Dissent-
ers were suspended on condition that the old
faith should not be interfered with : finally, the
Huguenot divines, with Theodore de Bfize at
their head, were invited to meet the Roman
Catholic prelates and theologians in a conference
(colloque) at Poissy, near Paris. Theodore de
Bfeze, the faithfid associate and coadjutor of
Calvin in the great work of the Reformation,
both at Geneva and in France, is justly and uni-
versally regarded as the historian of the early
Huguenots, . . . The speech he delivered at the
opening of the colloque is an eloquent plea for
liberty and mutual forbearance. Unfortunately,
the conciliatory measures he proposed satisfied
no one." — G. Alasson, The Huguenots, ch. 2. —
" The edict of .January . . . gave permission to
Protestants to hold meetings for public worship
outside the towns, and placed their meetings
under the protection of the law. . . . The Par-
liament of Paris refused to register tlie edict
until after repeated orders from the Queen-
mother. The Parliament of Dijon refused to
register it. . . . The Parliament of Aix refused.
Next, Antoine de Navarre, bribed by a promise
of the restoration of the Spanish part of his little
kingdom, announced that the colloquy of Poissy
had converted him, dismissed Beza and the re-
formed preachers, sent Jeanne back to Beam,
demanded the dismissal of the Chatillons from
the court, and invited the Duke of Guise and his
brother, the Cardinal, who were at their chateau
of Joiuville, to return to Paris. Then occurred
— it was only six weeks after the Edict of Janu-
ary — the massacre of Vassy. Nine hundred
out of 3,000 — • the population of that little town
— -were Protestants. Rejoicing in the permission
granted them by the new law, they were assem-
bled on the Sunday morning, in a barn outside
the town, for the purpo.se of public service. The
Duke of Guise and the Cardinal, with their armed
escort of gentlemen and soldiers, riding on their
way to Paris, heard the bells which summoned the
people, and asked what they meant. Being told
that it was a Huguenot ' preclie,' the Duke swore
that he would Huguenot them to some purpose.
He rode straight to the barn and entered the
place, threatening to murder them all. The
people relying on the law, barred the doors.
Then the massacre began. The soldiers burst open
the feeble barrier, and began to fire among the
perfectly unarmed and inotf ensive people. Sixty-
four were killed — men, women, and children ;
200 were wounded. This was the signal for war.
Conde, on the intelligence, immediately retired
from the court to Meaux, whence he issued a
proclamation calling on all the Protestants of the
country to take up arms. Coligny was at Cha-
tillon, whither Catharine addressed him letter
after letter, urging upon him, in ambiguous terms.
12.30
FRANCE, iseo-ises.
The Wars of
Religion.
FRANCE, 1560-1563.
the defence of the King. It seems, though this
is obscure, that at one time Conde might have
seized the ro3al family and held them. But if
he had the opportunity, he neglected it, and the
chance never came again. Henceforward, liow-
ever, vi^e hear no more talk about Catharine be-
coming a Protestant. That pretence will serve
her no more. Before the clash of arras, there
was silence for a space. Jlen waited till the last
man in France who had not spoken should de-
clare himself. The Huguenots looked to the
Admiral, and not to Conde. It was on him that
the real responsibility lay of declaring civil war.
It was a responsibility from which the strongest
man might shrink. . . . The Admiral having
once made up his mind, hesitated no longer,
and, with a heavy heart, set off the next day to
join Conde. He wrote to Catharine that he took
up arms, not against the King, but against those
who held him captive. He wrote also to his old
uncle, the Constable [Montmorency]. . . . The
Constable replied. There was no bitterness be-
tween uncle and nephew. The former was fight-
ing to prevent the 'universal ruin' of hiscountr3%
and for his ' petits maitres,' the boys, the sons of
his old friend, Henry II. Montmorency joined
the Guises in perfect loyalty, and with the firm
conviction tliat it was the right thing for him to
do. The Chatillon fought in the name of law
and justice, and to prevent the universal mas-
sacre of his people. . . . Then the first civil war
began with a gallant exploit — the taking of
Orleans [April 1563]. Conde rode Into it at the
head of 2,U00 cavalry, all shouting like school-
boys, and racing for six miles who should get
into the city first. They pillaged the churches,
and turned out the Catholics. ' Those who were
that day turned outside the city wept catholicly
that they were dispossessed of the magazines of
the finest wines in France.' Truly a dire mis-
fortune, for the Catholics to lose all the best
claret districts ! Orleans taken, the Huguenots
proceeded to issue protestations and manifestoes,
in all of which the hand of the Admiral is visi-
ble. They are not fighting against the King,
who is a prisoner; the war was begun by the
Guises. . . . They might have added, truly
enough, that Conde and the Admiral held in
their hands letters from Catharine, urging them
to carry on the contest for the sake of the young
King. The fall of Orleans was quickly followed
by that of Rouen, Tours, Blois, Bourges, Vienne,
Valence, and ^Montauban. The civil war was
fairly begun. The party was now well organ-
ized. Conde was commander-in-chief by right
of his birth ; Coligny was real leader by right of
his reputation and wisdom. It was by him that
a Solemn League and Covenant was drawn up,
to be signed by every one of the Calvinist chiefs.
These were, besides Conde and the Chatillons,
La Rochefoucauld, . . . Coligny 's nephew and
Conde's brother-in-law — he was the greatest
seigneur in Poitou ; Rohan, from Dauphine, who
was Conde's cousin ; the Prince of Porcian, who
was the husband of Conde's niece. Each of these
lords came with a following worthy of his name.
Montgomery, who had slain Henry II., brought
his Normans; Genlis, the Picards. . . . With
Andelot came a troop of Bretons; with the Count
de Grammont came 6,000 Gascons. Good news
poured in every day. Not only Rouen, but
Havre, Caen, and Dieppe submitted in the North.
Angers and Nantes followed. The road was
open in the end for bringing troops from Gter-
many. The country in the southwest was alto-
gether in their hands. Meantime, the enemy
were not idle. They began with massacres. In
Paris they murdered 800 Huguenots in that first
summer of the war. From every side fugitives
poured into Orleans, which became the city of
refuge. There were massacres at Amiens, Sen-
lis, Cahors, Toulouse, Angouleme — everywhere.
Coligny advised a march upon Paris, where, he
urged, the Guises had but a rabble at their com-
mand. His counsels when war was once com-
menced, were always for vigorous measures.
Conde preferred to wait. Andelot was sent to
Germany, where he raised 3,000 horse. Calvin
despatched letters in every direction, urging on
the churches and the Protestant princes to send
help to France. JIany of Coligny 's old soldiers
of St. Quentin came to fight under his banner.
Elizabeth of England offered to send an army if
Calais were restored ; when she saw that no
Frenchman would give up that place again, she
still sent men and money, though with grudging
spirit. At length both armies took the field.
The Duke of Guise had under him 8,000 men;
Conde 7,000. They advanced, and met at the
little town of Vassodun, where a conference was
held between the Queen-mother and Navarre on
the one hand, and Conde and Coligny on the
other. Catharine proposed that all the chiefs of
both sides — Guise, the Cardinal de Lorraine, St.
Andre, Montmorency, Navarre, Conde, and the
Chatillon brothers — -should all alike go into vol-
untary exile. Conde was nearly persuaded to
accept this absurd proposal. Another conference
was held at Taley. These conferences were only
delays. An attempt was made by Catharine to
entrap Conde, which was defeated by the Ad-
miral's prompt rescue. The Parliament of Paris
issued a decree commanding all Romanists in
every parish to rise in arms at the sound of the
bell and to slay every Huguenot. It was said
that 50,000 were thus murdered. No doubt the
numbers were grossly exaggerated. . . . These
cruelties naturally provoked retaliation. . . . An
English army occupied Havre. English troops
set out for Rouen. Some few managed to get
within the walls. The town was taken by the
Catholics [October 25, 1563], and, for eight days,
plundered. Needless to say that Guise hanged
every Huguenot he could find. Here the King
of Navarre was killed. The loss of Rouen, to-
gether with other disasters, greatly discouraged
the Huguenots. Their spirits rose, however,
when news came that Andelot, with 4,000 reiters,
was on his way to join them. He brought them
in safety across France, being himself carried in
a litter, sick with ague and fever. The Hugue-
nots advanced upon Paris, but did not attack the
city. At Dreux [December 19, 1563], they met
the army of Guise. Protestant historians en-
deavor to show that the battle was drawn. In
fact both sides sustained immense losses. St.
Andre was killed, Montmorency and Conde were
taken prisoners. Yet Coligny had to retire from
the field — his rival had outgeneralled him. It
was characteristic of Coligny that he never lost
heart. . . . With his German cavalry, a handful
of his own infantry, and a small troop of English
soldiers, Coligny swept over nearly the whole of
Normandy. It is true that Guise was not there
to oppose him. Every thing looked well. He
was arranging for a ' splendid alliance ' with
1231
FRANCE, 1560-1563.
The Wars of
Religion.
FRANCE, 1563-1570.
England, when news came which stayed his
hand. Guise marched southwards to Orleans.
. . . There was in Orleans a young Huguenot
soldier named Jean Poltrot de Mere. He was a
fanatic. ... He waited for an opportunity,
worked himself into the good graces of the Duke,
and then shot him with three balls, in the shoulder.
Guise died three days later. . . . Then a peace
was signed [and ratified by the Edict of Amboise,
March 19, 1563]. Conde, won over and seduced
by the sirens of the Court, signed it. It was a
humiliating and disastrous peace. Huguenots
were to be considered loyal subjects; foreign
soldiers should be sent out of the country;
churches and temples should be restored to their
original uses ; the suburbs of one town in every
bailiwick were to be used for Protestant worship
(this was a great reduction on the Edict of Janu-
ary, which allowed the suburbs of every town) ;
and the nobility and gentry were to hold worship
in their own houses after their own opinions.
The Admiral was furious at this weakness. ' You
have ruined,' he said to Conde, ' more churches
by one stroke of the pen than the enemy could
have done in ten years of war. ' " — W. Besant,
Oaspard de Coligny, ch. 8.
Also in: Due d'Aumale, Hist, of the Princes
de Conde, bh. 1, ch. 3 (v. 1). — E. Bersier, Earlier
Life of Coligny, ch. 21-26.
A. D. 1563-1564. — Recovery of Havre from
the English. — The Treaty of Troyes. — Under
the terms on which the Huguenot leaders pro-
cured help from Elizabeth, the English queen held
Havre, and refused to restore it until after the
restoration of Calais to England, and the re-
payment of a loan of 140,000 crowns. The
Huguenots, having now made peace with their
Catholic fellow countrymen, were not prepared
to fulfill the English contract, according to Eliza-
beth's claims, but demanded that Havre should
be given up. The Queen refusing, both the parties,
lately in arms against each other, joined forces,
and laid siege to Havre so vigorously that it was
surrendered to them on the 28th of July, 1563.
Peace with England was concluded in the April
following, by a treaty negotiated at Troyes, and
the Queen lost all her rights over Calais. — Due
d'Aumale, Hist, of the Princes of Conde, v. 1, ch. 4.
Also m: J. A. Froude, Hist, of England:
Beign of Elisabeth, ch. 6 and 8 {v. 1-2).
A. D. 1563-1570. — The conference at Bay-
onne. — Outbreak of the Second Civil War. —
Battle of St. Denis. — Peace of Longjumeau.
— The Third Civil War. — Huguenot rally at
La Rochelle. — Appearance of the Queen of
Navarre. — Battle of Jarnac. — Death of Cond6.
— Henry of Navarre chosen to command. —
Battle of Moncontour. — Peace of St. Germain.
— The religious peace established under the
Edict of Amboise lasted four years. "Not that
the Huguenots enjoyed during these years any-
thing like security or repose. The repeated
abridgment even of those narrow liberties con-
ferred by the Edict of Amboise, and the frequent
outbreaks of popular hatred in which numbers
of them perished, kept them in perpetual alarm.
Still more alarming was the meeting at Bayonne
[of Catherine de' Medici, the young king, her son,
and the Duke of Alva, representing Philip II. of
Spain] in the summer of 1565. . . . Amid the
Court festivities which took place, it was known
that there had been many secret meetings between
Alva, Catherine, and Charles. The darkest sus-
picions as to their objects and results spread over
France. It was generally believed — falsely, as
from Alva's letters it now appears — that a
simultaneous extermination of all heretics in the
French and Spanish dominions had been agreed
upon. To anticipate this stroke, Coligni pro-
posed that the person of the King should be
seized upon. The Court, but slenderly guarded,
was then at Monceaux. The project had almost
succeeded. Some time, however, was lost. The
Court got warning and fled to Meaux. Six thou-
sand Swiss arrived, and by a rapid march carried
the King to Paris. After such a failure, nothing
was left to the Huguenots but the chances of a
second civil war. Conde entered boldly on the
campaign. Though he had with him but 1,500
horse and 1,200 infantry, he marched to Paris,
and offered battle to the royal troops beneath its
walls. The Constable [Montmorency], who had
18,000 men at his command, accepted the chal-
lenge, and on the 10th of November 1567, the
battle of St. Denis was fought. . . . Neither
party could well claim the victory, as both re-
tired from the field. The royal army had to
mourn the loss that day of its aged and gal-
lant commander, the Constable. Conde renewed
next day the challenge, which was not accepted.
The winter months were spent by the Huguenots
in effecting a junction with some German auxili-
aries, and in the spring they appeared in such
force upon the field that, on the 23d March 1568,
the Peace of Longjumeau was ratified, which
re-established, free from all modifications and re-
strictions, the Edict of Amboise. It was evident
from the first that this treat)' was not intended to be
kept ; that it had been entered into by the govern-
ment solely to gain time, and to scatter the ranks
of the Huguenots. Coligni sought Conde at his
chateau of Noyers in Burgundy. He had scarcely
arrived when secret intelligence was given them
of a plot upon their lives. They had barely time
to fly, making many a singular escape by the
way, and reaching Rochelle, which from this time
became the head -quarters of the Huguenots, on
the 15th September 1568. During the first two
religious wars . . . the seat of war was so re-
mote from her dominions that the Queen of
Navarre [Jeanne d'Albret, — see Navarre: A.D.
1538-1563] had satisfied herself with opening her
country as an asylum for those Huguenots driven
thither out of the southern counties of France.
But when she heard that Conde and Coligni . . .
were on their way to Rochelle, to raise there once
more the Protestant banner, convinced that the
French Court meditated nothing sliort of the ex-
termination of the Huguenots, she determined
openly to cast in her lot with her co-religionists,
and to give them all the help she could. Dexter-
ously deceiving ilontluc, who had received in-
structions to watch her movements, and to seize
upon her person if she showed any intention of
leaving her own dominions, after a flight as pre-
cipitous and almost as perilous as that of Conde
and Coligni, she reached Rochelle on the 29th
September, ten days after their arrival. This
town, for nearly a century the citadel of Protes-
tantism in France, having by its own unaided
power freed itself from the English dominion
[in the period Ijetween 1368 and 1380] hud had
extraordinary municipal privileges bestowed on
it in return — among others, that of an entirely
independent jurisdiction, both civil and military.
Like so many of the great commercial marts of
1232
FRANCE, 1563-1570.
Henry of Navarre
and Coligny.
FRANCE, 1570-1573.
Europe, in which the spirit of freedom was
cherished, it had early welcomed the teaching
of the Reformers, and at the time now before us
nearly the whole of its inhabitants were Hugue-
nots. . . . About the verj' time that the Queen
of Navarre entered Rochelle a royal edict ap-
peared, prohibiting, under pain of death, the
exercise of any other than the Roman Catholic
religion in France, imposing upon all the observ-
ance of its rites and ceremonies ; and banishing
from the realm all preachers of the doctrine of
Calvin, fifteen days only being allowed them to
quit the kingdom. It was by the sword that this
stern edict was to be enforced or rescinded.
Two powerful armies of nearly equal strength
mustered speedily. One was nominally under
the command of the Duke of Anjou, but really
led by Tavannes, Biron, Brissac, and the young
Duke of Guise, the last burning to emulate the
military glory of his father ; the other under the
command of Conde and Coligni. The two armies
were close upon one another; their generals de-
sired to bring them into action ; they were more
than once actually in each other's presence ; but
the unprecedented inclemency of the weather pre-
vented an engagement, and at last, without com-
ing into collision, both had to retire to winter
quarters. The delay was fatal to the Hugue-
nots." In the following spring (March 13, 1569),
while their forces were still scattered and unpre-
pared, they were forced into battle with the
better-generaled Royalists, at Jarnuc, and were
grievously defeated. Conde, wounded and taken
prisoner, was treated at first with respect by the
ofiicers who received his sword. But "Montes-
quieu, captain of the Swiss Guard of the Duke of
Anjou, galloped up to the spot, and, hearing
who the prisoner was, deliberately levelled his
pistol at him and shot him through the head.
The Duke passed no censure on his officer, and
expressed no regret at his deed. The grossest
Indignities were afterwards, by his orders, heaped
upon the dead body of the slain. The defeat of
Jarnac, and still more the death of Conde, threw
the Huguenot army into despair. . . . The utter
dissolution of the army seemed at hand. The
Admiral sent a messenger to the Queen of Navarre
at Rochelle, entreating her to come to the camp.
She was already on her way. On arrival, and
after a short consultation with the Admiral, the
army was drawn up to receive her. She rode
along the ranks — her son Henry on one side, the
son of the deceased Conde on the other." Then
she addressed to the troops an inspiring speech,
concluding with these heroic words: "Soldiers,
I offer you everything I have to give, — my do-
minions, my treasures, my life, and, what is
dearer to me than all, my children. I make here
solemn oath before you all — I swear to defend to
ray last sigh the holy cause which now unites us. "
" The soldiers crowded around the Queen, and
unanimously, as if by sudden impulse, hailed
young Henry of Navarre as their future general.
The Admiral and La Rochefoucauld were the
first to swear fidelity to the Prince ; then came
the inferior officers and the whole assembled
soldiery; and it was thus that, in his fifteenth
year, the Prince of Beam was inaugurated as
general -in-chief of the army of the Huguenots."
In June the Huguenot army effected a junction
at St. Yriex with a division of German auxili-
aries, led by the Due de Deux-Ponts, and includ-
ing among its chiefs the Prince of Orange and
^^ 1233
his brother Louis of Nassau. They attacked the
Duke of Anjou at La Roche-Abeille and gained
a slight advantage; but wasted their strength
during the summer, contrary to the advice of the
Admiral Coligny, in besieging Poitiers. The
Duke of Anjou approached with a superior army,
and, again in opposition to the judgment of
Coligny, the Huguenots encountered him at
Moncontour (October 3, 1569), where they suf-
fered the worst of their defeats, leaving 5,000
dead and wounded on the field. Meanwhile a
French army had entered Navai-re, had taken
the capital and spread destruction everywhere
through the small kingdom ; but the Queen sent
Count de Montgomery to rally her people, and
the invaders were driven out. Coligny and
Prince Henry wintered their troops in the far
south, then moved rapidly northwards in the
spring, up the valley of the Rhone, across the
Cevennes, through Burgundy, approaching the
Loire, and were met by the Marshal de Cosse at
Arnay-le-Duc, where Henry of Navarre won his
first success in arms — Coligny being ill. Though
it was but a partial victory it brought about a
breathing time of peace. "This happened in the
end of June, and on the 8th of August [1570] the
Peace of St. Germain-en-Laye was signed, and
France had two full j'ears of quiet. "• — W. Hanna,
The ^Vars of the Uiiguciwts, ch. 4.
Also in : Due d'Aumale, Hist, of ths Princei
de Conde, bk. 1, ch. 4-5 (». 1-2).— M. W. Freer,
Life of Jeanne d'Alhret, ch. 8-10. — C. M. Yonge,
Cameos of Eng. Hist., 5th series, c. 8.
A. D. 1570-1572. — Coligny at court and his
influence with the King. — Projected war with
Spain. — The desperate step of Catharine de*
Medici, and its consequence in the plot of Mas-
sacre. — "After the Peace of 1570, it appeared as
if a complete change of policy was about to take
place. The Queen pretended to be friendly with
the Protestants; her relations with the ambitious
Guises were distant and cold, and the project of
uniting the Houses of Bourbon and Valois by
marriage [the marriage of Henry of Navarre
with the king's sister. Marguerite] really looked
as if she was in earnest. 'The most distinguished
leader of the Huguenot party was the Admiral
Caspar de Coligny. It is quite refreshing at this
doleful period to meet with such a character.
He was a nobleman of the old French school and
of the best stamp; lived upon his estates with
his family, his little court, his retainers and sub-
jects, in ancient patriarchal style, and on the
best terms, and regularly went with them to the
Protestant worship and the communion ; a man
of unblemished morality and strict Calvinistic
views of life. AVhatever this man said or did
was the result of his inmost convictions ; his life
was the impersonation of his views and thoughts.
In the late turbulent times he had become an im-
portant person as leader and organizer of the
Protestant armies. At his call, thousands of
noblemen and soldiers took up arms, and they
submitted under his command to very strict dis-
cipline. He could not boast of having won many
battles, but he was famous for having kept his
resources together after repeated defeats, and for
rising up stronger than before after every lost
engagement. . . . Now that peace was made,
'why,' he asked,- 'excite further dissensions for
the benefit of our common enemies ? Let us direct
our undivided forces against the real enemy of
France — against Spain, who stirs up intrigues
FRANCE, 1570-1572.
Plotting the
Massacre.
FRANCE. 1573.
in our civil wars. Let us crush tliis power,
which coademus us to ignominious dependence.'
The war against Spain was Coligny's project.
It was the idea of a good Huguenot, for it was
directed against the most blindly fanatical and
dangerous foe of the new doctrines ; but it was
also that of a good Frenchman, for a victory over
Spain would increase the power of France in the
direction of Burgundy. . . . From September,
1571, Coligny was at court. On his first arrival
he was heartily welcomed by the King, embraced
by Catharine, and loaded with honours and
favours by both. I am not of opinion that this
was a deeply laid scheme to entrap the guileless
hero, the more easily to ruin him. Catharine's
ideas did not extend so far. Still less do I believe
that the young King was trained to play the part
of a hypocrite, and regarded Coligny as a victim
to be cherished until the fSte day. I think,
rather, that Catharine, in her changeableness and
hatred of the Guises, was now really disposed to
make peace with the Protestants, and that the
young King was for the time impressed by this
superior personage. No youthful mind is so
degraded as to be entirely inaccessible to such
influence. ... I believe that the first and only
happy day in the life of this unfortunate mon-
arch was when he met Coligny, who raised him
above the degradation of vulgar life ; and I be-
lieve further, that this relation was the main
cause of the massacre of St. Bartholomew. A
new influence was threatening to surround the
King and to take deep root, which Catharine,
her sou Henry of Anjou, and the strict Catholic
party, must do their utmost to avert; and it was
quite in accordance with the King's weak charac-
ter to allow the man to be murdered whom he
had just called 'Father.'. . . It appears that
about the middle of the year [1572] the matter
[of war with Spain and help to the revolting
Netherlands] was as good as decided. The King
willingly acceded to Coligny's plan . . . [and]
privately gave considerable sums for the support
of the Flemish patriots, for the equipment of an
army of 4,000 men, composed of Catholics and
Protestants, who marched towards Mons, to
succour Louis of Nassau. When in July this
army was beaten, and the majority of the Hugue-
nots were in despair. Coligny succeeded in per-
suading the King to equip a fresh and still larger
army; but the opposition then bestirred itself.
. . . 'The Queen . . . had been absent with her
married daughter in Lorraine, and on her return
she found everything changed; the Guises with-
out influence, herself thrust on one side. Under
the impression of the latest events in Flanders,
which made it lilvcly that the war with Spain
would be ruinous, she hastened to the King, told
him with floods of tears that it would be his ruin;
that the Huguenots, through Coligny, had stolen
the King's confidence, unfortunately for himself
and the country. She made some impression
upon him, but it did not last long, and thoughts
of war gained the upper hand again. The idea
now (August, 1572), must have been matured in
Catharine's mind of venturing on a desperate
step, in order to save her supremacy and influ-
ence. . . . The idea ripened in her mind of get-
ting rid of Coligny by assassination. . . . En-
tirely of one mind with her .son Henry, she turned
to the Guises, with whom she was at enmity
when they were in power, but friendly when
they were of no more consequence than herself.
They breathed vengeance against the Calvinists,
and were ready at once to avenge the murder
of Francis of Guise by a murderous attack upon
Coligny. An assassin was hired, and established
in a house belonging to the Guises, near Coligny's
dwelling, and as he came out of the palace, on
the 22nd of August, a shot was fired at him,
which wounded but did not kill him. Had Co-
ligny died of his wound, Catharine would have
been content. . . . But Coligny did not die ; the
Huguenots defiantly demanded vengeance on the
well-known instigator of the deed ; their threats
reached the Queen and Prince Henry of Anjou,
and the personal fascination which Coligny had
exercised over King Charles appeared rather to
increase than to diminish. Thus doubtless arose,
during the anxious hours after the failure of the
assassination, the idea of an act of violence on a
large scale, which should strike a blow at Co-
ligny and his friends before they had time for
revenge. It certainly had not been in prepara-
tion for months, not even since the time that
Coligny had been at Court ; it was conceived in
the agony of these hours." — L. Hausser, The
Period of tJie Reformation, ch. 27.
Also in : J. L. Motley, The Rise of the Dutch
Republic, pt. 3, ch. 6-7 (v. 2). — L. von Ranke,
Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, ch. 15.
A. D. 1572 (August). — The Massacre of St.
Bartholomew's Day. — "With some proofs,
forged or real, in her hand that he was in per-
sonal danger, the Queen Mother [August 34]
presented herself to her son. She told him that
at the moment she was speaking the Huguenots
were arming. Sixteen thousand of them in-
tended to assemble in the morning, seize the
palace, destroy herself, the Duke of Anjou, and
tlie Catholic noblemen, and carry off Charles.
The conspiracy, she said, extended through
France. 'The chiefs of the congregations were
waiting for a signal from Coligny to rise in every
province and town. The Catholics had discov-
ered the plot, and did not mean to sit still to be
murdered. If the King refused to act with them,
they would choose another leader; and whatever
happened he would be himself destroyed. Un-
able to say that the story could not be true,
Charles looked enquiringly at Tavannas and De
Nevers, and they both confirmed the Queen
Mother's words. Shaking his incredulity with
reminders of Amboise and Meaux, Catherine
went on to say that one man was the cause of all '
the troubles in the realm. The Admiral aspired
to rule all France, and she — she admitted, with
Anjou and the Guises, had conspired to kill him
to save the King and the country. She dropped
all disguise. The King, she said, must now
assist them or all would be lost. . . . Charles
was a weak, passionate boy, alone in the dark
conclave of iniquity. He stormed, raved, wept,
implored, spoke of his honour, his plighted
word ; swore at one moment that the Admiral
should not be touched, then prayed them to try
other means. But clear, cold and venomous,
Catherine told him it was too late. If there was
a judicial enquiry, the Guises would shield
themselves by telling all that they knew. They
would betray her; they would betray his brother;
and, fairly or unfairly, they would not spare
himself. . . . For an hour and a half the King
continued to struggle. 'You refuse, then,'
Catherine said at last. ... ' Is it that you are
afraid, Sire? ' she hissed in his ear. ' By God's
1234
PRANCE, 1572.
The Massacre of
St. Bartholomew's Day.
FRANCE, 1572.
death,' he cried, springing to his feet, ' since you
will kill the Admiral, kill them all. Kill all the
Huguenots in France, that none may be left to
reproach me. Mort Dieu ! Kill them all.' He
da.shed out of the cabinet. A list of those who
were to die was instantly drawn up. Navarre
and Conde were first included ; but Catherine
prudently reflected that to kill the Bourbons
would make the Guises too strong. Five or six
Dames were added to the Admiral's, and these
Catherine afterwards asserted were all that it
was intended should suffer. . . . Night had now
fallen. Guise and Aumale were still lurking in
the city, and came with the Duke of Montpensier
at Catherine's summons. The persons who were
to be killed were in different parts of the town.
Each took charge of a district. Montpensier
promised to see to the Palace; Guise and his
uncle undertook the Admiral; and below these,
the word went out to the leaders of the already
organised sections, who had been disappointed
once, but whose hour was now come. The
Catholics were to recognise one another in the
confusion by a white handkerchief on the left
arm and a white cross in tlieir caps. The
Royal Guard, Catholics to a man, were instru-
ments ready made for the work. Guise assem-
bled the officers : he told them that the Hugue-
nots were preparing to rise, and that the King
had ordered their instant punishment. The
officers asked no questions, and desired no
better service. The business was to begin at
dawn. The signal would be the tolling of the
great bell at the Palace of Justice, and the first
death was to be Coligny's. The soldiers stole to
their posts. Twelve hundred lay along the
Seine, between the river and the Hotel de Ville ;
other companies watched at the Louvre. As the
darkness waned, the Queen Mother went down
to the gate. The stillness of the dawn was
broken by an accidental pistol-shot. Her heart
sank, and she sent off a messenger to tell Guise
to pause. But it was too late. A minute later
the bell boomed out, and the Massacre of St.
Bartholomew had commenced." The assassins
broke into the Admiral's dwelling and killed
him as he lay wounded in bed. "The window
was open. 'Is it done?' cried Guise from the
court below, ' is it done? Fling him out that we
may see him.' Still breathing, the Admiral was
hurled upon the pavement. The Bastard of
Angouleme wiped the Ijlood from his face to be
sure of his identity, and then, kicking him as he
lay, shouted, ' So far well. Courage, my brave
boys! now for the rest.' One of the Due de
Nevers's people hacked off the head. A rope
was luiotted about the ankles, and the corpse
was dragged out into the street amidst the howl-
ing crowd. Teligny, . . . Rochefoucault, and
the rest of the Admiral's frieuds who lodged in
the neighbourhood were disposed of in the same
way, and so complete was the surprise that there
was not the most faint attempt at resistance.
Montpensier had been no less successful in the
Louvre. The staircases were all beset. The
retinues of the King of Navarre and the Prince
had been lodged in the palace at Charles's par-
ticular desire. Their names were called over,
and as they descended unarmed into the quad-
rangle they were hewn in pieces. There, in
heaps, they fell below the Royal window, under
tie eyes of the miserable King, who was forced
forward between his mother and his brother that
he might be seen as the accomplice of the mas-
sacre. Most of the victims were killed upon the
spot. Some fled wounded up the stairs, and
were slaughtered in the presence of the Prin-
cesses. . . . By seven o'clock the work which
Guise and his immediate friends iiad undertaken
was finished with but one failure. The Count
Montgomery and the Vidame of Chartres . . .
escaped to England. The mob meanwhile was
in full enjoyment. . . . While dukes and lords
were killing at the Louvre, the bands of the sec-
tions imitated them with more than success;
men, women, and even children, striving which
should be the first in the pious work of murder.
All Catholic Paris was at the business, and every
Huguenot houseiiold had neighbours to know
and denounce them. Through street and lane
and quay and causeway, the air rang with yells
and curses, pistol-shots and crashing windows;
the roadways were strewed with mangled bodies,
the doors were blocked b}' the dead and dying.
From garret, closet, roof, or stable, crouching
creatures were torn shrieking out, and stabbed
and hacked at; boys practised their hands by
strangling babies in their cradles, and headless
bodies were trailed along the trottoirs. . . .
Towards midday some of the quieter people at-
tempted to restore order. A party of the town
police made their way to the palace. Charles
caught eagerly at their offers of service, and
bade them do their utmost to put the people
down ; but it was all in vain. The soldiers, mad-
dened with plunder and blood, could not be
brought to assist, and without them nothing
could be done. All that afternoon and night,
and the next day and the day after, the horrible
scenes continued, till the flames burnt down at
last for want of fuel. The number who perished
in Paris was computed variously from 2,000 to
10,000. In this, as in all such instances, the
lowest estimate is probably the nearest to the
truth. The massacre was completed — com-
pleted in Paris — only, as it proved, to be con-
tinued elsewhere. . . . On the 24th, while the
havoc was at its height, circulars went round to
the provinces that a quarrel had broken out be-
tween the Houses of Guise and Coligny ; that the
Admiral and many more had been unfortunately
killed, and that the King himself had been in
danger through his efforts to control the people.
The governors of the different towns were com-
manded to repress at once any symptoms of dis-
order which might show themselves, and par-
ticularly to allow no injury to be done to the
Huguenots." But Guise, when he learned of
these circulars, which threw upon him the odium
of the massacre, forced the King to recall them.
"The story of the Huguenot conspiracy was
revived. . . . The Protestants of the provinces,
finding themselves denounced from the throne,
were likely instantly to take arms to defend
themselves. Couriers were therefore despatched
with second orders that they should be dealt
with as they had been dealt with at Paris; and
at Lyons, Orleans, Rouen, Bordeaux, Toulon,
Meaux, in half the towns and villages of France,
the bloody drama was played once again. The
King, thrown out into the hideous torrent ol
blood, became drunk with frenzy, and let
slaughter have its way, till even Guise himself
affected to be shocked, and interposed to put an
end to it; not, however, till, according to the
belief of the times, 100,000 men, women and
1235
FRANCE, 1572.
News of the
Massacre in Europe.
FRANCE, 1572-1573.
children had been miserably murdered. . . . The
number again may be hoped to have been pro-
digiously exaggerated; with all_ large figures,
when unsupported by exact statistics, it is safe
to divide at least by ten. " — J. A. Froude, Hist,
of England: Reign of Elizabeth, ch. 23 (v. 4).
Also IN: H. White, The Massacre of St. Bar-
tlwlomew, ch. 12-14. — Duke of Sully, Memoirs,
bk. 1.— G. P. Fisher, The Massacre of St. Bar-
tlwlomew (Netc Eriglander, Jan., 1880).
A. D. 1572 (August — October). — The king's
avowal of responsibility for the Massacre, and
celebration of his "victory." — Rejoicings at
Rome and Madrid. — General horror of Europe.
— The effects in France. — Changed character of
the Protestant party. — " On the morning of the
26th of August, Charles IX. went to hold a ' bed
of justice ' in the parliament, carrying with him
the king of Navarre, and he then openly avowed
that the massacre had been perpetrated by his
orders, made . . . excuse for it, grounded on a
pretended conspiracy of the Huguenots against
his person, and then directed the parliament to
commence judicial proceedings against Coligni
and his accomplices, dead or alive, on the charge
of high treason. The parliament obeyed, and,
after a process of two months, which was a mere
tissue of falsehoods, they not only found all the
dead guilty, but they included in the sentence
two of the principal men who had escaped —
the old captain Briquemaut, and Arnaud de
Cavaignes. . . . Both were hanged at the Place
de Greve, in the presence of the king, who com-
pelled the king of Navarre also to be a witness
of their execution. Having once assumed the
responsibility of the massacre of the protestants,
Charles IX. began to glory in the deed. On the
27th of August, he went with the whole court to
Montfaucon, to contemplate the mutilated re-
mains of the admiral. . . . Next day, a grand
jubilee procession was headed by the king in
celebration of his so-called victory. . . . The
' victory ' was also celebrated by two medals.
. . . Nevertheless, the minds of Charles and his
mother were evidently ill at ease, and their mis-
givings as to the effect which would be produced
at foreign courts by the news of these proceed-
ings are very evident in the varying and often
contradictory orders which they dispatched into
the provinces, . . . The news of these terrible
events caused an extreme agitation in all the
courts throughout christian Europe. Philip of
Spain, informed of the massacres by a letter from
the king and the queen-mother, written on the
29th of August, replied by warm congratulations
and expressions of joy. The cardinal of Lor-
raine, who was ... at Rome, gave a reward of
1,000 ecus of gold to the courier who brought
the despatches, and the news was celebrated at
Rome by the firing of the cannons of the castle
of St. Angelo, and by the lighting of bon-fires
in the streets. The pope (Gregory XIII.) and
the sacred college went in grand procession to
the churches to offer their thanks to God. . . .
Not content with these demonstrations, the pope
caused a medal to be struck. . . . Gregory dis-
patched immediately to the court of France the
legate Fabio d'Orsini, with a commission to con-
gratulate the king and his mother for the vigour
they had shown in the repression of heresy, to
demand the reception in France of the council of
Trent, and the establishment of the Inquisition.
. But the papal legate found the court of
France in a different temper from that which he
anticipated. Catherine, alarmed at the effect
which these great outrages had produced on the
protestant sovereigns, found it necessary to give
him private intimations that the congratulations
of the pontiff were untimely, and could not be
publicly accepted. . . . The policy of the French
court at home was no less distasteful to the papal
legate than its relations abroad. The old edicts
against the public exercise of the protestant
worship were gradually revived, and the Hugue-
nots were deprived of the offices which they had
obtained during the short period of toleration,
but strict orders were sent round to forbid any
further massacres, with threats of punishment
against those who had already offended. On the
8th of October, the king published a declaration,
inviting such of the protestants as had quitted
the kingdom in consequence of the massacres to
return, and promising them safety ; but this was
soon followed by letters to the governors of the
provinces, directing them to exhort the Huguenot
gentry and others to conform to the catholic
faith, and declaring that he would tolerate only
one religion in his kingdom. Many, believing
that the protestant cause was entirely ruined in
France, complied, and this defection was encour-
aged by the example of the two princes of Bour-
bon [Henry, now king of Navarre, his mother,
Jeanne d'Albret, having died June 9, 1572, and
Henry, the young prince of Conde], who, after
some weeks of violent resistance, submitted at
the end of September, and, at least in outward
form, became catholics. It has been remarked
that the massacre of St. Bartholomew's-day pro-
duced an entire change in the character of the
protestant party in France. The Huguenots had
hitherto been entirely ruled by their aristocracy,
who took the lead and direction in every move-
ment ; but now the great mass of the protestant
nobility had perished or deserted the cause, and
from this moment the latter depended for sup-
port upon the inhabitants of some of the great
towns and upon the un-noble class of the people ;
and with this change it took a more popular
character, in some cases showing even a tendency
to republicanism. In the towns where the prot-
estants were strong enough to offer serious re-
sistance, such as La Rochellc, Nimes, Saucerre,
and Montauban, the richer burghers, and a part
at least of the municipal officers, were in favour
of submission, and they were restrained only by
the resolution and devotion of the less wealthy
portion of the population." — T. Wright, Hist, of
France, bk. 3, ch. 7 (». 1).
Also in : H. M. Baird, Hist, of the Rise of the
Huguenots, eh. 19 {v. 2). — A. de Montor, Lives and
Times of the Roman Pontiffs, ». \, pp. 810-812.
A. D. 1572-1573. — The Fourth Religious
War. — Siege and successful defence of La
Rochelle. — A favorable peace. ^" The two Re-
former-princes, Henry of Navarre and Henry de
Conde, attended mass on the 29th of September,
and, on the 3d of October, wrote to the pope, de-
ploring their errors and giving hopes of their
conversion. Far away from Paris, in the moun-
tains of the P3'renees and of Languedoc, in the
towns where the Reformers were numerous and
confident . , . the spirit of resistance carried the
day. An assembly, meeting at Milhau, drew up
a provisional ordinance for the government of the
Reformed church, ' until it please God, who has
the hearts of kings in His keeping, to change
1236
FRANCE, 1572-1573.
Benewed Civil
War.
FRANCE, 1573-1576.
that of King Charles IX. and restore the state of
France to good order, or to raise up sucli neigh-
boring prince as is manifestly marked out, by his
■virtue and by distinguishing signs, for to be the
liberator of this poor afflicted people. ' In Novem-
ber, 1572, the fourth religious war broke out.
The siege of La Rochelle was its only important
event. Charles IX. and his councillors exerted
themselves in vain to avoid it. There was every-
thing to disquiet them in this enterprise : so sud-
den a revival of the religious war after the grand
blow they had just struck, tlie passionate energy
manifested by the Protestants in asylum at La
Rochelle, and the help they had been led to hope
for from Queen Elizabeth, whom England would
never have forgiven for indifference in this cause.
. . . The king heard that one of the bravest
Protestant chiefs. La Noue, 'Ironarm,' had re-
tired to Mons with Prince Louis of Nassau. The
Duke of Longueville . . . induced him to go to
Paris. The king received him with great favor
, . . and pressed him to go to La Rochelle and
prevail upon the inhabitants to keep the peace.
... La iSToue at last consented, and repaired,
about the end of November, 1572, to a village
close by La Rochelle, whither it was arranged
that deputies from the town would come and
confer with him. . . . After hearing him, the
senate rejected the pacific overtures made to
them by La Noue. ' We have no mind [they
said] to treat specially and for ourselves alone ;
our cause is that of God and of all the churches
of France; we will accept nothing but what
shall seem proper to all our brethren.'" They
then offered to trust themselves under La Noue's
command, notwithstanding the commission by
which he was acting for the king. "La Noue
did not hesitate ; he became, under the authority
of the mayor, Jacques Henri, the military head
of La Rochelle, whither Cliarles IX. had sent
him to make peace. The king authorized him to
accept this singular position. La Noue con-
ducted himself so honorably in it, and everybody
was so convinced of his good faith as well as
bravery, that for three months he commanded
inside La Rochelle, and superintended the prep-
arations for defence, all the while trying to
make the chances of peace prevail. At the end
of February, 1573, he recognized the impossibil-
ity of his double commission, and he went away
from La Rochelle, leaving the place in better
condition than that in which he had found it,
without either king or Rochellese considering
that they had any right to complain of him.
Biron first and then the Duke of Anjou in per-
son took the command of the siege. They
brought up, it is said, 40,000 men and 60 pieces
of artillery. The Rochellese, for defensive
strength, had but 22 companies of refugees or
inhabitants, making in all 3,100 men. The siege
lasted from the 26th of February to the 13th of
June, 1573 ; six assaults were made on the place.
... La Rochelle was saved. Charles IX. was
more and more desirous of peace ; his brother, the
Duke of Anjou, had just been elected King of
Poland; Charles IX. was anxious for him to
leave France and go to take possession of his
new kingdom. Thanks to these complications,
the peace of La Rochelle was signed on the 6th
of July, 1573. Liberty of creed and worship was
recognized in the three towns of La Rochelle,
Montauban, and Nimes. They were not obliged
to receive any royal garrison, on condition of
giving hostages to be kept by the king for two
years. Liberty of worship throughout the ex-
tent of their jurisdiction continued to be recog-
nized in the case of lords high- justiciary. Every-
where else the Reformers had promises of not
being persecuted for their creed, under the obli-
gation of never holding an assembly of more than
ten persons at a time. These were the most
favorable conditions they had yet obtained.
Certainly this was not what Charles IX. had cal-
culated upon when he consented to the massacre
of the Protestants. "— F. P. Guizot, Poptilar Hist,
of France, ch. 33.
A. D. 1573-1576. — Escape of Cond6 and Na-
varre. — Death of Charles IX. — Accession of
Henry IH. — The Fifth Civil War. — Navarre's
repudiation of Catholicism. — The Peace of
Monseur. — The King's mignons and the na-
tion's disgust. — "Catherine . . . had the ad-
dress to procure the crown of Poland for the son
of her predilection, Henry duke of Anjou. She
had lavished her wealth upon the electors for
this purpose. No sooner was the point gained
than she regretted it. The health of Charles
was now manifestly on the decline, and Cather-
ine would fain have retained Henry ; but the
jealousy of the king forbade. After conducting
the duke on his way to Poland the court returned
to St. Germain, and Charles sunk, without hope
or consolation, on his couch of sickness. Even
here he was not allowed to repose. The young
king of Navarre formed a project of escape with
the prince of Conde. The due d'AlenQon,
youngest brother of the king, joined in it. . . .
The vigilance of the queen-mother discovered
the enterprise, which, for her own purposes, she
magnified into a serious plot. Charles was in-
formed that a huguenot army was coming ta
surprise him, and he was obliged to be removed
into a litter, in order to escape. . . . Conde was
the only prince that succeeded in making his
escape. The king of Navarre and the due d'Alen-
<;on were imprisoned." The young king of Na-
varre "had already succeeded by his address,
his frankness, and high character, in rallying to-
his interests the most honourable of the noblesse,
who dreaded at once the perfidious Catherine
and her children ; who had renounced their good
opinion of young Guise after the day of St. Bar-
tholomew ; and who, at the same time professing
Catholicism, were averse to huguenot principles
and zeal. This party, called the Politiques,
professed to follow the middle or neutral course,
which at one time had been that of Catherine of
Medicis ; but she had long since deserted it, and
had joined in all the sanguinary and extreme
measures of her son and of the Guises. Hence
she was especially odious to the new and moder-
ate party of the Politiques, among whom the
family of Montmorency held the lead, Cath-
erine feared their interference at the moment of
the king's death, whilst his successor was absent
in a remote kingdom ; and she swelled the pro-
ject of the princes' escape into a serious con-
spiracy, in order to be mistress of those whom
slie feared. ... In this state of the court Charles
IX. expired on the 30th of May, 1574, after hav-
ing nominated the queen-mother to be regent
during his successor's absence. . . . The career
of the new king [Henry III.], while duke of
Anjou, had been glorious. Raised to the com-
mand of armies at the age of 15, he displayed
extreme courage as well as generalship. He had
1237
FRANCE, 1573-1576.
Henry III. and
his Minions.
FRANCE, 1576-1585.
defeated tlie veteran leader of the protestants at
■Tarnac and at Moncontour ; and the fame of his
exploits had contributed to place him on the
elective tlirone of Poland, which he now occu-
pied. Auguring from his past life, a brilliant
epoch might be anticipated; and yet we enter
upon the most contemptible reign, perhaps, in
the annals of France. . . . Henry was obliged to
run away by stealth from his Polish subjects [see
Poland: A. D. 1574-1590]. When overtaken by
one of the nobles of that kingdom, the monarch,
instead of pleading his natural an.xiety to visit
France and secure his inheritance, excused him-
self by drawing forth the portrait of his mistress,
. . . and declared that it was love which has-
tened his return. At Vienna, however, Henry
forgot both crown and mistress amidst the feasts
that were given him; and he turned aside to
Venice, to enjoy a similar reception from that
ricli republic. . . . The hostile parties were in
the meantime arming. The Politiques, or neu-
tral catholics, for the first time showed them-
selves in the field. They demanded the freedom
of Cosse and of Montmorency, and at length
formed a treaty of alliance with the huguenots.
Henry, after indulging in the ceremony of being
•crowned, was obliged to lead an army into the
field Sieges were undertaken on both sides,
and what is called the fifth civil war raged
openly. It became more serious when the king's
brother joined it. This was the duke of Alen-
•^on, a vain and fickle personage, of whom it
pleased the king to become jealous. Alen^on
fled and joined the malcontents. The reformers,
however, warred but languidly. Both parties
were without active and zealous leaders ; and the
only notable event of this war was a skirmish
in Champagne [the battle of Dormans, in which
both sides lost heavily], where the duke of Guise
received a slight wound in the cheek. From
hence came his surname of ' Le Balafre.'" In
February, 1576, the king of Navarre made his
escape from court. ' ' He bent his course towards
Guienne, and at Niort publicly avowed his ad-
herence to the reformed religion, declaring that
force alone had made him conform to the mass.
It was about this time that the king, in lieu of
leading an army against the malcontents, des-
patched the queen-mother, with her gay and
licentious court, to win back his brother. She
succeeded, though not without making large
concessions [in a treaty called the 'Peace of Mon-
sieur']. The duke of Alen(;on obtained Anjou,
and other provinces in appanage, and henceforth
was styled duke of Anjou. More favourable
terms were granted to the huguenots: they were
allowed ten towns of surety in lieu of six, and
the appointment of a certain number of judges
in the parliament. Such weakness in Henry
disgusted tlie body of the catholics ; and the pri-
vate habits of his life contributed still more, if
possible, than his public measures, to render him
contemptible. He was continually surrounded
by a set of J'oung and idle favourites, whose
affectation it was to imite ferocity with frivolity.
The king showed them such tender affection as
he might evince towards woman ; they even had
tilt unblushing impudence to adopt feminine
habits of dress ; and the monarch passed his time
in adorning them and himself with robes and
ear-rings. . . . The indescribable tastes and
jimusements of Henry and his mignons, as his
favourites were called, . . . raised up through-
out the nation one universal cry of abhorrence
and contempt. "—E. E. Crowe, Hist, of France,
ch. 8-9 (». 1).
Also IK: Lady Jackson, Tlte Last of the Valois,
V. 2, ch. 2-6. — S. Menzies, Royal Favourites, v. 1,
ch. 5.
A. D. 1576-1585.— The rise of the League.—
Its secret objects and aims. — Its alliance with
Philip II. of Spain. — The Pope's Bull against
Navarre and Cond6. — "The famous association
known as the 'Catholic League ' or ' Holy Union,'
took its rise from the strangely indulgent terms
granted to the Huguenots by the ' Peace of Mon-
sieur,' in April, 1576. Pour years had scarcely
elapsed since the bloodstained Eve of St. Bar-
tholomew. It had been hoped that by means of
that execrable crime the Reformation would have
been finally crushed and extinguished in France ;
but instead of this, a treaty was concluded with
the heretics, which placed them in a more favour-
able situation than they had ever occupied be-
fore. ... It was regarded by the majority of
Catholics as a wicked and cowardly betrayal of
their most sacred interests. They ascribed it to
its true source, namely, the hopeless incapacity
of the reigning monarch, Henry III. ; a prince
whose monstrous vices and gross misgovernment
were destined to reduce France to a state of dis-
organization bordering on national ruin. The
idea of a general confederation of Catholics for
the defence of the Faith against the inroads of
heresy had been suggested by the Cardinal of
Lorraine daring the Council of Trent, and had
been favourably entertained at the Court of
Rome. The Duke of Guise was to have been
placed at the head of this alliance ; but his sudden
death changed the face of affairs, and the project
fell into abeyance. The Cardinal of Lorraine
was now no more ; he died at Avignon, at the
age of 50, in December, 1574. . . . Henry, the
third Duke of Guise, inherited in their fullest
extent the ambition, the religious ardour, the
lofty political aspirations, the enterprising spirit,
the personal jtopularity, of his predecessors.
The League of 1576 was conceived entirely in his
interest. He was the leader naturally pointed
out for such a movement; — a movement which,
although its ulterior objects were at first studi-
ously concealed, aimed in reality at substituting
the family of Lorraine for that of Valois on the
throne of France. The designs of tlie confeder-
ates, as set forth in the oinginal manifesto which
was circulated for signature, seemed at first sight
highly commendable, both with regard to reli-
gion and politics. According to tills document,
the Union was formed for three great purposes:
to uphold the Catholic Church; to suppress
heresy ; and to maintain the honour, the author-
ity and prerogatives of the Most Christian king
and his successors. On closer examination, how-
ever, expressions were detected which hinted at
less constitutional projects. . . . Their secret
aims became incontestably manifest soon after-
wards, when one of their confidential agents, an
advocate named David, haijpened to die suddenly
on his return from Rome, and his papers fell into
the hands of tlie Huguenots, who immediately
made them public. ... A change of dynasty in
France was the avowed object of the scheme
thus disclosed. It set forth, in substance, that
the Capetian monarchs were usurpers, — the
throne belonging rightfully to the house of Lor-
raine as the lineal descendants of Charlemagne.
1238
FRANCE, 1576-1585.
The Catholic
League.
FRANCE. 1578-1580.
. . . The Duke of Guise, with the advice and
permission of the Pope, was to imprison Henry
for the rest of liis days in a monastery, after tlie
example of his ancestor Pepin wlien lie dethroned
the Jlerovingian Childeric. Lastly, the heir of
the Carlovingians was to be proclaimed King of
France; and, on assuming the crown, was to
make such arrangements with his Holiness as
would secure the complete recognition of the
sovereignty of the Vicar of Christ, by abrogating
for ever tlie so-called ' liberties of the Gallican
Church.' . . . This revolutionary plot . . . un-
happily, was viewed with cordial sympathy, and
supported with enthusiastic zeal, by many of the
prelates, and a large majority of the parochial
clergy, of France. . . . The death of the Duke
of Anjou, presumptive heir to the throue, in
1584, determined the League to immediate action.
In the event of the king's dying without issue,
which was most probable, — the crown would
now devolve uijon Henry of Bourbon [the King
of Navarre], the acknowledged leader of the
Huguenots. ... In January, 1585, the chiefs
of the League signed a secret treaty at Joinville
with the King of Spain, by which the contracting
parties made common cause for the extirpation
of all sects and heresies in France and the Nether-
lands, and for excluding from the French throne
princes who were heretics, or who ' treated here-
tics with public impunity.' . . . Liberal supplies
of men and money were to be furnished to the
insurgents by Philip from the moment that war
should break out. . . . The Leaguers lost no
time in seeking for their enterprise the all-impor-
tant sanction of the Holy See. For this purpose
they despatched as their envoy to Rome a Jesuit
named Claude Matthieu. . . . The Jesuit frater-
nity in France had embraced with passionate
ardour the anti-royalist cause. . . . His Holiness
[Gregory XIII.], however, was cautious and re-
served. He expressed in general terms his con-
sent to the project of taking up arms against the
heretics, and granted a plenary indulgence to
those who should aid in the holy work. But
he declined to countenance the deposition of the
king by violence. ... At length, however [Sep-
tember 9, 1585], Sixtus was persuaded to fulmi-
nate a bull against the King of Navarre and the
Prince of Conde, in which . . . both culprits,
together with their heirs and posterity were pro-
nounced for ever incapable of succeeding to the
throne of France or any other dignity ; their sub-
jects and vassals were released from their oath
of homage, and forbidden to obey them." — W.
H. Jervis, Hist, of the CInirch of France, v. 1,
ch. 3.
Also in : L. von Ranke, Civil Wars and Mon-
archy in France, ch. 21.
A. D. 1577-1578. — Rapid spread of the
League. — The Sixth Civil War and the Peace
of Bergerac. — Anjou in the Netherlands. — The
League "spread like lightuiug over the whole
face of France ; Conde could find no footing in
Picardy or even in Poitou ; Henry of Navarre
was refused entrance into Bordeaux itself; the
heads of the League, the family-party of the
Dukes of Guise, Mayenne and Nemours, seemed
to carry all before them ; the weak King leant
towards them ; the Queen Mother, intriguing
ever, succeeded in separating Anjou from the
Politiques, and began to seduce Damville. She
hoped once more to isolate the Huguenots and to
use the League to weaken and depress them. . . .
The Court and the League seemed to be in per-
fect harmony, the King ... in a way, sub-
scribed to the League, though the twelve articles
were considerably modified before they were
shown to him. . . . The Leaguers had succeeded
in making war [called the Sixth Civil War —
1577], and winning some successes; but on their
heels came the Court with fresh negociations for
peace. The heart's desire of the King was to
crush the stubborn Huguenots and to destroy the
moderates, but he was afraid to act; and so it
came about that, though Anjou was won away
from them, and compromised on the other side,
and though Damville also deserted them, and
though the whole party was in the utmost dis-
order and seemed likcl}' to disperse, still the
Court offered them such terms that in the end
they seemed to have even recovered ground.
Under the walls of Montpellier, Damville, the
King's general, and Chatillon, the Admiral's son,
at the head of the Huguenots, were actually
manoeuvring to begin a battle, when La Noue
came up bearing tidings of peace, and at the
imminent risk of being shot placed himself be-
tween the two armies, and stayed their uplifted
hands. It was the Peace of Bergerac [confirmed
by the Edict of Poitiers — Sept. 17, 1577], an-
other ineffectual truce, which once more granted
in the main what that of Chastenoy [or the
' Peace of Monseur'] had already promised ; it is>
needless to say that the League would have none
of it; and partisan-warfare, almost objectless,
however oppressive to the country, went on
without a break : the land was overrun by ad-
venturers and bandits, sure sign of political death.
Nothing could be more brutalising or more
brutal : but the savage traits of civil war are less
revolting than the ghastly revelries of the Court.
All the chiefs were alike — neither the King, nor
Henry of Navarre, nor Anjou, nor even the strict
Catholic Guise, disdained to wallow in debauch. "
Having quarreled with his brother, the King,
"Anjou fled, in the beginning of 1578, to Angers,
where, finding that there was a prospect of
amusement in the Netherlands, he turned his
back on the high Catholics, and renewed friend
ship with the Huguenot chiefs. He was invited
to come to the rescue of the distressed Calvinists
in their struggle against PhiUp, and appeared
in the Netherlands in July 1578 [see Nether-
L.\NDs: A.D. 1577-1581, and 1581-1584]."— G.W.
Kitchin, Hist, of France, p. 3, pp. 370-373.
A. D. 1578-1580.— Treaty of N6rac.— The
Seventh Civil 'War, known as the War of the
Lovers. — The Peace of Fleix. — 'The King,
instead of availing himself of this interval of re-
pose [after the Peace of Bergerac] to fortify
himself against his enemies, only sank deeper
and deeper into vice and infamy. . . . The
court resembled at once a slaughter-house and a
brothel, although, amid all this corruption, the
King was the slave of monks and Jesuits whom
he implicit!}' obeyed. It was about this time
(December 1578) that he instituted the military
order of the Holy Ghost, that of St. Michael
having fallen into contempt through being pros-
tituted to unworthy objects. Meanwhile the
Guises were using every effort to rekindle the
war, which Catherine, on the other hand, was
endeavouring to prevent. With this view she
travelled, in August, into the southern provinces,
and had an interview with Henry of Navarre at
Nerac, bringing with her Henry's wife, her
1239
FRANCE, 1578-1580.
The War of the
Lovers.
FRANCE, 1584-1589.
daughter Margaret; a circumstance, liowever,
which did not add to the pleasure of their meet-
ing. Henry received the ladies coldly, and they
retired into Languedoc, where they passed the
remainder of the year. Nevertheless the negocia-
tions were sedulouslj^ pursued ; for a peace with
the Hugonots was, at this time, indispensable to
the Court. ... In February 1579, a secret
treaty was signed at Nerac, by which the con-
cessions granted to the Protestants by the peace
of Berge^ac were much extended. . . . Cather-
ine spent nearly the whole of the 3'ear 1579 in
the south, endeavouring to avert a renewal of
the war by her intrigues, rather than by a faith-
ful observance of the peace. But the King
of Navarre saw through her Italian artifices,
and was prepared to summon his friends and
captains at the shortest notice. The hostilities
wilich he foresaw were not long in breaking out,
and in a way that would seem impossible in any
other country than France. When the King of
Navarre fled from Court in 1576, he expressed
his indifference for two things he had left behind,
the mass and his wife ; Margaret, the heroine of
a thousand amours, was equally indifferent, and
though they now contrived to cohabit together,
it was because each connived at the infidelities
of the other. Henry was in love with Mademoi-
selle Fosseuse, a girl of fourteen, while Margaret
had taken for her gallant the young Viscount of
Turenne, who had lately turned Hugonot. . . .
The Duke of Anjou being at this time disposed
to renew his connection with the Hugonots, Mar-
garet served as the medium of communication
between her brother and her husband ; while
Henry III. , with a view to interrujH this good
understanding, wrote to the King of Navarre to
acquaint him of the intrigues of his wife with
Turenne. Henry was neither surprised nor af-
flicted at this intelligence ; but he laid the letter
before the guilty parties, who both denied the
charge, and Henry affected to believe their pro-
testations. The ladies of the Court of Nerac were
indignant at this act of Henry III., 'the enemy
of women ' ; they pressed their lovers to renew
hostilities against that discourteous monarch;
Anjou added his instances to those of the ladies ;
and in 1580 ensued the war called from its origin
'la guerre des amoureu.x,' or war of the lovers:
the seventh of what are sometimes styled the
wars of ' religion ' I The Prince of Conde, who
lived on bad terms with his cousin, had already
taken the field on his own account, and in No-
vember 1579 had seized on the little town of La
F6re in Picardy. In the spring of 1580 the Prot-
estant chiefs in the south unfurled their banners.
The King of Navarre laid the foundation of his
military fame by the bravery he displayed at
the capture of Cahoi-s; but on the whole the
movement proved a failure. Henry III. had no
fewer than three armies in the field, which were
generally victorious, and the King of Navarre
"found himself menaced in his capital of Nerac by
Marshal Biron. But Henry III., for fear of the
Guises, did not wish to press the Hugonots too
hard, and at length accepted the proffered medi-
ation of the Duke of Anjou, who was at this
time anxious to enter on the protectorate offered
to him by the Flemings. Anjou set off for the
south, accompanied by his mother and her ' flying
squadron ' [of seductive nymphs] ; conferences
were opened at the castle of Fleix in Perigord,
and on November 36th 1580 a treaty was con-
cluded which was almost a literal renewal of
that of Bergerac. Thus an equivocal peace, or
rather truce, was re-established, which proved
of some duration." — T. H. Dyer, Uist. of Modern
Europe, bk. 3, ch. 8 (». 2).
Also in : Due d'Aumale, Hist, of the Princes
de Conde, bk. 2, ch. 1 (v. 2).
A. D. 1584-1589.— Henry of Navarre heir ap-
parent to the throne.— Fresh hostility of the
League. — The Edict of Nemours. — The Pope's
Brutum Fulmen. — War of the Three Henrys.
— Battle of Coutras.— The Day of Barricades
at Paris. — Assassination of Guise. — Assas-
sination of Henry IIL— "The Due d'Anjou
. . . died in 1584; Henri IIL was a worn-out and
feeble invalid ; the reports of the doctors and the
known virtue of the Queen forbad the hope of
direct heirs. The King of Navarre was the
eldest of the legitimate male descendants of
Hugues Capet and of Saint-Louis [see Bourbon,
House of]. But on the one hand he was a re-
lapsed heretic ; on the other, his relationship to
the King was so distant that he could never have
been served heir to him in any civil suit. This
last objection was of small account ; the stringent
rules which govern decisions in private affairs
cannot be made applicable to matters affecting
the tranquillity and well-being of nations. . . .
His religion was the only pretext on which Na-
varre could be excluded. France was, and wished
to remain, Catholic ; she could not submit to a
Protestant King. The managers of the League
understood that this very wide-spread and even
strongly cherished feeling might some day be-
come a powerful lever, but that, in order to use
it, it was very needful for them to avoid offend-
ing the national amour-propre ; and they thought
that they had succeeded in finding the means of
effecting their object. Next to Navarre, the
eldest of the Royal House was his uncle the
Cardinal de Bourbon; the Guises acknowledged
him as heir to the throne and first Prince of the
Blood, under the protection of the Pope and of
the King of Spain. . . . The feeble-minded old
man, whom no one respected, was a mere phan-
tom, and could offer no serious resistance, when
it should be convenient to set him aside. ... In
every class throughout the nation the majority
were anxious to maintain at once French unity
and Catholic unity, disliking the Reformation,
but equally opposed to ultramontane pretensions
and to Spanish ambition. . . . But . . . this
great party, already named the ' parti politique,'
hung loosely together without a leader, and with-
out a policy. For the present it was paralyzed
by the contempt in which the King was held;
while the dislike which was entertained for the
religious opinions of the rightful heir to the
throne seemed to deprive it of all hope for the
future. Henry III. stood in need of the assis-
tance of the King of Navarre; he would will-
ingly have cleared away the obstacle which kept
them apart, and he made an overture with a
view to bring back that Prince to the Catholic
religion. But these efforts could not be success-
ful. The change of creed on the part of the
Bearnais was to be a satisfaction offered to
France, the pledge of a fresh agreement between
the nation and his race, and not a concession to-
the threats of enemies. He was not an un-
believer; still less was he a hypocrite; but he
was placed between two fanatical parties, and
repelled by the excesses of both ; so he doubted.
1240
FRANCE, 1584-1589.
The War of the
Three Henrys.
FRANCE, 1584-1589.
honestly doubted, and as his religious indecision
was no secret, his conversion at the time of which
we are now speaking would have been ascribed
to the worst motives. " As it was, he found it
necessary to quiet disturbing rumors with regard
to the proposals of the King by permitting a
plain account of what had occurred to be made
public. "Henry III., having no other answer
to make to this publication, which justified all
the complaints of the Catholics, replied to it by
the treaty of Nemours and by the edict of July
i[1585]. These two acts annulled all the edicts in
favour of toleration ; and placed at the disposal
■of the League all the resources and all the forces
of the monarchy." Soon afterwards the Pope
issued against Navarre and Conde his bull of
excommunication. By this " the Pontiff did not
deprive the Bourbons of a single friend, and did
not give the slightest fresh ardour to their op-
ponents; but he produced a powerful reaction
among a portion of the clergy, among the magis-
tracy, among all the Royalists ; wounded the na-
tional sensibility, consolidated that union between
the two Princes which he wished to break off,
and rallied the whole of the Reformed party
round their leaders. The Protestant pamphle-
teers replied with no less vehemence, and gave
to the Pontiff's bull that name of ' Brutum ful-
men ' by which it is still known. . . . Still the
sentence launched from the Vaticau had had one
very decided result — it had fired the train of pow-
der; war broke out at once." — Due d'Aumale,
Hist, of the Princes of Conde, bk. 3, ch. 1.—" The
war, called from the three leading actors in it
(Henry of Valois, Henry of Navarre, and Henry
of Guise] the War of the Three Henrys, now
opened in earnest. Seven powerful armies were
marshalled on the part of the King of France
and the League. The Huguenots were weak in
numbers, but strong in the quality of their
troops. An immense bodj' of German ' Reiter '
had been enrolled to act as an auxiliary force,
and for some time had been hovering on the fron-
tiers. Hearing that at last they had entered
France, Henry of Navarre set out from Rochelle
to effect a junction with them. The Duke of
Joyeuse, one of the French King's chief favour-
ites, who had the charge of the army that occu-
pied the midland counties, resolved to prevent
their junction. By a rapid movement he suc-
ceeded in crossing the line of Henry's march and
forcing him into action. The two armies came
in front of each other on a plain near the village
of Coutras, on the 19th of October, 1587. The
Royalist army numbered from 10,000 to 13,000,
the Huguenot from 6,000 to 7, 000 — the usual dis-
parity in numbers ; but Henry's skilful disposi-
tion did more than compensate for his numerical
inferiority. . . . The struggle lasted but an hour,
yet within that hour the Catholic army lost 3,000
men, more than 400 of whom were members of
the first families in the kingdom; 3,000 men were
made prisoners. Not more than a third part of
their entire army escaped. The Huguenots lost
only about 300 men. . . . Before night fell he
[Navarre] wrote a few lines to the French King,
which run thus: 'Sire, my Lord and Brother,—
Thank God, I have beaten yourenemiesand your
army. ' It was but too true that the poor King's
worst enemies were to be found in the very
armies that were marshalled in his name." — W.
Hanna, The Wars of the Huguenots, ch. 6. — " The
victory [at Coutras] had only a moral effect.
Henry lost time by going to lay at the feet of the
Countess of Grammont the flags taken from the
enemy. Meantime the Duke of Guise, north of
the Loire, triumphed over the Germans under
the Baron of Dohna at Vimory, near Jlontargis,
and again near Auneavi (1587). Henrj' III. was
unskilful enough to leave to his rival the glory
of driving them out of the countrv. Henry III.
re-entered Paris. As he passed along, the popu-
lace cried out, ' Saul has killed his thousands,
and David his ten thousands ' ; and a few days
after, the Sorbonne decided that ' the govern-
ment could be taken out of the hands of princes
who were found incapable.' Henry III., alarmed,
forbade the Duke of Guise to come to Paris, and
quartered in the faubourgs 4,000 SwLss and
several companies of the guards. The Sixteen
[chiefs of sixteen sections of Paris, who con-
trolled the League in that city] feared that all
was over ; they summoned the ' Balaf re ' and he
came [May 9, 1588]. Cries of ' Hosannah to the
Son of David ! ' resounded throughout Paris, and
followed him to tlie Louvre. . . . The king and
the chief of the League fortified themselves, one
in the Louvre, the other in the Hotel Guise.
Negotiations were carried on for two days. On
the morning of the 11th the duke, well attended,
returned to the Louvre, and in loud tones de-
manded of the king tliat he should send away his
counsellors, establish the Inquisition, and push
to the utmost the war against the heretics. That
evening the king ordered the companies of the
city guards to hold several positions, and the
next morning he introduced into the city the
Swiss and 3,000 men of the French guards. But
the city guards failed him. In two hours all
Paris was under arms, all the streets were ren-
dered impassable, and the advancing barricades
soon reached the positions occupied by the troops
[whence the insurrection became known as ' the
Day of Barricades ']. At this juncture Guise
came out of his hotel, dressed in a white doublet,
with a small cane in his hand ; saved the Swiss,
who were on the point of being massacred, sent
them back to the king with insulting scorn, and
quieted everj'thing as if by magic. He demanded
the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom
for himself, the convocation of the States at
Paris, the forfeiture of the Bourbons, and, for
his friends, provincial governments and all the
other offices. The queen-mother debated these
conditions for three hours. During this time the
attack was suspended, and Henry III. was thus
enabled to leave the Louvre and make his escape.
The Duke of Guise had made a mistake ; but if
he did not have the king, he had Paris. There
was now a king of Paris and a king of France ;
negotiations were carried on, and to the astonish-
ment of all, Henry III. at length granted what
two months before he had refused in front of the
barricades. He swore that he would not lay
down his arms until the heretics were entirely
exterminated; declared that any non-Catholic
prince forfeited his rights to the throne, appointed
the Duke of Guise lieutenant-general, and con-
voked the States at Blois [October, 1588]. The
States of Blois were composed entirely of Lea-
guers," and were wholly controlled by the Duke
of Guise. The latter despised the king too much
to give heed to repeated warnings which he re-
ceived of a plot against his life. Summoned to
a private interview in the royal cabinet, at an
early hour on the morning of the 23d of December.
1241
FRANCE, 1584-1589.
Henry of Navarre
becomes king.
FRANCE, 1589-1590.
he did not hesitate to present himself, boldly,
alone, and was murdered as he entered, by eight
of the king's body-guard, whom Henry III. had
personally ordered to commit the crime. ' ' Killing
the Duke of Guise was not killing the League.
At the news of his death Paris was stunned for
a moment ; then its fury broke forth. . . . The
Sorbonne decreed ' that the French people were
set free from the oath of allegiance taken to
Henry III.'. . . Henry III. had gained nothing
by the murder; . . . but he had helped the for-
tunes of the king of Navarre, into whose arms
he was forced to cast himself. . . . The junction
of the Protestant and the royal armies under the
same standard completely changed the nature of
the war. It was no longer feudal Protestantism,
but the democratic League, which threatened
royalty ; monarchy entered into a struggle with
the Catholic masses in revolt against it. Henry
III. called together, at Tours, his useless Parlia-
ment, and issued a manifesto against Mayenne
and the chiefs of the League. Henry of Navarre
carried on the war energetically. In two months
he was master of the territory between the Loire
and the Seine, and 15,000 Swiss and lanzknechts
joined him. On the evening of July 30th, 1.589,
the two kings, with 40,000 men, appeared before
Paris. The Parisians could see the long line
of the enemies' fires gleaming in a vast semi-
circle on the left bank of the Seine. The king
of Navarre established his headquarters at !Meu-
don ; Henry III. at Saint-Cloud. The great city
was astounded ; the people had lost energy ; but
the fury was concentrated in the hearts of the
chiefs and in the depths of the cloisters. . . .
The arm of a fanatic became the instrument of
the general fury, and put into practice the doc-
trine of tyrannicide more than once asserted in
the schools and the pulpit. The assault was to
be made on August 2d. On the morning of the
previous day a young friar from the convent of
the Dominicans, Jacques Clement, came out from
Paris," obtained access to the king by means of
a forged letter, and stabbed him in the abdomen,
being, himself, slain on the spot by the royal
guards. Henry III. "died the same night, and
with him the race of Valois became extinct. The
aged Catherine de' Medici had died six months
before." — V. Duruy, Hist, of France (ahndged),
ch. 45.
Also in: L. von Ranke, Cinl Wars and ifon-
archy in France, IQth and \lth Centuries, ch. 33-
25. — W. 8. Browning, Hist, of the Huguenots, ch.
35-43.
A. D. 1585. — Proffered sovereignty of the
United Netherlands declined by Henry III.
See Netherlands: A. D. 1585-1586.
A. D. 1589-1590. — Henry of Navarre as
Henry IV. of France. — His retreat to Nor-
mandy. — The battles at Arques. — Battle of
Ivry. — " On being made aware that all hope was
over, this King [Henry III.], whose life had been
passed in folly, vanity and sensuality . . . pre-
pared for death like a patriot king and a martyr.
He summoned his nobles to his bedside, and told
them that his only regret in dying was that he
left the kingdom in disorder, and as the best mode
of remedying the evil he recommended them to
recognize the King of Navarre, to whom the
kingdom belonged of right ; making no account
of the religious difference, because that king,
with his sincere and earnest nature, must finally
return to the bosom of the Church. Then turn-
ing to Henry, he solemnly warned him : ' Cousin,'
he said, ' I assure you that you will never be
King of France if you do not become Catholic,
and if you do not make your peace with the
Church.' Directly afterwards he breathed his
last, reciting the 'Miserere.' This account is
substantially confirmed by Peretixe. According
to Sully, Henry, hearing that the King had been
stabbed, started for St. Cloud, attended by Sully,
but did not arrive till he was dead ; and D'Au-
bigny says : ' When the King of Navarre en-
tered the chamber where the body was lying, he
saw amidst the bowlings some pulling their hats
down upon their brows, or throwing them on the
ground, clenching their fists, plotting, clasping
each other's hands, making vows and promises.'
. . . Henry's situation was embarrassing in the
extreme, for only a small number of the Catholic
nobles gave in an unqualified adhesion : a power-
ful body met and dictated the conditions upon
which alone they would consent to his being pro-
claimed King of France: the two first being that
within six months he would cause himself to be
instructed in the Holy Catholic Apostolic Faith;
and that during this interval he would nominate
no Huguenot to offices of State. He replied that
he was no bigot, and would readily seek instruc-
tion in the tenets of the Romish faith, but de-
clined pledging himself to any description of
exclusion or intolerance. M. Guadet computes
that nine-tenths of his French subjects were
Catholic, and the temper of the majority may be
inferred from what was taking place in Paris,
where the news of the late King's death was the
signal for the most unseemly rejoicing. . . .
Far from being in a condition to reduce the re-
fractory Parisians, Henry was obliged to abandon
the siege, and retire towards Normandy, where
the expected succours from England might most
easily reach him. Sully says that this retreat
was equally necessary for the safety of his per-
son and the success of his affairs. He was tem-
porarily abandoned by several of the Huguenot
leaders, who, serving at their own expense, were
obliged from time to time to go home to recruit
their finances and their followers. Others were
made lukewarm by the prospect of his becoming
Catholic ; so that he was no longer served with
enthusiasm by either party; and when, after
making the best arrangements in his power, he
entered Nonnandy, he had with him only 3,000
French foot, two regiments of Swiss and 1,300
horse; with which, after being joined by the
Due de Montpensier with 200 gentlemen and
1,500 foot, he drew near to Rouen, relying on a
secret understanding within the walls which
might give him possession of the place. Whilst
preparations were making for the siege, sure in-
telligence was brought that the Due de Mayenne
was seeking him with an army exceeding 30,000;
but, resolved to make head against them till the
last extremity, Henry entrenched himself before
Arques, which was only accessible by a cause-
way." A series of engagements ensued, begin-
ning September 15, 1589; but finding that he
could not dislodge his antagonist, Mayenne with-
drew after some ten days of fighting, moving his
army towards Picardy and leaving the road to
Paris open. "Being too weak to recommence
the siege or to occupy the city if taken by as-
sault, Henry resolved to give the Parisians a
sample of what they might expect if they per-
severed in their contumacy, and gave orders for
1242
FRANCE, 1589-1590.
Battle of Ivry.
FRANCE, 1590.
attacking all the suburbs at once. They were
taken and sacked. Davila states that the plun-
der was so abundant that the whole camp was
wonderfully relieved iind sustained." From this
attack on the Parisian suburbs, Henry proceeded
to Tours, where he hekl his court for a time.
Early in March, 1590, he laid siege to Dreux.
"The Due de Mayenne, reinforced by Spani.sh
troops from the Low Countries under Count
Egmont, left Paris to effect a diversion, and
somewhat unexpectedly found himself compelled
to accept the battle which was eagerly pressed
upon him. This was the renowned battle of
Ivry. The armies presented much the same con-
trast as at Coutras. The numerical superiority
on one side, the Catholic, was more than compen-
sated by the quality of the troops on the other.
Henry's soldiers, as described by De Thou, were
armed to the teeth. ' They displayed neither
scarf nor decoration, but their accoutrements in-
spired grim terror. The army of the Due, on
the contrary, was magnificent in equipment.
The officers wore bright-coloured scarves, while
gold glittered upon their helmets and lances.'
The two armies were confronted on the 13th
of March, 1590. but it was getting dark before
the dispositions were completed, and the battle
was deferred till the following morning. The
King passed the night like Henry V. at Agin-
court, and took only a short rest in the open air on
the field. ... At daybreak he mounted his horse,
and rode from rank to rank, pausing from time
to time to utter a brief exhortation or encourage-
ment. Prayers were offered up by the Huguenot
ministers at the head of each division, and the
bishop [Perefixe] gives the concluding words
of that in which Divine aid was invoked by the
King : ' But, Lord, if it has pleased Thee to dis-
pose otherwise, or Thou seest that I ought to be
one of those kings whom Thou punishest in Thy
wrath, grant, that I may be this day the victim
of Thy Holy will : so order it that my death may
deliver France from the calamities of war, and
that my blood be the last shed in this quarrel. '
Then, putting on his helmet with the white
plume, before closing tlie vizor, he addressed the
collected leaders ; — ' My friends, if you share my
fortune this day, I also share yours. I am re
solved to conquer or to die with you. Keep your
ranks firmly, I beg; if the heat of the combat
compels you to quit them, think always of the
rally; it is the gaining of the battle. You will
make it between the three trees which you see
there [pointing to three pear-trees on an emi-
nence], and if you lose your ensigns, pennons and
banners, do not lose sight of my white plume :
you will find it always on the road of honour and
victory.' It so chanced that his white plume
was the actual rallying-point at the most critical
moment. . . . His standard-bearer fell: a page
bearing a white pennon was struck down at his
side ; and the rumour was beginning to spread
that he himself was killed, when the sight of his
bay horse and white plume, with the animating
sound of his voice, gave fresh courage to all
around and brought the bravest of his follow-
ers to the front. The result is told in one of his
own missives. After stating that the battle be-
gan between 11 and 12, he continues; 'In less
than an hour, after having discharged all their
anger in two or three charges which they made
and sustained, all their cavalry began to shift
for themselves, abandoning their infantry, which
was very numerous. Seeing which, their Swiss
appealed to my pity and surrendered — colonels,
captains, soldiers, and colours. The lansquenets
and French had no time to form this resolution,
for more than 1,200 were cut to pieces, and the
rest dispersed into the woods at the mercy of the
peasants.' He urged on the pursuers, crying
' Spare the French, and down with the foreigners.'
. . . Instead of pushing on towards Paris, which
it was thought would have opened its gates to a
conqueror iu the flush of victory, Henry lingered
at Mantes, where he improvised a Court, which
his female favourites were summoned to attend. "
— Heni-y IV. of France {Quarterly Rev., Oct.,
1879).
Also in: H. M. Baird, The Hnyaenots and
Henry of Navarre, ch. 11 (». 2). — Duke of Sully,
Memoirs, bk. 3 (v. 1).— G. P. R. James, Life of
Henry IV.. hk. 11-13 (;■. 3). .
A. D. 1590. — The siege of Paris and its hor-
rors. — Relief at the hands of the Spaniards
under Parma. — Readiness of the League to
give the crown to Philip IL — "The king, yield-
ing to the councils of Biron and other catholics,
declined attacking the capital, and preferred
waiting the slow, and in his circumstances emi-
nently hazardous, operations of a regular siege.
. . . Whatever may have been the cause of the
delay, it is certain that the golden fruit of vic-
tory was not plucked, and that although the con-
federate army had rapidly dissolved, in conse-
quence of their defeat, the king's own forces
manifested as little cohesion. And now began
that slow and painful siege, the details of which
are as terrible, but as universally known, as those
of any chapters in the Ijlood-stained history of
the century. Henry seized upon the towns
guarding the rivers Seine and Marne, twin nurses
of Paris. By controlling the course of those
streams as well as that of the Yonne and Oise —
especially by taking firm possession of Lagny on
the Marne, whence a bridge led from the Isle of
France to the Brie country — great thorough-
fare of wine and corn — and of Corbeil at the
junction of the little river Essonne with the
Seine — it was easy in that age to stop the vital
circulation of the imperial city. By midsum-
mer, Paris, unquestionably the first city of Eu-
rope at that day, was in extremities. . . . Rarely
have men at any epoch defended their fatherland
against foreign oppression with more heroism
than that which was manifested by the Parisians
of 1590 in resisting religious toleration, and in
obeying a foreign and priestly despotism. Men,
women, and children cheerfully laid down their
lives by thousands in order that the papal legate
and the king of Spain might trample upon that
legitimate sovereign of France who was one day
to become the idol of Paris and of the whole
kingdom. A census taken at the beginning of
the siege had showed a population of 200,000
souls, with a sufficiency of provisions, it was
thought, to last one month. But before the ter-
rible summer was over — so completely had the
city been invested — -the bushel of wheat was
worth 360 crowns. . . . The flesh of horses,
asses, dogs, cats, rats, had become rare luxuries.
There was nothing cheap, said a citizen bitterly,
but sermons. And the priests and monks of
every order went daily about the streets, preach-
ing fortitude in that great resistance to heresy.
. . . Trustworthy eye-witnesses of those dread-
ful days have placed the number of the dead during
1243
FRANCE, 1590.
Siege of Paris.
FRANCE, 1591-1593.
the summer at 30,000. . . . The hideous details
of the most dreadful sieges recorded in ancient
or modern times were now reproduced in Paris.
. . . The priests . . . persuaded the populace
that it was far more righteous to kill their own
children, if they had no food to give them, than
to obtain food by recognizing a heretic king. It
was related, too, and believed, that in some in-
stances mothers had salted the bodies of their
dead children and fed upon them, day by day,
until the hideous repast would no longer sup-
port their own life. . . . The bones of the dead
were taken in considerable quantities from the
cemeteries, ground into flour, baked into bread,
and consumed. It was called Madame Montpen-
sier's cake, because the duchess earnestly pro-
claimed its merits to the poor Parisians. ' She
■was never known to taste it herself, however,'
bitterly observed one who lived in Paris through
that horrible summer. She was right to abstain,
for all who ate of it died. . . . Lansquenets and
other soldiers, mad with hunger and rage, when
they could no longer find dogs to feed on, chased
children through the streets, and were known in
several instances to kill and devour them on the
spot. . . . Such then was the condition of Paris
during that memorable summer of tortures.
What now were its hopes of deliverance out of
this Gehenna ? The trust of Frenchmen was
in Philip of Spain, whose legions, under com-
mand of the great Italian chieftain [Ale.xander
Farnese, Duke of Parma, commander of the
■ Spanish forces in the Netherlands], were daily
longed for to save them from rendering obedi-
ence to their lawful priuce. For even the king
of straw — the imprisoned cardinal [Cardinal de
Bourbon, whom the League had proclaimed
king, under the title of Charles X., on the death
of Henry III.] — was now dead, and there was
not even the effigy of any other sovereign than
Henry of Bourbon to claim authority in France.
Mayenne, in the course of long interviews with
the Duke of Parma at Conde and Brussels, had
expressed his desire to see Philip king of France,
and had promised his best efforts to bring about
such a result." Parma, who was struggling
hard with the obstinate revolt in the Netherlands,
having few troops and little money to pay them
with, received orders from his Spanish master to
relieve Paris and conquer France. He obeyed
the command to the best of his abilities. He
left the Netherlands at the beginning of August,
with 13,000 foot and 3,000 horse; effected a
junction with Mayenne at !Meau.\:, ten leagues
from Paris, on the 32d, and the united armies —
5,000 cavalry and 18,000 foot — arrived at Chelles
on the last day of summer. "The two great
captains of the age had at last met face to face.
. . . The scientific duel which was now to take
place was likely to task the genius and to bring
into full display the peculiar powers and defects
of the two. " The winner in the duel was the
Duke of Parma, who foiled Henry's attempts to
bring him to battle, while he captured Lagny
under the king's eyes. "The bridges of C'haren-
ton and St. Maur now fell into Farnese's hands
without a contest. In an incredibly short space
of time provisions and munitions were poured
into the starving city, 2,000 boat-loads arriving
in a single day. Paris was relieved. Ale.xander
had made his demonstration and solved the prob-
lem. . . . The king was now in worse plight
than ever. His army fell to pieces. His cava-
liers, cheated of their battle, and having neither
food nor forage, rode off by hundreds every
day. " He made one last attempt, by a midnight
assault on the city, but it failed. Then he fol-
lowed the Spaniards — whom Parma led back to
the Netherlands early in November — but could
not bring about a battle or gain any important
advantage. But Paris, without the genius of
Alexander Farnese in its defence, was soon re-
duced to as complete a blockade as before.
Lagny was recovered by the besieging royalists,
the Seine and the Marne were again fast-locked,
and the rebellious capital deprived of supplies.
— J. L. Motley, Hist, of tfie United Netherlands,
ch. 23 {v. 3).
Also m: M. W. Freer, Hist, of the Reign of
Henry IV.. bk. 1.— C. D. Yonge, Hist, of France
under the Bourbons, ch. 2.
A. D. 1591-1593.— The siege of Rouen and
Parma's second interference. — General ad-
vancement of Henry's cause. — Restiveness of
the Catholics. — The King's abjuration of
Protestantism. — "It seemed as if Henri IV.
had undertaken the work of Penelope. After
each success, fresh difficulties arose to render it
fruitless. . . . Now it was the Swiss who re-
fused to go on without their pay ; or Elizabeth
who exacted seaports in return for fresh supplies;
or the Catholics who demanded the conversion of
the King ; or the Protestants who complained of
not being protected. Depressed spirits had to be
cheered, some to be satisfied, others to be reas-
sured or restrained, allies to be managed, and all
to be done with very little money and without
any sacrifice of the national interests. Henri was
equal to all, both to war and to diplomacy, to
great concerns and to small. . . . His pen was as
active as his sword. The collection of his letters
is full of the most charming notes. . . . Public
opinion, which was already influential and thirst-
ing for news, was not neglected. Every two or
three months a little publication entitled ' A
Discourse,' or 'An Authentic Narrative,' or
' Account of all that has occurred in the King's
Army,' was circulated widely. . . . Thus it was
that by means of activity, patience, and tact,
Henri IV. was enabled to retrieve his fortunes
and to rally his party ; so that by the end of the
year 1591, he found himself in a position to
undertake an important operation. . . . The
King laid siege to Rouen in December, 1591.
He was at the head of the most splendid army
he had ever commanded ; it numbered upwards
of 35,000 men. This was not too great a number ;
for the fortifications were strong, the garrison
numerous, well commanded by Villars, and
warmly supported by the townspeople. The
siege had lasted for some months when the King
learned that Mayenne had at last made the Duke
of Parma to understand the necessity of saving
Rouen at all hazards. Thirty thousand Spanish
and French Leaguers had just arrived on the
Sorame. Rouen, however, was at the last gasp ;
Henri could not make up his mind to throw
away the fruits of so much toil and trouble ; he
left all his infantry under the walls, under the
command of Biron, and marched oflE with his
splendid cavalry. " He attacked the enemy im-
prudently, near Aumale, February 5, met with
a repulse, was wounded and just missed being
taken prisoner in a precipitate retreat. But
both armies were half paralyzed at this time by
dissensions among their chiefs. That of the
1244
FRANCE, 1591-1593.
Henry's Abjuration
of Protestantism,
FRANCE, 1593-1598.
Leaguers fell back to the Somme ; but in April it
approached Rouen again, and Parma was able,
despite all Henri's efforts, to enter tlie town. This
last clieck to the King "was tlie signal for a gen-
eral desertion, Henri, left with only a small
corps of regular troops and a few gentlemen, was
obliged to retire rapidly upon Pont de I'Arche.
The Duke of Parma did not follow him. Always
vigilant, he wislied before everything to establish
himself on the Lower Seine, and laid siege to
■Caudebec, which was not likely to detain him
long. But he received during that operation a
severe wound, which compelled him to hand over
the command to Mayenne. " The incompetence
of the latter soon lost all the advantages which
Parma had gained. Henri's supporters rallied
around him again almost as quickly as they had
dispersed. "The Leaguers were pushed back
upon the Seine and confined in tlie heart of the
Pays de Caux. They were without provisions ;
Mayenne was at his wits' end ; he had to resort for
suggestions and for orders to the bed of suffering
on which the Duke of Parma was held down by
his wound." The great Italian soldier, dying
though he was, as the event soon proved, directed
operations which baffled the keen watchfulness
and penetration of his antagonist, and extricated
his army without giving to Henri the chance for
battle which he sought. The Spanish army re-
tired to Flemish territory. In tlie meantime,
Henri's cause was being advanced in the north-
east of his kingdom by the skill and valor of
Turenne, then beginning his great career, and
experiencing vicissitudes in the southeast, where
Lesdiguiferes was contending with the mercenaries
of the Pope and the Duke of Savoy, as well as
with his countrymen of the League. He had de-
feated them with awful slaughter at Pontcharra,
September 19, 1591, and he carried the war next
j'ear into the territories of the Duke of Savoy,
seeking help from the Italian Waldenses which
he does not seem to have obtained. " Neverthe-
less tlie king had still some formidable obstacles
to overcome. Three years had run their course
since he had promised to become instructed in
the Catholic religion, and there were no signs as
yet that he was preparing to fulfil this undertak-
ing. The position in which lie found himself,
and tlie importance and activity of his military
operations, had hitlierto been a sufficient explana-
tion of his delay. But the war had now changed
its character. The King had gained brilliant suc-
cesses. There was no longer any large army in
the field against liim. Nothing seemed to be
now in the way to hinder him from fulfilling his
promise. And yet he always evaded it. He had
to keep on good terms with Elizabeth and the
Protestants; he wished to make his abjuration
the occasion for an agreement with the Court of
Rome, which took no steps to smooth over his
difficulties ; and lastly, he shrank from taking a
step which is always painful when it is not the
fruit of honest conviction. This indecision
doubled the ardour of his enemies, prevented
fresh adhesions, discouraged and divided his old
followers. ... A third party, composed of
bishops and Royalist noblemen, drew around the
cousins of Henri FV. . the Cardinal de Vendome
and the Comte de Soissons. . . . The avowed
object of this third party was to raise one of
these two Princes to the throne, if the Head of
their House did not forthwith enter the bosom of
the Catholic Church. And finally, the deputies
of the cities and provinces who had been called
to Paris by Mayenne were assembling there for
the election of a king. ' The Satire of Menippee '
has handed down the States of the League to
immortal ridicule; but however -decried that as-
sembly has been, and deserved to be, it decided
the conversion of Henri IV. : he does not attempt
in his despatches to deny this. ... In order to
take away every excuse for such an election, he
entered at once into conference with the Catholic
theologians. After some very serious discussion,
much deeper than a certain saying which has
become a proverb [that ' Paris is certainly worth a.
Mass'] would seem to imply, he abjured the
Protestant religion on the 35th of July, 1593, be-
fore the Archbishop of Bourges. The League
liad received its death-blow." — Due d'Aumale,
Hist, of the Princes de Condi, bk. 2, ch. 3 (». 3). —
' ' The news of the abj uration produced in the minds
of honest men, far and near, the most painful im-
pression. Politicians might applaud an act in-
tended to conciliate the favor of the great majority
of the nation, and extol the astuteness of the
king in choosing the most opportune moment for
his change of religion — the moment when he
would secure the support of the Roman Catho-
lics, fatigued by the length of the war and too
eager for peace to question very closely the sin-
cerity of the king's motives, without forfeiting
the support of the Huguenots. But men of con-
science, judging Henry's conduct by a standard
of morality immutable and eternal, passed a
severe sentence of condemnation upon the most
flagrant instance of a betrayal of moral convic-
tions which the age had known. " — H. M. Baird,
The Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, eh. 13 {v.
2). — " What the future history of France would
have been if Henry had clung to his integrity, is
known only to the Omniscient; but, with the
annals of France in our hands, we have no diffi-
culty in perceiving that the day of his impious,
because pretended conversion, was among the
' dies nefasti ' of his country. It restored peace
indeed to that bleeding land, and it gave to him-
self an undisputed reign of seventeen years; but
he found them years replete with cares and terrors,
and disgraced by many shameful vices, and at last
abruptly terminated by the dagger of an assassin.
It rescued France, indeed, from the evils of a dis-
puted succession, but it consigned her to two
centuries of despotism and misgoverument. It
transmitted the crown, indeed, to seven in suc-
cession of the posterity of Henry ; but of tliem
one died on the scaffold, three were deposed by
insurrections of their subjects, one has left a
name pursued by unmitigated and undying in-
famy, and another lived and died in a monastic
melancholy, the feeble slave of his own minister."
— Sir J. Stephen, Lect's on the Hist, of Fi-ance,
lect. 16.
Also in: P. F. Willert, Henry of Navarre and
the Huguenots of France, ch. 5-6.
A. D. 1593-1598. — Henry's winning of Paris.
— The first attempt upon his life. — Expulsion
of Jesuits from Paris. — War with Spain. — The
Peace of Vervins. — "A truce of three months
had been agreed upon [August 1, 1593], during
which many nobles and several important towns
made their submissions to the King. Many,
however, still held out for the League, and
among them Paris, as well as Rheims, by ancient
usage the city appropriated to the coronation of
the kings of France. Henry IV. deemed tha-i;
1245
FRANCE, 1593-1598.
Henry^s Successes.
FRANCE, 1593-1598.
ceremony indispensable to sanctify his cause in
the eyes of the people, and he therefore caused
it to be performed at Chartres by the bishop of
that place, February 37th 1594. But he could
hardly look upon himself as King of France so
long as Paris remained in the hands of a faction
which disputed his right, and he therefore
strained every nerve to get possession of that
capital. ... As he wished to get possession of
the city without bloodshed, he determined to at-
tempt it by corrupting the commandant. This
was Charles de Cosse, Count of Brissac. . . .
Henry promised Brissac, as the price of his ad-
mission into Paris, the sum of 200,000 crowns
and an annual pension of 20,000, together with
the governments of Corbeil and Mantes, and the
continuance to him of his marshal's baton. To
the Parisians was offered an amnesty from which
only criminals were to be e.xcepted ; the con-
firmation of all their privileges ; and the prohi-
bition of the Protestant worship within a radius
of ten leagues. . . . Before daybreak on the
morning of the 22nd March 1594 Brissac opened
the gates of Paris to Henry's troops, who took
possession of the city without resistance, except
at one of the Spanish guard-houses, where a few
soldiers were killed. When all appeared quiet,
Henry himself entered, and was astonished at
being greeted with joyous cheers. ... He gave
manifold proofs of forbearance and good temper,
fulfilled all the conditions of his agreement, and
allowed the Spaniards [4,000] to withdraw un-
molested." In May, 1594, Henry laid siege to
Laon, which surrendered in August. "Its e.x-
ample was soon followed by Chateau Thierry,
Amiens, Cambrai and Noyon. The success of
the King induced the Duke of Lorraine and the
Duke of Guise to make their peace with him. " In
November, an attempt to kill the King was made
by a young man named Jean Chatel, who con-
fessed that he attended the schools of the Jesuits.
"All the members of that order were arrested,
and their papers examined. One of them, named
Jean Guignard, on whom was found a treatise
approving the murder of Henry III. , and main-
taining tliat his successor deserved a like fate,
was condemned to the gallows: and the re-
mainder of the order were banished from Paris,
January 8th 1595, as corrupters of youth and
enemies of the state. This example, however,
was followed only by a few of the provincial
cities. The irritation caused by this event seems
to have precipitated Henry I'V. into a step which
he had been some time meditating : a declaration
of war against his ancient and most bitter enemy
Philip II. (January 17th 1595). The King of
Spain, whom the want of money had prevented
from giving the League much assistance during
the two preceding years, was stung into fury by
this challenge ; and he immediately ordered Don
Fernando de Velasco, constable of Castile, to
join Mayenne in Franche Comte with 10,000
men. Velasco, however, was no great captain,
and little of importance was done. The only
action worth mentioning is an affair of cavalry
at Fontaine Fran9aise (June 6th 1595), in which
Henry displayed his usual bravery, or rather
rashness, but came off victorious. He then over-
ran nearly all Franche Comte without meeting
with any impediment from 'Velasco, but retired
at the instance of the Swiss, who entreated him
to respect the neutrality of that province. Mean-
while Henry had made advances to Mayenne,
who was disgusted with Velasco and the Span-
iards, and on the 25th September Mayenne, in
the name of the League, signed with the King a
truce of three months, with a view to regulate
the conditions of future submission. An event
had already occurred which placed Henry in a
much more favourable position with his Roman
Catholic subjects; he had succeeded [September,
1595] in effecting his reconciliation with the
Pope. . . . The war on the northern frontiers had
not been going on so favourably for the King. "
In January, 1595, "Philip II. ordered the Span-
iard Fuentes, who, till the arrival of Albert [the
Archduke], conducted the government of the
Netherlands, to invade the north of France ; and
Fuentes . . . having left Mondragone with suf-
ficient forces to keep Prince Maurice in check,
setoff with 15,000 men, with the design of re-
covering Cambrai. Catelet and Doullens yielded
to his arms ; Ham was betrayed to him by the
treachery of the governor, and in August Fuentes
sat down before Cambrai. . . . The Duke of
Anjou had made over that place to his mother,
Catherine de' Medici, who had appointed Balagni
to be governor of it. During the civil wars of
France, Balagni had established himself there as
a little independent sovereign, and called himself
Prince of Cambrai ; but after the discomfiture of
the League he had been compelled to declare
himself, and had acknowledged his allegiance to
the King of France. His extortion and tyranny
having rendered him detested by the inhabitants,
they . . . delivered Cambrai to the Spaniards,
October 2nd. Fuentes then returned into the
Netherlands. . . . The Cardinal Archduke Albert
arrived at Brussels in February 1596, when
Fuentes resigned his command. . . . Henry IV.
had been engaged since the winter in the siege
of La FSre, a little town in a strong situation at
the junction of the Serre and Oise. He had
received reinforcements from England as well
as from Germany and Holland. . . . Albert
marched to Valenciennes with about 20,000 men,
with the avowed intention of relieving La FSre ;.
but instead of attempting that enterprise, he
despatched De Rosne, a French renegade . . .
with the greater part of the forces, to surprise
Calais; and that important place was taken by
assault, April 17th, before Henry could arrive
for its defence. La FSre surrendered May 22nd ;
and Henry then marched with his army towards
the coast of Picardy, where he endeavoured, but
in vain, to provoke the Spaniards to give him
battle. After fortifying Calais and Ardres, Al-
bert withdrew again into the Netherlands. . . .
Elizabeth, alarmed at the occupation by the
Spaniards of a port which afforded such facilities,
for the invasion of England, soon afterwards con-
cluded another offensive and defensive alliance
with Henry IV. (May 24th), in which the con-
tracting parties pledged themselves to make no-
separate peace or truce with Philip II." The
Dutch joined in this treaty; but the Protestant
princes of Germany refused to become parties to
it. "The treaty, however, had little effect."
Early in 1597, the Spaniards dealt Henry an
alarming blow, by surprising and capturing the
city of Amiens, gaining access to it by an in-
genious stratagem. But Henry recovered the
place in September, after a vigorous siege. He
also put down a rising, under the Duke de
Mercoeur, in Brittany, defeating the rebels at
Dinan, while his lieutenant, Lesdigui^res, In the
1246
FRANCE, 1593-1598.
The Edict of
Nantes.
FRANCE, 1598-1599.
southeast, invaded Savoy once more, taking Mau-
rienne, and paralyzing the hostile designs of its
Duke. The malignant Spanish king, suffering
and near his end, discouraged and tired of the
war, now sought to make peace. Both the Dutch
and the English refused to treat with hira ; but
Henry IV., notwithstanding the pledges given in
1596 to his allies, entered into negotiations which
resulted in the Treaty of Vervins, signed May 3,
1598. " By the Peace of Vervins the Spaniards
restored to France Calais, Ardres, Doullens, La
Capelle, and Le Catelet in Picardy, and Blavet
(Port Louis) in Brittany, of all their conquests
retaining only the citadel of Cambrai. The rest
of the conditions were referred to the treaty of
Cateau-Cambresis, which Henry had stipulated
should form the basis of the negociations. The
Duke of Savoy was included in the peace."
While this important treaty was pending, in April,
1598, Henry quieted the anxieties of his Hugue-
not subjects by the famous Edict of Nantes. —
T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 3, ch.
10-11 (V. 2).
Also in : Lady Jackson, The First of t?ie Bour-
bons, V. 1, ch. 14-18, and v. 2, ch. 1-7. — J. L.
Motley, Hist, of the United NetJierlands, ch. 29-
35 (v. 3).— R. Watson, Hist, of the Reign of Philip
11. , bk. 23-24.
A. D. 1598-1599.— The Edict of Nantes.— For
the purpose of receiving the submission of the
Duke of Mercoeur and the Breton insurgents, the
king proceeded down the Loire, and "reached
the capital of Brittany, the commercial city of
Nantes, on the 11th of April, 1598. Two days
later he signed the edict which has come to be
known as the Edict of Nantes [and which had
been under discussion for some months with rep-
resentatives of a Protestant assembly in session
at ChS,tellerault]. . . . The Edict of Nantes is a
long and somewhat complicated document. Be-
sides the edict proper, contained in 95 public
articles, there is a further series of 56 ' secret ' ar-
ticles, and a ' brevet ' or patent of the king, all
of which were signed on the 13th of April ; and
these documents are supplemented by a second
set of 23 ' secret ' articles, dated on the last day
of the same month. The first of these four
papers is expressly declared to be a ' perpetual
and irrevocable edict. "... Our chief concern
being with the fortunes of the Huguenots, the
provisions for the re-establishment of the Roman
Catholic worship, wherever in the course of the
events of the last 30 years that worship had been
interfered with or banished, need not claim our
attention. For the benefit of the Protestants the
cardinal concession was liberty to dwell anywhere
in the royal dominions, without being subjected to
inquiry, vexed, molested, or constrained to do any-
thing contrary to their conscience. As respects
public worship, while perfect equality was not
established, the dispositions were such as to
bring it within the power of a Protestant in any
part of the kingdom to meet his fellow-believers
for the holiest of acts, at least from time to time.
To every Protestant nobleman enjoying that ex-
tensive authority known as 'haute justice,' and
to noblemen in Normandy distinguished as pos-
sessors of 'fiefs de haubert,' the permission was
granted to have religious services on all occa-
sions and for all comers at their principal resi-
dence, as well as on other lands whenever they
themselves were present. Noblemen of inferior
jurisdiction were allowed to have worship on
their estates, but only for themselves and their
families. In addition to these seigniorial rights,
the Protestant ' people ' received considerable
accessions to the cities where they might meet for
public religious purposes. The exercise of their
worship was authorized in all cities and places
where such worship had been held on several oc-
casions in the years 1596 and 1597, up to the month
of August; and in all places in which worship
had been, or ought to have been, established In
accordance with the Edict of 1577 [the edict of
Poitiers — see above: A. D. 1577-1578], as inter-
preted by the Conference of Nerac and the Peace
of Fleix [see above: A. D. 1578-1580]. But in
addition to these, a fresh gift of a second city in
every bailiwick and senechaussee of the kingdom
greatly Increased the facilities enjoyed by the
scattered Huguenots for reaching the assemblies
of their fellow-believers. . . . Scholars of both
religions were to be admitted without distinction
of religion to all universities, colleges, and schools
throughout France. The same impartiality was
to extend to the reception of the sick in the hos-
pitals, and to the poor in the provision made for
their relief. More than this, the Protestants
were permitted to establish schools of their own
In all places where their worship was authorized.
. . . The scandal and inhumanity exhibited In the
refusal of burial to the Protestant dead, as well
in the disinterment of such bodies as had been
placed in consecrated ground, was henceforth
precluded by the assignment of portions of the
public cemeteries or of new cemeteries of their
own to the Protestants. The civil equality of the
Protestants was assured by an article which de-
clared them to be admissible to all public posi-
tions, dignities, offices, and charges, and forbade
any other examination Into their qualifications,
conduct, and morals than those to which their
Roman Catholic brethren were subjected. . . .
Provision was made for the establishment of a
' chamber of the edict, ' as it was styled, in the
Parliament of Paris, with six Protestants among
its sixteen counsellors, to take cognizance of
cases In which Protestants were concerned. A
similar chamber was promised in each of the
parliaments of Rouen and Rennes. In Southern
France three ' chambres ml-partles ' were either
continued or created, with an equal number of
Roman Catholic and Protestant judges." In the
' ' brevet " or patent which accompanied the edict,
the king made a secret provision of 45,000 crowns
annually from the royal treasury, which was un-
derstood to be for the support of Protestant
ministers, although that purpose was concealed.
In the second series of secret articles, the Prot-
estants were authorized to retain possession for
eight years of the "cautionary cities" which
they held under former treaties, and provision
was made for paying the garrisons. "Such are
the main features of a law whose enactment
marks an important epoch in the history of juris-
prudence. . . . The Edict of Nantes was not at
once presented to the parliaments ; nor was it,
indeed, until early In the following year that the
Parliament of Paris formally entered the docu-
ment upon Its registers. . . . There were obsta-
cles from many different quarters to be overcome.
The clergy, the parliaments, the university, raised
up dlflaculty after difficulty." But the masterful
will of the king bore down all opposition, and
the Edict was finally accepted as the law of the
land. "On the 17th of March [1599] Henry took
1247
PRANCE, 1598-1599.
Asaassinaiion of
Henry TV.
FRANCE, 1610-1619.
steps for its complete execution througliout
France, by the appointment of commissioners —
a nobleman and a magistrate from each province
— to attend to the worli." — H. M. Baird, The
Huguenots and Henry of Navarre, ch. 14 (o. 2).
Also IN : C. M.Yonge, Cameos from Eng. Hist.,
5th series, c. 36.
The full text of the Edict of Nantes will be
found in the following named works : C. Weiss,
Hist, of French Protestant Uefugees, v. 2, app. —
A. Maury, Memoirs of a Huguenot Family (J.
Fontaine), app.
A. D. 1599-1610. — Invasion of Savoy. — Ac-
quisition of the Department of Aisne. — Ten
years of peace and prosperity. — The great
works of Henry IV. — His foreign policy. — His
assassination. — "One tiling only the peace of
Vervins left unsettled. In the preceding troubles
a small Italian appanage, the Marquisate of
Saluces, had been seized by Charles Emmanuel,
Duke of Savoy, and remained still in his posses-
sion. The right of France to it was not disputed,
did not admit indeed of dispute ; but the Duke
was unwilling to part witli wliat constituted one
of the keys of Italy. He came to Paris in De-
cember 1599 to negotiate the affair in person,"
but employed his opportunity to intrigue with
certain disaffected nobles, including the Duke of
Biron, marshal of France and governor of Bur-
gundy. "Wearied with delays, whose object
was transparent, Henry at last had recourse to
arms. Savoy was sjieedily overrun with French
troops, and its chief strongholds taken. Spain
was not prepared to back her ally, and the affair
terminated by Henry's accepting in lieu of the
Marquisate that part of Savoy which now con-
stitutes the Department of Aisne in France."
Biron, whom the King tried hard to save by re-
peated warnings which were not heeded, paid
the penaltj' of his treasonable schemes at last by
losing his head. "The ten years from 1600 to
1610 were years of tranquillity, and gave to
Henry the opportunity lie had so ardently longed
for of restoring and regenerating France." He
applied his energies and his active mind to the
reorganization of the disordered finances of the
kingdom, to the improvement of agriculture, to
the multiplication of industries, to the extending
of commerce. He gave the first impulse to silk
culture and silk manufacture in France; he
founded the great Gobelin manufactory of tapes-
try at Paris ; he built roads and bridges, and en-
couraged canal projects; he began the creation
of a navy; he promoted the colonization of
Canada. ' ' It was, however, in the domain of
foreign politics that Henry exhibited the acute-
ness and comprehensiveness of his genius, and
his marvellous powers of contrivance, combina-
tion, execution. . . . The great political project,
to the maturing of which Henry IV. devoted his
untiring energies for the last j'ears of his life,
was the bringing of the . . . half of Europe
into close political alliance, and arming it against
the house of Austria, and striking when the fit
time came, such a blow at tlie ambition and in-
tolerance of that house that it might never be
able to recover. After innumerable negotiations
... he had succeeded in forming a coalition of
twenty separate States, embracing England, the
United Provinces, Denmark, Sweden, Northern
Germany, Switzerland. At last the time for
action came. The Duke of Cleves died, 25th
March 1609. The succession was disputed. One
of the claimants of the Dukedom was supported
by the Emperor, another by the Protestant
Princes of Germany [see Germany: A. D. 1608-
1618]. The contest about a small German Duchy
presented the opjjortunity for bringing into
action that alliance which Henry had planned
and perfected. In the great military movements
that were projected he was himself to take the
lead. Four French armies, numbering 100,000,
were to be launched against the great enemy of
European liberty. One of these Henry was to
command ; even our young Prince of Wales was
to bring 6,000 English with him, and make his
first essay in arms under the French King. By
the end of April, 1610, 35,000 men and 50 pieces
of cannon had assembled at Chalons. The 20th
May was fixed as the day on which Henry was
to place himself at its head." But on the 16th of
May (1610) he was struck down by the hand of
an assassin (Francois Ravaillac), and the whole
combination fell to pieces. — W. Hanna, T/ie
Wars of the Huguenots, ch. 8. — "The Emperor,
the King of Spain, the Queen of France, the
Duke d'Epernon, the Jesuits, were all in turn
suspected of having instigated the crime, because
they all profited by it ; but the assassin declared
that he had no accomplices. . . . He believed
that the King was at heart a Huguenot, and
thought that in ridding France of this monarch
he was rendering a great service to his country."
— A. de Bonncchose, Hi.it. of France, v. 1, p. 450.
Also in : M. W. Freer, The Last Decade of a
Glorious Reign. — Duke of Sully, Memoirs, v. 2-5.
—Sir N. W. Wraxall, Hist, of France, 1574-
1610, V. 5, ch. 7-8, and v. 6.
A. D. 1603-1608. — First settlements in Aca-
dia. See Can.\d.\: A. D. 1603-1605; and 1606-
1608.
A. D. 1608-1616. — Champlain's explorations
and settlements in the Valley of the St. Law-
rence. See Canada: A. D. 1608-1611; 1611-
1616; 1616-1628.
A. D. 1610. — Accession of King Louis XIII.
A. D. 1610-1619. — The regency of Marie de
Medicis. — The reign of favorites and the riot
of factions. — Distractions of the kingdom. —
The rise of Richelieu. — "After the death of
Henry IV. it was seen how much the power,
credit, manners, and spirit of a nation frequently
depend upon a single man. This prince had by
a vigorous, yet gentle administration, kept all
orders of the state in union, lulled all factions to
sleep, maintained peace between the two religions,
and kept his people in plenty. He held the bal-
ance of Europe in his hands bj' his alliance, his
riches, and his arms. All these advantages were
lost in the very first year of the regency of his
widow, Mary of Medicis [whom Henry had
married in 1600, the pope granting a divorce
from his first wife, Margaret of Valois]. . . .
Mary of Jledicis . . . appointed regent [during
the minority of her son, Louis XIII.], though
not mistress of the kingdom, lavished in making
of creatures all that Henry the Great had amassed
to render his nation powerful. The army he had
raised to carry the war into Germany was dis-
banded, the princes he had taken under his pro-
tection were abandoned. Charles Emanuel, duke
of Savoy, the new ally of Henry IV., was obliged
to ask pardon of Philip III. of Spain for having
entered into a treaty with the French king, and
sent his son to Madrid to implore the mercy of
the Spanish court, and to humble himself as a
1248
FRANCE, 1610-1619.
Marie de Medicis
and her favorites.
FRANCE, 1610-1619.
subject in his father's name. The princes of
Germany, wliom Henry had protected with an
army of 40,000 men, now found themselves al-
most without assistance. The state lost all its
credit abroad, and was distracted at home. The
princes of the blood and the great nobles filled
France with factions, as in the times of Francis
II., Charles IX. and Henry III., and as after-
wards, during the minority of Lewis XIV. At
length [1614] an assembly of the general estates
was called at Paris, the last that was held in
France [prior to the States General which assem-
bled on the eve of the Revolution of 1789]. . . .
The result of this assembly was the laying open
all the grievances of tlie kingdom, without being
able to redress one. France remained in confu-
sion, and governed by one Concini, a Florentine,
who rose to be marechal of France without ever
having drawn a sword, and prime minister with-
out knowing anything of the laws. It was suf-
ficient that he was a foreigner for the princes to
be displeased with him. Mary of Medicis was
in a very unhappy situation, for she could not
share her authority with the prince of Conde,
chief of the nialecontents, without being deprived
of it altogether ; nor trust it in the hands of Con-
cini, without displeasing the whole kingdom.
Henry prince of Condfe. father of the great
Conde, and son to him who had gained the battle
of Coutras in conjunction with Henry IV., put
himself at the head of a party, and took up arms.
The court made a dissembled peace with him,
and afterwards clapt him up in the Bastile. This
had been the fate of his father and grandfather,
and was afterwards that of his son. His confine-
ment encreased the number of the malecontents.
The Guises, who had formerly been implacable
enemies to the Conde family, now joined with
them. The duke of Vendome, son to Henry IV. ,
the duke of Nevers, of the house of Gonzaga,
the marechal de Bouillon, and all the rest of the
malecontents, fortified themselves in the prov-
inces, protesting that they continued true to their
king, and made war only against the prime min-
ister. Concini, marechal d'Ancre, secure of the
queen regent's protection, braved them all. He
raised 7,000 men at his own expence, to support
the royal authority. . . . A young man of whom
he had not the least apprehension, and who was
a stranger like himself, caused his ruin, and all
the misfortunes of JIary of Jledicis. Charles
Albert of Luines, born in the county of Avign-
on, had, with his two brothers, been taken into
the number of gentlemen in ordinary to the king,
and the companions of his education. He had
insinuated himself into the good graces and con-
fidence of the young monarch, by his dexterity
in bird-catching. It was never supposed that
these childish amusements would end in a bloody
revolution. The marechal d'Ancre had given
him the government of Amboise, thinking by
that to make him his creature ; but this yoimg
man conceived the design of murdering his bene-
factor, banishing the queen, and governing him-
self; all which he accomplished without meeting
with any obstacle. He soon found means of
persuading the king that he was capable of
reigning alone, though he was not then quite 17
years old, and told him that the queen-mother
and Concini kept him in confinement. The young
king, to whom in his childhood they had given
the name of Just, consented to the murder of his
prime minister ; the marquis of Vitri, captain of
^^ 1249
the king's guards, du Hallier his brother, Persan,
and others, were sent to dispatch him, who,
finding him in the court of the Louvre, shot him
dead with their pistols [April 24, 1617]: upon this
they cried out, ' Vive le roi, ' as if they had gained
a battle, and Lewis XIII., appearing at a win-
dow, cried out, 'Now I am king.' The queen-
mother had her guards taken from her, and was
confined to her own apartment, and afterwards
banished to Blois. The place of marechal of
France, held by Concini, was given to the mar-
quis of Vitri, his murderer." Concini's wife,
Eleanor Galigai, was tried on a charge of sorcery
and burned, "and the king's favourite, Luines,
had the confiscated estates. This unfortunate
Galigai was the first promoter of cardinal Riche-
lieu's fortune ; while he was yet very young, and
called the abbot of Chillou, she procured him the
bishopric of Lugon, and at length got him made
secretary of state in 1616. He was involved in
the disgrace of his protectors, and . . . was
now banished ... to a little priory at the far-
ther end of Anjou. . . . The duke of Bperuon,
who had caused the queen to be declared regent,
went to the castle of Blois [February 22, 1619],
whither she had been banished, and carried her
to his estate in Angoul6me, like a sovereign who
rescues his ally. This was manifestly an act of
high treason ; but a crime that was approved
by the whole kingdom." The king presently
"sought an opportunity of reconciliation with
his mother, and entered into a treaty with the
duke of Epernon, as between prince and prince.
. . . But the treaty of reconciliation was hardly
signed when it was broken again ; this was the
true spirit of the times. New parties took up
arms in favour of the queen, and always to
oppose the duke of Luines, as before it had been
to oppose the marechal d'Ancre, but never against
the king. Every favourite at that time drew
after him a civil war. Lewis and his mother in
fact made war upon each other. Mary was in
Anjou at the head of a small army against her
son ; they engaged each other on the bridge of
Ce, and the kingdom was on the point of ruin.
This confusion made the fortune of the famous
Richelieu. He was comptroller of the queen-
mother's household, and had supplanted all that
princess's confidants, as he afterwards did all the
king's ministers. His pliable temper and bold
disposition must necessarily have acquired for
him the first rank everywhere, or have proved
his ruin. He brought about the accommodation
between the mother and son ; and a nomination
to the purple, which the queen asked of the king
for him, was the reward of his services. The
duke of Epernon was the first to lay down arms
without making any demands, whilst the rest
made the king pay them for having taken up
arms against him. The queen-mother and the
king her son had an interview at Brisac, where
they embraced with a flood of tears, only to
quarrel again more violently than ever. The
weakness, intrigues, and divisions of the court
spread anarchy through the kingdom. All the
internal defects with which the state had for a
long time been attacked were now encreased, and
those which Henry IV. had removed were re-
vived anew. " — Voltaire, Ancient and Modern
History, ch. 145 {works tr. by Smollett, v. 5).
Also in : CD. Yonge, Hist, of France under
the Bourbons, v. 1, ch. 5-6. — A._Thierry, Porma-
tion and Progress of tlie Tiers Mat in France, v.
FRANCE, 1610-1619.
Revolt of the
Hitguenots.
FRANCE, 1630-1633.
1, ch. 7. — S. Menzies, Royal Favourites, v. 1,
ch. 9.
A. D. 1620-1622. — Renewed jealousy of the
Huguenots.— Their formidable organization
and its political pretensions. — Restoration of
Catholicism in Navarre and B^arn.— Their in-
corporation with France. — The Huguenot re-
volt.— Treaty of Montpellier. — "The Hugue-
not question had become a very serious one, and
the bigotry of some of the Catholics found its
opportuuit}' in the insubordination of many of
the Protestants. The Huguenots had undoubtedly
many minor causes for discontent. . . . But on
the whole the government and the majority of
the people were willing to carry out in good faith
the provisions of the edict of Nantes. The Prot-
estants, within the limits there laid down, could
have worshipped after their own conscience, free
from persecution and subject to little molesta-
tion. It was, perhaps, all that could be expected
in a country where the mass of the population
were Catholic, and where religious fanaticism
had recently supported the League and fostered
the wars of religion. But the Protestant party
seem to have desired a separate political power,
which almost justifies the charge made against
them, that they sought to establish a state within
a state, or even to form a separate republic.
Their territorial position afforded a certain fa-
cility for such endeavors. In the northern prov-
inces their numbers were insignificant. They
were found chiefly in the southwestern provinces
— Poitou, Saintonge, Guienne, Provence, and
Languedoc, — while in Beam and Navarre they
constituted the great majority of the population,
and they held for their protection a large number
of strongly fortified cities. . . . Though there is
nothing to show that a plan for a separate repub-
lic was seriously considered, the Huguenots had
adopted an organization which naturally e.xcited
the jealousy and ill-will of the general govern-
ment. They had long maintained a system of
provincial and general synods for the regulation
of their faith and discipline. . . . The assembly
which met at Saumur immediately after Henry's
death, had carried still further the organization
of the members of their faith. From consistories
composed of the pastors and certain of the laity,
delegates were chosen who formed local consis-
tories. These again chose delegates who met in
provincial synods, and from them delegates were
sent to the national synod, or general assembly
of the church. Here not only matters of faith,
but of state, were regulated, and the general as-
sembly finally assumed to declare war, levy taxes,
choose generals, and act both as a convocation
and a parliament. The assembly of Saumur
added a system of division into eight great
circles, covering the territory where the Protes-
tants were sufficiently numerous to be important.
All but two of these were south of the Loire.
They were subsequently organized as military
departments, each under the command of some
great nobleman. . . . The Huguenots had also
shown a williugness to assist those who were in
arms against the state, had joined Conde, and
contemplated a union with ]Mary de Medici in
the brief insurrection of 1630. A question had
now arisen which was regarded by the majority
of the party as one of vital importance. The
edict of Nantes, which granted privileges to the
Huguenots, had granted also to the Catholics the
right to the public profession of their religion in
all parts of France. This had formerly been pro-
hibited in Navarre and Beam, and the population
of those provinces had become very largely Prot-
estant. The Catholic clergy had long petitioned
the king to enforce the rights which they claimed
the edict gave them in Beam, and to compel also
a restitution of some portion of the property, for-
merly held by their church, which had been
taken by Jeanne d'Albret, and the revenues of
which the Huguenot clergy still assumed to ap-
propriate entirely to themselves. On July 35,
1617, Louis flnally issued an edict directing the
free exercise of the Catholic worship in Beam
and the restitution to the clergy of the pi-operty
that had been taken from them. The edict met
with bitter opposition in Beam and from all the
Huguenot party. The Protestants were as un-
willing to allow the rites of the Catholic Church
in a province which they controlled, as the Catho-
lics to suffer a Huguenot conventicle within the
walls of Paris. The persecutions which the
Huguenots suffered distressed them less than the
toleration which they were obliged to grant. . . .
In the wars of religion the Huguenots had been
controlled, not always wisely or unselfishly, by
the nobles who had espoused their faith, but
these were slowly drifting back to Catholicism.
. . . The Condes were already Catholics. Lesdi-
guiferes was only waiting till the bribe for his
conversion should be sufficiently glittering. [He
was received into the Church and was made Con-
stable of France in July, 1623.] Bouillon's re-
ligion was but a catch- weight in his political in-
trigues. The grandson of Coligni was soon to
receive a marshal's baton for consenting to a
jieace which was disastrous to his party. Sully,
Rohan, Soubise, and La Force still remained;
but La Force's zeal moderated when he also was
made a marshal, and one hundred years later
Rohans and the descendants of Sully wore cardi-
nal's hats. The party, slowly deserted by the
great nobles, came more under the leadership of
the clergy . . . and under their guidance the
party now assumed a political activity which
brought on the siege of La Rochelle and which
made possible the revocation of the edict of
Nantes. Beam was not only strongly Protestant,
but it claimed, with Navarre, to form no part of
France, and to be governed only by its own laws.
Its States met and declared their local rights
were violated by the king's edict ; the Parliament
of Pau refused to register it, and it was not en-
forced in the province. . . . The disturbances
caused by Mary de Medici had delayed any steps
for the enforcement of the edict, but these
troubles were ended by the peace of Ponts-de-Ce
in 1630. ... In October, 1630, Louis led his
army in Beam, removed various Huguenot offi-
cials, and reestablished the Catholic clergy. . . .
On October 30th, an edict was issued by which
Navarre and Beam were declared to be united
to France, and a parliament was established for
the two provinces on the same model as the
other parliaments of the kingdom. ... A gen-
eral assembly of Protestants, sympathizing with
their brethren of these provinces, was called for
November 36, 1630, at La Rochelle. The king
declared those guilty of high treason who should
join in that meeting. . . . The meeting was held
in defiance of the prohibition, and it was there
resolved to take up arms. . . . The assembly pro-
ceeded in all respects like the legislative body of
a separate state. The king prepared for the war
1250
FRANCE, 1620-1623.
Ascendancy
of Richelieu.
FRANCE, 1624-1626.
with vigor. . . . He now led his forces into
southern France, and after some minor engage-
ments he laid siege to Moutauban. A three
months' siege resulted disastrously; the cam-
paign closed, and the king returned to Paris.
The encouragement that tlie Huguenots drew
from this success proved very brief. The king's
armies proceeded again into the south of France
in 1622, and met only an irregular and inefficient
opposition. . . . Chatillon and La Force each
made a separate peace, and each was rewarded
by the baton of marshal from the king and by
charges of treachery from his associates. . . .
The siege of Montpellier led to the peace called
by that name, but on terms that were unfavora-
ble to the Huguenots. They abandoned all the
fortified cities which they had held for their se-
curity except La Rochelle and Montauban ; no
assemblies could meet without permission of the
king, except the local synods for ecclesiastical
matters alone, and the interests of Beam and Na-
varre were abandoned. In return the edict of
Nantes was again confirmed, and their religious
privileges left undisturbed. Rohan accepted
800,000 livres for his expenses and governments,
and the king agreed that the Fort of St. Louis,
which had been built to overawe the turbulence
of La Rochelle, should be dismantled. La Ro-
chelle, the great Huguenot stronghold, continued
hostilities for .some time longer, but at last it
made terms. The party was fast losing its power
and its overthrow could be easily foretold. La
Rochelle was now the only i)lace capable of mak-
ing a formidable resistance. ... In the mean-
time the career of Luines reached its end. " He
had taken the great office of Constable to him-
self, incurring much ridicule thereby. "The
exposures of the campaign and its disasters had
worn upon liim ; a fever attacked him at the little
town of Monheur, and on December 14, 1621, he
died." — J. B. Perkins, Prance vnder Mazann,
with a Beeiew of the Administration of Richelieu,
ch. 3 (». 1).
Also in : W. S. Bi'owning, Hist, of the Hugue-
nots, di. 54-56.
A. D. 1621. — Claims in North America con-
flicting with England. See New England:
A. D. 1631-1631.
A. D. 1624-1626.— Richelieu in power.— His
combinations against the Austro-Spanish as-
cendancy. — The 'Valtelline War. — Huguenots
again in revolt. — The second Treaty of Mont-
i-^.-ier. — Treaty of Monzon with Spain. — "The
Kiug was once more without a guide, without a
favourite, but his fate was upon him. A few
months more of uncertain drifting and he will
fall into the liands of the greatest politician
France has ever seen. Cardinal Richelieu; under
his hand the King will be effaced, his cold dispo-
sition and narrow intelligence will accept and be
convinced by the grandeur of his master's views ;
convinced, he will obey, and we shall enter on
the period in which the disruptive forces in
France will be coerced, and the elements of free-
dom and constitutional life stamped down ; while
patriotism, and a firm belief in the destinies of the
nation will be fostered and grow strong ; France
will assert her high place in Europe. Richelieu,
who had already in 1632 received the Cardinal's
hat, entered the King's Council on the ^fth of
April, 1624. ... La Vieuville, under whose
patronage he had been brought forward, wel-
comed him into the Cabinet. . . . But La Vieu-
ville was not fitted by nature for the chief place;
he was rash, violent, unpopular and corrupt.
He soon had to give place to Richelieu, hence-
forth the vii'tual head of the Council. La
Vieuville, thus supplanted, had been the first to
reverse the ruinous Spanish policy of the Court;
... he had promised help to the Dutch, to
Mansfield, to the Elector Frederick; in a word,
his policy had been the forecast of that of the
Cardinal, who owed his rise to him, and now
stepped nimbi)' over his head into his place.
England had declared war on Spain: France
joined England in renewing the old offensive
and defensive alliance with the Dutch, England
promising men and France money. . . . The
Austro-Spanish power had greatly increased dur-
ing these years : its successes had enabled it to
knit together all the provinces which owed
it allegiance. The Palatinate and the Lower
Rhine secured tlieir connexion with the Spanish
Netherlands, as we may now begin to call them,
and threatened the very existence of the Dutch:
the Valtelline forts [commanding the valley east
of Lake Como, from which one pass communicates
with the Engadine and the Grisons, and another
with the Tyrol] . . . were the roadway between
the Spanish power at Jlilan and the Austrians
on the Danube and in the Tyrol. Richelieu now
resolved to attack this threatening combination
at both critical points. In the North he did not
propose to interfere in arms : there others should
fight, and France support them with quiet sub-
sidies and good will. He pressed matters on
with the English, the Dutch, the Nortli German
Princes; he negociated with Maximilian of
Bavaria and the League, hoping to keep the
South German Princes clear of the Imperial
policy. . . . The French ambassador at Copen-
hagen, well supported by the English envoy,
Sir Robert Anstruthcr, at this time organised a
Northern Leasjue, headed by C'hristian IV. of
Denmark [see Gei»[.\ny: A. D. 1634-1636]. . . .
The Lutheran Princes, alarmed at the threatening
aspect of affairs, were beginning to think that
they had made a mistake in leaving the Palatin-
ate to be conquered ; and turned a more willing
ear to tlie French and English proposals for this
Northern League. ... By 1625 the Cardinal's
plans in the North seemed to be going well : the
North-Saxon Princes, though with little heart
and much difference of opinion, specially in the
cities, had accepted Christian IV. as their leader;
and the progress of the Spaniaj-ds in the United
Provinces was checked. In the other point to
which Richelieu's attention was directed, matters
had gone still better. [The inhabitants of the
Valtelline were mostly Catholics and Italians.
They had long been subject to the Protestant
Grisons or Graubuuden. In 1630 they had risen
in revolt, massacred the Protestants of the valley,
and formed an independent republic, supported
by the Spaniards and Austrians. Spanish and
German troops occupied the four strong Valtel-
line forts, and controlled the important passes
above referred to. The Grisons resisted and se-
cured the support of Savoy, Venice and finally
France. In 1623 an agreement had been reached,
to hand over the Valtelline forts to the pope, in
deposit, until some terms could be settled. But
in 1625 this agreement had not been carried out,
and Richelieu took the affair in hand.] . . .
Richelieu, never attacking in full face if he could
carry his point by a side-attack, allied himself
1251
>
FRANCE, 1624-1636.
Second Huguenot
Revolt.
FRANCE, 1627-1638.
with Charles Emmanuel, Duke of Savoy, and
with Venice ; he easily persuaded the Savoyard
to threaten Genoa, the port by which Spain could
penetrate into Italy, and her financial mainstay.
Meanwhile, the Marquis of Coeuvres had been
sent to Switzerland, and, late in 1634, had per-
suaded the Cantons to arm for the recovery of
the Valtelline ; then, heading a small army of
Swiss and French, he had marched into the
Grisons, The upper districts held by the Aus-
trians revolted : the three Leagues declared their
freedom, the Austrian troops hastily withdrew.
CcEuvres at once secured the Tyrolese passes, and
descending from the Engadine by Poschiavo,
entered the Valtelline: in a few weeks the Papal
and Spanish troops were swept out of the whole
valley, abandoning all their forts, though the
French general had no siege-artillery with which
to reduce them. . . . Early in 1625, the Valtel-
line being secured to the Grisons and French, the
aged Lesdiguitsres was sent forward to imdertake
the rest of the plan, the reduction of Genoa. But
just as things were going well for the party in
Europe opposed to Spain and Austria, an
unlucky outbxirst of Huguenot dissatisfaction
marred all : Soubise in the heart of winter had
seized the Isle of Re, and had captured in Blavet
harbour on the Breton coast si.x royal ships; he
failed however to take the castle which com-
manded the place, and was himself blockaded,
escaping only with heavy loss. Thence he seized
the Isle of Oleron : in May the Huguenots were
in revolt in Upper Languedoc, Querci, and the
Cevennes, led by Rohan on land, and Soubise by
sea. Their rash outbreak [provoked by alleged
breaches of the treaty of Montpellier, especially
in the failure of the king to demolish Fort Louis
at La Rochelle] came opportunely to the aid of
the distressed Austrian power, their true enemy.
Although very many of the Huguenots stood
aloof and refused to embarass the government,
still enough revolted to cause great uneasiness.
The war in the Ligurian mountains was not
pushed on with vigour; for Richelieu could not
now think of carrying out the large plans which,
by his own account, he had already formed, for
the erection of an independent Italy. ... He
was for the present content to menace Genoa,
without a serious siege. At this time James I.
of England died, and the marriage of the young
king [Charles I,] with Henriette jMarie was
pushed on. In llay Buckingham went to Paris
to carry her over to England ; he tried in vain to
persuade Richelieu to couple the Palatinate with
the Valtelline question. . . . After this the tide
of affairs turned sharply against the Cardinal;
while Tilly with the troops of the Catholic
League, and AVallenstein, the new general of the
Emperor, who begins at this moment his brief
and marvellous career, easily kept in check the
Danes and their halfhearted German allies,
Lesdiguieres and the Duke of Savoy were forced
by the Austrians and Spaniards to give up all
thoughts of success in the Genoese country, and
the French were even threatened in Piedmont and
the Valtelline. But the old Constable of France
was worthy of his ancient fame ; he drove the
Duke of Feria out of Piedmont, and in the Val-
telline the Spaniards only succeeded in seciu'ing
the fortress of Riva. Richelieu felt that the war
was more than France could bear, harassed as
she was within and without. ... He was de-
termined to free his hands in Italy, to leave the
war to work itself out in Germany, and to bring
the Huguenots to reason. . . . The joint fleets of
Soubise and of La Rochelle had driven back the
king's ships, and had taken Re and Oleron ; but
in their attempt to force an entrance into tiie
harbour of La Rochelle they were defeated by
Montmorency, who now commanded the royal
fleet: the islands were retaken, and the Hugue-
nots sued for peace. It must be remembered
that the bulk of them did not agree with the
Rochellois, and were quiet through this time.
Early in 1626 the treaty of Montpellier granted a
hollow peace on tolerable terms to the reformed
churches ; and soon after . . . peace was signed
with Spain at Mohzon in May, 1626. All was
done so silently that the interested parties. Savoy,
the Venetians, the Grisons. knew nothing of it
till all was settled: on Buckingham . . . the
news fell like a thunderclap. . . . The Valtelline
remained under the Grisons, with guarantees
for Catholic worship ; France and Spain would
jointly see that the inhabitants of the valleys
were fairly treated : the Pope was entrusted with
the duty of razing the fortresses: Genoa and
Savoy were ordered to make peace. It was a
treacherous affair ; and Richelieu comes out of it
but ill. We are bound, however, to remember
. . . the desperate straits into which the Car-
dinal had come. ... He did but fall back in
order to make that wonderful leap forward which
changed the whole face of European politics." —
G. W. Kitchin, Hist, of Prance, bk. 4, ch. 3 and
4 (v. 3-3).
Also ra: F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of France,
ch. 40-41. — J. B. Perkins, France under Masarin
[and Richelieu'], v. 1, ch. 4-5. — G. ]\Iasson, Riche-
lieu, ch. 5.
A. D. 1627-1628.— War with England, and
Huguenot revolt. — Richelieu's siege and cap-
ture of La Rochelle. — His great example of
magnanimity and toleration. — The end of po-
litical Huguenotism.—" Richelieu now found
himself dragged into a war against his will, and
that with the very power with which, for the
furtherance of his other designs, he most desired
to continue at peace. James I. of England had
been as unable to live except under the dominion
of a favourite as Louis. Charles . . . had the
same unfortunate weakness; and the Duke of
Buckingham, who had long been paramount at
the court of the father, retained the same mis-
chievous influence at that of the son. ... In
passing through France in 1623 he [Buckingham]
had been presented to the queen [Anne of Aus-
tria], and had presumed to address her in the
language of love. When sent to Paris to con-
duct the young Princess Henrietta Maria to Eng-
land, he had repeated this con<luct. . . . There
had been some little unpleasantness between the
two Courts shortly after the marriage . . . owing
to the imprudence of Henrietta," who paraded
her Popery too much in the eyes of Protestant
England ; and there was talk of a renewed treaty,
which Buckingham sought to make the prcte-xt
for another visit to Paris. But his motives were
understood; Louis "refused to receive him as
an ambassador, and Buckingham, full of dis-
appointed rage, instigated the Duke de Soubise,
who was stillin London, to rouse the Huguenots
to a fresh outbreak, promising to send an Eng-
lish fleet to Rochelle to assist them. Rochelle
was at this time the general head-quarters not
only of the Huguenots, but of all those who, on
1252
FRANCE, 1627-1628.
Siege of Rochelle.
FRANCE, 1630-1632.
any account, were discontented with the Govern-
ment. . . . Soubise . . . embraced the duke's
offer with eagerness ; and in July, 1627, without
any previous declaration of war, an English fleet,
with 16,000 men on board, suddenly appeared off
Rochelle, and prepared to attack the Isle of Rhe.
The Rochellois were very unwilling to co-operate
with it " ; but they were persuaded, ' ' against their
judgment, to connect themselves with what each,
individually, felt to be a desperate enterprise;
and Richelieu, to whom the prospect thus af-
forded him of having a fair pretence for crush-
ing the Huguenot party made amends for the
disappointment of being wantonly dragged into
a war with England, gladly received the intel-
ligence that Rochelle was in rebellion. At first
the Duke d'Anjou was sent down to command
the arm}', Louis being detained in Paris by ill-
ness; but by October he had recovered, his fond-
ness for military operations revived, and he has-
tened to the scene of action, accompanied by
Richelieu, whose early education had been of a
military kind. . . . He at once threw across re-
inforcements into the Isle of Rhe, where M.
Thoiras was holding out a fort known as St.
Martin with great resolution, though it was im-
finished and incompletely armed. In the begin-
ning of November, Buckingham raised the siege,
and returned home, leaving guns, standards and
prisoners behind him ; and Richelieu, anticipat-
ing a renewal of the attack the next year . . .
undertook a work designed at once to baffle for-
eign enemies and to place the city at his mercy.
Along the whole front of the port he began to
construct a vast wall . . . having only one small
opening in the centre which was commanded by
small batteries. The work was commenced in
November, 1627 ; and, in spite of a rather severe
winter, was carried on with such ceaseless dili-
gence, under the superintending eye of the car-
dinal himself, that before the return of spring a
great portion of it was completed. . . . When,
in May, 1628, the British fleet, under Lord Den-
bigh, the brother-in-law of Buckingham, returned
to the attack, they found it unassailable, and re-
turned without striking a blow." — C. D. Yonge,
Hist, of France under the Bourbons, v. 1, ch. 7. —
"Richelieu . . . was his own engineer, general,
admiral, prime-minister. AVhile he urged on the
army to work upon the dike, he organized a
French navy, and in due time brought it around
to that coast and anchored it so as to guard the
dike and be guarded by it. Yet, daring as all
this work was, it was but the smallest part of his
work. Richelieu found that his officers were
cheating his soldiers in their pay and dishearten-
ing them ; in face of the enemy he had to reor-
ganize the army and to create a new military
system. . . . He found, also, as he afterward
said, that he had to conquer not only the Kings
of England and Spain, b\it also the King of
France. At the most critical moment of the
siege Louis deserted him, — went back to Paris,
— allowed courtiers to till him with suspicions.
Not only Richelieu's place, but his life, was in
danger, and he well knew it; yet he never left
his dike and siege-works, but wrought on steadily
until they were done; and then the King, of his
own will, in very shame, broke away from his
courtiers, and went back to his master. And
now a Royal Herald summoned the people of La
Rochelle to surrender. But they were not yet
half conquered. Even when they had seen two
English fleets, sent to aid them, driven back
from Richelieu's dike, they still held out man-
fully. . . . They were reduced to feed on their
horses, — then on bits of filthy shell-fish, — then
on stewed leather. They died in multitudes.
Guiton, the Mayor, kept a dagger on the city
council-table to stab any man who should speak
of surrender. . . . But at last even Guiton had
to yield. After the siege had lasted more than
a year, after 5,000 were found remaining out of
15,000, after a motlier had been seen to feed her
child with her own blood, the Cardinal's policy
became too strong for him. The people yielded
[October 27, 1628], and Richelieu entered the'
city as master. And now the victorious states-
man showed a greatness of soul to which all the
rest of his life was as nothing. . . . All Europe
. . . looked for a retribution more terrible than
any in history. Riclielieu allowed nothing of the'
sort. He destroyed the old franchises of the city,
for they were incompatible with that royal au-
thority which he so earnestly strove to build.
But this was all. He took no vengeance, — he
allowed the Protestants to worship as before, —
he took many of them into the public service, —
and to Guiton he showed marks of respect. He
stretched forth that strong arm of his over the
city, and warded off all harm. . . . For his len-
iency Richelieu received the titles of Pope of the
Protestants and Patriarch of the Atheists. But
he had gained the first great object of his policy,
and he would not abuse it : he had crushed the
political power of the Huguenots forever." —
A. D. White, The Statesmanship of Richelieu (At-
lantic Monthly, May, 1862). — "Whatever the
benefit to France of this great feat, the locality
was permanently ruined. Two hundred and fifty
years after the event the Poitevin peasant is-
fanatic and superstitious as the Bretons them-
selves. Catholic Rochelle is still to be seen, with
almost one-third less inhabitants to-day than it
had in 1627. The cardinal's dyke is still there,
but the insects have seized on the city. A plague
of white ants, imported from India, have fas-
tened on its timbers." — R. Heath, TJw Reforma-
tion in France, ii. 1, bk. 3, ch. 12.
Also in : S. R. Gai-diner, Hist, of England, 160S
to 1642, ch. 56, 59-60, and G5.
A. D. 1627-1631. — War with Spain, Savoy
and the Empire over the succession to the
duchy of Mantua.— Successes of Richelieu.
SeelT.\LY: A. D. 1627-1631.
A. D. 1628. — New France placed under the
Company of the Hundred Associates. See
Canada: A. D. 1616-1628.
A. D. 1628-1632. — Loss and recovery of New
France. See Canada: A. D. 1C28-1635.
A. D. 1630-1632.— The Day of Dupes, and
after. — On the return of Richelieu and the king
from their Italian expedition, in the beginning
of August, 1630, "both the monarch and his.
minister had passed in safety through a whole
tract infected with the plague ; but, shortly after
their arrival at Lyons, Louis XIII. fell ill, and
in a few days his physicians pronounced his case
hopeless. It was now that all the hatred which
his power had caused to hide its head, rose up
openly against Richelieu; and the two queens
[Marie de Medicis, the queen-mother, and Anne
of Austria, the king's wife], united only in their
enmity towards the minister, never quitted the
bedside of the king but to form and cement the
party which was intended to work the cardinal'.''
1253
FRANCE, 1630-1632.
Tlie Day of the
Dupes.
FRANCE, 1641-1642.
destruction as soon as the monarch should he no
more. . . . The bold and the rash joined the
faction of the queens; and the prudent waited
with wise doubt till they saw the result they
hoped for. Happy was it for those who did
conceal their feelings ; for suddenly the internal
abscess, which had nearly reduced the king to
the tomb, broke, passed away, and in a very few
days he appeared perfectly convalescent. Riche-
lieu might now have triumphed securely; . . .
but he acted more prudently. He remembered
that the queen-mother, the great mover of the
cabal against him, had formerlj' been his benefac-
tress ; and though probably his gratitude was of
no very sensitive nature, yet he was wise enough
to affect a virtue that he did not possess, and to
suffer the offence to be given by her. ... At
Paris [after the return of the court] . . . the
queen-mother herself, unable to restrain any
longer the violent passions that struggled in her
bosom, seemed resolved to keep no terms with
the cardinal." At an interview with him, in the
king's presence, "the queen forgot the dignity
of her station and the softness of her sex, and,
in language more fit for the markets than the
court, called him rogue, and traitor, and per-
turber of the public peace ; and, turning to the
king, she endeavoured to persuade him that
Richelieu wished to take the crown from his
head, in order to place it on that of the count de
Soissons. Had Richelieu been as sure of the
king's firmness as he was of his regard, this
would have been exactly the conduct which he
could have desired the queen to hold; but he
knew Louis to be weak and timid, and easily
ruled by those who took a tone of authority
towards him ; and when at length he retired at
the command of the monarch ... he seems to
have been so uncertain how the whole would
end, that he ordered his papers and most valuable
effects to be secured, and preparations to be
made for immediate departure. All these pro-
ceedings had been watched by the courtiers:
Richelieu had been seen to quit the queen's cabi-
net troubled and gloomy, his niece in tears ; and,
some time after, the king himself followed in a
state of excessive agitation, and . . . left Paris
for Versailles without seeing his minister. The
whole court thought the rule of Richelieu at an
end, and the saloons of the Luxembourg were
crowded with eager nobles ready to worship the
rising authority of the queen-mother." But the
king, when he reached Versailles, sent this mes-
sage to his minister: "'Tell the cardinal de
Richelieu that he has a good master, and bid him
come hither to me without delay.' Richelieu
felt that the real power of France was still ia his
hands ; and setting off for Versailles, he found
Louis full of expressions of regard and confi-
dence. Rumours every moment reached Ver-
sailles of the immense concourse that was flocking
to pay court to the queen-mother: the king
found himself nearly deserted, and all that
Richelieu had said of her ambition was confirmed
in the monarch's mind ; while his natural good
sense told him that a minister who depended
solely upon him, and who under him exercised
the greatest power in the realm, was not likely
to wish his fall. ... In the mean time, the
news of these . . . events spread to Paris: the
halls of the Luxembourg, which the daj' before
had been crowded to suffocation, were instantly
deserted; and the queen-mother found herself
abandoned by all those fawning sycophants
whose confidence and disappointment procured
for the day of St. Martin, 1630, the title in
French history of The Day of Dupes." — G. P.
R. James, Eminent Foreign Statesmen, v. 2, pp.
88-92. — The ultimate outcome of The Day of
Dupes was the flight of Marie de Medicis, who
spent the remainder of her life in the Netherlands
and in England; the trial and execution of
Marshal de ilarillac ; the imprisonment or exile
and disgrace of Bassompierre and other nobles ;
a senseless revolt, headed by Gaston, Duke of
Orleans, the king's brother, which was crushed
in one battle at Castlenaudari, September 1,
1632, and which brought the Duke de Montmo-
rency to the block. — C. D. Yonge, Hist, of France
under the Bourbons, v. 1, ch. 7-8.
Also in : M. W. Freer, Married Life of Anne
of Austria, V. 1, ch. 4. — C. M. Yonge, Cameos qf
Eiif/U.^h Ilistnrij. Cit/t seric.i. c. 20.
A. D. 1631. — First Printed Newspaper. Ijie
Pkin-tino .\nd Pkkss : A. D. 1631.
A. D. 1631.— Treaty and negotiations with
Gustavus Adolphus. See Geum.^nt : A. D.
1031 (January); 1631-1632; and 1632-1634.
A. D. 1632-1641. — War in Lorraine. — Occu-
pation and possession of the duchy. See
Lorraine: A. D. 1634-1663.
A. D. 1635-1638. — Campaigns on the Flem-
ish frontier. — Invasion by the Spaniards. —
Paris in Peril. See Netiierl.\nds: A. D. 1035-
1638.
A. D. 1635-1639. — Active participation in the
Thirty Years War. — Treaties with the Ger-
mans, Swedes, and Dutch. — Campaigns of
Duke Bernhard in Lorraine, Alsace and
Franche-Comt^. — The fruit gathered by Riche-
lieu. — Alsace secured. See Germany: A. D.
1634-1639.
A. D. 1635-1642. — The war in northern
Italy. See Italy: A. D. 1635-1659.
A. D. 1637-1642. — The war in Spain. — Re-
volt of Catalonia. — Siege and capture of Per-
pignan. — Conquest of Roussillon. See Spain:
A. D. 1637-1640, and 1040-1642.
A. D. 1640-1645. — Campaigns in Germany.
See Germany: A. D. 1640-1645, and 1643-1644.
A. D. 1641-1642. — The conspiracies of Count
de Soissons and Cinq Mars. — Extinction of
the Principality of Sedan. — "There were re-
volts in various quarters to resist [the yoke of
Richelieu], but they were quelled with uniform
success. Once, and once only, the fate of the
Cardinal seemed finally sealed. The Count de
Soissons, a prince of the blood, headed the dis-
contented gentry in open war in 1641, and estab-
lished the headquarters of revolt in the town of
Sedan. The Empire and Spain came to his sup-
port with promises and money. Twelve thou-
sand men were under his orders, all influenced
with rage against Richelieu, and determined to
deliver the king from his degrading tutelage.
Richelieu was taken unprepared ; but delay would
have been ruin. He sent the Marshal Chatillon
to the borders of Sedan, to watch the proceedings
of the confederates, and requested the king to
summon fresh troops and go down to the scene
of war. While his obedient Majesty was busied
in the commission, Chatillon advanced too far.
Soissons assaulted him near the banks of the
Meuse, at a place called Marfee, and gave him a
total and irremediable overthrow. The cavalry on
the royalist side retreated at an early part of the
1254
FRANCE. 1641-1642.
Conspiracy of
Cinq Mars.
FRANCE, 1643-1643,
fight, and forced their way through the infantrj'.
not without strong suspicions of collusion with
their opponents. Paris itself was in dismay.
The King and Cardinal expected to hear every
hour of the advance of the rebels ; but no step
was taken. It was found, when the hurry of
battle was over, that Soissons was among the
slain. The force of the expedition was in that
one man; and the defeat was as useful to the
Cardinal as a victory would have been. The
malcontents had no leaders of sufficient rank and
authority to keep the inferiors in check ; for the
scaffold "had thinned the ranks of the great hered-
itary chiefs, and no man could take his first
open move against the Court without imminent
risk to his head. Great men, indeed, were rising
into fame, but of a totally different character
from their predecessors. Their minds were cast
in a monarchical mould from their earliest years.
. . . From this time subserviency to the king be-
■came a sign of noble birth. . . . Richelieu has
the boast, if boast it can be called, of having
crushed out the last spark of popular indepen-
dence and patrician pride. . . . One more effort
■was made [1642] to shake off the trammels of the
hated Cardinal. A conspiracy was entered into to
deliver the land by the old Roman method of
putting the tyrant to death; and the curious part
of the design is, that it was formed almost in
presence of the king. His favourite friend,
young Cinq Mars, son of the Marshal d'Effiat,
his brother Gaston of Orleans, and his kinsman
the Duke de Bouillon, who were round his per-
son at all hours of the day, were the chief agents
of the perilous undertaking. Others, and with
them de Thou, the son of the great French his-
torian, entered into the plan, but wished the as-
sassination to be left out. They would arrest
and imprison him; but this was evidently not
enough. While Richelieu lived, no man could
be safe, though the Cardinal were in the deepest
dungeon of the Bastile. Death, however, was
busy with their victim, without their aid. He
■was sinking under some deep but partially-con-
cealed illness when the threads of the plot came
into his skilful hands. He made the last use of
his strength and intelligence in unravelling [it]
and punishing the rebels, as he called them,
against the king's authority. The paltry and
perfidious Gaston was as usual penitent and par-
doned, but on Cinq Mars and de Thou the ven-
geance of the law and the Cardinal had its full
force. The triumphant but failing minister re-
clined in a state barge upon the Rhone, towing
his prisoners behind him to certain death. On
their arrival at Lyons the process was short and
fatal. The young men were executed together,
and the account of their behaviour at the block
is one of the most affecting narratives in the
annals of France." — J. White, Hist, of France,
eh. 13. — The Duke de Bouillon, implicated in
both these conspiracies — that of the Count de
Soissons and that of Cinq Mars — saved his life
on the latter occasion by surrendering to the
crown the sovereignty of Sedan, which belonged
to him, and which had been the headquarters of
the Soissons revolt. This small independent
principality — the town and a little territory
around it — had formerly been in the possession
of the powerful and troublesome family of La
Marck, the last heiress of whom brought it, to-
gether with the Duchy of Bouillon, into the
family of La Tour d'Auvergne. The Prince and
Duke who lost it was the second of that family
who bore the titles. He was the elder brother
of the great soldier, Turenne. The Principality
of Sedan was extinguished from that time. — T.
O. Cockayne, Life of I'urenne.
Also in: W. Robson, Life of Richelieu, ch.
11-12.— M. W. Freer, Married Life of Anne of
Austria, v. 2, ch. S. — Miss Pardoe, Life of Marie
de Medicis, hk. 3, ch. 13 {v. 3).
A. D. 1642-1643. — The death of Richelieu
and of Louis XIIL— Regency of Anne of Aus-
tria. — Cardinal Mazarin and the party of the
Importants. — The victory at Rocroi. — Cardinal
Richelieu died on the 4th of December, 1643.
" He was dead, but his work survived him. On
the very evening of the 3d of December, Louis
XIIL called to his council Cardinal Mazarin
[whom Richelieu had commended to him]. . . .
Scarcely had the most powerful kings yielded
up their last breath -when their wishes had been
at once forgotten : Cardinal Richelieu still gov-
erned in his grave." But now, after two and a
half centuries, "the castle of Richelieu is well-
nigh destroyed; his family, after falling into
poverty, is extinct; the Palais-Cardinal [his
splendid residence, -which he built, and which he
gave to the cro-wu] has assumed the name of the
Palais-Royal ; and pure monarchy, the aim of all
his efforts and the -work of his whole life, has
been swept away by the blast of revolution. Of
the cardinal there remains nothing but the great
memory of his power and of the services he ren-
dered his country. . . . Richelieu had no con-
ception of that noblest ambition on which a
human soul can feed, that of governing a free
country, but he -^'as one of the greatest, the most
effective, and the boldest, as well as the most
prudent servants that Prance ever had." Louis
XIIL survived his great minister less than half
a year, dying May 14, 1643. He had never had
confidence in Anne of Austria, his wife, and had
provided, by a declaration which she had signed
and sworn to, for a council (which included Maz-
arin) to control the queen's regency during the
minority of their son, Louis XIV. But the queen
contrived very soon to break from this obligation,
and she made Cardinal Mazarin her one counsel-
lor and supreme minister. ' ' Continuing to humor
all parties, and displaying foresight and prudence,
the new minister was even now master. Louis
XIIL, -without any personal liking, had been
faithful to Richelieu to the death. With differ-
ent feelings, Anne of Austria was to testify the
same constancy towards Mazarin. A stroke of
fortune came at the very first to strengthen the
regent's position. Since the death of Cardinal
Richelieu, the Spaniards, but recently over-
whelmed at the close of 1643, had recovered
courage and boldness ; new counsels prevailed at
the court of Philip IV., who had dismissed Oli-
varez ; the House of Austria vigorously resumed
the offensive; at the moment of Louis XIIL '3
death, Don Francisco de Mello, governor of the
Low Countries, had just invaded French tem-
tory by way of the Ardennes, and laid siege to
Rocroi. on the 13th of May [1643]. The French
army was commanded by the young Duke of
Enghien [afterwards known as the Great Conde],
the prince of Conde's son, scarcely 33 years old ;
Louis XIIL had given him as his lieutenant and
director the veteran Marshal de I'Hopital ; and
the latter feared to give battle. The Duke of
Enghien, w^ho 'was dying with impatience to
1255
FRANCE, 1643-1643.
Ministry of
Mazarin.
FRANCE, 1642-1643.
enter the enemy's country, resolved to accom-
plish by address what he could not carry by
authority. He opened his heart to Gassion alone.
As he [Gassion, one of the boldest of Conde's offi-
cers] was a man who saw nothing but what was
easy even in the most dangerous deeds, he had
very soon brought matters to the point that the
prince desired. Marshal de I'Hopital found him-
self imperceptibly so near the Spaniards that it
was impossible for liim any longer to hinder an
engagement. "... The army was in front of Ro-
croi, and out of the dangerous defile which led
to the place, without any idea on the part of the
marshal and the army that Louis XIII. was dead.
The Duke of Enghien, who had received the
news, had kept it secret. He had merely said in
the tone of a master ' that he meant to fight, and
would answer for the issue. ' " The battle, which
was fought May 19, 1643, resulted in the destruc-
tion, almost total, of the Spanish army. Of 18,-
000 men who formed its infantry, nearly 9,000
were killed and 7,000 were made prisoners. The
whole of the Spanish artillery and 300 of their
standards fell Into the hands of the victors, who
lost, according to their own reports, only 2,000
men, killed and wounded. " "The prince was a
born captain,' said Cardinal de Retz. And all
France said so with him on hearing of the vic-
tory of Rocroi. The delight was all the keener
in the queen's circle, because the house of Conde
openly supported Cardinal Mazarin, bitterly at-
tacked as he was by the Importants [a court fac-
tion or party so called, which was made up
of ' those meddlers of the court at whose head
marched the Duke of Beaufort, all puffed up
with the confidence lately shown to him by her
Majesty,' and all expecting to count importantly
among the queen's favorites], who accused him
of reviving the tyranny of Richelieu. . . . And,
indeed, on pretext offered by a feminine quarrel
[August, 1643] between the young Duchess of
Longueville, daughter of the prince of Conde,
and the Duchess of Montbazon, the Duke of
Beaufort and some of his friends resolved to
assassinate the cardinal. The attempt was a
failure, but the Duke of Beaufort, who was
arrested on the 2d of September, was taken to
the castle of Vincennes. Madame de Chevreuse,
recently returned [after being exiled by Riche-
lieu] to court, where she would fain have ex-
acted from the queen the reward for her services
and her past sufferings, was sent into exile, as
well as the Duke of Vendome. Madame d'
Hautefort, but lately summoned by Anne of
Austria to be near her, was soon involved in the
same disgrace. . . . The party of the Impor-
tants was dead, and the power of Cardinal Ma-
zarin seemed to be firmly established. ' It was
not the thing just then for any decent man to be
on bad terms witli the court,' says Cardinal de
Retz." — F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of France,
ch. 41-43. — "Cardinal Richelieu was . not so
much a minister, in the precise sense of the word,
as a person invested with the whole power of the
crown. His preponderating influence in the
council suspended the exercise of the hereditary
power, without which the monarchy must cease
to exist ; and it seems as if that may have taken
place in order that the social progress, violently
arrested since the last reign, might resume its
course at the instigation of a kind of dictator,
whose spirit was free from the influences which
the interest of family and dynasty exercises over
the characters of kings. By a strange concurrence
of circumstances, it happened that the weak
prince, whose destiny it was to lend his name
to the reign of the great minister, had in his
character, his instincts, his good or bad qualities,
all that could supply the requirements of such a
post. Louis XIII., who had a mind without
energy but not without intelligence, could not
live without a master ; after having possessed and
lost many, he took and kept the one, who he found
was capable of conducting France to the point,
which he himself had a faint glimpse of, and to
which he vaguely aspired in his melancholy rev-
eries. ... In his attempts at innovation, Riche-
lieu, as simple minister, much surpassed the
great king who had preceded him, in boldness.
He undertook to accelerate the movement to-
wards civil unity and equality so much, and to
carry it so far, that hereafter it should be impos-
sible to recede. . . . The work of Louis XI.
had been nearly lost in the depth of the troubles
of the sixteenth century; and that of Heury
IV. was compromised by fifteen years of dis-
order and weakness. To save it from perish-
ing, three things were necessary : that the high
nobility should be constrained to obedience to
the king and to the law ; that Protestantism
should cease to be an armed party in the State ;
that F'rance should be able to choose her allies
freely in behalf of her own interest and in that of
European independence. On this triple object
the king-minister employed his powerful intel-
lect, his indefatigable activity, ardent passions,
and an heroic strength of mind. His daily life
was a desperate struggle against the nobles, the
royal family, the supreme courts, against all
that existed of high institutions, and corporations
established in the country. For the purpose of
reducing all to the same level of submission and
order, he raised the royal power above the ties
of family and the tie of precedent ; he isolated it
in its sphere as a pure idea, the living idea of
the public safety and the national interest. . . .
He was as destitute of mercy as he was of fear,
and trampled under foot the respect due to judi-
cial forms and usages. He had sentences of
death pronounced by commissioners of his own
selection : at the very foot of the throne he struck
the enemies of the public interest, and at the same
time of his own fortune, and confounded his per-
sonal hatreds with the vengeance of the State.
No one can say whether or not there was deceit
in that assurance of conscience which he mani-
fested in his last moments ; God alone could look
into the depth of his mind. We who have gath-
ered the fruit of his labours and of his patriotic
devotion at a distance of time — we can only bow
before that man of revohition, by whom the ways
which led to our present state of society were
prepared. But something sad is still attached
to his glory: he sacrificed everything to the suc-
cess of his undertaking ; he stifled within him-
self and crushed down in some noble spirits the
eternal principles of morality and humanity.
When we look at the great things which he
achieved, we admire him with gratitude; we
would, but we cannot, love his character. "— r A.
Thierry, Formation and Progress of the Tiers Mat
or Third Estate in France, ch. 8.
Axso m : V. Cousin, Secret Hist, of the French
Court under Richelieu and Mazarin, ch. 3-4. —
The same, T?ie Youth of Madame de Longueville.
— Lord Mahon, Life of Louis, Prince of Conde,
1256
FRANCE, 1643-1643.
Court
and Parliament.
FRANCE, 1647-1648.
eh. 1. — Cardinal de Retz, Memoirs, bk. 1-2. — M'lle
de Montpensier, Memoin, ch. 3-3.
A. D. 1643. — Accession of Louis XIV.
A. D. 1643. — Enghien's (Condi's) campaign
on the Moselle. — Siege and capture of Thion-
ville. — "On tlieSOtliof May . . . Eughienmade
his triumphal entry into Rocroy. He allowed
his troops to repose for two days, and then it was
towards Guise that he directed his steps. He
soon heard that Don Francisco de Melo had taken
shelter at Phillipcville, that he was trying to
rally his cavalry, but that of all his infantry not
above 3,000 men remained to him, and they dis-
armed and nearly naked. No army any longer
protected Flanders, and the youthful courage of
Enghien already meditated its conquest. But
the Court, which had expected to sustain war in
its own provinces, was not prepared to carry it
into foreign countries. It became necessary to
give up all idea of an invasion of Maritime Flan-
ders and the siege of Dunkirk, with which En-
ghien had at first flattered himself. Then finding
that the Spaniards had drawn off their troops
from the fortifications on the Moselle, Enghien
proposed to march thither, and take possession
of them. . . . Although this project was very
Inferior to his first, its greatness surprised the
Council of Ministers: they at first refused their
consent, but the Duke insisted — and what could
tney refuse to the victor of Rocroy ? Thionville
was at that time considered to be one of the best
fortresses in Europe. On arriving before its
walls, after a seven days' march, Enghien . . .
established his lines, erected bridges, raised re-
doubts, and opened a double line of trenches on
the 3.5th of June. The French were several
times repulsed, but always rallied; and every-
where the presence of Enghien either prevented
or repaired the disorder. . . . The obstinate re-
sistance of the garrison obliged the French to
have recourse to mines, which, by assiduous
labor, they pushed forward under the interior of
the town. Then Enghien, wishing to spare
bloodshed, sent a flag of truce to the governor,
and allowed him a safe conduct to visit the state
of the works. This visit convinced the Spaniards
of the impossibility of defending themselves any
longer. . . . They evacuated the town on the
33d of August. Thionville was then little more
than a heap of ruins and ashes. . . . By this
conquest Enghien soon became master of the
whole course of the Moselle down to the gates of
Treves. Sierch alone ventured to resist him, but
was reduced in 34 hours. Then, disposing his
army in autumn quarters, he set off for Paris."
— Lord Mahon, Life of Louis, Prince of Conde,
ch. 1.
A. D. 1644-1646. — Campaigns in Catalonia.
— The failures at Lerida. See Spain: A. D.
1644-1646.
A. D. 1645-1648. — Campaigns in Flanders. —
Capture of Dunkirk. — Loss of the Dutch alli-
ance. — Condi's victory at Lens. See Neth-
erlands: A. D. 1634-1646; 1646-1648; 1647-
1648.
A. D. 1646-1648. — The last campaigns of
the Thirty Years War. — Turenne and the
Swedes in Germany. See Germany: A. D.
1646-1648.
A. D. 1646-1654. — Hostility to the Pope. —
Siege of Orbitello. — Attempts to take advan-
tage of the insurrection in Naples. See Italy:
A. D. 1646-1654.
A. D. 1647-1648. — Conflict between Court
and Parliament. — The question of the Pau-
lette. — Events leading to the First Fronde. —
" The war was couducted with alternate success
and failure, but with an unintermitted waste of
the public revenue; and while Guebriant, Tu-
renne, and Conde were maintaining the military
renown of France, D'Einer}-, the superintendent
of finance, was struggling with the far severer
difficulty of raising her ways and means to the
level of her expenditure. The internal history
of the first five years of the regency is thencefor-
ward a record of the contest between the court
and the Parliament of Paris ; between the court,
promulgating edicts to replenish the exhausted
treasury, and the Parliament, remonstrating in
angry addresses against the acceptance of them. "
Of the four sovereign courts which had their seat
at that time in the Palais de Justice of Paris, and
of which the Parliament was the most consider-
able — the other tliree being the Chamber ' des
Comptes,' the Cour des Aides, and the Grand
Conseil — the counselors or stipendiary judges
held their ofiices for life. " But, in virtue of the
law called Paulette [named from Paulet, its
originator, in the reign of Henry IV.] . . . they
also held them as an inheritance transmissible to
their descendants. The Paulette . . . was a royal
ordinance which imposed an annual tax on the
stipend of every judge. It was usually passed
for a term of nine years only. If the judge died
during that term, his heir was entitled to suc-
ceed to the vacant office. But if the death of the
judge happened when the Paulette was not in
force, his heir had no such right. Consequently,
the renewal of the tax was always welcome to
the stipendiary counselors of the sovereign courts ;
and, by refusing or delaying to renew it, the king
could always exercise a powerful influence over
them. In April, 1647, the Paulette had expired,
and the queen-mother proposed the revival of it.
But, to relieve the necessities of the treasury, she
also proposed to increase the annual per centage
which it imposed on the stipends of the coun-
selors of the Chamber ' des Comptes, ' of the
Cour des Aides, and of the Grand Conseil. To
concert measures of resistance to the contem-
plated innovation, those counselors held a meet-
ing in the Great Hall of St. Louis ; and at their
request the Parliament, though not personally
and directly interested in the change, joined their
assembly." The queen sarcastically replied to
their remonstrances that the "king would not
only witlidraw his proposal for an increase in the
rate of the annual tax on their stipends, but
would even graciously relieve them from that
burden altogether. . . . Exasperated by the
threatened loss of the heritable tenure of their
offices, and still more offended by the sarcastic
terms in which that menace was conveyed, the
judges assembled in the hall of St. Louis with
increased zeal, and harangued there with yet
more indignant eloquence. Four diiierent times
the queen interdicted their meetings, and four
different times they answered her by renewed
resolutions for the continuance of them. She
threatened severe punishments, and they replied
by remonstrances. A direct collision of authority
had thus occurred, and it behooved either party
to look well to their steps. " The queen began
to adopt a conciliatory manner. "But the as-
sociated magistrates derived new boldness from
the lowered tone and apparent fears of the gov-
1257
FRANCE, 1647-1648.
TJte First Fronde.
FRANCE, 1649.
eminent. Soaring at once above the humble
topic on which they had hitherto been engaged
into the region of general politics, they passed
at a step from the question of the Paulette to a
review of all the public grievances under which
their fellow subjects were labouring. After
having wrought during four successive days in
this inexhaustible mine of eloquence, they at
length, on the 30th of June, 1648, commenced
theadoptlon of a series of resolutions, which, by
the 24th of July, had amounted in number to 27,
and whicli may be said to have laid the basis of
a constitutional revolution. . . . Important as
these resolutions were in themselves, they were
still more important as the assertion, by the as-
sociated magistrates, of the right to originate
laws affecting all the general interests of the
commonwealth. In fact, a new power in the
state had suddenly sprung into existence. . . .
That was an age in which the minds of men, in
every part of Europe, had been rudely awakened
to the extent to which the unconstitutional en-
croachments of popular bodies might be carried.
Charles I. was at that time a prisoner in the
hands of the English Parliament. Louis XIV.
was a boy, unripe for an encounter with any
similar antagonists. . . . Tlie queen-mother,
therefore, resolved to spare no concessions by
■which the disaffected magistracy might be con-
ciliated. D'Etnery was sacrificed to their dis-
pleasure; the renewal of the Paulette on its
ancient terms was offered to them ; some of the
grievances of which they complained were im-
mediately redressed; and the young king ap-
peared before them in person, to promise his
assent to their other demands. In return, he
stipulated only for the cessation of their com-
bined meetings, and for their desisting from the
further promulgation of arrets, to which they
ascribed the force and authority of law. But
the authors of this hasty revolution were no
longer masters of the spirits whom they had
summoned to their aid. . . . With increasing
audacity, therefore, they persevered in defy-
ing the royal power, and In requiring from all
Frenchmen Implicit submission to their own.
Advancing from one step to another, they adopt-
ed, on the 28th of August, 1648, an arret in
direct conflict with a recent proclamation of the
king, and ordered the prosecution of three per-
sons for the offense of presuming to lend him
money. At that moment their debates were in-
terrupted by shouts and discharges of cannon,
aimouncing the great victory of Conde at Lens.
During the four following days religious festivals
and public rejoicings suspended their sittings.
But in those four days, the court had arranged
their measures for a coup d'etat. As the Parlia-
ment retired from Notre Dame, where they had
attended at a solemn thanksgiving for the triumph
of the arms of France, they observed that the
soldiery still stood to the posts which, in honour
of that ceremonial, had been assigned to them in
different quarters of the city. Under the protec-
tion of tliat force, one of the presidents of the
Chamber 'des Bnqufites,' and De Broussel, the
chief of the parliamentary agitators, were arrested
and consigned to different prisons, while three of
their colleagues were exiled to remote distances
from the capital. At the tidings of this violence,
the Parisian populace were seized with a charac-
teristic paroxysm of fury. ... In less than three
hours, Paris had become an entrenched camp.
. . . They dictated their own terms. The exiles
were recalled and the prisoners released. . . .
Then, at the bidding of the Parliament, the peo-
ple laid aside their weapons, threw down the
barricades, re-opened their shops, and resumed
the common business of life as quietly as if noth-
ing had occurred. ... It was, however, a short-
lived triumph. The queen, her son, and Mazarin
effected their escape to St. Germains ; and there,
by the mediation of Conde and of Gaston, duke
of Orleans, the uncle of the king, a peace was
negotiated. The treaty of St. Germains was re-
garded by the court with shame, and by the
Parliament with exultation." Fresh quarrels
over it soon arose. "Conde was a great soldier,
but aa unskillful and impatient peacemaker. By
his advice and aid, the queen-motlier and the
king once more retired to St. Germains, and com-
manded the immediate adjournment of tlie Par-
liament from Paris to Montargis. To their re-
monstrances against that order they could obtain
no answer, except that if their obedience to it
should be any longer deferred, an army of 25,000
men would immediately lay siege to the city.
War was thus declared." — Sir J. Stephen, Lect's
on tlie Hist, of France, lect. 21.
Also in: Cardinal De Retz, Memoirs, bk. 2
(». 1).
A. D. 1648.— The Peace of Westphalia.—
Acquisition of Alsace, etc. See Germany :
A. I). 1648 ; and 1648-1715.
A. D. 1649. — The First Fronde. — Doubtful
origin of the name. — Siege of Paris by Cond6.
— Dishonorable conduct of Turenne. — Deserted
by his array. — The Peace of Reuil. — "The
very name of this movement is obscure, and it is
onl3' certain that it was adopted in jest, from a
child's game. It was fitting that the struggle
which became only a mischievous burlesque on
a revolution should be named from the sport of
gamins and school-boys. Fronde is the name of
a sling, and the boys of the street used this
weapon in their mimic contests. How it came
to be applied to the opponents of the government
is uncertain. Some claimed it was because the
members of the Parliament, like the young fron-
deurs, hurled their weapons at Mazarin, but
were ready to fly when the officers of the police
appeared. Others said the tenn had been used
by chance by some counsellor, and had been
adopted by the writers of epigrams and mazari-
nades. However derived, it was not ill applied."
— J. B. Perkins, Frane^ Under Mazarin, ch. 9 (p.I).
— "Paul de Gondi, Coadjutor of Paris [Coadju-
tor, that is, of the Archbishop of Paris, who
was his uncle], famous afterwards under the
name of Cardinal de Retz, placed himself at the
head of the revolution. . . . The Prince of Conti,
brother of Conde, the Duke of Longueville, the
Duke of Beaufort, and the Duke of Bouillon
adopted the party of the coadjutor and the par-
liament. Generals were chosen for an army with
wliich to resist the court. Although taxes levied
by Mazarin had been resisted, taxes were freely
paid to raise troops — 12,000 men were raised;
Conde [commanding for the queen] had 8,000
soldiers. These he threw around Paris, and in-
vested 100,000 burgesses, and threatened to starve
tlie town. The citizens, adorned with feathers
and ribbons, made sorties occasionally, but their
manoeuvres were the subject of scorn by the sol-
diers. ... As Voltaire says, the tone of the civil
discords which afflicted England at the same time
1258
FRANCE, 1649.
The Frondeurs.
FRANCE, 1650-1651.
mark well the difference between the national
characters. The English had thrown into their
civil war a balanced fury and a mournful deter-
mination. . . . The French on the other hand
threw themselves into their civil strife with ca-
price, laughter, dissolution and debauchery.
Women were the leaders of factions — love made
and broke cabals. The Duchess of Longueville
urged Turenne, only a short time back appointed
Marshal of France, to encourage his army to re-
volt, which he was commanding for his king.
Nothing can justify Turenne's action in this mat-
ter. Had he laid down his command and taken
the side of his brother [the Duke de Bouillon],
on account of his family grievance [the loss of
the principality of Sedan — see above, A. D.
1641-1642], the feudal spirit which in those days
held affection for family higher than affection for
country, might have excused him ; but, while in
the service of a sovereign and intrusted with the
command of an army, to endeavour to lead his
troops over to the enemy can be regarded as
nothing short of the work of a traitor. He him-
self pleads as his apology that Conde was starv-
ing the population of Paris by the investment.
. . As it was he sacrificed his honour, and al-
lowed his fair fame to be tarnished for the sake
of a worthless woman who secretly jeered at his
passion, and cared nothing for his heart, but
merely for his sword for her own worldly advan-
tage. As it was he endeavoured to persuade his
army to declare for the parliament, and purposed
taking it into Champagne, and marching for the
relief of the capital ; but the treachery of the
marshal was no match for the subtlety of the
cardinal. Before Turenne issued his declaration
to his troops the colonels of his regiment had
already been tampered with. The cardinal's
emissaries had promised them pensions, and dis-
tributed £800,000 among the officers and soldiers.
This was a decisive argument for mercenaries,
who taught Turenne by forsaking him that mer-
cenary services can only be commanded by
money. D'Erlach had also stood firm. The
regiments of Turenne, six German regiments,
called by d'Erlach, marched one night to join
him at Brisach. Three regiments of infantry
threw themselves under the guns of Philipsburg.
Only a small force was left to Turenne, who,
finding the blow he intended hopeless, sent the
troops still with him to join d'Erlach at Brisach,
and retired himself with fifteen or twenty of his
friends to Heilbron, thence to Holland, where he
awaited the termination of the civil war. The
news of the abandonment of Turenne was re-
ceived with despair at Paris, with wild joy at St.
Qermain. His banishment, however, was not
long. The leaders of the parliament became
aware that the princes of the Fronde were trying
to obtain foreign assistance to overturn the mon-
archy; that their generals were negotiating a
treaty with Spain. They felt that order, peace,
and the independence of parliament, which would
in this case become dependent upon the nobility,
was in danger. They took the patriotic resolu-
tion quickly to act of their own accord. A con-
ference had been opened between the parliament
and the Court. Peace was concluded at Reuil,
which, notwithstanding the remonstrances of
Conti [brother of Conde, the family being di-
vided in the First Fronde], Bouillon, and the other
nobles of the Fronde, was accepted by the whole
parliament. Peace was proclaimed in Paris to
the discontent of the populace. . . . Turenne, on
the conclusion of the treaty of Reuil, embarked
in Zeeland, landed at Dieppe, and posted to
Paris." — H. M. Hozier, Turenne, eh. 6. — "After
the signing of the peace, the Chateau of St. Ger-
main became the resort of many Frondeurs : the
Duchess de Longueville, the Prince of Conti, and
nearly all the other chiefs of the party, hastened
to pay their respects to the Queen. She received
everybody without bitterness, some even with
friendship ; and the Minister on his part affected
much general good-will. . . . One of the first
effects of the peace between the parties was a
reconciliation in the House of Conde. The Prin-
cess Dowager employed herself with zeal and
success in reestablishing harmony between her
children. Conde, who despised his brother too
much to hate him, readily agreed to a reconcilia-
tion with him. As to his sister, he had always
felt for her great affection and confidence, and
she no less for him : these sentiments were re-
vived at their very first interview at Ruel, and
he not only gave her back his friendship, but be-
gan to enter into her views, and even to be guided
by her counsels. The Prince's policy was to
make Royalty powerful and respected, but not
absolute. He said publicly that he had done
what he ought in upholding Mazarin, because he
had promised to do so; but for the future, if
things took a different line, he should not be
bound by the past. ... A prey to a thousand
conflicting feelings, and discontented with every-
body, and perhaps with himself, he took the
resolution of retiring for several months to his
government in Burgundy. On returning from
Dijon in the month of August, the Prince found
the Queen and the Cardinal at Compi^gne, and
very much dejected. . . . He . . . pressed her
to return to Paris with her Minister, answering
for Mazarin's safety, at the risk of his own head.
. . . Their entry into Paris took place a few days
after." — Lord Mahon, Life of Louis, PHnee of
Conde, ch. 3-4.
Also in; Guy Joli, Memoirs, v. 1. — Cardinal
De Retz, Memoirs, bk. 2. — Miss Pardoe, Louis
XIV.. eh. 9-11.
A. D. 1650-1651. — The Nev7 Fronde, or the
Petits Maitres. — Its alliance with Spain and
defeat at Rethel. — Revolt, siege and reduction
of Bordeaux. — "Faction, laid asleep for one
night, woke again fresh and vigorous next morn-
ing. There was a Parliamentary party, a De Retz
party, and a Conde party, and each party plotted
and schemed unceasingly to discredit the others
and to evoke popular feeling against all except
itself. . . . Neither of the leaders, each pretend-
ing fear of assassination, ever stirred abroad un-
less in the company of 400 or 500 gentlemen, thus
holding the city in hourly peril of an 'emeute.'
Conde's arrogance and insolence becoming at last
totally unbearable, the Court proceeded to the
bold measure of arresting him. New combina-
tions; De Retz and Orleans coalesce once more;
De Retz coquets with Mazarin and is promised a
cardinal's hat. AVily Mazarin strongly supports
De Retz's nomination in public, and privately
urges every member of the council to vote against
it and to beseech the Queen to refuse the dignity.
It was refused ; upon which De Retz turned his
energies upon a general union of parties for the
purpose of effecting the release of Conde and
the overthrow of the minister. ' — De Retz and the
Fronde (Temple Bar, v. 38, pp. 535-536).— Conde,
1259
FRANCE, 1650-1651.
The Petits Maitres.
FRANCE, 1651-1653.
bis brother Conti. and his brother-in-law Longue-
ville, were arrested and conducted to Vincennes
on the 18th of January, 16.50. "This was tlie
second crisis of the sedition. Tlie old Fronde
had expired; its leaders had sold themselves
to the Court; but in its place sprang up the
New Fronde, called also, from the affected airs
of its leaders, the Petits Maitres. The beauti-
ful Duchess of Longueville was the soul of it,
aided by her admirer, Marsillac, afterwards Duke
de la Rochefoucauld, and by the Duke of Bouil-
lon. On the arrest of her husband and her
brother, the duchess had fled to Holland, and
afterwards to Stenai ; where she and Bouillon's
brotlier, Turenue,who styled himself the 'King's
Lieutenant -General for the liberation of the
Princes, ' entered into negociations with the Arch-
duke Leopold. Bouillon himself had retired into
Guienne, which province was alienated from the
Court because Mazarine maintained as its gover-
nor the detested Epernon. In July Bouillon and
his allies publicly received a Spanish envoy at
Bordeaux. Conde's wife and infant sou had been
received in that city with enthusiasm. But on
the approach of Mazarine with the royal army,
the inhabitants of Guienne, alarmed for their
vintage, now approaching maturity, showed
signs of submission ; after a short siege Bordeaux
surrendered, on condition of an amnesty, in
which Bouillon and La Rochefoucauld were in-
cluded ; and the Princess of Conde was permitted
to retire (October 1st 1650). In the north, the
Frondeurs, with their Spanish allies, seemed at
first more successful. In the summer Leopold
had entered Champagne, penetrated to Ferte
Milon, and some of his marauding parties had
even reached Dammartin. Turenne tried to
persuade the Archduke to march to Vincennes
and liberate the princes ; but while he was hesi-
tating, Gaston transferred the captives to Mar-
coussis, whence they were soon after conveyed to
Havre. Leopold and Turenne, after a vain at-
tempt to rouse the Parisians, retreated to the
Meuse and laid siege to Mouzon. The Cardinal
himself, like his master Riclielieu, now assumed
the character of a general. Uniting with his
troops in the north the army of Guienne, he took
up his quarters at Rethel, which had been cap-
tured by Du Plessis Praslin. Hence he ordered
an attack to be made on the Spaniards. In the
battle which ensued, these were entirely defeated,
many of their principal oflicers were captured,
and even Turenne himself narrowly escaped the
same fate (December 15th 1650). 'The Cardinal's
elation was unbounded. It was a great thing to
have defeated Turenne, and though the victory
was Du Plessis', Mazarine assumed all the credit
of it. His head began to turn. He forgot that
he owed his success to the leaders of the old
Fronde, and especially to the Coadjutor; he
neglected his promises to that intriguing prelate,
though Gondi plainly declared that he must
either be a prince of the Church or the head of a
faction. Mazarine was also imprudent enough to
offend the Parliament; and he compared them
with that sitting at London — which indeed was
doing them too much honour. The Coadjutor
went over to the party of the princes, dragging
with him the feeble-minded Orleans, who had
himself been insulted by the Queen. Thus was
produced a third phase of this singular sedition
— the union of the old Fronde with the new.
The Parliament now clamoured for the liberation
of the princes. As the Queen hesitated, Gaston
bluntly declared that the dismissal of Mazarine
was necessary to the restoration of peace ; while
the Parliament added to their former demand
another for the Cardinal's banishment. Mazarine
saw his mistake and endeavoured to rectify it.
He hastened to Havre in order to liberate the
princes in person, and claim the merit of a spon-
taneous act. But it was too late; it was plain
that he was acting only by constraint. The
princes were conducted back in triumph to Paris
by a large retinue sent to escort them. On Febru-
ary 25th 1651, their innocence was established by
a royal declaration, and they were restored to all
their dignities and charges. Mazarine, mean-
while, who saw that for the present the game was
lost, retired into exile; first into Bouillon, and
afterwards to Brilhl on the Rhine, where the
Elector of Cologne offered him an asylum. From
this place he corresponded with the Queen, and
continued to direct her counsels. The anarchy
and confusion that had ensued in France were
such as promised him a speedy return. " — T. H.
Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 5, ch. 1 (o. 3).
Also in : T. Wright, Hist, of France, bk. 4, ch.
4 (c. 2). — Miss Pardee, Louis XIV. aiid the Court
of France, v. 1, ch. 13-15.
A. D. 1651-1652.— The loss of Catalonia.
See Sp.\in : A. D, 1648-1652.
A. D. 1651-1653. — The arrogance of Cond6
and his renewal of civil war. — The King's
majority proclaimed. — General changing of
sides. — Battle of Porte St. Antoine and mas-
sacre of the Hotel de ViUe. — End of the
Fronde. — Cond6 in the service of Spain. —
"The liberated captives were received with every
demonstration of joy by all Paris and the Fron-
deurs, including the Duke of Orleans. The
Queen, melancholy, and perhaps really ill, lay in
bed to receive their visit of cold ceremony ; but
the Duke of Orleans gave them a grand supper,
and there was universal joy at being rid of
Mazarin. . . . There was a promise to assemble
the States General, while Conde thought himself
governing the kingdom, and as usual his arro-
gance gave offence in various quarters. One
article in the compact which had gained his lib-
erty was that the Prince of Conti should marry
Mademoiselle de Chevreuse, but this alliance of-
fended the pride of the elder brother, and he
broke the marriage off hastily and haughtily.
Madame de Chevreuse, much offended, repented
of the aid she had given, went over to the
Queen's party, and took with her the coadjutor,
who was devoted to the rejected daughter, and
could always sway the mob of Paris. So many
persons had thus come to desert the cause of the
Prince that Anne of Austria thought of again
arresting him." Conde, supposing himself in
danger, fled from the city on the 6th of July,
and "went to his chateau of St. Maur, where his
family and friends joined him, and he held a kind
of court. Queen and Parliament both sent en-
treaties to him to return, but he disdained them
all, and made the condition of his return the dis-
missal of the secretaries whom Mazarin had left.
The Queen, most unwillingly, made them retire,
and Conde did return for a short time ; but he
was haughtier than ever, and openly complained
of Mazarin's influence, making every preparation
for a civil war. Strangely violent scenes took
place," between the Prince and the Coadjutor
and their respective adherents ; and presently the
1260
FRANCE, 1651-1653.
End of the
Fronde.
FRANCE, 1651-1653.
Prince "quitted Paris, went to Chantilly, and
decided on war. Mazarin wrote to tlie Queen
that the most prudent course would be to ally
herself with the Parliament to crush the Princes.
After they should have been put down the Par-
liament would be easily dealt with. She acted
on this advice. The elections for the States Gen-
eral were beginning, but in order to quash them,
and cancel all her promises, the Queen decided
on proclaiming the majority of the King, and
thus the close of her own regencj'. It was of
course a farce, since he had only just entered his
fourteenth year, and his mother still conducted
the Government ; but it made a new beginning,
and was an occasion for stirring up the loyalty
of the people. . . . Conde was unwilling to be-
gin a civil war, and was only driven into it by
his sister's persuasions and those of his friends.
' Remember,' he said, ' if I once draw the sword,
I shall be the last to return it to the scabbard. '
On the other side, Anne of Austria said, ' Mon-
sieur le Prince shall perish, or I will.' From
Montrond, Conde directed his forces to take pos-
session of the cities in Guyenne, and he after-
wards proceeded to Bordeaux. On the other
hand, Mazarin repaired to Sedan, and contrived
to raise an army in the frontier cities, with which
he marched to join the King and Queen at
Poitiers. War was raging again, still as the
Fronde, though there had been a general change
of sides, the Parliament being now for the Court,
and the Princes against it, the Duke of Orleans
in a state of selfish agitation between the two.
Learning that the royal army was advancing to
his own appanage of Orleans, and fearing that
the city might open its gates to them, he sent off
his daughter. Mademoiselle [de Montpensier], to
keep the citizens to what he called their duty to
himself. She went with only two ladies and her
servants . . . and found the gates closed against
her." The persevering Mademoiselle succeeded,
however, in gaining admission to the town, de-
spite the orders of tlie magistrates, and she kept
out of it the soldiers of both factions in the war.
But her own inclinations were strongly towards
Conde and his side. ' ' She went out to a little inn
to hold a council with the Dukes of Beaufort and
Nemours, and had to mediate between them in a
violent quarrel. . . . Indeed, Conde's party were
ill-agreed ; he had even quarreled with his sister,
and she had broken with De la Rochefoucauld !
The Duke de Bouillon and his brother Turenne
were now on the Queen's side, and the command
of the royal army was conferred on the Viscount.
Conde, with only eight persons, dashed across
France, to take the command of the army over
which Beaufort and Nemours were disputing.
The very morning after he arrived, Turenne saw-
by the disposition of the troops who must be op-
posed to him. 'M. le Prince is come,' he said.
They were the two greatest captains of the age,
and they fought almost in sight of the King and
Queen at Bleneau. But though there were skir-
mishes [including, at the outset, the serious defeat
of a division of the royal forces under Hocquin-
court], no decisive engagement took place. It
was a struggle of manoeuvres, and in this Conde
had the disadvantage. . . . Week after week
the two armies . . . watched one another, till at
last Conde was driven up to the walls of Paris,
and there the gates were closed against both
armies. Conde was at St. Cloud, whence, on the
2nd of July [1652], he endeavoured to lead his
army round to Charenton at the confluence of the
Seine and the Loire ; but when he came in front
of the Porte St. Antoine, he found that a battle
was inevitable and that he was caught in a trap,
where, unless he could escape through the city,
his destruction was inevitable. He barricaded
the three streets that met there, heaping up his
baggage as a protection, and his friends within,
many of them wives of gentlemen in his array,
saw the situation with despair." The only one
who had energy to act was Mademoiselle. She
extorted from her hesitating father an order, by
virtue of which she persuaded the magistrates of
the city, not only to open the gates to Conde, but
to send 2,000 men to the Faubourg St. Antoine.
"Mademoiselle now repaired to the top of the
great square tower of the Bastille, whence she
could see the terrible conflict carried on in the
three suburban streets which converged at the
Porte St. Antoine." Seeing an opportunity to
turn the cannon of the Bastille on the pursuing
troops, she did so with efl'ect. "Turenne was
obliged to draw back, and at last Conde brought
his army into the city, where they encamped in
the open space of the Pre des Clercs. . . . Conde
unworthily requited the hospitality wrung from
the city. He was resolved to overcome the
neutrality of the Parliament, and, in concert with
Beaufort, instigated the mob to violence. Many
soldiers were disguised as artizans, and mingled
with the rabble, when, on the 4th of July, he
went to the Hotel de Ville, ostensibly to thank
the magistrates, but really to demand their sup-
port against the Crown, "These loyal men, how-
ever, by a majority of votes, decided on a peti-
tion to the King to return without Mazarin. On
this Conde exclaimed publicly, 'These gentle-
men will do nothing for us. They are Mazarin-
ists. Treat them as you please. ' Then he retired
to the Luxembourg with Gaston, while Beaufort
let loose the mob. The Hotel de Ville was
stormed, the rabble poured in at doors and win-
dows, while the disguised soldiers fired from the
opposite houses, and the magistrates were threat-
ened and pursued on all sides. 'They had one
advantage, tliat they knew their way through the
intricate passages and the mob did not. The
first who got out rushed to the Luxembourg to
entreat the Duke and Prince to stop the mas-
sacre ; but Monsieur only whistled and beat his
tattoo, and Conde said he knew nothing about
sedition. Nor would Beaufort interfere till the
disturbance had lasted many liours ; but after all
many more of the rabble were killed than of the
magistrates. It was the last remarkable scene in
the strange drama of the Fronde. The Parlia-
ment suspended its sittings, and the King trans-
ferred it to Pontoise, whither Mole and all the
other Presidents proceeded, leaving Paris in dis-
guise. This last ferocious proceeding of Conde's,
though he tried to disavow it, had shocked and
alienated every one, and he soon after fell sick of
a violent fever. Meanwhile, his castle of Mon-
trond was taken after a year's siege, Nemours
was killed in a duel by the Duke of Beaufort,
and the party was falling to pieces. . . . Mazarin
saw the opportunity, and again left the Court for
the German frontier. This was all that was
wanting to bring back the malcontents. Conde
offered to make terms, but was haughtily an-
swered that it was no time for negotiation, but
for submission. Upon this, he proceeded to the
Low Countries, and offered his sword to the
1261
FRANCE, 1651-1653.
Conde^s Treason.
FRANCE, 1653-1656.
Spaniards. The King entered Pari.s in state
and held a bed of justice, in which he pro-
claimed an amnesty, excepting from it Conde
and Conti, and some others of their party, and
forbidding the Parliament to interfere in State
affairs. The Coadjutor, who had become a Car-
dinal, was arrested, and imprisoned until he
made his escape, dislocating his shoulder in his
fall from the window, but finally reaching Rome,
where he lived till the Fronde was forgotten,
but never becoming Archbishop of Paris. . . .
When all was quiet, Mazarin returned, in Feb-
ruary, 1653, without the slightest opposition, and
thus ended the Fronde, in the entire triumph of
the Crown. . . . The misery, distress and disease
caused by these wars of the Fronde were un-
speakable. There was nothing to eat in the
provinces where the}' had raged but roots, rotten
fruit, and bread made of bran. . . . ' Le misfire
de la Fronde ' was long a proverbial expression
in France." — C. M. Yonge, Oameosfrom Enyliah
History, c. 15.
Also in : Lord Mahon, Life of Conde, ch. 8-9.
— G. P. R. James, Life and TimeJi of Lonii XLV.,
ch. 11-12. — Cardinal de Retz, Memoirs, bk. 3-4
(». 2-3). — M'lle de Montpensier, Memoirs, v. 1,
ch. 11-17.
A. D. 1652. — Loss of Gravelines and Dun-
kirk. — Spanish invasion of Picardy. — " In the
spring of 1653, the Spanish forces, under the
command of the archduke, had undertaken the
siege of Gravelines, which was obliged to capitu-
late on the 18th of May. The archduke next
undertook the siege of Dunkirk, but, at the
earnest desire of the princes, he merely blockaded
the place, and sent Fuensaldana with about
14,000 men into Picardy to their assistance.
. . . The court, in great alarm, sought first
a retreat in Normandy, but the Duke of Longue-
ville. who still held the government of that
province, refused to receive Mazarin. The fears
of the court Avere not lessened by this pro-
ceeding, and it was even proposed to carry
the king to Lyons; but the wiser counsels of
Turenne finally prevailed, and it was resolved to
establish the army at Compifigne, and lodge the
court at Pontoise. Fuensaldaiia forced the pas-
sage of the Oise at Chauni, and then joined the
duke of Lorraine at Fismes, on the 29th of Jul)',
when their joint forces amounted to full 30,000
men, while Turenne h.ad not more than 9,000 to
oppose to them. But the Spaniards were, as
usual, only pursuing a selfish policy, and Fuen-
saldana, in pursuance of the archduke's orders,
left a body of 3,000 cavalry to reinforce the duke
of Lorraine, and returned with the rest of his
troops to assist in the siege of Dunkirk," which
soon surrendered to his arms.— T. AVright, Hist,
of Frii n ce, v. 3, ;;). 89.
A. D. 1652-1653.— Last phase of the Fronde
at Bordeaux. — Attempted revolution by the
Society of the Orm6e. See Bordeaux : A. D.
1653-1C.53.
A. D. 1653-1656. — Condi's campaigns against
his owrn country, in the service of Spain. —
"Conde, unfortunately for his fame, made no
attempts at reconciliation, and retired to the
Spaniards — an enemy of his country! Recap-
tured several small places on the [Flemish] fron-
tier, and hoped to return in spring victorious. A
few days after the entry into Paris, Turenne set
out to oppose him; and, retaking some towns,
bad the satisfaction of compelling him to seek
winter quarters beyond the limits of France.
. . . Conde persuaded the Spanish to bring 30,-
000 men into the field for the next campaign:
Turenne and La Ferte had but 13,000. To para-
lyze the plans of the enemy, the Viscount pro-
posed, and his proposal was allowed, to be always
threatening their rear and communications; to
occupy posts they would not dare to attack, and so
to avoid fighting, at the same time hindering them
from all important undertakings. He began by
throwing himself between two corps of their
army, at the point where they expected to effect
a junction; and in the eight or nine days thus
gained, he recovered Rhetel, without which it
would have been, as he declares himself, impos-
sible to defend Picardy and Champagne. Rhetel,
so much an object of anxiety, was taken in three
days. Baffled in their original purposes, and at a
loss, the Spanish expected a large convoy from
Cambray, escorted by 3,000 horse. Turenne got
news of this, and, posting himself near Peronne to
intercept it, drove it back to Cambray [August 11,
1653]. There Condeand Fuensaldaiia turned upon
him ; but he took up a position, which they watched
for three or fom" days, and there defied their
attack. They refused the challenge. Thence
the enemy drew off," with designs on Guise,
which Turenne frustrated. "Conde then laid
siege to Rocroi, where his own first glory had
been gained; and this place is so hemmed in
by woods and defiles, that the relief of it was
impossible. But Turenne compensated for the
loss of it by the equally valuable recapture of
Mouson. Thus the whole year was spent in
marches and countermarches, in gains and losses,
which had no influence on events. By this
time the malcontents were so prostrate that
Conde's brother, the Prince de Conti, and his
sister, the Duchesse de Longueville, made their
peace with the court. . . . The year 1654 opened
with the siege of Stenay by the j'oung king in
person, who was carried thither by ^Mazarin, to
overawe Conde's governor with the royal name
and majesty. That officer was more true to his
trust than to his allegiance, and Stenay cost a
siege. . . . Conde could do no better than imitate
Turenne 's policy of the previous year, and be-
siege Arras as an equivalent for Stenay ; to which
end he mustered 33,000 men. Arras was a town
of some value. Conde had caught it at disad-
vantage; the governor. Mondejeu . . . was put
on his defence with 3,500 foot and 100 horse. To
reinforce this slender garrison was the first care of
Turenne. . . . Mazarin was anxious for Arras,
and offered Turenne to break up the siege of
Stenay, for the sake of reinforcing the army of
relief. This proposal the Viscount declined. He
must have been very confident of his own ca-
pacity; for he could collect only 14,000 men to
hover around the enemy's camp. ... He pro-
posed no attempt upon the intrenchments till he
had the aid of the troops from Stenay . . . ; but
he disposed his parties around so as to prevent the
enemy's convoys from reaching them. " Stenay
surrendered on the 6th of August, and Turenne,
with reinforcements from its besiegers, attacked
the Spanish lines at Arras on the night of the
34th, with complete success. The Spaniards
raised the siege and retreated to Cambray, leav-
ing 3,000 prisoners and 63 pieces of cannon in the
hands of the French. "The capture of Quesnoy
and Binches filled up the rest of the year ; the
places were weak and the garrisons feeble. Nor
1262
FRANCE, 1653-1656.
Alliance with
England,
FRANCE, 1659-1661.
did the next season, 1655, offer anything of
interest. Turenne reduced Landrecies, Conde,
and Guislain, while his active opponent was
sometimes foiled by his precautions, and sometimes
baffled by the absurd behaviour of the Spanish
authorities. . . . The great event of 1656 was the
siege of Valenciennes. This place . . . was in-
vested by Turenne about the middle of June:
but hardly had his camp been intrenched before
he repented of his undertaking. The Scheldt flows
through the town, and b}' reservoirs and sluices
was flooded at the will of the enemy. Turenne's
camp was largely inundated. . . . He had over-
estimated his means: so great was the circle of
his circumvallation that he had not men enough
to guard it adequately, when Conde and the
Spanish appeared with 30,000 men to the relief
of the place." They broke through his lines and
forced liira to retreat, with a heavy loss of pris-
oners taken. "The Viscount retrieved his credit
by the bold stand he made after the defeat." —
T. O. Cockayne, Life of Marshal Turenne, pp.
58-69.
Also ik: Lord Mahon, Life of Conde, ch. 10. —
J. B. Perkins, Prance under Mazarin, ch. 16-17
(V. 2).
A. D. 1653-1660. — First persecution of the
Jansenists. See Port Rot.\l .\:nd the Jansen-
ISTS.
A. D. 1655-1658. — Alliance with the English
Commonwrealth against Spain. — The taking
of Dunkirk for England and Gravelines for
France. — End of the V7ar. — " JIazarin was now
bent upon an enterprise which, if successful,
must finish the war. A deadly blow would be
struck at the strength of Spain if Dunkirk, Mar-
dyck, and Gravelines — the possession of which
was of vital importance to her communication
with Flanders, as well as enabling her to ruin
French commerce on that coast — could be wrested
from her. For this the cooperation of some
maritime power was necessary, and Mazarin de-
termined at all costs to secure England. With
Cromwell, the only diplomatist by whose astute-
ness he confessed himself baffled, he had been
negotiating since 1651. . . . Atlength on Novem-
ber 3, 1655, a treaty was signed at Westminster,
based upon freedom of commerce and an engage-
ment that neither country should assist the ene-
mies or rebels of the other ; Mazarin consented to
expel Charles II., James, and twenty named roy-
alists from France. Cromwell similarly agreed
to dismiss from England the emissaries of Conde.
But Mazarin was soon anxious for a more effec-
tual bond. . . . Cromwell had equally good rea-
sons for drawing closer to France, for Spain was
preparing actively to assist Charles II. French
and English interests thus coinciding, an alli-
ance was signed at Paris on March 33, 1657 [see
Englajid: a. D. 165.5-1658]. Gravelines and
Dunkirk were to be at once besieged both by
land and sea. England was to send 6,000 men
to assist the French army. Gravelines was to
become French and Dunkirk English ; should the
former fall first it was to be held by England
until Dunkirk too was taken. . . . The alliance
was not a moment too soon. The campaign of
1657 had opened disastrously. The tide was
however turned bj' the arrival of the English con-
tingent. Montmedy was immediately besieged,
and capitulated on August 4. The effect was
again to make Mazarin hang back from further
effort, since it seemed possible now to make peace
with Spain, and thereby avoid an English occu-
pation of Dunkirk. But Cromwell would stand
no trifling, and his threats were so clear that
Mazarin determined to act loyally and without
delay. On September 30, Turenne laid siege to
Mardyck, which protected Dunkirk, and took it
in four days. It was at once handed over to
the English. " In the spring of 1658 the siege of
Dunkirk was begun. The Spaniards, under Don
John of Austria and Conde, attempting to relieve
the place, were defeated (June 13) in the battle
of the Dunes, by Turenne and Cromwell's Iron-
sides (see England: A. D. 1655-1658). "Dunkirk
immediately surrendered, and on the 35th was in
Cromwell's possession. Two months later Grave-
lines also fell. A sliort and brilliant campaign
followed, in which Don John and Conde, shut
up in Brussels and Tournai respectively, were
compelled to remain inactive while fortress after
fortress fell into Fi-ench hands. A few days
after the fall of Gravelines Cromwell died ; but
Mazarin was now near his goal. Utterly defeated
on her own soil, beaten, too, by the Portuguese
at Elvas, and threatened in Milan, her army
ruined, her treasury bankrupt, without a single
ally in Europe, Spain stood at last powerless be-
fore him. " — O. Airy, The English Restoration and
Louis XIV., ch. 6.
A. D. 1657.— Candidacy of Louis XIV. for
the imperial crov7n. See Germany: A. D.
1648-1705. .
A. D. 1659-1661. — The treaty of the Pyre-
nees. — Marriage of Louis XIV. to the Spanish
Infanta. — "The Spaniards could struggle no
longer: they sued for peace. Things were pre-
pared for it on every hand : Spain was desperate ;
matters far from settled or safe in France ; in
England the Protector's death had come very
opportunely for Mazarin ; the strong man was
no longer there to hold the balance between the
European powers. Questions as to a Spanish
marriage and the Spanish succession had been
before men since 1648; the Spaniards had dis-
liked the match, thinking that in the end it must
subject them to France. But things were changed ;
Philip IV. now had an heir, so that the nations
might hope to remain under two distinct crowns;
moreover, the needs of Spain were far greater
than in 1648, while the demands of France were
less. So negociation between Mazarin and Louis
de Haro on the little Isle of Pheasants in the
Bidassoa, under the very shadow of the Pyrenees,
went on prosperously; even the proposal that
Louis XIV. should espouse the Infanta of Spain,
Maria Theresa, was at last agreed to at Madrid.
The only remaining difficulty arose from" the
fact that the young King, Louis XIV., had
fallen in love with Maria Mancini, Cardinal Maz-
arin's niece, and wished to marry her. "The
King at last abandoned his youthful and pure
passion, and signed the Treaty of the Pyrenees
[concluded November 7, 1659], condemning him-
self to a marriage of state, which exalted high
the dignity of the French Crown, only to plunge
it in the end into the troubles and disasters of
the Succession War. The treaty of peace begins
with articles on trade and navigation : then fol-
low cessions, restitutions, and exchanges of ter-
ritories. 1. On the Northern frontier Spain
ceded all she had In Artois, with exception of
Aire and S. Omer ; in Flanders itself France got
Gravelines and its outer defences. In Hainault
she became mistress of the important towns,
1263
FRANCE. 1659-1661.
Treaty of the
Pyrenees.
FRANCE, 1661.
Landrecies, Quesnoy, and Avesnes, and also
strengthened her position by some exchanges: in
Luxemburg she retained Thionville, Montmedy,
and several lesser places ; so tliat over her whole
northern border France advanced her frontier
along a line answering to her old limits. ... In
return she restored to Spain several of her latest
conquests in Flanders: Ypres, Oudenarde, Dix-
milden, Fumes, and other cities. In Conde's
country France recovered Rocroy, Le CStelet
and Linchamp, occupied by the Prince's soldiers ;
and so secured the safety and defences of Cham-
pagne and Paris. 3. More to the East, the
Duke of Lorraine, having submitted with such
good grace as might be, was reinstated in his
Duchy. . . . But France received her price here
also, the Duchy of Bar, the Countj' of Clermont
on the edge of Champagne, Stenay, Dun, Jametz,
Moyenvic, became hers. The fortifications of
Nancy were to be rased for ever; the Duke of
Lon-aine bound himself to peace, and agreed to
give France free passage to the Bishopricks and
Alsace. This was the more necessary, because
Franche-Comte, the other higliway into Alsace,
was left to the Spaniards, and such places in it
as were in the King's hands were restored to
them. Far out in Germany Louis XIV. replaced
Jillich in the hands of the Duke of Neuberg ; and
that element of controversy, the germ or pretext
of these long wars, was extinct for ever. On the
Savoyard border France retained Pinerolo, with
all the means and temptations of offence which
it involved : she restored to the Duke her other
conquests within his territories, and to the Span-
iards whatever she held in Lombardy ; she also
honourably obtained an amnesty for those sub-
jects of Spain, Neapolitans or Catalans, wlio had
sided with France. Lastly, the Pyrenees became
the iinal, as it was the natural, boundary be-
tween the two Latin kingdoms. . . . Roussillou
and Contlans became French: all French con-
quests to the south of the Pyrenees were restored
to Spain. The Spanish King renounced all claims
on Alsace or Breisach: on the other hand the
submission of the great Conde was accepted ; he
was restored to all his domains; his son, the
young Duke of Enghien, being made Grand
Master of France, and he himself appointed
Governor of Burgundy and Bresse: his friends
and followers were included in the amnesty.
Some lesser stipulations, with a view to the peace
of Europe, for the settlement of the differences
between Spain and Portugal, between the Dukes
of Savoy and Mantua, between the Catholic and
the Protestant Cantons of Switzerland, and an
agreement to help forward peace between tlie
Northern Courts, worthily close this great docu-
ment, this weighty appendix to the Treaties of
'Westphalia. A separate act, as was fitting, regu-
lated all questions bearing on the great marriage.
It contains a solemn renunciation, intended to
bar for ever the union of the two Crowns under
one sceptre, or the absorption into France of
Flanders, Burgundy, or Charolais. It was a re-
nunciation which, as Mazarin foresaw long be-
fore, would never hold firm against tlie tempta-
tions and exigencies of time. The King's marriage
with the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain did not
take place till the next year, by which time Maz-
arin's work in life seemed well nigh over; racked
vrith gout, he had little enjoyment of his tri-
umphs. ... He betook himself to the arrange-
ment of his own affairs : his physicians giving
him, early in 1661, no hopes of recovery. . . .
These things arranged, the Cardinal resigned
himself to die ' with a serenity more philosophic
than Christian ' ; and passed away on the 8th of
March,1661."— G.W. Kitchin, Hist, of France, bk.
A,ch. 8 (B. 3).— "The Treaty of the Pyrenees,
which completed the great work of pacification
that liad commenced at Munster, is justly cele-
brated as having put an end to such bitter and
useless animosities. But, it is more famous, as
having introduced a new tera in European poli-
tics. In its provisions all the leading events of a
century to come had their origin — the wai's which
terminated with the Treaties of Aix-la-Chapelle,
Nimeguen, and Ryswick, and that concerning
the Spanish succession. So great an epoch in
history has the Pyrenean Treaty been accounted
by politicians, that Lord Bolingbroke was of opin-
ion, ' That the only part of history necessary to be
thoroughly studied, goes no farther back than this
treaty, since, from that period, a new set of mo-
tives and principles have prevailed all over
Europe.'" — J. Dunlop, Memoirs of Spain during
the Reigns of PJdlip IV. and Charles II., v. 1,
ch. 11.
A. D. 1660-1688. — A footing gained in New-
foundland. See Ne^vfoundland : A. D. 1660-
1688.
A. D. 1661. — Personal assumption of the
government by Louis XIV. — The extraordi-
nary characteristics of the reign of the Grand
Monarch, nowr begun. — On the death of Maza-
rin Louis XIV., then twenty-three j^ears old, an-
nounced to his council his intention of taking the
government solely upon himself. His ministers
were henceforward to receive instructions from
him in person; there was to be no premier at
their head. The reign which then began "was
the culminating epoch in the history of the
French Monarchy. What the age of Pericles
was in the history of the Athenian Democracy,
what the age of the Scipios was in the history of
the Roman Republic, that was the reign of Louis
XIV. in the history of the old Monarchy of
France. ... It is not only the most conspicuous
reign in the history of France — it is the most
conspicuous reign in the history of Monarchy in
general. Of the very many kings whom history
mentions, who have striven to exalt the mo-
narchical principle, none of them achieved a suc-
cess remotely comparable to his. . . . They may
liave ruled over wider dominions, but they never
attained the exceptional position of power and
prestige which he enjoyed for more than half a
century. Tliey never were obeyed so submis-
sively at home, nor so dreaded, and even re-
spected, abroad. For Louis XIV. carried off that
last reward of complete success, that he for a
time silenced even envy, and turned it into ad-
miration. We who can examine with cold scru-
tin3' tlie make and composition of this Colossus
of a French Monarchy; who can perceive how
much the brass and clay in it exceeded the gold;
who know how it afterwards fell with a resound-
ing ruin, the last echoes of which have scarcely
died away, have difficulty in realising the fas-
cination it exercised upon contemporaries who
witnessed its first setting up. Louis XIV. 's reign
was the very triumph of commonplace great-
ness, of external magnificence and success, such
as the vulgar among mankind can best and most
sincerely appreciate. . . . His qualities were on
the surface, visible and comprehensible to all.
1264
FBANCE, 1661.
Louis XIV, and
the Huguenots.
FRANCE, 1661-1680.
... He was indefatigably industrious : worked
on an average eight hours a day for fifty-four
years ; had great tenacity of will ; that kind of
solid judgment wliich comes of slowness of brain,
and withal a most majestic port and great dignity
of manners. He had also as much kindliness of
nature as the very great can be expected to have.
. . . He must have had great original fineness of
tact, though it was in the end nearly extinguished
by adulation and incense. His court was an ex-
traordinary creation, and the greatest thing he
achieved. He made it the microcosm of all that
was most brilliant and prominent iu France.
Every order of merit was invited there, and re-
ceived courteous welcome. To no circumstance
did he so much owe his enduring popularity.
By its means he impressed into his service that
galaxy of great writers, the first and the last
classic authors of France, whose calm and serene
lustre will for ever illumine the epoch of his ex-
istence. It may even be admitted that his share
in that lustre was not so accidental and unde-
served as certain king-haters have supposed.
That subtle critic, M. Ste. Beuve, thinks he can
trace a marked rise even in Bossuet's style from
the moment he became a courtier of Louis XIV.
The king brought men together, placed them in
a position where they were induced and urged to
bring their talents to a focus. His Court was
alternately a high-bred gala and a stately uni-
versity. . . . But Louis XIV. 's reign has better
titles than the adulations of courtiers and the
eulogies of wits and poets to the attention of
posterity. It marks one of the most memorable
epochs in the annals of mankind. It stretches
across history like a great mountain-range, sepa-
rating ancient France from the France of modern
times. On the farther slope are Catholicism and
feudalism in their various stages of splendour
and decay — the France of crusade and chivalry,
of St. Louis and Bayard. On the hither side are
free-thought, industry, and centralization — the
France of Voltaire, Turgot and Condorcet. When
Louis came to the throne, the Thirty Years' War
still wanted six years of its end, and the heat of
theological strife was at its iutensest glow. When
he died, the religious temperature had cooled
nearly to freezing-point, and a new vegetation of
science and positive inquiry was overspreading
the world. This amounts to saying that his
reign covers the greatest epoch of mental transi-
tion through which the human mind has hitherto
passed, excepting the transition we are witness-
ing in the day which now is. We need but re-
call the names of the writers and thinkers who
arose during Louis XFV. 's reign, and shed their
seminal ideas broadcast upon the air, to realise
how full a period it was, both of birth and decay ;
of the passing away of the old and the uprising
of the new forms of thought. To mention only
the greatest ; — the following are among the chiefs
who helped to transform the mental fabric of
Europe in the age of Louis XIV. : — Descartes,
Newton, Leibnitz, Locke, Boyle. . . . But the
chief interest which the reign of Louis XIV.
offers to the student of history has yet to be
mentioned. It was the great turning-point in
the history of the French people. The triumph
of the Monarchical principle was so complete
under him. independence and self-reliance were
so effectually crushed, both in localities and in-
dividuals, that a permanent bent was given to
the national mind — a habit of looking to the
^'^ • 1265
Government for all action and initiative perma-
nently established. Before the reign of Louis
XIV. it was a question which might fairly be
considered undecided, whether the country would
be able or not, willing or not, to co-operate with
its rulers in the work of the Government and the
reform of abuses. On more than one occasion
such co-operation did not seem entirely impossi-
ble or improbable. . . . After the reign of Louis
XIV. such co-operation of the ruler and the ruled
became impossible. The Government of France
had become a machine depending upon the action
of a single spring. Spontaneity in the popula-
tion at large was extinct, and whatever there was
to do must be done by the central authority. As
long as the Government could correct abuses it
was well; if it ceased to be equal to this task
they must go uncorrected. When at last the re-
form of secular and gigantic abuses presented
itself with imperious urgency, the alternative
before the Monarchy was either to carry the re-
form with a high hand, or perish in the failure
to do so. We know how signal the failure was,
and could not help being, under the circum-
stances; and through having placed the Mon-
archy between these alternatives, it is no paradox
to say that Louis XFV. was one of the most direct
ancestors of the Great Revolution." — J. C. Mori-
son, Tlie Reign of Louis XIV. {Fortnightly Bev.,
March, 1874).
Also in: J. I. von Dallinger, Tlie Policy of
Louis XIV. (Studies in European History, ch. 11).
A. D. 1661-1680. — Revived and growing per-
secution of the Huguenots. — ' ' One of the King's
first acts, on assuming the supreme control of
affairs at the death of Mazarin, was significant
of his future policy with regard to the Huguenots.
Among the representatives of the various public
bodies who came to tender him their congratula-
tions, there appeared a deputation of Protestant
ministers, headed by their president Vignole ; but
the King refused to receive them, and directed
that they should be ordered to leave Paris forth-
with. Louis was not slow to follow up this in-
timation by measures of a more positive kind,
for he had been carefully taught to hate Protes-
tantism ; and, now that he possessed unrestrained
power, he flattered himself with the idea of com-
pelling the Huguenots to abandon their convic-
tions and adopt his own. His minister Louvois
wrote to the governors throughout the provinces
that 'his majesty will not suffer any person in
his kingdom but those who are of his religion.'
. . . A series of edicts was accordingly published
with the object of carrying the King's purposes
into effect. The conferences of the Protestants
were declared to be suppressed. Though wor-
ship was still permitted in their churches, the
singing of psalms in private dwellings was de-
clared to be forbidden. . . . Protestant children
were invited to declare themselves against the
religion of their parents. Boys of fourteen and
girls of twelve years old might, on embracing
Roman Catholicism, become enfranchised and
entirely free from parental control. . . . The
Huguenots were again debarred from holding
public offices, though a few, such as Marshal
Turenne and Admiral Duquesne, who were
Protestants, broke through this barrier by the
splendor of their services to the state. In some
provinces, the exclusion was so severe that a pro-
fession of the Roman Catholic faith was required
from simple artisans. . . . Colbert, while he
FRANCE, 1661-1680.
Colbert's
Administration.
PRANCE, 1661-1683.
lived, endeavored to restrain the King, and to
abate these intolerable persecutions. . . . He
took the opportunity of cautioning the King lest
the measures he was enforcing might tend, if
carried out, to the impoverishment of Prance and
the aggrandizement of her rivals. . . . But all
Colbert's expostulations were in vain ; the Jesuits
were stronger than he was, and the King was in
their hands; besides, Colbert's power was on the
decline. ... In 1666 the queen-mother died,
leaving to her son, as her last bequest, that he
should suppress and exterminate heresy within
his dominions. . . . The Bishop of Meaux ex-
horted him to press on in the path his sainted
mother had pointed out to him. . . . The Hugue-
nots had already taken alarm at the renewal of
the persecution, and such of them as could
readily dispose of their property and goods were
beginning to leave the kingdom in considerable
numbers for the purpose of establishing them-
selves in foreign countries. To prevent this, the
King issued an edict forbidding Prench subjects
from proceeding abroad without express per-
mission, under penalty of confiscation of their
goods and property. This was followed by a
succession of severe measures for the conversion
or extirpation of such of the Protestants — in
numbers about a million and a half — as had not
by this time contrived to make their escape from
the kingdom. The kidnapping of Protestant
children was actively set on foot by the agents
of the Roman Catholic priests, and their parents
were subjected to heavy penalties if they ven-
tured to complain. Orders were Issued to pull
down the Protestant places of worship, and as
man)' as eighty were shortly destroyed in one
diocese. . . . Protestants were forbidden to print
books without the authority of magistrates of the
Romish communion. Protestant teachers were
interdicted from teaching children any thing more
than reading, writing, and arithmetic. . . .
Protestants were only allowed to bury their dead
at daybreak or at nightfall. They were pro-
hibited from singing psalms on land or on water,
in workshops or in dwellings. If a priestly
procession passed one of their churches while the
psalms were being sung, they must stop instantly
on pain of the fine or imprisonment of the offici-
ating minister. In short, from the pettiest
annoyance to the most exasperating cruelty,
nothing was wanting on the part of the ' Most
Christian King' and his abettors." — S. Smiles,
The Huguenots, ch. 7.
Also in; A. Maury, Memoirs of a Huguenot
Family (Fontaine), ch. 4-7. — W. S. Browning,
Hist, of the Huguenots, ch. 59-60.
A. D. 1661-1683. — The administration of
Colbert. — His economic system and its results.
— " With Colbert the spirit of the great Cardinal
came back to power. Born at Reims on the 29th
of August, 1619, Colbert was educated by the
Jesuits, and at the early age of nineteen entered
the War Office, in which department Le Tellier,
a connection of his f amUy by marriage, filled the
post of Under-Secretary of State. From the
first Colbert distinguished himself by his abnor-
mal powers of work, by his extraordinary zeal in
the public service, and by an equal devotion to
his own interests. His Jesuit training showed
fruit in his dealings with all those who, like Le
Tellier or Mazarin, could be of use to him on his
road to power, whilst the old tradition of his
Scotch blood is favoured by a certain ' dourness '
of character which rendered him in general diffi-
cult of access. His marvellous strength of brain,
seconded by rare powers of endurance, enabled
him to work habitually fourteen hours a day, to
enter into every detail of every branch of the
administration, whilst at the same time he never
lost sight of that noble project of universal re-
form which he had conceived, and which em-
braced both Church and State. . . . Qualified in
every way for the work of administration, abso-
lutely indifferent to popularity, Colbert seemed
destined by nature to lead the final charge
against the surviving forces of the feudal system.
After the troubles of the Fronde had died away
and the death of Mazarin had left Louis XIV. a
king in deed as well as in name, these forces of
the past were personified by Fouquet, and the
duel between Fouquet and Colbert was the dra-
matic close of a struggle predestined to end in
the complete triumph of absolutism. The mag-
nificent and brilliant Fouquet, who for years past
had taken advantage of his position as ' Surin-
tendant des Finances ' to lavish the resources of
the State on his private pleasures, was plainly
marked out as the object of Colbert's hostility.
. . . On the losing side were ranged all the
spendthrift princes and facile beauties of the
Court, all the greedy recipients of Fouquet's
ostentatious bounties. He had reckoned that
the greatest names in Prance would be compro-
mised by his fall, and that by their danger his own
safety was assured. He had reckoned without
Colbert; he had reckoned without that power
which had been steadily growing throughout all
vicissitudes of fate during the last two genera-
tions, and which was now centred in the King.
No stranger turn of fortune can be pictured than
that which, on the threshold of the modern era,
linked the nobles of France in their last struggle
for independence with the fortunes of a rapa-
cious and fraudulent financier, nor can anything
be more suggestive of the character of the com-
ing epoch than the sight of this last battle
fought, not in the field of arms, but before a
court of law. To Colbert, the fall of Fouquet
was but the necessary preliminary to that reform
of every branch of the administration which had
been ripening in his mind ever since he had
entered the puWic service. To bring the finan-
cial situation into order, it was necessary first to
call Fouquet to account. . . . The fall of the
chief offender, Fouquet, having been brought
about, it was easy to force all those who had
been guilty of similar malversations on a minor
scale to run the gauntlet of the High Commission.
Restitution and confiscation became the order of
the day. and when the Chamber of Justice was
finally dissolved in 1669, far beyond any advan-
tage which might be reckoned to the 'Treasury
from these sources was the gain to the nation in
the .general sense of security and confidence. It
was felt that the days of wholesale dishonesty
and embezzlement were at an end. . . . Colbert
went forward from this moment without hesita-
tion, devoting his whole energies to the gigantic
task of re-shaping the whole internal economy of
France. . . . Backed by despotic power, his
achievements in these directions have to an in-
credible extent determined the destinies of mod-
ern industry, and have given origin to the whole
system of modern administration, not only in
Prance, but throughout Europe. In the teeth of
a lavish expenditure which he was utterly unable
1266
FRANCE, 1661-1683.
Gi'eat Days of
Auvergne.
FRANCE, 1665.
to check, once and again did Colbert succeed in
establishing a financial equilibrium when the
fortunes of France seemed desperate. . . . He
aimed ... at the fostering of home production
by an elaborate system of protection, wliilst at
the same time the markets of other countries
were to be forced open and flooded witli Freucli
goods. Any attempt on tlie part of a weaker
power to imitate his own policy, such for instance
as that made in the papal states by Alexander
VII. and Clement IX., was instantly repressed
with a high hand. . . . His leading idea was to
lower all e.vport dues on national produce and
manufactures, and, whilst diminishing import
duties on such raw materials as were required
for French manufactures, to raise them until
they became prohibitive on all foreign goods
[see Tariff Legislation: A. D. 1664-1667
(France)]. The success of the tariff of 1664 mis-
led Colbert. Tliat tariff was a splendidly states-
manlike attempt to put an end to the conflict and
confusion of the duties, dues, and customs then
existing in the different provinces and ports of
France, and it was in effect a tariff calculated for
purel}' fiscal purposes. Far other were the con-
siderations embodied in tlie tariff of 1667, which
led to the Dutch and English wars, and which,
having been enacted in the supposed interests of
home industry, eventually stimulated production
in other countries. ... If, however, the indus-
trial policy of Colbert cannot be said to have
realised his expectations, since it neither brought
about a great increase in the number of home
manufactures nor succeeded in securing a larger
share of foreign trade, there is not a doubt
that, in spite even of the disastrous wars which
it provoked, it powerfully contributed, on the
whole, to place France in the front rank as a
commercial nation, . . . The pitiless and des-
potic Louvois, who had succeeded his father.
Colbert's old patron Le Tellier, as Secretary of
State for War, played on the imperious vanity of
King Louis, and engaged him in wars big and
little, wliich in most cases wanted even the shade
of a pretext. . . . All the zeal of the great Min-
ister's strict economy could only stay for a while
the sure approach of national distress. . . .
When Colbert died, on 6th September, 1683, the
misery of France, exhausted by oppressive taxa-
tion, and depopulated by armies kept constantly
on foot, cried out against the Minister who, rather
than fall from power, had lent himself to meas-
ures which he heartily condemned. For the
moment men forgot how numerous were tlie bene-
fits which he had conferred . . . and remembered
only the harshness with which he had dealt jus-
tice and stinted mercy. Yet order reigned where,
before his advent, all had been corruption and
confusion; the navy of France had been created,
her colonies fostered, her forests saved from de-
struction; justice and the authority of the law
had been carried into the darkest corners of the
land; religious toleration, socially if not politi-
call}', had been advocated ; whilst the encroach-
ments of the Church had been more or less stead-
fastly opposed. To the material prosperity of
the nation — even after we have made all possible
deductions for the evils arising from an exagger-
ated system of protection — an immense and en-
during impulse had been given; and although it
is true that, with the death of Colbert, many
parts of his splendid scheme fell to the ground,
yet it must be confessed that the spirit in which
it was originated and improved still animates
France." — Lady Dilke, France under Colbert
(Fortnightly Bee., Feb., 1886).
Also in : H. Martin, Hist, of France : Age of
Louis XIV., V. 1, ch. 1-7. — See, also, Taille and
Gabelle.
A. D. 1662. — The purchase of Dunkirk from
Charles II. See England: A. D. 1662.
A. D. 1663-1674. — New France made a Royal
Province. — The French West India Company.
See Canada: A. D. 1603-1674.
A. D. 1664. — Aid given to Austria against
the Turks. — The victory of St. Gothard. See
Hungary: A. D. 1660-1664.
A. D. 1664-1666. — War with the piratical
Barbary States. — The Jijeli expedition. —
Treaties with Tunis and Algiers. See Bar-
bary States: A. D. 1664-1684.
A. D. 1664-1690. — The building ofVersailles.
See Versailles.
A. D. 1665. — The Great Days of Auvergne.
— "We must read the curious account of the
Great Days of Auvergne, written by Flechier in
his youth, if we would form an idea of the bar-
barism in which certain provinces of France were
still plunged, in the midst of the brilliant civili-
zation of the 17th century, and would know how
a large number of those seigniors, who showed
themselves so gallant and tender in the boudoirs
of Paris, lived on their estates, in the midst of
tlieir subjects: we might imagine ourselves in
the midst of feudalism. A moment bewildered
by the hammer of the great demolisher [Riche-
lieu], which had battered down so many Cha-
teaux, the mountain squires of Auvergne, Limou-
sin, Marche and Forez had resumed their habits
under the feeble government of Slazarin. Pro-
tected by tlieir remoteness from Paris and the
parliament, and by the nature of the country
they inhabited, they intimidated or gained over
the subaltern judges, and committed with im-
punity every species of violence and exaction.
A single feature will enable us to comprehend
the state of these provinces. There were still,
in the remoter parts of Auvergne, seigniors who
claimed to use the wedding right (droit de jam-
bage), or, at the least, to sell exemption from
this right at a high price to bridegrooms. Serf-
hood of the glebe still existed in some districts.
August 31, 1665, a royal declaration, for which
ample and noble reasons were given, ordered the
holding of a jurisdiction or court 'commonly
called the Great Days,' in the city of Clermont,
for Auvergne, Bourbonnais, Nivernais, Forez,
Beaujolais, Lyonnais, Combrailles, Marche, and
Berry. A president of parliament, a master of
requests, sixteen councillors, an attorney-general,
and a deputy procurator- general, were designated
to hold these extraordinary assizes. Their powers
were almost absolute. They were to judge with-
out appeal all civil and criminal cases, to punish
the ' abuses and delinquencies of officers of the
said districts,' to reform bad usages, as well in
the style of procedure as in the preparation and
expedition of trials, and to try all criminal cases
first. It was enjoined on bailiffs, seneschals,
their lieutenants and all other judges, to give
constant information of all kinds of crimes, in
order to prepare matter for the Great Days. A
second declaration ordered that a posse should
be put into the houses of the contumacious, that
the chateaux where the least resistance was made
to the law should be razed ; and forbade, under
1267
FRANCE, 1665.
Absorption of
Alsace,
TRANCE, 1679-1681.
penalty of death, the contumacious to be received
or assisted. The publication of the royal edicts,
and the prompt arrival of Messieurs of the Great
Days at Clermont, produced an extraordinary
commotion in all those regions. The people
welcomed the Parisian magistrates as liberators,
and a remarkable monument of their joy has
been preserved, the popular song or Christmas
hymn of the Great Days. Terror, on the con-
trary, hovered over the chSteaux ; a multitude
of noblemen left the province and Prance, or
concealed themselves in the mountains; others
endeavored to conciliate their peasants. . . .
The Great Days at least did with vigor what it
was their mission to do: neither dignities, nor
titles, nor high connections preserved the guilty.
. . . The Court of Great Days was not content
with punishing evil; it undertook to prevent its
return by wise regulations: first, against the
abuses of seigniorial courts ; second, against the
vexations of seigniors on account of feudal ser-
vice due them ; third, concerning the mode and
abbreviation of trials; and lastly, concerning the
reformation of the clergy, who had no less need
of being reformed than the nobility. The Great
Days were brought to a close after three months
of assizes (end of October, 1665 — end of January,
1666), and their recollection was consecrated by
a medal. " — -H. Martin, Jlist. of France : T/w Age
of Louis XIV., V. 1, ch. 2.
A. D. 1665-1670. — The East India Company.
See India: A. D. 1665-1743.
A. D. 1666. — Alliance with Holland against
England. See Netherlands (Holland) : A. D.
1665-1666.
A. D. 1667.— The War of the Queen's Rights.
— Conquests in the Spanish Netherlands. See
Netherlands (Spanish Provinces): A. D. 1667.
A. D. 1668. — The king's conquests in Flan-
ders checked by the Triple Alliance. See
Netherlands (Holland): A. D. 1668.
A. D. 1670. — The secret treaty of Dover. —
The buying of the English king. See Eng-
land: A. D. 1668-1670.
A. D. 1672-1678.— War with Holland and
the Austro-Spanish Coalition. See Austria:
A. D. 1672-1714; and Netherlands (Holland) :
A. D. 1672-1674, and 1674-1678,
A. D. 1673-1682. — Discovery and explora-
tion of the Mississippi by Marquette and La
Salle. — Possession taken of Louisiana. See
C.\nada: a. D. 1634-1673, and 1669-1687.
A. D. 1678-1679.— The Peace of Nimeguen.
See NiiiEGUEN, Peace of.
A. D. 1679-1681. — Complete absorption of
Les Trois-Evech^s and Alsace. — Assumption
of entire sovereignty by Louis XIV. — En-
croachments of the Chambers of Reannexa-
tion. — The seizure of Strasburg. — " The Lor-
raine Trois-Eveches, recovered by France from
the Holy Roman Empire, had remained in an
equivocal position, as to public law, during
nearly a century, between their old and new ties:
the treaty of Westphalia had cut the knot by the
formal renunciation of the Empire to all rights
over these countries; difficulties nevertheless still
subsisted relative to the fiefs and the penden-
cies of Trois-Eveches possessed by members of
the Empire. Alsace, in its turn, from the treaty
of Westphalia to the peace of Nimeguen, had
offered analogous and still greater difficulties,
this province of Teutonic tongue not having
accepted the annexation to France as easily as the
Walloon province of Trois-Evgohes, and the treaty
of Westphalia presenting two contradictory
clauses, one of which ceded to France all the
rights of the Emperor and the Empire, and the
other of which reserved the ' immediateness ' of
the lords and the ten cities of the prefecture of
Alsace towards the Empire [see Germany: A. D.
1648]. ... At last, on the complaints carried
to the Germanic Diet by the ten Alsacian cities,
joined by the German feudatories of Trois-
Evgches, Louis, who was then very conciliatory
towards the Diet, consented to take for arbiters
the King of Sweden and some princes and towns
of Germany (1665). The arbitration was pro-
tracted for more than six years. In the begin-
ning of 1673, the arbiters rendered an ambiguous
decision which decided nothing and satisfied no
one. War with Holland broke out meanwhile
and changed all the relations of France with
Germany. . . . Louis XIV. disarmed or took
military occupation of the ten cities and silenced
all opposition. ... In the conferences of Nime-
guen, the representatives of the Emperor and the
Empire endeavoretl to return to the ' immediate-
ness,' but the King would not listen to a renewal
of the arbitration, and declared all debate super-
fluous. ' Not only,' said the French plenipoten-
tiaries, ' ought the King to exercise, as in fact
he does exercise, sovereign domain over the
ten cities, but he might also extend it over
Strasburg, for the treaty of Milnster furnishes
to this city no special title guaranteeing its
independence better than that of the other
cities.' It was the first time that Louis had dis-
closed this bold claim, resting on an inaccurate
assertion. The Imperialists, terrified, yielded as
regarded the ten cities, and Alsace was not called
in question in the treaty of Nimeguen. Only the
Imperialists protested, by a separate act, against
the conclusions which might be drawn from this
omission. The ten cities submitted and took to
the King an oath of fidelit}', without reserva-
tion towards the Empire; their submission was
celebrated byamedal bearing the device: 'Alsatia
in provinciam reducta' (1680). The treaty of
Nimeguen was followed by divers measures des-
tined to win the Alsacian population. . . . This
wise policy bore its fruits, and Alsace, tranquil-
lized, gave no more cause of anxiety to the
French government. France was thenceforth
complete mistress of the possessions which had
been ceded to her by the Empire ; this was only
the first part of the work ; the point in question
now was, to complete these possessions by join-
ing to them their natural appendages which the
Empire had not alienated. The boundaries of
Lower Alsace and the Messin district were ill de-
fined, encroached upon, entangled, on the Rhine,
on the Sarre, and in the Vosges, by the fiefs of
a host of petty princes and German nobles. This
could not be called a frontier. Besides, in the
very heart of Alsace, the great city of Strasbiu-g
preserved its independence towards France and
its connection with the Empire. A pacific method
was invented to proceed to aggrandizements
which it would seem could only be demanded by
arms ; a pacific method, provided that France could
count on the weakness and irresolution of her
neighbors ; this was to investigate and revendicate
everything which, by any title and at any epoch
whatsoever, had been dependent on Alsace and
Trois-Eveches. We may comprehend whither this
would lead, thanks to the complications of the
1268
FRANCE, 1679-1681.
The Dragonnades.
FRANCE, 1681-1698.
feudal epoch ; and it was not even designed to stop
at tlie feudal system, but to go back to the times of
the Frankish kings ! Chambers of ' reannexation '
were therefore instituted, in 1679, in the Parlia-
ment of Metz, and in the sovereign council of
Alsace, with a mission which their title suffici-
ently indicated. . . . Among the nobles sum-
moned, figured the Elector of Treves, for Ober-
stein, Falkenburg, etc. ; the Landgrave of Hesse,
for divers flefs; the Elector Palatine, for Seltz
and the canton situated between the Lauter and
the Keich (Hogenbach, Germersheim, etc.); an-
other prince palatine for the county of Veldentz ;
the Bishop of Speyer, for a part of his bishopric ;
the city of Strasburg, for the domains which it
possessed beyond the Rhine (Wasselonne and
Marlenheim); lastly, the King of Sweden, for the
duchy of Deux-Ponts or Zweibrlicken, a territory
of considerable extent and of irregular form,
which intersected the cis-Rhenish Palatinate.
. . . By divers decrees rendered in March,
August, and October, 1680, the sovereign coun-
cil of Alsace adjudged to the King the sovereignty
of all the Alsacian seigniories. The nobles and
inhabitants were summoned to swear fidelity to
the King, and the nobles were required to recog-
nize the sovereign council as judge in last resort.
The chamber of Metz acted on a still larger scale
than the chamber of Breisach. April 13, 1680, it
united to Trois-Evgches more than 80 fiefs, the
Lorraine marquisate of Pont-a-Mousson, the prin-
cipality of Salm, the counties of Saarbruck and
Veldentz, the seigniories of Sarrebourg, Bitche,
Homburg, etc. The foundation of the new town
of Sarre-Louis and the fortification of Bitche con-
solidated this new frontier; and not only was the
course of the Sarre secured to Prance, but France,
crossing the Sarre, encroached deeply on the
Palatinate and the Electorate of Treves, posted
herself on the Nahe and the Blies, and threw, as
an advance-guard, on a peninsula of the Moselle,
the fortress of Mont-Royal, half-way from Treves
to Coblentz, on the territories of the county of
Veldentz. The parliament of Franche-Comte,
newly French as it was, zealously followed the
example of the two neighboring courts. There
was also a frontier to round towards the Jura.
. . . The Duke of Wiirtcmberg was required to
swear allegiance to the King for his county of
Montbeliard. . . . The acquisitions made were
trifling compared with those which remained to
be made. He [Louis XIV.] was not sure of the
Rhine, not sure of Alsace, so long as he had not
Strasburg, the great city always ready to throw
upon the French bank of the river the armies of
the Empire. France had long aimed at this con-
quest. As soon as she possessed Metz she had
dreamed of Strasburg. . . . Though the King
and Louvois had prevented Crequi from besieging
the place during the war, it was because they
counted on surprising it after peace. This great
enterprise was most ably manoeuvred." The
members of the regency of the city were gained
over, one by one. ' ' The Imperial troops had
evacuated the city pursuant to the treaty of
Nimeguen ; the magistrates dismissed 1,200 Swiss
which the city had in its pay; then, on the
threatening demands of the French, they de-
molished anew Fort Kehl. which they liad rebuilt
since its destruction by Crequi. Wheu the fruit
seemed ripe, Louis stretched out his hand to
gather it. In the latter part of September, 1681,
the garrisons of Lorraine, Franche-Comte, and
Alsace put themselves in motion. . . . The 28th,
35,000 men were found assembled before the city;
Baron de Moutclar, who commanded this army,
informed the magistrates that ' the sovereign
chamber of Breisach having adjudged to the
king the sovereignty of all Alsace, of which
Strasburg was a member, his Majesty desired
that they should recognize him as their sovereign
lord, and receive a garrison." On the 30th the
capitulation of the city was signed; oh the 23d of
October the King was received as its sovereign.
— H. Martin, Hist, of France : Age of Louis XIV.,
V. 1, ch. 7. See Germ.int: A. D. 1648-171.5.
A. D. i68o. — Imprisonment of the " Man in
the Iron Mask." .See Iron JL\sk.
A. D. 1681-1684. — Threatening relations
with the Turks. — War with the Barbary
States. — Destructive bombardment of Algiers.
See B.A.RB.\RY States : A. D. 1664-1684.
A. D. 1681-1698. — Climax of the persecution
of the Huguenots. — The Dragonnades. — The
revocation of the Edict of Nantes. — The great
exodus of French Protestants and the conse-
quent national loss. — "Love and war suspended
for a considerable time " the ambition of the king
to extinguish heresy in his dominions and estab-
lish uniformity of religious worship; "but when
Louis became satiated at once with glory and
pleasure, and when Madame de Maintenon, the
Duke de Beauvilliers, the Duke de Montausier,
Bossuet, the Archbishop of Rheims, the Chan-
cellor Letellier, and all the religious portion of
the court, began to direct his now unoccupied
and scrupulous mind to the interests of religion,
Louis XIV. returned to his plans with renewed
ardor. From bribery they proceeded to compul-
sion. Missionaries, escorted by dragoons, spread
themselves at the instigation of Bossuet, and
even of Fenelon, over the western, southern and
eastern provinces, and particularly in those dis-
tricts throughout which Protestantism, more
firmly rooted among a more tenacious people,
had as yet resisted all attempts at conversion by
preaching. . . . Children from above seven years
of age were authorized to abjure legally the
religion of their fathers. The houses of those
parents who refused to deliver up their sons and
daughters were invaded and laid under contri
butions by the royal troops. The expropriation
of their homes, and the tearing asunder of fami-
lies, compelled the people to fly from persecu-
tion. The king, uneasy at this growing depopu-
lation, pronounced the punishment of the galleys
against those who sought liberty in flight; he
also ordered the confiscation of all the lands and
houses which were sold by those proi>rietors who
were preparing to quit the kingdom. . . . Very
soon the proscription was organized en masse:
all the cavalry in the kingdom, who, on account
of the peace, were unemployed, were placed at
the disposal of the preachers and bishops, to up-
hold their missions [known as the dragonnades]
with the sabre. . . . Bossuet approved of these
persecutions. Religious and political faith, in
his eyes, justified their necessity. His corre-
spondence is full of evidence, while his actions
prove that he was an accomplice : even his elo-
quence . . . overflowed with approbation of, and
enthusiasm for, these oppressions of the soul and
terrors of hei-esy." — A. de Lamartine, Memoirs
of Celebrated Characters, t. 3: Bossuet. — "The
heroism of conviction, it has been truly said, was
now displayed, not in resistance, but, if the para
1269
FRANCE, 1681-1698.
Revocation of
the Edict of Nantes.
FRANCE, 1686.
<iox may be admitted, in flight. Tlie outflow
was for the moment arrested at the remonstrance
of Colbert, now for the last time listened to in
the royal councils, and by reason of the sympathy
aroused by the fugitives in England: but not
before 3,000 families had left the country. The
retirement and death of the great minister were
the signal for revived action, wherever an as-
semblj' of huguenots larger than usual might
warrant or colour a suspicion of rebellion. In
such excuses, not as yet an avowed crusade, the
troopers of the duke de Noailles were called in
at Grenoble, Bourdeaux, and Nlmes. Full forty
churches were demolished in 1683, more than a
liundred in 1684. But the system of military
missions was not organized until in 1685 the
defence of the Spanish frontier offered the op-
portunity for a final subjugation of the hugue-
nots of Beam. The dragonnade passed through
the land like a pestilence. From Guienne to
Dauphine, from Poitou to Upper Languedoc, no
place was spared. Then it pervaded the south-
east country, about the Cevennes and Provence,
and ravaged Lyons and the Pays de Gex. In
the end, the whole of the north was assailed, and
the failing edict of Nantes was annulled on the
1st of October. The sombre mind of Madame de
JIaintenon had postulated the Recall as a pre-
liminary to the marriage which the king had
already conceded. On the 21st of the month the
great church at Charenton was doomed ; and on
the 23nd the 'unadvised and precipitate' Edict
of Revocation was registered in the Chambre
■des Vacations. . . . The year 1685 is fitly identi-
fied with the depopulation of France. And yet,
with a blindness that appears to us incredible,
the government refused to believe in the desire
or the possibility of escape. The penalties at-
tached to capture on the road, — the galleys or
the nunnery, — the vigilant watch at the fron-
tier, the frigates cruising by every coast, all
these difficulties seem to have persuaded Lou-
vois that few would persist in risking flight.
What these measures actually effected was doubt-
less to diminish the exodus, but in no marked
degree. At length, it came to be thought that
the emigration was due to its prohibition, as
though the huguenots must do a thing from
mere perverseness. The watch was relaxed, and
a result unlocked for issued. It was the signal
of the greatest of the emigrations, that of 1688.
... In the statistical question [as to the total
number of the Huguenot exiles from France after
the revocation of the edict of Nantes] it is im-
possible to arrive at a certain result; and the
range which calculation or conjecture has al-
lowed to successive historians may make one
pause before attempting a dogmatic solution.
Basnage, a year after the Recall, reckoned the
emigrants above 150,000; next year Jurieu raised
the total above 300,000. "Writing later Basnage
found between 300,000 and 400,000; and the esti-
mate has been accepted by Sismondi. Lastly
Voltaire, followed in our own day by Hase,
counted 500,000. These are a few of the sober
calculations, and their mean will perhaps supply
the ultimate figure. I need only mention, among
impossible guesses, that of Limiers, which raises
the account to 800,000, because it has been taken
up by the Prussian statesman Von Dohm. . . .
The only historian who professes to have pur-
sued the enquiry in exact detail is Capeflgue;
and from his minute scrutiny of the cartons des
generalites, as prepared in the closing years of
the 17th century, he obtains a computation of
235,000 or 330,000. Such a result must be ac-
cepted as the absolute minimum ; for it was the
plain interest of the intendants who drew up the
returns, to put all the facts which revealed the
folly of the king's action at the lowest cipher.
And allowing the accuracy of Capefigue's work,
there are other reasons for increasing his total.
. . . We cannot set the emigration at a lower
fraction than one-fifth of the total huguenot
society. If the body numbered two millions, the
outflow will be 400,000. If this appear an ex-
treme estimate, It must be remembered that one-
fifth Is also extreme on the other side. Reducing
the former aggregate to 1,500,000, it will be
clearly within the bounds of moderation to leave
the total exodus a range between 300,000 and
350,000. How are we to distribute this immense
aggregation ? Holland certainly claims near 100, -
000 ; England, with Ireland and America, prob-
ably 80,000. Switzerland must have received
25,000; and Germany, including Brandenburg,
thrice that number. The remainder will be
made up from the north of Europe, and from
the exiles whom commerce or other causes carried
in isolated households elsewhere, and of whom
no record is preserved to us. . . . The tale then
of the emigrants was above 300,000. It follows
to ask what was the material loss involved In
their exodus. Caveirac is again the lowest in his
estimate : he will not grant the export of more
than 350,000 livres. He might have learnt from
Count d'Avaux himself, that those least likely
to magnify the sum confessed that by the very
year of the Recall twenty million livres had gone
out of the country; and it is certain that the
wealthier merchants deferred their departure in
order to carry as much as they could with them.
Two hundred and fifty traders are said to have
quitted Rouen In 1687 and 1688. Probably the
actual amount was very far in excess of these
twenty millions; and a calculation is cited by
Macpherson which even affirms that every ludi'
vidual refugee in England brought with him on
an average money or effects to the value of £60.
... It will be needless to add many statistics
of the injury caused by their withdrawal from
France. Two great instances are typical of the
rest. Lyons which had employed 18,000 silk-
looms had but 4,000 remaining by the end of the
century. Tours with the same interest had had
800 mills, 80,000 looms, and perhaps 4,000 work-
people. Of its 3,000 ribbon-factories only sixty
remained. Equality significant was the ruin of
the woollen trade of Poitou. Little was left of
the drugget-manufacture of Coulonges and Cha-
taigneraie, or of the industry in serges and bom-
bazines at Thouars; and the export traffic be-
tween Chataigneraie and Canada, by way of La
Rochelle, was in the last year of the century
absolutely extinct." — R. L. Poole, Sist. of the
Huguennts of tlw Dispersion, ch. 3 and 15.
Also in : C. Weiss, Hist, of the French Protes-
tant Refugees. — N. Peyrat, The Pastors in t/i€ Wil-
der?ieM, v. 1, ch. 5-7. — J. I. von DoUingei-, Studies
in European History, ch. 11-12. — C. W. Baird,
Hist, of the Huguenot Emigration to Am., ch. 4-8
(r. 1-2).
A. D. 1682-1693.— Contest with the Papacy.
Se Papacy: A D. 1082-1693.
A. D. 1686. — Claims upon the Palatinate.
See Germany : A. D. 1686.
1270
FRANCE, 1689-1690.
Devastation of the
Palatinate.
FRANCE, 1689-1691.
A. D. 1689-1690. — War of the League of
Augsburg. — The second devastation of the
Palatinate. — "The interference of Lewis in Ire-
laud on behalf of James [the Second, the de-
throned Stuart king] caused William [Prince of
Orange, now King of England] to mature his
plans for a great Continental confederacy against
France. On May 12, 1689, William, as Stadt-
holder of the United Provinces, had entered into
an oflfensive and defensive alliance with the Em-
peror against Lewis. On 3Iay 17, as King of
England, he declared war against France; and
on December 30 joined the alliance between the
Emperor and the Dutch. His example was fol-
lowed on June 6, 1690, by the King of Spain,
and on October 20 of the same year by Victor
Amadeus, Duke of Savoy. This confederation
was called the 'Grand Alliance.' Its main ob-
ject was declared to be to curb the power and
ambition of Lewis XIV. ; to force him to sur-
render his conquests, and to confine Lis territories
to the limits agreed upon between him and the
Emperor at the treaty of Westphalia (16-18), and
between France and Spain at the treaty of the
Pyrenees (1659). The League of Augsburg,
which William had with so much trouble brought
about, had now successfully developed into the
Grand Alliance. " — E. Hale, T/ie Fall of the Stuarts
and Western Europe, ch. 14, sect. 5. — " The work
at which AVilliam had toiled indefatigably during
many gloomy and anxious years was at length
accomplished. The great coalition was formed.
It was plain that a desperate conflict was at hand.
The oppressor of Europe would have to defend
himself against England allied with Charles the
Second King of Spain, with the Emperor Leo-
pold, and with the Germanic and Batavian fed-
erations, and was likely to have no ally except
the Sultan, who was waging war against the
House of Austria on the Danube. Lewis had,
towards the close of the preceding year, taken
his enemies at a disadvantage, and had struck
the first blow before they were prepared to parry
it. But that blow, though heavy, was not aimed
at the part where it might have been mortal.
Had hostilities been commenced on the Batavian
frontier, AVilliam and his army would probably
have been detained on the continent, and James
might have continued to govern England. Hap-
pily, Lewis, under an infatuation which many
pious Protestants confidently ascribed to the
righteous judgment of God, had neglected the
point on which the fate of the whole civilised
world depended, and had made a great display
of power, promptitude, and energy, in a quarter
where the most splendid achievements could pro-
duce nothing more than an illumination and a
Te Deum. A French army under the command
of Marshal Duras had invaded tlie Palatinate and
some of the neighbouring principalities. But
this expedition, though it had been completely
successful, and though the skill and vigour with
which it had been conducted had excited general
admiration, could not perceptibly affect the event
of the tremendous struggle which was approach-
ing. France would soon be attacked on every
side. It would be impossible for Duras long to
retain possession of the jirovinces which he had
surprised and overrun. An atrocious thought
rose in the mind of Louvois, who, in military
affairs, had the chief sway at Versailles. . . .
The ironhearted statesman submitted his plan,
probably with much management and with some
disguise, to Lewis ; and Lewis, in an evil hour
for his fame, assented. Duras received orders to
turn one of the fairest regions of Europe into a
wilderness. Fifteen years had elapsed since Tu-
renne had ravaged part of that fine country.
But the ravages committed by Turenne, though
they have left a deep stain on his glory, were
mere sport in comparison with the horrors of
this second devastation. The French commander
announced to near half a million of human be-
ings that he granted them three days of grace,
and that, within that time, they must shift for
themselves. Soon the roads and field,«. which
then lay deep in snow, were blackened by in-
numerable multitudes of men, women, and chil-
dren flying from their homes. Many died of cold
and hunger: but enough survived to till the
streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and
squalid beggars, who had once been thriving
farmers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the work
of destruction began. The flames went up from
every marketplace, every hamlet, every parish
church, every country seat, within the devoted
provinces. The fields where the corn had been
sown were ploughed up. The orchards were
hewn down. No promise of a harvest was left
on the fertile plains near what had once been
Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree,
was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny hills
round what had once been Heidelberg. No re-
spect was shown to palaces, to temples, to mon-
asteries, to infirmaries, to beautiful works of art,
to monuments of the illustrious dead. The far-
famed castle of the Elector Palatine was turned
into "a, heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital
was sacked. The provisions, the medicines, the
pallets on whicli the sick lay, were destroyed.
The very stones on which Manheim had been
built were flung into the Rhine. The magnifi-
cent Cathedral of Spires perished, and with it
the marble sepulchres of eight Caesars. The
coffins were broken open. Tlie ashes were scat-
tered to the winds. Treves, with its fair bridge,
its Roman baths and amphitheatre, its venerable
churches, convents, and colleges, was doomed to
the same fate. But, before this last crime had
been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better
mind by the execrations of all the neighbouring
nations, by the silence and confusion of his flat-
terers, and by the expostulations of his wife.
... He relented ; and Treves was spared. In
truth he could hardly fail to perceive that he had
committed a great error. The devastation of the
Palatinate, while it had not in any sensible de-
gree lessened the power of his enemies, liad in-
flamed their animosity, and had furnished them
with inexhaustible matter for invective. The
cry of vengeance rose on every side. Whatever
scruple either branch of the House of Austria
might have felt about coalescing with Protestants
was completely removed. " — Lord Macaulay, Hist.
of Eiig., ch. 11.
Also in : H. Martin, Hist, of France : Age of
Louis XIV. {trims, by M. L. Booth), v. 2, ch. 2.—
S. A. Dunham, Hist, of the Oer. Empire, blc. 3,
ch. 3 (v. 3).— See, also, Canad.a.; A. D. 1689-1690.
A. D. 1689-1691. — Aid to James 11. in Ire-
land. SeelREL.WD: A. D. 1689-1691.
A. D. 1689-1691. — Campaigns in the Nether-
lands and in Savoy. — "Our limits will not per-
mit us to describe at any length the war between
Louis XIV. and the Grand Alliance, which lasted
till the Peace of Ryswick, in 1697, but only to
1271
FRANCE, 1689-1691.
Campaigns in the
Low Countries.
FRANCE, 1692.
note some of the chief incidents of the different
campaigns. The Imperialists had, ia 1689, not-
withstanding the efforts it was still necessary to
make against the Turks, brought an army of
80,000 men into the field, which was divided into
three bodies under the command of the Duke of
Lorraine, the Elector of Bavaria, and the Elector
of Brandenburg ; while the Prince of Waldeck,
in the Netherlands, was at the head of a large
Dutch and Spanish force, composed, however, in
great part of German mercenaries. In this quar-
ter. Marshal d'Humi6res was opposed to Wal-
deck, while Duras commanded the French army
on the Rhine. In the south, tlie Duke of Noailles
maintained a French force in Catalonia. Nothing
of much importance was done this year; but on
the whole the war went in favour of the Im-
perialists, who succeeded in recovering Mentz
and Bonn. 1690: This year. Marshal d'Hu-
miSres was superseded by the Duke of Luxem-
bourg, who infused more vigour into the French
operations. . . . Catinat was sent this year into
Dauphine to watch the movements of the Duke
of Savoy, who was suspected by the French
Court, and not without reason, of favouring the
Grand Alliance. The extravagant demands of
Louis, who required Victor Amadeus to unite
his troops with the army of Catinat, and to ad-
mit a French garrison into Vercelli, Verrua, and
even the citadel of Turin itself, till a general
peace should be effected, caused the Duke to
enter into treaties with Spain and the Emperor,
June 3d and 4th; and on October 30th, he joined
the Grand Alliance by a treaty concluded at the
Hague with England and the States-Genferal.
This last step was taken by Victor Amadeus in
consequence of his reverses. He had sustained
from Catinat in the battle of Staffarda (August
17th) a defeat which only the skill of a youthful
general, his cousin the Prince Eugene, had saved
from becoming a total rout. As the fruits of this
victory, Catinat occupied Saluzzo, Susa, and all
the country from the Alps to the Tanaro. Dur-
ing these operations another French division had
reduced, without much resistance, the whole of
Savoy, except the fortress of Montmelian. The
only other event of importance during this cam-
paign was the decisive victory gained by Lux-
embourg over Prince Waldeck at Fleurus, July
1st. The captured standards, more than a hun-
dred in number, which Luxembourg sent to
Paris on this occasion, obtained for him the
name of the ' Tapassier de Notre Dame. ' Lux-
embourg was, however, prevented from follow-
ing up his victory by the orders of Louvois, who
forbade him to lay siege to Namur or Charleroi.
Thus, in this campaign, France maintained her
preponderance on land as well as at sea by the
victory off Beach}' Head [see England : A. D.
1690]. . . . The Imperialists had this year lost
one of their best leaders by the death of the Duke
of Lorraine (April). He was succeeded as com-
mander-in-chief by Maximilian Emanuel, Elector
of Bavaria; but nothing of importance took
place upon the Rhine. 1691 : The campaign
of this year was singularly barren of events,
though both the French and English kings took
a personal part in it. In March, Louis and Lux-
embourg, laid siege to Mons, the capital of
Hainault, which surrendered in less than three
weeks. King William, who was in the neigh-
bourhood, could not muster sufficient troops to
venture on its relief. Nothing further of impor-
tance was done in this quarter, and the campaign
in Germany was equally a blank. On the side
of Piedmont, Catinat took Nice, but, being con-
fronted by superior numbers, was forced to
evacuate Piedmont ; though, bj' way of compen-
sation, he completed the conquest of Savoy by
the capture of Jlontmelian. Noailles gained some
trifling successes in Spain; and the celebrated
French corsair, Jean Bart, distinguished himself
by his enterprises at sea. One of the most re-
markable events of the year was a domestic
occurrence, the death of Louvois." — T. H. Dyer,
Hist, of Modern Europe, b/c. 5, ch. 5 {v. 3).
Also in: F. P. Guizot, Popular Hist, of France,
ch. 44 (p. 5).
A. D. 1692. — The taking of Namur and the
victory of Steinkirk, or Steenkerke. — "Never
perhaps in the whole course of his unresting life
were the energies of William [of Orange] more
severely taxed, and never did his great moral and
intellectual qualities shine forth with a brighter
lustre, than in the years 1693-93. The great
victory of La Hogue [see England : A. D. 1693]
and the destruction of the flower of the French
fleet did, it is true, relieve England of any im-
mediate dread either of insurrection or invasion,
and so far the prospect before him acquired a
slight improvement towards the summer of 1692.
But this was the only gleam of light in the hori-
zon. . . . The great coalition of Powers which
he had succeeded in forming to resist the ambi-
tion of Louis was never nearer dissolution than in
the spring of 1693. The Scandinavian states,
who had held aloof from it from the first, were
now rapidly changing the benevolence of their
neutrality into something not easily distinguish-
able from its reverse. The new Pope Innocent
XII. showed himself far less amicably disposed
towards William than his two predecessors. The
decrepitude of Spain and the arrogant self-will
of Austria were displaying themselves more con-
spicuously than ever. Savoy was ruled by a
duke who was more than half suspected of being
a traitor. . . . William did succeed in saving
the league from dissolution, and in getting their
armies once more into the field. But not, un-
fortunately, to any purpose. The campaign of
the present year was destined to repeat the errors
of the last, and these errors were to be paid for at
a heavier cost. . . . The French king was bent
upon the capture of the great stronghold of
Namur, and the enemy, as in the case of Mons,
were too slow in their movements and too inef-
fective in their dispositions to prevent it. March-
ing to the assault of the doomed city, with a
magnificence of courtly pageantry which had
never before been witnessed in warfare, Louis
sat down before Namur, and in eight days its
faint-hearted governor, the nominee of the Span-
ish viceroy of the Netherlands, surrendered at
discretion. Having accomplished, or rather hav-
ing graciously condescended to witness the ac-
complishment of this feat of arms, Louis re-
turned to Versailles, leaving his army under the
command of Luxembourg. The fall of Namur
was a severe blow to the hopes of William, but
yet worse disasters were in store for him. He
was now pitted against one who enjoyed the
reputation of the greatest general of the age, and
William, a fair but by no means brilliant strate-
gist, was unequal to the contest with his accom-
plished adversary. Luxembourg lay at Stein-
kirk, and William approaching him from a place
1272
FRANCE, 1692.
Campaigns in the
Low Countries.
FRANCE, 169a
named Lambeque, opened his attack upon him
by a well-conceived surprise which promised at
first to throw the French array into complete
disorder. Luxembourg's resource and energy,
however, were equal to the emergency. He
rallied and steadied liis troops witli astonishing
speed, and the nature of the ground preventing
the allies from advancing as rapidly as they had
expected, they found the enemy in a posture to
receive them. The British forces were in the
front, commanded by Count Solmes, the division
of Slackay, a name now lionourable for many
generations in the annals of continental, no less
than of Scottish, warfare, leading the way.
These heroes, for so, though as yet untried sol-
diers, they approved themselves, were to have
been supported by Count Solmes with a strong
body of cavalry and infantry, but at the criti-
cal moment he failed them miserably, and his
failure decided tlie fortunes of tlic day. . . . The
division was practically annihilated. Its five
regiments, 'Cutt's, Mackay's, Angus's, Graham's,
and Leven's, all,' as Corporal "Trim relates pa-
thetically, 'cut to pieces, and so had the Eng-
lish Life-guards been too, had it not been for
some regiments on the right, wlio marched up
boldly to their relief, and received tlie enemy's
fire in their faces, before any one of their own
platoons discharged a musket.' Bitter was the
resentment in the English army at the desertion
of tliese gallant troops by Count de Solmes, and
William gave vent to one of his rare outbursts of
anger at the sight. We have it indeed on the
authority above quoted — unimpeachable as first-
hand tradition, for Sterne had heard the story
of these wars at the knees of an eye-witness of
and actor in them — tliat tlie King 'would not
sufier the Count to come into his presence for
many months after. ' Tlie destruction of Mackay's
division had indeed decided the issue of the
struggle. Luxembourg's army was being rapidly
strengthened by reinforcements from that of
Boufflers, and tliere was notliing for it but re-
treat. The loss on both sides had been great, but
the moral effect of the victory was still greater.
William's reputation for generalship, perhaps
unduly raised by his recent exploits in Ireland,
underwent a serious decline." — H. D. Traill,
William the Third, ch. 10. — On the Rhine and on
the Spanish frontier nothing of importance oc-
curred during 1692. The Duke of Savoy gained
some advantages on his side and invaded Dau-
phiny, without any material result. The inva-
sion called into action a young heroine. Mademoi-
selle de La Tour-du-Pin, whose portrait has a
place at Saint-Denis by the side of that of
Jeanne D'Arc. — H. Martin, Hist, of Fraiux : Age
of Louis XIV.. V. 2, ch. 3.
Also en: W. H. Torriano, William the Third,
ch. 30.
A. D. 1693 (July). — The Battle of Neerwin-
den, or Landen. — "' Lewis had determined not to
malve any advance towards a reconciliation with
the new government of England till the wliole
strength of his realm had been put forth in one
more effort. A mighty effort in truth it was, but
too exhausting to be repeated. He made an im-
mense display of force at once on the Pyrenees
and on the Alps, on the Rhine and on the Meuse,
in the Atlantic and in the IMediterranean. That
nothing might be wanting wliicli could excite the
martial ardour of a nation eminently high-spir-
ited, he instituted, a few days before he left his
palace for the camp, a new military order of
knighthood, and placed it under the protection
of his own sainted ancestor and patron. The
cross of Saint Lewis shone on the breasts of the
gentlemen who had been conspicuous in the
trenches before Mons and Namur, and on the
fields of Fleurus and Steinkirk. ... On the 18th
of May Lewis left Versailles. Early in June he
was under the walls of Namur. The Princesses,
who had accompanied him, held their court
within the fortress. He took under his immedi-
ate command the army of Boufflers, which was
encamped at Gembloux. Little more than a mile
off lay the army of Luxemburg. Tlie force col-
lected in that neighbourhood under the French
lilies did not amount to less than 130,000 men.
Lewis had flattered himself that he should be able
to repeat in 1693 the stratagem by which Mons
had been taken in 1691 and Namur in 1693; and he
had determined that either Liege or Brussels
should be his prey. But William had this year
been able to assemble in good time a force, inferior
indeed to that which was opposed to him, but
still formidable. With this force he took his
post near Louvain, on the road between the two
threatened cities, and watched every movement
of the enemy. . . . Just at this conjuncture
Lewis announced his intention to return instantly
to Versailles, and to send the Dauphin and Bouf-
flers, with part of the army which was assem-
bled near Namur, to join Marshal Lorges who
commanded in the Palatinate. Luxemburg was
thunderstruck. He expostulated boldly and
earnestly. Never, he said, was such an oppor-
tunity thrown away. . . . 'The Marshal reasoned:
he implored: he went on his knees: but all was
vain; and he quitted the royal presence in the
deepest dejection. Lewis left the camp a week
after he had joined it, and never afterwards made
war in person. . . . Though the French army in
the Netherlands had been weakened by the de-
parture of the forces commanded by the Dau-
phin and BoulHers, and though the aUied army
was daily strengthened by the arrival of fresh
troops, Luxemburg still had a superiority of
force; and that superiority he increased by an
adroit stratagem." He succeeded by a feint in
inducing William to detach 30,000 men from his
army and to send them to Liege. He then moved
suddenly upon the camp of the allies, with 80,-
000 men, and found but 50,000 to oppose him.
" It was still in the [English] King's power, by a
hasty retreat, to put between his army and the
enemy the narrow, but deep, waters of the Gette,
which had lately been swollen by rains. But the
site which he occupied was strong ; and it could
easily be made still stronger. He set all his
troops to work. Ditches were dug, mounds
thrown up, palisades fixed in the earth. In a
few hours the ground wore a new aspect ; and
the King trusted that he should be able to repel
the attack even of a force greatly outnumbering
his own. ... On the left flank, the village of
Romsdorfi rose close to the little stream of Lan-
den, from which the English have named the
disastrous day. On the right was the village
of Neerwinden. Both villages were, after the
fashion of the Low Countries, surrounded by
moats and fences. " Notwithstanding the strength
of tlie position held by the allies, and the valor
with which they defended it, they were driven
out of Neerwinden [July 39] — but only after
the shattered village had been five times taken
127;
FRANCE, 1693.
Battles on
Land and Sea.
FRANCE, 1694.
and retaken — and across the Gette, in confusion
and with heavy loss. ' ' The French were vic-
torious : but they had bought their victory dear.
More then 10,000 of the best troops of Lewis had
fallen. Neerwinden was a spectacle at which
the oldest soldiers stood aghast. The streets
were piled breast high with corpses. Among
the slain were some great lords and some re-
nowned warriors. . . . The region, renowned as
the battle field, through many ages, of the great-
est powers of Europe, has seen only two more
terrible days, the day of Malplaquet and the day
of "Waterloo. . . . There was no pursuit, though
the sun was still high in the heaven when Wil-
liam crossed the Gette. The conquerors were so
much exhausted by marching and fighting that
they could scarcely move. ... A very short
delay was enough for William. . . . Three
weeks after his defeat he held a review a few
miles from Brussels. The number of men under
arms was greater than on the morning of the
bloody day of Landen: their appearance was
soldierlike; and their spirit seemed unbroken.
William now wrote to Heinsius that the worst
was over. ' The crisis,' he said, ' has been a ter-
rible one. Thank God that it has ended thus.'
He did not, however, think it prudent to try at
that time the event of another pitched field. He
therefore suffered the French to besiege and take
Charleroi; and this was the only advantage
whicli they derived from the most sanguinary
battle fought in Europe during the seventeenth
century." — Lord Macaulay, Ilist. of Eng., ch. 30
(V. 4).
Also in: G. Burnet, Hist, of My Own Time,
bk. 5 (1693), V. 4. — Due de Saint-Simon, Memoirs
(tr. by St. John), r. 1, ch. 4.
A. D. 1693 (October). — Defeat of the Duke
of Savoy at Marsaglia. — -"The great efforts
made by Louis in the north prevented him from
strengthening the army of Catinat sufficiently to
act with energy against the Savoyard prince, and
it was determined to restrict the campaign of
1693 to the defensive on the part of France. The
forces of the duke had in the meantime been re-
inforced from Germany, and he opened the cam-
paign with a brilliant and successful movement
against Pignerol. ... He is said to have enter-
tained hopes of carrying the war in that one cam-
paign to the very gates of Lyons ; but the suc-
cesses which inspired him with such expectations
alarmed the court of France, and Louis detached
in haste a large body of cavalry to reinforce
Catinat. That general marched at once to fight
the Duke of Savoy, who, presuming on his
strength, suffered the French to pour out from
the valley of Suza into the plain of Piedmont,
abandoned the heights, and was consequently
defeated at Marsaglia on the 4th of October.
Catinat, however, could not profit by his victory ;
he was too ill supplied in every respect to under-
take the siege of Coni, and the state of the French
armies at this time marks as plainly that Louvois
was dead, as the state of the finances speaks the
loss of Colbert." — G. P. R. James, Life and
Times of Louis XIV., r. 2, ch. 11.
A. D. 1694. — Campaigns without battles. —
Operations at sea. — In 1694, King William was
"in a position to keep an army afoot in the
Netherlands stronger than any had hitherto been.
It was reckoned at 31,800 horse, including a
corps of dragoons, and 58,000 foot; so great a
force had never been seen within the memory of
man. All the best-known generals, who had
hitherto taken part in the wars of western
Europe, were gathered round him with their
troops. The French army, with which the Dau-
phin, but not the King, was present, was not
much smaller ; it was once more led by Marshal
Luxembourg. These two hosts lay over against
one another in their camps for a couple of months ;
neither offered battle to the other. . . . This cam-
paign is notable in the annals of the art of war
for the skill with which each force pursued or
evaded the other ; but the results were limited to
the recovery by the allies of that unimportant
place, Huy. William had thought himself for-
tunate in having come out of the previous cam-
paign without disaster: in this campaign the
French were proud to have held their lines in
presence of a superior force. On the coast also
the French were successful in repelling a most
vehement and perilous attack. They had been
warned that the English were going to fall on
Brest, and Vauban was sent down there in haste
to organise the defence ; and in this he was thor-
oughly successful. When the English landed
on the coast in Camaret Bay (for the fort of that
name had first to be taken) they were saluted by
two batteries, which they had never detected,
and which were so well jilaced that every shot
told, and the grape-shot wounded almost every
man who had ventured ashore. The gallant
General, Talmash, was also hit, and ere long died
of his wounds. The English fleet, which had
come to bombard Brest, was itself bombarded
from the walls. But though this great effort
failed, the English fleet still held the mastery of
the Channel : it also blockaded the northern coast
of France. After Brest it attacked Dieppe, lay-
ing it almost entirely in ashes ; thence it sailed to
Havre, and St. Malo, to Calais, and Dunkirk.
This was of great use in the conduct of the war.
King William observes that had not the coasts
been kept in a state of alarm, all the forces de-
tained there for defensive purposes would have
been thrown on the Netherlands. . . . But the
most important result of the maritime war lay
on another side. In May, 1694, Noailles pushed
into Catalonia, supported by Tourville, who lay
at anchor with the fleet in the Bay of Rosas.
... It was of incalculable importance to Spain
to be in alliance with the maritime powers.
Strengthened by a Dutch fleet and some Spanish
ships. Admiral Russell now appeared in the
Mediterranean. He secured Barcelona from the
French, who would never have been kept out of
the city by the Spaniards alone. The approach
of tlie English fleet had at this time the greatest
influence in keeping the Duke of Savoy staunch
to the confederation. In Germany the rise of the
house of Hanover to the Electoral dignity had
now caused most unpleasant complications. A
shoal of German princes, headed by the King of
Denmark, as a Prince of the Empire, and offended
by the preference shown to Hanover, inclined, if
not to alliance with France, at least to neutrality.
. . . We can have no conception, and in this
place we cannot possibly investigate, with what
unbroken watchfulness King William, supported
by Heinsius, looked after the German and the
Northern courts, so as to keep their irritation
from reacting on the course of the great war. . . .
When the French, in June, 1694, crossed the
Rhine, meaning, as they boasted with true Gallic
arrogance, soon to dip their swords in the Danube,
1274
FRANCE, 1694.
Peace of Rysivick.
FRANCE, 1697.
they found the Prince of Baden so well prepared,
and posted so strongly near Wisloch, that they
did not venture to attack him. . . . The general
result is this : neither side was as yet really su-
perior to the other ; but the French power was
everywhere checked and held within bounds by
the arms and influence of William III." — L. von
Ranke, Jlist. of Eng., llth Century, bk. 20, ch. 6
(i'. 5).
A. D. 1695-1696. — The end of the War of
the League of Augsburg. — Loss of Namur. —
Terms with Savoy. — The Peace of Ryswick.
— "Military and naval efforts were relaxed on
all side.s ; on the Rhine the Prince of Baden and
the Marechal de Lorges, both ill in health, did
little but observe each other; and though the
Duke of Savoy made himself master of Casal on
the 11th July, 169.5, no other military event of
any consequence took place on the side of Italy,
where Louis entered into negotiations with the
duke, and succeeded, in the following year, in
detaching him from tlie league of Augsburg. As
the price of his defection the whole of his terri-
tories were to be restored to him, with the ex-
ception of Suza, Nice, and ^Montmeillan, which
were promised to be delivered also on the signa-
ture of a general peace. Money was added to
render the consent of a needy prince more read)'.
. . . The duke promised to obtain from the em-
peror a pledge that Italy should be considered as
neutral ground, and if the allies refused such a
pledge, then to join the forces of Savoy to those
of France, and give a free passage to the French
through his dominions. In consequence of this
treaty ... he applied to the emperor for a rec-
ognition of the neutrality of Italy, and was re-
fused. He then hastened, with a facility which
distinguished him through life, to abandon bis
friends and join his enemies, and within one
month was generalissimo for the emperor in
Italy fighting against France, and generalissimo
for the King of France in Italy fighting against
the emperor. Previous to this change, however,
the King of England opened the campaign of
1695 in the Netherlands by the siege of Namur.
The death of Luxemburg had placed the French
army of Flanders under the command of the in-
capable Marshal Villeroi; and William, feeling
that his enemy was no longer to be mucli re-
spected, assumed at once the offensive. He
concealed his design upon Namur under a variety
of manoeuvres which kept the French generals
in suspense ; and, then leaving the Prince of
Vaudemont to protect the principal Spanish
towns in Flanders, he collected his troops sud-
denly ; and while the Duke of Bavaria invested
Namur, he covered the operations of the siege
with a considerable force. Villeroi now deter-
mined to attack the Prince of Vaudemont, but
twice suffered him to escape; and then, after
having apparently hesitated for some time how
to drive or draw the King of England from the
attack upon Namur, he resolved to bombard the
city of Brussels, never pretending to besiege it,
but alleging as his motive for a proceeding
which was merely destructive, the bombardment
of the maritime towns of France by the English.
During three daj's he continued to fire upon the
city, ruining a great part thereof, and then with-
drew to witness the surrender of the citadel of
Namur on the 2nd September, the town itself
having capitulated on the 4th of the preceding
month. As some compensation, though but a
poor one, for the loss of Namur, and the disgrace
of the French arms in suffering such a city to be
captured in the presence of 80,000 men, Alontal
took Dixmude and Deynse in the course of June.
. . . The only after-event of any importance
which occurred in Flanders during this war, was
the capture of Ath by the French, in the year
1697, while negotiations for peace were going on
with activity at Ryswick. . . . Regular com-
munications regarding peace having been once
established, Ryswick, near the Hague, was ap-
pointed for the meeting of plenipotentiaries ; and
Harlay, Torci, and Callifires appeared at that
place as representatives of Louis. The articles
which had been formerly sketched out at Utrecht
formed the base of the treaties now agreed upon ;
and Louis yielded far more than could have been
expected from one so proud and so successful."'
— G. P. R. James, Life and Times of Louis XIV. ,
V. 2, ch. 11.
Also in : T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe,
V. 3, ch. 5. — Sir J. Dairy mple. Memoirs of Oreat
Britain and Ireland, pt. 3, bk. 4 (c. 3).
A. D. 1697 (April). — The sacking of Cartha-
gena. See C'.\RTn.\GENA : A. D. 1697.
A. D. 1697.— The Peace of Ryswick.— "The
Congress for the treaty or series of treaties that
was to terminate the great European war. which
had now lasted for upwards of nine j'ears, was
held at Ryswick, a chateau near tlie Hague.
The conferences were opened in May, 1697.
Among the countries represented were Sweden,
Austria, France, Spain, England, Holland, Den-
mark and the various States of the German Em-
pire. The treaties were signed, in severalty,
between the different States, except Austria, in
September and October, 1697, and with the Em-
peror, in November. The principal features of
the treaty were, as between France and Spain,
that, the former country was to deliver to Spain
Barcelona, and other places in Catalonia; also
various places which France had taken in the
Spanish Netherlands, during the war, including
Luxembourg and its Duchy, Charleroi, Mons and
Courtrai. Various others were excepted, to be
retained by France, as dependencies of French
possessions. The principal stipulations of the
treaty, as between France and Great Britain,
were that France formally recognized William
III. as lawful king of Great Britain, and agreed
not to trouble him in the possession of his do-
minions, and not to assist his enemies, directly
or indirectly. This article had particular rela-
tion to the partisans of the exiled Stuart king,
then living in France. By another article, all
places taken by either country in America, dur-
ing the war, were to be relinquished, and the
Principality of Orange and its estates situated in
the south of France were to be restored to Wil-
liam. In the treaty with Holland, certain pos-
sessions in the East Indies were to be restored to
the Dutch East India Company: and important
articles of commerce were appended, among
which the principle was laid down that free
ships should make free goods, not contraband
of war. By the treaty with the Emperor and
the German States, the Treaties of Westphalia
and Nymeguen were recognized as the basis of
the Treaty of Ryswick, with such exceptions
only as were to be provided in the latter treaty.
France also was to give up all territory she had
occupied or controlled before or during the war
under the name of 'reunions,' outside of Alsace,
1275
FRANCE, 1697
Rising of
the Camisards.
FRANCE, 1702-1710.
but the Roman Catholic religion was to be pre-
served in Alsace as it then existed. This con-
cession by France included among other places
Freiburg, Brisach, and Treves; and certain res-
titutions were to be made by France, in favor of
Spire, the Electors of Treves, and Brandenburg
and the Palatinate ; also, otliers in favor of cer-
tain of the smaller German Princes. The city of
Strasburg, in return, was formally ceded to
France, . . . and the important fort of Kehl was
yielded to the Empire. Tlie navigation of the
Rhine was to be free to all persons. The Duke
of Lorraine was to be restored to his possessions
with such exceptions as were provided in the
treaty. By the terms of this treat}', a more ad-
vantageous peace was given to Spain than she
had any expectation of. . . . Not only were the
places taken in Spain, including the numerous
fortified places In Catalonia, yielded up, but also,
with some exceptions, those in the Spanish Neth-
erlands, and also the important territory of Lux-
embourg; some places were even yielded to
Spain that France had gained under former
treaties. "—J. W. Gerard, T/ie Peace of Utrecht,
ch. 4. — "The restitutions and cessions [from
France to Germany] comprised Treves, Germers-
heim, Deux-Ponts, Veldentz, Montbeliard, Kehl,
Freiburg, Breisach, Philippsburg, the Emperor
and the Empire ceding in exchange Strasbourg
to the King of France in complete sovereignty.
. . . Louis XIV. had consented somewhat to re-
lax the rigor of the treaty of Nimegueu towards
the heir of the Duchy of Lorraine, nephew of the
Emperor by his mother ; he restored to the young
Duke Leopold his inheritance in the condition
in which Charles IV. had possessed it before the
French conquest of 1670 ; that is to say, he re-
stored Nancy, allowing only the ramparts of the
Old Town to remain, and razing all the rest of
the fortifications without the power of restoring
them ; he kept Marsal, an interior place calcu-
lated to hold Lorraine in check, and also Sarre-
Louis, a frontier-place which separated Lorraine
from the Germanic provinces ; he restored Bitche
and Homburg dismantled, without power to re-
establish them, and kept Longwy In exchange
for a domain of similar value in one of the Trois-
Evgches; finally, he no longer demanded, as at
Nimeguen, four great strategic routes through
Lorraine, and consented that the passage should
always be open to his troops. The House of
Lorraine was thus reestablished in its estates
after twenty-seven years of exile." — H. Martin,
Hist, of France: Age of Louis XIV., v. 2, ch. 8.
Also in: L. von Ranke, Hist, of Eng., llth
Century, hk. 20, ch. 11 (v. 5). — See, also, Canada:
A. D. 1692-1697; and Newfoundlakd : A. D.
1694-1697.
A. D. 1698-1712. — The colonization of Louis-
iana. — Broad claims to the wrhole valley of the
Mississippi. See Louisiana; A. D. 1098-1712.
A. D. 1700. — Bequest of the Spanish crovo-n
to a French royal prince. See Spain: A. D.
1698-1700.
A. D. 1701-1702. — Provocation of the Second
Grand Alliance and War of the Spanish Suc-
cession. See Spain: A. D. 1701-1702, and Eng-
land: A. D. 1701-1702.
A. D. 1702-1710. — The Camisard rising of
the French Protestants in the C^vennes. —
" The movement known as the War of the Cami-
sardsis an episodeof the historj' of Protestantism
in France which, though rarely studied in detail
and perhaps but partially understood, was not
devoid of significance. When it occurred, in the
summer of 1702, a period of little less than 17
years had elapsed since Louis XIV., by his edict
of Pontaiuebleau, October, 1685, solemnly re-
voked the great and fundamental law enacted by
his grandfather, Henry IV., for the protection
of tlie adherents of the Reformed faith, known
in history as the Edict of Nantes. During the
whole of that period the Protestants had sub-
mitted, with scarcely an attempt at armed resis-
tance, to tlie proscription of tlieir tenets. . . .
The majority, unable to escape from the land of
oppression, remained at home . . . nearly all of
them cherishing the confident hope that the
king's delusion would be short-lived, and that
the edict under which they and their ancestors
had lived for three generations would, before
long, be restored to them with the greater part,
if not the whole, of its beneficent provisions.
Meanwhile, all the Protestant ministers having
been expelled from France by the same law that
prohibited the expatriation of any of the laity,
the people of the Reformed faith found them-
selves destitute of the spiritual food they craved.
True, the new legislation affected to regard tliat
faith as dead, and designated all the former ad-
herents of Protestantism, without distinction, as
the 'New Converts,' ' Nouveaux Convertis.'
And, in point of fact, the great majority had so
far yielded to the terrible pressure of the violent
measures brought to bear upon them . . . that
they had consented to sign a promise to be ' re-
united ' to the Roman Catholic Church, or had
gone at least once to mass. But they were still
Protestants at heart. . . . Under these circum-
stances, feeling more than ever the need of re-
ligious comfort, now that remorse arose for a
weak betrayal of conscientious conviction, the
proscribed Protestants, especially in the south of
France, began to meet clandestinely for divine
worship in such retired places as seemed most
likely to escape the notice of their vigilant ene-
mies. ... It was not strange that in so excep-
tional a situation, a phase of religious life and feel-
ing equally exceptional should manifest itself. 1
refer to that appearance of prophetic inspiration
which attracted to the province of Vivarais and
to the Cevennes Mountains the attention of all
Europe. . . . Historically . . . the influence of
the prophets of the Cevennes was an important
factor in the Protestant problem of the end of the
17th and the commencement of the 18th centu-
ries. . . . Various methods were adopted to put an
end to the prophets with their prophecies, which
were for the most part denunciatory of Rome as
Antichrist and foreshadowed the approaching
fall of the papacy. But this form of enthusiasm
had struck a deep root and it was hard to eradi-
cate it. Imprisonment, in convent or jail, was
the most common punishment, especially in the
case of women. Not infrequently to imprison-
ment was added corporal chastisement, and the
prophets, male and female, were flogged until
they might be regarded as fully cured of their
delusion. . . . But no utterances of prophets,
however fervid and impassioned, would have
sufficed to occasion an uprising of the inhabitants
of the Cevennes Mountains, had it not been for
the virulent persecution to which the latter found
themselves exposed at the hands of the provincial
aiithorities directly instigated thereto by the
clergy of the established church. For it must
1276
FRANCE, 1703-1710.
War of the
Spanish Succession.
FRANCE, 1710.
be noticed that a large part of the population of
the Cevennes was still Protestant, and made no
concealment of the fact, even though the king's
ministers affected to call them ' New Catholics,'
or ' New Converts. ' The region over which the
Camisard war extended with more or less vio-
lence comprised six episcopal dioceses, which, in
1698, had an aggregate population of about two-
thirds of a million of souls. Of these souls,
though Protestantism had been dead in the eye
of the law for 13 years, fully one-fourth were
still Protestant. . . . The war may be said to
have begun on the 24th of July, 1702, when
the Abbe du Chayla, a noted persecutor, was
killed in his house, at Pont de Montvert, by a
band of 40 or 50 of the 'Nouveaux Convertis,'
whom he had driven to desperation by his cruelty
to their fellow believers. If we regard its termi-
nation to be the submission of Jean Cavalier, the
most picturesque and, in some regards, the most
able of the leaders, in the month of May, 1704,
the war lasted a little less than two years. But,
although the French government had succeeded,
rather by craft than by force, in getting rid of
the most formidable of its opponents ... it was
not until five or six years later — that is, until
1709 or 1710 — that . . . comparative peace was
finally restored. . . . During the first months of
the insurrection the exploits of the malcontents
were confined to deeds of destruction accom-
plished by companies of venturesome men, who
almost everywhere eluded the pursuit of the
enemy by their superior knowledge of the intri-
cacies of the mountain woods and paths. The
track of these companies could easily be made
out; for it was marked by the destruction of
vicarages and rectories, by the smoke of burned
churches, too often by the corpses of slain priests.
The perpetrators of these acts of violence soon
won for themselves some special designations, to
distinguish them from the more passive Protes-
tants who remained in their homes, taking no
open part in the struggle. . . . About the close of
1702, however, or the first months of 1703, a new
word was coined for the fresh emergency, and
the armed Protestants received the appellation
under which they have passed into history — the
Camisards. Passing by all the strange and fanci-
ful derivations of the word which seem to have
no claim upon our notice, unless it be their evi-
dent absurdity, we have no difficulty in connect-
ing it with those nocturnal expeditions which
were styled ' Camisades ' ; because the warriors
who took advantage of the darkness of the night
to ride out and explore or force the enemy's en-
trenchments, sometimes threw over their armor
a shirt that might enable them to recognize each
other. Others will have it that, though the
name was derived from the same article of ap-
parel — ■ the ' camisa ' or shirt — it was applied to
the Cevenol bands for another reason, namely,"
that when they found opportunities, they carried
oflf clean linen from the villages and left their
soiled garments in exchange. The final over-
throw of the Camisards ' ' was not accomplished
without the employment of 100,000 troops, cer-
tainly far more than ten times the total number
ever brought into the field by the Camisards.
. . . Not less than three ofilcers of the highest
grade in the service, marshals of France, were
successively appointed to put down a revolt
which it might have been expected a simple
colonel could suffice to quell — M. de Broglie
being succeeded by the Marshal de Montrevel,
the Marshal de Montrevel by the Marshal de
Villars, and the Marshal de Villars by the Marshal
de Berwick." — H. M. Baird, The Camisard Upris-
ing (Papers of the Am. Soc. of Church Hist., v. 2,
pp. 13-34).
Also in : !Mrs. Bray, The Revolt of tlie Protes-
tants oftJie Cevennes. — N. Peyrat, Tlie Pastors in
the Wilderness. — S. Smiles, The Huguenots in-
France after the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes,
ch. 5-8.
A. D. 1702-1711. — The War of the Spanish
Succession in America (called Queen Anne's
War). See New England: A. D. 1703-1710;
and C.VNAD.\: A. D. 1711-1713.
A. D. 1702-1713. — The War of the Spanish
Succession in Europe. See Italy; A. D. 1701-
1713; Spain: A.D. 1702, to 1707-1710; Germany:
A. D. 1702, to 1706-1711; Netherlands: A.D.
1703-1704, to 1710-1712.
A. D. 1702-1715. — Renewed Jesuitical per-
secution of the Jansenists. — The odious Bull
Unigenitus and its tyrannical enforcement.
See Port Royal and the Jansenists: A. D.
1702-1715.
A. D. 1710.— The War of the Spanish Suc-
cession : Misery of the nation. — Overtures for
Peace. — Conferences at Gertruydenberg. —
" France was still reduced to extreme and abject
wretchedness. Her finances were ruined. Her
people were half starving. Marlborough de-
clared that in the villages through which he
passed in the summer of 1710, at least half the
inhabitants had perished since the beginning of
the preceding winter, and the rest looked as if
they had come out of their graves. All the old
dreams of French conquests in the Spanish
Netherlands, in Italy, and in Germany were dis-
pelled, and the French generals were now strug-
gling desperately and skilfully to defend their
own frontier. . . . In 1710, while the Whig min-
istry [in England] was still in power, but at a
time when it was manifestly tottering to its fall,
Lewis had made one more attempt to obtain
peace by the most ample concessions. The con-
ferences were held at the Dutch fortress of Ger-
truydenberg. Lewis declared himself ready to
accept the conditions exacted as preliminaries of
peace in the preceding year, with the exception
of the article compelling Philip within two
months to cede the Spanish throne. He con-
sented, in the course of the negotiations, to grant
to the Dutch nearly all the fortresses of the French
and Spanish Netherlands, including among others
Ypres, Tournay, Lille, Fumes, and even Valen-
ciennes, to cede Alsace to the Duke of Lorraine,
to destroy the fortifications of Dunkirk, and those
on the Rhine from Bale to Philipsburg. The
main difficulty was on the question of the Span-
ish succession. . . . The French troops had al-
ready been recalled from Spain, and Lewis con-
sented to recognise the Archduke as the sovereign,
to engage to give no more assistance to his grand-
child, to place four cautionary towns in the hands
of the Dutch as a pledge for the fulfilment of the
treaty, and even to pay a subsidy to the allies
for the continuance of the war against Philip.
The allies, however, insisted that he should join
with them in driving his grandson by force of
arms from Spain, and on this article the negotia-
tions were broken off." — W. B. H. Lecky, Hist.
of Eng. in the 18th Century, ch. 1. — See England:
A. D. 1710-1713.
1277
FBANCE, 1713-1714.
The Kingdom as
left by Louis XIV.
FRANCE, 1715-1723.
A. D. 1713-1714. — Ending of the War of the
Spanish Succession. — The Peace of Utrecht
and the Treaty of Rastadt. See Utrecht:
A. D. 1712-1714.
A. D. 1714. — The desertion of the Cata-
lans. See Sp.un: A. D. 1713-1714.
A. D. 1715.— Death of Louis XIV.— The
character of his reign. — Louis XIV. died Septem-
ber 1, 1715, at the age of 77 years, having reigned
72 years. "Richelieu, and after him Mazarin,
governing as if they had been dictators of a re-
public, had extinguished, if I may use the ex-
pression, their personality in the idea and service
of the state. Possessing only the exercise of au-
thority, they both conducted themselves as re-
sponsible agents towards the sovereign and be-
fore the judgment of the country; while Louis
XIV., combining the exercise with the right,
considered himself exempted from all rule but
that of his own will, and acluiowledged no re-
sponsibility for his actions except to his own con-
science, it was this conviction of his universal
power, a conviction genuine and sincere, exclud-
ing both scruples and remorse, which made him
upset one after the other the twofold system
founded by Henry FV., of religious liberty at
home, and abroad of a national preponderance
resting upon a generous protection of the inde-
pendence of states and European civilisation.
At the personal accession of Louis XIV. , more
than fifty years had passed since France had
pursued the work of her policy in Europe, im-
partial towards the various communions of Chris-
tians, the different forms of governments, and
the Internal revolutions of the states. Although
France was catholic and monarchical, her alli-
ances were, in the first place, with the Protestant
states of Germany and with republican Holland ;
she had even made friendly terms with regicide
England. No other interest but that of the well-
understood development of the national resources
had weight in her councils, and directed the in-
ternal action of her government. But all was
changed by Louis XIV., and special interests,
the spawn of royal personality, of the principle
of the hereditary monarchy, or that of the state
religion, were admitted, soon to fly upward in
the scale. Thence resulted the overthrow of the
system of the balance of power in Europe, which
might be justly called the French system, and
the abandonment of it for dreams of an universal
monarchy, revived after the example of Charles
V. and Philip II. Thence a succession of enter-
prises, formed in opposition to the policy of the
country, such as the war with Holland, the fac-
tions made with a view to the Imperial crown,
the support given to James II. and the counter-
revolution in England, the acceptance of the
throne of Spain for a son of France, preserving
his rights to the Crown. These causes of mis-
fortune, under which the kingdom was obliged
to succumb, all issued from the circumstance ap-
plauded by the nation and conformable to the
spirit of its tendencies, which, after royalty had
attained its highest degree of power under two
ministers, delivered it unlimited into the hands
of a prince endowed with qualities at once bril-
liant and solid, an object of enthusiastic affection
and legitimate admiration. When the reign,
which was to crown under sucli auspices the
ascendant march of the French monarchy, had
falsified the imbounded hopes which its com-
mencement had excited ; when in the midst of
fruitless victories and continually increasing re-
verses, the people beheld progress in all the
branches of public economy changed into dis-
tress, — the ruin of the finances, industry, and
agriculture — the exhaustion of all the resources
of the country, — the impoverishment of all classes
of the nation, the dreadful misery of the popula-
tion, they were seized with a bitter disappoint-
ment of spirit, which took the place of the en-
thusiasm of their confidence and love." — A.
Thierry, Formation and Progress of the Tiers
Etat or Third Estate in France, ch. 9.
A. D. 1715. — Accession of King Louis XV.
A. D. 1715-1723. — State of the kingdom at
the death of Louis XIV. — The minority of
Louis XV. and Regency of the Duke of
Orleans. — "Louis XIV. . . . left France exces-
sively exhausted. The State was ruined, and
seemed to have no resource but bankruptcy.
This trouble seemed especially imminent in 1715,
after the war, during which the government had
been obliged to borrow at 400 per cent., to create
new taxes, to spend in advance the revenue of
two years, and to increase the public debt to
2,400 millions. The acquisition of two prov-
inces (Flanders, Franche-Comte) and a few cities
(Strassburg, Landau, and Dunkirk) was no com-
pensation for such terrible poverty. Succeeding
generations have remembered only the numerous
victories, Europe defied, France for twenty years
preponderant, and the incomparable splendor of
the court of Versailles, with its marvels of letters
and arts, which have given to the 17th century
the name of the age of Louis XIV. It is for his-
tory to show the price which France has paid for
her king's vain attempts abroad to rule over
Europe, and at home to enslave the wills and
consciences of men. . . . The weight of the
authority of Louis XIV. had been crushing dur-
ing his last years. When the nation felt it lifted,
it breathed more freely ; the court and the city
burst into disrespectful demonstrations of joy;
the very coffin of the great king was insulted.
The new king [Louis XV., great-grandson of
Louis XIV.] was five years old. Who was to
govern? Louis XIV. had indeed left a will, but
he had not deceived himself with regard to the
value of it. ' As soon as I am dead, it will be
disregarded; I know too well what became of
the will of the king, my father ! ' As after the
death of Henry IV. and Louis XIII. there was a
moment of feudal reaction ; but the decline of the
nobility may be measured by the successive weak-
ening of its efforts in each case. Under Mary
de' Medici it was still able to make a civil war;
under Anne of Austria it produced the Fronde ;
after Louis XIV. it only produced memorials.
The Duke of Saint-Simon desired that the first
prince of the blood, Philip of Orleans, to whom
the will left only a shadow of power, should
demand the regency from the dukes and peers,
as heirs and representatives of the ancient grand
vassals. But the Duke of Orleans convoked
Parliament in order to break down the posthu-
mous despotism of the old king, feigning that
the king had committed the government to his
hands. The regency, with the right to appoint
the council of regency as he would, was con-
ferred upon him, and the command of the royal
household was taken from the Duke of Maine
[one of the bastard sons of Louis XIV.], who
yielded this important prerogative only after a
violent altercation. As a reward for the services
1278
FRANCE, 1715-1723.
John Law and
the Mississippi Scheme.
FRANCE, 1717-1730.
of his two allies, the Duke of Orleans called the
high nobility into affairs, by substituting for
the ministries six councils, in which they oc-
cupied almost all the places, and accorded to
Parliament the right of remonstrance. But two
years had hardly passed when the ministries were
re-established, and the Parliament again con-
demned to silence. It was plain that neither
nobility nor Parliament were to be the heirs of
the absolute monarchy. . . . Debauchery had,
until then, kept within certain limits; cynicism
of manners as well as of thought was now
adopted openly. The regent set the example.
There had never been seen such frivolity of con-
duct nor such licentious wit as that exhibited in
the wild meetings of the roues of the Duke of
Orleans. There had been formerly but one salon
in France, that of the king ; a thousand were now
open to a society which, no longer occupied with
religious questions, or with war, or the grave
futilities of etiquette, felt that pleasure and
change were necessities. . . . Louis XV. attained
his majority February 13, 1733, being then 13
years old. This terminated the regency of the
Duke of Orleans. But the king was still to remain
a long time under tutelage ; the duke, in order to
retain the power after resigning the regency, had
in advance given [Cardinal] Dubois the title of
prime minister. At the death of the wretched
Dubois he took the office himself, but held It
only four months, dving of apoplexy in Decem-
ber, 1733."— V. Duruy, Hist, of Framx, 6h. 53
and 55.
Also in : W. C. Taylor, Memoirs of tlie House
of Orleans, v. 1, cJi. 11-17, and i). 3, ch. 1-3. —
F. Rocquain, The Revolutionary Spirit preceding
the French Rev., ch. 1. — J. B. Perkins, France
under the Regency.
A. D. 1717-1719. — The Triple Alliance. —
The Quadruple Alliance.— War with Spain.
See Spain: A. D. 1713-1735; also, Italy: A. D.
1715-1735.
A. D. 1717-1720. — John Law and his Mis-
sissippi Scheme. — "When the Regent Orleans
assumed the government of France, he found its
affairs in frightful confusion. The public debt
was three hundred millions ; putting the debt on
one side, the expenditure was only just covered
by the revenue. St. Simon advised him to de-
clare a national bankruptcy. De Noailles, less
scrupulous, proposed to debase the coinage. . . .
In such desperate circumstances, it was no won-
der that the regent was ready to catch eagerly at
any prospect of success. A remedy was pro-
posed to him by the famous John Law of Lauris-
ton. This new light of finance had gambled in,
and been banished from, half the courts of Eu-
rope; he had figured in the English 'Hue and
Cry,' as 'a very tall, black, lean man, well-shaped,
above six feet high, large pock-holes in his face,
big-nosed, speaks broad and loud.' He was a
big, masterful, bullying man, one of keen intel-
lect as well; the hero of a hundred romantic
stories. . . . He studied finance at Amsterdam,
then the great school of commerce, and offered
his services and the ' system ' which he had in-
vented, first to Godolphin, when that nobleman
was at the head of affairs in England, then to
Victor Amadeus, duke of Savoy, then to Louis
XIV. , who, as the story goes, refused any credit
to a heretic. He Invented a new combination at
cards, which became the despair of all the crou-
piers in Europe : so successful was this last in-
vention, that he arrived for the second time at
Versailles, in the early days of the regency, with
upwards of £120,000 at his disposal, and a copy
of his ' system ' in his pocket. . . . There was a
dash of daring in the scheme which suited well
with the regent's peculiar turn of mind ; It was
gambling on a gigantic scale. . . . Besides, the
scheme was plausible and to a certain point cor-
rect. The regent, with all his faults, was too
clever a man not to recognize the genius which
gleamed In Law's dark eyes. Law showed that
the trade and commerce of every country was
crippled by the want of a circulating medium;
specie was not to be had In sufficient quantities ;
paper, backed by the credit of the state, was the
grand secret. He adduced the examples of Great
Britain, of Genoa, and of Amsterdam to prove
the advantage of a paper currency ; he proposed
to institute a bank, to be called the ' Bank of
France,' and to issue notes guaranteed by the
government and secured on the crown lands, ex-
changeable at sight for specie, and receivable in
payment of taxes; the bank was 10 be conducted
in the king's name, and to be managed by com-
missioners appointed by the States-General. The
scheme of Law was based on principles which
are now admitted as economical axioms ; the dan-
ger lay in the enormous extent to which it was
intended to push the scheme. . . . While the
bank was in the hands of Law himself. It appears
to have been managed with consummate skill ; the
notes bore some proportion to the amount of
available specie ; they contained a promise to pay
in silver of the same standard and weight as
that which existed at the time. A large divi-
dend was declared ; then the regent stepped in.
The name of the bank was changed to that of
the Royal Bank of France, the promise to pay
in silver of a certain weight and standard was
dropped, and a promise substituted to pay ' in
silver coin.' This omission, on the part of a
prince who had already resorted to the expedi-
ent of debasing the currency, was ominous, and
did much to shake public confidence ; the Intelli-
gence that in the first year of the new bank
1,000,000,000 of livres were fabricated, was not
calculated to restore It. But these trifles were
forgotten in the mad excitement which followed.
Law had long been elaborating a scheme which
is for ever associated with his name, and beside
which the Bank of France sank Into insignifi-
cance. In 1717, the year before the bank had
been adopted by the regent, the billets d'etat of
500 livres each were worth about 160 livres in the
market. Law, with the assent of the regent,
proposed to establish a company which should
engross all the trade of the kingdom, and all the
revenues of the crown, should carry on the busi-
ness of merchants in every part of the world,
and monopolize the farming of the taxes and the
coining of money ; the stock was to be divided
into 300,000 shares of 500 livres each. The re-
gent nearly marred the scheme at starting by
inserting a proviso that the depreciated billets
d'etat were to be received at par in payment for
the new stock, on which four per cent, was
guaranteed by the State." Law's company was
formed, under the name of the Company of the
West, and obtained for the "basis of its operations
a monopoly of the trade of that vast territory of
France in the valley of the Mississippi which
bore the name of Louisiana. The same monopoly
had been held for five years by one Crozat, who
1279
FRANCE, 1717-1720.
Reiffn of Louis XV.
FRANCE, 1723-1774.
now resigned it because he found it unprofitable ;
but the fact received little attention (see Louisi-
ana: A. D. 1717-1718). "Louisiana was de-
scribed as a paradise. . . . Shareholders in the
company were told that they would enjoy the
monopoly of trade throughout French North
America, and the produce of a country rich in
every kind of mineral wealth. Billets d'etat
were restored to their nominal value ; stock in the
Mississippi scheme was sold at fabulous prices ;
ingots of gold, which were declared to have come
from the mines of St. Barbe, were taken with
great pomp to the mint; 6,000 of the poor of
Paris were sent out as miners, and provided with
tools to work in the new diggings. New issues
of shares were made; first 50,000, then 50,000
more; both at an enormous premium. The job-
bers of the rue Quincampoix found ordinary
language inadequate to express their delight:
they invented a new slang for the occasion, and
called the new shares ' les filles,' and ' les petites
filles,' respectively. Paris was divided between
the ' Anti-system ' party who opposed Law, and
the Mississippians who supported him. The
State borrowed from the company fifteen hun-
dred millions ; government paid its creditors in
warrants on the company. To meet them, Law
issued 100,000 new shares; which came out at a
premium of 1,000 per cent. The Mississippians
went mad with joy — they invented another new
slang phrase ; the ' cinq cents ' eclipsed the filles
and the petites filles in favour. The gates of
Law's hotel had to be guarded by a detachment
of archers ; the cashiers were mobbed in their
bureaux; applicants for shares sat in the ante-
rooms ; a select body slept for several nights on
the stairs; gentlemen disguised themselves in
Law's livery to obtain access to the great man.
, . . By this time the charter of the company of
Senegal had been merged in the bank, which also
became sole farmer of the tobacco duties; the
East India Company had been abolished, and the
exclusive privilege of trading to the East Indies,
China, and the South Seas, together with all the
possessions of Colbert's company were transferred
to Law. The bank now assumed the style of
the Company of the Indies. Before the year
[1719] was out the regent had transferred to it
the exclusive privilege of the mint, and the con-
tract of all the great farms. Almost every branch
of industry in France, its trade, its revenue, its
police, were now in the hands of Law. Every
fresh privilege was followed by a new issue of
shares. . . . The shares of 500 franks were now
worth 10,000. The rue Quincampoix became
impassable, and an army of stockjobbers camped
in tents in the Place VendSme. . . . The excite-
ment spread to England [where the South Sea
Bubble was inflated by the madness of the hour
— see South Sea Bubble]. . . . Law's system
and the South Sea scheme both went down to-
gether. Both were calculated to last so long,
and so long only, as universal confidence existed ;
when it began to be whispered that those in the
secret were realizing their profits and getting out
of the impending ruin, the whole edifice came
down with a crash. ... No sooner was it evi-
dent that the system was about to break down,
than Law, the only man who could at least have
mitigated the blow, was banished. "— Viscount
Bury, Exodus of the Western Nations, v. 3, ch. 5.
ALSOm: C. Mackay, Memoirs of Extraordinary
Popular Delusions, v. 1, ch. 1. — A. Thiers. The
Mississippi Bubble. — "W. C. Taylor, Memoirs of
tlie House of Orleans, v. 2, ch. 2. — C. Gayarre,
Hist, of Louisiana, second series, lect. 1. — Duke
de Saint-Simon, Memoirs: abridged trans, by St.
John, V. 3, eh. 35, and v. 4, ch. 4, and 13-15.
A. D. 1720. — The fortifying of Louisbourg.
See Cape Breton Island; A. D. 1720-1745.
A. D. 1723-1774. — Character and reign of
Louis XV. — The King's mistresses and their
courtiers who conducted the government. —
State and feeling of the nation. — After the
death of the Duke of Orleans, "a short period of
about two years and a-half comprehends the ad-
ministration of the Duke of Bourbon, or rather
of his mistress, la Marquise de Prie. Fleury
[Cardinal] then appears on the stage, and dies in
1743. He was, therefore, minister of France for
seventeen years. On his death, the king (Louis
XV.) undertook to be his own prime minister ;
an unpromising experiment for a country at any
time. In this instance the result was only that
the king's mistress, Madame de Chateauroux,
became the ruler of France, and soon after
Bladame de Pompadour, another mistress, whose
reign was prolonged from 1745 to 1763. Differ-
ent courtiers and prelates were seen to hold the
first ofiices of the state during this apparent pre-
miership of the monarch. The ladies seem to
have chosen or tolerated Cardinal Tengin, Ar-
gen(;on, Orsy, Mauripaux, and Amelot, who. with
the Dukes Noailles and Richelieu, succeeded to
Fleury. Afterwards, we have Argenpon and
Machault, and then come the most celebrated of
the ministers or favourites of Madame de Pom-
padour, the Abbe de Bernis and the Due de
Choiseul. The last is the most distinguished
minister after Fleury. He continued in favour
from 1758, not only to 1763, when Madame de
Pompadour died, but for a few years after. He
was at length disgraced by la Comtesse Dubarri,
who had become the king's mistress soon after
the death of Madame de Pompadour, and re-
mained so, nearly to the death of the monarch
himself, in 1774." — W. Smyth, Lect'son the Hist,
of the French Revolution, lect. 3. — "The regency
of the Duke of Orleans lasted only eight years,
but it was not without a considerable effect upon
the destinies of the country. It was a break in
the political and the religious traditions of the
reign of Louis XIV. The new activity imparted
to business during this period was an event of
equal importance. Nothing is more erroneous
than to suppose that constantly increasing misery
at last excited revolt against the government and
the institutions of the old regime. The Revolution
in France at the close of the eighteenth century
was possible, not because the condition of the
people had grown worse, but because it had be-
come better. The material development of that
country, during the fifty years that preceded the
convocation of the States General, had no parallel
in its past history. Neither the weight of taxa-
tion, nor the extravagance of the court, nor the
bankruptcy of the government, checked an in-
crease in wealth that made France in 1789 seem
like a different land from France in 1715. The
lot of large classes was still miserable, the burden
of taxation upon a large part of the population
was still grievous, there were sections where
Arthur Young could truly say that he found
only poverty and privileges, but the country as
a whole was more prosperous than Germany or
Spain; it was far more prosperous than it had
1280
FEANCE, 1723-1774.
Bourbon
Famity Compact.
FRANCE, 1733.
been under Louis XIV. . . . Such an improve-
ment in material conditions necessitated both
social and political changes. . . . But ■while so-
cial conditions had altered, political institutions
remained unchanged. New wine had been poured
in, but the old bottles were still used. Tallies
and corvees were no more severe in the eigh-
teenth than in the fifteenth century, but they
were more odious. A feudal privilege, which
had then been accepted as a part of the law of
nature, was now regarded as contrary to nature.
... A demand for social equality, for the aboli-
tion of privileges and immimities by which any
class profited at the expense of others, was fos-
tered by economical changes. It received an ad-
ditional impetus from the writings of theorists,
philosophers, and political reformers. The influ-
ence of literature in France during the eighteenth
century was important, yet it is possible to over-
estimate it. The seed of political and social change
was shown by the writers of the period, but the
soil was already prepared to receive it. . . . The
course of events, the conduct of their rulers, pre-
pared the minds of the French people for politi-
cal change, and accounted for the influence which
literature acquired. The doctrines of philoso-
phers found easy access to the hearts of a people
with whom reverence for royalty and a tranquil
acceptance of an established government had
been succeeded by contempt for the king and
hatred for the regime under which they lived.
We can trace this change of sentiment during
the reign of Louis XV. The popular affection
which encircled his cradle accompanied him
when he had grown to be a man. . . . Few
events are more noticeable in the history of the
age than the extraordinary expressions of grief
and affection that were excited by the illness of
Louis XV. in 1744. ... A preacher hailed him
as Louis the well beloved, and all the nation
adopted the title. ' What have I done to be so
loved?' the king himself asked. Certainly he
had done nothing, but the explanation was cor-
rectly given. ' Louis XV. is dear to his people,
without having done anything for them, because
the French are, of all nations, most inclined to
love their king.' This affection, the result of
centuries of fidelity and zeal for monarchical
institutions, and for the sovereigns by whom
they were personified, was wholly destroyed by
Louis's subsequent career. The vices to which
he became addicted were those which arouse
feelings not only of reprehension, but of loath-
ing. They excited both aversion and contempt.
The administration of the country was as des-
picable as the character of the sovereign. Under
Louis XIV. there had been suffering and there
had been disaster, but France had always pre-
served a commanding position in Europe. . . .
But now defeat and dishonor were the fate of a
people alike powerful and proud. . . . The low
profligacy into which the king had sunk, the
nullity of his character, the turpitude of his mis-
tress, the weakness of his administration, the
failure of all his plans, went far toward destroy-
ing the feelings of loyalty that had so long ex-
isted in the hearts of the French people. Some
curious figures mark the decline in the estima-
tion in which the king was held. In 1744, six
thousand masses were said at Notre Dame for
the restoration of Louis XV. to health ; in 1757,
after the attempted assassination by Damieus,
there were six hundred; when the king actually
12
lay dying, in 1774, there were only three. The
fall from six thousand to three measures the de-
cline in the affection and respect of the French
people for their sovereign. It was with a public
whose sentiments had thus altered that the new
philosophy found acceptance." — J. B. Perkins,
France under the Regency, eh. 1.
Also is : F. Rocquain, The Bewlutionary Spirit
preceding tlie Fr. Rev., ch. 3-8.— J. Murray, F-ench
Finance and Financiers under Louin XV.
A. D. 1725. — The alliance of Hanover. See
Spaix; a. D. 1713-1735.
A. D. 1727-1731. — Ineffectual congress at
Soissons. — The Treaty of Seville, vyith Spain
and England. — The Second Treaty of Vienna.
See Spain: A. D. 1736-1731.
A. D. 1733. — The First Family Compact of
the Bourbons (France and Spain). — "The two
lines of the house of Bourbon [in France and in
Spain] once more became in the highest degree
prominent. ... As early as November 1733 a
Family Compact (the first of the series) was con-
cluded between them, in which they contemplated
the possibility of a war against England, but
without waiting for it entered into an agreement
against the maritime supremacy of that power.
. . . The commercial privileges granted to the
English in the Peace of Utrecht seemed to both
courts to be intolerable." — L. von Ranke, Hist.
of Eng., bk. 23, ch. 4 (». 5). — "It is hardly too
much to say that the Family Compact of 1733,
though even yet not generally known to exist, is
the most important document of the middle
period of the 18th century and the most indis-
pensable to history. If that period seems to us
confused, if we lose ourselves in the medley of
its wars — war of the Polish election, war of
Jenkins's ears, war of the Austrian succession,
colonial war of 1756 — the simple reason is that
we do not know this treaty, which furnishes the
clue. From it we may learn that in this period,
as in that of Louis XIV. and in that of Napo-
leon, Europe struggled against the ambitious
and deliberately laid design of an ascendant
power, with this difference, that those aggres-
sors were manifest to all the world and their
aims not difficult to understand, whereas this
aggression proceeded by ambuscade, and, being
the aggression not of a single state but of an alli-
ance, and a secret alliance, did not become clearly
manifest to Europe even when it had to a con-
siderable extent attained its objects. . . . The
first two articles define the nature of the alliance,
that it involves a mutual guarantee of all posses-
sions, and has for its object, first, the honour,
glory, and interestsof both powers, and, secondly,
their defence against all damage, vexation, and
prejudice that may threaten them." The first
declared object of the Compact is to secure the
position of Don Carlos, the Infant of Spain,
afterwards Charles III., in Italy, and "to obtain
for him the succession in Tuscany, protecting
him against any attack that may be attempted
by the Emperor or by England. Next, France
undertakes to ' aid Spain with all her forces by
land or sea, if Spain should suspend England's
enjoyment of commerce and her other advan-
tages, and England out of revenge should resort
to hostilities and insults in the dominions and
states of the crown of Spain, whether within or
outside of Europe.'" Further articles provide
for the making of efforts to induce Great Britain
to restore Gibraltar to Spain; set forth "that the
81
FRANCE, 1733.
War with Austria.
FRANCE, 1733-1735.
foreign policy of both states is to be guided ex-
clusively by the interests of the house" ; denounce
the Austrian Pragmatic as "opposed to the
security of the house of Bourbon." "The King
of France engages to send 33,000 infantry and
8,000 cavalry into Italy, and to maintain other
armies on his other frontiers; also to have a
squadron ready at Toulon, either to join the
Spanish fleet or to act separately, and another
squadron at Brest, ' to keep the English in fear
and jealousy ' ; also, in case of war with Eng-
land breaking out, to commission the largest
possible number of privateers. Spain also prom-
ises a fixed number of troops. The lltli and
12th articles lay the foundation of a close com-
mercial alliance to be formed between France
and Spain. Article 13 runs as follows: — 'His
Catholic majesty, recognising all the abuses which
have been introduced into commerce, chiefly by
the British nation, in the eradication of which the
French and Spanish nations are equally inter-
ested, has determined to bring everything back
within rule and into agreement with the letter of
treaties'" — to which end the two kings make
common cause. "Finally the 14th article pro-
vides that the present treaty shall remain pro-
foundly secret as long as the contracting parties
shall judge it agreeable to their interests, and
shall be regarded from this day as an eternal
and irrevocable FamUy Compact. . . . Here is
the explanation of the war which furnished the
immediate occasion of the first Compact, a war
most misleadingly named from the Polish elec-
tion which afforded an ostensible pretext for it,
and deserving better to be called the Bourbon
invasion of Italy. Here too is sketched out the
course which was afterwards taken by the Bour-
bon courts in the matter of the Pragmatic Sanc-
tion. Thirdly, here most manifestly is the ex-
planation of that war of Jenkins's ears, which
we have a habit of representing as forced upon
Spain by English commercial cupidity, but
which appears here as deliberately planned in
concert by the Bourbon courts in order to eradi-
cate the 'abuses which have been allowed to
creep into trade.'" — J. R. Seeley, The House of
Bourbon (Eng. Hist. Bev., Jan., 1886).
Also in: J. McCarthy, Hist, of the Four
Georges, ch. 23 (o. 2).
A. D. 1733-1735. — War with Austria, in
Germany and Italy. — Final acquisition of Lor-
raine. — Naples and Sicily transferred to Spain.
— In the war with Austria which was brought
about by the question of the Polish succession
(see Polakd: A. D. 1733-1733), the French
" struck at the Rhine and at Italy, while the
other powers looked on unmoved ; Spain watch-
ing her moment, at which she might safely in-
terfere for her own interests in Italy. The army
of the Rhine, which reached Strasburg in autumn
1733, was commanded by Marshal Berwick, who
had been called away from eight years of happy
and charming leisure at Fitz-James. With him
served for the first time in the French army their
one great general of the coming age, and he too
a foreigner, Maurice, son of Augustus II. of
Poland and the lovely Countess of Konigsmark.
... He is best known to us as JIarshal Saxe.
It was too late to accomplish much in 1733, and
the French had to content themselves witli the
capture of Kehl : in the winter the Imperialists
constructed strong lines at Ettliugcu, a little
place not far from Carlsruhc, between Kehl,
which the French held, and Philipsburg, at
which they were aiming. In the spring of 1734
French preparations were slow and feeble: a
new power had sprung up at Paris in the person
of Belle-Isle, Fouquet's grandson, who had much
of the persuasive ambition of his grandfather.
He was full of schemes, and induced the aged
Fleury to believe him to be the coming genius of
French generalship ; the careful views of Marshal
Berwick suited ill his soaring spirit; he wanted
to march headlong into Saxony and Bohemia.
Berwick would not allow so reckless a scheme to
be adopted ; still Belle-Isle, as lieutenant-general
with an almost independent command, was sent
to besiege Trarbach on the Moselle, an operation
which delayed the French advance on the Rhine.
At last, however, Berwick moved forwards. By
skilful arrangements he neutralised the Ettlingen
lines, and without a battle forced the Germans to
abandon them. Their army withdrew to Heil-
bronn, where it was joined by Prince Eugene.
Berwick, freed from their immediate presence,
and having a great preponderance in force, at
once sat down before Philipsburg. There, on
the 12th of June, as he visited the trenches, he
was struck by a ball and fell dead. So passed
away the last but one of the great generals of
Louis XIV. : Prance never again saw his like till
the genius of the Revolution evoked a new race
of heroes. It was thought at first that Berwick's
death, like Turenne's, would end the campaign,
and that the French army must get back across
the Rhine. The position seemed critical, Philips-
burg in front, and Prince Eugene watching with-
out. The Princes of the Empire, however, had
not put out any strength in this war, regarding
it chiefly as an Austrian affair; and the Marquis
d'Asfeld, who took the command of the French
forces, was able to hold on, and in July to reduce
the great fortress of Philipsburg. Therewith
the campaign of the Rhine closed. In Italy
things had been carried on with more vigour and
variety. The veteran Villars, now 81 years old,
was in command, under Charles-Emmanuel,
King of Sardinia. . . . Villars found it quite
easy to occupy all the Milanese : farther he could
not go ; for Charles-Emmanuel, after the maimer
of his family, at once began to deal behind his
baclv with the Imperialists and the campaign
dragged. The old Marshal, little brooking in-
terference and delay, for he still was full of fire,
threw up his command, and started for France :
on the way he was seized with illness at Turin,
and died there five days after Berwick had been
killed at Philipsburg. With them the long series
of the generals of Louis XIV. comes to an end.
Coigny and the Duke de Broglie succeeded to
the command. Not far from Parma they fought
a murderous battle with the Austrians, hotly
contested, and a Cadmean victory for the French:
it arrested their forward movement, and two
months were spent in enforced idleness. In Sep-
tember 1734 the Imperialists inflicted a heavy
check on the French at the Secchia ; afterwards
however emboldened by this success, they fought
a pitched battle at Guastalla, in which, after a
fierce struggle, the French remained masters of
the field. Their losses, the advanced time of the
year, and the uncertainty as to the King of Sar-
dinia's movements and intentions, reniiered the
rest of the campaign unimportant. As however
the Imperialists, in order to make head against
the French in the valley of the Po, had drawn
1282
FRANCE, 1733-1735.
Lost Opportunitief:.
FRANCE, 1738-1770.
all their available force out of the Neapolitan
territory, the Spaniards were able to slip in be-
hind them, and to secure that great prize. Don
Carlos landed at Naples and was received with
transports of joy : the Austrians were defeated
at Bitonto ; the Spaniards then crossed into Sicily,
which also welcomed them gladly ; the two
kingdoms passed willingly under the rule of the
Spaniards. In 1735 Austria made advances in
the direction of peace ; for the French had stirred
up their old friend the Turk, who, in order to
save Poland, proposed to invade Hungary.
Fleury, no lover of war, and aware that Eng-
land's neutrality could not last forever, was not
unwilling to treat : a Congress at Vienna fol-
lowed, and before the end of 1735 peace again
reigned in Europe. The terms of the Treaty of
Vienna (3 Oct. 1735) were very favourable to
France. Austria ceded Naples and Sicily, Elba,
and ■ the States degli Presidii to Spain, to be
erected into a separate kingdom for Don Carlos :
France obtained Lorraine and Bar, which were
given to Stanislaus Lecziuski on condition that
he should renouijce all claim to the Polish Crown ;
they were to be governed by him under French
administration : Francis Stephen, the former
Duke, obtained, as an indemnity, the reversion of
Tuscany, which fell to him in the following year.
Parma and Piacenza returned to tlie Emperor,
who also obtained from France a guarantee of
the Pragmatic Sanction. Thus France at last
got firm hold of the much-desired Lorraine coun-
try, though it was not absolutely united to her
till the death of Stanislaus in 1766."— G. W.
Kitchin, Hist, of Prance, bk. 6, ch. 2.
Also in : F. P.Guizot, Popular Hist, of Prance,
ch. 52 (». 6).
A. D. 1738-1740. — The Question of the Aus-
trian Succession. — Guarantee of the Prag-
matic Sanction. See Austri.\: A. D. 1718-
1738, and 1740.
A. D. 1738-1770. — The fatal policy in Europe
which lost to the French their opportunity for
colonial aggrandizement. — "Louis XIV. had
made France odious to her neighbors and sus-
pected by all Europe. Those who succeeded him
required much prudence and wisdom to diminish
the feelings of fear and jealousy which this long
reign of wars and conquests had inspired. They
were fortunate in that the moderation demanded
of them was for France the most skilful and ad-
vantageous policy. France kept Alsace, Franche-
Comte, Flanders, Roussillon, and beyond this
enlarged frontier she was no longer menaced by
the same enemies. The treaty of Utrecht had
modified the entire balance of power. There is
henceforward no house of Austria excepting in
Germany. . . . Spain is no longer to be feared :
she is weakened, she is becoming dependent.
A cadet of France, a Bourbon, reigns at Madrid.
... It seems that henceforward Prance has only
to conserve on the continent. She presents to it
the most compact power. Her principal enemy
in it is greatly reduced. She is surrounded by
states, weaker than she, who defer to her and
fear her ; she can resume that fine role of modera-
tor and guardian of the peace of Europe which
Richelieu liad prepared for her, and bear else-
where, into the other hemisphere, the super-
abundance of her forces and that excess of vigor
which in great nations is precisely the condition
of health. The future of her grandeur is hence-
forward in the colonies. There she will en-
counter England. Upon this new stage their
rivalry will be revived, more ardent than in the
days of the hundred years war. To maintain
this struggle which extends over the entire world,
France will not be too strong with all her re-
sources When she is engaged in Canada and
the Indies at the same time, she will not need to
carry her armies across the Rhine. Peace on the
continent is the condition necessary to the mag-
nilicent fortune which awaits her in America and
Asia. If she wishes to obtain it she must re-
nounce continental ambitions. She can do it ;
her defense is formidable. No one about her
would dare to fire a gun without her permission.
But, alas ! she is far removed from this wisdom,
and, in attempting to establisli colonies, and
make changes in the kingdoms of Europe at the
same time, she will compromise her power in
both worlds at once. The French desire colonial
conquests, but they cannot abstain from Euro-
pean conquests, and England profits by it.
Austria becomes her natural ally against France.
These powerful diversions keep the French on
the ground. However, they can yet curb Aus-
tria ; they have Prussia, Savoy, Poland and
Tiu'key if necessary. Diplomacy is sufficient
for this game ; but this game is not sufficient for
the French politicians. The hatred of the house
of Austria survives the causes of rivalry. This
house seems always ' the monster ' of which Bal-
zac speaks. One is not satisfied to have chained
it ; one can cease only after having annihilated it.
'There is always,' writes Argenson, 'for politi-
cians a fundamental rule of reducing this power
to the point where the Emperor will not be a
greater landholder than the richest elector.'
Charles VI. dies in 1740 ; he leaves only a daugh-
ter ; the opportunity seems favorable, and noisily
sounding the death-cry (I'hallali) they take the
field at the head of all the hunters by inheri-
tance [see Austria : A. D. 1740-1741, and after ;
Italy: A. D. 1741-1743 to 1746-1747; Nether-
lands: A. D. 1745, and 1746-1747]. They go
' to make an emperor, to conquer kingdoms ! '
The Bavarian whom they crown is a stage em-
peror, and, as for conquests, they are considered
only too fortunate that Maurice of Saxe pre-
serves to France those of Louis XIV. "The
coalition has no other result than to enlarge
Prussia [see Aix-la-Chapelle : A. D. 1748 ;
and New England: A. D. 1745-1748]. Mean-
while France is beaten on the sea and abandons
solely to the i-esourcesof his genius Dupleix, who
with a handful of men was founding an empire
[see India : A. D. 1743-1752]. There was be-
sides another small matter ; after having exposed
Canada [see New England : A. D. 1744 and
1745] in order to conquer Silesia for the king of
Prussia, it was lost in order to have the pleasure
of giving back that province to the queen of
Hungary. France had played the game of Eng-
landjin the war of the succession of Austria, she
played that of Austria in the seven years war
[see Germany : A. D. 1755-1756, and after ; and
England : A. D. 17.54-1755]. Frederick was the
most equivocal of allies. In 1755, he deserted
cynically and passed over to the English, who
had just recommenced war against France.
England having Prussia, it was important, in
order to maintain the equilibrium, that France
have Austria. Maria Theresa offered her alliance
and France accepted it. Thus was concluded the
famous treaty of Mav 1, 1756. The object of
1283
FRANCE, 1738-1770.
More Family Compacts.
FRANCE, 1761.
this alliance was entirely defensive. This is
what France did not understand, and she did not
cease to be a dupe for having changed partners.
Louis XV. made himself the defender of Austria
with the same blindness as he had made himself
her adversary. The continental war which was
only the accessory became the principal. From
a ruling power, France fell to the rank of a sub-
ordinate. She did not even attain the indirect
result to which she sacrificed her most precious
interests. Frederick kept Silesia. France lost
Canada and abandoned Louisiana ; the empire of
the Indies passed to the English [see Canada :
A. D. 1750-1753 to 1760 ; Nova Scotia : A. D.
1749-1755, and 1755 ; Ohio (Valley) : A. D.
1748-1754, and after ; Cape Breton Island :
A. D. 1758-1760; India: A. D. 1758-1761].
Louis XV. had thus directed a policy the sole
reason for which was the defeat of England, in
such a way as to assure the triumph of that
country. ■ Above all,' wrote Bernis to Choiseul,
then ambassador at Vienna, ' arrange matters in
such a way that the king will not remain in
servile dependence on his allies. That state
would be the worst of all." It was the state of
France during the last years of the reign of
Louis XV. The alliance of 1756, which had been
at its beginning and under its first form, a skil-
ful expedient, became a political system, and the
most disastrous of all. Without gaining any-
thing in territory. Franco lost her consideration
in Europe. She had formerly grouped around
her all those who were disturbed by the power
of Austria ; forced to chose between them and
Austria, she allowed the Austrians to do as they
chose. To crown the humiliation, immediately
after a war in which she had lost everything to
serve the hatred of Maria Theresa for Frederick,
she saw those unreconcilable Germans draw to-
gether without her knowledge, come to an under-
standing at her expense, and, in concert with
Russia, divide the spoil of one of the oldest cli-
ents of the French monarchy, Poland. There
remained to France but one ally, Spain. They
were united in 1761 by the Family Pact, the
only beneficial work which had been accom-
plished in these years of disaster. . . . To the
anger of having felt herself made use of during
the war, to the rancor of having seen herself
duped during the peace, was joined the fear of
being despoiled one day by an ally so greedy and
so little scrupulous. 'I foresee,' wrote Slably
some years later, ' that the Emperor will demand
of us again Lorraine, Alsace and everything
which may please him.' — 'Who can guaranty
France, if she should experience a complicated
and unfortunate war,' said one of the ministers
of Louis XVI., ' that the Emperor would not re-
claim Alsace and even other provinces ? ' It was
in this way that the abuse made by Austria of
the alliance revived all the traditions of rivalry.
Add that Maria Theresa was devout, that she
was known to be a friend of the Jesuits, an en-
emy of the philosophers, and that at the King's
court, the favorites were accounted as acquired
from Austria: everything thus contributed to
render odious to public opinion the alliance
which, in itself, already seemed detestable. At
the time when they were beginning to style
the partisans of new ideas 'patriots,' they were
in the habit of confounding all the adver-
saries of these ideas with the 'Austrian party.'
. . The marriage of Marie Antoinette with tlie
]2
Dauphin was destined to seal forever the alliance
of 1756. The unfortunate princess accumulated
on her head the hatreds and prejudices heaped
up by three centuries of rivalry and excessively
stimulated by the still smarting impression of
recent wrongs. Even the cause of her coming to
France rendered her suspected by the French ;
they imputed to her as a crime her attachment
to the alliance which was, notwithstanding, the
very reason of her marriage. To understand
the prodigious unpopularity which pursued her
in France, it is necessary to measure the violence
of the passions raised up against her mother and
her country ; it was summed up, long before the
Revolution, in thatword which became for Marie
Antoinette a decree of forfeiture and of death ;
the Austrian." — A. Sorel, L'Europe et la, Betolu-
tionfran^aue (trans, from the French), pt. 1, pp.
288-297.
A. D. 1743 (October).— The Second Family
Compact of the Bourbon kings. — ' ' France and
Spain signed a secret treaty of perpetual alliance
at Fontaiucbleau, October 25th, 1748. The treaty
is remarkable as the precursor of the celebrated
Family Compact between the French and Span-
ish Bourbons. The Spaniards, indeed, call it the
Second Family Compact, the first being the
Treaty of November 7th, 1733, of which, with
regard to colonial aifairs, it was a renewal. But
this treaty had a more special reference to Italy.
Louis XV. engaged to declare war against Sar-
dinia, and to aid Spain in conquering the Mi-
lanese. Philip V. transferred his claims to that
duchy to his son, the Infant Don Philip, who
was also to be put in possession of Parma and
Piacenza. All the possessions ceded by France
to the King of Sardinia, by the Treaty of Utrecht,
were to be again wrested from him. A public
alliance was to be formed, to which the Emperor
Charles VII. was to accede ; whose states, and
even something more, were to be recovered for
him. Lender certain circumstances war was to
be declared against England ; in which case
France was to assist in the recovery of Gibraltar,
and also, if possible, of Minorca. The new colony
of Georgia was to be destroyed, the Asiento with-
drawn from England, &c.'' — T. H. Dyer, Eist.
of Modern Europe, b/c. 6. ch. 4 (■». 3).
A. D. 1754-1756. — The Seven Years War.
— Its Causes and Provocations. See Geumant:
A. D. 175.5-1756 : and England : A. D.1754-1755.
A. D. 1756 (May). —The Seven Years War :
Minorca ■wrested from England. See Minor-
ca : A. D. 1756.
A. D. 1761 (August). — The Third Family
Compact of the Bourbon kings. — " On the 15th
of August [1761] . . . Grimaldi [Spanish am-
bassador at the French court] and Choiseul [the
ruling minister, at the time, in France] signed
the celebrated Family Compact. By this treaty
the Kings of France and Spain agreed for the
future to consider every Power as their enemy
which might become the enemy of either, and to
guarantee the respective dominions in all parts
of the world which they might possess at the
next conclusion of peace. ]\Iutual succours by
sea and land were stipulated, and no proposal of
peace to their common enemies was to be made,
nor negotiation entered upon, unless by common
consent. The subjects of each re.siding in the
European dominions of the other were to enjoy
the same commercial privileges as the natives.
Moreover, the King of Spain stipulated the
84
FRANCK, 1761.
Loin's XVL and
his Ministers.
FRANCE, 1774-1788.
accession of his son, the King of Naples, to this
iilliance ; but it was agreed that no prince or po-
tentate, except of the House of Bourbon, should
ever be admitted to its participation. Besides
this treaty, which in its words at least applied
only to future and contingent wars, and which
was intended to be ultimately published, there
was also signed on the same day a special and
secret convention. This imported, that in case
England and France should still be engaged in
hostilities on the 1st of May 1762 Spain should
on that day declare war against England, and that
France should at the same period restore Minorca
to Spain. . . . Not only the terms but the exis-
tence of a Family Compact were for some time
kept scrupulously secret. Mr. Stanley, however,
gleaned some information from the scattered
hints of the Duke de Clioiseul, and these were
confirmed to Pitt from several other quarters. "
As the result of the Family Compact, England
declared war against Spain on tlie 4th of Janu-
ary, 1762. Pitt had gone out of office in October
because his colleagues and the King would not
then consent to a declaration of war against the
Spanish Bourbons (see England: A. D. 1760-
1763). The force of circumstances soon brought
them to the measure. — Lord Mahon (Earl Stan-
hope), Hist, of Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 37 {v. 4).
A. D. 1761-1764. — Proceedings against the
Jesuits. — ^Their expulsion from the kingdom.
SeeJEStnTS: A. D. 1761-1769.
A. D. 1763. — The end and results of the
Seven Years War. — The Peace of Paris. —
America lost, nothing gained. See Seven
Years War; A. D. 1763.
A. D. 1763. — Rights in the North American
fisheries secured by the Treaty of Paris. See
Fisheries, North Ajierican : A. D. 1763.
A. D. 1768. — Acquisition of Corsica. See
Corsica: A. D. 1729-1769.
A. D. 1774-1788. — The Court and Govern-
ment of Louis XVI., his inheritance of troubles,
his vacillations, his helpless ministers. — Tur-
got, Necker, Calonne, Brienne. — Blind selfish-
ness of the privileged orders. — The Assembly
of Notables. — The Parliament of Paris. —
"Louis XVI., an equitable prince, moderate in
his propensities, carelessly educated, but natur-
ally of a good disposition, ascended the throne
[May 11, 1774] at a very early age. He called
to his side an old courtier, and consigned to him
the care of his kingdom ; and divided his con-
fidence between JIaurepas and the Queen, an
Austrian princess [Marie Antoinette], young,
lively, and amiable, who possessed a complete
ascendency over him. Maurepas and the Queen
were not good friends. The King, sometimes
giving way to his minister, at others to his con-
sort, began at an early period the long career of
his vacillations. . . . The public voice, which
was loudly expressed, called for Turgot, one of
the class of economists, an honest, virtuous man,
endowed with firmness of character, a slow genius,
but obstinate and profound. Convinced of his
probity, delighted with his plans of reform, Louis
XVI. frequently repeated : ' There are none be-
sides myself and Turgot who are friends of the
people.' Turgot's reforms were thwarted by the
opposition of the highest orders in the state,
A-ho were interested in maintaining all kinds of
abuses, which the austere minister proposed to
suppress. Louis XVI. dismissed him [1776] with
regret. During his whole life, which was only
a long martyrdom, he had the mortification to
discern what was right, to wish it sincerely, but
to lack the energy requisite for carrying it into
execution. The King, placed between the court,
the parliaments, and the people, exposed to in-
trigues and to suggestions of all sorts, repeatedly
changed his ministers. Yielding once more to
the public voice, and to the necessity for reform,
he summoned to the finance department Necker,
a native of Geneva, who had amassed wealth as a
banker, a partisan and disciple of Colbert, as
Turgot was of Sully ; an economical and upright
financier, but a vain man, fond of setting him-
self up for arbitrator in everything. . . . Necker
re-established order in the finances, and found
means to defray the heavy expenses of the Ameri-
can war. . . . But it required something more
than financial artifices to put an end to the em-
barrassments of the exchequer, and he had re-
course to reform. He found the higher orders
not less adverse to him than they had been to
Turgot; the parliaments, apprised of his plans,
combined against him, and obliged him to retire
[1781]. The conviction of the existence of abuses
was universal ; everybody admitted it. . . . The
courtiers, who derived advantage from these
abuses, would have been glad to see an end put
to the embarrassments of the exchequer, but
without its costing them a single sacrifice. . . .
The parliaments also talked of the interests of
the people, loudly insisted on the sufferings of
the poor, and yet opposed the equalization of the
taxes, as well as the abolition of the remains of
feudal barbarism. All talked of the public weal,
few desired it ; and the people, not yet knowing
who were its true friends, applauded all those
who resisted power, its most obvious enemy.
By the removal of Turgot and Necker, the state
of affairs was not changed : the distress of the
treasury remained the same. . . . An intrigue
brought forward M. de Calonne [in 1783, after
brief careers in office of M. de Fleury and M.
d'Ormesson]. . . . Calonne, clever, brilliant, fer-
tile in resources, relied upon his genius, upon
fortune, and upon men, and awaited the future
with the most extraordinary apathy. . . . That
future which had been counted upon now ap-
proached : it became necessary at length to adopt
decisive measures. It was impossible to burden
the people with fresh imposts, and yet the coffers
were empty. There was but one remedy which
could be applied ; that was to reduce the ex-
penses by the suppression of grants ; and if this
expedient should not suffice, to extend the taxes
to a greater number of contributors, that is, to
the nobility and clergy. These plans, attempted
successively by Turgot and Necker, and resumed
by Calonne, appeared to the latter not at all
likely to succeed, unless the consent of the privi-
leged classes themselves could be obtained.
Calonne, therefore, proposed to collect them to-
gether in an assembly, to be called the Assembly
of the Notables, in order to lay his plans before
them, and to gain their consent either by address
or by conviction. The assembly [which met
February 22, 1787] was composed of distin-
guished members of the nobility, clergy, and
magistracy, of a great number of masters of re-
quests and some magistrates of the provinces.
. . . Very warm discussions ensued." The No-
tables at length "promised to sanction the plans
of Calonne, but on condition that a minister more
moral and more deserving of confidence should
1285
FRANCE, 1774-175
Louis X VI. and
his Court.
FRANCE, 1774-1788.
be appointed to carry them into execution."
Calonne, consequently, was dismissed, and re-
placed by M. de Brienne, Arclibishop of Tou-
louse. "Tlie Notables, bound by the promises
■which they had made, readily consented to all
that they had at first refused: land-tax, stamp-
duty, suppression of the gratuitous services of
vassals (' corvees '), provincial assemblies, ■were
all cheerfully granted. . . . Had M. de Brienne
known how to profit by the advantages of his
position; had he actively proceeded with the
execution of the measures assented to by the No-
tables; had he submitted them all at once and
without delay to the parliament, at the instant
when the adhesion of the higher orders seemed
to be wrung from them — all would probably
have been over; the parliament, pressed on all
sides, would have consented to everything. . . .
Nothing of the kind, however, was done. By
imprudent delays occasion was furnished for re-
lapses ; the edicts were submitted only one after
another; the parliament had time to discuss, to
gain courage, and to recover from the sort of
surprise by which the Notables had been taken.
It registered, after long discussions, the edict
enacting the second abolition of the ' corvees, '
and another permitting the free exportation of
corn. Its animosity was particularly directed
against the land-tax ; but it feared lest by a re-
fusal it should enlighten the public, and show
that its opposition was entirely selfish. It hesi-
tated, when it was spared this embarrassment by
the simultaneous presentation of the edict on the
stamp-duty and the land-tax, and especially by
opening the deliberations with the former. The
parliament had thus an opportunity of refusing
the first without entering into explanations re-
specting the second ; and, in attacking the stamp-
duty, which affected the majority of the payers
of taxes, it seemed to defend the interest of the
public. At a sitting which was attended by the
peers, it denounced the abuses, the profligacy,
and the prodigality of the court, and demanded
statements of expenditure. A councillor, pun-
ning upon the 'etats' (statements) exclaimed . . .
^'It is not statements, but States-General that
we want.' . . . The utterance of a single word
presented an unexpected direction to the public
mind : it was repeated by every mouth, and States-
Cteneral were loudly demanded. " — A. Thiers, Hist,
of the French BemluUon {Am. ed.), v. 1, pp. 17-21.
— " There is no doubt that the French adminis-
trative body, at the time when Louis XVI. began
to reign, was corrupt and self-seeking. In the
management of the finances and of the army,
Illegitimate profits were made. But this was not
the worst evil from which the public service was
suffering. France was in fact governed by what
in modern times is called 'a ring.' The mem-
bers of such an organization pretend to serve the
sovereign, or the public, and in some measure
actually do so ; but their rewards are determined
by intrigue and favor, and are entirely dispro-
portionate to their services. They generally pre-
fer jobbery to direct stealing, and will spend a
million of the state's money in a needless under-
taking, in order to divert a few thousands into
their own pockets. They hold together against
all the world, while trying to circumvent each
other. Such a ring in old France was the court.
By such a ring will every country be governed,
where the sovereign who possesses the political
power is weak in moral character or careless of
the public interest ; whether that sovereign be a
monarch, a chamber, or the mass of the people.
Louis XVI., king of France and of Navarre, was
more dull than stupid, and weaker in will than
in intellect. . . . He was . . . thoroughly con-
scientious, and had a high sense of the responsi-
bility of his great calling. He was not indolent,
although heavy, and his courage, which was
sorely tested, was never broken. With these
virtues he might have made a good king, had he
possessed firmness of will enough to support a
good minister, or to adhere to a good policy. But
such strength had not been given him. Totally
incapable of standing by himself, he leant suc-
cessively, or simultaneously, on his aunt, his
wife, his ministers, his courtiers, as ready to
change his policy as his adviser. Yet it was part
of his weakness to be unwilling to believe him-
self under the guidance of any particular person ;
he set a high value on his own authority, and
was inordinately jealous of it. No one, there-
fore, could acquire a permanent influence. Thus
a well-meaning man became the worst of sover-
eigns. . . . Louis XV. had been led by his mis-
tresses; Louis XVI. was turned about by the
last person who happened to speak to him. The
courtiers, in their turn, were .swayed by their
feelings, or their interests. They formed parties
and combinations, and intrigued for or against
each other. They made bargains, they gave and
took bribes. In all these intrigues, bribes, and
bargains, the court ladies had a great share.
They were as corrupt as the men, and as frivol-
ous. It is probable that in no government did
women ever exercise so great an influence. The
factions into which the court was divided tended
to group themselves round certain rich and in-
fluential families. Such were the Noailles, an
ambitious and powerful house, with which Lafay-
ette was connected by marriage; the Broglies,
one of whom had held the thread of the secret
diplomacy which Louis XV. had carried on
behind the backs of his acknowledged minis-
ters; the Polignacs, new people, creatures of
Queen Marie Antoinette; the Rohans, through
the influence of whose great name an unworthy
member of the family was to rise to high dignity
in the church and the state, and then to cast a
deep shadow on the darkening popularity of that
ill-starred princess. Such families as these formed
an upper class among nobles. ... It is not easy,
in looking at the French government in the eigh-
teenth century, to decide where the working ad-
ministration ended, and where the useless court
that answered no real purpose began. . . . There
was the department of hunting and that of build-
ings, a separate one for royal journeys, one for
the guard, another for police, yet another for
ceremonies. There were five hundred oflicers
' of the mouth,' table-bearers distinct from chair-
bearers. There were tradesmen, from apothe-
caries and armorers at one end of the list to
saddle-makers, tailors and violinists at the other.
. . . The military and civil households of the
king and of the ro3'al family are said to have con-
sisted of about fifteen thousand souls, and to have
cost forty-five million francs per annum. The
holders of many of the places served but three
months apiece out of every year, so that four
officers and four salaries were required, instead
of one. With such a system as this we cannot
wonder that the men who administered the French
government were generally Incapable and self-
128G
FRANCE. 1774-1':
Affair of the
Diamond Necklace.
FRANCE, 1784-1785.
seeking. Most of them were politicians rather
them administrators, and cared more for their
places than for their country. Of the few con-
scientious and patriotic men who obtained power,
the greater number lost it very speedily." —
E. J. Lowell, The Eve of the French Eecolution,
eh. 3.
Also in: F. Rocquain, The Bewlutionary
Spirit preceding the Fr. Bev., ch. 9-11. — Mme. de
Stael, Considerations on the Principal Events of
tlie Fr. Rev., ch. 3-10 (v. 1).— J. Necker, On the
Fr. Bei\, pt. 1, sect. 1 (e. 1).— Condorcet, Life of
Turgot, ch. 5-6.— L. Say, Twrgot, ch. 5-7.— CD.
Yonge, Life of Marie Antoinette, ch. 8-31.
A. D. 1778 (February). — Treaty with the
United States of America. See United States
OF Am. : A. D. 1776-1778, and 1778 (Febru-
ary).
A. D. 1780 (July).— Fresh aid to the United
States of America. See United St.\tbs of Am. :
A. D. 1780 (July).
A. D. 1782. — Disastrous naval defeat by
Rodney. — Unsuccessful siege of Gibraltar.
See Engl.\nd: A. D. 1780-1783.
A. D. 1782.— The negotiation of Peace be-
tween Great Britain and the United States
of America. — Dissatisfaction of the French
minister. See United States of Am. ; A. D.
1783 (September), and (September — Novem-
ber).
A. D. 1784-1785. — The affair of the Diamond
Necklace. — The chief actor in the affair of the
diamond necklace, which caused a great scandal
and smirched the queen's name, was an adven-
turess who called herself the Comtesse de La-
motte, and claimed descent from Henry II. , but
who had been half servant, half companion, to a
lady of quality, and had picked up a useful ac-
quaintance with the maimers and the gossip of
court society. " Madame de Lamotte's original
patroness had a visiting acquaintance with the
Cardinal Prince Louis de Rohan, and in her
company her 'protegee learned to know him
also. Prince Louis, who had helped to receive
Marie Antoinette at Strasburg, had been the
French ambassador at Vienna, where he had dis-
gusted and incensed JIaria Theresa by his world-
liness, profligacy, and arrogance. She had at
last procured his withdrawal, and her letters ex-
pressing a positive terror lest ho should come
near Marie Antoinette and acquire an influence
over her, were not without their effect. He was
not allowed to appear at Court, and for ten long
years fretted and fumed under a sense of the
roj'al displeasure. ... He was now a man bor-
dering on fifty, grey-headed, rosy, 'pursy,' with
nothing save his blue blood aud the great offices
which he disgraced to recommend him. Madame
de Lamotte, hovering about Paris and Versailles,
where she had lodgings in La Belle Inage, tried
to make her own of backstairs gossip, and picked
up a hint or two. Suddenly a great idea struck
her, founded on the history of a magnificent
necklace dangled before bright eyes, over which
many an excitable imagination gloated. The
Queen had a court jeweller, Bcehmer, who had
formerly been jeweller to the King of Saxony
at Dresden. . . . For a period of years he had
been collecting and assorting the stones which
should form an incomparable necklace, in row
upon row, pendants and tassels of lustrous dia-
monds, till the price reached the royal pitch of
from eighty to ninety thousand pounds English
money. This costly ' collar, ' according to ni-
mour, was . . . meant, in the beginning, for the
Comtesse du Barry. In the end, it . . . was
offered with confidence to the Queen. . . . She
declined to buy — she had enough diamonds.
. . . There was nothing for it but that Boehmer
should ' hawk ' his necklace in every Court of
Europe, without success, till the German declared
himself ruined, and passionately protested that,
if the Queen would not buy the diamonds, there
was no resource for him save to throw himself
into the Seine. But there was a resource, un-
happily for Bffihmer, unhappily for all con-
cerned, most so for the poor Queen. Madame de
Lamotte, in keeping up her acquaintance with
Prince Louis de Rohan, began to hint darkly
that there might be ways of winning the royal
favour. She threw out cunning words about
the degree of importance and trust to which she
had attained in the highest quarters at Versailles;
about the emptiness of the Queen's exchequer,
with consequent difficulties in the discharge of
her charities; about the secret royal desire for
the famous necklace, which the King would not
enable Marie Antoinette to obtain. The blinded
aud besotted Cardinal drank in these insinuations.
The black art was called in to deepen his convic-
tions. In an age when many men, especially
many churchmen, believed in nothing, in spite
of their professions, naturally they were given
over to believe a lie. Cagliostro, astrologer and
modern magician, was flourishing in Paris, and
bv circles and signs he promised the priest, De
R"ohan, progress in the only suit he had at heart.
Still the dupe was not so infatuated as to require
no proof of the validity of these momentous
implications, and proof was not wanting; notes
were handed to him, to be afterwards shown to
Boehmer, graciously acknowledging his devo-
tion, and authorising him to buy for the Queen
the diamond necklace. These notes were appar-
ently written in the Queen's hand (that school-
girl's scrawl of which Maria Theresa was wont
to complain) ; but they were signed ' Marie An-
toinette de France,' a signature which so great a
man as the Cardinal ought to have known was
never employed by the Queen, for the very good
reason that the termination ' do France ' belonged
to the children and not to the wife of the sover-
eign. Even a further assurance that all was
right was granted. The Cardinal, trembling in
a fever of hope and expectation, was told that
a private interview with the Queen would be
vouchsafed to him at midnight in the Park of
Versailles. At the appointed hour, on the night
of the 38th of July, 1784, De Rohan, in a blue
greatcoat and slouched hat, was stationed, amidst
shrouding, sultry darkness, in the neighbourhood
of the palace. Madame de Lamotte, in a black
domino, hovered near to give the signal of the
Queen's approach. The whisper was given, ' In
the Hornbeam Arbour,' and the Cardinal hurried
to the spot, where he could dimly descry a tall
lady in white, with chestnut hair, blue eyes, and
a commanding air, if he could really have seen
all these well-known attributes. He knelt, but
before he could do more than mutter a word of
homage and gratitude, the black domino was at
his side again with another vehement whisper,
' On vient ' (They come). The lady in white
dropped a rose, with the significant words,
' Vous savez ce que cela veut dire ' (You know
what that means), and vanished before the 'Vlte,
[287
FRANCE, 1784-1785.
struggle with the
Parliament of Paris,
FRANCE, 1787-1789.
vlte' ('Quick, quick') of the black domino, for
the sound of approaching footsteps was supposed
to indicate the approach of Madame and the
Comtesse d'Artols, and the Cardinal, In his
turn, had to flee from detection. What more
could be required to convince a man of the good
faith of the lady. . . . Bcehraer received a hint
that he might sell his necklace, through the
Prince Cardinal Louis de Rohan, to one of the
great ones of the earth, who was to remain in
obscurity. The jeweller drew out his terms —
sixteen hundred thousand livres, to be paid in
five equal instalments over a year and a-half —
to which he and Prince Louis affixed their signa-
tures. This paper Madame de Lamotte carried
to Versailles, and brought it back with the words
written on the margin, 'Bon Marie Antoinette
de France.' In the meantime, Bcehmer, the
better to keep the secret, gave out that he had
sold the necklace to the Grand Turk for his fa-
vourite Sultana. The necklace was, in fact,
delivered to Prince Louis and by him entrusted
to Madame Lamotte, from whose hands it passed
— not into the Queen's. Having been taken to
pieces, it was sent in all haste out of the king-
dom, while the Cardinal, according to his own
account, was still played with. ... It goes
without saying that no payment, except a small
offer of interest on the thirty thousand, was
forthcoming. The Cardinal and Bcehmer were
betrayed into wrath, dismay, and despair.
Bcehmer took it upon him to apply, in respectful
terms, to her Majesty for payment; and when
she said the whole thing was a mistake, the man
must be mad, and caused her words to be written
to him, he sought an interview with Madame
Campan, the tirst woman of the bedchamber, at
her bouse at Crespy, where he had been dining,
and in the gardens there, in the middle of a
thunder-shower, astounded her with his version
of the story. . . . The Cardinal was taken to
the Bastille. More arrests followed, including
those of Madame de Lamotte, staying quietly in
her house at Bar-sur-Aube, and the girl Gay
d'Oliva, an unhappy girl, tall and fair haired,
taken from the streets of Paris, and brought to
the park of Versailles to personate the Queen.
It was said the Queen wept passionately over
the scandal — ■ well she might. The court in
which the case was tried might prove the for-
gery, as in fact it did, though not in the way she
expected; but every Court in Europe would
ring with the story, and she had made deadly
enemies, if not of the Church itself, of the great
houses of De Rohan, De Soubise, De Guemenee,
De Marsan, and their multitude of allies. The
proces lasted nine months, and every exertion
was made for the deliverance of the princely
culprit. . . . The result of the trial was that,
though the Queen's signature was declared false,
Madame de Lamotte was sentenced to be whipped,
branded, and imprisoned for life, her husband
was condemned to the galleys, and a man called
Villette de Retaux, who was the actual fabricator
of the Queen's handwriting, was sentenced to
be banished for life. The Cardinal Prince Louis
de Rohan was fully acquitted, with permission
to publish what defence he chose to write of his
conduct. When he left the court, he was escorted
by great crowds, hurrahing over his acquittal,
because it was supposed to cover the Court with
mortification. " — Sarah Tytler, Marie Antoinette,
»/(.. 12.
Also in: T. Cariyle, The Diamond Necklace
{Critical and Miscellaneous Essays, v. 5). — H.
Vizetelly, The Story of the Diamond NecMitrc.
A. D. 1787-1789.— Struggle of the Crown
with the Parliament of Paris. — The demand
for a meeting of the States-General yielded to.
— Double representation of the Third Estate
conceded. — The make-up of the States-Gen-
eral as elected by the three Estates. — Ban-
ished to Troyes (August, 1787), in consequence
of its refusal to register two edicts relating to
the stamp-duty and the land-tax, the Parliament
of Paris "grew weary of exile, and the minister
recalled it on condition that the two edicts should
be passed. But this was only a suspension of
hostilities ; the necessities of the crown soon ren-
dered the struggle more obstinate and violent.
The minister had to make fresh applications for
money ; his existence depended on the issue of
several successive loans to the amount of 440,-
000,000. It was necessary to obtain the enrol-
ment of them. Brienne, expecting opposition
from the parliament, procured the enrolment of
this edict, by a ' bed of justice,' and to conciliate
the magistracy and public opinion, the protes-
tants were restored to their rights in the same
sitting, and Louis XVI. promised an annual pub-
lication of the state of finances, and the convo-
cation of the states-general before the end of five
years. But these concessions were no longer
sufficient: parliament refused the enrolment, and
rose against the ministerial tyranny. Some of
its members, among othars the duke of Orleans,
were banished. Parliament protested by a de-
cree against ' lettres de cachet, ' and required the
recall of its members. This decree was annulled
by the king, and confirmed by parliament. The
warfare increased. The magistracy of Paris was
supported by all the magistracy of France, and
encouraged by public opinion. It proclaimed
the rights of the nation, and its own incompe-
tence in matters of taxation ; and, become liberal
from interest, and rendered generous by oppres-
sion, it exclaimed against arbitrary imprisonment,
and demanded regularly convoked states-general.
After this act of courage, it decreed the irre-
movability of its members, and the incompetence
of any who might usurp their functions. This
bold manifesto was followed by the arrest of two
members, d'Epremenil and Goislard, by the re-
form of the body, and the establishment of a
plenary court. Brienne understood that the op-
position of the parliament was systematic, that
it would be renewed on every fresh demand for
subsidies, or on the authorization of every loan.
Exile was but a momentary remedy, which sus-
pended opposition, without destroying it. He
then projected the reduction of this body to
judicial functions. . . . All the magistracy of
France was exiled on the same day, in order that
the new judicial organization might take place.
The keeper of the seals deprived the Parliament
of Paris of its political attributes, to invest with
them a plenary court, ministerially composed,
and reduced its judicial competence in favour of
bailiwicks, the jurisdiction of which he extended.
Public opinion was indignant ; the Chatelet pro-
tested, the provinces rose, and the plenary court
could neither be formed nor act. Disturbances
broke out in Dauphine, Brittany, Provence, Flan-
ders, Languedoc, and Beam; the ministry, in-
stead of the regular opposition of parliament,
had to encounter one much more animated and
1288
FRANCE, 1787-1789.
Question of
the tytates-General.
FRANCE, 1789.
factious. The nobility, the third estate, the pro-
vincial states, and even the clergy, took part in
it. Brienne, pressed for money, had called to-
gether an extraordinary assembly of the clergy,
who immediately made an address to the king,
demanding the abolition of his plenary court,
and the recall of the states-general : they alone
could thenceforth repair the disordered state of
the finances, secure the national debt, and ter-
minate these disputes for power. . . . Obtaining
neither taxes nor loans, unable to make use of
the plenary court, and not wishing to recall the
parliaments, Brienne, as a last resource, promised
the convocation of the states-general. By this
means he hastened his ruin. ... He succumbed
on the 25th August, 1788. The cause of his
fall was a suspension of the payment of the
interest on the debt, which was the commence-
ment of bankruptcy. This minister has been
the most blamed because he came last. Inherit-
ing the faults, the embarrassments of past times,
he had to struggle with the difficulties of his
position with inefficient means. He tried intrigue
and oppression ; he banished, suspended, disor-
ganized parliament; everj'thing was an obstacle
to him, nothing aided him. After a long struggle,
he sank under lassitude and weakness; I dare
not say from incapacity, for had he been far
stronger and more skilful, had he been a Riche-
lieu or a Sully, he would still have fallen. It
no longer appertained to any one arbitrarily to
raise money or to oppress the people. . . . The
states-general had become the only means of
government, and the last resource of the throne.
They had been eagerly demanded by parliament
and the peers of the kingdom, on the 13th of
July, 1787; by the states of Dauphine, in the
assembly of Vizille ; by the clergy in its assembly
at Paris. The provincial states had prepared
the public mind for them ; and the notables were
their precursors. The king after having, on the
18th of December, 1787, promised their convo-
cation in five years, on the 8th of August, 1783,
fixed the opening for the 1st of May, 1789.
Necker was recalled, parliament re-established,
the plenary court abolished, the bailiwicks de-
stroyed, and the provinces satisfied ; and the new
minister prepared everything for the election of
deputies and the holding of the states. At this
epoch a great change took place in the opposition,
which till then had been unanimous. Under
Brienne, the ministry had encountered opposi-
tion from all the various bodies of the state, be-
cause it had sought to oppress them. Under
Necker, it met with resistance from the same
bodies, which desired power for themselves and
oppression for the people. From being despotic,
it had become national, and it still had them all
equally against it. Parliament had maintained a
struggle for authority, and not for the public
welfare; and the nobility had united with the
third estate, rather against the government than
in favour of the people. Each of these bodies
had demanded the states-general : the parliament,
in the hope of ruling them as it had done in 1614 ;
and the nobUity, in the hope of regaining its lost
influence. Accordingly, the magistracy pro-
posed as a model for the states-general of 1789,
the form of that of 1614, and public opinion
abandoned it ; the nobility refused its consent to
the double representation of the third estate, and
a division broke out between these two orders.
This double representation was required by the
intellect of the age, the necessity of reform, and
by the importance which the third estate had
acquired. It had already been admitted into the
the provincial assemblies. . . . Opinion became
daily more decided, and Necker wishing, yet
fearing, to satisfy it, and desirous of conciliating
all orders, of obtaining general approbation, con-
voked a second assembly of notables on the 6th
of November, 1788, to deliberate on the compo-
sition of the states-general, and the election of
its members. . . . Necker, having been unable
to make the notables adopt the [double] repre-
sentation of the third estate, caused it to be
adopted by the council. The royal declaration
of the 37th of November decreed, that the depu-
ties in the states-general should amount to at
least a thousand, and that the deputies of the
third estate should be equal in number to the
deputies of the nobility and clergy together.
Necker moreover obtained the admission of the
cures into the order of the clergy, and of .protes-
tants into that of the third estate. The district
assemblies were convoked for the elections ; every
one exerted himself to secure the nomination of
members of his own party, and to draw up mani-
festoes setting forth his views. Parliament had
but little influence in the elections, and the cou2t
none at all. The nobility selected a few popular
deputies, but for the most part devoted to the
interests of their order, and as much opposed to
the third estate as to the oligarchy of the great
families of the court. The clergy nominated
bishops and abbes attached to privilege, and
cures favourable to the popular cause, which
was their own ; lastly, the third estate selected
men enlightened, firm and unanimous in their
wishes. The deputation of the nobility was
comprised of 343 gentlemen, and 38 members of
the parliament ; that of the clergy, of 48 arch-
bishops or bishops, 35 abbes or deans, and 208
cures ; and that of the communes, of two eccle-
siastics, 12 noblemen, 18 magistrates of towns,
300 county members, 212 barristers, 16 physi-
cians, and 316 merchants and agriculturists. The
opening of the states-general was fixed for the
5th of May, 1789."— F. A. Mignet, Hist, of the
French Rev., introd.
Also in: W. Smyth, Lect's on the Hist, of the
Fr. Rev., lect. 6 (». 1).— J. Necker, On tU Fr.
Res., pt. 1, sect. 1.
A. b. 1789. — The condition of the people on
the eve of the great Revolution. — The sources
and causes of its destructive fury. — "In 1789
three classes of persons, the Clergy, the Nobles,
and the King occupied the most prominent posi-
tion in the State, with all the advantages which
it comports; namely, authority, property, honors,
or, at the very least, privileges, immunities, favors,
pensions, preferences, and the like. . . . The
privileged classes number about 270,000 persons,
comprising of the nobility 140,000 and of the
clergy 130,000. This makes from 25,000 to 30,000
noble families ; 23, 000 monks in 2, 500 monasteries,
and 37,000 nuns in 1,500 convents, and 60,000
curates and vicars in as many churches and
chapels. Should the reader desire a more dis-
tinct impression of them, he may imagine on
each square league of territory, and to each
thousand of inhabitants, one noble family in its
weathercock mansion, in each village a curate
and his church, and, every six or seven leagues,
a conventual body of men or of women. ... A
fifth of the soil belongs to the crown and the
1289
FRANCE, 1789.
Conaition of the
People,
FRANCE, 1789.
communes, a fifth to the third estate, a fifth to
the rural population, a fifth to the nobles and a
fifth to the clergy. Accordingly, if we deduct the
public lands, the privileged classes own one half
of the kingdom. This large portion, moreover,
is at the same time the richest, for it comprises
almost all the large and handsome buildings,
the palaces, castles, convents, and cathedrals, and
almost all the valuable movable property. . . .
Such is the total or partial exemption from taxa-
tion. The tax-collectors halt in their presence,
because the king well knows that feudal property
has the same origin as his own ; if royalty is one
privilege seigniory is another ; the king himself is
simply the most privileged among the privileged.
. . . After the assaults of 450 years, taxation, the
first of fiscal instrumentalities, the most burden-
some of all, leaves feudal property almost intact.
. . . The privileged person avoids or repels taxa-
tion, not merely because it despoils him, but be-
cause it belittles him ; it is a mark of plebeian con-
dition, that is to say, of former servitude, and he
resists the fisc as much through pride as through
interest. ... La Bruyfire wrote, just a century
before 1789, ' Certain savage-looking beings, male
and female, are seen in the country, black, livid
af id sunburnt, and belonging to the soil which they
dig and grub with invincible stubbornness. They
seem capable of articulation, and, when they
stand erect they display human lineaments. They
are, in fact, men. They retire at night into their
dens, where they live on black bread, water and
roots. They spare other human beings the trouble
of sowing, ploughing and harvesting, and thus
should not be In want of the bread they have
planted.' They continue In want of it during 2o
years after this, and die in herds. I estimate that
in 1715 more than one-third of the population, six
millions, perish with hunger and of destitution.
The picture, accordingly, for the first quarter of tlie
century preceding the Revolution, far from being
overdrawn, is the reverse; we shall see that, dur-
ing more than half a century, up to the death of
Louis XV. , it is exact ; perhaps, instead of weak-
ening any of its points, they should be strength-
ened. . . . Undoubtedly the government under
Louis XVI. is milder; the intendants are more
humane, the administration is less rigid, the
' taille ' becomes less unequal, and the ' corvee '
is less onerous through its transformation, in
short, misery has diminished, and yet this is
greater than human nature can bear. Examine
administrative correspondence for the last thirty
years preceding the Revolution. Countless state-
ments reveal excessive suffering, even when not
terminating in fury. Life to a man of the lower
class, to an artisan, or workman, subsisting on
the labor of his own hands, is evidently precari-
ous ; he obtains simply enough to keep him from
starvation and he does not always get that.
Here, in four districts, ' the inhabitants live only
on buckwheat,' and for five years, the apple crop
having failed, they drink only water. There,
in a country of vineyards, ' the vine-dressers
each year are reduced, for the most part, to beg-
ging their bread during the dull season.' . . . In
a remote canton the peasants cut the grain still
green and dry it in the oven, because they are
loo hungry to wait. . . . Between 1750 and 1760,
the idlers who eat suppers begin to regard with
compassion and alarm the laborers who go with-
out dinners. Why are the latter so impoverished,
and by what chance, on a soil as rich as that of
France, do those lack bread who grow the grain t
In the first place, many farms remain unculti-
vated, and, what is worse, many are deserted.
According to the best observers 'one-quarter
of the soil is absolutely lying waste. . . . Hun-
dreds and hundreds of arpentsof heath and moor
form extensive deserts.' . . . This is not sterility
but decadence. The regime invented by Louis
XIV. has produced its effect ; the soil for a century
past is reverting back to a wild state. ... In the
second place, cultivation, when it does take place,
is carried on according to mediieval modes.
Arthur Young, in 1789, considers that French
agriculture has not progressed beyond that of
the 10th century. Except in Flanders and on the
plains of Alsace, the fields lie fallow one year out
of three and oftentimes one year out of two. The
implements are poor ; there are no ploughs made
of iron; in many places the plough of Virgil's
time is still in use. . . . Arthur Young shows
that in France those who lived on field labor, and
they constituted the great majority, are 76 per
cent, less comfortable than the same laborers in
England, while they are 76 per cent, less well
fed and well clothed, besides being worse treated
in sickness and in health. The result is that, in
seven-eighths of the kingdom, there are no farmers
but simply metayers. ['The poor people,' says
Arthur Young, ' who cultivate the soil here are
metayers, that is, men who hire the land without
ability to stock it ; the proprietor is forced to
provide cattle and seed, and he and his tenants
divide the product.'] . . . Misery begets bitter-
ness in a man; but ownership coupled with
misery renders him still more bitter"; and,
strange as it appears, the acquisition of land by
the French peasants, in small holdings, went on
steadily during the 18th century, despite the
want and suffering which were so universal.
"The fact is almost Incredible, but it is never-
theless true. We can only explain it by the
character of the French peasant, by his sobriety,
his tenacity, his rigor with himself, his dissimu-
lation, his hereditary passion for property and
especially for that of the soil. He had lived on
privations and economized sou after sou. . . .
Towards 1760, one-quarter of the soil is said to
have already passed into the hands of agricultur-
ists. . . . The small cultivator, however, in be-
coming a possessor of the soil assumed its charges.
Simply as day -laborer, and with his arms alone,
he was only partially affected by the taxes;
' where there is nothing the king loses his dues.'
But now, vainly is he poor and declaring himself
still poorer ; the fisc has a hold on him and on
every portion of his new possessions. . . . lu
1715, the ' taille ' [see Taille and Gabelle] and
the poll-tax, which he alone pays, or nearly
alone, amounts to 66,000,000 livres, the amount is
93,000,000inl759andll0,000,000inl789. ... I
am miserable because too much is taken from me.
Too much is taken from me because not enough is
taken from the privileged. Not only do the privi-
leged force me to pay in their place, but, again,
they previously deduct from my earnings their
ecclesiastical and feudal dues. When, out of my
income of 100 francs, I have parted with 53 francs,
and more, to the collector, I am obliged again to
give 14 francs to the seignior, also more than 14
for tithes, and, out of the remaining 18 or 19
francs, I have additionally to satisfy the excise-
men. I alone, a poor man, pay two governments,
one, the old government [the seigniorial govern-
1290
FRANCE, 1789.
Condition of the
People.
FRANCE, 1789.
ment of the feudal regime], local and now absent,
useless, inconvenient and humiliating, and active
only through annoyances, exemptions and taxes;
and the other [the royal government], recent,
centralized, everywhere present, which, taking
upon itself all functions, has vast needs and
makes my meagre shoulders support its enormous
weight.' These, in precise terms, are the vague
ideas beginning to ferment in the popular brain
and encountered on every page of the records of
the States-General. . . . The privileged wrought
their own destruction. ... At their head, the
king, creating France by devoting himself to her
as if his own property, ended by sacrificing her
as if his own property ; the public purse is his
private purse, while passions, vanities, personal
weaknesses, luxurious habits, family solicitudes,
the intrigues of a mistress and the caprices of a
wife, govern a state of 26,000,000 men with an
arbitrariness, a heedlessness, a prodigality, an
unskilfulness, an absence of consistency, that
would scarcely be overlooked in the management
of a private domain. The king and the privi-
leged excel in one direction, in good-breeding, in
good taste, in fashion, in the talent for self-display
and in entertaining, in the gift of graceful con-
versation, in finesse and in gayety, in the art of
converting life into a brilliant and ingenious fes-
tivity. . . . Through the habit, perfection and
sway of polished intercourse they stamped on
the French intellect a classic form, which, com-
bined with recent scientific acquisitions, produced
the philosophy of the 18th century, the ill-repute
of tradition, the ambition of recasting all human
institutions according to the sole dictates of
reason, the appliance of mathematical methods
to politics and morals, the catechism of the rights
of man, and other dogmas of anarchical and
despotic character in the ' Contrat Social.' — Once
this chimera is born they welcome it as a draw-
ing-room fancy ; they use the little monster as a
plaything, as yet innocent and decked with rib-
bons like a pastoral lambkin; they never dream
of it becoming a raging, formidable brute ; they
nourish it, and caress it, and then, opening their
doors, they let it descend into the streets. — Here,
amongst a middle class which the government
has rendered ill-disposed by compromising its
fortunes, which the privileged have offended by
restricting its ambition, which is wounded by
inequality through injured self-esteem, the revo-
lutionary theory gains rapid accessions, a sudden
asperity, and, in a few years, it finds itself undis-
puted master of public opinion. — At this moment,
and at its summons, another colossal monster
rises up, a monster with millions of heads, a
blind, startled animal, an entire people pressed
down, exasperated and suddenly loosed against
the government whose exactions have despoiled
it, against the privileged whose rights have re-
duced it to starvation." — H. A. Taine, T/ie
Ancient Regime, bk. 1, ch. 1, 2, andbk. 5, ch. 1, 2, 5.
— "When the facts of history are fully and im-
partially set forth, the wonder is rather that sane
men put up with the chaotic imbecility, the
hideous injustices, the shameless scandals, of the
' Ancien Regime,' in the earlier half of the cen-
tury, many years before the political ' Philoso-
phes' wrote a line, — why the Revolution did
not break out in 1754 or 1757, as it was on the
brink of doing, instead of being delayed, by the
patient endurance of the people, for another gen-
eration. It can hardly be doubted that the
Revolution of '89 owed many of its worst features
to the violence of a populace degraded to the
level of the beasts by the effect of the institu-
tions under which they herded together and
starved; and that the work of reconstruction
which it attempted was to carry into practice
the speculations of Mably and of Rousseau. But,
just as little, does it seem open to question that,
neither the writhings of the dregs of the popu-
lace in their misery, nor the speculative demon-
strations of the Philosophers, would have come
to much, except for the revolutionary movement
which had been going on ever since the beginning
of the century. The deeper source of this lay in
the just and profound griefs of at least 95 per
cent, of the population, comprising all its most
valuable elements, from the agricultural peas-
ants to the merchants and the men of letters
and science, against the system by which they
were crushed, or annoyed, whichever way they
turned. But the surface current was impelled
by the ofiicial defenders of the ' Ancien Regime '
themselves. It was the Court, the Church, the
Parliaments, and, above all, the Jesuits, acting in
the interests of the despotism of the Papacy,
who, in the first half of the 18th century, effectu-
ally undermined all respect for authority [see
Port Royal AND the Jansenists: A. D. 1702-
1715; and Jesuits: A.D. 1761-1767], whether civil
or religious, and justified the worst that was or
could be said by the 'Philosophes' later on." —
Prof. T. H. Huxley, Introd. to F. Bocquain's "The
Revolutionary Spirit preceding the French Rev." — -
"I took part in the opening of the States-Gen-
eral, and, in spite of the pomp with which the
royal power was still surrounded, I there saw
the passing away of the old regime. The regime
which preceded '89, should, it seems to me, be
considered from a two-fold aspect: the one, the
general condition of the country, and the other,
the relations existing between the government
and the country. With regard to the former, I
firmly believe that, from the earliest days of the
monarchy, France had at no period been happier
than she was then. She had not felt the effects
of any great misfortune since the crash which
followed Law's system. The long lasting minis-
try of Cardinal de Fleury, doubtless Inglorious,
but wise and circumspect, had made good the
losses and lightened the burdens imposed at the
end of the reign of Louis XV. If, since that
time, several wars undertaken with little skill,
and waged with still less, had compromised the
honor of her arms and the reputation of her gov-
ernment ; if they had even thrown her finances
into a somewhat alarming state of disorder, it
is but fair to say that the confusion resulting
therefrom had merely affected the fortune of a
few creditors, and had not tapped the sources of
public prosperity; on the contrary,what is styled
the public administration had made constant
progress. If, on the one hand, the state had not
been able to boast of any great ministers, on the
other, the provinces could show many highly
enlightened and clever intendants. Roads had
been opened connecting numerous points, and
had been greatly improved in all directions. It
should not be forgotten that these benefits are
principally due to the reign of Louis XV. Their
most important result had been a progressive
improvement in the condition of agriculture.
The reign of Louis XVI. had continued favoring
this wise policy, which had not been interrupted
1291
FRANCE, 1789.
Popular opinion of
Marie Antoinette,
FRANCE, 1789.
by the maritime war undertaken on behalf of
American independence. Many cotton-mills had
sprung up. while considerable progress had been
made in the manufacture of printed cotton fab-
rics, and of steel, and iu the preparing of skins.
... I saw the splendors of the Empire. Since
the Restoration I see daily new fortunes spring
up and consolidate themselves ; still nothing so
far has. in my eyes, equalled the splendor of
Paris during the years which elapsed between
1783 and 1789. . . . Far be it from me to shut
my eyes to the reality of the public prosperity
wiiicii we are now [1833] enjoying. . . . But,
nevertheless, when I question my reason and
my conscience as to the possible future of the
Prance of 1789, if the Revolution had not burst,
if the ten years of destruction to which it gave
birth had not weighed heavily upon that beau-
tiful country, ... I am convinced that France,
at the time I am writing, would be richer and
stronger than she is to-day." — Chancellor Pas-
(lUKT, Memoirs, pp. 44-47. — "The history of the
revolution can no more be understood without
understanding the part played in it by Paris,
than one can conceive of the tragedy of Hamlet
with the part of Hamlet left out ; and to under-
stand the part played by Paris in the revolution
is equally impossible. . . . Let us commence at
the bottom with the nobodies. . . . Since the
days of Henry III. (1574-89) the forcing of all
industrial piu-suits into the strait-jacket of guild-
ships had been carried to the extreme of utter
absurdity. Here, too, the chronic financial dis-
tress had been the principal cause. At first the
handicrafts, which everybody had been at liberty
to practice, were withdrawn from free competi-
tion and sold as a privilege, and then, when
nothing was left to be sold, the old guilds were
split up into a number of guikllets. merely to
have again something to put on the counter.
And it was not only left pretty raucli to the mas-
ters whom they would admit to the freedom of
the guild, but besides the charges for it were so
high that it was often absolutely out of the reach
even of the most skillful Journeyman. Even a
blood-aristocracy was not lacking. In a number
of guilds only the sons of masters aud the second
husbands of masters' widows could become mas-
ters. Thus an immense proletariat was gradu-
ally formed, which to a great extent was a pro-
letariat only because the law irresistibly forced
it into this position. And the city proletariat
proper received constant and ever-increasing ad-
ditions from the country. There such distress
prevailed, that the paupers flocked in crowds to
the cities. ... In 1791, long before the inaugu-
ration of Uie Reign of Terror, there were iu a
population of 6.50,000, 118,000 paupers (indi-
gents). Under the ' ancien regime' the immi-
grant proletariat from the country was by the
law barred out from all ways of earning a liveli-
hood except as common day-laborers, and the
wages of these were in 1788, on an average, 26
cents for men and 15 for women, while the price
of bread was higher than in our times. What a
gigantic heap of ferment ! " — H. von Hoist, The
FrencJi Uexolution, led. 2. — "In the spring of
1789 who could have foreseen the bloody catas-
trophe ? Everything was tinged with hopeful-
ness ; the world was dreaming of the Golden
Age. . . . Despite the previous disorders, and
seeds of discord contained In certain cahiers,
the prevailing sentiment was confidence. . . .
The people everywhere hailed with enthusiasm
the new era which was dawning. With a firm
king, with a statesman who knew what he wished,
and was determined to accomplish it, this confi-
dence would have been an incomparable force.
With a feeble prince like Louis XVI., with an
irresolute minister like Necker, it was an appall-
ing danger. The public, inflamed by the anarchy
that had preceded the convocation of the States,
disposed, through its inexperience, to accept all
Utopias, and impelled by its peculiar character
to desire their immediate realization, naturally
grew more exacting in proportion as they were
promised more, and more impatient and irritable
as their hopes became livelier and appeared better
founded. In the midst of this general satisfac-
tion there was but one dark spot, — the queen.
The cheers which greeted the king were silent
before his wife. Calumny had done its work ;
and all the nobles from the provinces, the coun-
try curates, the citizens of the small towns, came
from the confines of France imbued with the
most contemptible prejudices against ^his unfor-
tunate princess. Pamphlets, poured out against
her by malicious enemies ; vague and mysterious
rumours, circulated everywhere, repeated in
whispers, without giving any clew to their
source, — the more dangerous because indefinite,
and the more readily believed because infamous
and absurd, — had so often reiterated that the
queen was author of all the evil, that the world
had come to regard her as the cause of the deficit,
and the only serious obstacle to certain efficacious
reforms. ' The queen pillages on all sides , she
even sends money, it is said, to her brother, the
emperor,' wrote a priest of Maine, in his parochial
register, in 1781 ; and he attributed the motive
of the reunion of the Notables to these supposed
depredations. This was eight years before the
crisis came, and such stories grew aud spread."
— M. de la Rocheterie, Life of Marie Antoinette,
T. 2, ch. 1.
Also in: A. deTocqueville, On the State of So-
ciety in France before tlieRer. — A. Young, Travels
in France, 1787-89. — R. H. Dabney, Causes of the
F-ench ifec— E. J. Lowell, The Eve of the F-ench
Rev.
A. D. 1789 (May). — Meeting of the States-
General.— Conflict between the three Estates.
— The question of three Houses crone. — "The
opening of the States-general was fixed for the
5th of May, 1789, and Versailles was chosen as
the place of their meetings. On the 4th, half
Paris poured into that town to see the court and
the deputies marching in procession to the solemn
religious ceremony, which was to inaugurate the
important epoch. . . . On the following day, the
States-general, to the number of 1,300 persons,
assembled in the spacious and richly decorated
■ salle des menus plaisirs.' The King appeared
surrounded by his family, with all the magnifi-
cence of the ancient court, and was greeted by
the enthusiastic applause of the deputies and
.spectators." The king made a speech, followed
by Barentin, the keeper of the great seal, and by
Necker. The latter "could not prevail upon
himself to avow to the Assembly the real state
of affairs. He announced an annual deficit of
56,000,000 francs, and thereby confused the mind
of the public, which since the meeting of the
Notables, had always been discussing a deficit
of from 120,000,000 to 140.000.000. He was
quite right in assuming that those 56,000,000
1292
FRANCE, 1789.
Meeting of
the States-General.
FRANCE, 1789.
might be covered by economy in the expendi-
ture ; but it was both irritating and untrue, when
he, on this ground, denied the necessity, of sum-
moning the States-general, and called their con-
vocation a free act of royal favour. . . . The
balance of income and expenditure might, in-
deed, easily be restored in the future, but the def-
icit of former years had been heedlessly allowed
to accumulate, and by no one more than by
Necker himself. A floating debt of 550,000,000
had to be faced — in other words, therefore, more
than a whole year's income had been expended
in advance. . . . The real deficit of the year,
therefore, at the lowest calculation, amounted to
more than 200,000,0D0, or nearly half the annual
income. . . . These facts, then, were concealed,
and thus the ministry was necessarily placed in a
false position towards the States-general; the
continuance of the former abuses was perpetu-
ated, or a violent catastrophe made inevitable.
. . . For the moment the matter was not dis-
cussed. Everything yielded to the importance
of the constitutional question — whether the three
orders should deliberate in common or apart —
whether there should be one single representa-
tive body, or independent corporations. This
point was mooted at once in its full extent on
the question, whether the validity of the elections
should be scrutinised by each order separately,
or by the whole Assembly. We need not here
enter into the question of right ; but of this there
can be no doubt, that the government, which
virtually created tlie States-general afresh [since
there had been no national meeting of the Estates
since the States-general of 1614 — see above:
A. D. 1610-1619], had the formal right to con-
voke them either in one way or the other, as it
thought fit. . . . They [the government] infi-
nitely lowered their own influence and dignity by
leaving a most important constitutional question
to the decision and the wrangling of the three
orders; and they frustrated their own practical
objects, by not decidedly declaring for the union
of the orders in one assembly. Every important
measure of reform, which had in view the im-
provement of the material and financial condition
of the country, would have been mutilated by
the clergy and rejected by the nobles. This was
sufficiently proved by the ' cahiers ' of the elec-
tors [' written instructions given by the electors
to the deputies ']. The States themselves had to
undertake what the government had neglected.
That which the government might have freely
and legally commanded, now led to violent revo-
lution. But there was no choice left ; the com-
mons would not tolerate the continuance of the
privileged orders ; and the state could not toler-
ate them if it did not wish to perish. The com-
mons, who on this point were unanimous, con-
sidered the system of a single Assembly as a
matter of course. They took care not to consti-
tute themselves as 'tiers etat,'but remained pas-
sive, and declared that they would wait until the
Assembly should be constituted as a whole.
Thus slowly and cautiously did they enter on
their career. . . . Indisputably the most impor-
tant and influential among them was Count
Mirabeau, the representative of the town of Aix
in Provence, a violent opponent of feudalism,
and a restless participator in all the recent popu-
lar commotions. He would have been better
able than any man to stimulate the Assembly to
vigorous action ; but even he hesitated, and kept
back his associates from taking any violent steps,
because he feared that the inconsistency and in-
experience of the majority would bring ruin on
the state. ... It was only very gradually that
the ' tiers etat ' began to negotiate with the other
orders. The nobles shewed themselves haughty,
dogmatical, and aggressive ; and the clergy cau-
tious, unctuous, and tenacious. They tried the
efficacy of general conferences ; but as no prog-
ress was found to have been made after three
weeks, they gave up their consultations on the
3oth of May. The impatience of the public, and
tlie necessities of the treasury, continually in-
creased ; the government, therefore, once more
intervened, and Necker was called upon to pro-
pose a compromise," which was coldly rejected
by the nobles, who "declared that they had long
ago finished their scrutiny, and constituted them-
selves as a separate order. They thus spared the
commons the dreaded honour of being the first
to break with the crown. The conferences were
again closed on the 9th of June. The leaders of
the commons now saw that they must either suc-
cumb to the nobility, or force the other orders to
submission." — H. von Sybel, Hist, of the French
Rev., bk. 1, ch. 3 (». 1).
Also m: W. Smyth, Lect'son the Hist, of the
French Rev., led. 8 (v. 1). — Prince de Talleyrand,
Memoirs, pt. 1 (v. 1).
A. D. 1789 (June). — The Third Estate seizes
the reins, proclaims itself the National As-
sembly, and assumes sovereign povyers. — The
passionate excitement of Paris. — Dismissal of
Necker. — Rising of the mob. — "At last . . .
on the proposal of Siey&s [the Abbe, deputy for
Paris] and amid a storm of frantic excitement,
the Third Estate alone voted themselves 'the
National Assembly,' invited the other two orders
to join them, and pushing their pretensions to
sovereignty to the highest point, declared that
the existing taxes, not having been consented to
by the nation, were all illegal. The National As-
sembly, however, allowed them to be levied till
its separation, after which they were to cease if
not formally regranted. This great revolution
was effected on June 17, and it at once placed the
Third Order in a totally new relation both to the
other orders and to the Crown. There were
speedy signs of yielding among some members
of the privileged orders, and a fierce wave
of excitement supported tlie change. Malouet
strongly urged that the proper course was to dis-
solve the Assembly and to appeal to the constitu-
encies, but Necker declined, and a feeble and
ineffectual effort of the King to accomplish a
reunion, and at the same time to overawe the
Third Order, precipitated the Revolution. The
King announced his intention of holding a royal
session on June 23, and he summoned the three
orders to meet him. It was his design to direct
them to unite in order to deliberate in common
on matters of common interest, and to regain the
royal initiative by laying down the lines of a new
constitution. ... On Saturday, the 30th, how-
ever, the course of events was interrupted by the
famous scene in the tennis court. Troops had
lately been pouring to an alarming extent into
Paris, and exciting much suspicion in the popu-
lar party, and the Government very injudiciously
selected for the royal session on the following
Monday the hall in which the Third Order as-
sembled. The hall was being prepared for the
occasion, and therefore no meeting could be held.
1293
FRANCE, 1789.
The National
Assembly proclaivied.
FRANCE, 1789.
The members. Ignorant of the fact, went to their
chamber and were repelled by soldiers. Furious
at the insult, they adjourned to the neighbour-
ing tennis court [Jeu-de-Paume]. A suspicion
that the King meant to dissolve them was
abroad, and they resolved to resist such an at-
tempt. With lifted hands and in a transport of
genuine, if somewhat theatrical enthusiasm, they
swore that they would never separate ' till the
constitution of the kingdom and the regeneration
of public order were established on a solid basis.'
. . . One single member, Martin d'Auche, re-
fused his assent. The Third Estate liad thus
virtually assumed the sole legislative authority in
France, and like the Long Parliament in England
had denied the King's power to dissolve them.
. . . Owing to the dissension that had arisen,
the royal session was postponed till the 23rd, but
on the preceding day the National Assembly met
in a church, and its session was a very important
one, for on this occasion a great body of the
clergy formally joined it. One hundred and
forty-eight members of the clergy, of whom 134
were cures, had now given their adhesion. Two
of the nobles, separating from their colleagues,
took the same course. Next day the royal ses-
sion was held. The project adopted in the
council differed so much from that of Necker
that this minister refused to give it the sanction
of his presence. Instead of commanding the
three orders to deliberate together in the common
interest, it was determined in the revised project
that the King should merely invite them to do
so. . . . It was . . . determined to withdraw
altogether from the common deliberation ' the
form of the constitution to be given to the com-
ing States-General,' and to recognise fully the
essential distinction of the three orders as politi-
cal bodies, though they might, with the approval
of the Sovereign, deliberate in common. Necker
had proposed . . . that the King should deci-
sively, and of his own authority, abolish all
privileges of taxation, but in the amended article
the King only undertook to give his sanction to
this measure on condition of the two orders re-
nouncing their privileges. On the other hand,
the King announced to the Assembly a long
series of articles of reform which would have
made France a thoroughly constitutional coun-
try, and have swept away nearly all the great
abuses in its government. ... He annulled the
proceedings of June 17, by which the Third
Estate alone declared itself the Legislature of
France. He reminded the Assembly that none of
its proceedings could acquire the force of law
without his assent, and he asserted his sole right
as French Sovereign to the command of the army
and police. He concluded by directing the three
orders to withdraw and to meet next day to con-
sider his proposals. The King, with the nobles
and the majority of the clergy, at once with-
drew, but the Third Order defiantly remained.
It was evident that the attempt to conciliate, and
the attempt to assert the royal authority, had both
failed. The Assembly proclaimed itself inviola-
ble. It confirmed the decrees which the King
had annulled. Sieyes declared, in words which
excited a transport of enthusiasm, that what the
Assembly was yesterday it still was to-day ; and
two days later, the triumph of the Assembly be-
came still more evident by the adhesion of 47 of
the nobility. After this defection the King saw
the hopelessness of resistance, and on the 27th
he ordered the remainder of the nobles to take the
same course. ... In the mean time the rea\
rulers of the country were coming rapidly to the
surface. . . . Groups of local agitators and of
the scum of the Paris mob began to overawe the
representatives of the nation, and to direct the
course of its policy. Troops were poured into
Paris, but their presence was an excitement
without being a protection, for day after day it
became more evident that their discipline was
gone, and that they shared the sympathies and
the passions of the mob. ... At the same time
famine grew daily more intense, and the mobs
more passionate and more formidable. The dis-
missal of Necker on the •vening of July 11
was the spark which produced the conflagration
that had long been preparing. Next day Paris
flew to arms. The troops with few exceptions
abandoned the King." — W. B. H. Lecky, Hist,
of England in the \Wi Century, ch. 20 (j). 5).
Also in : E. Dumont, SecollectioTis ofMirabeau,
ch. 4-5.
A. D. 1789 (July).— The mob in arms.— An-
archy in Paris. — The taking of the Bastille. —
"On the 12th of July, near noon, on the news of
the dismissal of Necker, a cry of rage arises In
the Palais-Royal ; Camille Desmoulins, mounted
on a table, announces that the Court meditates
'a St. Bartholomew of patriots.' The crowd
embrace him, adopt the green cockade which he
has proposed, and oblige the dancing-saloons and
theatres to close in sign of mourning: they hurry
off to the residence of Curtius [a plaster-cast
master], and take the busts of the Duke of
Orleans and of Necker and carry them about in
triumph. Meanwhile, the dragoons of the Prince
de Lambesc, drawn up on the Place Louis-
Quinze, find a barricade of chairs at the entrance
of the Tuilleries, and are greeted with a shower
of stones and bottles. Elsewhere, on the Boule-
vard, before the Hotel Montmorency, some of
the French Guards, escaped from their barracks,
fired on a loyal detachment of the ' Royal AUe-
mand.' The tocsin is sounding on all sides, the
shops where arms are sold are pillaged, and the
Hotel-de- Ville is invaded ; 15 or 16 well-disposed
electors, who meet there, order the districts to be
assembled and armed. — The new sovereign, the
people in arms and in the street, has declared
himself. The dregs of society at once come to
the surface. During the night between the 12th
and 13th of July, ' all the barriers, from the Fau-
bourg Saint- Antoine to the Faubourg Saint-Hon-
ore, besides those of the Faubourgs Saint-Marcel
and Saint- Jacques, are forced and set on fire.'
There is no longer an ' octroi ' ; the city is with-
out a revenue just at the moment when it is
obliged to make the heaviest expenditures. . . .
' During this fearful night, the bourgeoisie kept
themselves shut up, each trembling at home for
himself and those belonging to him.' On the
following day, the 13th, the capital appears to
be given up to bandits and the lowest of the low.
. . . During these two days and nights, says
BaiUy, ' Paris ran the risk of being pillaged, and
was only saved from the marauders by the
national guard.' . . . Fortunately the militia
organized itself, and the principal inhabitants
and gentlemen enrol themselves ; 48, 000 men are
formed into battalions and companies ; the bour-
geoisie buy guns of the vagabonds for three
livres apiece, and sabres or pistols for twelve
sous. At last, some of the offenders are hung on
1294
FRANCE, 1789.
The taking of the
Bastille,
FRANCE, 1789.
the spot, and others disarmed, and the insurrec-
tion again becomes political. But, whatever Its
object, it remains always wild, because it is in
the hands of the populace. . . . There is no
leader, no management. The electors who have
converted themselves into the representatives of
Paris seem to command the crowd, but it is the
crowd which commands tliera. One of them,
Legrand, to save the H6tel-de-ViIle, has no other
resource but to send for six barrels of gun-pow-
der, and to declare to the assailants that he is
about to blow everything into the air. The com-
mandant whom they themselves have chosen, M.
de Salles, has twenty bayonets at his breast dur-
ing a quarter of an hour, and, more than once,
the whole committee is near being massacred.
Let the reader imagine, on the premises where
the discussions are going on, and petitions are
being made, ' a concourse of 1,500 men pressed by
100,000 others who are forcing an entrance,' the
wainscoting cracking, the benches upset one over
another ... a tumult such as to bring to mind
'the day of judgment," the death-shrieks, songs,
yells, and ' people beside themselves, for the most
part not knowing where they are nor what they
want.' Each district is also a petty centre, while
the Palais-Royal is the main centre. . . . One wave
gathers here and another there, their strategy
consists in pushing and in being pushed. Yet,
their entrance is effected only because they are
let in. If they%et into the Invalides it is owing
to the connivance of the soldiers. — At the Bas-
tille, firearms are discharged from ten in the
morning to five in the evening against walls 40
feet high and 30 feet thick, and it is by chance
that one of their shots reaches an ' invalide ' on
the towers. They are treated the same as chil-
dren whom one wishes to hurt as little as possi-
ble. The governor, on the first summons to sur-
render, orders the cannon to be withdrawn from
the embrasures; he makes the garrison swear
not to fire if it is not attacked ; he invites the first
of the deputations to lunch ; he allows the mes-
senger dispatched from the H6tel-de-Ville to
inspect the fortress; he receives several dis-
charges without returning them, and lets the
first bridge be carried without firing a shot.
When, at length, he does fire, it is at the last
extremity, to defend the second bridge, and after
having notified the assailants that he is going to
do so. . . . The people, in turn, are infatuated
with the novel sensations of attack and resis-
tance, with the smell of gunpowder, with the
excitement of the contest ; all they can think of
doing is to rush against the mass of stone, their
expedients being on a level with their tactics.
A brewer fancies that he can set fire to this block
of masonry by pumping over it spikenard and
poppy-seed oil mixed with phosphorus. A
young carpenter, who has some archicological
notions, proposes to construct a catapult. Some
of them think that they have seized the gover-
nor's daughter, and want to burn her in order to
make the father surrender. Others set fire to a
projecting mass of buildings filled with straw,
and thus close up the passage. 'The Bastille
was not taken by main force,' says the brave
Elie, one of the combatants ; ' it was surrendered
before even it was attacked,' by capitulation, on
the promise that no harm should be done to any-
body. The garrison, being perfectly secure, had
no longer the heart to fire on human beings while
themselves risking nothing, and, on the other
hand, they were unnerved by the sight of the
immense crowd. Eight or nine hundred men
only were concerned in the attack, most of them
workmen or shopkeepers belonging to the fau-
bourg, tailors, wheelwrights, mercers, and wine-
dealers, mixed with the French Guards. The
Place de la Bastille, however, and all the streets
in the vicinity, were crowded with the curious
who came to witness the sight ; ' among them, '
says a witness, ' were a number of fashionable
women of very good appearance, who had left
their carriages at some distance.' To the 120
men of the garrison, looking down from their
parapets, it seemed as though all Paris had come
out against them. It is they, also, who lower
the drawbridge and introduce the enemy : every-
body has lost his head, the besieged as well as
the besiegers, the latter more completely because
they are intoxicated with the sense of victory.
Scarcely have they entered when they begin the
work of destruction, and the latest arrivals shoot
at random those that come earlier ; ' each one
fires without heeding where or on whom his shot
tells.' Sudden omnipotence and the liberty to
kill are a wine too strong for human nature. . . .
Elie, who is the first to enter the fortress, Cholat,
Hulin, the brave fellows who are in advance, the
French Guards who are cognizant of the laws of
war, try to keep their word of honour ; but the
crowd pressing on behind them know not whom
to strike, and they sti'ike at random. They spare
the Swiss soldiers who have fired on thein, and
who, in their blue smocks, seem to them to be
prisoners ; on the other hand, by way of compen-
sation, they fall furiously on the ' invalides ' who
opened the gates to them; the man who pre-
vented the governor from blowing up the fortress
has his wrist severed by the blow of a sabre, is
twice pierced with a sword and is hung, and the
hand which had saved one of the districts of
Paris is promenaded through the streets in tri-
umph. 'The officers are dragged along and five
of them are killed, with three soldiers, on the
spot, or on the way." M. de Launay, the gov-
ernor, after receiving many wounds, while being
dragged to the Hotel-de-Ville, was finally killed
by bayonet thrusts, and his head, cut from his
body, was placarded and borne through the streets
upon a pitchfork. — H. A. Taine, T/te French
Revolution, bk. 1, ch. 2 {v. 1). — "I was present at
the taking of the Bastille. What has been styled
the fight was not serious, for there was absolutely
no resistance shown. Within the hold's walls
were neither provisions nor ammunition. It was
not even necessary to invest it. The regiment of
gardes fran^aises which had led the attack, pre-
sented itself under the walls on the rue Saint
Antoine side, opposite the main entrance, which
was barred by a drawbridge. There was a dis-
charge of a few musket shots, to which no reply
was made, and then four or five discharges from
the carmon. It has been claimed that the latter
broke the chains of the drawbridge. I did not
notice this, and yet I was standing close to the
point of attack. What I did see plainly was the
action of the soldiers, invalides, or others,
grouped on the platform of the high tower, hold-
ing their muskets stock in the air, and expressing
by all means employed under similar circum-
stances their desire of surrendering. The result
of this so-called victory, which brought down so
many favors on the heads of the so-called victors,
is well-known. The truth is, that this great fight
1295
FRANCE, 1789.
Tlie
King^s Surrender.
FRANCE, 1789.
did not for a moment frighten the numerous
spectators who had flocked to witness its result.
Among them were many women of fashion, who,
in order to be closer to the scene, had left their
carriages some distance away." — Chancellor Pas-
quier, Memoirs, pp. 55-56.
Also rs; D. Bingham, The. Bastille, v. 3, ch.
9-13. — R. A. Davenport, Hist, of the Bastile, ch.
13. — J. Claretie, Camille Desmoulins and his
Wife, ch. 1, .^ect. 4.
A. D. 1789 (July). — Practical surrender of
authority by the king. — Organization of the
National Guard with Lafayette in command.
— Disorder and riot in the provinces. — Hunger
in the capital. — The murder of Foulon and
Berthier. — "The next morning the taking of
the Bastille bore its intended fruit. Marshal de
Broglie, who had found, instead of a loyal army,
only disaffected regiments wliich had joined or
were preparing to join the mob, sent in his resig-
nation. . . . The king, deserted by his army,
his authority now quite gone, had no means of
restoring order except through the Assembly.
He begged that body to undertake the work,
promising to recall the dismissed ministers. . . .
The power of the king had now passed from him
to the National Assembly. But that numerous
body of men, absorbed in interminable discussions
on abstract ideas, was totally incapable of apply-
ing its power to the government of the country.
The electors at the Hotel de Ville, on the 15th of
July, resolved that there must be a mayor to
direct the affairs of Paris, and a National Guard
to preserve order. Dangers threatened from
every quarter. When the question arose as to
who should fill these offices, Moreau de Saint
Mery, the president of the electors, pointed to
the bust of Lafayette, which had been sent as a
gift to the city of Paris by the State of Virginia,
in 1784. The gesture was immediately under-
stood, and Lafayette was chosen by acclamation.
Not less unanimous was the choice of Bailly for
mayor. Lafayette was now taken from the As-
sembly to assume the more active employment
of commanding the National Guard. While the
Assembly pursued the destruction of the old
order and the erection of a new, Lafayette, at
the age of 33, became the chief depositary of
executive power. . . . Throughout France, the
deepest interest was exhibited in passing events.
. . . The victory of the Assembly over the king
and aristocracy led the people of the prov-
inces to believe that their cause was already
won. A general demoralization ensued. " After
the taking of the Bastille, " the example of re-
bellion thus set was speedily followed. Rioting
and lawlessness soon prevailed everywhere, in-
creased and imbittered by the scarcity of food.
In the towns, bread riots became continual, and
the custom-houses, the means of collecting the
exorbitant taxes, were destroyed. In the rural
districts, chateaux were to be seen burning on
all sides. The towers in which were preserved
the titles and documents which gave to the noble-
man his oppressive rights were carried by storm
and their contents scattered. Law and authority
were fast becoming synonymous with tyranny ;
the word 'liberty,' now in every mouth, had no
other signification than license. Into Paris slunk
hordes of gaunt foot-pads from all over France,
attracted by the prospect of disorder and pillage.
. . . From such circumstances naturally arose
the National Guard. " The king had been asked.
on the 13th, by a deputation from the Assembly,
"to confide the care of the city to a militia," and
had declined. The military organization of citi-
zens was then undertaken by the electors at the
Hotel de Ville, without his consent, and its com-
mander designated without his appointment.
"The king was obliged to confirm this choice,
and he was thus deprived even of the merit of
naming the chief officer of the guard whose ex-
istence had been forced upon him. " On the 17th
the king was persuaded to visit the city, for the
effect which his personal presence would have,
it was thought, upon the anxious and excited pub-
lic mind. Lafayette had worked with energy to
prepare his National Guard for the difficult duty
of preserving order and protecting the royal
visitor on the occasion. ' ' So intense was the
excitement and the insurrectionary spirit of the
time, so uncertain were the boundaries between
rascality and revolutionary zeal, that it was dif-
ficult to establish the fact that the new guard
was created to preserve order and not to fight
the king and pillage the aristocracy. The great
armed mob, now in process of organization, had
to be treated with great tact, lest it shoidd refuse
to submit to authority in any shape." But short
as the time was, Lafayette succeeded in giving
to the powerless monarch a safe and orderly re-
ception. "The king made his will and took the
sacraments before leaving Versailles, for . . .
doubts were entertained that 9e would live to
return." He was met at the gates of Paris by
the new mayor, Bailly, and escorted through a
double line of National Guards to the Hotel de
Ville. There he was obliged to fix on his hat
the national cockade, just brought into use, and
to confirm the appointments of Lafayette and
Bailly. ' ' Louis XVI. then returned to Versailles,
on the whole pleased, as the day had been less
unpleasant than had been expected. But the
compulsory acceptation of the cockade and the
nominations meant nothing less than the extinc-
tion of his authority. . . . Lafayette recruited
his army from the bourgeois class, for the good
reason that, in the fever then raging for uncon-
trolled freedom, that class was the only one from
which the proper material could be taken. The
importance of order was impressed on the bour-
geois by the fact that they had shops and houses
which they did not wish to see pillaged. . . .
The necessity for strict police measures was soon
to be terribly illustrated. For a week past a
large crowd composed of starving workmen,
country beggars, and army deserters, had
thronged the streets, angrily demanding food.
The city was extremely short of provisions, and
it was impossible to satisfy the demands made
upon it. . . . On July 33, an old man named
Foulon, a member of the late ministry, who had
long been the object of public dislike, and was
now detested because it was rumored that he
said that 'the people might eat grass,' was ar-
rested in the country, and brought to the Hotel
de Ville, followed by a mob who demanded his
immediate judgment. " Lafayette exerted vainl}'
his whole influence and his whole authority to
protect the wretched old man until he could be
lodged In prison. The mob tore its victim from
his very hands and destroyed him on the spot.
The next day, Foulon's son-in-law, Berthier, the
Intendant of Paris, was arrested in the country,
and the tragedy was re-enacted. "Shocked by
these murders and disgusted by his own inability
1296
FRANCE, 1789.
The Emigration.
FRANCE, 1789.
to prevent them, Lafayette sent his resignation
to the electors, and for some time persisted in his
refusal to resume his office. But no other man
sould be found in Paris equally fitted for the
place ; so that on the personal solicitation of the
electors and a deputation from the 60 districts of
the city, he again took command." — B. Tucker-
man, X«/« o/ Geraera^ Xa/ayeMc, ■!>. 1, ch. 9-10.
Axso in: J. Michelet, Historical View of the
French Rev. , bk. 3, ch. 1-3.
A. D. i789(July— August).— Cause and char-
acter of the "Emigration." — "Everything, or
nearly everything, was done by the party op-
posed to the Revolution in the excitement of the
moment; nothing vifas the result of reasoning.
Who, for instance, reasoned out the emigration '?
It has oftentimes been asked how so extraordi-
nary a resolution came to be taken ; how it had
entered the minds of men gifted with a certain
amount of sense that there was any advantage
to be derived from abandoning all the posts where
they could still exercise power; of giving over to
the enemy the regiments they commanded, the
localities over which they had control ; of deliver-
ing up completely to the teachings of the oppo-
site party the peasantry, over whom, in a goodly
number of provinces, a valuable influence might
be exerted, and among whom they still had many
friends; and all this, to return for the purpose of
conquering, at the sword's point, positions, a
number of which at least could be held without
a fight. No doubt it has been offered as an ob-
jection, that the peasantry set fire to chateaux,
that soldiers mutinied against their officers.
This was not the case at the time of what has
been called the first emigration, and, at any
rate, such doings were not general; but does
danger constitute sufficient cause for abandoning
an important post ? . . . What is the answer to
all this ? Merely what follows. The voluntary
going into exile of nearly the whole nobility of
France, of many magistrates who were never to
unsheath a sword, and lastly, of a large number
of women and children, — this resolve, without
a precedent in history, was not conceived and
determined upon as a State measure; chance
brought it about. A few, in the first instance,
followed the princes who had been obliged, on
the 14th of July, to seek safety out of Prance,
and others followed them. At first, it was
merely in the nature of a pleasant excursion.
Outside of France, they might freely enjoy say-
ing and believing anything and everything. . . .
The wealthiest were the first to incur tlie expense
of this trip, and a few brilliant and amiable
women of the Court circle did their share to
render most attractive the sojourn in a number
of foreign towns close to the frontier. Gradually
the number of these small gatherings increased,
and it was then that the idea arose of deriving
advantage from them. It occurred to the minds
of a few men in the entourage of the Comte
d'Artois, and whose moving spirit was M. de
Calonne, that it would be an easy matter for
them to create a kingdom for their sovereign
outside of France, and that if they could not in
this fashion succeed in giving him provinces to
reign over, he would at least reign over subjects,
and that this would serve to give him a standing
in the eyes of foreign powers, and determine them
to espouse his cause. . . . Thus in '89, '90, and
'91, there were a few who were compelled to fly
from actual danger; a small number were led
53 1297
away by a genuine feeling of enthusiasm ; many
felt themselves bound to leave, owing to a point
of honor which they obeyed without reasoning
it out; the mass thought it was the fashion, and
that it looked well ; all, or almost all, were car-
ried away by expectations encouraged by the
wildest of letters, and by the plotting of a few
ambitious folk, who were under the impression
that they were building up their fortunes." —
Chancellor Pasquier, Memoirs, pp. 64-66.
A. D. 1789 (August).— The Night of Sacri-
fices. — The svffeeping out of Feudalism. —
"What was the Assembly doing at this period,
when Paris was waiting in expectation, and the
capture of the Bastille was being imitated aU
over France ; when chateaux were burning, and
nobles flying into exile ; when there was positive
civil war in many a district, and anarchy in
every province ? Why, the Assembly was dis-
cussing whether or not the new constitution of
France should be prefaced by a Declaration of
the Rights of Man. In the discussion of this
extremely important question were wasted the
precious days which followed July 17. . . .
The complacency of these theorists was rudely
shaken on August 4, when Salomon read to the
Assembly the report of the Comite des Recher-
ches, or Committee of Researches, on the state
of France. A terrible report it was. Chateaux
burning here and there; millers hung; tax-
gatherers drowned ; the warehouses and depots of
the gabelle burnt; everywhere rioting, and no-
where peace. . . . Among those who listened to
the clear and forcible report of Salomon were
certain of the young liberal noblesse who had
just been dining with the Due de la Rochefou-
cauld-Liancourt, a wise and enlightened noble-
man. At their head was the Vicomte de Noailles,
a young man of thirty-three, who had distin-
guished himself at the head of his regiment
under his cousin, Lafayette, in America. . . .
The Vicomte de Noailles was the first to rush
to the tribune. ' What is the cause of the evil
which is agitating the provinces ?' he cried ; and
then he showed that it arose from the uncertainty
under which the people dwelt, as to whether or
not the old feudal bonds under which they had
so long lived and laboured were to be perpetu-
ated or abolished, and concluded an impassioned
speech by proposing to abolish them at once.
One after another the young liberal noblemen,
and then certain deputies of the tiers etat, fol-
lowed him with fresh sacrifices. First the old
feudal rights were abolished ; then the rights of
the dovecote and the game laws; then the old
copyhold services; then the tithes paid to the
Church, in spite of a protest from Sieyfis ; then
the rights of certain cities over their immediate
suburbs and rural districts were sacrificed ; and
the contention during that feverish night was
rather to remember something or other to sacri-
fice than to suggest the expediency of maintain-
ing anything which was established. In its gen-
erosity the Assembly even gave away what did
not belong to it. The old dues paid to the pope
were abolished, and it was even declared that
the territory of Avignon, which had belonged to
the pope since the Middle Ages, should be united
to France if it liked ; and the sitting closed with
a unanimous decree that a statue should be
erected to Louis XVI. , ' the restorer of French
liberty. ' Well might Mirabeau define the night
of August 4 as a mere ' orgie. "... Noble indeed
FRANCE, 1789.
Constitution
making.
FRANCE, 17
■were the intentions of the deputies. . . . Yet the
results of this night of sacrifices were bad rather
than good. As Mirabeau pointed out, the people
of France were told that all the feudal rights,
dues, and tithes had been abolished that evening,
but they were not told at the same time that
there must be taxes and other burdens to take
their place. It was of no use to issue a pro-
visional order that all rights, dues, and taxes re-
mained in force for the present, because the poor
peasant would refuse to pay what was illegal,
and would not understand the political necessity
of supporting the revenue. . . . This ill-con-
sidered mass of resolutions was what was thrown
in the face of France in a state of anarchy to re-
store it to a state of order." — H. M. Stephens,
Sist. of the French Bev. , v. 1, ch. 5.
Ai.so IN : A. Thiers, Hist, of the French Rev.
{Am. ed.), v. 1, ;;;). 81-84.
A. D. 1789 (August— October). — Constitu-
tion-making and the Rights of Man. — The first
emigration of nobles. — Famine in Paris. —
Rumors of an intended flight of the King. —
" One may look upon the peculiarity of the As-
sembly as being a singular faith in the power of
ideas. That was its greatness. It firmly believed
that truth shaped into laws would be invincible.
Two months — such was the calculation — would
suffice to construct the constitution. That con-
stitution by its omnipotent virtue would convince
all men and bend them to its authority, and the
revolution would be completed. Such was the
faith of the National Assembly. The attitude of
the people was so menacing that many of the
courtiers fled. Thus commenced the first emigra-
tion. ... As if the minds of men were not suf-
ficiently agitated, there now were heard cries of
a great conspiracy of the aristocrats. The papers
announced that a plot had been discovered which
was to have delivered Brest to the English.
Brest, the naval arsenal, wherein Prance for
whole centuries had expended her millions and
her labours : this given up to England ! Eng-
land would once more overrun France ! ... It
was amidst these cries of alarm — with on one
hand the emigration of the nobility, on the other
the hunger of a maddened people ; with here an
irresolute aristocracy, startled at the audacity of
the ' canaille,' and there a resolute Assembly, pre-
pared, at the hazard of their lives, to work out
the liberty of France ; amidst reports of famine,
of insurrections, and wild disorders of all sorts,
that we find the National Assembly debating
upon the rights of man, discussing every article
with metaphysical quibbling and wearisome flu-
ency, and, having finally settled each article,
making their famous Declaration. This Declara-
tion, which was solemnly adopted by the As-
sembly, on the 18th of August, was the product
of a whole century of philosophical speculation,
fixed and reduced to formulas, and bearing un-
mistakeable traces of Rousseau. It declared the
original equality of mankind, and that the ends
of social union are liberty, property, security, and
resistance to oppression. It declared that sov-
ereignty resides in the nation, from whence all
power emanates ; that freedom consists in doing
everything which does not injure another; that
law is the expression of the general will ; that
public burdens should be borne by all the mem-
bers of the state in proportion to their fortunes;
that the elective franchise should be extended to
all ; that the exercise of natural rights has no other
limit than their interference with the rights of
others ; that no man should be persecuted for his
religious opinions, provided he conform to the
laws and do not disturb the religion of the state ;
that all men have the right of quitting the state
in which they were born, and of choosing another
country, by renouncing their rights of citizen-
ship ; that the liberty of the press is the foremost
support of public liberty, and the law should
maintain it, at the same time punishing those
who abuse it by distributing seditious discourses,
or calumnies against individuals." Having
adopted its Declaration of the rights of man, the
Assembly proceeded to the drawing up of a con-
stitution which should embody the principles of
the Declaration, and soon found itself in passion-
ate debate upon the relations to be established
between the national legislature and the king.
Should the king retain a veto upon legisla-
tion 1 Should he have any voice in the making
of laws ? "The lovers of England and the Eng-
lish constitution all voted in favour of the veto.
Even Mirabeau was for it." Robespierre, just
coming into notice, bore a prominent part in the
opposition. "The majority of the Assembly
shared Robespierre's views; and the King's
counselors were at length forced to propose a
compromise in the shape of a suspensive veto ;
namely, that the King should not have the abso-
lute right of preventing any law, but only the
right of suspending it for two, four, or six years.
. . . It was carried by a large majority." Mean-
time, in Paris, "vast and incalculable was the
misery: crowds of peruke-makers, tailors, and
shoemakers, were wont to assemble at the Louvre
and in the Champs Elysees, demanding things
impossible to be granted; demanding that the
old regulations should be maintained, and that
new ones should be made; demanding that the
rate of daily wages should be fixed ; demanding
. . . that all the Savoyards in the country should
be sent away, and only Frenchmen employed.
The bakers' shops were besieged, as early as five
o'clock in the morning, by hungry crowds who
had to stand ' en queue ' ; happy when they had
money to purchase miserable bread, even in this
uncomfortable manner. . . . Paris was living at
the mercy of chance : its subsistence dependent
on some arrival or other : dependent on a convoy
from Beauce, or a boat from Corbeuil. The city,
at immense sacrifices, was obliged to lower the
price of bread: the consequence was that the
population for more than ten leagues round came
to procure provisions at Paris. The imcertainty
of the morrow augmented the difficulties. Every-
body stored up, and concealed provisions. The
administration sent in every direction, and bought
up flour, by fair means, or by foul. It often hap-
pened that at midnight there was but half the
flour necessary for the morning market. Pro-
visioning Paris was a kind of war. The National
Guard was sent to protect each arrival; or to se-
cure certain purchases by force of arms. Specu-
lators were afraid ; farmers would not thrash any
longer ; neither would the miller grind. ' I used
to see,' says Bailly, ' good tradesmen, mercers and
goldsmiths, praying to be admitted among the
beggars employed at Montmartre, in digging the
ground.' Then came fearful whispers of the
King's intention to fly to Metz. What will be-
come of us if the King should fly ? He must not
fly ; we will have him here ; here amongst us in
Paris 1 This produced the famous insurrection
129S
FRANCE, 1789.
The Mob of Women
at Versailles.
FRANCE, 1780.
of woraea ... on the 5th October." — G. H.
Lewes, Life of Robespierre, ch. 9. — H. von Sybel,
Hist, of the French Rev., bk. 1, cli. 3-4 (v. 1).
A. D. 1789 (October). — The Insurrection of
Women. — Their march to Versailles. — "A
thought, or dim raw-material of a tliought, was
fermenting all night [October 4-5], universally
in the female head, and might explode. In
squalid garret, on Monday morning Maternity
awakes, to hear children weeping for bread.
Maternity must forth to the streets, to the herb-
markets and Bakers'-queues; meets there with
hunger-stricken Maternity, sympathetic, exas-
perative. O we unhappy women ! But, instead
of Bakers'-queues, why not to Aristocrats' palaces,
the root of the matter ? Allons ! Let us as-
semble. To the Hotel-de-Ville ; to "Versailles;
to the Lanterne ! In one of the Guard houses of
the Quartier Saint-Eustache, ' a young woman '
seizes a drum, — for how shall National Guards
give lire on women, on a young woman 1 The
young woman seizes the drum ; sets forth, beat-
ing it, ' uttering cries relative to the dearth of
grains.' Descend, O mothers; descend, ye Ju-
diths, to food and revenge! — All women gather
and go; crowds storm all stairs, force out all
women; the female Insurrectionary Force, ac-
cording to Camille, resembles tlie English Naval
one; there is a universal ' Press of women.' Ro-
bust Dames of the Halle, slim Mantua-makers, as-
siduous, risen with the dawn ; ancient Virginity
tripping to matins; the Housemaid, with early
broom ; all must go. Rouse ye, O, women ; the
laggard men will not act ; they say, we ourselves
may act! And so, like snowbreak from the
mountains, for every staircase is a melted brook,
it storms; tumultuous, wild-shrilling, towards
the Hotel-de-Ville. Tumultuous; with or with-
out drum-music: for the Faubourg Saint- Antoine
also has tucked-up its gown ; and with besom-
staves, fire-irons, and even rusty pistols (void of
ammunition), is flowing on. Sound of it flies,
with a velocity of sound, to the utmost Barriers.
By seven o'clock, on this raw October morning,
fifth of the month, the Townhall will see won-
ders. . . . Grand it was, says Camille, to see so
many Judiths, from eight to ten thousand of
them in all, rushing out to search into the root
of the matter! Not unfrightful it must have
been; ludicro-terrific, and most unmanageable.
At such hour the overwatched Three Hundred
are not yet stirring: none but some Clerks, a
company of National Guards; and M. de Gou-
vion, the Major-general. Gouvion has fought in
America for the cause of civil Liberty; a man of
no inconsiderable heart, but deficient in head.
He is, for the moment, in his back apartment;
assuaging Usher Maillard, the Bastille-sergeant,
who has come, as too many do, with ' repre-
sentations. ' Tlie assuagement is still incomplete
when our Judiths arrive. The National Guards
form on the outer stairs, with levelled bayonets ;
the ten thousand Judiths press up, resistless ; with
obtestations, with outspread hands, — merely to
speak to the Mayor. The rear forces them ; nay
from male hands in the rear, stones already fly :
the National Guard must do one of two things ;
sweep the Place de Grfive with cannon, or else
open to right and left. They open : the living
deluge rushes in. Through all rooms and cabi-
nets, upwards to the topmost belfry : ravenous;
seeking arms, seeking Mayors, seeking justice; —
while, again, the better-dressed speak kindly to
the Clerks ; point out the misery of these poor
women ; also their ailments, some even of an in-
teresting sort. Poor 'M. de Gouvion is shiftless in
this extremity ; — a man shiftless, perturbed : who
will one day commit suicide. How happy for him
that Usher Maillard the shifty was there, at the
moment, though making representations! Fly
back, thou shifty Maillard: seek the Bastille
Company ; and O return fast with it ; above all,
with thy own shifty head! For, behold, the
Judiths can find no Mayor or Municipal ; scarcely,
in the topmost belfry, can they find poor Abbe
LefSvre the Powder-distributor. Him, for want
of a better, they suspend there: in the pale
morning light ; over the top of all Paris, which
swims in one's failing eyes: — a horrible end?
Nay the rope broke, as French ropes often did ;
or else an Amazon cut it. Abbe LefSvre falls,
some twenty feet, rattling among the leads ; and
lives long years after, though always with ' a
tremblement in the limbs.' And now doors fly
under hatchets; the Judiths have broken the
Armory; have seized guns and cannons, three
money-bags, paper-heaps ; torches flare : in few
minutes, our brave Hotel-de-Ville, wliich dates
from the Fourth Henry, will, with all that it
holds, be in flames! In flames, truly, — were it
not that Usher Maillard, swift of foot, shifty of
head, has returned ! Maillard, of his own motion,
— for Gouvion or the rest would not even sanc-
tion him, — snatches a drum : descends the Porch-
stairs, ran-tan, beating sharp, with loud rolls, his
Rogues'-march: To Versailles ! Allons; ^Ver-
sailles! As men beat on kettle or warming-pan,
when angry she-bees, or say, flying desperate
wasps, are to be hived ; and the desperate in-
sects hear it, and cluster round it, — simply as
round a guidance, where there was none : so now
these Menads round shifty Maillard, Riding-
Usher of the ChStelet. The axe pauses uplifted;
Abbe Lef6 vre is left half-hanged : from the belfry
downwards all vomits itself. What rub-a-dub
is that? Stanislas Maillard, Bastille hero, will
lead us to Versailles ? Joy to thee, Maillard ;
blessed art thou above Riding-Ushers! Away,
then, away! The seized cannon are yoked with
seized cart-horses : brown-locked Demoiselle The-
roigne, with pike and helmet, sits there as gun-
neress. . . . Maillard (for his drum still rolls) is,
by heaven-rending acclamation, admitted Gen-
eral. Maillard hastens the languid march. . . .
And now Maillard has his Menads in the Champs
Elysees (Fields Tartarean rather) ; and the Hotel-
de-Ville has suffered comparatively nothing. . . .
Great Maillard! A small nucleus of Order Is
round his drum ; but his outskirts fluctuate like
the mad Ocean : for Rascality male and female is
flowing in on him, from the four winds: guid-
ance there is none but in his single head and two
drum-sticks. ... On the Elysian Fields there
is pause and fluctuation; but, for Maillard, no
return. He persuades his Menads, clamorous
for arms and the Arsenal, tliat no arms are in
the Arsenal ; that an unarmed attitude, and peti-
tion to a National Assemblj', will be the best:
he hastily nominates or sanctions generalesses,
captains of tens and fifties ; — and so, in loosest-
flowing order, to the rhythm of some ' eight
drums ' (having laid aside his own), with the Bas-
tille Volunteers bringing up his rear, once more
takes the road. Chaillot, which will promptly
yield baked loaves, is not plundered ; nor are the
SSvres Potteries broken. . . . The press of women
1299
FRAIfCE, 1789.
The Mob of Men
at Versailles.
FRANCE, 1789.
still continues, for it is the cause of all Eve's
Daughters, mothers that are, or that ought to be.
No carriage-lady, were it with never such hys-
terics, but must dismount, in the mud roads, in
her silk shoes, and walk. In this manner, amid
wild October weather, they, a wild unwinged
stork-flight, through the astonished country wend
their way." — T. Carlyle, The French Remlution,
r. 1, hk. 7, cU. 4-5.
A. D. 1789 (October). — The mob of men at
Versailles, with Lafayette and the National
Guard. — The king and royal family brought
to Paris. — Before the memorable 5th day of
October closed, the movement of the women upon
Versailles was followed by an outpouring, in the
same direction, of the masculine mob of Paris,
headed by the National Guard. "The com-
mander, Lafayette, opposed their departure a
long time, but in vain ; neither his eiforts nor his
popularity could overcome the obstinacy of the
people. For seven hours he harangued and re-
tained them. At length, impatient at this delay,
rejecting his advice, they prepared to set for-
ward without him; when, feeling that it was
now his duty to conduct as it had previously been
to restrain them, he obtained his authorisation
from the corporation, and gave the word for depar-
ture about seven in the evening." Meantime the
army of the amazons had arrived at Versailles,
and excited the terrors of the court. ' ' The troops
of VersaUles flew to arms and surrounded the
chateau, but the intentions of the women were
not hostile. Maillard, their leader, had recom-
mended them to appear as suppliants, and in that
attitude they presented their complaints succes-
sively to the assembly and to the king. Accord-
ingly, the first hours of this turbulent evening
were sufliciently calm. Yet it was impossible
but that causes of hostility should arise between
an excited mob and the household troops, the ob-
jects of so much irritation. The latter were sta-
tioned in the court of the chateau opposite the
national guard and the Flanders regiment. The
space between was filled by women and volun-
teers of the Bastille. In the midst of the con-
fusion, necessarily arising from such a juxta-
position, a scuffle arose ; this was the signal for
disorder and conflict. An oflicer of the guards
struck a Parisian soldier with his sabre, and was
in turn shot in the arm. The national guards
sided against the household troops ; the conflict
became warm, and would have been sanguinary,
but for the darkness, the bad weather, and the
orders given to the household troops, first to cease
firing and then to retire. . . . During this tu-
mult, the court was in consternation ; the flight of
the king was suggested, and carriages prepared ;
a piquet of the national guard saw them at the
gate of the orangery, and having made them go
back, closed the gate : moreover, the king, either
ignorant of the designs of the court, or conceiv-
ing them impracticable, refused to escape. Fears
were mingled with his pacific intentions, when he
hesitated to repel the aggression or to take flight.
Conquered, he apprehended the fate of Charles I.
of England ; absent, he feared that the duke of
Orleans would obtain the lieutenancy of the king-
dom. But, in the meantime, the rain, fatigue,
and the inaction of the household troops, lessened
the fury of the multitude, and Lafayette arrived
at the head of the Parisian army. His presence
restored security to the court, and the replies of
the king to the deputation from Paris satisfied
the multitude and the army. In a short time,
Lafayette's activity, the good sense and discipline
of the Parisian guard, restored order everywhere.
Tranquillity returned. The crowd of women and
volunteers, overcome by fatigue, gradually dis-
persed, and some of the national guard were en-
trusted with the defence of the chateau, while
others were lodged with their companions in arms
at Versailles. The royal family, re-assured after
the anxiety and fear of this painful night, retired
to rest about two o'clock in the morning. To-
wards five, Lafayette, having visited the out-
posts which had been confided to his care, and
finding the watch well kept, the town calm, and
the crowds dispersed or sleeping, also took a few
moments repose. About six, however, some men
of the lower class, more enthusiastic than the
rest, and awake sooner than they, prowled round
the chateau. Finding a gate open, they informed
their companions, and entered. Unfortunately,
the interior posts had been entrusted to the house-
hold guards, and refused to the Parisian army.
This fatal refusal caused all the misfortunes of
the night. The interior guard had not even been
increased; the gates scarcely visited, and the
watch kept as negligently as on ordinary occa-
sions. These men, excited by all the passions
that had brought them to Versailles, perceiving
one of the household troops at a window, began
to insult him. He fired, and wounded one of
them. They then rushed on the household
troops, who defended the chateau breast to-
breast, and sacrificed themselves heroically. One
of them had time to warn the queen, whom the
assailants particularly threatened ; and, half
dressed, she ran for refuge to the king. The tu-
mult and danger were extreme in the chateau.
Lafayette, apprised of the invasion of the royal
residence, mounted his horse, and rode hastily to
the scene of danger. On the square he met some
of the household troops surrounded by an infuri-
ated mob, who were on the point of killing them.
He threw himself among them, called some
French guards who were near, and, having res-
cued the household troops and dispersed tlieir as-
sailants, he hurried to the chateau. He found it
already secured by the grenadiers of the French
guard, who, at the first noise of the tumult, had
hastened and protected the household troops from
the fury of the Parisians. But the scene was not
over; the crowd assembled again in the marble
court under the king's balcony, loudly called for
him, and he appeared. They required his de-
parture for Paris ; he promised to repair thither
with his family, and this promise was received
with general applause. The queen was resolved
to accompany him ; but the prejudice against her
was so strong that the journey was not without
danger; it was necessary to reconcile her with
the multitude. Lafayette proposed to her to
accompany him to the balcony ; after some hesi-
tation, she consented. They appeared on it to-
gether, and to communicate by a sign with the
tumultuous crowd, to conquer its animosity, and
awaken its enthusiasm, Lafayette respectfully
kissed the queen's hand; the crowd responded
with acclamations. It now remained to make
peace between them and the household troops.
Lafayette advanced with one of these, placed his
own tricoloured cockade on his hat, and embraced
him before the people, who shouted ' Vivent les
gardes-du-corps ! ' Thus terminated this scene ;
the royal family set out for Paris, escorted by the-
1300
FRANCE, 1789.
The new
Constitution,
FRANCE, 1789-1791.
army and its guards mixed witli it." — F. A. Mig-
net. Hist, of the French Rev., ch. 2.
Also ln : B. Tuckerman, Life of Lafayette, v.
1, ch. 11.
A. D. 1789-1791. — The new constitution. —
Appropriation and sale of Churcli property. —
Issue of Assignats. — Abolition of titles of
honor. — Civil constitution of the clprgy. — The
Feast of the Federation. — The Emigres on
the border and their conduct. — "The king was
henceforth at the mercy of the mob. Deprived
of his guards, and at a distance from his army,
he was in the centre of the revolution ; and sur-
rounded by an excited and hungry populace.
He was followed to Paris by the Assembly ; and,
for the present, was protected from further out-
rages by Lafayette and the national guards.
Mirabeau, who was now in secret communica-
tion with the court, warned the king of his
danger, in the midst of the revolutionary capi-
tal. 'The mob of Paris,' he said, 'will scourge
the corpses of the king and queen.' He saw no
hope of safety for them, or for the State, but in
their withdrawal from this pressing danger, to
Fontainebleau or Rouen, and in a strong govern-
ment, supported by the Assembly, pursuing lib-
eral measures, and quelling anarchy. His coua -
sels were frustrated by events ; and the revolution
had' advanced too far to be controlled by this
secret and suspected adviser of the king. Mean-
while, the Assembly was busy with further
schemes of revolution and desperate finance.
France was divided into departments: the prop-
erty of the Church was appropriated to meet the
urgent necessities of the State: the disastrous
assignats were issued: the subjection of the
clergy to the civil power was decreed : the Par-
liaments were superseded, and the judicature of
the country was reconstituted, upon a popular
basis: titles of honour, orders of knightliood,
armorial bearings — even liveries — were abol-
ished : the army was reorganised, and the privi-
leges of birth were made to yield to service
and seniority. All Frenchmen were henceforth
equal, as 'citoyens': and their new privileges
were wildly celebrated by the planting of trees
of liberty. The monarchy was still recognised,
but it stood alone, in the midst of revolution." —
Sir T. E. May, Democracy in Europe, ch. 13 (v.
8). — "The monarchy was continued and liberally
endowed ; but it was shorn of most of its ancient
prerogatives, and reduced to a very feeble Ex-
ecutive ; and while it obtained a perilous veto on
the resolutions and acts of the Legislature, it
was separated from that power, and placed in
opposition to it, by the exclusion of tlie Ministers
of the Crown from seats and votes in the National
Assembly. The Legislature was composed of a
Legislative Assembly, formed of a single Cham-
ber alone, in theory supreme, and almost abso-
lute ; but, as we have seen, it was liable to come
in conflict with tlie Crown, and it had less au-
thority tlian might be supposed, for it was
elected by a vote not truly popular, and subor-
dinate powers were allowed to possess a very
large part of the rights of Sovereignty which it
ought to have divided with the King. Tliis last
portion of the scheme was very striking, and
was the one, too, tliat most caused alarm among
distant political observers. Too great centrali-
zation having been one of the chief complaints
against the ancient Monarchy, this evil was met
with a radical reform. . . . The towns received
extraordinary powers; their municipalities had
complete control over the National Guards to be
elected in them, and possessed many other func-
tions of Government ; and Paris, by these means,
became almost a separate Commonwealth, inde-
pendent of the State, and directing a vast mili-
tary force. The same system was applied to
the country ; every Department was formed into
petty divisions, each with its National Guards,
and a considerable share of what is usually tlie
power of the government. . . . Burke's saying
was strictly correct, ' that France was split into
thousands of Republics, with Paris predominat-
ing and queen of all.' With respect to other
institutions of the State, the appointment of
nearly all civil functionaries, judicial and other-
wise, was taken from tlie Crown, and abandoned
to a like popular election ; and the same princi-
ple was also applied to the great and venerable
institution of the Church, already deprived of its
vast estates, though the election of bishops and
priests by their flocks interfered directly with
Roman Catholic discipline, and probably, too,
with religious dogma. . . . Notwithstanding the
opposition of Necker, who, though hardly a
statesman, understood finance, it was resolved to
sell the lands of the Church to procure funds for
the necessities of the State ; and the deficit, which
was increasing rapidly, was met by an inconver-
tible currency of paper, secured on the lands to
be sold. This expedient . . . was carried out
with injudicious recklessness. The Assignats,
as the new notes were called, seemed a mine of
inexhaustible wealth, and they were issued in
quantities which, from the first moment, dis-
turbed yie relations of life and commerce, though
they created a show of brisk trade for a time.
In matters of taxation the Assembly, too, ex-
ceeded the bounds of reason and justice; exemp-
tions previously enjoyed by the ricli were now
indirectly extended to the poor ; wealthy owners
of land were too heavily burdened, while the
populace of the towns went scot free. . . . Very
large sums, also, belonging to the State, were
advanced to the Commune of Paris, now rising
into formidable power. . . . The funds so ob-
tained were lavishly squandered in giving relief
to the poor of the capital in the most improvi-
dent ways — in buying bread dear and reselling
it cheap, and in finding fanciful employment for
artizans out of work. The result, of course, was
to attract to Paris many thousands of the lowest
class of rabble, and to add them to the scum of
the city. . . . On the first anniversary [July
14, 1790] of the fall of the Bastille, and before
the Constitution had been finished ... a great
national holiday [called the Feast of the Fed-
eration] was kept; and, amidst multitudes of
applauding spectators, deputations from every
Department in France, headed by the authorities
of the thronging capital, defiled in procession to
the broad space known as the Field of Mars,
along the banks of the Seine. An immense am-
phitheatre had been constructed [converting the
plain into a valley, by the labor of many thou-
sands, in a single week], and decorated with ex-
traordinary pomp ; and here, in the presence of a
splendid Court, of the National Assembly, and
of the municipalities of the realm, and in the
sight of c great assemblage surging to and fro
with throbbing excitement, the King took an oath
that he would faithfully respect the order of
things that was being established, while incense
]301
FRANCE, 1789-1791.
The Clubs.
FRANCE, 1790.
streamed from high-raised altars, and the ranks
of 70,000 National Guards burst into loud cheers
and triumphant music ; and even the Queen,
sharing in the passion of the hour, and radiant
with beauty, lifted up iu her arms the young
child who was to be the future chief of a dis-
enthralled and regenerate people. . . . The fol-
lowing week was gay with those brilliant dis-
plays which Paris knows how to arrange so well.
. . . The work, however, of the National Assem-
bly developed some of its effects ere long. . . .
The emigration of the Nobles, which had become
very general from the 5th and 6th of October,
went on in daily augmenting numbers : and, in a
short time, the frontiers were edged with bands
of exiles breathing vengeance and hatred." To
all the many destructive and revolutionary influ-
ences at work was now added "the pitiful con-
duct of those bj-'st known bj the still dishonora-
ble name of ' Emigres.' In a few months the
great majority of the aristocracy of France had
fled the kingdom, abandoned the throne around
which they had stood, breathing maledictions
against a contemptuous Nation, as arrogant as
ever in the impotence of want, and thinking
only of a counter-revolution that would cover
the natal soil with blood. . . . Their utter want
of patriotism and of sound feeling made thou-
sands believe that the state of society which had
bred such creatures ought to be swept away."
— W. O'C. Morris, The French Bev. and First
Empire, ch. 3.
Also in : H. Von Sybel, Hist, of tlie French
Bev., bk. 1, rh. 5, and bk. 2, ch. 3-5. — M'rae de
Stael, Considerations on the Fr. Bev., pt. 3, ch.
13-19 (v. 1). — E. Burke, Beflections on the Bev. in
France. — A. F. Bertrand de Moleville, Annals of
the Fr. Bev., pt. 1, eh. 33-35 (c. 2-3).— Duchess
de Tourzell, Memoirs, v. 1, ch. 3-11. — W. H. Jer-
vis. The Oalliean Church and the Bev., eh. 1-4. i
A. D. 1789-1794.— Myths of the Revolu-
tion. — "The rapid growth and the considerable
number of these myths are one of tlie most curi-
ous features of the Revolution, while their per-
sistent vitality is a standing warning tor historical
students. I claim to show that Cazotte's vision
was invented by Laharpe, that Sombreiiil's
daughter did not purchase his liberty by quaff-
ing blood, that the locksmith Gamain was not
poisoned, that Labussiere did not save hundreds
of prisoners by destroying the documents in-
criminating them, that the Girondins had no
last supper, that some famous ejaculations have
been fabricated or distorted, that no attempt was
made to save the last batch of victims, that the
hoys Barra and Viala were not heroes, that no
leather was made of human skins, that no
Englishmen plied the September assassins with
drink, that the 'Veugeur' crew did not perish
rather than surrender, that the ice-bound Dutch
fleet was not captured, that Robespierre's wound
was not the work of Merda, but was self-inflicted,
and that Thomas Paine had no miraculous es-
cape." — J. G. Alger, Glimjnes of the French Bev.
A. D. 1790. — The Rise of the Clubs.— Jaco-
bins, Cordeliers, Feuillants.ClubMonarchique,
and Club of '89. — "Every party sought to gain
the people ; it was courted as sovereign. After
attempting to influence it by religion, another
means was employed, that of the clubs. At that
period, clubs were private assemblies, in which
the measures of government, the business of the
state, and the decrees of the assembly, were dis-
cussed; their deliberations had no authority, but
they exercised a certain influence. The first
club owed its origin to the Breton deputies, who
already met together at Versailles to consider the
course of proceeding they should take. When
the national representatives were transferred from
Versailles to Paris, the Breton deputies and those
of the assembly who were of their views held
their sittings in the old convent of the Jacobins,
which subsequently gave its name to their meet-
ings. It did not at first cease to be a preparatory
assembly, but as all things increase in time, the
Jacobin Club did not confine itself to influencing
the assembly ; it sought also to influence the
municipality and the people, and received as as-
sociates members of the municipality and com-
mon citizens. Its organization became more
regular, its action more powerful ; its sittings
were regularly reported in the papers ; it created
branch clubs In the provinces, and raised by the
side of legal power another power which" first
counselled and then conducted it. The Jacobin
Club, as it lost its primitive character and be-
came a popular assembly, had been forsaken b}'
part of its founders. The latter established an-
other society on the plan of the old one, under
the name of the Club of '89. Sieyes, Chapelier,
Lafayette, La Rochefoucauld, directed it, as
Lameth and Barnave directed that of the Jacobins.
Mirabeau l)elonged to both, and by both was
equally courted. These clubs, of which the one
prevailed in the assembly, and the other amongst
the people, were attached to the new order of
things, though in different degrees. The aris-
tocracy sought to attack the revolution with its
own arms: it opened royalist clubs to oppose the
popular clubs. That first established, under the
name of the Club des Impartiaux, could not
last because it addressed itself to no class opinion.
Reappearing under the name of the Club Monar-
chique, it included among its members all those
whose views it represented. It sought to render
itself popular with the lower classes, and dis-
tributed bread ; but, far from accepting its over-
tures, the people considered such establishments
as a counter-revolutionary movement. It dis-
turbed their sittings, and obliged them several
times to change their place of meeting. At
length, the municipal authority found itself
obliged, in January, 1791, to close this club, which
had been the cause of several riots." — F. A.
Mignet, Hi.it. of the French Bev., ch. 3.— "At the
end of 1790 the number of Jacobin Clubs was
200, many of which — like the one in Marseilles
— contained more than a thousand members.
Their organization extended through the whole
kingdom, and every impulse given at the centre
in Paris was felt at the extremities. ... It was
far indeed from embracing the majority of adult
Frenchmen, but even at that time it had undoubt-
edly become — by means of its strict unity — the
greatest power in the kingdom." — H. von Sybel,
Hist, of the Fr. Bev., bk. 1, ch. 5 (v. 1).—" This
Jacobin Club soon divided itself into three other
clubs : first, that party which looked upon the
Jacobins as lukewarm patriots left it, and con-
stituted themselves into the Club of the Corde-
lier.?, where Danton's voice of thunder made the
halls ring ; and Camille Desmoulins' light, glanc-
ing wit played with momentous subjects. The
other party, which looked upon the Jacobins as
too fierce, constituted itself into the 'Club of 1789 ;
friends of the monarchic constitution ; ' and after-
1302
FRANCE, 1790.
European Coalition
taking form.
FRANCE, 1790-1791.
wards named Feuillant's Club, because it met
in the Feuillant Convent. Lafayette was their
chief; supported by the 'respectable' patriots.
These clubs generated many others, and the
provinces imitated them." — G. H. Lewes, Life of
Robespierre, ch. 10. — "The Cordeliers were a
Parisian club ; the Jacobins an immense associa-
tion extending throughout France. But Paris
would stir and rise at the fury of the Cordeliers ;
and Paris being once in motion, the political
revolutionists were absolutely obliged to follow.
Individuality was very powerful among the Cor-
deliers. Their journalists, Marat, Desmoulins,
Freron, Robert, Hebert and Fabre d'figlantine,
wrote each for himself. Danton, the omnipotent
orator, would never write ; but, by way of com-
pensation, Marat and Desmoulins, who stam-
mered or lisped, used principally to write, and
seldom spoke. . . . The Cordeliers formed a sort
of tribe, all living in the neighbourhood of the
club."— J. Michelet, Hist. View of the Fr. Bev.,
hk. 4, ch. 7 and 5.
Also in: T. Carlyle, The Fr. Bev., v. 2, bk. 1,
eh. 5.— H. A. Taine, The Fr. Bev., bk. 4 (o. 2).
A. D. 1790-1791. — Revolution at Avignon.
— Reunion of the old Papal province with
France decreed. — "The old residence of the
Popes [Avignon] remained until the year 1789
under the papal government, which, from its dis-
tance, exercised its authority with great mild-
ness, and left the towns and villages of the
country in the enjoyment of a great degree of
independence. The general condition of the
population was, however, much the same as in
the neighbouring districts of France — agitation
in the towns and miseiy in the country. It is not
surprising, therefore, that the commotion of
August 4th should extend itself among the sub-
jects of the Holy see. Here, too, castles were
burned, black mail levied on the monasteries,
tithes and feudal rights abolished. The city of
Avignon soon became the centre of a political
agitation, whose first object was to throw off the
papal yoke, and then to unite the country with
France. ... In June, 1790, the people of
Avignon tore down the papal arms, and the
Town Council sent a message to Paris that
Avignon wished to be united to France." Some
French regiments were sent to the city to main-
tain order; but "the greater part of them de-
serted, and marched out with the Democrats of
the town to take and sack the little town of
Cavaillon, which remained faithful to the Pope.
From this time forward civil war raged without
intermission. . . . The Constituent Assembly, on
the 14th of September, 1791, decreed the reunion
of the country with France. Before the new
government could assert its authority, fresh and
more dreadful atrocities had taken place, " ending
with the fiendish massacre of 110 prisoners, held
by a band of rufiians who had taken possession
of the papal castle. — H. von Sybel, Hist, of tlie
French Bev., bk. 3, ch. 3 {v. 1).
A. D. 1790-1791. — The oath of the clergy. —
First movements toward the European coali-
tion against French democracy. — Death of
Mirabeau. — The King's flight and arrest at
Varennes. — Rise of a Republican Party. — "By
a decree of November 27th, 1790, the Assembly
required the clergy to take an oath of fidelity to
the nation, the law and the king, and to main-
tain the constitution. This oath they were to
take within a week, on pain of deprivation. The
King, befoie assenting to this measure, wished to
procure the consent of the Pope, but was per-
suaded not to wait for it, and gave his sanction,
December 3rd. ... Of 300 prelates and priests,
who had seats in the Assembly, those who sat on
the right unanimously refused to take the oath,
while those who sat on the left anticipated the
day appointed for that purpose. Out of 138
archbishops and bishops, only four consented to
swear, Talleyrand, Lomenie de Brienne (now
Archbishop of Sens), the Bishop of Orleans, and
the Bishop of Viviers. The oath was also re-
fused by the great majority of the cures and
vicars, amounting, it is said, to 50,000. Hence
arose the distinction of ' prgtres sermentes ' and
' insermentes, ' or sworn and non-juring priests.
The brief of Pius VI., forbidding the oath, was
burnt at the Palais Royal, as well as a mannikin
representing the Pope himself in his pontificals.
Many of the deprived ecclesiastics refused to va-
cate their functions, declared their successors
intruders and the sacraments they administered
null, and excommunicated all who recognised and
obeyed them. Louis XVI., whose religious feel-
ings were very strong, was perhaps more hurt
by these attacks upon the Church than even by
tliose directed against his own prerogative. The
death of Mirabeau, April 2nd 1791, was a great
loss to the King, though it may well be doubted
whether his exertions could have saved the mon-
archy. He fell a victim to his profligate habits,
assisted probably by the violent exertions he had
recently made in the Assembly. . . . He was
honoured with a sumptuous funeral at the public
expense, to which, says a contemporary histo-
rian, nothing but grief was wanting. In fact, to
most of the members of the Assembly, eclipsed
by his splendid talents and overawed by his reck-
less audacity, his death was a relief. . . . After
Mirabeau's death, Duport, Barnave, and Lameth
reigned supreme in the Assembly, and Robes-
pierre became more prominent. "The King had
now begun to fix his hopes on foreign interven-
tion. The injuries inflicted by the decrees of
the Assembly on August 4th 1789, on several
princes of the Empire, through their possessions
in Alsace, Franche Comte, and Lorraine, might
afford a pretext for a rupture between the Ger-
man Confederation and France. . . . The Ger-
man prelates, injured by the Civil Constitution
of the clergy, were among the first to complain.
By this act the Elector of Mentz was deprived
of his metropolitan rights over the bishoprics of
Strasburg and Spires; the Elector of Treves of
those over Metz, Toul, Verdun, Nanci and St.
Diez. The Bishops of Strasburg and Bale lost
their diocesan rights in Alsace. Some of these
princes and nobles had called upon the Emperor
and the German body in January 1790, for pro-
tection against the arbitrary acts of the National
Assembly. This appeal had been favourably
entertained, both by the Emperor Joseph II. and
by the King of Prussia ; and though the Assem-
bly offered suitable indemnities, they were haugh-
tily refused. . . . The Spanish and Italian Bour-
bons were naturally inclined to support their
relative, Louis XVI. . . . The King of Sardinia,
connected by intermarriages with the French
Bourbons, had also family interests to maintain.
Catherine II. of Russia had witnessed, with hu-
miliation and alarm, the fruits of the philosophy
which she had patronised, and was opposed to
the new order of things in Prance. . . . All the
1303
FRANCE, 1790-1791.
The King's flight
to Varennes.
FRANCE, 1791.
materials existed for an extensive coalition against
Frencli democracy. In this posture of affairs the
Count d'Artois, accompanied by Calonne, who
served him as a sort of minister, and by the
Count deDurfort.who had been despatched from
the French Court, had a conference with the
Emperor, now Leopold II., at Mantua, in May
1791, in which it was agreed that, towards the
following July, Austria should march 35,000 men
towards the frontiers of Flanders ; the German
Circles 15,000 towards Alsace; the Swiss 15,000
towards the Lyonnais; the King of Sardinia
15,000 towards Dauphine; while Spain was to
hold 20,000 in readiness in Catalonia. This agree-
ment, for there was not, as some writers have
supposed, any formal treaty, was drawn up by
Calonne, and amended with the Emperor's own
hand. But the large force to be thus assembled
was intended only as a threatening demonstra-
tion, and hostilities were not to be actually com-
menced without the sanction of a congress. . . .
The King's situation had now become intolerably
irksome. He was, to all intents and purposes, a
prisoner at Paris. A trip, which he wished to
make to St. Cloud during the Easter of 1791, was
denounced at the Jacobin Club as a pretext for
flight; and when he attempted to leave the Tuil-
eries, April 18th, the tocsin was rung, his car-
riage was surrounded by the mob, and he was
compelled to return to the palace. ... A few
days after . . . the leaders of the Revolution,
who appear to have suspected his negociations
abroad, exacted that he should address a circular
to his ambassadors at foreign courts, in which he
entirely approved the Revolution, assumed the
title of 'Restorer of French liberty,' and utterly
repudiated the notion that he was not free and
master of liis actions." But the King immedi-
ately nullified the circular by despatching secret
agents with letters "in which he notified that
any sanction he might give to the decrees of the
Assembly was to be reputed null : that his pre-
tended approval of the constitution was to be
Interpreted in an opposite sense, and that the
more strongly he should seem to adhere to it, the
more he should desire to be liberated from the
captivity in which he was held. Louis soon after
resolved on his unfortunate flight to the army of
the Marquis de Bouille at Montmedy. . . . Hav-
ing, after some hair-breadth escapes, succeeded in
quitting Paris in a travelling berlin, June 20th,
they [the King, Queen, and family] reached St.
Menehould in safety. But here the King was
recognised by Drouet, the son of the postmaster,
who, mounting his horse, pursued the royal fu-
gitives to Varennes, raised an alarm, and caused
them to be captured when they already thought
themselves out of danger. In consequence of
their being rather later than was expected, the
military preparations that had been made for
their protection entirely failed. The news of the
King's flight filled Paris with consternation. The
Assembly assumed all the executive power of
the Government, and when the news of the King's
arrest arrived, they despatched Barnave, Latour,
Maubourg and Petion to conduct him and his
family back to Paris. . . . Notices had been
posted up in Paris, that those who applauded
the King should be horsewhipped, and that those
who insulted him should be hanged; hence he
was received on entering the capital with a dead
silence. The streets, however, were traversed
without accident to the Tuileries, but is the
royal party were alighting, a rush was made
upon them by some ruffians, and they were witli
difficulty saved from inj ury. The King's brother,
the Count of Provence, who had fled at the same
time by a different route, escaped safely to Brus-
sels. This time the King's intention to fly could
not be denied; he had, indeed, himself pro-
claimed it, by sending to the Assembly a mani-
fest, in which he exjilained his reasons for it,
declared that he did not intend to quit the king-
dom, expressed his desire to restore liberty and
establish a constitution, but annulled all that he
had done during the last two years. . . . The
King, after his return, was provisionally sus-
pended from his functions by a decree of the
Assembly, June 25th. Guards were placed over
him and tlie Queen ; the gardens of tlie Tuileries
assumed the appearance of a camp; sentinels
were stationed on the roof of the Palace, and
even in the Queen's bedchamber. . . . From
the period of the King's flight to Varennes must
be dated the first decided appearance of a repub-
lican party in France. During his absence the
Assembly had been virtually sovereign, and hence
men took occasion to say, ' You see the public
peace has been maintained, affairs have gone on
in the usual way in the King's absence. ' The chief
advocates of a republic were Brissot, Condorcet,
and the recently-established club of the Corde-
liers. . . . The arch-democrat,Thomas Payne, who
was now at Paris, also endeavoured to excite the
populace against the King. The Jacobin Club
had not yet gone this length; they were for
bringing Louis XVI. to trial and deposing him,
but for maintaining the monarchy." — T. H. Dyer,
Mist, of Modern Europe, bk. 1, ch. 2-3 (». 4).
Also m: J. Michelet, Hist. View of the French
Rev., bk. 4, ch. 8-14. — M'me Campan, Memoirs of
Marie Antoinette, ». 3, ch. 5-7. — Marquis de
Bouille, Memoirs, eli. 8-11. — Duchess deTourzel,
Memoirs, D. 1, ch. 12. — A. B. Cochrane, Fnnicis
I., and other Historical Studies, v. 3 {The Flight
of Varennes).
A. D. 1791 (July— September).— Attitude of
Foreign Powers. — Coolness of Austria to-
wards the Emigres. — The Declaration of
Pilnitz. — Completion of the Constitution. —
Restoration of the King. — Tumult in the
Champs de Mars. — Dissolution of the Con-
stituent National Assembly. — " On the 27th of
Julj', Prince Reuss presented a memorial [from
the Court of Austria] to the Court of Berlin, in
which the Emperor explained at length his views
of a European Concert. It was drawn up,
throughout, in Leopold's usual cautious and
circumspect manner. ... In case an armed in-
tervention should appear necessary — they would
take into consideration the future constitution of
France ; but in doing so they were to renounce,
in honour of the great cause in which they were
engaged, all views of selfish aggrandizement.
We see what a small part the desire for war
played in the drawing up of this far-seeing plan.
The document repeatedly urged that no step
ought to be taken without the concurrence of all
the Powers, and especially of England ; and as
England's decided aversion to every kind of in-
terference was well known, this stipulation alone
was suflicient to stamp upon the whole scheme,
the character of a harmless demonstration." At
the same time Catharine II. of Russia, released
from war with the Turks, and bent upon the
destruction of Poland, desired "to implicate the
1304
FRANCE, 1791.
The Constitution
Completed.
FRANCE, 1791.
Emperor as inextricably as possible in the French
quarrel, in order 1o deprive Poland of its most
powerful iirotector; she therefore entered witli
the greatest zeal into tlie ncgociations for tiie
support of Louis XVI. Her old opponent, the
brilliant King Gustavus of Sweden, declared his
readiness — on receipt of a large subsidy from ■
Russia — to conduct a Swedish army by sea to the I
coast of Flanders, and thence, under the guid-
ance of Bouille, against Paris. . . . But, of course,
every word he uttered was only an additional
warning to Leopold to keep tlie peace. . . .
Under these circumstances he [tlie Emperor] was
most disagreeably surprised on the 20th of
August, a few days before his departure for
Pillnitz, by the sudden and entirely unannounced
and unexpected arrival in Vienna of the Count
d'Artois. It was not possible to refuse to see
him, but Leopold made no secret to him of the
real position of affairs. ... He asked permis-
sion to accompany the Emperor to Pillnitz, which
the latter, with cool politeness, said that he had
no scruple in granting, but that even there no
change of policy would take place. . . . Filled
with such sentiments, the Emperor Leopold set
out for the conference with his new ally; and
the King of Prussia came to meet him with
entirely accordant views. . . . The representa-
tions of d'Artois, therefore, made just as little
impression at Pillnitz, as they had done, a week
before, at Vienna. ... On the 37th, d'Artois re-
ceived the joint answer of the two Sovereigns,
the tone and purport of wliich clearly testitied to
the sentiments of its authoi-s. . . . The Emperor
and King gave their sanction to the peaceable
residence of individual Emigres in their States,
but declared that no armed preparations would
be allowed before the conclusion of an agreement
between the European Powers. To this rejec-
tion the two Monarchs added a proposal of their
own — contained in a joint declaration — in which
they spoke of the restoration of order and mon-
archy in France as a question of the greatest im-
portance to the whole of Europe. Tliey signified
their intention of inviting the cooperation of all
the European Powers. . . . But as it was well
ascertained that England would take no part, the
expressions they cliose were really equivalent to
a declaration of non-intervention, and were evi-
dently made use of by Leopold solely to intimi-
date the Parisian democrats. . . . Thus ended
the conference of Pillnitz, after the two Monarchs
had agreed to protect the constitmion of the
Empire, to encourage the Elector of Saxonj' lo
accept the crown of Poland, and to afford each
other friendly aid in every quarter. The state-
ment, therefore, which has been a thousand times
repeated, that the first coalition for an attack on
the French Revolution was formed on this occa-
sion, has been shown to be utterly without foun-
dation. As soon as the faintest gleam of a recon-
ciliation between Louis and the National Assembly
appeared, the cause of the Emigres was aban-
doned by the German Courts." — H. Von Sybel,
History of the FrencJt Revolution, bk. 3, cli. 6
(». 1), — At Paris, meantime, "the commissioners
charged to make tlieir report on the affair of Va-
rennes presented it on tlie 16th of July. In the
journey, they said, there was nothing culpable;
and even if there were, the King was inviolable.
Dethronement could not result from it, since the
King had not staid away long enough, and had
not resisted the summons of tlie legislative body.
Robespierre, Buzot, and Petion repeated all the
well known arguments against the inviolability.
Duport, Barnave, and Salles answered them, and
it was at length resolved that the King could not
be brought to trial on account of his flight. . . .
No sooner was this resolution passed than Robes-
pierre rose, and protested strongly against it, in
the name of humanity. On the evening preced-
ing this decision, a great tumult had taken place
at the Jacobins. A petition to the Assembly
was there drawn up, praying it to declare that
the King was deposed as a perfidious traitor to
his oaths, and that it would seek to supply his
place by all the constitutional means. It was
i-esolved that this petition should be carried on
the following day to the Champ de Mars, where
every one might sign it on the altar of the coun-
try. Next day, it was accordingly carried to the
place agreed upon, and the crowd of tlie sedi-
tious was reinforced by that of the curious, who
wished to be spectators of the event. At this
moment the decree was passed, so that it was
now too late to petition. Lafayette arrived,
broke down the barricades already erected, was
threatened and even fired at, but ... at length
prevailed on the populace to retire. . . . But
the tumult was soon renewed. Two invalids,
who happened to be, nobody knows for what
purpose, under the altar of the country, were
murdered, and then the uproar became un-
bounded. The Assembly sent for the munici-
pality, and charged it to preserve public order.
Bailly repaired to the Champ de Mars, ordered
the red flag to be unfurled, and, by virtue of
martial law, summoned the seditious to retire.
. . . Lafayette at first ordered a few shots to be
lired in the air; the crowd quitted the altar of
the country, but soon rallied. Thus driven to
extremity, he gave the word, ' Fire I ' The first
discharge killed some of the rioters. Their num-
ber has been exaggerated. Some have reduced
it to 30, others have raised it to 400, and others
to several thousand. The last statement was be-
lieved at the moment, and the consternation
became general. . . . Lafayette and Bailly were
vehemently reproached for the proceedings in
the Champ de Mars; but both of them, consider-
ing it their duty to observe the law, and to risk
popularity and life in its execution, felt neither
regret nor fear for what they had done. The
factions were overawed by the energy which
they displayed. . . . About this time the As-
sembly came to a determination which has since
been censured, but the result of which did not
prove so mischievous as it has been supposed. It
decreed that none of its members should be re-
elected. Robespierre was the proposer of this
resolution, and it was attributed to the envy
which he felt against his colleagues, among whom
he had not shone. . . . The new Assembly was
thus deprived of men whose enthusiasm was
somewhat abated, and whose legislative science
was matured by an experience of three years.
. . . The constitution was . . . completed with
some haste, and submitted to the King for his
acceptance. From that moment his freedom was
restored to him ; or, if that expression be objected
to, the strict watch kept over the palace ceased.
. . . After a certain number of days he declared
that he accepted the constitution. ... He re-
paired to the Assembly, where he was received
as in tlie most brilliant times. Lafayette, who
never forgot to repair the inevitable evils of
1305
FRANCE, 1791.
The Girondists
and the Mountain.
FRANCE, 1791.
political troubles, proposed a general amnesty for
all acts connected 'n-ltli the Revolution, which
was proclaimed amidst shouts of joy, and the
prisons were instantly thrown open. At length,
on the 30th of September [1791], Thouret, the
last president, declared that the Constituent As-
sembly had terminated its sittings. " — A. Thiers,
Hist, of the French Bev. (Am. ed.), v. 1, pp. 186-
193.
Also IN: M'me de Stael, Considerations on the
French Rev., i)t. 2, ch. 32-23, andpt. 3, ch. 1-2.—
H. C. Lockwood, Constitutional Hist, of France,
ch. 1., and app. 1.
A. D. 1791 (August).— Insurrection of slaves
in San Domingo. See Hayti: A. D. 1633-1803.
A. D. 1791 (September). — Removal of all
disabilities from the Jews. See Jews: A. D.
1791.
A. D. 1791 (October). — The meeting of the
Legislative Assembly. — Its party divisions. —
The Girondists and their leaders. — The Moun-
tain. — " The most glorious destiny was predicted
for the Constitution, yet it did not live a twelve
month; the Assembly that was to apply it was
but a transition between the Constitutional Mon-
archy and the Republic. It was because the
Revolution partook much more of a social than
of a political overthrow. The Constitution had
done all it could for the political part, but the
social fabric remained to be reformed ; the ancient
privileged classes had been scotched, but not
killed. . . . The new Legislative Assembly
[which met October 1, its members having been
elected before the dissolution of the Constituent
Assembly] was composed of 745 deputies, mostly
chosen from the middle classes and devoted to
the Revolution ; those of the Right and Extreme
Right going by the name of Peuillants, those of
the Left and Extreme Left by the name of Jaco-
bins. The Right was composed of Constitution-
alists, who counted on the support of the
National Guard and departmental authorities.
Their ideas of the Revolution were embodied in
the Constitution. . . . They kept up some rela-
tions with the Court by means of Barnave and
the Lameths, but their pillar outside the Assem-
bly, their trusty counsellor, seems to have been
Lafayette. . . . The Left was composed of men
resolved at all risks to further the Revolution,
even at the expense of the Constitution. They
intended to go as far as a Republic, only they
lacked common unity of views, and did not form
a compact body. . . . They reckoned among
their numbers Vergniaud, Guadet, and Gensonne,
deputies of the Gironde [the Bordeaux region, on
the Garonne], powerful and vehement orators,
and from whom their party afterwards took the
name of ' Girondins ' ; also Brissot [de Warville]
(born 1754), a talented journalist, who had drawn
up the petition for the King's deposition ; and Con-
dorcet (born 1743), an ultra-liberal, but a brilliant
philosopher. Their leader outside the Assembly
was Petion (born 1753), a cold, calculating, and
dissembling Republican, enjoying great popu-
larity with the masses. The Extreme Left, occu-
pying in small numbers the raised seats in the
Assembly, from which circumstance they after-
wards took the name of 'the Mountain,' were
auxiliaries of the ' Girondins ' in their attempts
to further a Revolution which should be entirely
in the interest of the people. Their inspirers
outside the Assembly were Robespierre (born
1759), who controlled the club of the Jacobins by
his dogmatic rigorism and fame for integrity;
and Danton (born 1759), surnamed the Mirabeau
of the ' Breechless ' (Sansculottes), a bold and
daring spirit, who swayed the new club of the
Cordeliers. The Centre was composed of nonen-
tities, their moderation was inspired by fear, hence
they nearly always voted with the Left." — H.
Van Laun, The French Revolutionary Epoch, bk.
1, ch. 3, sect. 3 (v. 1).— "The department of the
Gironde had given birth to a new political party
in the twelve citizens who formed its depu-
ties. . . . The names (obscure and unknown up
to this period), of Ducos, Guadet, Lafond-Lade-
bat, Grangeueuve, Gensonne, Vergniaud, were
about to rise into notice and renown with the
storms and disasters of their country ; they were
the men who were destined to give that impulse
to the Revolution that had hitherto remained in
doubt and indecision, before which it still trem-
bled with apprehension, and which was to precipi-
tate it into a republic. Why was this impulse
fated to have birth in the department of the
Gironde and not in Paris ? Nought but conjec-
tures can be offered on this subject. . . . Bor-
deaux was a commercial city, and commerce,
which requires liberty through interest, at last
desires it through a love of freedom. Bordeaux
was the great commercial link between America
and France, and their constant intercourse with
America had communicated to the Gironde their
love for free institutions. Moreover Bordeaux
. . . was the birthplace of Montaigne and Mon-
tesquieu, those two great republicans of the
French school." — A. de Lamartiue, Hist, of the
Oirondists, bk. i, sect. 1 (v. 1). — "In the new
National Assembly there was only one powerful
and active party — that of the Gironde. . . .
When we use the term ' parties ' in reference to
this Assembly, nothing more is meant by it than
small groups of from 12 to 30 persons, who bore
the sway in the rostra and in the Committees,
and who alternately carried with them the aim-
less crowd of Deputies. It is true, indeed, that
at the commencement of their session, 130 Depu-
ties entered their names among the Jacobins, and
about 200 among the Feuillants, but this had no
lasting influence on the divisions, and the major-
ity wavered under the influence of temporary
motives. The party which was regarded as the
' Right ' had no opportunity for action, but saw
themselves, from the very first, obliged to assume
an attitude of defence. . . . Outside the Cham-
ber the beau ideal of this party, — General La-
fayette, — declared himself in favour of an Ameri-
can Senate, but without any of the energy of
real conviction. As he had defended the Mon-
archy solely from a sense of duty, while all the
feelings of his heart were inclined towards a
Republic, so now, though he acknowledged the
necessity of an upper Chamber, the existing
Constitution appeared to him to possess a more
ideal beauty. He never attained, on this point,
either to clear ideas or decided actions ; and it
was at this period that he resigned his command
of the National guard in Paris, and retired for a
while to his estate in Auvergne. . . . The Giron-
dist Deputies . . . were distinguished among the
new members of the Assembly by personal dig-
nity, regular education, and natural ability ; and
were, moreover, as ardent in their radicalism as
any Parisian demagogue. They consequently
soon became the darlings of all those zealous
patriots for whom the Cordeliers were too dirty
I30n
FRANCE, 1791.
Emigres and
ejected Priests.
FRANCE, 1791-1793.
and the Feuillants too luke warm. External a<l-
vantages are not without their weight, even iu
the most terrible political crises, and the Giron-
dists owe to the magic of their eloquence, and
especially to that of Vergniaud, an enduring
fame, which neither their principles nor their
deeds would have earned for them. . . . The
representatives of Bordeaux had never occupied
a leading position in the Girondist party, to
which they had given its name. The real leader-
ship of the Gironde fell singularly enough into
the hands of an obscure writer, a political lady,
and a priest who carried on Ms operations behind
the scenes. It was their hands that overthrew
Ihe throne of the Capets, and spread revolution
over Europe. . . . The writer in this trio was
Brissot, who on the 16th of July had wished to
proclaim the Republic, and who now represented
the capital in the National Assembly, as a con-
stitutional member. . . . While Brissot shaped
the foreign policy of the Girondist party, its
home affairs were directed by Marie Jeanne Ro-
land, wife of the quondam Inspector of Factories
at Lyons, with whom she had come the year be-
fore to Paris, and immediately thrown herself into
the whirlpool of political life. As early as the
year 1789, she had written to a friend, that the
National Assembly must demand two illustrious
heads, or all would be lost. . . . She was ... 36
years old, not beautiful, but interesting, enthusi-
astic and indefatigable; with noble aims, but
incapable of discerning the narrow line which
separates right from wrong. . . . When warned
by a friend of the unruly nature of the Parisian
mob, she replied, that bloodhounds were after all
indispensable for starting the game. ... A less
conspicuous, but not less important, part in this
association, was played by the Abbe SieySs. He
did what neither Brissot nor Mad. Roland could
have done by furnishing his party with a compre-
hensive and prospective plan of operations. . . .
Their only clearly defined objects were to possess
themselves of the reins of government, to carry
on the Revolution, and to destroy the Monarchy
by every weapon within their reach." — H. von
Sybel, Mst. of the Fi-ench Rev., bk. 3, ch. 1 {v. 1).
Also in : H. A. Taine, The French Rev. , bk. 4
(». 2). — See, also, below.
A. D. 1791-1792. — Growth and spread of
anarchy and civil war. — Activity of the Emi-
gres and the ejected priests. — Decrees against
them vetoed by the King. — The Girondists in
control of the government. — War with the
German powers forced on by them. — " It was
an ominous proof of the little confidence felt by
serious men in the permanence of the new
Constitution, that the funds fell when the King
signed it. All the chief municipal posts in Paris
were passing into the hands of Republicans, and
when Bailly, in November, ceased to be Mayor
of Paris, he was succeeded in that great office
by Petion, a vehement and intolerant Jacobin.
Lafayette had resigned the command of the
National Guard, which was then divided under
six commanders, and it could no longer be counted
on to support the cause of order. Over a great
part of France there was a total insecurity of life
and property, such as had perhaps never before
existed in a civilised country, except iu times
of foreign invasion or successful rebellion. Al-
most all the towns in the south — Marseilles,
Toulon, Nimes, Aries, Avignon, Montpellier,
Carpentras, Aix, Montauban — were centres of
Republicanism, brigandage, or anarchy. The mas-
sacres of Jourdain at Avignon, in October, are
conspicuous even among the horrors of the Revo-
lution. Caen in the following month was con-
vulsed bj' a savage and bloody civil war. The
civil constitution of the clergy having been con-
demned by the Pope, produced an open schism,
and crowds of ejected priests were exciting the
religious fanaticism of the peasantry. In some
districts in the south, the war between Catholic
and Protestant was raging as fiercely as in the
17th century, while in Brittany, and especially
in La Vendee, there were all the signs of a great
popular insurrection against the new Govern-
ment. Society seemed almost in dissolution, and
there was scarcely a department in -which law
was observed and property secure. The price
of corn, at the same time, was rising fast
under the influence of a bad harvest in the south,
aggravated by the want of specie, the deprecia-
tion of paper money, and the enormously in-
creased difficulties of transport. The peasantry
were combining to refuse the paper money. It
was falling rapidly in value. ... In the mean
time the stream of emigrants continued unabated,
and it included the great body of the officers of
the army who had been driven from the regi-
ments by their own soldiers. ... At Brussels,
Worms, and Cobleutz, emigrants were forming
armed organisations." — W. E. H. Lecky, Jlist. q/"
Enr/. in the 18th century, ch. 21 {v. 5). — "The
revolution was threatened by two dangerous
enemies, the emigrants, who were urging on a
foreign invasion, and the non-juring bishoijs and
priests who were doing all in their power to ex-
cite domestic rebellion. The latter were really
the more dangerous. . . . The Girondists clam-
oured for repressive measures. On the 30th of
October it was decreed that the count of Provence,
unless he returned within two months, should
forfeit all rights to the regency. On the 9th of
November an edict threatened the emigrants with
confiscation and death unless they returned to
their allegiance before the end of the year. On
the 29th of November came the attack upon the
non- j urors. They were called ujjon to take the oath
within eight days, when lists were to be drawn
up of those who refused; these were then to
forfeit their pensions, and if any disturbance
took place in their district they were to be re-
moved from it, or if their complicity were proved
they were to be imprisoned for two years. The
king accepted the decree against his brother, but
he opposed his veto to the other two. The Gi-
rondists and Jacobins eagerly seized the oppor-
tunity for a new attack upon the monarchy. . . .
Throughout the winter attention was devoted
almost exclusively to foreign affairs. It has been
seen that the emperor was really eager for peace,
and that as long as he remained in that mood
there was little risk of any other prince taking
the initiative. At the same time it must be ac-
knowledged that Leopold's tone towards the
French government was often too haughty and
menacing to be conciliatory, and also that the
open preparations of the emigrants in neighbour-
ing states constituted an insult if not a danger to
France. The Girondists, the most susceptible of
men, only expressed the national sentiment in
dwelling upon this with bitterness, and in call-
ing for vengeance. At the same time they had
conceived the definite idea that their own sujirem-
acy could best be obtained and secured by fore-
1307
FRANCE, 1791-1792.
War with the
German Powers.
FRANCE, 1793.
ing on a foreign war. This was expressly avowed
by Brissot, who took the lead of the party iu this
matter. Robespierre, on the other hand, partly
through temperament and partly through jeal-
ousy of his brilliant rivals, was inclined to the main-
tenance of peace. But on this point the Feuil-
lants were agreed with the Gironde, and so a vast
majority was formed to force the unwilling king
and ministers into war. The first great step was
tqkeu when Duportail, who had charge of mili-
tary affairs, was replaced by Narbonne, a Feuil-
lant. Louis XVI. was compelled to issue a note
(14 December, 1791) to the emperor and to the
archbishop of Trier to the effect that if the mili-
tary force of the emigrants were not disbanded
by the 15th" of January hostilities would be com-
menced against the elector. The latter at once
ordered the cessation of the military preparations,
but the emigrants not only refused to obey but
actually insulted the French envoy. Leopold
expressed his desire for peace, but at the same
time declared that any attack on the electorate
of Trier would be regarded as an act of hostility
to the empire. These answers were unsatis-
factory, and Narbonne collected three armies on
the frontiers, under the command of Rocham-
beau, Lafayette, and Luckner, and amounting
together to about 150,000 men. On the 35th of
January an explicit declaration was demanded
from the emperor, with a threat that war would
be declared unless a satisfactory answer was re-
ceived by the 4th of March. Leopold IL saw all
his hopes of maintaining peace in western Europe
gradually disappearing, and was compelled to
bestir himself. . . . On the 7th of February he
finally concluded a treaty with the king of
Prussia. ... On the 1st of March, while still
hoping to avoid a quarrel, Leopold II. died
of a sudden illness, and with him perished the
last possibility of peace. His son and successor,
Francis II. , who was now 24, had neither his
father's ability nor his experience, and he was
naturally more easily swayed by the anti-revo-
lutionary spirit. . . . The Girondists combined
all their efforts for an attack upon the minister of
foreign ailairs, Delessart, whom they accused of
truckling to the enemies of the nation. Delessart
was committed to pi-ison, and his colleagues at
once resigned. The Gironde now came into of-
fice. The ministry of home affairs was given to
Roland; of war to Servan; of finance to Cla-
vifere. Dumouriez obtained the foreign depart-
ment, Duranthon that of justice, and Lacoste the
marine. Its enemies called it ' the ministry of the
sansculottes.' ... On the 20th of April [1793]
Louis XVI. appeared in the assembly and read
with trembling voice a declaration of war against
the king of Hungary and Bohemia. " — R. Lodge,
Hist, of Modern Mirope, ch. 23, sect. 30-31.— The
sincere desire of the Emperor Leopold II. to avoid
war with France, and the restraining influence
over the King of Prussia which he exercised up
to the time when Catherine II. of Russia over-
came it by the Polish temptation, are set fortli
by H. von Sybel in passages quoted elsewhere.
See Germany: A. D. 1791-1793.
Also in : A. de Lamartine, Sist. of the Giron-
dists, hk. 6-14 («. 1).— A. F. Bertrand de Mole-
ville, Annals of the French Rev., pt. 2, ch. 1-14
(i\ 5-6). — F. C. Schlosser, Hist, of the Eighteenth
Centuri/, 5th period, 2ddiv., ch. 1 {e. 6).
A. D. 1792 (April). — Fete to the Soldiers of
Chateauvieux. See Liberty C.U".
A. D. 1792 (April— July).— Opening of the
vrar with Austria and Prussia. — French re-
verses. — "Hostilities followed close upon th'j
declaration of war. At this time the forces des-
tined to come into collision were posted as fol-
lows: Austria had 40,000 men in Belgium, and
25,000 on the Rhine. These numbers might
easily have been increased to 80,000, but the Em-
peror of Austria did no more than collect 7.000
or 8,000 around Brisgau, and some 30,000 more
around Rastadt.. The Prussians, now bound into
a close alliance with Austria, had still a great
distance to traverse from their base to the theatre
of war, and could not hope to undertake active
operations for a long time to come. France, on
the other hand, had already three strong armies
in the field. The Army of the North, under Gen-
eral Rochambeau, nearly 50,000 strong, held the
frontier from Philippeville to Dunkirk ; General
Lafayette commanded a second army of about
the same strength in observation from Philippe-
ville to the Lauter; and a third army of 40,000
men, under Marshal Luckner, watched the course
of the Rhine from Lauterbourg to the confines
of Switzerland. The French forces were strong,
however, on paper only. The French army had
been mined, as it seemed, by the Revolution,
and had fallen almost to pieces. The wholesale
emigration of the aristocrats had robbed it of Its
commissioned officers, the old experienced leaders
whom the men were accustomed to follow and
obey. Again, the passion for political discus-
sion, and the new notions of universal equality
had fostered a dangerous spirit of license in the
ranks. . . . While the regular regiments of the
old establishment were thus demoralised, the
new levies were still but imperfectly organised, ,
and the whole army was unfit to take the field.
It was badly equipped, without transport, and
without those useful administrative services
which are indispensable for mobility and effici-
ency. Moreover, the prestige of the French arms
was at its lowest ebb. A long and enervating
peace had followed since the last great war, in
which the French armies had endured only failure
and ignominious defeat. It is not strange, then,
that the foes whom France had so confidently
challenged, counted upon an easy triumph over
the revolutionary troops. The earliest operations
fully confirmed these anticipations. . . . France
after the declaration of war had at once assumed
the initiative, and proceeded to invade Belgium.
Here the Duke Albert of Saxe-Teschen, who
commanded the Imperialist forces, held his forces
concentrated in three principal corps : one covered
the line from the sea to Tournay ; the second was
at Leuze ; the third and weakest at Mons. The
total of these troops rose to barely 40,000, and
Jlons, the most important point iu the general
line of defence, was the least strongly held. An
able strategist gathering together 30,000 men
from each of the French armies of the Centre
and North, would have struck at Mons with all
his strength, cut Duke Albert's communications
with the Rhine, turned his inner flank, and rolled
him up into the sea. But no great genius as yet
directed the military energies of Prance. . . .
By Dumouriez's advice, the French armies were
ordered to advance against the Austrians by
several lines. Four columns of invasion were to
enter Belgium ; one was to follow the sea coast,
the second to march on Tourna.y, the third to
move from Valenciennes on Mons, and the fourth,
1308
FRANCE, 1792.
The Mob in the
TuUeries.
FRANCE, 1792.
under Lafayette, on Givet or Namur. Each, ac-
cording to the success it might achieve, was to
reinforce the next nearest to it, and all, finally,
were to converge on Brussels. At the very out-
set, however, the French encountered the most
ludicrous reverses. Their columns fled in dis-
order directly they came within sight of the
enemy. Lafayette alone continued his march
boldly towards Namur; but he was soon com-
pelled to retire by the news of the hasty flight of
the columns north of him. The French troops
had proved as worthless as their leaders were In-
capable ; whole brigades turned tail, crying that
they were betrayed, casting away their weapons
as they ran, and displaying the most abject
cowardice and terror. Not strangely, after this
pitiful exhibition, the Austrians — all Europe, in-
deed — held the military power of France in the
utmost contempt. . . . But now the national dan-
ger stirred France to its Inmost depths. French
spirit was thoroughly roused. The country rose
as one man, determined to offer a steadfast, stub-
born front to its foes. Stout-hearted leaders, full
of boundless energy and enthusiasm, summoned
all the resources of the nation to stem and roll
back the tide of invasion. Immediate steps were
taken to put the defeated and disgraced armies
of the frontier upon a new footing. Lafayette
replaced Rochambeau, with charge from Longwy
to the sea, his main body about Sedan ; Luckner
took the line from the Moselle to the Swiss moun-
tains, with head-quarters at Metz. A third gen-
eral, destined to come speedily to the front, also
joined the army as Lafayette's lieutenant. This
was Dumouriez, who, wearied and baffled by
Parisian politics, sought the freedom of the field. "
— A. Griffiths, French Revolutionary Generals,
eh. 1.
A. D. 1792 (June — August). — The King's
dismissal of Girondist ministers. — Mob demon-
stration of June 20. — Lafayette in Paris. — His
failure. — The Country declared to be in Dan-
ger. — Gathering of volunteers in Paris. —
Brunswick's manifesto. — Mob attack on the
Tuileries, August 10. — Massacre of the Swiss.
— "Servan, the minister of war, proposed the
formation of an armed camp for the protection
of Paris. Jluch opposition was, however, raised
to the project, and the Assembly decreed (June
6) that 20,000 volunteers, recruited in the de-
partments, should meet at Paris to take part in
the celebration of a federal festival on July 14,
the third anniversary of the fall of the Bastille.
The real object of those who supported the decree
was to have a force at Paris with which to main-
tain mastery over the city should the Allies pene-
trate into the interior. Louis left the decree un-
sanctioned, as he had the one directed against
nonjurors. The agitators of the sections sought
to get up an armed demonstration against this
exercise of the King's constitutional prerogative.
Though armed demonstrations were illegal, the
municipality offered but a perfunctory and half-
hearted resistance. . . . Louis, irritated at the
pressure put on him by Roland, Clavi^re, and
Servan, to sanction the two decrees, dismissed the
three ministers from office (June 13). Dumouriez,
who had quarreled with his colleagues, supported
the King in taking this step, but in face of the
hostility of the Assembly himself resigned office
(June 15). Three days later a letter from Lafay-
ette was read in the Assembly. The general de-
nounced the Jacobins as the" authors of all dis-
orders, called on the Assembly to maintain the
prerogatives of the crown, and Intimated that his
army would not submit to see the constitution
violated (June 18). Possibly the dismissal of the
ministers and the writing of this letter were meas-
ures concerted between the King and Lafayette.
In any case the King's motive was to excite
division between the constitutionalists and the
Girondists, so as to weaken the national defence.
The dismissal of the ministers was, however, re-
garded by the Girondists as a proof of the truth
of their worst suspicions, and no measures were
taken to prevent an execution of the project of
making an armed, and therefore illegal, demon-
stration against the royal policy. On June 30,
thousands of persons, carrying pikes or whatever
weapon came to hand, and accompanied by sev-
eral battalions of the national guard, marched
from St. Antoine to the hall of the Assembly. A
deputation read an address demanding the recall
of the ministers. Afterwards the whole of the
procession, men, women and children, dancing,
singing, and carrying emblems, defiled through
the chamber. Instigated by their leaders they
broke into the Tuileries. "The King, who took
his stand on a window seat, was mobbed for four
hours. To please his unwelcome visitors, he put
on his head a red cap, such as was now commonly
worn at the Jacobins as an emblem of liberty, in
imitation of that which was once worn by the
emancipated Roman slave. He declared his in-
tention to observe the constitution, but neither in-
sult nor menace could prevail on him to promise
his sanction to the two decrees. The Queen, sep-
arated from the King, sat behind a table on which
she placed the Dauphin, exposed to the gaze and
taunts of the crowds which slowly traversed the
palace apartments. At last, but not before night,
the mob left the Tuileries without doing further
harm, and order was again restored. This insur-
rection and the slackness, if not connivance, of
the municipal authorities, excited a widespread
feeling of indignation amongst constitutionalists.
Lafayette came to Paris, and at the bar of the
Assembly demanded in person what he had be-
fore demanded by letter (June 28). With him, as
with other former members of the constituent
Assembly, it was a point of honour to shield the
persons of the King and Queen from harm. Vari-
ous projects for their removal from Paris were
formed, but policy and sentiment alike forbade
Marie Antoinette to take advantage of them. . . .
The one gleam of light on the horizon of this
unhappy Queen was the advance of the Allies.
' Better die, ' she one day bitterly exclaimed, ' than
be saved by Lafayette and the constitutionalists. '
There was, no doubt, a possibility of the Allies
reaching Paris that summer, but this enormously
increased the danger of the internal situation.
... To rouse the nation to a sense of peril the
Assembly [July 11] caused public proclamation to
be made in every municipality that the country
was in danger. The appeal was responded to
with enth\isiasm, and within six weeks more than
60,000 volunteers enlisted. The Duke of Bruns-
wick, the commander-in-chief of the allied forces,
published a manifesto, drawn up by the emi-
grants. If the authors of this astounding procla-
mation had deliberately intended to serve the
purpose of those Frenchmen who were bent on
kindling zeal for the war, they could not have
done anything more likely to serve their purpose.
The powers required the country to submit
1309
FRAJSrCE, 1792.
^fassacre of the
Swiss,
FRANCE, 1792,
unconditionally to Louis's mercy. All who offered
resistance were to be treated as rebels to their
King, and Paris was to suffer military execution
if any harm befell the royal family. . . . 5Iean-
whOe, a second insurrection, which had for its
object the King's deposition, was in preparation.
The Assembly, after declaring the country in
danger, had authorised the sections of Paris, as
well as the administrative authorities throughout
France, to meet at any moment. The sections
had, in consequence, been able to render them-
selves entirely independent of the municipality.
In each of the sectional or primary assemblies
from 700 to 3,000 active citizens had the right to
vote, but few cared to attend, and thus it con-
stantly happened that a small active minority
spoke and acted in the name of an apathetic con-
stitutional majority. Thousands of volunteers
passed through Paris on their way to the fron-
tier, some of whom were purposely retained to
take part in the insurrection. The municipality
of Marseilles, at the request of Barbaroux, a
young friend of the Rolands, sent up a band of
500 men, who first sung in Paris the verses cele-
brated as the 'Marseillaise' [see MAKSBrLLAisE].
The danger was the greater since every section
had its own cannon and a special body of can-
noneers, who nearly to a man were on the side of
the revolutionists. The terrified and oscillating
Assembly made no attempt to suppress agitation,
but acquitted (August 8) Lafayette, by 406
against 280 votes, of a charge of treason made
against him by the left, on the ground that he
had sought to intimidate the Legislature. This
vote was regarded as tantamount to a refusal to
pass sentence of deposition on Louis. On the
following night the insurrection began. Its centre
was in the Faubourg of St. Antoine, and it was
organised by but a small number of men. Man-
dat, the commander-in-chief of the national guard,
was an energetic constitutionalist, who had taken
well-concerted measures for the defence of the
Tuileries. But the unscrupulousness of the con-
spirators was more than a match for his zeal.
Soon after midnight commissioners from 28 sec-
tions met together at the Hotel de Ville, and
forced the Council-General of the Municipality to
summon Mandat before it, and to send out orders
to the oflicers of the guard in contradiction to
those previously given. Mandat, unaware of
what was passing, obeyed the summons, and on
his arrival was arrested and murdered. After this
the commissioners dispersed the lawful council
and usurped its place. At the Tuileries were
about 950 Swiss and more than 4,000 national
guards. Early in the morning the first bands of
insurgents appeared. On the fidelity of the na-
tional guards it was impossible to rely ; and the
royal family, attended by a small escort, left the
palace, and sought refuge with the Assembly
[which held its sessions in the old Riding-School
of the Tuileries, not far from the palace, at one
side of the gardens]. Before their departure
orders had been given to the Swiss to repel force
by force, and soon the sound of firing spread
alarm through Paris. The King sent the Swiss
instructions to retire, which they punctually
obeyed. One column, passing through the Tuil-
eries gardens, was shot down almost to a man.
The rest reached the Assembly in safety, but sev-
eral were afterwards massacred on their way to
prison. For 24 hours the most frightful anarchy
prevailed. Numerous murders were committed
in the streets. The assailants, some hundreds of
whom had perished, sacked the palace, and killed
all the men whom they found there." — B. M.
Gardiner. T/ie French Revolution, ch. 5. — "Ter-
ror and fury ruled the hour. The Swiss, pressed
on from without, paralysed from within, have
ceased to shoot ; but not to be shot. What shall
they do ? Desperate is the moment. Shelter or
instant death: yet How, Where? One party
flies out by the Rue de 1' Echelle ; is destroyed ut-
terly, 'enentier.' A second, by the other side,
throws itself into the Garden ; ' luirrying across a
keen fusillade'; rushes suppliant into the Na-
tional Assembly; finds pity and refuge in the
back benches there. 'The third, and largest,
darts out in column. 300 strong, towards the
Champs Elysees : ' Ah, could we but reach Cour-
bevoye, where other Swiss are ! ' Wo ! see, in
such fusillade the column ' soon breaks itself by
diversity of opinion,' into distracted segments,
this way and that; — to escape in holes, to die
fighting from street to street. The firing and
murdering will not cease ; not yet for long. "The
red Porters of Hotels are shot at, be they ' Suisse'
by nature, or Suisse only in name. The very
Firemen, who pump and labour on that smoking
Carrousel [which the mob had fired], are shot at;
whj' should the Carrousel not burn ? Some Swiss
take refuge in private houses; find that mercy
too does still dwell in the heart of man. The
brave Marseillese are merciful, late so wroth ; and
labour to save. . . . But the most are butchered,
and even mangled. Fifty (some say Fourscore)
were marched as prisoners, by National Guards,
to the H6tel-de- Ville: the ferocious people bursts
through on them, in the Place-de-Gr6ve ; mas-
sacres them to the last man. ' O Peuple, envy of
the universe ! ' Peuple, in mad Gaelic efferves-
cence I Surely few things in the history of car-
nage are painf uler. What ineffaceable red streak,
flickering so sad in the memory, is that, of this
poor column of red Swiss, ' breaking itself in the
confusion of opinions ' ; dispersing, into blackness
and death ! Honour to you, brave men ; honour-
able pity, through long times ! Not martyrs were
ye ; and yet almost more. He was no King of
yours, this Louis ; and he forsook you like a King
of shreds and patches : ye were but sold to him
for some poor sixpence a-day ; yet would ye work
for your wages, keep your plighted word. The
work now was to die ; and ye did it. Honour to
you, O Kinsmen ; and may the old Deutsch ' Bie-
derkeit'and ' Tapferkeit,' and Valour which is
Worth and Truth, be they Swiss, be they Saxon,
fail in no age I" — T. Carlyle, Tlie French Bev.,
V. 3, bk. 6, ch. 7.
Also ts: A. Thiers, Hist, of the French Rev.
(Am. ed.), v. 1, pp. 266-330. — Madame Campan.
Memoirs of Marie Antoinette, v. 2, ch. 9-10. — J.
Claretie, Camille DesmouliTis and his Wife, ch. 3,
sect. 4-5. — A. F. Bertrand de Moleville, Arnials
of tU F-ench Rev., pt. 2, ch. 18-28 (». 6-7).—
Duchess de Tourzel, Memoirs, v. 2, ch. 8-10. —
Count M. Dumas, Ifemoirs. ch. 4 (i: 1).
A. D. 1792 (August). — Power seized by the
insurrectionary Commune of Paris. — De-
thronement and imprisonment of the King. —
Conflict between the Girondins of the Assem-
bly and the Jacobins of the Commune. — Alarm
at the advance of the Prussians. — The search-
ing of the city for suspects. — Arrest of 3,000.
— "While the Swiss were being murdered, the
Legislative Assembly were informed that a depu-
]310
FRANCE, 1793.
The Commune
of Paris.
FRANCE, 1792.
tation wished to enter. At the head of this
deputation appeared Huguenin, who announced
that a new municipality for Paris had been
formed, and that the old one had resigned. This
was, indeed, the fact. On the departure of
Santerre the commissioners of the sections had
given orders to the legitimate council-general of
the municipality to resign, and the council-gen-
eral, startled by the events which were passing,
consented. The commissioners then called them-
selves the new municipality, and proceeded, as
municipal officers, to send a deputation to the As-
sembly. The deputation almost ordered that the
Assembly should immediately declare the king's
dethronement, and, in the presence of the unfor-
tunate monarch himself, Verguiaud mounted the
tribune, and proposed, on behalf of the Com-
mittee of Twenty-one, that the French people
should be invited to elect a National Convention
to draw up a new Constitution, and that the
chief of the executive power, as he called the
king, should be provisionally suspended from bis
functions until the new Convention had pro-
nounced what measures should be adopted to es-
tablish a new government and the reign of liberty
and equality. The motion was carried, and was
countersigned by one of the king's ministers, De
Joly ; and thus the old monarchy of the Bourbons
in France came to an end. But the Assembly
had not yet completed its work. The ministry
was dismissed, as not having the confidence of
the people, and the Minister of War, d'Aban-
court, was ordered to be tried by the court at
Orleans for treason, In having brought the Swiss
Guards to Paris. The Assembly then prepared
to elect new ministers. Roland, Clavi^re, and
Servan were recalled by acclamation to their
former posts. . . . Danton was elected Minister
of Justice by 333 votes against 60; Gaspard
Monge, the great mathematician, was elected
Minister of Marine, on the nomination of Con-
dorcet; and Lebrun-Tondu, a friend of Brissot
and Dumouriez, and a former abbe, to the de-
partment of Foreign Affairs. At the bidding of
the self-elected municipality of Paris the king
had been suspended, and a new miaistry in-
augurated, and this new municipality, which, it
must be remembered, only represented 28 sec-
tions of Paris, next proceeded to send its decrees
all over France. It was joined on this very day
by some of the extreme men who hoped through
its means to force a republic on France — notably
by Caraille Desmoulins and Dubois-Dubais ; and
on the 11th it was still further reinforced by the
presence of Robespierre, Billaud-Varenne, and
Marat. The Legislative Assembly had become
a mere instrument in the hands of tke Committee
of Twenty-one [a committee specially charged
with watchfulness over the safety of the public,
and which foreshadowed the later famous Com-
mittee of Public Safety]. The majority of the
deputies either left Paris, or, if they belonged to
the right, hid themselves, while those of the left
had to obey every order of their leaders, and left
the transaction of temporary business to the
Committee of Twenty-one. This committee prac-
tically ruled France for forty days, until the
meeting of ihe Convention ; the Assembly always
accepted its propositions and sent the deputies it
nominated on important missions ; its only rival
was the insurrectionary commune, and the inter-
necine warfare between the Jacobins and the Gi-
rondins was foreshadowed in the struggle between
this Commune and the Committee of Twenty-
one. For, while the extreme Jacobins filled the
new Commune of Paris, the Committee of
Twenty-one consisted of Girondins and Feuil-
lants, Brissot was its president, Vergniaud its
reporter, and Gensonne, Condorcet, Lasource,
Guadet, Lacepfide, Lacufie, Pastoret, Muraire,
Dehnas, and Guyton-Morveau were amongst its
members. On the evening of August 10 the As-
sembly decreed that the difference between active
and passive citizens should be abolished, and
that every Frenchman of the age of 25 should
have a vote for the Convention. . . . The last
sight the king might have seen on the night of
August 10 was his palace of the Tuileries in
flames, where, for mischief, fire had been set
to the stables. It spread from building to build-
ing, and the Assembly only took steps to check
it when it threatened to spread to the houses of
the Rue Saint Honore. ... On the day after
this terrible night the king was informed that
rooms had been found for him in the Convent of
the Feuillants ; and to four monastic cells, which
had not been inhabited since the dissolution of
the monastery two years before, the royal family
was led, and round them was placed a strong
guard. Yet they were no more prisoners in the
Convent of the Feuillants than they had been in
the splendid palace of the Tuileries. . . . The
king's nominal authority was annihilated ; but
though the course of events left him a prisoner,
it cannot be said that his influence was dimin-
ished, for he had none left to diminish. It was
to the Girondins, rather than to the king, that
the results of August 10 brought unpleasant sur-
prises. . . . The real power had gone to the
Commune of Paris, and this was very clearly
perceived by Robespierre and by Marat. . . .
Though Marat was received with the loudest
cheers by the insurrectionary commune, Robes-
pierre was the man who really became its leader.
He had long expected the shock which had just
taken place, and had prepared himself for the
crisis. The first requisition was, of course, for a
Convention. This had been granted on the very
first day. The second demand of the Commune
was the safe custody of the king, so that he
should not be able to escape to the army. This
was conceded by the Assembly on August 13,
when they ordered that the king and royal
family should be taken to the old tower of the
Temple, and there strictly guarded under the
superintendence of the insurrectionary comnmne.
Lafayette's sudden flight greatly strengthened the
position of the Commune of Paris. . . . Relieved
from the fear of Lafayette's turning against
them, both the Girondins in the Legislative As-
sembly and the Jacobins in the insurrectionary
commune turned to the pursuit of their own
special plans, and naturally soon came into vio-
lent collision. . . . The Girondins were, above
all things, men of ideas ; the Jacobins, above all
things, practical men : and of the issue of a strug-
gle between them there could be little doubt,
though, at this period the Girondins had the ad-
vantage of the best position. On August 15 the
final blow was struck at the unfortunate Feuil-
lants, or Constitutionalists. The last ministers of
the king, as well Duport du Tertre, Bertrand de
Moleville, and Duportail, were all ordered to be
arrested, with Barnave and Charles de Lameth.
The Assembly followed up this action by estab-
lishing the special tribunal of August 17, which
1311
FRANCE, 1793.
Arn-est of the
Suspects,
FRANCE, 1793.
held its first sitting on the same evening at the
Hotel de Ville. Robespierre was elected presi-
dent, and refused the office. . . . The new tri-
bunal was too slow to satisfy the leaders of the
Commune of Paris, for its first prisoner, Laporte,
the old intendant of the civil list, was not judged
until August 31, and then acquitted. This news
made the Commune lose all patience, and they
determined to urge the Assembly to more ener-
getic measures. Under the pressure of the Com-
mune the Assembly took vigorous measures in-
deed. All the leaders of the emigres were se-
questrated ; all ecclesiastics who would not take
the oath were to be transported to French
Guiana, and it was decreed that the National
Guard should enlist every man, whether an
active or a passive citizen. Much of this vigour
on the part of the Assembly was due, not only to
the pressure of the Commune, but to the rapid
advance of the Prussians. . . . The Assembly
. . . decreed that an army of 30,000 men should
be raised in Paris, and that every man who had
a musket Issued to him should be punished with
death if he did not march at once. . . . On
August 38, on the motion of Danton, now Min-
ister of Justice, a general search for arras and
suspects was ordered. The gates of the city
were closed on August 30; every street was or-
dered to be illuminated; bodies of national
guards entered each house and searched it from
top to bottom. Barely 1,000 muskets were
seized, but more than 3,000 prisoners were taken
and shut up, not only in the prisons, but iu all
the largest convents of Paris, which were turned
into houses of detention. Who should be arrested
as a suspect depended entirely on the municipal
officer who happened to examine the house, and
these men acted under the orders of a special
committee established by the Commune, at the
head of which sat Marat. . . . The residents in
Paris at the time of the Revolution seem to have
been more struck by this house-to-house visita-
tion than by many other events which were far
more horrible." — H. M. Stephens, Hist, of t/ie
FivHch Rei)., V. 2, ch. 4.
Also in: Grace D. Elliot, Journal of My
Life during the French Rev., ch. 4. — Gouverneur
Morris, Xi/is and Corr., ed. by Sparks, v. 3, pp.
303-217. — G. Long, Prance and its Revolutions,
ch. 29.
A. D. 1792 (August). — Lafayette's unsuc-
cessful resistance to the Jacobins. — His with-
drawal from France. — "The news of the 10th
of August was carried to Lafayette by one of his
own officers who happened to be in Paris on
business. He learned that the throne was over-
turned and the Assembly in subjection, but he
could not believe that the cause of the constitu-
tional monarchy was abandoned without a strug-
gle. He announced to the army the events that
had taken place, and conj ured the men to remain
true to the king and constitution. The commis-
sioners despatched by the Commune of Paris to
announce to the different armies the change of
government and to exact oaths of fidelity to it
soon arrived at Sedan within Lafayette's com-
mand. The general had them brought before
the municipality of Sedan and interrogated re-
garding their mission. Convinced, from their
own account, that they were the agents of a fac-
tion which had unlawfully seized upon power,
he ordered their arrest and had them imprisoned.
Lafayette's moral influence in the army and the
country was still so great that the Jacobins knew
that they must either destroy him or win him
over to their side. The latter course was pre-
ferred. . . . The imprisoned commissioners, there-
fore, requested a private conference with Lafay-
ette, and offered him, on the part of their superiors
in Paris, whatever executive power he desired in
the new government. It is needless to say that
Lafayette, whose sole aim was to establish liberty
in his country, refused to entertain the idea of
associating himself with the despotism of the
mob. He caused his own soldiers to renew their
oath of fidelity to the king, and communicated
with Luckner on the situation. . . . Meanwhile,
emissaries from the Commune were sent to Sedan
to influence the soldiers by bribes and threats to
renounce their loyalty to their commander. All
the other armies and provinces to which com-
missioners had been sent had received them and
taken the new oaths. Lafayette found himself
alone in his resistance. His attitude acquired,
every day, more the appearance of rebellion
against authorities recognized by the rest of
France. New commissioners arrived, bringing
with them his dismissal from command. The
army was wavering between attachment to their
general and obedience to government. On the
19th of August, the Jacobins, seeing that they
could not win him over, caused the Assembly to
declare him a traitor. Lafayette had now to
take an immediate resolution. France had de-
clared for the Paris Commune. The constitu-
tional monarchy was irretrievably destroyed.
For the general to dispute with his appointed
successor the command of the army was to pro-
voke further disorders in a cause that had ceased
to be that of the nation and become only his own.
Three possible courses remained open to him, —
to accept the Jacobin overtures and become a
part of their bloody despotism ; to continue his
resistance and give his head to the guillotine ; to
leave the country. He resolved to seek an asylum
in a neutral territory with the hope, as he himself
somewhat naively expressed it, ' some day to be
again of service to liberty and to France. ' La-
fayette made every preparation for the safety of
his troops, placing them under the orders of
Luckner until the arrival of Dumouriez, the new
general in command. He publicly acknowledged
responsibility for the arrest of the commissioners
and the defiance of Sedan to the Commune, in
order that the municipal officers who had sup-
ported him might escape punishment. He in-
cluded in his party his staflE-officers, whose as-
sociation with him would have subjected them
to the fury of the Commune, and some others
who had also been declared traitors on account
of obedience to his orders. He then made his
way to Bouillon, on the extreme frontier. There,
dismissing the escort, and sending back final
orders for the security of the army, he rode with
his companions into a foreign land, " — B. Tucker-
man, Life of Lafayette, v. 3, ch. 3.
A. D. 1792 (August — September). — The Sep-
tember Massacres in the Paris prisons. — The
house-to-house search for suspects was carried on
during the night of August 39 and the following
day. "The next morning, at daybreak, the
Mairie, the sections, the ancient prisons of Paris,
and the convents that had been converted into
prisons, were crowded with prisoners. They
were summarily interrogated, and half of them,
the victims of error or precipitation, were set at
1312
FRANCE, 1792.
The September Massacre
in the Prisons.
FRANCE, 1792.
liberty, or claimed by their sections. The re-
mainder were distributed in the prisons of the
Abbaye Saint Germain, the Conciergerie, the
CUatelet, La Force, the Luxembourg, and the
ancient monasteries of the Bernardins, Saint
Firmin, and the Carmes ; BicStre and the Salpe-
trifire also opened their gates to receive fresh
inmates. The three days that followed this
night were employed by the commissaries in
making a selection of the prisoners. Already
their death was projected. . . . ' We must purge
the prisons, and leave no traitors behind us when
we hasten to the frontiers.' Such was the cry
put into the mouth of the people by Marat and
Danton. Such was the attitude of Danton on
the brink of these crimes. As for the part of
Robespierre, it was the same as in all these
crises — on the debate concerning war, on the
20th of June, and on the 10th of August. He
did not act, he blamed ; but he left the event to
itself, and when once accomplished he accepted
it as a progressive step of the Revolution. . . .
On Sunday, the 2d of September, at three o'clock
in the afternoon, the signal for the massacre was
given by one of those accidents that seem so per-
fectly the effect of chance. Five coaches, each
containing six priests, started from the Hotel-de-
Ville to the prison of the Abbaye . . . escorted
by weak detachments of Avignonnais and Mar-
seillais, armed with pikes and sabers. . . .
Groups of men, women and children insulted
them as they passed, and their escort joined in
the invective threats and outrages of the popu-
lace. . . . The emeute, increasing in number at
every step across the Rue Dauphine, was met by
another mob, that blocked up the Carrefour
Bussy, where municipal officers received enrol-
ments in the open air. The carriages stopped ;
and a man, forcing his way through the escort,
sprung on the step of the first carriage, plunged
his saber twice into the body of one of the
priests, and displayed it reeking with blood : the
people uttered a cry of horror. ' This frightens
you, cowarcjs ! ' said the assassin, with a smile of
disdain ; ' You must accustom yourselves to look
on death.' "With these [words] he again plunged
his saber into the carriage and continued to strike.
. . . The coaches slowly moved on, and the
assassin, passing from one to the other, and cling-
ing with one hand to the door, stabbed at random
at all he could reach ; while the assassins of
Avignon, who formed part of their escort,
plunged their bayonets into the interior ; and the
pikes, pointed against the windows, prevented any
of the priests from leaping into the street. The
long line of carriages moving slowly on, and
leaving a bloody trace behind them, the despair-
ing cries and gestures of the priests, the ferocious
shouts of their butchers, the yells of applause of
the populace, announced from a distance their
arrival to the prisoners of the Abbaye. The
cortSge stopped at the door of the prison, and
the soldiers of the escort dragged out by the
feet eight dead bodies. The priests who had es-
caped, or who were only wounded, preoipitated
themselves into the prison ; foHr of them were
seized and massacred on the threshold. . . . The
prisoners . . . cooped up in the Abbaye heard
this prelude to murder at their gates. . . . The
internal wickets were closed on them, and they
received orders to return to their chambers, as if
to answer the muster-roll. A fearful spectacle
was visible in the outer court: the last wicket
opening into it had been transformed into a tri-
bunal ; and around a large table — covered with
papers, writing materials, the registers of the
prisons, glasses, bottles, pistols, sabers, and pipes
— were seated twelve judges, whose gloomy
features and athletic proportions stamped them
men of toil, debauch or blood. Their attire was
that of the laboring classes. . . . Two or three
of them attracted attention by the whiteness of
their hands and the elegance of their shape ; and
that betrayed the presence of men of intellect,
purposely mingled with these men of action to
guide them. A man in a gray coat, a saber at
his side, pen in his hand, and whose inflexible
features seemed as though they were petrified,
was seated at the center of the table, and pre-
sided over the tribunal. This was the Huissier
Maillard, the idol of the mobs of the Faubourg
Saint Marceau ... an actor in the days of Oc-
tober, the 30th of June, and the 10th of August.
... He had just returned from the Carmes,
where he had organized the massacre. It was
not chance that had brought him to the Abbaye
at the precise moment of the arrival of the
prisoners, and with the prison registers in his
hand. He had received, the previous evening,
the secret orders of Marat, through the members
of the Comite de Surveillance. Danton had sent
for the registers to the prison, and gone through
them ; and Maillard was shown those he was to
acquit and condemn. If the prisoner was ac-
quitted, Maillard said, ' Let this gentleman be set
at liberty ' ; if condemned, a voice said, ' A la
Force.' At these words the outer door opened,
and the prisoner fell dead as he crossed the
threshold. The massacre commenced with the
Swiss, of whom there were 150 at the Abbaye,
officers and soldiers. . . . They fell, one after
another, like sheep in a slaughter-house. The
tumbrils were not sufficient to carry away the
corpses, and they were piled up on each side of
the court to make room for the rest to die : their
commander, Major Reding, was the last to fall.
. . . After the Swiss, the king's guards, impris-
oned in the Abbaye, were judged en masse. . . .
Their massacre lasted a long time, for the people,
excited by what they had drank — brandy min-
gled with gun-powder — and intoxicated by the
sight of blood, prolonged their tortures. . . .
The whole night was scarcely enough to slay
and strip them." — A. de Lamartine, Hist, of the
Girondists, bk. 25(». 2). — " To moral intoxication
is added physical intoxication, wine in profusion,
bumpers at every pause, revelry over corpses.
. . . They dance . . . and sing the 'carmag-
nole ' ; they arouse the people of the quarter ' to
amuse them,' and that they may have their share
of 'the fine fSte.' -Benches are arranged for 'gen-
tlemen ' and others for ' ladies ' : the latter, with
greater curiosity, are additionally anxious to con-
template at their ease ' the aristocrats ' already
slain ; consequently, lights are required, and one
is placed on the breast of each corpse. Mean-
while, slaughter continues, and is carried to per-
fection. A butcher at the Abbaye complains
that ' the aristocrats die too quick, and that those
only who strike first have the pleasure of it ' :
henceforth they are to be struck with the backs
of the swords only, and made to run between
two rows of their butchers, like soldiers formerly
running a gauntlet. . . . AH the unfettered in-
stincts that live in the lowest depths of the heart
start from the human abyss at once, not alone the
1313
FRANCE, 1792
77(6 National
Convention.
FRANCE, 1792.
heinous instincts with their fangs, but likewise
the foulest with their slaver, whUe both packs
fall furiously on women whose noble or infamous
repute brings them before the world ; on Madame
de Lamballe, the Queen's friend; on Madame
Desrues, widow of the famous prisoner ; on the
flower-girl of the Palais-Royal, who, two years
before, had mutilated her lover, a French guards-
man, in a lit of jealousy. Ferocity here is asso-
ciated with lubricity to add profanation to tor-
ture, while life is attacked through attacks on
modesty. In Madame de Lamballe, killed too
quickly, the libidinous butchers could only out-
rage a corpse, but for the widow, and especially
the flower-girl, they imagine the same as a Nero
the fire-circle of the Iroquois. ... At La Force,
Madame de Lamballe is cut to pieces. I cannot
transcribe what Chariot, the hair-dresser, did
with her head. I merely state that another
wretch, in the Rue Saint-Antoine, bore off her
heart and ' ate it. ' They kill and they drink, and
drink and kill again. ... As the prisons are to
be cleaned out, it is as well to clean them all out,
and do it at once. After the Swiss, priests, the
aristocrats, and the ' white-skin gentlemen, ' there
remain convicts and those confined through the
ordinary charmels of justice, robbers, assassins,
and those sentenced to the galleys in the Con-
ciergerie, in the Ch^telet, and in the Tour St.
Bernard, with branded women, vagabonds, old
beggars and boys confined in Bic§tre and the
Salpetri^re. They are good for nothing, cost
something to feed, and, probably, cherish evil
designs. . . . This time, as the job is more foul,
the broom is wielded by fouler hands. ... At
the SalpetriSre, ' all the bullies of Paris, former
spies, . . . libertines, the rascals of France and
all Europe, prepare beforehand for the operation,'
and rape alternates with massacre. ... At
Bicbtre, however, it is crude butchery, the car-
nivorous instinct alone satisfying itself. Among
other prisoners are 43 youths of the lowest class,
from 17 to 19 years of age, placed there for cor-
rection by their parents, or by those to whom
they are bound. . . . These the band falls on,
beating them to death with clubs, . . . There
are six days and five nights of uninterrupted
butchery, 171 murders at the Abbaye, 169 at La
Force, 223 at the Chatelet, 328 at the Concierg-
erie, 73 at the Tour-Saint-Bernard, 120 at the
Carmelites, 79 at Saint-Firmin, 170 at BicStre, 35
at the Salpetrifere ; among the dead, 250 priests,
8 bishops or archbishops, general officers, magis-
trates, one former minister, one royal princess,
belonging to the best names in France, and, on
the other side, one negro, several low class
women, young scape-graces, convicts, and poor
old men. . . . Fournier, Lazowski, and Becard,
the chiefs of robbers and assassins, return from
Orleans with 1,500 cut-throats. On the way they
kill M, de Brissac, M. de Lessart, and 42 others
accused of 'lise-nation,' whom they arrested
from their judges' hands, and then, by way of
surplus, 'following the example of Paris,' 21
prisoners taken from the Versailles prisons. At
Paris the Minister of Justice thanks them, the
Commune congratulates them, and the sections
feast them and embrace them. . . . All the jour-
nals approve, palliate, or keep silent; nobody
dares ofTer resistance. Property as well as lives
belong to whoever wants to take them. . . .
Like a man struck on the head with a mallet,
Paris, felled to the ground, lets things go; the
authors of the massacre have fully attained their
ends. The faction has fast hold of power, and
wUl maintain its hold. Neither in the Legisla-
tive Assembly nor in the Convention will the
aims of the Girondists be successful against its
tenacious usurpation. . . . The Jacobins, through
sudden terror, have maintained their illegal
authority ; through a prolongation of terror they
are going to establish their legal authority. A
forced suffrage is going to put them iu oflice at
the Hotel-de-Ville, in the tribunals, in the Na-
tional Guard, in the sections, and in the various
administrations." — H. A. Taine, Tlie French Rev.,
bk. 4, ch. 9 (!). 2).
Also m : A. Thiers, Hist, of the French Rev.
(Am.'ed.), v. 1, spp. 350-368. — Sergent Marceau,
Reminiscences of a Regicide, ch. 9. — A. Dobson,
The Princess de Lamballe {"Four Frenchwomen,"
ch. 3). — Th^ Reign of Ten-or : A collection of Au-
thentic Narratives, v. 2. — J. B. Clery, Journal of
Occurrences at the Temple. — Despatches of Earl
Ooicer, pp. 225-229.
A. D. 1792 (September — November). — Meet-
ing of the National Convention. — Abolition
of royalty. — Proclamation of the Republic. —
Adoption of the Era of the Republic. — Estab-
lishment of absolute equality. — The losing
struggle of the Girondists with the Jacobins
of the Mountain. — " It was in the midst of these
horrors [of the September massacres] that the
Legislative Assembly approached its termination.
. . . The National Convention began [Septem-
ber 22] under darker auspices. . . . The great
and inert mass of the people were disposed, as in
all commotions, to range themselves on the vic-
torious side. The sections of Paris, under the
influence of Robespierre and Marat, returned the
most revolutionary deputies ; those of most other
towns followed their example. The Jacobins,
with their affiliated clubs, on this occasion ex-
ercised an overwhelming influence over all
France. ... At Paris, where the elections took
place on the 2d September, amidst all the excite-
ment and horrors of the massacres in the prisons,
the violent leaders of the municipality, who had
organized the revolt of August 10th, exercised
an irresistible sway over the citizens. Robes-
pierre and Danton were the first named, amidst
unanimous shouts of applause; after them Ca-
mille Desmoulins, Tallien, Osselin, Freron, An-
acharsis Clootz, Fabre d'Eglantine, David, the
celebrated painter, CoUot d'Herbois, Billaud
Vareunes, Legendre, Panis, Sergent, almost all
implicated in the massacres in ,the prisons, were
also chosen. To these was added the Duke of
Orleans, who had abdicated his titles, and was
called Philippe figalite. . . . The most con-
servative part of the new Assembly were the
Girondists who had overturned the throne. From
the first opening of the Convention, the Giron-
dists occupied the right, and the Jacobins the
seats on the summit of the left ; whence their
designation of ' The Mountain ' was derived.
The former had the majority of votes, the greater
part of the departments having returned men
of comparatively moderate principles. But the
latter possessed a great advantage, in having
on their side all the members of the city of
Paris, who ruled the mob, . . . and in being
supported by the municipality, which had al-
ready grown into a ruling power in the state,
and had become the great centre of the demo-
cratic party. A neutral body, composed of those
1314
FRANCE, 1793.
Girondists
and Jacobins.
FRANCE, 1792.
members whose principles were not yet declared,
was called the Plain, or, Marais; it ranged it-
self with the Girondists, until terror compelled
its members to coalesce with the victorious side.
. . . The two rival parties mutually indulged in
recriminations, in order to influence the public
mind. The Jacobins incessantly reproached the
Girondists with desiring to dissolve the Republic ;
to establish three-and-twenty separate democratic
states, held together, like the American pi'ov-
inces, by a mere federal union. . . . Nothing
more was requisite to render them in the highest
degree unpopular iu Paris, the very existence of
which depended on its remaining, through all
the phases of government, the seat of the ruling
power. The Girondists retorted upon their ad-
versaries charges better founded, but not so
likely to inflame the populace. They reproached
them with endeavouring to establish in the
municipality of Paris a power superior to the
legislature of all France, with overawing the
deliberations of the Convention by menacing
petitions, or the open display of brute force ; and
secretly preparing for their favourite leaders. Ban-
ton, Robespierre, and Marat, a triumvirate of
po^ver, which would speedily e.xtinguish all the
freedom which had been acquired. The first
part of the accusation was well-founded even
then; of the last, time soon afforded an ample
conrtrmation. The Convention met at first in one
of the halls of the Tuileries, but immediately
adjourned to the Salle du Menage, where its sub-
sequent sittings were held. Its first step was,
on the motion of the Abbe Gregoire, and amidst
unanimous transports, to declare Royalty abol-
ished in France, and to proclaim a republic;
and by another decree it was ordered, that the
old calendar taken from the year of Christ's birth
should be abandoned, and that all public acts
should be dated from the first year of the French
republic. This era began on "the 22d September
1792. [See, also, below: A. D. 1793 (October).]
... A still more democratic constitution thau
that framed by the Constituent and Legislative
Assemblies was at the same time established.
All the requisites for election to any oSice what-
ever were, on the motion of the Duke of Orleans,
abolished. It was no longer necessary to select
judges from legal meu, nor magistrates from the
class of proprietors. All persons, in whatever
rank, were declared eligible to every situation ;
and the right of voting in the primary assemblies
was conferred on every man above the age of 21
years. Absolute equality, iu its literal sense,
was universally established. Universal suffrage
was the basis on which government rested."
The leaders of the Girondists soon opened attacks
upon Robespierre and Marat, accusing the for-
mer of aspiring to a dictatorship, and also hold-
ing him responsible, with Marat and Danton, for
the September massacres ; but Lou vet and others
who made the attack were feebly supported by
their party. Lou vet "repeatedly appealed to
Petion, Vergniaud, and the other leaders, to sup-
port his statements; but they had not the firm-
ness boldly to state the truth. Had they testified
a fourth part of what they knew, the accusation
must have been instantly voted, and the tyrant
crushed at once. As it was, Robespierre, fear-
ful of its effects, demanded eight days to pre-
pare for his defence. In the interval, the whole
machinery of terror was put in force. The
Jacobins thundered out accusations against the
intrepid accuser, and all the leaders of the Moun-
tain were indefatigable iu their efforts to strike
fear into their opponents. . . . By degrees the
impression cooled, fear resumed its sway, and
the accused mounted the tribune at the end of
the week with the air of a victor. ... It was
now evident that the Girondists were no match
for their terrible adversaries. The men of action
ou their side, Lou vet, Barbaroux, and Lanjuinais,
in vain strove to rouse them to the necessity of
vigorous measures in contending with such ene-
mies. Their constant reply was, that they would
not be the first to commence the shedding of
blood. Their whole vigour manifested itself iu
declamation, their whole wisdom in abstract dis-
cussion. They had now become humane in in-
tention, and moderate in counsel, though they
were far from having been so iu the earlier stages
of the Revolution. . . . They were too honour-
able to believe in the wickedness of their op-
ponents, too scrupulous to adopt the measures
requisite to disarm, too destitute of moral cour-
age to be able to crush them. . . . The Jacobins
. . . while they were daily strengthening and
increasing the armed force of the sections at the
command of the municipality, . . . strenuously
resisted the slightest approach towards the es-
tablishment of any guard or civic force for the
defence of the Convention. . . . Aware of their
weakness from this cause, the Girondists brought
forward a proposal for an armed guard for the
Convention. The populace was immediately put
iu motion," and the overawed Convention aban-
doned the measure. "In the midst of these
vehement passions, laws still more stringent and
sanguinary were passed against the priests and
emigrants. . . . First, it was decreed that every
Frenchman taken with arms in his hands against
France should be punished with death ; and soon
after, that ' the French emigrants are forever
banished from the territory of France, and those
who return shall be punished with death.' A
third decree directed that all their property,
movable and immovable, should be confiscated
to the service of the state. These decrees were
rigidly executed : and though almost unnoticed
amidst the bloody deeds which at the same period
stained the Revolution, ultimately produced the
most lasting and irremediable effects. At length
the prostration of the Assembly before the
armed sections of Paris had become so excessive,
that Buzot and Barbaroux, the most intrepid of
the Girondists, brought forward two measures
which, if they could have been carried, would
have emancipated the legislatiu'e from this odious
thraldom. Buzot proposed to establish a guard,
specially for the protection of the Convention,
drawn from young men chosen from the different
departments. Barbaroux at the same time
brought forward four decrees. . . . By the first,
the capital was to cease to be the seat of the
legislature, when it lost its claim to their presence
by failing to protect them from insult. By the
second, the troops of the Federes and the national
cavalry were to be charged, along with the armed
sections, with the protection of the legislature.
By the third, the Convention was to constitute
itself into a court of justice, for the trial of all
conspirators against its authority. By the fourth,
the Convention suspended the municipality of
Paris. . . . The Jacobins skilfully availed them-
selves of these impotent manifestations of dis-
trust, to give additional currency to the report
1315
FRANCE, 1792.
The Revolution
becoming Aggressive.
FRANCE, 1792.
that the Girondists intended to transport the seat
of government to the southern provinces. This
rumour rapidly gained ground with the popu-
lace, and augmented their dislike at the ministry.
. . . All these preliminary struggles were essays
of strength by the two parties, prior to the grand
question which was now destined to attract the
eyes of Europe and the world. This was the
trial of Louis XVI." — Sir A. Alison, Hist, of
JSurope, ch. 8 (». 3).
Also en : G. H. Lewes, Life of Robespierre, ch.
16. — A. de Lamartine, Hist, of the Girondists, hk.
29-31. — C. D. Yonge, Hist, of France under the
Bourbons, ch. 43 (». 4). — J. Moore, Journal in
France, 1792, r. 2.
A. D. 1792 (September — December). — The
wrar on the northern frontier. — Battle of
Valmy. — Retreat of the invading army. — Cus-
tine in Germany and Dumouriez in the Nether-
lands. — Annexation of Savoy and Nice. — The
Decree of December 15. — Proclamation of a
republican crusade. — "The defence of France
rested on General Dumouriez. . . . Happily for
France the slow advance of the Prussian general
permitted Dumouriez to occupy the difficult
country of the Argonnes, where, while waiting for
his reinforcements, he was able for some time to
hold the invaders in check. At length Bruns-
wick made his way past the defile which Du-
mouriez had chosen for his first line of defence ;
but it was only to find the French posted in such
strength on his flank that any further advance
would imperil his own army. If the advance
was to be continued, Dumouriez must be dis-
lodged. Accordingly, on the 20th of September,
Brunswick, facing half-round from his line of
march, directed his artillery against the hills of
Valmy, where Kellermann and the French left
were encamped. The cannonade continued for
some hours, but it was followed by no general
attack. Already, before a blow had been struck,
the German forces were wasting away with dis-
ease. . . . The King of Prussia began to listen
to the proposals of peace which were sent to him
by Dumouriez. A week spent in negotiations
served only to strengthen the French and to
aggravate the scarcity and sickness within the
German camp. Dissensions broke out between
the Prussian and Austrian commanders ; a retreat
was ordered ; and, to the astonishment of Europe,
the veteran forces of Brunswick fell back before
the mutinous soldiery and unknown generals of
the Revolution. ... In the meantime the Legis-
lative Assembly had decreed its own dissolution
. . . and had ordered the election of representa-
tives to frame a constitution for France. . . . The
Girondius, who had been the party of extremes
in the Legislative Assembly, were the party of
moderation and order in the Convention. . . .
Monarchy was abolished, and France declared
a Republic (Sept. 21). Office continued in the
hands of the Gironde ; but the vehement, uncom-
promising spirit of their rivals, the so-called
party of the Mountain, quickly made itself felt
in all the relations of France to foreign powers.
The intention of conquest might stiU be as sin-
cerely disavowed as it had been five months be-
fore; but were the converts to liberty to be
denied the right of uniting themselves to the
French people by their own free will ? . . . The
scruples which had lately condemned all annex-
ation of territory vanished in that orgy of pa-
triotism which followed the expulsion of the in
vader and the discovery that the Revolution was
alreadj' a power in other lands than France. . . .
Along the entire frontier, from Dunkirk to the
Maritime Alps, France nowhere touched a strong,
united, and independent people; and along this
entire frontier, except in the country opposite
Alsace, the armed proselytism of the French
Revolution proved a greater force than the influ-
ences on which the existing order of things de-
pended. In the Low Countries, in the Principali-
ties of the Rhine, in Switzerland, in Savoy, in
Piedmont itself, the doctrines of the Revolution
were welcomed by a more or less numerous class,
and the armies of France appeared for a moment
as the missionaries of liberty and right rather than
as an invading enemy. No sooner had Bruns-
wick been brought to a stand by Dumouriez at
Valmy than a French division under Custine
crossed the Alsatian frontier and advanced upon
Spires, where Brunswick had left large stores of
war. The garrison was defeated in an encoun-
ter outside the town ; Spires and Worms surren-
dered to Custine. In the neighbouring fortress of
Mainz, the key to western Germany, Custine's
advance was watched with anxious satisfaction by
a republican party among the inhabitants, from
whom the French general learnt that he had only
to appear before the city to become its master.
... At the news of the capture of Spires, the
Archbishop retired into the interior of Germany,
leaving the administration to a board of ecclesias-
tics and officials, who published a manifesto call-
ing upon their ' beloved brethren ' the citizens to
defend themselves to the last extremity, and then
followed their master's example. A council of
war declared the city to be untenable ; and, be-
fore Custine had brought up a single siege-gun,
the garrison capitulated, and the French were
welcomed into Mainz by the partisans of the
Republic (Oct. 20). . . . Although the mass of
the inhabitants held aloof, a Republic was finally
proclaimed, and incorporated with the Republic
of France. The success of Custine's raid into
Germany did not divert the Convention from the
design of attacking Austria in the Netherlands,
which Dumouriez had from the first pressed
upon the Government. It was not three years
since the Netherlands had been in full revolt
against the Emperor Joseph. . . . Thus the
ground was everywhere prepared for a French
occupation. Dumouriez crossed the frontier.
The border fortresses no longer existed : and
after a single battle won by the French at Je-
mappes on the 6th November, the Austrians, find-
ing the population universally hostile, aban-
doned the Netherlands without a struggle. The
victory of Jemappes, the first pitched battle won
by the Republic, excited an outburst of revolu-
tionary fervour in the Convention which deeply
affected the relations of France to Great Britain,
hitherto a neutral spectator of the war. A de-
cree was passed for the publication of a mani-
festo in all languages, declaring that the French
nation offered its alUance to all peoples who
wished to recover their freedom, and charging
the generals of the Republic to give their pro-
tection to all persons who had suffered or might
suffer in the cause of liberty. (Nov. 19.) A week
later Savoy and Nice were annexed to France,
the population of Savoy having almost unani-
mously declared in favour of France on the out-
break of war between France and Sardinia, On
the 15th December the Convention proclaimed
1316
FRANCE, 1792.
Charges against
the King.
FRANCE, 1792.
that a system of social and political revolution
was henceforth to accompany every movement
of its armies on foreign soil. ' In every country
that shall he occupied by the armies of the French
Republic' — such was the substance of the De-
cree of December 15th — ' the generals shall an-
nounce the abolition of all existing authorities ;
of nobility, of serfage, of every feudal right and
every monopoly; they shall proclaim the sov-
ereignty of the people. . . . The French nation
wiU treat as enemies any people which, refusing
liberty and equality, desires to preserve its prince
and privileged castes, or to make any accommo-
dation with them. ' This singular announcement
of a new crusade caused the Government of
Great Britain to arm." — C. A. Fyfle, Hist, of
Modern Europe, v. 1, ch. 2.
Also in; F. C. Schlosser, Hist, of the 18th
Century, v. 6, div. 2, ch. 2, sect. 1. — E. Baines,
Hist, of the Wars of the French Rev., hk. 1, ch. 3-5
(«. 1).
A.D. 1792 (November— December).— Charges
against the King. — Jacobin clamor for his con-
demnation. — The contest in Convention. —
"There were, without a doubt, in this conjunc-
ture, a great number of Mountaineers who. on
this occasion, acted with the greatest sincerity,
and only as republicans, in whose eyes Louis
XVI. appeared guilty with respect to the revo-
lution ; and a dethroned king was dangerous to
a young democracy. But this party would have
been more clement, had it not had to ruiu the
Gironde at the same time with Louis XVI. . . .
Party motives and popular animosities combined
against this unfortunate prince. Those who,
two months before, would have repelled the idea
of exposing him to any other punishment than
that of dethronement, were stupefied; so quickly
does man lose in moments of crisis the right to de-
fend his opinions I . . . Afterthe 10th of August,
there were found in the offices of the civil list
documents which proved the secret correspon-
dence of Louis XVI. with the discontented
princes, with the emigration, and with Europe.
In a report, drawn up at the command of the
legislative assembly, he was accused of intending
to betray the state and overthrow the revolu-
tion. He was accused of having written, on the
16th April, 1791, to the bishop of Clermont, that
if he regained his power he would restore the
former government, and the clergy to the state
in which they previously were ; of having after-
wards proposed war, merely to hasten the ap-
proach of his deliverers ; ... of having been on
terms with his brothers, whom his public meas-
ures had discountenanced ; and, lastly, of having
constantly opposed the revolution. Fresh docu-
ments were soon brought forward in support of
this accusation. In the Tuileries, behind a panel
in the wainscot, there was a hole wrought in the
wall, and closed by an iron door. This secret
closet was pointed out by the minister, Roland,
and there were discovered proofs of all the con-
spiracies and intrigues of the court against the
revolution; projects with the popular leaders to
strengthen the constitutional power of the king,
to restore the ancient regime and the aristocrats ;
the manoeuvres of Talon, the arrangements with
Jllrabeau, the propositions accepted by Bouille,
under the constituent assembly, and some new
plots under the legislative assembly. This dis-
covery increased the exasperation against Louis
XVI. Mirabeau's bust was broken by the Jaco-
bins, and the convention covered the one which
stood in the hall where it held its sittings. For
some time there had been a question in the as-
sembly as to the trial of this prince, who, having
been dethroned, could no longer be proceeded
against. There was no tribunal empowered to
pronounce his sentence, no punishment which
could be inflicted on him: accordingly, they
plunged into false interpretations of the inviola-
bility granted to Louis XVI., in order to con-
demn him legally. . . . The committee of legis-
lation, commissioned to draw up a report on the
question as to whether Louis XVI. could be
tried, and whether he could be tried by the con-
vention, decided in the affirmative. . . . The dis-
cussion commenced on the 13tli of November, six
days after the report of the committee. . . . This
violent party [the Mountain], who wished to sub-
stitute a coup d'etat for a sentence, to follow no
law, no form, but to strike Louis XVI. like a
conquered prisoner, by making hostilities even
survive victory, had but a very feeble majority
in the convention ; but without, it was strongly
supported by the Jacobins and the commune.
Notwithstanding the terror which it already in-
spired, its murderous suggestions were repelled
by the convention ; and the partisans of inviola-
bility, in their turn, courageously asserted reasons
of public interest at the same time as rules of
justice and humanitj'. They maintained that the
same men could not be judges and legislators,
tlie jury and the accusers. ... In a political
view, they showed the consequences of the king's
condemnation, as it would afliect the anarchical
party of the kingdom, rendering it still more in-
solent; and with regard to Europe, whose still
neutral powers it would induce to join the coali-
tion against the republic. But Robespierre, who
during this long debate displayed a daring and
perseverance that presaged his power, appeared
at the tribune to support Saint Just, to reproach
the convention with involving in doubt what the
insurrection had decided, and with restoring, by
sympathy and the publicity of a defence, the
fallen royalist party. 'The assembly,' said Ro-
bespierre, ' has involuntarily been led far away
from the real question. Here we have nothing
to do with trial : Louis Is not an accused man ;
you are not judges, you are, and can only be
statesmen. You have no sentence to pronounce
for or against a man, but you are called on to
adopt a measure of public safety ; to perform an
act of national precaution. A dethroned king is
only fit for two purposes, to disturb the tran-
quillity of the state, and shake its freedom, or to
strengthen one or the other of them. Louis was
king ; the republic is founded ; the famous ques-
tion you are discussing is decided in these few
words. Louis cannot be tried ; he is already
tried, he is condemned, or the republic is not ab-
solved.' He required that the convention should
declare Louis XVI. a traitor towards the French,
criminal towards humanity, and sentence him at
once to death, by virtue of the insurrection. The
Mountaineers, by these extreme propositions, by
the popularity they attained without, rendered
condemnation in a measure inevitable. By gain-
ing an extraordinary advance on the other parties,
it obliged them to follow it, though at a distance.
The majority of the convention, composed in a
large part of Girondists, who dared not pronounce
Louis XVI. inviolable, and of the Plain, decided,
on Petion's proposition, against the opinion of
1317
FRANCE, 1792.
The King's Trial.
FRANCE, 1792-1793.
the fanatical Mountaineers and against that of
the partisans of inviolabilitT, that Louis XVI.
should be tried by the convention. Robert Lindet
then made, in the name of the commission of the
twenty-one, his report respecting Louis XVI.
The arraignment, setting forth the offences im-
puted to him, was drawn up, and the conven-
tion summoned the prisoner to its bar." — F. A.
Mignet, Bist. of the FreneJi Bev., ch. 6.
Also in : G. H. Lewes, Life of Robespierre, ch.
17. — A. de Lamartlne, Hist, of the Qiroiidis ts, bk .
33-33 (r. 2).— A. de Beauchesne, Lovis XVU.:
His Life, his Suffering, his Death, bk. 9.
A. D. 1792-1793 (December — January). — The
King's Trial and death sentence. — "On De-
cember 11, the ill-fated monarch, taken from his
prison to his former palace, appeared at the bar
of his republican judges, was received in silence
and with covered heads, and answered interroga-
tories addressed to him as ' Louis Capet,' though
with an air of deference. His passive constancy
touched many hearts. ... On the 26th the ad-
vocates of the King made an eloquent defence
for their discrowned client, and Louis added, in
a few simple words, that the 'blood of the 10th
of August should not be laid to his charge.' The
debates in the Assembly now began, and it soon
became evident that the Jacobin faction were
making the question the means to further their
objects, and to hold up their opponents to popu-
lar hatred. They clamored for immediate ven-
geance on the tyrant, declared that the Republic
could not be safe untU the Court was smitten on
its head, and a great example had been given to
Europe, and denounced as reactionary and as
concealed royalists all who resisted the demands
of patriotism. These ferocious invectives were
aided by the expedients so often employed with
success, and the capital and its mobs were ar-
rayed to intimidate any deputies who hesitated
in the ' cause of the Nation. ' The Moderates, on
the other hand, were divided in mind ; a majority,
perhaps, condemning the King, but also wishing
to spare his life : and the Gironde leaders, halt-
ing between their convictions, their feelings, their
desires, and their fears, shrank from a courageous
and resolute course. The result was such as
usually follows when energy and will encounter
indecision. On January 14 [the 15th, according
to Thiers and others], 1793, the Convention de-
clared Louis XVI. guilty, and on the following
day [the speaking and voting lasted through
the night of the 16th and the day after it] sen-
tence of immediate death was pronounced by a
majority of one [but the miuorit)', in this view,
included 26 votes that were cast for death but
in favor of a postponement of the penalty, on
grounds of political expediency], proposals for a
respite and an appeal to the people having been
rejected at the critical moment. The votes had
been taken after a solemn call of the deputies at
a sitting protracted for days; and the spectacle
of the vast dim hall, of the shadowy figures of
the awestruck judges meting out the fate of
their former Sovereign, and tier upon tier of half-
seen faces, looking, as in a theatre, on the drama
below, and breaking out into discordant clamor,
made a fearful impression on many eye-witnesses.
One vote excited a sensation of disgust even
among the most ruthless chiefs of the Mountain,
though it was remarked that many of the aban-
doned women who crowded the galleries shrieked
approbation. The Duke of Orleans, whose Jaco-
bin professions had caused him to be returned
for Paris, with a voice in which effrontery min-
gled with terror, pronounced for the immediate
execution of his kinsman. The minister of jus-
tice — Danton had resigned — announced on the
20th the sentence to the King. The captive re-
ceived the message calmly, asked for three days
to get ready to die (a request, however, at once
refused), and prayed that he might see his family
and have a confessor." — W. O'C. Morris, The
li^ench Sev. , and First Empire, ch. 5.
Also in: A. Thiers, Hist, of the Fi-ench Rev.
{Am. ed.), v.2,pp. 44-72. — A. F.'Bertrand deMole-
ville, Private Memoirs, relative to the last year of
Lotiia XVI., ch. 39-40.— J. B. Clery, Journal of
Occurrences at the Temple.
A. D. 1792-1793 (December— February).—
Determinatioa to incorporate the Austrian
Netherlands and to attack Holland. — Pitt's
unavailing struggle for peace. — England
driven to arras. — War with the Maritime
Powers declared by the French. — "Since the
beginning of December, the French government
had contracted their far-reaching schemes within
definite limits. They were compelled to give up
the hope of revolutionizing the German Empire
and establishing a Republic in the British Is-
lands ; but they were all the more determined in
the resolve to subject the countries which had
hitherto been occupied in the name of freedom,
to the rule of France. This object was more es-
pecially pursued in Belgium by Danton and
three other deputies, who were sent as Commis-
sioners of the Convention to that country on the
30th of November. They were directed to en-
quire into the condition of the Provinces, and to
consider Dumouriez's complaints against Pache
[the Minister at War] and the Committee formed
to purchase supplies for the army." Danton be-
came resolute in the determination to incorporate
Belgium and pressed the project inexorably.
' ' It was a matter of course that England
would interpose both by word and deed directly
France prepared to take possession of Belgium.
. . . England had guaranteed the possession of
Belgium to the Emperor in 1790 — and the closing
of the Scheldt to the Dutch, and its political
position in Holland to the House of Orange in
1788. Under an imperative sense of her own
interests, she had struggled to prevent the French
from gaining a footing in Antwerp and Ostend.
Prudence, fidelity to treaties, the retrospect of
the past and the hopes of the future — all called
loudly upon her not to allow the balance of
Europe to be disturbed, and least of all in Bel-
gium." — H. von Sybel, Hist, of the French Rev.,
bk. 5, c7i. 5 (v. 2). — "'The French Government
resolved to attack Holland, and ordered its gen-
erals to enforce by arms the opening of the
Scheldt. To do this was to force England into
war. Public opinion was already pressing every
day harder upon Pitt [see England : A. D. 1793-
1796]. . . . Across the Channel his moderation
was only taken for fear. . . . The rejection of
his last offers indeed made a contest inevitable.
Both sides ceased from diplomatic communica-
tions, and in February 1793 France issued her
Declaration of War." — J. R. Green, Hist, of
tJie English People, bk. 9, ch. 4 {v. 4).
Also in : W. E. H. Lecky, Hist, of Eng. in
tU 18th Century, ch. 23 (v. 6).— Earl Stanhope,
Life of Pitt, ch. 16 {v. 2).— Despatches of Earl
Gower, pp. 256-309.
1318
FRANCE, 1793.
Execution
of the King.
FRANCE, 1793.
A. D. 1793 (January). — The execution of
the king. — "To this conclusion, then, liast thou
come, O Ikapless Louis ! The Son of Sixty Kings
is to die on the Scaffold by form of Law. Under
Sixty Kings this same form of law, form of
Society, has been fashioning itself together these
thousand years; and has become, one way and
other, a most strange Machine. Surely, if need-
ful, it is also frightful, this Machine; dead,
blind ; not what it should be ; which with swift
stroke, or by cold slow torture, has wasted the
lives and souls of innumerable men. And behold
now a King himself or say rather Kinghood in
his person, is to expire here in cruel tortures; —
like a Phalaris shut in the belly of his own red-
heated Brazen Bull! It is ever so; and thou
shouldst luiow it, O haughty tyrannous man:
injustice breeds injustice; curses and false-
hoods do verily return 'always home,' wide as
they may wander. Innocent Louis bears the
sins of many generations: he too experiences
that man's tribunal is not in this Earth ; that if he
had no higher one, it were not well with him.
A King dying by such violence appeals impres-
sively to the imagination ; as the like must do,
and ought to do. And yet at bottom it is not
the King dying, but the man! Kingship is a
coat: the grand loss is of the skin. The man
from whom you take his Life, to him can the
whole combined world do more? ... A Con-
fessor has come; Abbe Edgeworth, of Irish
extraction, whom the King knew by good report,
has come promptly on this solemn mission.
Leave the Earth alone, then, thou hapless King ;
it with its malice will go its way, thou also canst
go thine. A hard scene yet remains : the part-
ing with our loved ones. Kind hearts, environed
in the same grim peril with us ; to be left here !
Let the reader look with the eyes of Valet Clery
through these glass-doors, where also the Munici-
pality watches ; and see the crudest of scenes :
'At half-past eight, the door of the ante-room
opened: the Queen appeared first, leading her
Son by the hand; then Madame Royale and
Madame Elizabeth: they all flung themselves
into the arms of the King. Silence reigned for
some minutes; interrupted only by sobs.' . . .
For nearly two hours this agony lasts; then
they tear themselves asunder. 'Promise that
you will see us on the morrow.' He promises:
— Ah yes, yes; yet once; and go now, ye loved
ones; cry to God for yourselves and me! — It
was a hard scene, but it is over. He will not
see them on the morrow. The Queen in passing
through the ante-room, glanced at the Cerberus
Municipals ; and, with woman's vehemence, said
through her tears, ' Vous etes tons des scelerats. '
King Louis slept sound, till five in the morning,
when Clery, as he had been ordered, awoke him.
Clery dressed his hair: while this went forward,
Louis took a ring from his watch, and kept try-
ing it on his finger; it was his wedding-ring,
which he is now to return to the Queen as a
mute farewell. At half-past six, he took the
Sacrament, and continued in devotion, and con-
ference with Abbe Edgeworth. He will not see
his family : it were too hard to bear. At eight
the Municipals enter: the King gives them his
Will, and messages and effects ; which they, at
first, brutally refuse to take charge of: he gives
them a roll of gold pieces, a hundred and twenty-
five louis ; these are to be returned to Malesherbes,
who had lent them. At nine, Santerre says the
hour is come. The King begs yet to retire for
three minutes. At the end of three minutes,
Santerre again says the hour is come. ' Stamp-
ing on the ground with his right-foot, Louis
answers; Partons, Let us go.' — How the rolling
of those drums comes in, through the Temple
bastions and bulwarks, on the heart of a queenly
wife; soon to be a widow! He is gone, then,
and has not seen us? ... At the Temple Gate
were some faint cries, perhaps from voices of
pitiful women : Grace! Grace! Through the rest
of the streets there is silence as of the grave.
No man not armed is allowed to be there: the
armed, did any even pity, dare not express it,
each man overawed by all his neighbours. All
windows are down, none seen looking through
them. All shops are shut. No wheel-carriage
rolls, this morning, in these streets but one only.
80,000 armed men stand ranked, like armed
statues of men ; cannons bristle, cannoneers with
match burning, but no word or movement: it is
as a city enchanted into silence and stone : one
carriage with its escort, slowly rumbling, is the
only sound. Louis reads, in his Book of Devo-
tion, the Prayers of the Dying : clatter of this
death-march falls sharp on the ear, in the great
silence ; but the thought would fain struggle
heavenward, and forget the Earth. As the
clock strikes ten, behold the Place de la Revolu-
tion, once Place de Louis Quinze : the Guillotine,
mounted near the old Pedestal where once stood
the Statue of that Louis ! Far round, all bristles
with cannons and armed men ; spectators crowd-
ing in the rear ; D'Orleans Egalite there in cabrio-
let. . . .Heedless of all Louis reads his Prayers
of the Dying; not till five minutes yet has he
finished; then the Carriage opens. What temper
he is in? Ten different witnesses will give ten
different accounts of it. He is in the collision of
all tempers; arrived now at the black Mahl-
strom and descent of Death : in sorrow, in indig-
nation, in resignation struggling to be resigned.
'Take care of M. Edgeworth,' he straitly
charges the Lieutenant who is sitting with them :
then they two descend. The drums are beating:
' Taisez-vous, Silence ! ' he cries ' in a terrible
voice, d'une voix terrible. ' He mounts the scaf-
fold, not without delay ; he is in puce coat,
breeches of gray, white stockings. He strips
off the coat ; stands disclosed in a sleeve-wai.stcoat
of white flannel. The executioners approach to
bind him; he spurns, resists; Abbe Edgeworth
has to remind him how the Saviour, in whom men
trust, submitted to be bound. His hands are tied,
his head bare ; the fatal moment is come. He
advances to the edge of the Scaffold, 'his face
very red,' and says: 'Frenchmen, I die innocent:
it is from the Scaffold and near appearing before
God that I tell you so. I pardon my enemies ; I
desire that France ' A General on horseback,
Santerre or another, prances out with ujjlifted
hand : ' Tambours ! ' The drums drown the voice.
' Executioners, do your duty ! ' The Execu-
tioners, desperate lest themselves be murdered
(for Santerre and his Armed Ranks will strike,
if they do not), seize the hapless Louis: six of
them desperate, him singly desperate, struggling
there; and bind him to their plank. Abbelidge-
worth, stooping, bespeaks him; 'Son of Saint
Louis, ascend to Heaven.' The Axe clanks
down ; a King's Life is shorn away. It is Mon-
day the 21st of .January 1793. He was aged 38
years four months and 28 days. Executioner
1319
FRANCE, 1793.
Tfie Revolutionary
Tribunal.
FRANCE, 1793.
Samson shows the Head : fierce shouts of Vive la
Repuliliquc rises, and swells ; caps raised on bayo-
nets, hats waving: students of the College of
Four Nations take it up, on the far Quais; fling
it over Paris. D'Orleans drives off in his cabrio-
let: the Townhall Councillors rub their hands,
.saying, 'It is done. It is done.' ... In the
coffee-houses that evening, says Prudhomme,
Patriot shook hands with Patriot in a more cor-
dial manner than usual. Not till some days
after, according to Mercier, did public men see
what a grave thing it was. A grave thing it
indisputably is; and will have consequences. . . .
At home this Killing of a King has divided all
friends; and abroad it has united all enemies.
Fraternity of Peoples, Revolutionary Propagan-
dism; Atheism, Regicide; total destruction of
social order in this world ! All Kings, and lovers
of Kings, and haters of Anarchy, rank in coali-
tion; as in a war for life." — T. Carlyle, The Fr.
Rev., V. 3, bk. 2, ch. 8.
A. D. 1793 (February — April). — Increasing
anarchy. — Degradation of manners. — Forma-
tion of the terrible Revolutionary Tribunal. —
Treacherous designs of Dumouriez. — His in-
vasion of Holland. — His defeat at Neer-
winden and retreat. — His flight to the enemy.
— " While the French were . . . throwing down
the gauntlet to all Europe, their own country
seemed sinking into anarchical dissolution.
Paris was tilled with tumult, insurrection and
robbery. At the denunciations of Jlarat against
' f orestallers, ' the shops were entered by the
mob, who carried off articles at their own prices,
and sometimes without paying at all. The
populace was agitated by the harangues of low
itinerant demagogues. Rough and brutal man-
ners were affected, and all the courtesies of life
abolished. The revolutionary leaders adopted a
dress called the 'carmagnole,' consisting of
enormous black pantaloons, a short jacket, a
three-coloured waistcoat, and a Jacobite wig of
short black hair, a terrible moustache, the
'bonnet rouge,' and an enormous sabre. [The
name Carmagnole was also given to a tune and
a dance ; it is supposed to have borne originally
some reference not now understood to Carraag-
nola in Piedmont.] Moderate persons of no
strong political opinions were denounced as
'suspected,' and their crime stigmatised by the
newly coined word of ' moderantisme. ' The varia-
tions of popular feeling were recorded like the
heat of the weather, or the rising of a flood.
The principal articles in the journals were
entitled ' Thermometer of the Public Mind ;' the
Jacobins talked of . . . being 'up to the level.'
Many of the provinces were in a disturbed state.
A movement had been organising in Brittany ever
since 1791, but the death of the Marquis de la
Rouarie, its principal leader, had for the present
suspended it. A more formidable iusurrection
was preparing in La Vendee. ... It was in the
midst of these disturbances, aggravated by a
suspicion of General Dumouriez's treachery,
which we shall presently have to relate, that the
terrible court known as the Revolutionary
Tribunal was established. It was first formally
proposed in the Convention March 9th, by
Carrier, the miscreant afterwards notorious by
his massacres at Nantes, urged by Cambacerfis
on the 10th, and completed that very night at
the instance of Danton, who rushed to the
tribune, insisted that the Assembly should not
separate, till the new Court had been organised.
. . . The extraordinary tribunal of August
1792 had not been found to work fast enough,
and it was now superseded by this new one,
which became in fact only a method of massa-
cring under the form of law. The Revolutionary
Tribunal was designed to take cognisance of all
counter-revolutionary attempts, of all attacks
upon liberty, equality, the unity and indivisi-
bility of the Republic, the internal and external
safety of the State. A commission of six mem-
bers of the Convention was to examine and re-
port upon the cases to be brought before it, to
draw up and present the acts of accusation.
The tribunal was to be composed of a jury to
decide upon the facts, five judges to apply the
law, a public accuser, and two substitutes ; from
its sentence there was no appeal. Meanwhile
Dumouriez had returned to the army, very dis-
satisfied that he had failed in his attempts to
save the King and baffle the Jacobins. He had
formed the design of invading Holland, dissolv-
ing the Revolutionary Committee in that coun-
try, annulling the decree of Dec. 15th, offering
neutrality to the English, a suspension of arms
to the Austrians, reuniting the Belgian and
Batavian republics, and proposing to France a
re-union with them. In case of refusal, he
designed to march upon Paris, dissolve the Con-
vention, extinguish Jacobinism; in short, to
play the part of Monk in England. This plan
was confided to four persons only, among whom
Danton is said to have been one. . . . Du-
mouriez, having directed General Miranda to
lay siege to Maestricht, left Antwerp for Hol-
land, Feb. 22nd, and by March 4th had seized
Breda, Klundert and Gertruydenberg. Austria,
at the instance of England, "had pushed forward
112,000 men under Prince Josias of Saxe-Coburg.
C'lairfait, with his army, at this time occupied
Berghem, where he was separated from the
French only by the little river Roer and the
fortress of Juliers. Coburg, having joined
Clairfait, March 1st, crossed the Roer, defeated
the French under Dampierre at Altenhoven, and
thus compelled Miranda to raise the siege of
Maestricht, and retire towards Tongres. Aix-la-
Chapelle was entered by the Austrians after a
smart contest, and the French compelled to re-
treat upon Liege, while the divisions under
Stengel and Neuilly, being cut off by this move-
ment, were thrown back into Limburg. The
Austrians then crossed the Meuse, and took
Liege, March 6th. Dumouriez was now com.
pelled to concentrate his forces at Louvain.
From this place he wrote a threatening letter to
the Convention, March 11th, denouncing the pro-
ceedings of the ministry, the acts of o]ipression
committed in Belgium, and the decree of Decem-
ber 15th. This letter threw the Committee of
General Defence into consternation. It was
resolved to keep it secret, and Danton and
Lacroix set off for Dumouriez's camp, to try
what they could do with him, but found him in-
flexible. His proceedings had already unmasked
his designs. At Antwerp he had ordered the
Jacobin Club to be closed, and the members to
be imprisoned, at Brussels he had dissolved the
legion of ' sans-culottes. ' Dumouriez was de-
feated by Prince Coburg at Neerwinden, Jlarch
18th, and again on the 22nd at Louvain. In a
secret interview with the Austrian Colonel Mack,
a day or two after, at Ath, he announced to that
1320
FRANCE, 1793.
Insurrection
in La I'endee.
FRANCE, 1793.
officer his intention to march on Paris and estab-
lish a constitutional monarchy, but nothing was
said as to who was to wear the crown. The
Austrians were to support Dumouriez's advance
upon Paris, but not to show themselves e.xcept
in case of need, and he was to have the com-
mand of what Austrian troops he might select.
The French now continued their retreat, which,
in consequence of these negociations, was un-
molested. The Archduke Charles and Prince
Coburg entered Brussels March 25th, and the
Dutch towns were shortly after retaken. When
Dumouriez arrived with his van at Courtrai, he
was met by three emissaries of the Jacobins,
sent apparently to sound him. He bluntly told
them that his design was to save France, whether
they called him Ca;sar, Cromwell or Monk, de-
nounced the Convention as an assembly of
tyrants, said that he despised their decrees. . . .
At St. Amand he was met by Beurnonville, then
minister of war, who was to supersede him in
the command, and by four commissaries de-
spatched by the Convention." Dumouriez
arrested these, delivered tliem to Clairfait, and
they were sent to Maestricht. " The allies were
so sanguine that Dumouriez's defection would
put an end to the Revolution, that Lord Auck-
land and Count Stahremberg, the Austrian
minister, looking upon the dissolution and flight
of the Convention as certain, addressed a joint
note to the States-General, requesting them not
to shelter such members of it as had taken any
part in the condemnation of Louis XVI. But
Dumouriez's army was not with him. On tlie
road to Conde he was fired on by a body of
volunteers and compelled to fly for his life (April
4th)." The day following he abandoned his
army and went over to the Austrian quarters at
Tournay, with a few companions, thus ending
liis political and military career. ' ' The situation
of France at this time seemed almost desperate.
The army of the North was completely dis-
organised through the treachery of Dumoiiriez ;
the armies of the Rhine and Moselle were re-
treating ; those of the Alps and Italy were ex-
pecting an attack; on the eastern side of the
Pyrenees the troops were without artillery, with-
out generals, almost without bread, while on the
western side the Spaniards were advancing
towards Bayonne. Brest, Cherbourg, the coasts
of Brittany, were threatened by the English.
The ocean ports contained only si.x ships of the
line ready for sea, and the Mediterranean fleet
was being repaired at Toulon. But the energy
of the revolutionary leaders was equal to the
occasion." — T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe,
bk. 7, ch. 5 (j). 4).
Also in A. Grifllths, French Revolutionary
Generals, ch. 5. — F. C. Schlosser, Hiit. of the
18th Century, v. 6, div. 2, ch. 2, sect. 1-3.— C.
MacFarlane, Th^! FV. Rev., v. 8, ch. 11.
A. D. 1793 (March— April). — The insurrec-
tion in La Vendee. — "Ever since the abolition
of royalty and the constitution of 1790, that is,
since the 10th of August, a condemnatory and
threatening silence had prevailed in Normandy.
Bretagne exhibited still more hostile sentiments,
and the people there were engrossed by fondness
for the priests and the gentry. Nearer to the hanks
of the Loire, this attachment amounted to insur-
rection; and lastly, on the left bank of that river,
in the Bocage, Le Loroux, and La Vendee, the
insurrection was complete, and large armies of
ten and twenty thousand men were already i;i
the field. ... It was particularly on this left
bank, in Anjou, and Upper and Lower Poitou,
that the famous war of La Vendee had broken
out. It was in this part of France that the
influence of time was least felt, and that it had
produced least change in the ancient manners.
The feudal system had there acquired a truly
patriarchal character; and the Revolution, in-
stead of operating a beneficial reform in the
country, had shocked the most kindly habits and
been received as a persecution. The Bocage and
the Marais constitute a singular country, which
it is necessary to describe, in order to convey an
idea of the manners of the population, and the
kind of society that was formed there. Setting
out from Nantes and Saumur and proceeding
from the Loire to the sands of Olonne, Lupon,
Pontenay, and Niort, you meet with an unequal
undulating soil, intersected by ravines and
crcssed by a multitude of hedges, which serve
to fence in each field, and which have on this
account obtained for the country the name of
the Bocage. As you approach the sea the ground
declines, till it terminates in salt marshes, and is
everywhere cut up by a multitude of small
canals, which render access almost impossible.
This is what is called the Marais. The only
abundant produce in this country is pasturage,
consequently cattle are plentiful. The peasants
there grew only just sufficient corn for their own
consumption, and employed the produce of their
herds and flocks as a medium of exchange. It is
well known that no people are more simple than
those subsisting by this kind of industry. Few
great towns had been built in these parts. They
contained only large villages of two or three
thousand souls. Between the two high-roads
leading, the one from Tours to Poitiers, and the
other from Nantes to La Rochelle, extended a
tract thirty leagues in breadth, where there were
none but cross-roads leading to villages and
hamlets. The country was divided into a great
number of small farms paying a rent of from
five to six hundred francs, each let to a single
family, which divided the produce of the cattle
with the proprietor of the land. From this divi-
sion of farms, the seigneurs had to treat with
each family, and kept up a continual and easy
intercourse with them. The simplest mode of
life prevailed in the mansions of the gentry:
they were fond of the chase, on account of the
abundance of game ; the gentry and the peasants
liunted together, and they were all celebrated
for their skill and vigour. The priests, men of
extraordinary purity of character, exercised
there a truly paternal ministry. . . . When the
Revolution, so beneficent in other quarters,
reached this country, with its Iron level, it pro-
duced profound agitation. It had been well if it
could have made an exception there, but that
was impossible. . . . When the removal of the
non-juring priests deprived the peasants of the
ministers in whom they had confidence, they
were vehemently exasperated, and, as in Bre-
tagne, they ran into the woods and travelled to a
considerable distance to attend the ceremonies of
a worship, the only true one in their estimation.
From that moment a violent hatred was kindled
in their souls, and the priests neglected no
means of fanning the flames. The 10th of
August drove several Poitevin nobles back to
their estates; the 21st of January estranged
1321
FRANCE, 1793.
La Vcjtdee.
FRANCE, 1793.
them, and they communicated their indignation
to those about them. They did not conspire,
however, as some have conceived. The known
dispositions of the country had incited men who
were strangers to it to frame plans of conspiracy.
One had been hatched in Bretagne, but none was
formed in the Socage ; tliere was no concerted
plan there ; the people suffered themselves to be
driven to extremity. At length, the levy of
300,000 men excited in the month of March a
general insurrection. . . . Obliged to take arms,
tliey chose rather to fight against the republic
than for it. Nearly about the same time, that
is, at the beginning of March, the drawing was
the occasion of an insurrection in the Upper
Socage and in the Marais. On the 10th of
March, the drawing was to take place at St.
Florent, near Ancenis. in Anjou. The young
men refused to draw. The guard endeavoured to
force them to comply. The military command-
ant ordered a piece of cannon to be pointed and
fired at tlie mutineers. They dashed forward
with their bludgeons, made themselves masters
of the piece, disarmed the guard, and were, at
the same time, not a little astonished at their own
temerity. A carrier, named Cathelineau, a man
highly esteemed in that part of the country,
possessing great bravery and powers of persua-
sion, quitting his farm on hearing the tidings,
hastened to join them, rallied them, roused their
courage, and gave some consistency to the insur-
rection by his skill in keeping it up. The very
same day he resolved to attack a republican
post consisting of eighty men. The peasants
followed him with their bludgeons and their
muskets. After a first volley, every shot of
which told, because they were excellent marks-
men, they rushed upon the pest, disarmed it,
and made themselves master of the position.
Next day, Cathelineau proceeded to Chemille,
which he likewise took, in spite of 200 republi-
cans and three pieces of cannon. A gamekeeper
at the chateau of Maulevrier, named Stofilet, and
a young peasant of the village of Chanzeau, had
on their part collected a band of peasants.
These came and joined Cathelineau, who con-
ceived the daring design of attacking Chollet,
the most considerable town in the country, the
chief place of a district, and guarded by 500
republicans. . . . The victorious band of Cathe-
lineau entered Chollet, seized all the arms that it
could find, and made cartridges out of the
charges of the cannon. It was always in tliis
manner that the Vendeans procured ammunition.
. . . Another much more general revolt had
broken out in the Marais and the department of
La Vendee. At Machecoul and Challans, the
recruiting was the occasion of a universal insur-
rection. . . . Three hundred republicans were
Bhot by parties of 20 or 30. . . . In the depart-
ment of La Vendee, that is, to the south of tlie
theatre of this war, the insurrection assumed
still more consistence. The national guards of
Fontenay, having set out on their march for
Chantonnay, were repulsed and beaten. Chan-
tonnay was plundered. General Verteuil, who
commanded the 11th military division, on
receiving intelligence of this defeat, dispatched
General Marce with 1,200 men, partly troops of
the line, and partly national guards. The rebels
who were met at St. Vincent, were repulsed.
General Marce had time to add 1,200 more men
and nine pieces of cannon to his little army. In
marching upon St. Fulgent, he again fell in
with the Vendeans in a valley and stopped to
restore a bridge which they liad destroyed.
About four in the afternoon of the 18th of March,
the Vendeans, taking the initiative, advanced
and attacked him . . . and made themselves
masters of the artillery, the ammunition, and the
arms, which the soldiers threw away that they
might be the lighter in their flight. These more
important successes in the department of La
Vendee properly so called, procured for the
insurgents the name of Vendeans, which they
afterwards retained, though the war was far
more active out of La Vendee. The pillage
committed by them in the Marais caused them
to be called brigands, though the greater number
did not deserve that appellation. The insurrec-
tion extended into the Slarais from the environs
of Nantes to Les Sables, and into Anjou and
Poitou, as far as the environs of Vihiers and
Parthenay. . . . Easter recalled all the insur-
gents to their liomes, from which they never
would stay away long. To them a war was a
sort of sporting excursion of several days ; they
carried with them a sufficient quantity of bread
for the time, and then returned to inflame their
neighbours by the accounts which they gave.
Places of meeting were appointed for the month
of April. The Insurrection was then general
and extended over the whole surface of the
country. It might be comprised in a line
which, commencing at Nantes, would pass
through Pornic, the Isle of Noirmoutiers, Les
Sables, Lugon, Fontenay, Niort, and Parthenay,
and return by Airvault, Thouar, Done, and St.
Florent, to the Loire. The insurrection, begun
by men who were not superior to the peasants
whom they commanded, excepting by their
natural qualities, was soon continued by men of
a higher rank. The peasants went to the man-
sions and forced the nobles to put themselves at
their head. The whole Marais insisted on being
commanded by Charette. ... In the Socage,
the peasants applied to ]\Iessrs. de Bonchamps,
d'Elbee, and de Laroche-Jacquelein, and forced
them from their mansions to place them at their
head." These gentlemen were afterwards
joined by M. de Lescure, a cousin of Henri de
Laroche-Jacquelin. — A. Thiers, Hist, of the Pr.
Rev. (Am. ed.), i\ 2, pp. 146-152.
Also in Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, ch. 12,
{i\ 3). — Marquise de Larochejaquelein, Memoirs.
— Henri Larochejaquelein and the War in La
Vendee, (Chambers Miscellany, i\ 2). — L. I.
Guiney, Monsieur Henri (de La Rochejaquelein.)
A. D. 1793 (March — June). — Vigorous
measures of the Revolutionary government. —
The Committee of Public Safety. — The final
struggle of Jacobins and Girondins. — The
fall of the Girondins. — The news of the defeat
of Dumouriez at Neerwinden, which reached
Paris on the 21st, " brought about two important
measures. Jean Debry, on behalf of the
Diplomatic Committee, proposed that all strangers
should be expelled from France within eight
days who could not give a good reason for their
residence, and on the same evening the Commit-
tee of General Defence was reorganized and
placed on another footing. This committee had
come into existence in .January, 1793. It origi-
nally consisted of 81 members, who were not
directly elected by the Convention, but were
chosen from the seven most important commit-
1322
FRANCE, 1793.
Full of the
Girundins.
FRANCE, 1793.
tees. But now, after the news of Neerwinden,
a powerful committee was directly elected. It
consisted of 24 members, and the first committee
contained nine Girondins, nine deputies of the
Plain, and six Jacobins, including every repre-
sentative man in the Convention. . . . The new
Committee was given the greatest powers, and
after lirst proposing to the Convention that the
penalty of death should be decreed against every
emigre over fourteen, and to every one who pro-
tected an emigre, it proposed that Dumouriez
should be summoned to the bar of the Conven-
tion." Early in April, news of the desertion of
Dumouriez and the retreat of Custine, "made
the Convention decide on yet further measures
to strengthen the executive. Marat, who, lilie
Danton and Robespierre, was statesman enough to
perceive the need of strengthening the executive,
proposed that enlarged powers should be given
to the committees ; and Isnard, as the reporter
of the Committee of General Defence, proposed
the establisliment of a smaller committee of nine,
with supreme and unlimited executive powers —
a proposal which was warmly supported by
every statesman in the Convention. ... It is
noticeable that every measure which strength-
ened the terror when it was finally established
was decreed while the Girondins could com-
mand a majority in the Convention, and that it
was a Girondin, Isnard, who proposed the
immense powers of the Committee of Public
Safety [Comite de Salut Public]. Upon April 6
Isnard brought up a decree defining the powers
of the new committee. It was to consist of
nine deputies; to confer in secret; to have
supreme executive power, and autliority to
spend certain sums of money without account-
ing for them, and it was to present a weelily
report to the Convention. These immense
powers were granted under the pressure of news
from the frontier, and it was obvious that it
would not be long before such a powerful
executive could conquer the independence of the
Convention. Isnard's proposals were opposed
by Buzot, but decreed; and on April 7 the first
Committee of Public Safety was elected. It
consisted of the following members; — Barere,
Delmas, Breard, Cambon, Danton, Guyton-
Morveau, Treilhard, Lacroi.x, and Robert Lindet.
The very first proposal of the new committee
vras that it should appoint three representatives
with every army from among the deputies of
the Convention, with unlimited powers, who
were to report to the committee itself. This
motion was followed by a very statesmanlike one
from Danton. He perceived the folly of the
decree of November 18, which declared univer-
sal war against all kings. ... On his propo-
sition the fatal decree . . . was withdrawn, and
it was made possible for France again to enter
into the comity of European nations. It is very
obvious tliat it was the foreign war which liad
developed the progress of the Revolution with
such astonishing rapidity in France. It was
Brunswick's manifesto which mainly caused the
attack on the Tuileries on August 10; it was the
surrender of Verdun which directly caused the
massacres of September. It was the battle of
Neerwinden which established the Revolutionary
Tribunal, and that defeat and the desertion of
Dumouriez which brought about the establish-
ment of the Committee of Public Safety. The
Girondins were chiefly responsible for the great
war, and its first result was to destroy them as
a party. . . . Their early influence over the
deputies of the Plain rested on a belief in their
statesmanlike powers, but as time went on that
influence steadily diminished. It was in vain
for Danton to attempt to make peace in the Con-
vention ; bitter words on both sides had left too
strong an impression ever to be effaced. The
Jacobin leaders despised the Girondins; the
Girondins hated the Jacobins for having won
away power from them. The Jacobins formed
a small but very united body, of which every
member knew its own mind : they were deter-
mined to carry on the Republic at all costs, and
to destroy the Girondins as quickly as they
could. . . . The desertion of Dumouriez had
caused strong measures to be taken by the Con-
vention, . . . and all parties had concurred.
. . . But as soon as these important measures
liad been taken, which the majority of the Con-
vention believed would enable France once more
to free her frontiers from the invaders, the
Girondins and Jacobins turned upon each other
with redoubled ardour, and the death-struggle
between them recommenced. The Girondins
reopened the struggle with an attack upon
Marat. Few steps could have been more fool-
ish, for Marat, though in many ways a real
statesman, had from the exaggeration of his
language never obtained the influence in the
Convention to which his abilities entitled him.
. . . But he remained the idol of the people of
Paris, and in attacking him the Girondins
exasperated the people of Paris in the person of
their beloved journalist. On April 11 Guadet
read a placard in the Convention, which Marat
had posted on the walls of Paris, full of his
usual libellous abuse of the Girondins. It was
referred to the Committee of Legislation with
other writings of Marat," and two days
later, on the report of the Committee, it was
voted by the Convention (half of its members
being absent), that Marat should be sent before
t lie Tribunal for trial. This called out immediate
demonstrations from Marat's Parisian admirers.
"On April 15, in the name of 35 sections of
Paris, Pache and Hebert demanded the expulsion
from the Convention of 22 of the leading
Girondists as 'disturbers of the public peace,'
inclucling Brissot, Guadet, Vergniaud, Gen-
sonne, Buzot, Barbaroux, Louvet, Petion, and
Lanjuinais. ... On April 22 the trial of Marat
took place. He was unanimously acquitted,
although most of the judges of the Revolutionary
Tribunal sympathized with the Girondins. . . .
The acquittal of Marat was a fearful blow to the
Girondin party ; they had in no way discredited
the Jacobins, and had only made themselves
unpopular in Paris. . . . The Commune of Paris
.steadily organized the more advanced republicans
of the city for an open attack upon the Girondins.
. . . Throughout the month of May, preparations
for the final struggle went on ; it was recognized
by both parties that they must appeal to force,
and arrangements for appealing to force were
made as openly for the coup d'etat of May 31
as they had been for that of August 10. On the
one side, the Commune of Paris steadily concen-
trated its armed strength and formed its plan of
action ; on the other, the leading Girondins met
daily at the house of Valaze, and prepared
to move decrees in the Convention." But the
Girondins were still divided among themselves.
1323
FRANCE, 1793.
European
Coalition.
FRANCE, 1793.
Some wished to appeal to the provinces, against
Paris, which meant civil war; otliers opposed
this as unpatriotic. On the 31st of May, and on
the two days following, tlie Commune of Paris
called out its mob to execute tlie determined
coup d'etat. On the last of these three days
(June 2), tlie Convention surrounded, imprisoned
and terrorized by armed rntfians, led by Henriot,
lately appointed Commander of the National
Guard, submissively decreed that the proscribed
Girondin deputies, with others, to the number
altogether of 31, should be placed under arrest
in their own houses. This "left the members of
the Mountain predominant in the Convention. Tlie
deputies of the Marsh or Plain were now docile
to the voice of the Jacobin leaders," whose
supremacy was now without dispute. On the
preceding day, an attempt had been made, on
the order of the Commune, to arrest M. Roland
and two others of the ministers. Roland
escaped, but Madame Roland, the more impor-
tant Girondist leader, was taken and consigned
to the Abbaye. — H. M. Stephens, Hist, of the
Fr. Rev., v. 3, ch. 7-8.
Also ln H. A. Taine, The Fr. Bev. , ik. 4, ch. 13.
W. Smyth, Lects. on tlie Ilist. of the Fr. Rev.,
lect. 37 (o. 2).— H. Von Sybel, Hist, of the Fr.
Bev., bk. 7, ch. 1-3 (v. 3).
A. D. 1793 (March — September).— Forma-
tion of the great European Coalition against
Revolutionary France. — The seeds of dis-
sension and weakness in it. — "The impression
made at St. Petersburg by the execution of
Louis was fully as vivid as at London: already
it was evident that these two capitals were the
centres of the great contest which was approach-
ing. . . . An intimate and confidential corre-
spondence immediately commenced between
Count Worouzofi, the Russian ambassador at
London, and Lord Grenville, the British sec-
retary of state for foreign affairs, which termi-
nated in a treaty between the powers, signed in
London on the 25th of March. By this conven-
tion, which laid the basis of the grand alli-
ance which afterwards brought the war to a
glorious termination, it was provided that the
two powers should ' employ tlieir respective
forces, as far as circumstances shall permit, in
carrying on the just and necessary war in which
they find themselves engaged against France ; and
they reciprocally engage not to lay down their
arms without restitution of all the conquests
which may have been made upon either of the re-
spective powers, or upon such otlier states or allies
to whom, by common consent, they shall extend
the benefit of this treaty.' . . . Shortly after
[April 25], a similar convention was entered into
between Great Britain and Sardinia, by which
the latter power was to receive an annual sub-
sidy of £200, OUO during the whole continuance
of the war, and the former to keep on foot an
army of 50,000 men; and the English govern-
ment engaged to procure for it entire restitution
of its dominions as they stood at the commence-
ment of the war. By another convention, with
the cabinet of Madrid, signed at Aranjuez on
the 25th of May, they engaged not to make
peace till they had obtained full restitution for
the Spaniards 'of all places, towns, and terri-
tories which belonged to them at the commence-
ment of the war, and which the enemy may have
taken during its continuance.' A similar treaty
was entered into with the court of the Two
Sicilies, and with Prussia [July 12 and 14], iq
wliich the clauses, proliibitiug all exportation to
France, and preventing the trade of neutrals
witli it, were the same as in the Russian treaty.
Treaties of the same tenor were concluded in the
course of the summer with the Emperor of
Germany [August 30], and the King of Portu-
gal [September 26]. Thus was all Europe ar-
rayed in a great league against Republican
France, and thus did the regicides of that coun-
try, as the first fruits of their cruel triumph,
find themselves excluded from the pale of civil-
ized nations. . . . But while all Europe thus
resounded with the note of military preparation
against France, Russia had other and more inter-
ested designs in view. Amidst the general conster-
nation at the triumphs of the French republicans,
Catharine conceived that she would be permitted
to pursue, without molestation, her ambitious
designs against Poland [See Poland: A. D.
1793-1796]. She constantly represented the dis-
turbances in that kingdom as the fruit of revolu-
tionary propagandism, which it was indispensable
to crush in tlie first instance. . . . The ambitious
views of Prussia were also . . . strongly turned
in the same direction. . . . Nor was it only the
ambitious projects of Russia and Prussia against
tlie independence of Poland which already gave
ground for gloomy augury as to the issue of the
war. Its issue was more immediately affected
by the jealousy of Austria and Prussia, which
now broke out in the most undisguised manner,
and occasioned such a division of the allied forces
as effectually prevented any cordial or effective
co-operation continuing to exist between them.
The Prussian cabinet, mortified at the lead which
the Imperial generals took in the common opera-
tions, insisted upon the formation of two inde-
pendent German armies ; one composed of Prus-
sians, the other of Austrians, to one or other of
which the forces of all tlie minor states should be
joined: those of Saxony, Hanover, and Ilesse
being grouped around the standards of Prussia;
tliose of Bavaria, Wirtemburg, Swabia, the Pala-
tinate, and Franconia, following the double-
headed eagles of Austria. By this means, all
unity of action between the two grand allied
armies was broken up. . . . Prince Cobourg was
appointed generalissimo of the allied Armies from
the Rliine to the German ocean. " In April, a
corps of 20,000 English had been lauded in
Holland, "under the command of the Duke of
Vork, and being united to 10,000 Hanoverians
and Hessians, formed a total of 30,000 men in
British pay." Holland, as an ally of England,
was already in the Coalition, the French having
declared war, in February, against the two mar-
itime powers, simultaneously. — Sir A. Alison,
Jlist. of Europe, ch. 13 («. 4).
Also lm F. C. Schlosser, Hist, of the ISiA Cen-
tury, V. 6, div. 2, ch. 2, sect. 3.
A. D. 1793 (April — August): Minister Genet
in America. — Washington's proclamation of
neutrality. See United States of Am. : A. D.
1793.
A. D. 1793 (June). — Flight of most of the
Girondists. — Their appeal to the country. —
Insurrection in the provinces. — The rising at
Lyons, Marseilles, Bordeaux, Toulon. — Pro-
gress of the Vendean revolt.^" After this day
[of the events whicli culminated on the 2d of
June, but which are commonly referred to as
1324
FRANCE, 179a.
Committee of
Public Safety.
FRANCE, 1793.
being of 'the 31st of May,' when they began],
■when the people made no other use of their
power than to display and to exercise the pres-
sure of Paris over the representation, they sepa-
rated without committing any excess. ... La
Montaigne caused the committees to be reinstated
on the morrow, with the exception of that of
public safety. They threw into the majority
their most decided members. . . . They deposed
those ministers suspected of attachment to the
conquered; sent commissioners into the doubt-
ful departments; annulled the project of the
constitution proposed by the Girondists; and
charged the committee of safety to draw up in
eight days a project for the constitution entirely
democratical. They pressed forward the re-
cruiting and armament of the revolutionary
army — that levy of patriotism en masse. They
decreed a forced loan of a million upon the rich.
They sent one after the other, accused upon
accused, to the revolutionary tribunal. Their
sittings were no longer deliberation, but cursory
motions, decreed on the instant by acclamation,
and sent immediately to the different committees
for execution. They stripped the executive
power of the little independence and responsibil-
ity it heretofore retained. Continually called into
the bosom of their committees, ministers became
no more than the passive executors of the meas-
ures they decreed. From this day, also, dis-
cussion was at an end ; action was all. The dis-
appearance of the Girondists deprived the Revo-
lution of its voice. Eloquence was proscribed
with Vergniaud, with the exception of those few
days when the great party chiefs, Danton and
Robespierre, spoke, not to refute opinions, but
to intimate their will, and promulgate their
orders. The Assemblies became almost mute.
A dead silence reigned henceforth in the Conven-
tion. In the meanwhile the 33 Girondists [ex-
cepting Vergniaud, Gensonne, Ducos, Tonfrede,
and a few others, who remained under the de-
cree of arrest, facing all consequences], the mem-
bers of the Commission of Twelve, and a certain
number of their friends, warned of their danger
by this first blow of ostracism, fled into their
departments, and hurried to protest against the
mutilation of the country. . . . Robespierre, Dan-
ton, the Committee of Public Safety, and even
the people themselves, seemed to shut their eyes
to these evasions, as if desirous to be rid of
victims whom it would pain them to strike.
Buzot, Barbaroux, Guadet, Louvet, Salles.
Petion, Bergoing, Lesage, Cressy, Kervelegan
andLanjuinais, threw themselves into Normandy ;
and. after having traversed it, inciting all the
departments between Paris and the Ocean, es-
tablished at Caen the focus and centre of insurrec-
tion against the tyranny of Paris. They gave
themselves the name of the Central Assembly of
Resistance to Oppression. Biroteau and Chas-
set had arrived at Lyons. The armed sections
of this town were agitated with contrary and
already bloody commotion [the Jacobin munici-
pality having been overthrown, after hard fight-
ing, and its chief , Chalier, put to death]. Brissot
fled to Moulins, Robaut St. Etienne to Nismes.
Grangeneuve. sent by Vergniaud, TonfrMe, and
Ducos, to Bordeaux, raised troops ready to march
upon the capital. Toulouse followed the same
impulse of resistance to Paris. The departments
of the west were on fire, and rejoiced to see the
republic, torn into contending factions, offer
them the aid of one of the two parties for the
restoration of royalty. The mountainous centre
of France . . . was agitated. . . . Marseilles
enrolled 10,000 men at the voice of Rebecquiand
the young friends of Barbaroux. They impris-
oned the commissioners of the Convention, Roux
and Antiboul. Royalty, always brooding in the
south, insensibly transformed this movement of
patriotism into a monarchical insurrection. Re-
becqui, in despair ... at seeing loyalty avail
itself of the rising in the south, escaped remorse
by suicide, throwing himself into the sea. Lyons
and Bordeaux likewise imprisoned the envoys of
the Convention as Maratists. The first columns
of the combined army of the departments began
to move in all directions; 6,000 Marseillais were
already at Avignon, ready to reascend the Rhone,
and form a junction with the insurgents of Nis-
mes and of Lyons. Brittany and Normandy
uniting, concentrated their first forces at
Evreux." — A de Lamartine, Ilist. of tlie Oiron-
dists, bk. 43 {v. 3). — The royalists of the west,
" during this almost general rising of the depart-
ments, continued to extend their enterprises.
After their first victories, the Vendeans seized on
Bressure, Argenton, and Thouars. Entirely
masters of their own country, they proposed get-
ting possession of the frontiers, and opening the
way to revolutionary France, as well as commu-
nications with England. On the 6th of June,
the Vendean army, composed of 40,000 men,
under Cathelineau, Lescure, Stofflet, and La
Rochejacquelin, marched on Saumur, which it
took by storm. It then prepared to attack and
capture Nantes, to secure the possession of its
own country, and become masters of the course
of the Loire. Cathelineau, at the head of the
Vendean troops, left a garrison in Saumur, took
Angers, crossed the Loire, pretended to advance
upon Tours and Lemans, and then rapidly threw
himself upon Nantes, which he attacked on the
right bank, while Charette was to attack it on
the left. "—P. A. Mignet, Hist, of the Fr. Rev.,
ch. 8.
A. D. 1793 (June— October).— The new
Jacobin Constitution postponed. — -Concentra-
tion of povrer in the Committee of Public
Safety. — The irresistible machine of revolu-
tionary government. — "It was while affairs
were in this critical condition that the Mountain
undertook the sole conduct of the government
in France. They had hitherto resisted all at-
tempts of the Girondists to establish a new con-
stitution in place of that of 1791. They now
undertook the work themselves, and in four days
drew up a constitution, as simple as it was
democratic, which was issued on the 24th of
June. Every citizen of the age of 21 could vote
directly in the election of deputies, who were
chosen for a year at a time and were to sit in a
single assembly. The assembly had the sole
power of making laws, but a period was fixed
during which the constituents could protest
against its enactments. The executive power
was entrusted to 24 men, who were chosen by
the assembly from candidates nominated by
electors chosen by the original voters. Twelve
out of the 34 were to be renewed every six
months. But this constitution was intended
merely to satisfy the departments, and was never
put into practice. The condition of France re-
quired a greater concentration of power, and
this was supplied by the Committee of Public
1325
FRANCE, 1793.
Assassination
of Marat.
FRANCE, 1793.
Safety. Ever since the 6th of April the original
members of the Committee had been re-elected,
but on the 10th of July its composition was
changed. Dauton ceased to be a member, and
Barfire was joined by Robespierre, St. Just,
Couthon.Billaud-Varennes, Collot d'Herbois, and,
in a short time, Carnot. These men became
the absolute rulers of France. The Committee
had no difficulty in carrying their measures in
the Convention, from which the opposition party
had disappeared. All the state obligations were
rendered uniform and inscribed in ' tlie great boolv
of the national debt.' The treasury was tilled
by a compulsory loan from the rich. Every in-
come between 1,000 and 10,000 francs had to pay
ten per cent., and every excess over 10,000 francs
had to be contributed in its entirety for one year.
To recruit the army a levee en masse was de-
creed. ' The young men shall go to war ; the
married men shall forge arms and transport sup-
plies; the wives shall make tents and clothes
and serve in the hospitals; the children shall
tear old linen into lint ; the aged shall resort to
the public places to excite the courage of the
warriors and hatred against kings.' Nor were
measures neglected against domestic enemies.
On the 6th of September a revolutionary arniy,
consisting of 6,000 men and 1,200 artillery men,
was placed at the disposal of the Committee to
carry out its orders throughout France. On the
17th the famous 'law of the suspects' was
carried. Under the term 'suspect' were in-
cluded all those who by words, acts or writings
had shown themselves in favour of monarchy or
of federalism, the relatives of the emigrants, etc. ,
and they were to be imprisoned until the peace.
As the people were in danger of famine, a maxi-
mum price, already established for corn, was
decreed for all necessaries ; if a merchant gave
up his trade he became a suspect, and the hoard-
ing of provisions was punished by death. On
the 10th of October the Convention definitely
transferred its powers to the Committee, by sub-
jecting all officials to its authority and by post-
poning the trial of the new constitution until
the peace." — R. Lodge, Hist, of Modern Europe,
ck. 23, sect. 11. — The Committee of Public
Safety — the "Revolutionary Government," as
Danton had named it, on the 2d of August,
when he demanded the fearful powers that were
given to it — " disposed of all the national forces ;
it appointed and dismissed the ministers,
generals. Representatives on Mission, the judges
and juries of the Revolutionary Tribunal. The
latter instrument became its strong arm ; it was.
In fact, a court martial worked by civil magis-
trates. By its agents it directed the departments
and armies, the political situation without and
within, striking down at the same time the
rebels within and the enemies without: for,
together with the constitution were, of course,
suspended the municipal laws and the political
machinery of the communes; and thus cities
and villages hitherto indifferent or opposed to
the Revolution were republicanized, By the
Tribunal it disposed of the persons of in-
dividuals ; by requisition and the law of maxi-
mum (with which we are going to be better
acquainted) it disposed of their fortunes. It
can, indeed, be said that the whole of France
was placed in a state of siege ; but that was the
price of its salvation. . . . But Danton has com-
mitted a great mistake, — one that he and
especially France, will come to rue. He has de-
clined to become a member of the Revolutionary
Government, which has been established on his
motion. ' It is my firm resolve not to be a mem-
ber of such a government, ' he had said. In other
words, he has declined re-election as a member
of the Committee de Salut Public, now it has
been erected into a dictatorship. He unfortu-
nately lacked all ambition. . . . When after-
wards, on Sept. 8, one Gaston tells the Conven-
tion, ' Danton has a mighty revolutionary head.
No one understands so well as he to execute
what he himself proposes. I therefore move
that he be added to the Revolutionary Govern-
ment, in spite of his protest,' and it is so
unanimously ordered, he again peremptorily de-
clines. ' No, I will not be a member ; but as a
spy on it I intend to work.' A most fateful
resignation ! for while he still for a short time
continues to exercise his old influence on the
government, both from the outside, in his own
person, and inside the Co.mmittee, in the person
of Herault de Sechelles, selected in his place, he
very soon loses ground more and more, — so much
so even that Herault, his friend, is ' put in
quarantine,' as was said in the Committee. And
very natural. A statesman cannot have power
when he shirks responsibility, and without power
he soon loses all influence with the multitude.
Those who now succeed him in power are Robes-
pierre, BarJre, Billaud-Varennes, and Carnot, —
the two last very good working members, good
men of the second rank, but after Danton not a
single man is left fit to be leader." — L. Gron-
lund. Ca Ira ! or Danton in the French Revolution,
ch. 4.
Also m C. A. Fyffe, Hist, of Modern Europe,
V. 1, ch. 2.— H. M. Stephens, Hist, of the Fr.
Rev., V. 2, ch. 9. — H. C. Lockwood, Constitutional
Hist, of Fr., ch. 1, and app. 2.
A. D. 1793 (July).— The assassination of
Marat. — "Amongst those who had placed faith
in the Girondists and their ideals was a young
woman of Normandy, Charlotte Corday. . . .
When the mob of Paris rose and drove with
insult from the Convention those who in her eyes
were the heroic defenders of the universal prin-
ciples of truth and justice, she bitterly resented
the wrong that had been done, not only to the
men themselves, but to that France of which she
regarded them as the true representatives.
Owing to Marat's persistent cry for a dictator-
ship and for shedding of blood, it was he who,
in the departments, was accounted especially
responsible both for the expulsion of the Giron-
dists and for the tyranny which now began to
weigh as heavily upon the whole country as it
had long weighed upon the capital. Incapable
as all then were of comprehending the causes
which had brought about the fall of the Giron-
dists, Charlotte Corday imagined that by putting
an end to this man's life, she could also put an
end to the system of government which he advo-
cated. Informing her friends that she wished
to visit England, she left Caen and travelled in
the diligence to Paris. On her arrival she pur-
chased a knife, and afterwards obtained entrance
into Marat's house on the pretext that she
brought news which she desired to communicate
to him. She knew that he would be eager to
obtain intelligence of the movements of the
Girondist deputies still in Normandy. Marat
was ill at the time, and in a bath when Charlotte
1326
FRANCE, 1793.
Civil Wuv in
the Provuices,
FRANCE, 1793.
Corday was admitted. She gave him the names
of the deputies who were at Caen. ' In a few
days,' ho said, as he wrote them hastily down,
' I will have them all guillotined in Paris. ' As
she heard these words she jilunged the knife
into his body and killed him on the spot. The cry
uttered by the murdered man was heard, and
Charlotte, who did not attempt to escape, was
captured and conveyed to prison amid the mur-
murs of an angry crowd. It had been from the
first her intention to sacrifice her life for the
cause of her country, and, glorying in her deed,
she mot deatli with stoical indifference. ' I
killed one man,' she .said, when brought before
the revolutionary court, 'in order to save the
lives of 100,000 others.' . . . His [Marat's] mur-
der brought about contrary results to those
which the woman who ignorantly and rashly had
flung away her life hoped by the sacrifice to
effect. . . . He was regarded as a martyr by no
small portion of the working population of Paris.
. . . His murder excited indignation beyond the
comparatively narrow circle of those who took
an active part in political life, while at the same
time it added a new impulse to the growing cry
for blood."— B. M. Gardiner, Ths Pr. Rev., ch. 1.
Also inC. Mac Farlane, Tlw Fr. Rev., v. 3, ch.
13.— J. Michelet, Women of tlie Fr. Rev., ch.
18-19.— Mrs. R. K. Van Alstine, Charlotte Cor-
day. — A. Dobson, Four French Women, ch. 1.
A. D. 1793 (July — December). The civil
war. — Sieges of Lyons and Toulon. — Submis-
sion of Caen, Marseilles and Bordeaux. —
Crushingof the Vendeans. — "The insurgents in
Calvados [Normand}-] were easily suppressed ;
at the very first skirmish at Vernon [July 13],
the insurgent troops fled. "Wimpfon endeavoured
to rally them in vain. The moderate class,
those who had taken up the defence of the Gi-
rondists, displayed little ardour or activity.
When the constitution was accepted by the
other departments, it saw the opportunity for
admitting that it had been in error, when it
thought it was taking arms against a mere fac-
tious minority. This retractation was made at
Caen, which had been the headquarters of the
revolt. The Mountain commissioners did not
sully this first victory with executions. General
Carteaux on the other hand, marched at the head
of some troops against the sectionary army of
the south ; he defeated its force, pursued it to
Marseilles, entered the town [August 23] after
it, and Provence would have been brought into
subjection like Calvados, if the royalists, who
had taken refuge at Toulon, after their defeat,
had not called in the English to their aid, and
placed in their hands this key to France. Ad-
miral Hood entered the town in the name of
Louis XVII. , whom he proclaimed king, disarmed
the fleet, sent for 8, 000 Spaniards by sea, occupied
the surrounding forts, and forced Carteaux, who
was advancing against Toulon, to fall back on
Marseilles. Notwithstanding this check, the
conventionalists succeeded in isolating the insur-
rection, and this was a great point. The Moun-
tain commissioners had made their entry into the
rebel capitals ; Robert Lindot into Caen ; Tallien
Into Bordeaux; Barras and Freron into Mar-
seilles. Only two towns remained to be taken
— Toulon and Lyons. A simultaneous attack
from the south, west, and centre was no longer
apprehended, and in the interior the enemy was
only on the defensive. Lyons was besieged by
Kellermann, general of the army of the Alps ;
three corps pressed the town on all sides. The
veteran soldiers of the Alps, the revolutionary
battalions and the newly levied troops, reinforced
the besiegers every day. The people of Lyons
defended themselves with all the courage of
despair. At first, they relied on the assistance of
the insurgents of the south ; but these having
been repulsed by Carteaux, the Lyonnese placed
their last hope in the army of Piedmont, which
attempted a diversion in their favoui', but was
beaten by Kellermann. Pressed still more ener-
getically, they saw their first position carried.
Famine began to be felt, and courage forsook
them. The royalist leaders, convinced of the
inutility of longer resistance, left the town, and
the republican army entered the walls [October
9], where they awaited the orders of the conven-
tion. A few months after, Toulon itself [in the
siege of which Napoleon Bonaparte commanded
the artillery], defended by veteran troops and
formidable fortifications, fell into the power of
the republicans. The battalions of the army of
Italy, reinforced by those which the taking of
Lyons left disposable, pressed the place closely.
After repeated attacks and prodigies of skill and
valour, they made themselves masters of it, and
the capture of Toulon finished what that of
Lyons had begun [December 19]. Everywhere
the convention was victorious. The Vendeans
had failed in their attempt upon Nantes, after
having lost many men,and their general-in-chief,
Cathelineau. This attack put an end to the
aggressive and previously promising movement
of the Vendeau insurrection. The royalists re-
passed the Loire, abandoned Saumur, and
resumed their former cantonments. They were,
however, still formidable ; and the republicans,
who pursued them, were again beaten in La
Vendee. General Biron, who had succeeded
General Berruyer, imsuccessfully continued the
war with small bodies of troops ; his moderation
and defective system of attack caused him to be
replaced by Canclaux and Rossignol, who were
not more fortunate than he. There were two
leaders, two armies, and two centres of operation.
. . . The committee of public safety soon reme-
died this, by appointing one sole general-in-chief,
Lechelle, and by introducing war on a large scale
into La Vendee. This new method, aided by the
garrison of Mayence, consisting of 17,000 veter-
ans, who, relieved from operations against the
coalesced powers after the capitulation, were
employed in the interior, entirely changed the
face of the war. The royalists underwent four
consecutive defeats, two at Cluttillon, two at
Cholet [the last being October 17]. Lescure,
Bonchamps, and d'Elbee were mortally wounded :
and the insurgents, completely beaten in Upper
Vendee, and fearing that they should be exter-
minated if they took refuge in Lower Vendee,
determined to leave their country to the number
of 80,000 persons. This emigration through
Brittany, which they hoped to arouse to insur-
rection, became fatal to tliem. Repulsed before
Granville, utterly routed at Mons [Le Mans,
December 12], they were destroyed at Savenay
[December 23], and barely a few thousand men,
the wreck of this vast emigration, returned to
Vendee. These disasters, irreparable for the
royalist cause, the taking of their land of Noir-
moutiers from Charette, the dispersion of the
troops of that leader, the death of Laroche jac-
1327
FRANCE, 1793.
War of the
Coalition.
FRANCE, 1793.
quelin, rendered the republicans masters of the
country. The committee of public safety,
thinking, not without reason, that its enemies
■were beaten but not subjugated, adopted a ter-
rible system of extermination to prevent them
from rising again. General Thurreau surrounded
Vendee with sixteen entrenched camps; twelve
movable columns, called the infernal columns,
overran the country in every direction, sword
and fire in hand, scoured the woods, dispersed
the assemblies, and diffused terror throughout
this unhappy country." — P. A. Mignet, Hist, of
the Pi: Rev., cli. 8.
Also en" A. Thiers, Hist, of the Fr. Rev. (Am.
ed.), -v. Z,pp. 328-335, anfZ 398^10.— Marchioness
de Larochejaquelain Memoirs. — A. des Echer-
olles, Early Life, v. 1, ch. 5-7.
A. D. 1793 (July — December). — Progress of
the war of the Coalition. — Dissensions among
the Allies. — Unsuccessful siege of Dunkirk. —
French Victories of Hondschotten and
Wattignies. — Operations on the Rhine and
elsewhere. — "The civil war in which France
for a moment appeared engulfed was soon con-
fined to a few narrowing centres. What, in the
meantime, had been the achievements of the
mighty Coalition of banded Europe ? Success,
that might have been great, was attained on the
Alpine and Pyrenean frontiers; and had the
Piedmontese and Spaniards been well led they
could have overrun Provence and Rousillon,
and made the insurrection of the South fatal.
But here, as elsewhere, the Allies did little ; and,
though defeated in almost every encounter, the
republican levies held their ground against
enemies who nowhere advanced. It was, how-
ever, in the North and the North-east that the
real prize of victory was placed ; and no doubt
can exist that had unanimity in the councils of
the Coalition prevailed, or had a great com-
mander been in its camp, Paris might have been
captured without difficulty, and the Revolution
been summarily put down. But the Austrians,
the Prussians, and the English, were divided in
mind; they had no General capable of rising
above the most ordinary routine of war ; and the
result was that tlie allied armies advanced tardily
on an immense front, each leader thinking of his
own plans only, and no one venturing to press
forward boldly, or to pass the fortresses on the
hostile frontiers, though obstacles like these
could be of little use without the aid of power-
ful forces in the field. In this manner half the
summer was lost in besieging Mayence, Valen-
ciennes, and Conde ; and when, after the fall of
these places [July — August], an attempt was
made to invade Picardy, dissensions between the
Allies broke out, and the British contingent was
detached to besiege Dunkirk, while the Austrians
lingered in French Flanders, intent on enlarging
by conquest Belgium, at that period an
Austrian Province. Time was thus gained for
the French armies, which, though "they had
made an honorable resistance, had been obliged
to fall back at all points, and were in no condi-
tion to oppose their enemy; and the French
army in the North, though driven nearly to the
Somme, within a few marches of the capital,
was allowed an opportunity to recruit its
strength, and was not, as it might have been
easily, destroyed. A part of the hastily raised
levies was now incorporated in its ranks"; and as
these were largely composed of seasoned men
from the old army of the Bourbon Monarchy,
and from the volunteers of Valmy and Jem-
niapes, a respectable force was "before long
mustered. At the peremptory command of the
Jacobin Government, this was at once directed
against the invaders, who did not know what an
invasion meant. The Duke of York, assailed
with vigor and skill, was compelled to raise the
siege of Dunkirk [by the French victory at
Hondschotten, September 8] ; and, to the
astonishment of Europe, the divided forces of
the halting and irresolute Coalition began to re-
cede before the enemies, who saw victory yielded
to them, and who, feeble soldiers as they often
were, were nevertheless fired by ardent patriot-
ism. As the autumn closed the trembling
balance of fortune inclined decidedly on the side
of the Republic. The French recruits, hurried
to the frontier in masses, became gradually
better soldiers, under the influence of increasing
success. Carnot, a man of great but overrated
powers, took the general direction of military
affairs; and though his strategy was not sound,
it was much better than the imbecility of his
foes. At the same time, the Generals of the
fallen Monarchy having disappeared, or, for the
most part, failed, brilliant names began to
emerge from the ranks, and to lead the suddenly
raised armies ; and though worthless selections
were not seldom made, more than one private
and sergeant gave proof of capacity of no com-
mon order. Terror certainly added strength to
patriotism, for thousands were driven to the
camp by force, and death was the usual penalty
of a defeated chief; but it was not the less "a
great national movement, and high honor is
justly due to a people which, in a situation that
might have seemed hopeless, made such heroic
and noble efforts, even though it triumphed
through the weakness of its foe. Owing to a
happy inspiration of Carnot, a detachment was
rajjidly marched from the Rhine, where the
Prussians remained in complete inaction; and
with this reinforcement Jourdan gained a victory
at AVattignies [October 16] over the Austrians,
and opened the way into the Low Countries.
At the close of the year the youthful Hoche,
once a corporal, but a man of genius, who had
given studious hours to the theory of war,
divided Brunswick from the Austrian Wilrmser
by a daring and able march through the V<jsges ;
and the baffled Allies were driven out of Alsace,
tlie borders of which they had just invaded
By these operations the great Northern frontier,
the really vulnerable part of France, was almost
freed from the invaders' presence; and, though
less was achieved on the Southern frontier, the
enemies of the Republic began to lose courage."
— W. O'C. Morris, The Fr. Rev., ch. 6. — "The
Prussians had remained wholly inactive for two
months after the fall of Mayence, contenting
themselves with watching the French in their
lines at "Weissenburg. Wearied at length by the
torpor of his opponents, Moreau assumed the
initiative, and attacked the Prussian corps at
Pirmasens. This bold attempt was repulsed
(Sept. 14) with the loss of 4,000 men; but it was
not till a month later (Oct. 13) that the Allies
resumed the offensive, when the Weissenburg
lines were stormed by a mixed force of Austrians
and Prussians, and the French fled in confusion
almost to Strasburg. But this important advan-
tage led to no results, though the defeat of the
1328
FRANCE, 1793.
Reign
of Terror.
FRANCE, 1793.
Republican movement was hailed by a royalist
movement in Alsace. The Austrians, immovable
in their plans of conquest, refused to occupy
Strasburg in the name of Louis XVII. ; and the
unfortunate royalists, abandoned to Republican
vengeance, were indiscriminately consigned to the
guillotine by a decree of the Convention, while
the confederate array was occupied in the siege
of Landau. But the lukewarmness of the
Prussians had now become so evident, that it
was only by the most vehement remonstrances
of the Austrian cabinet that they were prevented
from seceding altogether from the league ; and
the Republicans, taking advantage of the dis-
union of their enemies, again attacked the Allies
(Dec. 36), who were routed and driven over the
Rhine [abandoning the siege of Landau] ; while
the victors, following up their success, retook
Spires, and advanced to the gates of Mannheim.
The operations in the Pyrenees and on the side
of Savoy, during this campaign, led to no im-
portant results. On the western extremity of
the Pyrenees, the Spaniards [had] entered France
in the middle of April, routed their opponents
in several encounters, and drove them into St.
Jean Pied-de-Poet. An invasion of Roussillon,
at the same time, was equally successful ; and
the Spaniards maintained themselves in the
province till the end of the year, taking the
fortresses of Bellegarde and Collioure, and rout-
ing two armies which attempted to dislodge
them, at Truellas (Sept. 32) and Boulon (Dec. 7).
An attempt of the Sardinians to expel the
French from their conquests in Savoy was less
fortunate; and, at the close of the campaign,
both parties remained in their former position."
— A. Alison, Epitome of Hist, of Europe, pp. 58-59
(ch. 13, i\ 4 of complete icork).
Also in:H. Von Sybel, Bist. of tU Fr. Rev.,
bk. 8, ch. 2 {v. 3).— E. Baines, Hist, of the Wars
of the Pi: Rev., v. 1, ch. 9-11.
A. D. 1793 (August). — Emancipation in San
Domingo proclaimed. See Hayti: A. D.
1632-1803.
A. D. 1793 (September — December). The
"Reign of Terror " becomes the "Order of
the Day." — Trial and execution of Marie
Antoinette, Madame Roland, and the Giron-
dists. — " On the 16th of September, the
Faubourg Saint-Antoine surrounded the H6tel
de Ville, clamoring for 'Bread.' Hebert and
Chaumette appeased the mob by vociferous
harangues against rich men and monopolists,
and by promising to raise a revolutionary army
with orders to scour the country, empty the
granaries, and put the grain within reach of the
people. ' The next thing will be a guillotine
for the monopolists,' added Hebert. 'This had
been demanded by memorials from the most
ultra provincial Jacobins. The next day the
Convention witnessed the terrible reaction of
this scene. At the opening of the session Merlin
de Douai proposed and carried a vote for the
division of the revolutionary tribunal into four
sections, in order to remedy the dilatoriness
complained of by Robespierre and the Jacobins.
The municipality soon arrived, followed by a
great crowd ; Chaumette, in a furious harangue,
demanded a revolutionary army with a travelling
guillotine. The ferocious Billaud-Varennes de-
clared that this was not enough, and that all
suspected persons must be arrested immediately.
^* 1329
Danton Interposed with the powerful eloquence
of his palmy days ; he approved of an immedi-
ate decree for the formation of a revolutionary
army, but made no mention of the guillotine.
. . . Danton's words were Impetuous, but his
ideas were pohticand deliberate. His motions
were carried, amid general acclamation. But
the violent propositions of Billaud-Varennes and
others were also carried. The decree forbidding
domiciliary visits and night arrests, which had
been due to the Girondists, was revoked. A depu-
tation from the Jacobins and the sections de-
manded the indictment of the ' monster ' Brissot
with his accomplices, Vergniaud, Gensonne,
and other 'miscreants.' 'Lawgivers,' said the
spokesman of the deputation, 'let the Reign of
Terror be the order of the day ! ' BarJre, in the
name of the Committee of Public Safety, ob-
tained the passage of a decree organizing an
armed force to restrain counter-revolutionists
and protect supplies. Fear led him to unite
with the most violent, and to adopt the great
motto of the Paris Commune, ' Let the Reign
of Terror be the order of the day ! ' ' The royal-
ists are conspiring,' he said; 'they want blood.
"Well they shall have that of the conspirators, of
the Brissots and Marie Antoinettes ! ' The asso-
ciation of these two names shows what frenzy
prevailed in the minds of the people. The next
day September 6, two of the most formidable
Jacobins, the cold, implacable Billaud-Varennes
and the fiery Collot d'Herbois, were added to
the Committee of Public Safety. Danton per-
sisted in his refusal to return to it. This proves
how mistaken the Girondists had been in accus-
ing him of aspiring to the dictatorship. He
kept aloof from the Committee chiefly because
he knew that they were lost, and did not wish to
contribute to their fall. Before leaving the
ministry Garat had tried to prevent the Giron-
dists from being brought to trial ; upon making
known his wish to Robespierre and Danton, he
found Robespierre implacable, while Danton,
with tears coursing down his rugged cheeks
replied, ' I cannot save them ! ' . . . . On
the 10th of October Saint-Just, in the name
of the Committee of Public Safety, read to the
Assembly an important report upon the situa-
tion of the Republic. It was violent and menac-
ing to others beside the enemies of the Mountain ;
Hebert and his gang might well tremble. He
inveighed not only against those who were plun-
dering the government, but against the whole
administration. . . . Saint-Just's report had
been preceded on the 3d of October by a report
from the new Committee of Public Safety, con-
cluding with the indictment of 40 deputies ; 39
were Girondists or friends of the Gironde; the
fortieth was the ex-Duke of Orleans. Twenty-
one of these 39 were now in the hands of their
enemies, and of these 31 only 9 belonged to the
first deputies indicted on the 2d of June; the
remainder had left Paris hoping to organize out-
side resistance, and had been declared outlawed.
The deputies subsequently added to this number
were members of the Right who had signed
protests against the violation of the national
representation on that fatal day. ... It was de-
cided at the same session to bring the 40 deputies,
together with Marie Antoinette, to trial. The
Jacobins and the commune had long been de-
manding the trial of the unhappy queen, and
were raising loud clamors over the plots for her
FRANCE. 1793.
Execution of
the Queen.
FRANCE, 1793.
deliverance. She might perhaps have escaped
from the Temple if she vi-ould have consented tci
leave her children. During July a sorrow equal
to that of the 21st of January had been inflicted
on her : she had been separated from her young
son under the pretence that she treated him like
a king, and was bringing him up to make ' a
tyrant of him.' The child was placed in another
part of the Temple, and his education was in-
trusted to a vulgar and brutal shoemaker,
named Simon. Nevertheless the fate of Marie
Antoinette at this epoch was still doubtful;
neither the Committee of Public Safety nor the
ministry desired her death. While Lebrun, the
friend of the Girondists, was minister of foreign
affairs, a project had been formed which would
have saved her life. Danton knew of it and
aided it. . . . This plan was a negotiation with
Venice, Tuscany, and Naples, the three Italian
States yet neutral, who were to pledge them-
selves to maintain their wavering neutrality, in
consideration of a guaranty of the safety of
Marie Antoinette and her family. Two diplo-
matic agents who afterwards held high posts in
France, ilarat and Semonville, were intrusted
■with this affair. As they were crossing from
Switzerland into Italy, they were arrested, in
violation of the law of nations, upon the neutral
territory of the Grisons by an Austrian detach-
ment (July 25). ... At tidings of the arrest
of the French envoys, Marie Antoinette was
separated from her daughter and sister-in-law
Elizabeth, and transferred to the Conciergerie.
On the 14th of October she appeared before the
revolutionary tribunal. To the accusation of
the public prosecutor, Fouquier-Tinville, made
up of calumnies against her private life, and for
the most part well-founded imputations against
her political conduct, she opposed a plausible
defence, which effaced as far as possible her part
in the late government. . . . The following
questions were put to the jurors : ' Has Marie An-
toinette aided in movements designed to assist the
foreign enemies of the Republic to open French
territory to them and to facilitate the progress
of their arms? Has she taken part in a con-
spiracy tending to incite civil war?' The an-
swer was in the atfirmative, and the sentence of
death was passed on her. The decisive por-
tions which we now possess of the queen's cor-
respondence with Austria had not then been
made public ; but enough was known to leave no
doubt of her guilt, which had the same moral
excuses as that of her husband. . . . She met
death [October 16] with courage and resigna-
tion. The populace who had hated her so
much did not insult her last moments. ... A
week after the queen's death the Girondists were
summoned before the revolutionary tribunal.
Brissot and Lasource alone had tried to escape
this bloody ordeal, and to stir up resistance
against it in the South. Vergniaud, Gensonne,
and Valaze remained unshaken in their resolve
to await trial. Gensonne, who had been placed
in the keeping of a Swiss whose life he had
saved on the 10th of August, and who had be-
come a gendarme, might have escaped, but he
refused to profit by this man's gratitude. . . .
Tlie act of indictment drawn up by the ex-
Feuillant Amar was only a repetition of the
monstrous calumnies which had circulated
through the clubs and the journals. Brissot
was accused of having ruined the colonies by
advocating the liberation of shives. and of having
drawn foreign arms upon France by declaring
war on kings. The whole trial corresponded to
this beginning. ... On the 29th the Jacobins
appeared at the bar of the Convention, and
called for a decree giving the jurors of the revo-
lutionary tribunal the right to bring tlie pro-
ceedings to a close as soon as they believed
tlieraselves sufficiently enlightened. Robes-
pierre and Bar^re supported tlie Jacobin demand.
Upon Robespierre's motion it was decreed that
after three days' proceedings, the jurors might
declare themselves ready to render their verdict.
The next day the jurors availed themselves of
their privilege, and declared themselves suf-
ficiently informed, although they had not heard
the evidence for acquittal, neither the accused
nor their counsel having been allowed to plead
their cause. Brissot, Vergniaud, Gensonne,
Valaze, Bishop Fauchet, Ducos, Boyer-Fon-
frede, Lasource, and their friends were "declared
guilty of having conspired against the unity
and indivisibility of the Republic, and against
the liberty and safety of the French people. . . .
Danton, who had not been an accomplice in
their death, had retired to his mother's home at
Arcis-sur-Aube, that he might not be a witness
thereof. The condemned were brouglit back to
hear their sentence. The greater part of them
rose up with a common impulse, and cried, ' We
are innocent! People, they are deceiving you!'
The crowd remained motionless and silent. . . ,
At midnight they partook of a last repast,
passing the rest of the night in converse about
their native land, their remnant of life being
cheered by news of victory and pleasant sallies
from young Ducos, who might have escaped,
but preferred to share his friend Fonfrede's fate.
Vergniaud had been given a subtle poison by
Condorcet, but threw it away, choosing to die
with his companions. One of his noble utter-
ances gives us the key to his life. ' Others
sought to consummate the Revolution by terror;
I would accomplish it by love.' Next day,
October 31, at noon, the prisoners were led
forth, and as the five carts containing them left
the Conciergerie, they struck up the national
hymn . . . and shouts of ' Long live the Repub-
lic' The sounds died away as their number de-
creased, but did not cease until the last of the
21 mounted the fatal platform. . . . The mur-
derers of the Girondists were not likely to spare
the illustrious woman who was at once the
inspiration and the honor of that party, and the
very same day Madame Roland who had been
for five months a prisoner at St. Pelagic and the
Abbaye, was transferred to the Conciergerie.
Hebert and his followers had long clamored for
her head. During her captivity she wrote her
ilemoirs, which unfortunately have not been
preserved complete ; no other souvenir of the
Revolution equals this, although it is not always
reliable, for Madame Roland had feminine
weaknesses of intellect, despite her masculine
strength of soul; she was prejudiced against all
who disagreed with her, and regarded caution
and compromise with a noble but impolitic scorn.
. . . The 18th Brumaire (November 10), she was
summoned before the revolutionary tribunal;
when she left her cell, clad in white, her dark
hair floating loosely over her shoulders, a smile
on her lips and her face sparkling with life and
animation. . . . She was condemned in advance,
1330
FRANCE, 1793.
Life in Pari
FRANCE, 1793.
not being allowed a word in her own defence,
and was declared guilty of being an author or
aceompUce ' of a monstrous consjjiracy against
the unity and indivisibility of the Republic.'
She heard her sentence calmly, saj'ing to the
judges: ' You deem me worthy the fate of tlie
great men you have murdered. I will try to
display the same courage on the scaffold. ' Slie
was taken directly to the Place de la Revolution,
a man condemned for treason being placed in
tlie same cart, who was overwhelmed with
terror. She passed tlie mournful journey iu
soothing him, and on reacliing the scaffold bid
him mount tirst, that his sufferings miglit not
be prolonged. As she tooli lier place in turn,
lier eye fell on a colossal statue of Liberty,
erected August 10, 1793. 'O Liberty,' she
cried, ' what crimes are committed in thy name ! '
Some say that slie said, ' O Liberty, how they
have deceived tliee!' Thus died the noblest
woman in history since the incomparable Joan,
who saved France! . . . The bloody tribunal
never paused ; famous men of every party suc-
ceeded each other at the fatal t)ar, the ex-Duke
of Orleans among them, but four days earlier
than Madame Roland. . . . The day after
Madame Roland's trial began that of tlie vener-
able Bailli, ex-mayor of Paris and ex-president
of the Constituent Assembly, a man who played
a great part early in the Revolution, but faded
out of sight with the constituent power." —
Henry Martin, Popular Hist, of France, 1789-
1877, V. 1, ch. 16.
Also in A. de Lamartine, Sist. of tlie G-iron-
disis, ch. 46-52 (». 3).— C. D. Yonge, Life of
Marie Antoinette, ch. 39. — M'me Campan,
Memoirs of the Private Life of Marie Antoinette,
V. 2, conchision. — S. Marceau, Reminiscences of
a Regicide, ch. 11. — Count Beugnot, Life, i\ 1,
ch. 6. — Lord R. Gower, Last Days of Marie
Antoinette.
A. D. 1793 (October). — Life in Paris during
the Reign of Terror. — Gaiety in the Prisons.
— The Tricoteuses, or knitting women. —
Revolutionary costumes and modes of speech.
— The guillotine as plaything and ornament.
— "By the end of October, 1793, the Committee
of General Security had mastered Paris, and
established the Reign of Terror there by means
of tlie Revolutionary Tribunal, and could answer
to the Great Committee of Public Safety for tlie
tranquillity of the capital. There were no more
riots; men were afraid even to express their
opinions, much less to quarrel about them ; the
system of denunciation made Paris into a hive
of unpaid spies, and ordinary crimes, pocket-
picking and the like, vanished as if by magic.
Yet it must not be supposed that Paris was
gloomy or dull ; on the contrary, the vast ma j ority
of citizens seemed glad to have an excuse to
avoid politics, of which they had had a surfeit
during the last four years, and to turn their
thoughts to the literary side of their favourite
journals, to the theatres, and to art. . . . The
dull places of Paris were the Revolutionary
Committees, the Jacobin Clu.b. the Convention,
the Hotel de Brienne, where the Committee of
General Security sat, and the Pavilion de
I'Egalite, formerly the Pavilion de Flore, in the
Tuileries, where the Great Committee of Public
Safety laboured. . . . Elsewhere men were
lighthearted and gay, following their usual avo-
cations, and busy in their pursuit of pleasure or
of gain. It is most essential to grasp the fact
tliat there was no particular difference, for the
vast majority of the population, iu living in Paris
during the Reign of Terror and at other times.
The imagination of posterity, steeped in tales of
tlie tumbrils bearing their burden to the guillo-
tine, and of similar stories of horror, has con-
ceived a ghastly picture of life at that extra-
ordinary period, and it is only after living for
months amongst the journals, memoirs, and let-
ters of the time that one can realize the fact that
to the average Parisian the necessity of getting
his dinner or his evening's amusement remained
the paramount tliought of his daily life. . . .
Strange to say, nowhere was life more happy
and gay than in the prisons of Paris, where the
inmates lived in the constant expectation that
the haphazard chance of being brought before
tlie Revolutionary Tribunal and condemned to
death might befall them at any moment. . . .
A little more must be said about the market-
women, the tricoteuses, or knitting-women of
infamous memory. These market-women had
been treated as heroines ever since their march to
Versailles in October, 1789. . . . They formed
their societies after the fashion of the Jacobin
Club, presided over by Reuee Audu, Agnfes
Lefevre, Marie Louise Bouju, and Rose Lacombe,
and went about the streets of Paris insulting
respectably dressed people, and hounding on the
sans-culottes to deeds of atrocity. These Maenads
were encouraged by Marat, and played an
important part in the street history of Paris, up
to the Reign of Terror, when their power was
suddenly taken from them. On May 21, 1793,
they were excluded by a decree from the gal-
leries of the Convention ; on May 26 they were
forbidden to form part of any political assembly;
and when they appealed from the Convention to
the Commune of Paris, Chaumette abruptly told
them ' that the Republic had no need of Joans of
Arc. ' Thus deprived of active participation in
politics, the market-women became the tricoteu-
ses, or knitting-women, who used to take their
seats in the Place de la Revolution, and watch the
guillotine as they Itnitted. Their active power for
good or harm was gone. . . . Life during the Ter-
ror in Paris . . . differed in little things, in little
affectations of liberty and equality, which are
amusing to study. "The fashions of dress every-
where betrayed the new order of things. A few
men, such as Robespierre, might still go about
witli powdered hair and in knee-breeches, but
the ordinary male costume of the time was
designed to contrast in every way with the cos-
tume of a dandy of the 'ancien regime.' Instead
of breeches, the fashion was to wear trousers;
instead of shoes, top-boots ; and instead of shav-
ing, the young Parisian prided liimself on lotting
his moustache grow. In female costume a dif-
ferent motive was at work. Only David's art
disciples ventured to imitate the male apparel
of ancient Greece and Rome, but such imitation
became the fashion among women. Waists
disappeared ; and instead of stiffened skirts and
narrow bodices, women wore short loose robes,
which they fancied resembled Greek chitons;
sandals took the place of high-heeled shoes ; and
the hair, instead of being worked up into elaborate
edifices, was allowed to flow down freely. For
ornaments, gun-metal and steel took the place of
gold, silverand precious stones. . . . The favour-
ite design was the guillotine. Little guillotines
FRANCE, 1793.
Woiship of
Reason.
FRANCE, 1793.
were worn as brooches, as earrings and as clasps,
and the women of the time simply followed the
fashion without realizing what it meant. Indeed,
the worship of the guillotine was one of the
most curious features of the epoch. Children
had toy guillotines given them ; models were
made to cut off imitation heads, when wine or
sweet syrup flowed in place of blood ; and hymns
were written to La Sainte Guillotine, and jokes
made upon it, as the 'national razor.' . . . It is well
known that the desire to emphasize the abolition
of titles was followed by the abolition of the
terms ' Monsieur ' and ' Madame, ' and that their
places were taken by ' Citizen ' and ' Citizeness ; '
and also how the use of the second person plural
was dropped, and it was considered a sign of a
good republican to tutoyer every one, that is, to
call them 'thou 'and 'thee.' . . . The Reign of
Terror in Paris seems to us an age of unique
experiences, a time unparalleled in the history
of the world; yet to the great majority of con-
temporaries it did not appear so: they lived
their ordinary lives, and it was only in excep-
tional cases that the serenity of their days was
interrupted, or that their minds were exercised
by anything more than the necessity of earning
their daily bread. "—H. M. Stephens, ITist. of
the Fr. Rev., v. 2, ch. 10.
Also in J. Michelet, Women of the Fr. Rev. ,
eh. 30-80.
A. D. 1793 (October). — The new republican
calendar. — ' ' Before the year ended the legislat ors
of Paris voted that there was no God, and de-
stroyed or altered nearly everything that had
any reference to Christianity. Robespierre, who
would have stopped short at deism, and who
would have preserved the external decencies,
was overruled and intimidated by Hebert and
his frowsy crew, who had either crept into the
governing committees or had otherwise made
themselves a power in the state. . . . All popu-
lar journalists, patriots, and public bodies, had
begun dating 'First Year of Liberty,' or 'First
Year of the Republic ; ' and the old calendar had
come to be considered as superstitious and slav-
ish, as an abomination in the highest degree dis-
graceful to free and enlightened Frenchmen.
Various petitions for a change had been pre-
sented ; and at length the Convention had em-
ployed the mathematicians Romme and Monge,
and the astronomer Laplace, to make a new re-
publican calendar for the new era. These three
philosophers, aided by Fabre d'Eglantine, who,
as a poet, furnished the names, soon finished
their work, which was sanctioned by the Con-
vention and decreed into universal use as early
as the 5th of October. It divided the year into
four equal seasons, and twelve equal months of
30 days each. The five odd days which remained
were to be festivals, and to bear the name of
' Sansculottides. ' . . . One of these five days was
to be consecrated to Genius, one to Industry, the
third to Fine Actions, the fourth to Rewards,
the fifth to Opinion. ... In leap-years, when
there would be six days to dispose of, the last
of those days or Sansculottides was to be conse-
crated to the Revolution, and to be observed in
all times with all possible solemnity. The
months were divided into three decades, or por-
tions of ten days each, and, instead of the Chris-
tian sabbath, once in seven days, the decadi, or
tenth day, was to be the day of rest. . . . "The
decimal method of calculation . . . was to pre-
side over all divisions: thus, instead of our
twenty-four hours to the day, and sixty minutes
to the hour, the day was divided into ten parts,
and the tenth was to be subdivided by tens and
again by tens to the minutest division of time.
New dials were ordered to mark the time in this
new way, but, before they were finished, it was
found that the people were puzzled and per-
plexed by this last alteration, and therefore this
part of the calendar was adjourned for a year,
and the hours, minutes and seconds were left as
they were. As the republic commenced on the
21st of September close on the [autumnal] equi-
nox, the republican year was made to commence
at that season. The first month in the year
(Fabre d'Eglantine being god-father to them all)
was called Vendemiaire, or the vintage month,
the second Brumaire, or the foggy month, the
third Frimaire, or the frosty month. These were
the three autumn months. Nivose, Pluviose,
and Ventose, or the snowy, rainy and windy,
were the three winter months. Germinal, Flo-
real, and Prairial, or the bud month, the flower
month, and the meadow month, formed the
spring season. Messidor, Thermidor and Fruc-
tidor, or reaping month, heat month, and fruit
month, made the summer, and completed the re-
publican year. In more ways than one all this
was calculated for the meridian of Paris, and
could suit no other physical or moral climate.
. . . But the strangest thing about this repub-
lican calendar was its duration. It lasted till the
1st of January, 1806. "— C. JIac Farlane, The Fr.
Rev., V. 4, ch. 3. — The Republican Calendar for
the Year Two of the Republic (Sept. 22, 1793 —
Sept. 21, 1794) is synchronized with the Grego-
rian Calendar as follows: 1 Vendemiaire=Sept.
22; 1 Brumaire = Oct. 23; 1 Frimaire = Nov. 21;
1 Niv6se=Dec. 21; 1 Pluvi6se=Jan. 20; 1 Ven-
t6se=Feb. 19; 1 Germinal = March 31; 1 Flo-
real=April 20; 1 Prairial=Jlay 30; 1 Messidor=
June 19; 1 Thermidor=July 19; 1 Fructidor=
Aug. 18; 1st to 5th Sanscul6ttides=Sept. 17-31.
— H. M. Stephens, Hist, of the Fr. Rev., v. 2,
app. 13.
Also in A. Thiers, Hist, of the Fr. Rev. {Am.
ed.), t\ 2. pp. 364-365.
A. D. 1793 (November). — Abandonment of
Christianity. — The Worship of Reason insti-
tuted. — "The earliest steps towards a public
abandonment of Christianity appear to have
been taken by Fouche, the future minister of
Police, and Duke of Otranto. ... lie published
at Nevers (October 10, 1793) a decree" ordaining
that "no forms of religious worship be practised
except within their respective temples;" that
"ministers of religion are forbidden, under pain
of imprisonment, to wear their otficial costumes
in any other places besides their temples;" and
that the inscription, "Death is an eternal sleep,"
should be placed over the entrance to the ceme-
tery. " This decree was reported to the munici-
pality of Paris by Chaumette, the fanatical pro-
cureur of the Commune, and was warmly
applauded. . . . The atheistical cabal of which
he was the leader (his chief associates being the
infamous Hebert, the Prussian baron Auncharsis
Clootz, and Chabot, a renegade priest), now
judged that public feeling was ripe for an
avowed and combined onslaught on the pro-
fession of Christianity. . . . They decreed that
on the 10th of November the ' Worship of
Reason ' should be inaugurated at Notre Dame.
1332
FRANCE, 1793.
FiisUUules
and Noyades.
FRANCE, 1793-1794.
On that day the venerable cathedral was pro-
faned by a series of sacrilegious outrages unpar-
alleled in the history of Christendom. A temple
dedicated to ' Philosophy ' was erected on a
platform in the middle of the choir. A motley
procession of citizens of both sexes, headed by
the constituted authorities, advanced towards it;
on their approach, the Goddess of Reason, imper-
sonated by Mademoiselle Maillard, a well known
figurante of the opera, took her seat upon a
grassy throne in front of the temple ; a hymn,
composed in her honour by the poet Chenier, was
sung by a body of young girls dressed in white
and bedecked with flowers; and the multitude
bowed the knee before her in profound adoration.
It was the ' abomination of desolation sitting in
the holy place.' At the close of this grotesque
ceremony the whole cortege proceeded to the
hall of the Convention, carrying with them their
'goddess,' who was borne aloft in a chair of
state on the shoulders of four men. Having
deposited her in front of the president, Chau-
mette harangued the Assembly. . . . He pro-
ceeded to demand that the ci-devant metropoliti-
cal church should henceforth be tlic temple of
Reason and Liberty ; which proposition was
immediately adopted. The ' goddess ' was then
conducted to the president, and he and other
officers of the House saluted her with the 'frater-
nal kiss,' amid thunders of applause. After this,
upon the motion of Thuriot, the Convention in a
body joined the mass of the people, and marched
in their comjiany to the temple of Reason, to
witness a repetition of the impieties above
described. These demonstrations were zealously
imitated in the other churches of the capital. . . .
The Interior of St. Eustache was transformed
into a ' guinguette,' or place of low public enter-
tainment. ... At St. Qervaia a ball was given
in the chapel of the Virgin. In other churches
theatrical spectacles took place. . . . Represen-
tatives of the people thought it no shame to quit
their curule chairs in order to dance the ' carmag-
nole ' with abandoned women in the streets attired
in sacerdotal garments. On Sunday, the 17th of
November, all the parish churches of Paris were
closed by authority, with three exceptions. . . .
Chaumette, at a sitting of the Commune on the
26th of November, called for further measures
for the extermination of every vestifc of Chris-
tian worship ; " and the Council of the Commune,
on his demand, ordered the closing of all churches
and temples, of every religious denomination ;
made priests and ministers of religion responsible
for any troubles that might arise from religious
opinions, and commanded the arrest as a
' ' suspect " of any person who should ask for the
reopening of a church. "The example set by
Paris, at this melancholy period, was faithfully
repeated, if not surpassed in atrocity, tliroughout
the provinces. Religion was proscribed,
churches closed. Christian ordinances interdicted ;
the dreary gloom of atheistical despotism over-
spread the land. . . . These infamies were too
monstrous to be tolerated for any length of time.
. . . Robespierre, who had marked the symptoms
of a coming reaction, boldly seized tlie oppor-
tunity, and denounced without mercy the hypo-
critical faction which disputed his own march
towards absolute dictatorship." — W. H, Jervis,
TTie Oallican Church and the Revolution, ch. 7.
Also in A. de Lamartine, Hist, of the Giron-
dists, bk. 52 («. 3).— T. Carlyle, The FY. Rev.,
Vi
bk. 5, ch. 4 (». 3).— E. de Presaense, Religion and
the Reign of Terror, bk. 2, ch. 2.
A. D. 1793-1794 (October — April). — The
Terror in the Provinces.— Republican ven-
geance at Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, Bor-
deaux, Nantes.— Fusillades and Noyades.—
' ■ Tlie insurgents of Lyons, Marseilles, Toulon, and
Bordeaux, were punished with pitiless severity.
Lyons had revolted, and the convention decreed
[October 12] the destruction of the city, the
confiscation of the property of the rich, for the
benefit of the patriots, and the punishment of
the insurgents by martial law. Couthon, a com-
missioner well tried in cruelty, hesitated to
carry into execution this monstrous decree, and
was superseded by Collot d' Herbois and Fouche.
Tliousands of workmen were employed in the
work of destruction: whole streets fell under
their pickaxes: the prisons were gorged: the
j;uillotine was too slow for revolutionary ven-
geance, and crowds of prisoners were shot, in
murderous ' mitraillades. ' ... At Marseilles,
12,000 of the richest citizens fled from the
vengeance of the revolutionists, and their
Ijroperty was confiscated, and plundered. When
Toulon fell before the strategy of Bonaparte,
the savage vengeance and cruelty of the con-
querors were Indulged without restraint. . . .
The dockyard labourers were put to the sword :
gangs of prisoners were brought out and exe-
cuted by fusillades: the guillotine also claimed
its victims: the sans-culottes rioted in confisca-
tion and plunder. At Bordeaux, Tallien threw
15,000 citizens into prison. Hundreds fell under
the guillotine; and the possessions and property
of the rich were offered up to outrage and
robbery. But all these atrocities were far sur-
passed in La Vendee. . . . The barbarities of
warfare were yet surpassed by the vengeance of
the conquerors, when the insurrection was, at
last, overcome. At Nantes, the monster Carrier
outstripped his rivals in cruelty and Insatiable
thirst for blood. Not contented with wholesale
mitraillades, he designed that masterpiece of
cruelty, the noyades; and thousands of men,
women and children who escaped the muskets
of the rabble soldiery were deliberately drowned
in the waters of the Loire. In four months, his
victims reached 15,000. At Angers, and other
towns in La Vendee, these hideous noyades were
added to the terrors of the guillotine and the
fusillades."— Sir T. E. May, Democracy in,
Europe, ch. 14.— "One begins to be sick of
' death vomited in great floods. ' Nevertheless,
hearest thou not, O Reader (for the sound reaches
through centuries), in the dead December and
January nights, over Nantes Town, — confused
noises, as of musketry and tumult, as of rage
and lamentation ; mingling with the everlasting
moan of the Loire waters there ? Nantes Town
is sunk in sleep ; but Representant Carrier is not
sleeping, the wool-capped Company of Marat is
not sleeping. Why unmoors that flatbottomed
craft, that 'gabarre' ; about eleven at night;
with Ninety Priests under hatches ? They are
going to Belle Isle ? In the middle of the Loire
stream, on signal given, the gabarre is scuttled;
she sinks with all her cargo. ' Sentence of
Deportation,' writes Carrier, 'was executed
vertically." The Ninety Priests, with their
gabarre-coffin, lie deep! It is the first of the
Noyades [November 16], what we may call
'Drownages' of Carrier; which have become
FRANCE, 1793-1794.
T)-iiti)iph of
Robespierre.
FRANCE, 1793-1794.
famous forever. Guillotining there was at
Nantes, till the Headsman sank worn out : then
fusillading 'in the Plain of Saint-Mauve;' little
children fusilladed, and women with children at
the breast; children and women, by the hundred
and twenty ; and by the five hundred, so hot is
La Vendee : till the very Jacobins grew sick,
and all but the Company of Marat cried. Hold !
Wherefore now we have got Noyading ; and on
the 24th night of Frostarious year 2, which is
14th of December 1793, we have a second
Noyade; consisting of '138 persons.' Or why
waste a gabarre, sinking it with them 1 Fling
them out ; fling them out, with their hands tied :
pour a continual hail of lead over all the space,
till the last struggler of thera be sunk ! Unsound
sleepers of Nantes, and the Sea-Villages there-
abouts, hear the musketry amid the night- winds ;
wonder what the meaning of it is. And women
were in that gabarre ; whom the Red Nightcaps
were stripping naked ; who begged, in their
agony, that their smocks might not be stript
from them. And young children were thrown
in, their mothers vainly pleading: 'Wolflings,'
answered the Company of Marat, ' who would
grow to be wolves. ' By degrees, daylight itself
witnesses Noyades: women and men are tied
together, feet and feet, hands and hands; and
flung in: this they call Mariage Republicain,
Republican Marriage. Cruel is the panther of
the woods, the she-bear bereaved of her whelps:
but there is in man a hatred crueler than that.
Dumb, out of suffering now, as pale swoln
corpses, the victims tumble confusedly seaward
along the Loire stream; the tide rolling them
back: clouds of ravens darken the River;
wolves prowl on the shoal-places : Carrier writes,
'Quel torrent revolutionnaire. What a torrent of
Revolution!' For the man is rabid; and the
Time is rabid. These are the Noyades of Carrier ;
twenty-five by the tale, for what is done in dark-
ness comes to be investigated in sunlight: not to
be forgotten for centuries. . . . Men are all
rabid; as the Time is. Representative Lebon,
at Arras, dashes his sword into the blood flowing
from the Guillotine; exclaims, 'How I like it!'
Mothers, they say, by his orders, have to stand
by while the Guillotine devours their children : a
band of music is stationed near; and, at the fall
of every head, strikes up its ' Ca-ira. ' " — T.
Carlyle, The Fr. Rev., i). 3, bk. 5, ch. 3.
Also in H. M. Stephens, Hist, of the Fr. Rev.,
V. 3, ch. 11,— H. A. Taine, The Fi: Rev., bk. 5,
eh. 1, sect. 9 {v. 3). — Horrors of the Pnson of
Arras ("The Reign of Terror: A Collection of
Authentic Narratives," V. 2). — Duchesse deDuras,
Prison Journals during the Fr. Rev. — A. des
Echerolles, Early Life, v. 1, ch. 7-13, andv. 2, ch.
1. — See, also, below: 1794 June — July).
A. D. 1793-1794 (November— June).— The
factions of the Mountain devour one another.
— Destruction of the Hebertists.— Danton and
his followers brought to the knife.— Robes-
pierre and the Committee of Public Safety. —
The Feast of the Supreme Being. — ■Itobes-
pierre was vuiutterably outraged by the pro-
ceedings of the atheists. They perplexed him
as a politician intent upon order, and they
afflicted him sorely as an ardent disciple of the
Savoyard Vicar. Hebert, however, was so
strong that it needed some courage to attack
him, nor did Robespierre dare to wi'thstand him
to the face. But he did not flinch from making
an energetic assault upon atheism and the
excesses of its partisans. His admirers usually
count his speech of the 21st of November one of the
most admirable of his oratorical successes. . . .
' Atheism [he said] is aristocratic. 'The idea of
a great being who watches over oppressed inno-
cence and punishes triumphant crime is essen-
tially the idea of the people. This is the
sentiment of Europe and the Universe; it is the
sentiment of the French nation. That people is
attached neither to priests, nor to superstitions,
nor to ceremonies ; it is attached only to worship
in itself, or in other words to the idea of an
incomprehensible Power, the terror of wrong-
doers, the stay and comfort of virtue, to which
it delights to render words of homage that are all
so many anathemas against injustice and trium-
phant crime.' This is Robespierre's favourite
attitude, the priest posing as statesman. . . .
Danton followed practically the same line,
though saying much less about it. ' If Greece,'
he said in the Convention, ' had its Olympian
games, France too shall solemnize her sans-
culottid days. ... If we have not honoured
the priest of error and fanaticism, neither do we
wish to honour the priest of incredulity: we
wish to serve the people. I demand that there
shall be an end of these anti-religious mas-
querades in the Convention.' There was an end
of the masquerading, but the Hebertists still
kept their ground. Danton, Robespierre, and
the Committee were all equally impotent against
them for some months longer. The revolutionary
force had been too strong to be resisted by any
government since the Paris insurgents had car-
ried both king and assembly in triumph from
Versailles in the October of 1789. It was now too
strong for those who had begun to strive with
all their might to build a new government out
of the agencies that had shattered the old to
pieces. For some months the battle which had
been opened by Robespierre's remonstrance
against atheistic intolerance, degenerated into a
series of masked skirmishes. . . . Collot D'Her-
bois had come back in hot haste from Lyons.
. . . Carrier was recalled from Nantes. . . .
The presence of these men of blood gave new
courage and resolution to the Hebertists.
Though the alliance was informal, yet as against
Danton, Camille Desmoulius, and the rest of
the Indulgents, as well as against Robespierre,
they made common cause. Camille Desmoulins
attacked Hebert in successive numbers of a
journal ['Le Vieux Cordelier'] that is perhaps
the one truly literary monument of this stage of
the revolution. Hebert retaliated by impugning
the patriotism of Desmoulins in the Club, and
the unfortunate wit, notwithstanding the efforts
of Robespierre on his behalf, was for a while
turned out of the sacred precincts. . . . Even
Danton himself was attacked (December, 1793)
and the integrity of his patriotism brought into
question. Robespierre made an energetic defence
of his great rival in the hierarchy of revolution.
. . . Robespierre, in whom spasmodical courage
and timidity ruled by rapid turns, began
to suspect that he had been premature; and a
convenient illness, which some supposed to have
been feigned, excused his withdrawal for some
weeks from a scene where he felt that he could
no longer see clear. We catmot doubt that both
he and Danton were perfectly assured that the
anarchic party must unavoidably roll headlong
13o4
FRANCE, 1793-1794.
Dnnton to
the Guillotine.
FRANCE, 1793-1794.
into the abyss. But the hour of doom w.as
uncertain. To make a mistake in the rijrht
moment, to hurry the crisis, was instant deatli.
Robespierre was a more adroit calculator than
Danton. . . . His absence during the final crisis
of the anarchic party allowed events to ripen,
without committing him to that initiative in
dangerous action which he had dreaded on the
10th of August, as he dreaded it on every other
decisive day of this burning time. The party
of the Commune became more and more daring
in their invectives against the Convention and
the Committees. At length they proclaimed
open insurrection. But Paris was cold, and
opinion was divided. In the night of the 13th of
March, Hebert, Chaumette, Clootz, were arrested.
The next day Robespierre recovered sufficiently
to appear at the Jacobin Club. He joined his
colleagues of the Committee of Public Safety
in striking the blow. On the 24th of March
the Ultra-Revolutionist leaders were beheaded.
The first bloody breach in the Jacobin ranks
was speedily followed by the second. The Right
wing of the opposition to the Committee soon
followed the Left down the ways to dusty death,
and the execution of the Anarchists only pre-
ceded by a week the arrest of the Moderates.
When the seizure of Danton had once before
been discussed in the Committee, Robespierre
resisted the proposal violently. We have already
seen how he defended Danton at the Jacobin Club.
. . . What produced this sudden tack? . . . His
acquiescence in the ruin of Danton is intelligible
enough on the grounds of selfish policy. The
Committee [of Public Safety] hated Danton for
the good reason that he had openly attacked them,
and his cry for clemency was an inflammatory and
dangerous protest against their system. Now
Robespierre, rightly or wrongly, had made up his
mind that the Committee was the instrument by
which, and which only, he could work out his
own vague schemes of power and reconstruc-
tion. And, in any case, how could he resist the
Committee? . . . All goes to show that Robes-
pierre was really moved by nothing more than
his invariable dread of being left behind, of
finding himself on the weaker side, of not seeming
practical and political enough. And having
made up his mind that the stronger party was
bent on the destruction of the Dantonists, he
became fiercer than Billaud himself. . . . Dan-
ton had gone, as he often did, to his native
village of Arcis-sur-Aube, to seek repose and a
little clearness of sight in the night that wrapped
him about. He was devoid of personal ambi-
tion ; he never had any humour for mere factious
struggles. . . . It is not clear that he could have
done anything. The balance of force, after the
suppression of the Hebertists, was irretrievably
against him, as calculation had already revealed
to Robespierre. . . . After the arrest, and on
the proceedings to obtain the assent of the Con-
vention to the trial of Danton and others of its
members, one only of their friends had the
courage to rise and demand that they should be
heard at the bar. Robespierre burst out in cold
rage; he asked whether they had undergone so
many heroic sacrifices, counting among them
these acts of 'painful severity,' only to fall
under the yoke of a band of domineer-
ing intriguers; and he cried out impatiently
that they would brook no claim of privilege,
and suffer no rotten idol. The word was felici-
tously chosen, for the Convention dreaded to
have its independence suspected, and it dreaded
this all the more because at this time its inde-
pendence did not really exist. The vote against
Danton was unanimous, and the fact that it was
so is the deepest stain on the fame of this assem-
bly. On the afternoon of the 16th Germinal
(April 5, 1794), Paris in amazement and some
stupefaction saw the once dreaded Titan of the
Slountain fast bound in the tumbril, and faring
towards the sharp-clanging knife [with Camille
Desmoulins and others]. 'I leave it all in a
frightful welter,' Danton is reported to have said.
' Not a man of them has an idea of government.
Robespierre will follow me ; he is dragged down by
me. Ah, better be a poor fisherman than meddle
with the governing of men!' . . . After the fall of
the anarchists and the death of Danton, the rela-
tions between Robespierre and the Committees
underwent a change. He, who had hitherto
been on the side of government, became in turn
an agency of opposition. He did this in the
interest of ultimate stability, but the difference
between the new position and the old is that he
now distinctly associated the idea of a stable
republic with the ascendency of his own religious
conceptions. . . . The base of Robespierre's
scheme of social reconstruction now came clearly
into view ; and what a base I An ofiicial Supreme
Being and a regulated Terror. . . . How can we
speak with decent patience of a man who
seriously thought that he should conciliate the
conservative and theological elements of the
society at his feet, by such an odious opera-piece
as the Feast of the Supreme Being. This was
designed as a triumphant ripost to the Feast of
Reason, which Chaumette and his friends had
celebrated in the winter. . . . Robespierre per-
suaded the Convention to decree an official recog-
nition of the Supreme Being, and to attend a
commemorative festival in honour of their mystic
patron. He contrived to be chosen president for
the decade in which the festival would fall.
AVhen the day came (20th Prairial, June 8, 1794),
he clothed himself with more than even his
usual care. As he looked out from the windows
of the Tuileries upon the jubilant crowd in the
gardens, he was intoxicated with enthusiasm.
'O Nature,' he cried, 'how sublime thy power,
how full of delight! How tyrants must grow
pale at the idea of such a festival as this ! ' In
pontifical pride he walked at the head of the
procession, with flowers and wheat-ears in his
hand, to the sound of chants and symphonies
and choruses of maidens. On the first of the
great basins in the gardens, David, the artist,
had devised an allegorical structure for which
an inauspicious doom was prepared. Atheism,
a statue of life size, was throned in the midst of
an amiable group of human Vices, with Madness
by her side, and Wisdom menacing them with
lofty wrath. Great are the perils of symbolism.
Robespierre applied a torch to Atheism, but
alas, the wind was hostile, or else Atheism and
Madness were damp. They obstinately resisted
the torch, and it was hapless Wisdom who took
fire. . . . The whole mummery was pagan.
. . . It stands as the most disgusting and con-
temptible anachronism in history," — J. Morley,
Rohespierre {Critical Miscellanies, Second Series).
Also in T. Carlyle, The Fr. Rev., v. 3, bk. 6.
— 6. H. Lewes, Life of Robespierre, ch. 19-20. —
L. Gronlund, fa ira; or Danton in t?ie Pr. Rev.,
1335
FRANCE, 1794.
PRANCE, 1794.
ch. 6. — J. Claretie, Camille Deamoulins and his
Wife, ch 5-6.
A. D. 1794 (March— July).— Withdrawal of
Prussia from the European Coalition as a.T
ally, to become a mercenary. — Successes of
the Republic. — Conquest of the Austrian
Netherlands. — Advance to the Rhine. — Loss
of Corsica. — Naval defeat off Ushant.—
"While the alliance of the Great Powers was on
the point of dissolution from selfishness and
jealousy, the French, with an energy and de-
termination, which, considering their unparalleled
difficulties, were truly heroic, had assembled
armies numbering nearly a million of men. The
aggregate of the allied forces did not much ex-
ceed 300,000. The campaign on the Dutch and
Flemish frontiers of France was planned at
Vienna, but had nearly been disconcerted at the
outset by the refusal of the Duke of York to
serve under General Clairfait. . . . The Emperor
settled the difficulty by signifying his intention
to take the command in person. Thus one in-
competent prince who knew little, was to be
commanded by another incompetent prince who
knew nothing, about war ; and the success of a
great enterprise was made subservient to con-
siderations of punctilio and etiquette. The
main object of the Austrian plan was to com-
plete the reduction of the frontier fortresses by
the capture of Landrecy on the Sambre, and
then to advance through the plains of Picardy
on Paris; — a plan which might have been
feasible the year before. . . . The King of
Prussia formally withdrew from the alliance
[March 13] ; but condescended to assume the
character of a mercenary. In the spring of the
year, by a treaty with the English Government,
his Prussian Majesty undertook to furnish
62,000 men for a year, in consideration of the
sum of £1,800,000, of which Holland, by a
separate convention, engaged to supply some-
what less than a fourth part. The organisation
of the French army was effected under the
direction of Carnot. . . . The policy of terror
was nevertheless applied to the administration
of the army. Custine and Houchard, who had
commanded the last campaign, . . . were sent
to the scaffold, because the arms of the republic
had failed to achieve a complete triumph under
their direction. . . . Pichegru, the officer now
selected to lead the hosts of Prance, went forth
to assume his command with the knife of the
executioner suspended over his head. His orders
were to expel the invaders from the soil and
strongholds of the republic, and to reconquer
Belgium. The first step towards the fulfilment
of this commission was the recovery of the three
great frontier towns, Conde, Valenciennes, and
Quesnoy. The siege of Quesnoy was im-
mediately formed; and Pichegru, informed of
or anticipating the plans of the Allies, disposed
a large force in front of Cambray, to intercept
the operations of . . . the allied army upon
Landrecy. ... On the 17th [of April] a great
action was fought in which the allies obtained a
success, sufficient to enable them to press the
siege of Landrecy. . . . Pichegru, a few days
after [April 26, at the redoubts of Troisville]
sustained a signal repulse from the British, in
an attempt to raise the siege of Landrecy ; but
by a rapid and daring movement, he improved
his defeat, and seized the important post of
Moucron. The results were, that Clairfait was
forced to fall back on Tournay: Courtray and
Menin surrendered to the French ; and thus the
right flanks of the Allies were exposed. Lan-
drecy, which, about the same time, fell into the
hands of the Allies, was but a poor compensa-
tion for the reverses in West Flanders. The
Duke of York, at the urgent instance of the
Emperor, marched to the relief of Clairfait;
but, in the meantime, the Austrian general, be-
ing hard pressed, was compelled to fall back
upon a position which would enable him for a
time to cover Bruges, Ghent, and Ostend. The
English had also to sustain a vigorous attack
near Tournay; but the enemy were defeated
with the loss of 4,000 men. It now became
necessary to risk a general action to save
Flanders, by cutting off that division of the
French army which had outflanked the Allies.
By bad management and want of concert this
movement, which had been contrived by Colonel
Mack, the chief military adviser of the Emperor,
was wholly defeated [at Tourcoign, May 18].
. _. . The French took 1,500 prisoners and 60
pieces of cannon. A thousand English soldiers
lay dead on the field, and the Duke [of York]
himself escaped with ditficulty. Four days
after, Pichegru having collected a great force,
amounting, it has been stated, to 100,000 men,
made a grand attack upon the allied army [at
Pont Achin]. . . . The battle raged from live in
the morning until nine at night, and was at
length determined by the bayonet. ... In con-
sequence of this check, Pichegru fell back upon
Lisle." It was after this repulse that "the
French executive, on the flimsy pretence of a
supposed attempt to assassinate Robespierre, in-
stigated by the British Government, procured a
decree from the Convention, that no English or
Hanoverian prisoners should be made. In reply
to this atrocious edict, the Duke of York issued
a general order, enjoining forbearance to the
troops under his command. Most of the French
generals . . . refused to become assassins. . . .
The decree was carried into execution in a few
instances only. . . . The Allies gained no
military advantage by the action of Pont Achin
on the 22nd of May. . . . The Emperor . . .
abandoned the army and retired to Vienna. He
left some orders and proclamations behind him,
to which nobody thought it worth while to pay
any attention. On the 5th of June, Pichegru
invested Ypres, which Clairfait made two at-
tempts to retain, but without success. The
place surrendered on the 17th ; Clairfait re-
treated to Ghent; Walmoden abandoned Bruges;
and the Duke of York, forced to quit his posi-
tion at Tournay, encamped near Oudenarde. It
was now determined by the Prince of Coburg,
who resumed the chief command after the de-
parture of the Emperor, to risk the fate of
Belgium on a general action, which was fought
at Fleurus on the 26th of June. The Austrians,
aft^r a desperate struggle, were defeated at all
points by the French army of tlie Sambre under
Jourdan. Charleroi having surrendered to tflie
French . . . and the Duke of York being forced
to retreat, any further attempt to save the
Netherlands was hopeless. Ostend and Mons,
Ghent, Tournay, and Oudenarde, were succes-
sively evacuated ; and the French were estab-
lished at Brussels. When it was too late, the
English army was reinforced. ... It now only
remained for the French to recapture the fort-
1336
FRANCE, 1794.
Climax of
the Terror.
FRANCE, 1794.
res.^ies on their own frontier which had been
taken from them in the last campaign. . . .
Laudrecy . . . fell without a struggle. Quesnoy
. . . made a gallant [but vain] resistance. . . .
Valenciennes and Conde . . . opened their
gates. . . . The victorious armies of the Re-
public were thus prepared for the conquest of
Holland. . . . The Prince of Orange made an
appeal to the patriotism of his countrymen ; but
the republicans preferred the ascendancy of their
faction to the liberties of their country. . . .
The other military operations of the year, in
wliich England was engaged, do not require pro-
longed notice. The Corsicans, under tlie guid-
ance of their veteran chief, Paoli, . . . sought
the aid of England to tlirow off the French
yoke, and offered in return allegiance of his
countrymen to the British Crown. ... A small
force was despatched, and, after a series of petty
operations, Corsica was occupied by British
troops, and proclaimed a part of the British
dominions. An expedition on a greater scale
was sent to the West Indies. Martinique, St.
Lucie and Guadaloupe were easily taken; but
the large island of St. Domingo, relieved by a
timely arrival of succours from France, offered
a formidable [and successful] resistance. . . .
The campaign on the Rliine was undertaken by
the Allies under auspices ill calculated to inspire
confidence, or even hope. The King of Prussia,
not content with abandoning the cause, had done
everything in his power to thwart and defeat the
operations of the Allies. ... On the 22d of
May, the Austrians crossed the Rhine and at-
tacked the French in their intrenchments with-
out success. On the same day, the Prussians
defeated a division of the Republican army [at
Kaiserslautern], and advanced their head-quarters
to Deux-Ponts. Content with this achievement,
the German armies remained inactive for several
weeks, when the French, having obtained rein-
forcements, attacked the whole line of the
German posts. . . . Before the end of the year
the Allies were in full retreat, and the Republi-
cans in their turn had become the invaders
of Germany. They occupied the Electorate of
Treves, and they captured the important fort of
Mannheim. Mentz also was placed under a
close blockade. ... At sea, England maintained
her ancient reputation. The French had made
great exertions to fit out a fleet, and 36 ships of
the line were assembled in tlie port of Brest,"
for the protecting of a merchant fleet, laden
with much needed food-supplies, expected from
America. Lord Howe, with an English fleet of
25 ships of the line, was on the watcli for the
Brest fleet when it put to sea. On the 1st of
June he sighted and attacked it off Ushant, per-
forming the celebrated manoeuvre of brealsing
the enemy's line. Seven of the French ships
were taken, one was sunk during the battle, and
18, much crippled, escaped. The victory caused
great exultation in England, but it was fruitless,
for the American convoy was brought safely
into Brest. — W. Massey, Bist. of Etiglajid during
the reign of Oeorge III. , ch. 35 («. 3).
Also in Sir A. Alison, Hist of Europe, 1789-
1815, ch. 16 {v. 4).— F. C. Schlosser, Hist, of the
\^th Century, v. 6, div. 2, ch. 2, sex:. 3. — Capt. A.
T. Mahan, Influence of Sea Power -upon the
Prench Rev. and Empire, ch. 8 (». 1).
A. D. 1794 (June — July). — The monstrous
Law of the 22d Prairial. — The climax of the
Reign of Terror. — A summary of its horrors.
— "On the day of the Feast of the Supreme
Being, the guillotine was concealed in the folds of
rich liangings. It was the 20th of Prairial.
Two days later Couthon proposed to the Con-
vention the memorable Law of the 22d Prai-
rial [June 10]. Robespierre was tlie draftsman,
and the text of it still remains in his own writing.
Tliis monstrous law is simply the complete abro-
gation of all law. Of all laws ever passed in
tlie world it is the most nakedly iniquitous
After the probity and good judgment of the
tribunal, the two cardinal guarantees in state
trials are accurate definition, and proof. The
offence must be capable of precise description,
and the proof against an offender must conform
to strict rule. The Law of Prairial violently in-
fringed all three of these essential conditions of
judicial equity. First, the number of the jury
who had power to convict was reduced. Second,
treason was made to consist in such vague and
infinitely elastic kinds of action as inspiring dis-
couragement, misleading opinion, depraving
manners, corrupting patriots, abusing the prin-
ciples of the Revolution by perfidious applica-
tions. Third, proof was to lie in the conscience
of the jury; there was an end of preliminary
inquiry, of witnesses in defence, and of counsel
for the accused. Any kind of testimony was
evidence, whether material or moral, verbal or
written, if it was of a kind ' likely to gain the
assent of a man of reasonable mind,' Now, what
was Robespierre's motive in devising this infernal
instrument ? . . . To us the answer seems
clear. We know what was the general aim in
Robespierre's mind at this point in the history
of the Revolution. His brother Augustin was
then the representative of the Convention with the
army of Italy, and General Bonaparte was on
terms of close intimacy with him. Bonaparte
said long afterwards . . , that he saw long let-
ters from Maximilian to Augustin Robespierre,
all blaming the Conventional Commissioners
[sent to the provinces] — Tallien, Fouche. Barras,
Collot, and the rest — for the horrors they per-
petrated, and accusing them of ruining the Revo-
lution by their atrocities. Again, there is abund-
ant testimony that Robespierre did his best to
induce the Committee of Public Safety to bring
those odious malefactors to justice. The text of
the Law. . . discloses the same object. The vague
phrases of depraving manners and applying rev-
olutionary principles perfidiously, were exactly
calculated to smite the band of violent men
whose conduct was to Robespierre the scandal of
the Revolution. And there was a curious clause
in the law as originally presented, which de-
prived the Convention of the right of preventing
measures against its own members. Robespierre's
general design in short was to effect a further
purgation of the Convention. ... If Robes-
pierre's design was what we believe it to have
been, the result was a ghastly failure. The Com-
mittee of Public Safety would not consent to
apply his law against the men for whom he had
specially designed it. The frightful weapon
wliich he had forged was seized by the Commit-
tee of General Security, and Paris was plunged
into the fearful days of the Great Terror. The
number of persons put to death by the Revolu-
tionary Tribunal before the Law of Prairial had
been comparatively moderate. From the crea-
tion of the Tribunal in April 1793, down to the
1337
FRANCE, 1794.
Summari/ of
the Tenor.
FRAXCE, 1794.
execution of tlic Hebprtists in March 1794, the
number of persons condemned to death was 505.
From the death <jf the Hebertists down to the
death of Robespierre, the number of the con-
demned was 2,158. One-half of the entire num-
ber of victims, namely, 1,3.56, were guillotined
after the Law of Prairial. ... A man was in-
formed against; he was seized in his bed at five
in the morning ; at seven he was taken to the
Conciergerie ; at nine he received information of
the charge against him; at ten he went into the
dock; by two in the afternoon he was con-
demned; by four his head lay in the executioner's
basket." — J. Morley, Robespierre (Critical Mis-
uiliiniex: Setond Series). — " Single indictments
comprehended 80 or 30 people taken promis-
cuously — great noblemen from Paris, day la-
bourers from ' Marseilles, sailors from Brest,
peasants from Alsace — who were accused of
conspiring together to destroy the Republic. All
examination, discussion, and evidence were dis-
pensed with; the names of the victims were
hardly read out to the jury, and it happened,
more than once, that the son was mistaken for
the father — an entirely innocent person for the
one really charged — -and sent to the guillotine.
The judges urged the jury to pass sentences of
death, with loud threats ; members of the Gov-
ernment committees attended daily, and ap-
plauded the bloody verdicts with ribald jests.
On this spot at least the strife of parties was
hushed. " — H. von Sybel, Uist. of the Fr. Rev. ,
bk. 10, ch. 1 (». 4). — "The first murders commit-
'ed in 1793 proceeded from a real irritation
caused by danger. Such perils had now ceased ;
the republic was victorious; people now
slaughtered not from indignation, but from the
atrocious habit which they had contracted. . . .
According to the law, the testimony of witnesses
was to be dispensed with only when there existed
material or moral proofs; nevertheless no wit-
nesses were called, as it was alleged that proofs
of this kind existed in every case. The jurors
did not take the trouble to retire to the consulta-
tion room. They gave their opinions before the
audience, and sentence was immediately pro-
nounced. The accused had scarcely time to rise
and to mention their names. One day, there was a
prisoner whose name was not upon the list of the
accused, and who said to the Court, ' I am not
accused ; my name is not on your list, ' ' What
signifies that ?' said Fouquier, ' give it quick! '
He gave it, and was sent to the scaffold like the
others. . . . The most extraordinary blunders
were committed. . . . More than once victims
were called long after they had perished. There
were hundreds of acts of accusation quite ready,
to which there was nothing to add but the
designation of the individuals. . . . The printing-
office was contiguous to the hall of the tribunal :
the forms were kept standing, the title, the mo-
tives, were ready composed ; there was nothing
but the names to be added. These were handed
through a small loop-hole to the overseer.
Thousands of copies were immediately worked
off and plunged families into mourning and
struck terror into the prisons. The hawkers
came to sell the bulletin of the tribunal under
the prisoners' windows, crying , ' Here are the
names of those who have gained prizes in the
lottery of St. Guillotine.' The accused were exe-
cuted on the breaking up of the court, or at
latest on the morrow, if the day was too far ad-
vanced. Ever since the passing of the Law of
the 32d of Prairial, victims perished at the rate
of 50 or 60 a day. 'That goes well,' said Fou-
quier-Tinville; 'heads fall like tiles:' and he
added, 'It must go better still next decade; I
must have 450 at least. ' " — A. Thiers, Eist. of the
Fr. Rev. (Am. ed.), v. 3, pp.63-66. — "Onehundred
and seventy-eight tribunals, of which 40 are am-
bulatory, pronounce in every part of the territory
sentences of death which are immediately exe-
cuted on the spot. Between April 6, 1793, and
Thermidor 9, year IL [July 27, 1794], that of
Paris has 3,635 persons guillotined, while the
pi'ovincial judges do as much work as the Paris
judges. In the small town of Orange alone, they
guillotine 331 persons. In the single town of
Arras they have 399 men and 93 women guillo-
tined. At Nantes, the revolutionary tribunals
and military committees have, on the average,
100 persons a day guillotined, or shot, in all
1971. In the city of Lyons the revolutionary
committee admit 1684 executions, while Cadillot,
one of Robespierre's correspondents, advises him
of 6,000. — -The statement of these murders is
not complete, but 17,000 have been enumerated.
. . . Even excepting those who had died fight-
ing or who, taken with arms in their hands, were
shot down or sabred on the spot, there were
10,000 persons slaughtered without trial in the
province of Anjou alone. ... It is estimated
that, in the eleven western departments, the
dead of both sexes and of all ages exceeded
400,000. — Considering the programme and prin-
ciples of the Jacobin sect, this is no great num-
ber; they might have killed a good many more.
But time was wanting ; during their short reign
they did what they could with the instrument in
their hands. Look at their machine. . . . Or-
ganised March 30 and April 6, 1793, the Revolu-
tionary Committees and the Revolutionary Tri-
bunal had but seventeen months in which to do
their work. They did not drive ahead with all
their might until after the fall of the Girondists,
and especially after September, 1793, that is to
say for a period of eleven months. Its loose
wheels were not screwed up and the whole was
not in running order under the impulse of the
central motor until after December, 1793, that
is to say during eight months. Perfected by the
Law of Prairial 33, it works for the past two
months faster and better than before. . . . Bau-
dot and Jean Bon St. Andre, Carrier, Antonelle
and Guffroy had already estimated the lives to
be taken at several millions, and, according to
Collot d'Herbois, who had a lively imagination,
' the political perspiration should go on freely,
and not stop until from twelve to fifteen million
Frenchmen had been destroyed.' " — H. A.
Tnine, TheFr. Rev., bk. 8, ch. 1 (». 3).
Also in W. Smyth, Le^:ts. on the Hist, of the
Fr. Rev., lects. 39-43 (v. 3).— Abbe Dumes-
nil, RecMections of the Reign of Terror. — Count
Beugnot, Life, v. 1, ch. '7-8.— J. 'Wilson, The
Reign of Terror and its Secret Police (Studies in
Modern Mind. etc.). ch. 7. — The Reign of Terror :
A cMeetion of mitlientic nnrriilires, 3?'.
A. D. 1794 (July).— The Fall of Robespierre.
— End of the Reign of Terror. — Robespierre
" was already feeling himself unequal to the task
laid upon him. He said himself on one occasion:
' I was not made to rule, I was made to combat
the enemies of the Revolution ; ' and so the pos-
session of supreme power produced in him
1338
FRANCE, 1794.
End of
Robespierre.
FRANCE, nw.
no feeling of exultation. On tlic contrary, it
preyed upon his spirits, anil made him fancy him-
self the object of universal hatred. A guard
now slept niglitly at his hoiise, and followed him
in all his walks. Two pistols lay ever at his
side. He would not eat food till some one else
had tasted from the dish. His jealous fears
were awakened by every sign of popularity in
another. Even the successes of his generals
filled him with anxiety, lest they should raise up
dangerous rivals. He had, indeed . . . grounds
enough for anxiety. In the Committee of Pub-
lic Safety every member, except St. Just and
Couthon, viewed him with hatred and suspi-
cion. Carnot resented his Interferences. The
Terrorists were contemptuous of his religious
festivals, and disliked his decided supremacy.
The friends of Mercy saw with indignation that
the number of victims was increasing. The
friends of Disorder found themselves restrained,
and were bored by his long speeches about virtue
and simplicity of life. He was hated for what
was good and for what was evil in liis govern-
ment; and meanwhile the national distress was
growing, and the cry of starvation was heard
louder than ever. Fortunately there was a
splendid harvest in 1794; but before it was
gathered in Robespierre had fallen. A some-
what frivolous incident did much to discredit
him. A certain old woman named Catherine
Theot, living in an obscure part of Piiris, had
taken to seeing visions. Some of the Terrorists
produced a paper, purporting to be written by
her, and declaring that Robespierre was the
Messiah. The paper was a forgery, but it
served to cover Robespierre with ridicule, and to
rouse In him a fierce determination to sujjpress
those whom he considered his enemies in the
Committee and the Convention. For some time
he had taken little part in the proceedings of
either of these bodies. His reliance was chiefly
on the .Jacobin Club, the reorganized Commune,
and the National Guards, still under the com-
mand of Henriot. But on July 26th [8th Ther-
midor] Robespierre came to the Convention and
delivered one of his most elaborate speeches,
maintaining that the affairs of France had been
mismanaged ; that the army had been allowed to
become dangerously independent ; that the Gov-
ernment must be strengthened and simplified;
and that traitors must be punished. He made
no definite proposals, and did not name his
intended victims. The real meaning of the
speech was evidently that he ought to be made
Dictator, but that in order to obtain his end, it
was necessary to conceal the use he meant to
make of his power. The members of the Con-
vention naturally felt that some of themselves
were aimed at. Few felt themselves safe ; but
Robespierre's dominance had become so estab-
lished that no one ventured at first to criticize.
It was proposed, and carried unanimously, that
the speech should be printed and circulated
throughout France. Then at length a deputy
named Cambon rose to answer Robespierre's
attacks on the recent management of the finances.
Finding himself favourably listened to, he went
on to attack Robespierre himself. Other mem-
bers of the hitherto docile Convention now took
courage; and it was decided that the speech
should be referred to the Committees before it
was printed. The crisis was now at hand. Robes-
pierre went down as usual to the Jacobin Club,
where he was received with the usual enthu-
siasm. The members swore to die with their
leader, or to suppress his enemies. On the fol-
lowing day [9th Thermidor] St. Just attacked
Billaud and CoUot. Billaud [followed and sup-
ported by Tallien] replied by asserting that on
the previous night the Jacobins had ]iledged
themselves to massacre the deputies. Then the
storm burst. A cry of horror and indignation
arose; andasBilhaud proceeded to give details of
the alleged conspiracy, .shouts of ' Down with
the tyrant!' began to rise from the benches.
Robespierre vainly strove to obtain a hearing.
He rushed about the chamber, appealing to the
several groups. As he went up to the higher
benches on the Left, he was met with the cry,
'Back, tyrant, the shade of Danton repels you! '
and when he sought shelter among the deputies on
the Right, and actually sat down in their midst,
they indignantly exclaimed, ' Wretch, that was
Vergniaud's seat!' Baited on all sides, his
attempts to speak became shrieks, which were
scarcely audible, however, amid the shouts and
interruptions that rose from all the groups. His
voice grew hoarser . . . till at length it failed him
altogether. Then one of the Mountain cried,
' The blood of Danton chokes him ! ' Amid a
scene of indescribable excitement and uproar, a
decree was passed that Robespierre and some of
his leading followers should be arrested. They
were seized by the ofBcers of the Convention,
and hurried off to different prisons ; so that, in
case of a rescue, only one of them might be
released. There was room enough for fear.
The Commune organized an insurrection, as soon
as they heard what the Convention had done; and
by a sudden attack the prisoners were all deliv-
ered from the hands of their guards. Both par-
ties now hastily gathered armed forces. Those
of the municipalfty were by far the most numer-
ous, and Henriot confidently ordered them to
advance. But the men refused to obey. The
Sections mostly declared for the Convention, and
thus by an unexpected reaction the Robespierian
leaders found themselves almost deserted. A
detachment of soldiers forced their way into the
room where the small band of fanatics were
drawing up a Proclamation. A pistol was fired ;
and no one knows with certainty whether
Robespierre attempted suicide, or was shot by
one of his opponents. At any rate his jaw was
fractured, and he was laid out, a ghastly spec-
tacle, on an adjacent table. The room was soon
crowded. Sorie spat at the prostrate form.
Others stabbed him with their knives. Soon he
was dragged [along with Couthon, St. Just, Hen-
riot, and others] before the Tribunal which he
himself had instituted. The necessary formali-
ties were hurried through, and the mangled
body was borne to the guillotine, where what
remained to him of life was quickly extinguished.
Then, from the crowd, a man stepped quickly up
to the blood-stained corpse, and uttered over him
the words, ' Yes, Robespierre, there is a God ! ' "
—J. E. Symes. The Fr. Rev., ch. 13,— " Sam-
son's work done, there bursts forth shout on
shout of applause. Shout, which prolongs itself
not only over Paris, but over France, but over
Europe, and down to this generation. Deser-
vedly, and also undeservedly. O unhappiest
Advocate of Arras, wert thou worse than other
Advocates? Stricter man, according to his
Formula, to his Credo and his Cant, of probities,
1339
FRANCE, 1794.
End of the
Jacobin Club.
FRAjSTCE, 1794-1795.
benevolences, pleasures-of-virtue, and suchlike,
lived not in that age. A man fitted, in some
luckier settled age, to have become one of those
incorruptible barren Pattern-Figures, and have
had marble-tablets and funeral-sermons. His
poor landlord, the Cabinet-maker in the Rue
Saint-Honorfe, loved him; his Brother died for
him. May God be merciful to him and to us !
This is the end of the Reign of Terror; new
glorious Revolution named ' of Thermidor ' ; of
Thermidor 9th, year 3; which being inter-
preted into old slave-style means 27th of July,
1794."— T. Carlyle, T/ie Fr. Ree., bk. 6, ch. 7
(v. 3). " He [Robespierre] had qualities, it is
true, which we must respect; he was honest,
sincere, self-denying and consistent. But he
was cowardly, relentless, pedantic, unloving,
intensely vain and morbidly envious. ... He
has not left the legacy to mankind of one grand
thought, nor the example of one generous and
exalted action. " — G. H. Lewes, Life of Robes-
pierre. Conclusion. — "The ninth of Thermidor
is one of the great epQchs in the history of
Europe. It is true that the three members of
the Committee of Public Safety [Billaud, Col-
lot, and BarSre], who triumphed were by no
means better men than the three [Robespierre,
Couthon, and St. Just], who fell. Indeed, we
are inclined to think that of these six statesmen
the least bad were Robespierre and St. Just,
■whose cruelty was the effect of sincere fanati-
cism operating on narrow understandings and
acrimonious tempers. The worst of the six was,
beyond all doubt, Barfire, vpho had no faith in
any part of the system which he upheld by per-
secution." — Lord Macaulay, Barere's Meinoirs
{Essays, v. 5).
Also in G. Everitt, Ouillotine t?ie Qreat, ch.
2. — J. W. Croker, Robespierre (Quarterly Bee.,
Sept., 1835, V. 34).— W. Chambers, Robespierre
{Chambers' Edin. Journal, 1852).
A. D. 1794-179S (July — April). Reaction
against the Reign of Terror. — The Therrai-
dorians and the Jeunesse Doree. — End of the
Jacobin Club. — Insurrection of Germinal 12. —
Fall of the Montagnards. — The White Terror
in the Provinces. — " On the morning of the 10th
of Thermidor all the people who lived near the
prisons of Paris crowded on the roofs of their
houses and cried, ' All is over ! Robespierre is
dead ! ' The thousands of prisoners, who had
believed themselves doomed to death, imagined
themselves rescued from the tomb. Many were
set free the same day, and all the rest regained
hope and confidence. Their feeling of deliverance
was shared throughout France. The Reign of
Terror had become a sort of nightmare that
stifled the nation, and the Reign of Terror and
Robespierre were identical in the sight of the
great majority. . . . The Convention presented a
strange aspect. Party remnants vrere united in
the coalition party called the ' Thermidorians. '
Many of the JJountaineers and of those who had
been fiercest in their missions presently took
seats with the Right or Centre ; and the periodic
change of Committees, so long contested, was
determined upon. Lots were drawn, and Bar6re,
Lindet, and Prieur went out ; Carnot, indispen-
sable in the war, was re-elected until the coming
spring ; Billaud and Collot, feeling out of place
in tlie new order of things, resigned. Danton's
friends now prevailed ; but, alas ! the Dantonists
were not D.auton. " — H. Martin, Popular Hist, of
Ei-ancsfrom the First Rev., eh. 22 (v. 1).— "The
Reign of Terror was practically over, but the
ground-swell which follows a storm continued
for some time longer. Twenty-one victims suf-
fered on the same day with Robespierre, 70 on
the next; altogether 114 were condemned and
executed in the three days which followed
his death. ... A strong reaction against the
'Terreur' now set in. Upwards of 10,000 'sus-
pects ' were set free, and Robespierre's law of
the 22 Prairial was abolished. Freron, a leading
Thermidorien, organized a band of young men
who called themselves the Jeunesse Doree
[gilded youth], or Muscadins, and chiefly fre-
quented the Palais Royal. They wore a ridicu-
lous dress, ' &, la Victime ' [large cravat , black
or green collar, and crape around the arm, sig-
nifying relationship to some of the victims of
the revolutionary tribunal.— Thiers], and de-
voted themselves to punishing the Jacobins.
They had their hymn, 'Lereveil du Peuple,'
which they sang aijout the street, often coming
into collision with the sans-culottes shouting the
Marseillaise. On the 11th of November the
Muscadins broke open the hall of the celebrated
club, turned out the members, and shut it up for
ever. . . . The committees of Salut Public and
Surete Generale were entirely remodelled and
their powers much restrained ; also the Revolu-
tionary Tribunal was reorganized on the lines
advocated by Camille Desmoulins in his pro-
posal foraComitede Clemence — -which cost him
his life. Carrier and Lebon suffered death for
their atrocious conduct in La Vendee and
[Arras] ; 73 members who had protested against
the arrest of the Girondins were recalled, and the
survivors of the leading Girondists, Louvet, Lan-
juinais, Isnard, Larevilliere-Lepeaux and others,
22 in number, were restored to their seats in the
Convention." — Sergent Marceau, Reminiscences of
a Regicide, pt. 2, ch. 12. — "Billaud, Collot, and
other marked Terrorists, already denounced in
the Convention by Danton's friends, felt that dan-
ger was every day drawing nearer to themselves.
Their fate was to all appearance sealed by the
readmission to the Convention (December 8) of
the 73 deputies of the right, imprisoned in 1793
for signing protests against the expulsion of the
Girondists. By the return of these deputies the
complexion of the Assembly was entirely
altered. . . . They now sought to undo the
work of the Convention since the insurrection by
which their party had been overwhelmed. They
demanded that confiscated property should be
restored to the relatives of persons condemned
by the revolutionary courts; that eniigrants who
had fled in consequence of Terrorist persecutions
should be allowed to return ; that those deputies
proscribed on June 2, 1793, who yet survived,
should be recalled to their seats. The Mountain,
as a body, violently opposed even the discussion
of such questions. The Thermidorians split
into two divisions. Some in alarm rejoined the
Mountain; while others, headed by Tallien and
Freron, sought their safety by coalescing with
the returned members of the right. A commit-
tee was appointed to report on accusations
brought against Collot, Billaud, Barere, and
Vadier (December 27, 1794). In a few weeks the
survivors of the proscribed deputies entered the
Convention amidst applause (March 8, 179.'5).
. . . There was at this time great misery preva-
lent in Paris, and imminent peril of insurrection.
1340
FRANCE, 1794-1795.
The fVar.
FRANCE, 1794-1795.
After Robespierre's fall, maximum prices were
no longer observed, and assignats were only-
accepted in payment of goods at their real value
compared with coin. The result was a rapid
rise in prices, so that in December prices were
double what they had been in July, and were
continuing to rise in proportion as assignats
decreased in value. . . . The maximum laws,
already a dead letter, were repealed (December
24). The abolition of maximum prices and
requisitions increased the already lavish ex-
penditure of the Government, which, to meet
the deficit in its revenues, had no resource but
to create more assignats, and the faster these
were issued the faster they fell in value and
the higher prices rose. In July 1794, they had
been worth 34 per cent, of their nominal value.
In December tliey were worth 33 per cent., and
in May 1795 they were worth only 7 per cent. . . .
At this time a pound of bread cost eight shil-
lings, of rice thirteen, of sugar seventeen, and
other articles were all proportionately dear. It
is literally true that more than half the popula-
tion of Paris was only kept alive by occasional
distributions of meat and other articles at low
prices, and the daily distribution of bread at
three half-pence a pound. In February, how-
ever, this source of relief threatened to fail. . . .
On April 1, or Germinal 13, bread riots, begun
by women, broke out in every section. Bands
collected and forced their way into the Conven-
tion, shouting for bread, but offering no violence
to the deputies. . . . The crowd was already
dispersing when forces arrived from the sections
and cleared the House. The insurrection was
a spontaneous rising for bread, without method
or combination. The Terrorists had sought, but
vainly, to ol)tain direction of it. Had they suc-
ceeded, the Jlountaiu would have had an oppor-
tunity of proscribing the right. Their failure
gave the right the opportunity of proscribing
the left. The transportation to Cayenne of
Billaud, Collot, Barere, and Vadier was decreed,
and the arrest of fifteen other Montagnards,
accused without proof, in several cases without
probability, of having been accomplices of the
insurgents. . . . The insurrection of Germinal
13 gave increased strength to the party of re-
action. The Convention, in dread of the Ter-
rorists, was compelled to look to it for support.
... In the departments famine, disorder, and
crime prevailed, as well as in Paris. . . . From
the first the reaction proceeded in the depart-
ments with a more rapid step and in bolder
form than in Paris. ... In the departments of
the south-east, where the Royalists had always
possessed a strong following, emigrants of all
descriptions readily made their way back ; and
here the opponents of the Republic, instigated
by a desire for vengeance, or merely by party
spirit, commenced a reaction stained by crimes as
atrocious as any committed during the course of
the revolution. Young men belonging to the
upper and middle classes were organised in
bands bearing the names of companies of Jesus
and companies of the Sun, and first at Lyons,
then at Aix, Toulon, Marseilles, and other towns,
they broke into the prisons and murdered their
inmates without distinction of age or sex. Be-
sides the Terrorist and the Jacobin, neither the
Republican nor the purchaser of State lands was
safe from their knives; and in the country
numerous isolated murders were committed.
This lawless and brutal movement, called the
White Terror in distinction to the Red Terror
preceding Thermidor 9, was suffered for weeks
to run its course unchecked, and counted its
victims by many hundreds, spreading over the
whole of Provence, besides the departments of
Rhone, Gard, Loire, Ain, and Jura."— B. M.
Gardiner, The Pr. Bev., ch. 10.
Also m A. Thiers, Hist, of the Fr. Rev. (Am.
ed.). V. 3, pp. 109-136; 149-175; 193-335. — H.
von Sybel, Hint, of the Pi: Bee., bk. 13, ch. 1-8.
— J. Mallet du Pan, Memoirs and Cor., v. 2,
ch. 5. — A. des Echerolles, Early Life, v. 3, ch. 8.
A. D. 1794-1795 (October— May).— Sub-
jugation of Holland. — Overthrow of the
Stadtholdership.— Establishment of the Bata-
vian Republic. — Peace of Basle with Prussia.
— Successes on the Spanish and Italian
frontiers. — Crumbling of the Coalition. —
" Pichegru having taken Bois le Due, October
9th, the Duke of York retreated to the Ar, and
thence beyond the Waal. Venloo fell October
37th, Maestricht November 4th, and the capture
of Nimeguen on the 9th, which the English aban-
doned after the fall of Maestricht, opened to the
French the road into Holland. The Duke of
York resigned the command to General Walmo-
den, December 3nd, and returned into England.
His departure showed that the English govern-
ment had abandoned all hope of saving Holland.
It had, indeed, consented that the States -General
should propose terms of accommodation to the
French; and two Dutch envoys had been des-
patched to Paris to offer to the Committee of
Public Welfare the recognition by their govern-
ment of the French Republic, and the payment
of 300,000,000 florins within a year. But the
Committee, suspecting that these offers were
made only with the view of gaining time, paid
no attention to them. The French were repulsed
in their first attempt to cross the Waal by
General Duncan with 8,000 English; but a
severe frost enabled them to pass over on the
ice, January 11th, 1795. Nothing but a victory
could now save Holland. But Walmoden, in-
stead of concentrating his troops for the purpose
of giving battle, retreated over the Yssel, and
finally over the Ems into Westphalia, whence
the troops were carried to England by sea from
Bremen. . . . General Alvinzi, who held the
Rhine between Emmerich and Arnheim, having
retired upon Wesel, Pichegru had only to ad-
vance. On entering Holland, he called upon
the patriots to rise, and his occupation of the
Dutch towns was immediately followed by a
revolution. The Prince of Orange, the heredi-
tary Stadtholder, embarked for England,
January 19th, on which day Pichegru 's advanced
columns entered Amsterdam. Next day the
Dutch fleet, frozen up in the Texel, was captured
by the French hussars. Before the end of
January the reduction of Holland had been com-
pleted, and a provincial [provisional ?] govern-
ment established at the Hague. The States-
General, assembled February 34th, 1795, having
received, through French influence, a new in-
fusion of the patriot party, pronounced the
abolition of the Stadtholderate, proclaimed the
sovereignty of the people and the establishment
of tlie Batavian Republic. A treaty of Peace
with France followed, May 16th, and an offen-
sive alliance against all enemies whatsoever till
the end of the war, and against England for
1341
FRANCE, 1794-1795.
Chouannerte.
FRANCE, 1794-1796.
ever. The sea and land forces to he provided
by the Dutch were to serve under French com-
manders. Thus the new republic became a mere
dependency of France. Dutch Flanders, the
district on the left bank of the Hondt, Maes-
tricht, Venloo, were retained by the French as a
just indemnity for the expenses of the war, on
which account the Dutch were also to pay 100,-
000,000 florins; but they were to receive, at the
general peace, an equivalent for the ceded terri-
tories. By secret articles, the Dutch were to
lend the French seven sliips of war, to support
a French army of 25,000 men, &c. Over and
above the requisitions of the treaty, they were
also called upon to reclothe the French troops,
and to furnish them with provisions. In short,
though the Dutch patriots had ' fraternised '
with the French, and received them with open
arms, they were treated little better than a con-
quered people. Secret negotiations had been
for some time going on between France and
Prussia for a peace. . . . Frederick William II. ,
. . . satisfied with his acquisitions in Poland,
to which the English and Dutch subsidies had
helped him, . . . abandoned himself to his
voluptuous habits," and made overtures to the
French. "Perhaps not the least influential
among Frederick William's motives, was the re-
fusal of the maritime Powers any longer to sub-
sidise him for doing nothing. . . . The Peace of
Basle, between the French Republic and the
King of Prussia, was signed April 5th 1795.
The French troops were allowed to continue the
occupation of the Rhenish provinces on the left
bank. An article, that neither party should per-
mit troops of the enemies of either to pass over
its territories, was calculated to embarrass the
Austrians. France agreed to accept the media-
tion of Prussia for princes of the Empire. . . .
Prussia should engage in no hostile enterprise
against Holland, or any other country occupied
by French troops ; while the French agreed not
to push their enterprises in Germany beyond a
certain line of demarcation, including the Circles
of Westphalia, Higher and Lower Saxony,
Franconia, and that part of the two Circles of
the Rhine situate on the right bank of the Main.
. . . Thus the King of Prussia, originally the
most ardent promoter of the Coalition, was one
of the first to desert it. By signing the Peace
of Basle, he sacrificed Holland, facilitated the
invasion of the Empire by the French, and thus
prepared the ruin of the ancient German con-
stitution." In the meantime the French had
been pushing war with success on their Spanish
frontier, recovering the ground which they had
lost in the early part of 1794. In the eastern
Pyrenees, Dugommier "retook Bellegarde in
September, the last position held by the
Spaniards in France, and by the battle of the
Montagne Noire, which lasted from November
17th to the 20th, opened the way into Catalonia.
But at the beginning of this battle Dugommier
was killed. Figui^res surrendered November
24th, through the influence of the French demo-
cratic propaganda. On the west, Moncey
captured St. Sebastian and Fuentarabia in
August, and was preparing to attack Pampe-
luna, when terrible storms . . . compelled him
to retreat on the Bidassoa, and closed the cam-
paign in that quarter. On the side of Pied-
mont, the French, after some reverses, succeeded
in making themselves masters of Mont Cenis
and the passes of the Maritime Alps, thus hold-
ing the keys of Italy ; but the Government, con-
tent with this success, ventured not at present
to undertake the invasion of that country."
The King of Sardinia, Victor Amadeus, re-
mained faithful to his engagements with Austria,
although the French tempted him with an ofEer
of the Milanese, "and the exchange of the
island of Sardinia for territory more conveniently
situated. With the Grand Duke of Tuscany
they were more successful. . . . On February
9th 1795, a treaty was signed by which the
Grand Duke revoked his adhesion to the Coali-
tion. . . . Thus Ferdinand was the first to
desert the Emperor, his brother. The example
of Tuscany was followed by the Regent of
Sweden." — T. H. Dyer, Sist. of Modern Europe,
bk. 7, ch. 7 {V. 4).
Also in C. M. Davies, Hist, of Holland, pt. 4,
ch. 3 (». 3).— L. P. Segur, Hist, of tlie Reign of
Frederick William II. of Prussia, v. 3.
A. D. 1794-1796. — Brigandage in La
Vendee. — Chouannerie in Brittany. — The Dis-
astrous Quiberon expedition. — End of the
Vendean War. — " Since the defeat at Savenay,
the Vendee was no longer the scene of grand
operations, but of brigandage and atrocities
without result. The peasants, though detesting
the Revolution, were anxious for peace ; but, as
there were still two chiefs, Charette and Stofflet,
in the field, who hated each other, this wish
could scarcely be gratified. General Thurieu,
sent by the former Revolutionary Committee,
had but increased this detestation by allowing
pillage and incendiarism. After the death of
Robespierre he was replaced by General Clan-
caux, who had orders to employ more concilia-
tory measures. The defeat of the rebel troops
at Savenay, and their subsequent dispersion, had
led to a kind of guerilla warfare throughout the
whole of Brittany, known by the name of
Chouannerie. ['A poor peasant, named Jean
Cottereau, had distinguished himself in this
movement above all his companions, and his
family bore the name of Chouans (Chat-huans)
or night-owls. . . . The name of Chouan passed
from him to all the insurgents of Bretagne,
aUhough he himself never led more than a few
hundred peasants, who obeyed him, as they said,
out of friendship.' — H. Von Sybel, Hist, of the
Fr.Rev.,v.A,p.2^%'\. . . . The Chouans attacked
the public conveyances, infested the high roads,
murdered isolated bands of soldiers and func-
tionaries. Their chiefs were Scepeaux, Bour-
mont, Cadoudal, but especially Puisaye . . .
formerly general of the Girondins, and who
wanted to raise a more formidable insurrection
than had hitherto been organised. Against
them was sent Hoche [September, 1794], who
accustomed his soldiers to pacify rather than
destroy, and taught them to respect the habits,
but above all the religion, of the inhabitants.
After some difficult negotiations with Charette
peace was concluded (15th February), but the
suppression of the Chouans was more difficult
still, and Hoche . . . displayed in this ungrate-
ful mission all the talents and humanity for
which he was ever celebrated. Puisaye himself
was in England, having obtained Pitt's promise
of a fleet and an army, but his aide-de-camp con-
cluded in his absence a treaty similar to that of
Charette. . . . Stofflet surrendered the last. Not
much dependence could be placed on either of
1342
FRANCE, 1794-1796.
End of the
Vendean War.
FRANCE. 1795.
these pacifications, Charette himself having con-
fessed in a letter to the Count de Provence that
they were but a trap for the Republicans; but
tliey proved useful, nevertheless, by accustoming
the country to peace. " This deceptive state of
peace came to an end early in the summer of 1795.
"The conspiracy organised in London by Puisaye,
assisted and subsidised by Pitt, . . . fitted out a
fleet, which harassed the French naval squadron,
and then set sail for Brittany, where the expedi-
tion made itself master of the peninsula of Qui-
beron and the fort Penthifevre (37th June). The
Brittany peasants, suspicious of the Vendeans and
hating the English, did not respond to the call
for revolt, and occasioned a loss of time to the in-
vaders, of which Hoche took advantage to bring
together . his troops and to march on Quiberon,
where he defeated tlie vanguard of the emigres,
and surrounded them in the peninsula. Puisaye
[who had, it is said, about 10,000 men, emigres
and Cliouans] attempted to crush Hoche by an
attaclc in the rear, but was eventually out-ma-
nceuvred. Fort PenthiSvre was scaled during the
night, and the emigres were routed ; whilst the
English squadron was caught iu a hurricane and
could not come to their assistance, save with one
ship, which fired indiscriminately on friend and
foe alilie. Most of the Royalists rushed into the
sea, where nearly all of them perished. Scarcely
a thousand men remained, and tliese fouglit he-
roically. It is said that a promise was given to
them that if they surrendered their lives should
be spared, and, accordingly, 711 laid down their
arms (21st July). By order of the Convention
. . . these 711 emigres were shot. . . . From his
camp at Belleville, Charette, one of the insurgent
generals, responded to this execution by the mas-
sacre of 2,000 Republican prisoners." In the fol-
lowing October another expedition of Royalists,
fitted out in England under the auspices of Pitt,
"landed at the He Dieu . . . , a small island
about eight miles from the mainland of Poitou,
and was composed of 2,500 men, who were des-
tined to be the nucleus of several regiments ; it
also had on board a large store of arms, ammu-
nition, and the Count d'Artois. Charette, named
general commander of the Catholic forces, was
awaiting him with 10,000 men. The whole of
the Vendee was ready to rise the moment the
prince touched French soil, but frivolous and un-
decided, he waited six weeks in idleness, en-
deavouring to obtain from England his recall.
Hoche, to whom the command of the Republican
forces had been entrusted, took advantage of this
delay to cut off Charette from his communica-
tions, while he held Stofflet and the rest of the
Brittany chiefs in check, and occupied the coast
with 30,000 men. The Count d'Artois, whom
Pitt would not recall, entreated the English com-
mander to set sail for England (Dec. 17th, 1795),
and the latter, unable to manage his fleet on a
coast without shelter, complied with his request,
leaving the prince on his arrival to the deserved
contempt of even his own partisans. Charette
in despair attempted another rising, hoping to be
seconded by Stofflet, but he was beaten on all
sides by Hoche. This general, who combined the
astuteness of the statesman with the valour of
the soldier, succeeded in a short time in pacify-
ing the country by his generous but firm behaviour
towards the inhabitants. Charette, tracked from
shelter to shelter, was finally compelled to sur-
render, brought to Nantes, and shot (March 24th).
The same lot had befallen StoflSet a month before
at Angers. After these events Hoche led his
troops into Brittany, where he succeeded in put-
ting an end to the ■ chouannerie.' The west re-
turned to its normal condition. " — H. Van Laun,
The French Revolutionary Epoch, bk. 2, ch. 2, and
hk. 3, ch. 1 (o. 1).
Also est : A. Thiers, JSist. of the French Rev.
(Am. ed.), v. 3, pp. 144^145; 188-193; 230-240;
281-305; 343-1345; 358-363; 384-389.
A. D. 1795 (April). — The question of the Con-
stitution. — Insurrection of the ist Prairial and
its failure. — Disarming of the Faubourgs. —
End of Sansculottism. — Bourgeoisie dominant
again. — "The events of the 13th of Germinal
decided nothing. The faubourgs had been re-
pulsed, but not conquered. . . . After so many
questions decided against the democratists, there
still remained one of the utmost importance —
the constitution. On this depended the ascen-
dancy of the multitude or of the bourgeoisie. The
supporters of the revolutionary government then
fell back on the democratic constitution of '93,
which presented to them the means of resuming
the authority they had lost. Their opponents,
on the other hand, endeavoured to replace it by a
constitution which would secure all the advan-
tage to them, by concentrating the government a
little more, and giving it to the middle class.
For a month, both parties were preparing for
this last contest. The constitution of 1793, hav-
ing been sanctioned by the people, enjoyed a
great prestige. It was accordingly attacked
with infinite precaution. At first its assailants
engaged to carry it into execution without re-
striction ; next they appointed a commission of
eleven members to prepare the ' lois organiques '
which were to render it practicable ; by and by,
they ventured to suggest objections to it on the
ground that it distributed power too loosely, and
only recognised one assembly dependent on the
people, even in its measures of legislation. At
last, a sectionary deputation went so far as to
term the constitution of '93 a decemviral consti-
tution, dictated by terror. All its partisans, at
once indignant and filled with fears, organized an
insurrection to maintain it. . . , The conspir-
ators, warned by the failure of the risings of the
1st and 13th Germinal, omitted nothing to make
up for their want of direct object and of organi-
zation. On the 1st Prairial (20th of May) in the
name of the people, insurgent for the purpose of
obtaining bread and their rights, they decreed
the abolition of the revolutionary government,
the establishment of the democratic constitution
of '93, the dismissal and arrest of the members
of the existing government, the liberation of the
patriots, the convocation of the primary assem-
blies on the 25th Prairial, the convocation of the
legislative assembly, destined to replace the con-
vention, on the 25th Messidor, and the suspen-
sion of all authority not emanating from the
people. They determined on forming a new
municipality, to serve as a common centre; to
seize on the barriers, telegraph, cannon, tocsins,
drums, and not to rest till they had secured re-
pose, happiness, liberty, and means of subsis-
tence for all the French nation. They invited the
artillery, gendarmes, horse and foot soldiers, to
join the banners of the people, and marched on
the convention. Meantime, the latter was delib-
erating on the means of preventing the insurrec-
tion. . . . The committees came in all haste to
1343
FRANCE, 1795.
Suppression of the
Sansculottes.
FRANCE, 1795.
apprise it of its danger; it immediately de-
clared its sitting permanent, voted Paris respon-
sible for the safety of the representatives of
the republic, closed its doors, outlawed all the
leaders of the mob, summoned the citizens of
the sections to arms, and appointed as their
leaders eight commissioners, among whom were
Legendre, Henri la Riviere, Kervelegan, &c.
These deputies had scarcely gone, when a loud
noise was heard without. An outer door had
been forced, and numbers of women rushed into
the gaUeries, crying ' Bread and the constitution
of '93!'. . . The galleries were . . . cleared;
but the insurgents of the faubourgs soon reached
the inner doors, and, finding them closed, forced
them with hatchets and hammers, and then
rushed in amidst the convention. The Hall now
became a field of battle. The veterans and gen-
darmes, to whom the guard of the assembly was
confided, cried ' To arms ! ' The deputy Auguis,
sword in hand, headed them, and succeeded in
repelling the assailants, and even made a few of
them prisoners. But the insurgents, more nu-
merous, returned to the charge, and again rushed
into the house. The deputy Feraud entered
precipitately, pursued by the insurgents, who
fired some shots in the house. They took aim
at Boissy d'Anglas, who was occupying the
president's chair. . . . Feraud ran to the tri-
bune, to shield him with his body; he was
struck at with pikes and sabres, and fell dan-
gerously wounded. The insurgents dragged
him into the lobby, and, mistaking him for
Freron, cut off his head and placed it on a
pike. After this skirmish they became masters
of the Hall. Most of the deputies had taken
flight. There only remained the members of the
Crete [the 'Crest' — a name now given to the
remnant of the party of ' The Mountain'] and
Boissy d'Anglas, who, calm, his hat on, heedless
of threat and insult, protested in the name of the
convention against this popular violence. They
held out to him the bleeding head of Feraud ; he
bowed respectfully before it. They tried to
force him, by placing pikes at his breast, to put
the propositions of the insurgents to the vote ;
he steadily and courageously refused. But the
CrStois, who approved of the insurrection, took
possession of the bureaus and of the tribune,
and decreed, amidst the applause of the multi-
tude, all the articles contained in the manifesto
of the insurrection." Meantime "the commis-
sioners despatched to the sections had quickly
gathered them together. . . . The aspect of af-
fairs then underwent a change ; Legendre, Ker-
velagan, and Auguis besieged the insurgents, in
their turn, at the head of the sectionaries," and
drove them at last from the hall of the conven-
tion. "The assembly again became complete;
the sections received a vote of thanks, and the
deliberations were resumed. All the measures
adopted in the interim were annulled, and four-
teen representatives, to whom were afterwards
joined fourteen others, were arrested, for organ-
izing the insurrection or approving it in their
speeches. It was then midnight ; at five in the
morning the prisoners were already si.x leagues
from Paris. Despite this defeat, the Faubourgs
did not consider themselves beaten ; and the nest
day they advanced en masse with their cannon
against the convention. The sections, on their
side, marched for its defence." But a collision
was averted by negotiations, and the insurgents
withdrew, "after having received an assurance
that the Convention would assiduously attend
to the question of provisions, and would soon
publish the organic laws of the constitution of
'93. . . . Six democratic Mountaineers, Goujon,
Bourbotte, Rorame, Duroy, Duquesnoy, and Sou-
brany, were brought before a military commis-
sion . . . and . . . condemned to death. They
all stabbed tliemselves with the same knife, which
was transferred from one to the other, exclaim-
ing, 'Vive la Repubhque!' Romme, Goujon,
and Duquesnoy were fortunate enough to wound
themselves fatally; the other three were con-
ducted to the scaiiold in a dying state, but faced
death with serene countenances. Meantime, the
Faubourgs, though repelled on the 1st, and
diverted from their object on the 2nd of Prairial,
still had the means of rising," and the convention
ordered them to be disarmed. ' ' They were en-
compassed by all the interior sections. After at-
tempting to resist, they yielded, giving up some of
their leaders, their arms, and artillery. . . . 'The
inferior class was entirely excluded from the gov-
ernment of tlie state ; the revolutiouary commit-
tees which formed its assemblies were destroyed ;
the cannoneers forming its armed force were dis-
armed; the constitution of '93, which was it3
code, was abolished; and here the rule of the
multitude terminated. . . . From that period,
the middle class resumed the management of the
revolution without, and the assembly was as
united under the Girondists as it had been, after
the 2nd of June, under the Mountaineers." — F.
A. Mignet, Sist. of tlie French Rev., di. 10.
Also in: Duchesse d'Abrantes, Menwirs, ch.
12-14 {v. 1).— T. Carlyle, The French Rev., v. 3,
bk. 7, ch. 4-6. — G. Long, France and its Revolu-
tions, ch. 53.
A. D. 1795 (June — September). — Framing
and adoption of the Constitution of the Year
in. — Self-renewing decrees of the Convention.
— Hostility in Paris to them. — Intrigues of the
Royalists. — "The royalist party, beaten on the
frontiers, and deserted by the court of Spain, on
which it placed most reliance, was now obliged
to confine itself to intrigues in the interior; and
it must be confessed tliat, at this moment, Paris
offered a wide field for such intrigues. The work
of the constitution was advancing ; the time when
the Convention was to resign its powers, when
Prance should meet to elect fresh representatives,
when a new Assembly should succeed that which,
had so long reigned, was more favourable than
any other for counter-revolutionary manoeuvres.
The most vehement passions were in agitation
in the sections of Paris. The members of them
were not royalists, but they served the cause of
royalty without being aware of it. They had
made a point of opposing the Terrorists; they
had animated themselves by the conflict; they
wished to persecute also; and they were exas-
perated against the Convention, which would
not permit this persecution to be carried too far.
They were always ready to remember that Terror
had sprung from its bosom ; they demanded of
it a Constitution and laws, and the end of the
long dictatoi-ship which it had exercised. . . .
Behind this mass the royalists concealed them-
selves. . . . The constitution had been presented
by the commission of eleven. It was discussed
during the three months of Messidor, Thermidor,
and Fructidor [June — August], and was suc-
cessively decreed with very little alteration.''
1344
FRANCE, 1795.
Constitution
of the Year III.
FRANCE, 1795.
The principal features of the constitution so
framed, linown as the Constitution of the Year
III., were the following: "A Council, called
'The Council of the Five Hundred,' composed of
500 members, of, at least, thirty years of age,
having exclusively the right of proposing laws,
one-third to be renewed every year. A Council
called ' The Council of the Ancients,' composed
of 350 members, of, at least, forty years of age,
all either widowers or married, having the sanc-
tion of the laws, to be renewed also by one-third.
An executive Directory, composed of five mem-
bers, deciding by a majority, to be renewed an-
nually by one-fifth, having responsible ministers.
. . . The mode of nominating these powers was
the following: All the citizens of the age of
twenty-one met of right in primary assembly on
every first day of the month of Prairial, and
nominated electoral assemblies. These electoral
assemblies met every 20th of Prairial, and nom-
inated the two Councils; and the two Councils
nominated the Directory. . . . The judicial au-
thority was committed to elective judges. . . .
There were to be no communal assemblies, but
municipal and departmental administrations, com-
posed of three, five, or more members, accord-
ing to tlie population: they were to be formed
by way of election. . . . The press was entirely
free. The emigrants were banished for ever
from the territory of the republic ; the national
domains were irrevocably secured to the pur-
chasers; all religions were declared free, but
were neither acknowledged nor paid by the state.
. . . One important question was started. The
Constituent Assembly, from a parade of disin-
terestedness, had excluded itself from the new
legislative body [the Legislative Assembly of
1791] ; would the Convention do the same ? "
The members of the Convention decided this
question in the negative, and "decreed, on the
5th of Fructidor (August 33d), that the new leg-
islative body should be composed of two-thirds
of the Convention, and that one new third only
should be elected. The question to be decided
was, whether the Convention should itself desig-
nate the two-thirds to be retained, or wliether it
should leave that duty to the electoral assem-
blies. After a tremendous dispute, it was agreed
on the 13th of Fructidor (August 30), that this
choice should be left to the electoral assemblies.
It was decided that the primary assemblies should
meet on the 30th of Fructidor (September 6th),
to accept the constitution and the two decrees of
the 5th and the 13th of Fructidor. It was like-
wise decided that, after giving their votes upon
the constitution and the decrees, the primary
assemblies should again meet and proceed forth-
with, that is to say, in the year III. (1795), to
the elections for the 1st of Prairial in the follow-
ing year." The right of voting upon the consti-
tution was extended, by another decree, to the
armies in the field. "No sooner were these reso-
lutions adopted, than the enemies of the Con-
vention, so numerous and so diverse, were deeply
mortified by them. . . . The Convention, they
said, was determined to cling to power; ... it
wished to retain by force a majority composed
of men who had covered France with scaffolds.
. . . All the sections of Paris, excepting that of
the Quinze-Vingts, accepted the Constitution
and rejected the decrees. The result was not the
same in the rest of France. . . . On the 1st of
Vendemiaire, year IV. (September 33, 1795), the
85
general result of the votes was proclaimed. The
constitution was accepted almost unanimously,
and the decrees by an immense majority of the
voters. " The Convention now decreed that the
new legislative body should be elected in Octo-
ber and meet November 6. — A. Thiers, Hist, of
the French Bev. (Am. ed.), v. 3, pp. 305-315.
Also in: H. Von Sybel, Hist, of the French
Bcv., bk. 12, ch. 4 [v. 4).— H. C. Lockwood, Con-
stitutional Hist, of France, ch. 1, and app. 3. — J.
Mallet du Pan, Memoirs and Corr., i\ 3, ch. 8.
A. D. 1795 (June — December). — Death of the
late King's son (Louis XVII.) — Treaty of
Basle with Spain. — Acquisition of Spanish
San Domingo. — Ineffectual campaign on the
Rhine. — Victory at Loano. — "The Committees
had formed great plans for the campaign of 1795;
meaning to invade the territories of the allies,
take Mayence, and enter Southern Germany, go
down into Italy, and reach the very heart of
Spain. But Carnot, Lindet, and Prieur were no
longer on the Committee, and their successors
were not their equals; army discipline was re-
laxed ; a vulgar reactionist had replaced Carnot
in the war department and was working ruin.
. . . The attack in Spain was to begin with the
Lower Pyrenees, by the capture of Pampeluna
and a march upon Castile, but famine and fever
decimated the array of the Western Pyrenees,
and General Moucey was forced to postpone all
serious action till the summer. At the other end
of the Pyrenees, the French and Spaniards were
fighting aimlessly at the entry to Catalonia. The
war was at a standstill ; but the negotiations went
on between the two countries. The king of
Spain, as in honor bound, made the liberation of
his young kinsman, the son of Louis XVI., a
condition of peace. This the Republic would
not grant, but the prisoner's death (.lune 8, 1795)
removed the obstacle. The counter-revolution-
ists accused the Committees of poisoning the
child styled by the royalist party Louis XVII.
This charge was false ; the poor little prisoner
died of scrofula, developed by inaction, ennui,
and the sufferings of a pitiless imprisonment, in-
creased by the cruel treatment of his jailers, a
cobbler named Simon and his wife. A rumor
was also spread that the child was not dead, but
had been taken away and an impostor substi-
tuted, who had died. Only one of the royal
family now remained in the Temple, Louis XVI. 's
daughter, afterwards the Duchesse d'AngouIgme.
Spain interceded for her, and she was exchanged.
. . . Peace with Spain was also hastened by
French successes beyond the Pyrenees ; General
Marceau, being reinforced, took Vittoria and
Bilboa, and pushed on to the Ebro. On the 32d
of July, Barthelemi, the able French diplomatist,
signed a treaty of peace with Spain at Basle, re-
storing her Biscayan and Catalonian provinces,
and accepting Spanish mediation in favor of the
king of Naples, Duke of Parma, king of Portu-
gal, and 'the other Italian powers,' including,
though not mentioning, the Pope; and Spain
yielded her share of San Domingo, which put a
brighter face on French affairs in America. . . .
Guadeloupe, Santa Lucia, and St. Eustache were
restored to the French. . . . Spain soon made
overtures for an alliance with France, wishing to
put down the English desire to rule the seas ; and,
before the new treaty was signed, the army of
the Eastern Pyrenees was sent to reinforce the
armies of the Alps and Italy, who had only held
1345
FRANCE, 1795.
Treason
of Pichegru.
FRANCE, 1795.
their positions in the Apennines and on the Ligu-
rian coast against the Austrians and Piedmontese
by sheer force of will ; but in the autumn of 1795
the face of affairs was changed. Now that Prus-
sia had left the coalition, war on the Rhine went
on between France and Austria, sustained by the
South German States; France had to complete
her mastery of the left bank by taking Mayence
and Luxembourg; and Austria's aim was to. dis-
pute them with her. The French government
charged Marceau to besiege Mayence during the
winter of 1794-95, but did not furnish him the
necessary resources, and, France not holding the
right bank, Kleber could only partially invest
the town, and both his soldiers and those block-
ading Luxembourg suffered greatly from cold
and privation. Early in March, 1795, Pichegru
was put in command of the armies of the Rhine
and Moselle, and Jourdan was 'ordered to support
him on the left (the Lower Rhine) with the army
of Sambre-et-Meuse. Austria took no advantage
of the feeble state of the French troops, and Lux-
embourg, one of the strongest posts in Europe,
receiving no help, surrendered (June 24) with 800
cannon and huge store of provisions. Tlae French
now had the upper hand, Pichegru and Jourdan
commanding 160,000 men on the Rhine. One of
these men was upright and brave, but the other
had treason in his soul; though ever_ybody ad-
mired Pichegru, ' the conqueror of Holland. '. . .
In August, 1795, an agent of the Prince of Conde,
who was then at Brisgau, in the Black Forest,
with his corps of emigrants, offered Pichegru,
who was in Alsace, the title of Marshal of France
and Governor of Alsace, the royal castle of Cham-
bord, a million down, an annuity of 200, 000 livres,
and a house in Paris, in the ' king's ' name, thus
flattering at once his vanity and his greed. . . .
He was checked by no scruples; utterly devoid
of moral sense, he hoped to gain his army by
money and wine, and had no discussion with the
Prince of Conde save as to the manner of his
treason. " In the end, Pichegru was not able to
make his treason as effective as he had bargained
to do ; but he succeeded in spoiling the campaign
of 1795 on the Rhine. Jourdan crossed the river
and took Dusseldorf, with 168 cannon, on the 6th
of September, expecting a simultaneous move-
ment on the part of Pichegru, to occupy the
enemy in the latter's front. But Pichegru, though
he took Mannheim, on the 18th of September,
threw a corps of 10,000 men into the hands of the
Austrians, by placing it where it could be easi-
ly overwhelmed, and permitted his opponent,
Wurmser, to send reinforcements to Clairfait, who
forced Jourdan, in October, to retreat across the
Rhine. ' ' Pichegru's perfidy had thwarted a cam-
paign which must have been decisive, and Jour-
dan's retreat was followed by the enemy's offen-
sive return to the left bank [retaking Mannheim
and raising the siege of Mayence], and by re-
verses which would have been fatal had they
coincided with the outburst of royalist and reac-
tionary plots and insurrections in the West, and in
Paris itself; but they had luckily been stifled
some time since, and as the Convention concluded
its career, the direction of the war returned to
the hands which guided it so well in 1793 and
1794." — H. Martin, Popular Hist, of France from
the First Rev., eh. 24 (i\ 1). — " The peace with
Spain . . . enabled the government to detach the
whole Pyrenean army to the support of General
Scherer, who had succeeded Kellermann in the
command of the army of Italy. On the 33d oi
November, the French attacked the Austrians in
their position at Loano, and, after a conflict of
two days, the enemy's centre was forced by Mas-
sena and Augereau, and the Imperialists fled with
the loss of 7,000 men, 80 guns, and all their stores.
But the season was too far advanced to prosecute
this success, and the victors took up winter quar-
ters on the ground they had occupied. . . . The
capture of the Cape of Good Hope (Sept. 16) by
the British under Sir James Craig, was the only
other important event of this year." — Epitome of
Alison's Hist, of Europe, sect. 154 arad! 157 (ch. 18
of the complete work).
Also in: A. Griffiths, French Bevolutionary
Generals, ch. 13. — E. Baines, Hist, of the Wars of
the French Rev., bk. 1, ch. 19-20 («. 1).— A. de
Beauchesne, Louis XVII. : His Life, his Suffer-
ings, his Death.
A. D. 1795 (October— December).— The In-
surrection of the 13th Vend^miare, put down
by Napoleon Bonaparte. — Dissolution of the
National Convention. — Organization of the
government of the Directory. — Licentiousness
of the time. — "The Parisians . . . proclaimed
their hostility to the Convention and its designs.
The National Guard, consisting of armed citizens,
almost unanimously sided with the enemies of
the Convention ; and it was openly proposed to
march to the Tuilleries, and compel a change of
measures by force of arms. The Convention
perceiving their vmpopularity and danger, began
to look about them anxiously for the means of
defence. There were in and near Paris 5,000
regular troops, on whom they thought they might
rely, and who of course contemned the National
Guard as only half soldiers. They had besides
some hundreds of artillery men ; and they now
organised what they called ' the Sacred Band,' a
body of 1,500 ruffians, the most part of them old
and tried instruments of Robespierre. Wi th these
means they prepared to arrange a plan of de-
fence; and it was obvious that they did not want
materials, provided they could find a skilful and
determined head. The insurgent sections placed
themselves under the command of Danican, an
old general of no great skill or reputation. The
Convention opposed to him Menou; and he
marched at the head of a column into the section
Le Pelletier to disarm the National Guard of that
di.strict — -one of the wealthiest of the capital.
The National Guard were found drawn up in
readiness to receive him at the end of the Rue
Vivienne; and Menou, becoming alarmed, and
hampered by the presence of some of the ' Repre-
sentatives of the People,' entered into a parley,
and retired without having struck a blow. The
Convention judged that Menou was not master
of nerves for such a crisis ; and consulted eagerly
about a successor to his command. Barras, one
of their number, had happened to be present at
Toulon and to have appreciated the character of
Buonaparte. He had, probably, been applied to
by Napoleon in his recent pursuit of employ-
ment. Deliberating with Tallien and Carnot,
his colleagues, he suddenly said, 'I have the
man whom you want; it is a little Corsican offi-
cer, who will not stand upon ceremony.' These
words decided the fate of Napoleon and of
France. Buonaparte had been in the Odeon
Theatre when the affair of Le Pelletier occurred,
had run out, and witnessed the result. He now
happened to be in the gallery, and heard the dis-
1346
FRANCE, 1795.
Bonaparte and
the l^th Vend^miaire.
FRANCE, 1796.
cussion concerning the conduct of Menou. He
was presently sent for, and asked his opinion as
to that officer's retreat. He explained what had
happened, and how the evil might have been
avoided, in a manner which gave satisfaction.
He was desired to assume the command, and ar-
ranged his plan of defence as well as the circum-
stances might permit; for it was already late at
night, and the decisive assault on the Tuilleries
was expected to take place next morning. Buona-
parte stated that the failure of the march of
Slenou had been chiefly owing to the presence of
the ' Representatives of the People, ' and refused
to accept the command unless he received it free
from all such interference. They yielded : Barras
was named commander-in-chief ; and Buonaparte
second, with the virtual control. His first care
was to despatch Murat, then a major of chasseurs,
to Sablons, five miles off, where fifty great guns
were po.sted. The Sectionaries sent a stronger
detachment for these cannon immediately after-
wards ; and Murat, who passed them in the dark,
would have gone in vain had he received his orders
but a few minutes later. On the 4th of October
(called in the revolutionary almanac the 13th
Vendemiaire) the affray accordingly occurred.
Thirty thousand National Guards advanced about
two P. M., by different streets, to the siege of the
palace: but its defence was now in far other
hands than those of Louis XVI. Buonaparte,
having planted artillery on all the bridges, had
effectually secured the command of the river, and
the safety of the Tuilleries on one side. He had
placed cannon also at all the crossings of the
streets by which the National Guard could ad-
vance towards the other front ; and having posted
his battalions in the garden of the Tuilleries and
Place du Carousel, he awaited the attack. The
insurgents had no cannon ; and they came along
the narrow streets of Paris in close and heavy
columns. When one party reached the church
of St. Roche, in the Rue St. Honore, they found
a body of Buonaparte's troops drawn up there,
with two cannons. It is disputed on which side
the firing began ; but in an instant the artillery
swept the streets and lanes, scattering grape-shot
among the National Guards, and producing such
confusion that they were compelled to give way.
The first shot was a signal for all the batteries
which Buonaparte had established ; the quays of
the Seine, opposite to the Tuilleries, were com-
manded by his guns below the palace and on the
bridges. In less than an hour the action was
over. The Insurgents fled in all directions, leav-
ing the streets covered with dead and wounded ;
the troops of the Convention marched into the
various sections, disarmed the terrified inhabi-
tants, and before nightfall everything was quiet.
This eminent service secured the triumph of the
Conventionalists. . . . Within five days from the
Day of the Sections Buonaparte was named
second in command of the army of the interior;
and shortly afterwards, Barras finding his duties
as Director sufficient to occupy his time, gave up
the command-in-chief of the same army to his
'little Corsican officer.'" — J. G. Lockhart, Ltfe
of Napoleon Buonaparte, ch. 3. — The victory of
the 13th Vendemiaire "enabled the Convention
immediately to devote its attention to the forma-
tion of the Councils proposed by it, two-thirds
of which were to consist of its own members.
The first third, which was freely elected, had al-
ready been nominated by the Reactionary party.
The members of the Directory were chosen, and
the deputies of the Convention, believing that
for their own interests the regicides should be at
the head of the Government, nominated La Re-
veillgre-Lepeaux, Sifeyes, Rewbel, Le Tourneur,
and Barras. Sifeyes refused to act, and Carnot
was elected in his place. Immediately after this,
the Convention declared its session at an end,
after it had had three years of existence, from
the 21st September, 1792, to the 28th October,
1795 (4th Brumaire, Year IV.). . . . The Direc-
tors were all, with the exception of Carnot, of
moderate capacity, and concurred in rendering
their own position the more difficult. At this
period there was no element of order or good
government in the Republic; anarchy and un-
easiness everywhere prevailed, famine had be-
come chronic, the troops were without clothes,
provisions or horSes ; the Convention had spent
an immense capital represented by assignats, and
had sold almost half of the Republican territory,
belonging to the proscribed classes . . . ; the
excessive degree of discredit to which paper
money had fallen, after the issue of thirty-eight
thousand millions, had destroyed all confidence
and all legitimate commerce. . . . Such was the
general poverty, that when the Directors entered
the palace which had been assigned to them as a
dwelling, they found no furniture there, and
were compelled to borrow of the porter a few
straw chairs and a wooden table, on the latter of
which they drew up the decree by which they
were appointed to office. Their first care was to
establish their power, and they succeeded in do-
ing this by frankly following at first the rules
laid down by the Constitution. In a short time
industry and commerce began to raise their heads,
the supply of provisions became tolerably abun-
dant, and the clubs were abandoned for the work-
shops and the fields. The Directory exerted it-
self to revive agriculture, industry, and the arts,
re-established the public exhibitions, and founded
primary, central, and normal schools. . . . This
period was distinguished by a great licentious-
ness in manners. The wealthy classes, who had
been so long forced into retirement by the Reign
of Terror, now gave themselves up to the pursuit
of pleasure without stint, and indulged in a
course of unbridled luxury, which was outwardly
displayed in balls, festivities, rich costumes and
sumptuous equipages. Barras, who was a man
of jjleasure, favoured this dangerous sign of the
reaction, and his palace soon became the ren-
dezvous of the most frivolous and corrupt so-
ciety. In spite of this, however, the wealthy
classes were still the victims, under the govern-
ment of the Directory, of violent and spoliative
measures." — E. de Bonnechose, Hist, of France,
V. 2. pp. 370-273.
A. D. 1796 (April — October). — Triple attack
on Austria. — Bonaparte's first campaign in
Italy. — Submission of Sardinia. — Armistice
with Naples and the Pope. — Pillage of art
treasures. — Hostile designs upon Venice. —
Expulsion of the Austrians from Lorabardy. —
Failure of the campaign beyond the Rhine. —
" With the opening of the year 1796 the leading
interest of European history passes to a new
scene. . . . The Directory was now able . .
to throw its whole force into the struggle with
Austria. By the advice of Bonaparte a threefold
movement was undertaken against Vienna, by
way of Lombardy, by the valley of the Danube,
134
FRANCE, 1796.
Bonciparte in
Italy.
FRANCE, 1796.
and Ly the valley of the Main. General Jourdan,
in command of the army that had conquered the
Netherlands, was ordered to enter Germany by
Frankfort; Moreau, a Breton law-student in
1793, now one of the most skilful soldiers in
Europe, crossed the Rhine at Sti-asburg; Bona-
parte himself, drawing his scanty supplies along
the coast-road from Nice, faced "the allied forces
of Austria and Sardinia upon the slopes of the
Maritime Apennines, forty miles to the west of
Genoa. . . . Bonaparte entered Italy proclaim-
ing himself the restorer of Italian freedom, but
with the deliberate purpose of using Italy as a
means of recruiting the exhausted treasury of
France. His correspondence with the Directory
exposes with brazen frankness this well-con-
sidered system of plunder and deceit, in which
the general and the Government were cordially
at one. . . . The campaign of 1796 commenced
in April, in the mountains above the coast-road
connecting Nice and Genoa. . . . Bonaparte . . .
for four days . . . reiterated his attacks at Monte-
notte and at Millesimo, until he had forced his
own army into a position in the centre of the.
Allies [Austrians and Piedmontese] ; then, leav-
ing a small force to watch the Austrians, he
threw the mass of his troops upon the Pied-
montese, and drove them back to within thirty
miles of Turin. The teiTor-strlcken Government,
anticipating an outbreak in the capital itself, ac-
cepted an armistice from Bonaparte at Cherasco
(April 38). . . . The armistice, which was soon
followed by a treaty of peace between France
and Sardinia, ceding Savoy to the Republic, left
him free to follow the Austrians, untroubled by
the existence of some of the strongest fortresses
of Europe behind him. In the negotiations with
Sardinia, Bonaparte demanded the surrender of
the town of Valenza, as necessary to secure his
passage over the river Po. Having thus artfully
led the Austrian Beaulieu to concentrate his forces
at this point, he suddenly moved eastward along
the southern bank of the river, and crossed at
Piacenza. 50 miles below the spot where Beaulieu
was awaiting him. . . . The Austrian general,
taken in the rear, had no alternative but to
abandon Milan and all the country west of it,
and to fall back upon the line of the Adda.
Bonaparte followed, and on the 10th of May at-
tacked the Austrians at Lodi. He himself stormed
the bridge of Lodi at the head of his Grenadiers.
The battle was so disastrous to the Austi-ians
that they could risk no second engagement, and
retired upon Mantua and the line of the Mincio,
Bonaparte now made his triumphal entry into
Milan (May 15). ... In return for the gift of
liberty, the Milanese were invited to offer to their
deliverers 30,000,000 francs, and a selection from
the paintings in their churches and galleries.
The Dukes of Parma and Modena, in return for
an armistice, were required to hand over forty
of their best pictures, and a sum of money pro-
portioned to their revenues. The Dukes and the
townspeople paid their contributions with a good
grace : the peasantry of Lombardy, whose cattle
were seized in order to supply an army that
marched without any stores of its own, rose in
arms, and threw themselves into Pavia, after
killing all the French soldiers who fell in their
way. The revolt was instantly suppressed, and
the town of Pavia given up to pillage. ... In-
stead of crossing tlie Apennines, Bonaparte ad-
vanced against the Austrian positions upon the
Mincio. ... A battle was fought and lost by
the Austrians at Borghetto. . . . Beaulieu's
strength was exhausted ; he could meet the enemy
no more in the field, and led his army out of Italy
into the Tyrol, leaving Mantua to be invested by
the French. The first care of the conqueror was
to make Venice pay for the crime of po&sessing
territory intervening between the eastern and
western extremes of the Austrian district. Bona-
parte affected to believe that the Venetians had
permitted Beaulieu to occupy Peschiera before
he seized upon Brescia himself. . . . ' I have
purposely devised this rupture,' he wrote to the
Directory (June 7th), ' in case you should wish
to obtain Ave or six millions of francs from Ven-
ice. If you have more decided intentions, I
think it would be well to keep up the quarrel.'
The intention referred to was the disgraceful
project of sacrificing Venice to Austria in return
for the cession of the Netherlands. . . . The
Austrians were fairly driven out of Lombardy,
and Bonaparte was now free to deal with South-
ern Italy. He advanced into the States of the
Church, and expelled the Papal Legate from
Bologna. Ferdinand of Naples . . . asked for
a suspension of hostilities against his own king-
dom . . . and Bonaparte granted the king an
armistice on easy terms. The Pope, in order to
gain a few months' truce, had to permit the oc-
cupation of Ferrara, Ravenna, and Ancona, and
to recognise the necessities, the learning, the
taste, and the virtue of his conquerors by a gift
of 30,000,000 francs, 500 manuscripts, 100 pic-
tures, and the busts of Marcus and Lucius Bru-
tus. . . . Tuscany had indeed made peace with
the French Republic a year before, but . . .
while Bonaparte paid a respectful visit to the
Grand Duke at Florence, Murat descended upon
Leghorn, and seized upon everything that was
not removed before his approach. Once estab-
lished in Leghorn, the French declined to quit it.
. . . Mantua was meanwhile invested, and thither
Bonaparte returned. Towards the end of July
an Austrian relieving army, nearly double the
strength of Bonaparte's, descended from the
Tyrol. It was divided into three corps: one,
under Quasdanovich, advanced by the road on
the west of Lake Garda; the otliers, under
Wurraser, the commauder-in-cliief, by the roads
between the lake and the river Adige. . . .
Bonaparte . . . instantly broke up the siege of
Mantua, and withdrew from every position east
of the river. On the 30th July, Quasdanovich
was attacked and checked at Lonato. . . . Wurm-
ser, unaware of his colleague's repulse, entered
Mantua in triumph, and then set out, expecting
to envelop Bonaparte between two fires. But
the French were ready for his approach. Wurra-
ser was stopped and defeated at Castiglione
(Aug. 3), while the western Austrian divisions
were still held in check at Lonato. ... In five
days the skill of Bonaparte and the unspar-
ing exertions of his soldiery had more than re-
trieved all that appeared to have been lost. The
Austrians retired into the Tyrol, leaving 15,000
prisoners in the hands of the enemy. Bonaparte
now prepared to force Ms way into Germany by
tlie Adige, in fulfilment of the original plan of
the campaign. In the firet days of September
he again routed the Austrians, and gained pos-
session of Roveredo and Trent. Wurmser here-
upon attempted to shut the French up in the
mountains by a movement southwards; but.
1348
FRANCE, 1796.
English
peace negotiations.
FRAJifCE, 1796-1797.
while he operated with insufficient forces between
the Brenta and the Adige, with a view of cut-
ting Bonaparte off from Italy, he was himself
[defeated at Bassano, September 8, and] cut off
from Germany, and only escaped capture by
throwing himself into Mantua with the shattered
remnant of his army. The road into Germany
through the Tyrol now lay open; but in the
midst of his victories Bonaparte learnt that the
northern annies of Moreau and Jourdan, with
which he had intended to co-operate in an attack
upon Vienna, were in full retreat. Moreau's
advance into the valley of the Danube had, dur-
ing the months of July and August, been at-
tended with unbroken military and political suc-
cess. The Archduke Charles, who was entrusted
with the defence of the Empire, " fell back before
Moreau, in order to unite his forces with those
of Wartensleben, who commanded an army
which confronted Jourdan. " The design of the
Archduke succeeded in the end, but it opened
Germany to the French for six weeks, and re-
vealed how worthless was the military constitu-
tion of the Empire, and how little the Germans
had to expect from one another. ... At length
the retreating movement of the Austrians stopped
[and the Archduke fought an indecisive battle
with Moreau at Neresheim, August 11]. Leaving
30,000 men on the Lech to disguise his motions
from iloreau, Charles turned suddenly north-
wards from Neuberg on the 17th August, met
Wartensleben at Amberg, and attacked Jourdan
. . . with greatly superior numbers. Jourdan
was defeated [September 3, at Wilrtzburg] and
driven back in confusion towards the Rhine.
The issue of the campaign was decided before
Moreau heard of his colleague's danger. It only
remained for him to save his own army by a
skilful retreat," in the course of which he de-
feated the Austrian general Latour at Biberach,
October 3, and fought two indecisive battles with
the Archduke, at Emmendingen, October 19,
and at Huningenonthe24th. — C. A. Fyffe, Sist.
of Modern Europe, r, 1, ch. 3.
Also in: A. Griffiths, JB^-ench Bevolutionari/
Generals, ch. 14-15. — General Jomini, Life of
Napoleon, v. 1, ch. 2. — E. Baines, Hist, of tile
Wars of the French Rev., hk. 1, ch. 23 (». 1).—
C. Adams, 0-reat Campaigns, 1796-1870, ch. 1.
A. D. 1796 (September). — Evacuation of Cor-
sica by the English. — Its reoccupation by the
French. — " Corsica, which had been delivered to
the English by Paoli, and occupied by them as a
fourth kingdom annexed to the crown of the King
of Great Britain, had just been evacuated by its
new masters. They had never succeeded in sub-
duing the interior of the island, frequent insur-
rections had kept them in continual alarm, and
free communication between the various towns
could only be effected by sea. The victories of
the French army in Italy, under the command of
one of their countrymen, had redoubled this in-
ternal ferment in Corsica, and the English had
decided on entirely abandoning their conquest.
In September 1796 they withdrew their troops,
and also removed from Corsica their chief par-
tisans, such as Genera] Paoli, Pozzo di Borgo,
Beraldi and others, who sought an asylum in Eng-
land. On the first intelligence of the English prep-
arations for evacuating the island, Buonaparte
despatched General Gentili thither at the head of
two or three hundred banished Corsicans, and
with this little band Gentili took possession of the
principal strongholds. . . . On the 5th Frimaire,
year V. (November 25, 1796), I received a decree
of the Executive Directory . . . appointing me
Commi.ssioner-Extraordinary of the Government
in Corsica, and ordering me to proceed thither at
once." — Count Miot de Melito, Memoirs, ch. 4.
A. D. 1796 (October). — Failure of peace ne-
gotiations V7ith England. — Treaties with Na-
ples and Genoa. — "It was France itself, more
even than Ital}', which was succumbing under
the victories in Italy, and was falling rapidly
under the military despotism of Bonaparte ; while
what had begun as a mere war of defence was
already becoming a war of aggression against
everybody. . . . The more patriotic members of
the legislative bodies were opposed to what they
considered only a war of personal ambitions, and
were desirous of peace, and a considerable peace
Ijarty was forming throughout the country. The
opportunity was taken by the English govern-
ment for making proposals for peace, and a pass-
port was obtained from the directory for lord
Malmesbury, who was sent to Paris as the Eng-
lish plenipotentiary. Lord Malmesbury arrived
in Paris on the 2nd of Brumaire (the 23rd of Octo-
ber, 1796), and next day had his first interview
with the French minister Delacroix, who was
chosen by the directory to act as their representa-
tive. There was from the first an evident want
of cordiality and sincerity on the part of the
French government in this negotiation ; and the
demands they made, and the political views en-
tertained by them, were so unreasonable, that,
after it had dragged on slowly for about a month,
it ended without a result. The directory were se-
cretly making great preparations for the invasion
of Ireland, and they had hopes of making a sep-
arate and very advantageous peace with Austria.
Bonaparte had, during this time, become uneasy
on account of his position in Italy," and " urged
the directory to enter into negotiations with the
different Italian states in his rear, such as Naples,
Rome, and Genoa, and to form an offensive and
defensive alliance with the king of Sardinia, so
that he might be able to raise reinforcements in
Italy. For this purpose he asked for authority
to proclaim the independence of Lombardy and
of the states of Modena ; so that, by forming both
into republics, he might create a powerful French
party, through which he might obtain both men
and provisions. The directory was not unwilling
to second the wishes of Bonaparte, and on the
19th of Vendemiaire (the 10th of October) a peace
was signed with Naples, which was followed by
a treaty with Genoa. This latter state paid two
millions of francs as an indemnity for the acts
of hostility formerly committed against France,
and added two millions more as a loan. " The ne-
gotiation for an offensive alliance with Sardinia
failed, because the king demanded Lombardy. —
T. Wright, Hist, of France, v. 3, p. 758.
Also in : W. E. H. Lecky, Hist, of Eng. in tlie
18th Century, ch. 27 (». 7). — E. Burke, Letters on
a Regicide Peace.
A. D. 1796-1797 (October— April).— Bona-
parte's continued victories in Italy. — His ad-
vance into Carinthia and the Tyrol. — Peace
preliminaries of Leoben. — "The failure of the
French invasion of Germany . . . enabled the
Austrians to make a fresh effort for the relief of
[Wtlrmser] in Mantua. 40, 000 men under Alvinzi
and 18,000 under Davidowich entered Italy from
the Tyrol and marched by different routes to-
1349
FRANCE, 1796-1797.
Work of
Bonaparte in Italy.
FRANCE, 1797.
wards Verona. Bonaparte had employed the re-
cent interlude in consolidating French Influence
in Italy. Against the wishes of the Directors he
dethroned the duke of Modena, and formed his
territories into the Cispadane Republic. Then he
tried to induce Piedmont and Venice to join
France, but both states preferred to retain their
neutral position. This was another of the charges
which the general was preparing against Venice.
On the news of the Austrian advance, Bonaparte
marched against Alviuzi, and checked him at
Carmignano (6 November). But meanwhile
Davidowich had taken Trent and was approach-
ing Rivoli. Bonaparte, in danger of being sur-
rounded, was compelled to give way, and re-
treated to Verona, while Alvinzi followed him.
Never was the French position more critical, and
nothing but a very bold move could save them.
With reckless courage Bonaparte attacked Al-
vinzi at Areola, and after three days' hard fight-
ing [November 15-17, on the dykes and cause-
ways of a marshy region] won a complete vic-
tory. He then forced Davidowich to retreat to
the Tyrol. The danger was averted, and the
blockade of Mantua was continued. But Austria,
as if its resources were inexhaustible, determined
on a fourth effort in January, 1797. Alvinzi was
again entrusted with the command, while another
detachment under Provera advanced from Friuli.
Bonaparte collected all his forces, marched
against Alvinzi, and crushed him at Rivoli (15
Jan.). But meanwhile Provera had reached
Mantua, where Bonaparte, by a forced march,
overtook him, and won another complete victory
in the battle of La Favorita. The fate of Mantua
was at last decided, and the city surrendered on
the 2nd of February. With a generosity worthy
of the glory which he had obtained, Bonaparte
allowed WUrmser and the garrison to march out
with the honours of war. He now turned to
Romagna, occupied Bologna and terrified the
Pope into signing the treaty of Tolentino. The
temporal power was allowed to exist, but within
very curtailed limits. Not only Avignon, but
the whole of Romagna, with Ancona, was sur-
rendered to France. Even these terms, harsh as
they were, were not so severe as the Directors
had wished. But Bonaparte was beginning to
play his own game ; he saw that Catholicism was
regaining ground in France, and he wished to
make friends on what might prove after all the
winning side. Affairs in Italy were now fairly
settled: two republics, the Cisalpine in Lom-
bardy, and the Cispadane, which included Modena,
Ferrara, and Bologna, had been created to secure
P^ench influence in Italy. . . . The French had
occupied the Venetian territory from Bergamo to
Verona, and had established close relations with
those classes who were dissatisfied with their ex-
clusion from political power. When the republic
armed against the danger of a revolt, Bonaparte
treated it as another ground for that quarrel
which he artfully fomented for his own pur-
poses. But at present he had other objects more
immediately pressing than the oppression of
Venice. Jourdan's army on the Rhine had been
entrusted to Hoche, whose ambition had long
chafed at the want of an opportunity, and wlio
was burning to acquire glory by retrieving the
disasters of the last campaign. Bonaparte, on
the other hand, was eager to anticipate a possible
rival, and determined to hurry on his own inva-
sion of Austria, in order to keep the war and the
negotiations in his own hands. The task of
meeting him was entrusted to the archduke
Charles, who had won such a brilliant reputation
in 1796, but who was placed at a great disadvan-
tage to his opponent by having to obey instruc-
tions from Vienna. The French carried ail be-
fore them, Joubert occupied Tyrol, Jlassena
forced the route to Carinthia, and Bonaparte him-
self, after defeating the archduke on the TagU-
amento, occupied Trieste and Carniola. The
French now marched over the Alps, driving
the Austrians before them. At Leoben, which
they reached on 7th April, they were less than
eighty miles from Vienna. Here Austrian en-
voys arrived to open negotiations. They con-
sented to surrender Belgium, Lombardy, and the
Rhine frontier, but they demanded compensation
in Bavaria. This demand Bonaparte refused, but
offered to compensate Austria at the expense of
a neutral state, Venice. The preliminaries of
Leoben, signed on the 18th April, gave to Austria,
Istria, Dalmatia, and the Venetian provinces be-
tween the Oglio, the Po, and the Adriatic. At
this moment, Hoche and Moreau, after overcom-
ing the obstacles interposed by a sluggish gov-
ernment, were crossing the Rhine to bring their
armies to bear against Austria. They had already
gained several successes when the unwelcome
news reached them from Leoben, and they had
to retreat. Bonaparte may have failed to extort
the most extreme terms from Austria, but he had
at any rate kept both power and fame to him-
self." — R. Lodge, Hist, of Modern Europe, ch. 33.
Also in: F. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon I., v.
1, ch. 5-7. — -Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St.
Helena. i\ 4, ch. 1-i.
A. D. 1796-1797 (December — January). —
Heche's expedition to Ireland. See Ireland:
A. D. 1791-1798.
A. D. 1797 (February — October). — British
naval victories of Cape St. Vincent and Cam-
perdown. See Engl.vnd: A. D. 1797.
A. D. 1797 (April— May). — The overthrow
of Venice by Bonaparte. — When Napoleon, in
March, entered upon his campaign against the
Archduke Charles, "the animosity existing be-
tween France and Venice had . . . attained a
height that threatened an open rupture between
the two republics, and was, therefore, of some
advantage to Austria. The Signoria saw plainly
what its fate would be should the French prove
victorious; but though they had 12,000 or 15,000
Slavonian troops ready at hand, and mostly as-
sembled in the capital, they never ventured to
use them till the moment for acting was past.
On the Terra Firma, the citizens of Brescia and
Bergamo had openly renounced the authority
of St. Mark, and espoused the cause of France;
the country people, on the otlier hand, were bit-
terly hostile to the new Republicans. Oppressed
by requisitions, plundered and insulted by the
troops, the peasants had slain straggling and
marauding French soldiers ; the comrades of the
sufferers had retaliated, and an open revolt was
more than once expected. General Battaglia, the
Venetian providatore, remonstrated against the
open violence practised on the subjects of Venice;
Buonaparte replied by accusing the government
of partiality for Austria, and went so far as to
employ General Andrieux to instigate the people
to rise against the senate. The Directory, how-
ever, desired him to pause, and not to 'drive
the Venetians to extremity, till the opportunity
1350
FRANCE. 1797.
Fall of Venice.
FRANCE, 1797.
ahould have arrived for carrying into eflfect the
future projects entertained against that state.'
Both parties were watching their time, but the
craven watches in vain, for he is struck down
long before his time to strike arrives. " A month
later, when Napoleon was believed to be involved
in difficulties in Carinthia and the Tyrol, Venice
"had thrown ofE the mask of neutrality; the
tocsin had sounded through the communes of the
Terra Firma, and a body of troops had joined
the insurgents in the attack on the citadel of
Verona. Not only were the French assailed
wherever they were found in arms, but the very
sick were inhumanly slain in the hospitals by
the infuriated peasantry ; the principal massacre
took place at Verona on Easter Monday [April
17], and cast a deep stain on tlie Venetian cause
and character." But even while these sinister
events were in progress, Bonaparte had made
peace with the humiliated Austrians, and had
signed the preliminary treaty of Leoben, which
promised to give Venice to them in exchange for
the Netherlands. And now, with all his forces
set free, he was prepared to crush the venerable
Republic, and make it subservient to his ambi-
tious schemes. He "refused to hear of any ac-
commodation : and, unfortunately, the base mas-
sacre of Verona blackened the Venetian cause
so much as almost to gloss over the unprincipled
violence of their adversaries. ' If you could
offer me the treasures of Peru,' said Napoleon to
the terrified deputies who came to sue for pardon
and offer reparation, ' if you could cover your
whole dominions with gold, the atonement would
be insufficient. French blood has been treacher-
ously shed, and the Lion of St. Mark must bite
the dust. ' On the 3d of May he declared war
against the republic, and French troops immedi-
ately advanced to the shores of the lagunes.
Here, however, the waves of the Adriatic ar-
rested their progress, for they had not a single
boat at command, whereas the Venetians had a
good fleet in the harbour, and an army of 10,000
or 15,000 soldiers in the capital; they only wanted
the courage to use them. Instead of fighting,
however, they deliberated ; and tried to purchase
safety by gold, instead of maintaining it by arms.
Finding the enemy relentless, the Great Council
proposed to modify their government, — to render
it more democratic, in order to please the French
commander, — -to lay tlieir very institutions at
the feet of the conqueror; and, strange to say,
only 21 patricians out of 690 dissented from this
act of national degradation. The democratic
party, supported by the intrigues of Vittelan,
the French secretary of legation, exerted them-
selves to the utmost. The Slavonian troops were
disbanded, or embarked for Dalmatia; the fleet
was dismantled, and the Senate were rapidly
divesting themselves of every privilege, when, on
the 31st of May, a popular tumult broke out in
the capital. The Great Council were in deliber-
ation when shots were fired beneath the windows
of the ducal palace. The trembling senators
thought that the rising was directed against
them, and that their Hves were in danger, and
hastened to divest themselves of every remnant
of power and authority at the very moment when
the populace were taking arms in their favour.
'Long live St. Mark, and down with foreign
dominion ! ' was the cry of the insurgents, but
nothing could communicate one spark of gallant
fire to the Venetian aristocracy. In the midst of
the general confusion, while the adverse parties
were firing on each other, and the disbanded Sla-
vonians threatening to plunder the city, these
unhappy legislators could only delegate their
power to a hastily assembled provisional govern-
ment, and then separate in shame and for ever.
The democratic government commenced their
career in a manner as dishonourable as that of
the aristocracy had been closed." They "imme-
diately despatched the flotilla to bring over the
French troops. A brigade under Baraguai d'Hil-
liers soon landed [May 15] at the place of St.
Mark ; and Venice, which had braved the thun-
ders of the Vatican, the power of the emper-
ors, and the arms of the Othmans, . . . now
simk for ever, and without striking one manly
blow or tiring one single shot for honour and
fame! Venice counted 1300 years of indepen-
dence, centuries of power and renown, and many
also of greatness and glory, but ended in a man-
ner more dishonourable than any state of which
history makes mention. The French went
through the form of acknowledging the new
democratic government, but retained the power
in their own hands. Heavy contributions were
levied, all the naval and military stores were
taken possession of, and the fleet, having con-
veyed French troops to the Ionian islands, was
sent to Toulon." — T. Mitchell, Principal Cam-
paigns in the Rise of Napoleon, ch. 6 {Fraser's
Magaziiu, April, 1846).
Also kt ; E. Flagg, Veiiics : The City of the
Sea, pt. 1, ch. 1-4 («. 1). — Memoirs of Napoleon
dictated at St. Helena, ®. 4, ch. 5.
A. D. 1797 (May — October). — Napoleon's
political work in Italy. — Creation of the Ligu-
rian and Cisalpine Republics.— Dismemberment
of the Graubunden.— The Peace of Campo-
Formio. — Venice given over to Austria, and
Lombardyand the Netherlands taken away. —
"The revolution in Venice was soon followed
by another in Genoa, also organised by the
plots of the French minister there, Faypoult.
The Genoese had in general shown themselves
favourable to France ; but there existed among
the nobles an anti-French party ; the Senate, like
that of Venice, was too aristocratic to suit Bona-
parte's or the Directory's notions; and it was
considered that Genoa, under a democratic con-
stitution, would be more subservient to French
interests. An insurrection, prepared by Fay-
poult, of some 700 or 800 of the lowest class of
Genoese, aided by Frenchmen and Lombards,
broke out on May 23nd, but was put down by
the great mass of the real Genoese people.
Bonaparte, however, was determined to effect
his object. He directed a force of 13,000 men
on Genoa, and despatched Lavalette with a letter
to the Doge. . . . Bonaparte's threats were at-
tended by the same magical effects at Genoa as
had followed them at Venice. The Senate im-
mediately despatched three nobles to treat with
him, and on June 6th was concluded the Treaty
of Montebello. The Government of Genoa recog-
nised by this treaty the sovereignty of the peo-
ple, confided the legislative power to two Coun-
cils, one of 300, the other of 500 members, the
executive power to a Senate of twelve, presided
over by the Doge. Meanwhile a provisional
government was to be established. By a secret
article a contribution of four millions, disguised
under the name of a loan, was imposed upon
j Genoa. Her obedience was recompensed with a
1351
FRAlSrCE, 1797.
Teace of
Campo Formio,
FRANCE, 1797.
considerable augmentation of territory, and the
incorporation of the districts known as the ' im-
perial fiefs. ' Such Tvas the origin of the Ligurian
Republic. Austrian Lombardy, after its con-
quest, had also been formed into the ' Lombard
Republic ' ; but the Directory had not recognised
it, awaiting a final settlement of Italy through a
peace with Austria. Bonaparte, after taking
possession of the Duchy of Modena and the
Legations, had, at first, thought of erecting
them into an independent state under the name
of the ' Cispadane Republic ' ; but he afterwards
changed his mind and united these states with
Lombardy under the title of the Cisalpine Repub-
lic. He declared, in the name of the Directory,
the independence of this new republic, June
29th 1797; reserving, however, the right of
nominating, for the first time, the members of
the Government and of the legislative body.
The districts of the Valteline, Chiavenna, and
Bormio, subject to the G-rison League, in which
discontent and disturbance had been excited by
French agents, were united in October to the
new state ; whose constitution was modelled on
that of the French Republic. Bonaparte was
commissioned by the Directory to negociate a
definitive peace with Austria, and conferences
were opened for that purpose at Montebello,
Bonaparte's residence near Milan. The negocia-
tions were chiefly managed by himself, and on
the part of Austria by the Marquis di Gallo, the
Neapolitan ambassador at Vienna, and Count
Meerfeld. . . . The negociations were protracted
six months, partly through Bonaparte's engage-
ments in arranging the affairs of the new Italian
republics, but more especially by divisions and
feuds in the French Directory." The Peace of
Campo Formio was concluded October 17. "It
derived this name from its having been signed
in a ruined castle situated in a small village of
that name near Udine; a place selected on
grounds of etiquette in preference to the resi-
dence of either of the negociators. By this
treaty the' Emperor ceded the Austrian Nether-
lands to France; abandoned to the Cisalpine
Republic, which he recognised, Bergamo, Bres-
cia, Crema, Peschiera, the town and fortress of
Mantua with their territories, and all that part
of the former Venetian possessions to the south
and west of a line which, commencing in the
Tyrol, traversed the Lago di Garda, the left bank
of the Adige, but including Porto Legnago on
the right bank, and thence along the left bank of
the Po to its mouth. France was to possess the
Ionian Islands, and all the Venetian settlements
in Albania below the Gulf of Lodrino; the
French Republic agreeing on its side that the
Emperor should have Istria, Dalmatia, the Vene-
tian isles in the Adriatic, the mouths of the
Cattaro, the city of Venice, the Lagoons, and all
the former Venetian terra firma to the line before
described. The Emperor ceded the Breisgau to
the Duke of Modena, to be held on the same con-
ditions as he had held the Modenese. A congress
composed of the plenipotentiaries of the German
Federation was to assemble immediately, to treat
of a peace between France and the Empire. To
this patent treaty was added another secret one,
by the principal article of which the Emperor
consented that France should have the frontier
of the Rhine, except the Prussian possessions,
and stipulated that the Imperial troops should
enter Venice on the same day that the French
entered Mentz. He also promised to use his in-
fluence to obtain the accession of the Empire to
this arrangement ; and if that body withheld its
consent, to give it no more assistance than his con-
tingent. The navigation of the Rhine to be de-
clared free. If, at the peace with the Empire,
the French Republic should make any acquisi-
tions in Germany, the Emperor was to "obtain an
equivalent there, and vice versa. The Dutch
Stadtholder to have a territorial indemnity. To
the King of Prussia were to be restored his pos-
sessions on the left bank of the Rhine, and he
was consequently to have no new acquisitions in
Germany. Princes and States of the Empire,
damnified by this treaty, to obtain a suitable in-
demnity. . . . By the Treaty of Campo Formio
was terminated not only the Italian campaign,
but also the first continental war of the Revolu-
tion. The establishment of Bonaparte's prestige
and power by the former was a result still more
momentous in its consequences for Europe than
the fall of Venice and the revolutionising of
Northern Italy." — T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern
Europe, bk. 7, ch. 8 {v. 4).
Also ts: A. Thiers, Hist, of the French Rev.
(Am. ed.), v. 4, pp. 214-23.5.— Sir AV. Scott, Life
of Napoleon Buonaparte, ch. 28, — Memoirs of Na-
poleon dictated at St. Helena, ch. 6-8.
A. D. 1797 (September). — Conflict of the
Directory and the two Councils. — The Revo-
lutionary Coup d'Etat of the i8th of Fructidor.
— Suppression of the Royalists and Moderates.
— Practical overthrow of the Constitution. —
"The inevitable dissension between the execu-
tive power and the electoral power had already
displayed itself at the conclusion of the elections of
the Year V. The elections were made for the most
part under the influence of the reactionary party,
which, whilst it refrained from conspiring for the
overthrow of the new Constitution, saw with
terror that the executive power was in the hands
of men who had taken part in the excesses and
crimes of the Convention. Pichegru, whose in-
trigues with the princes of the House of Bour-
bon were not yet known, was enthusiastically
made President of the Council of Five Hundred,
and Barbe-Marbois was made President of the
Ancients. Le Tourneur having become, by lot,
the retiring member of the Directory, Barthelemy,
an upright and moderate man, was chosen in his
place. He, as well as his colleague, Carnot,
were opposed to violent measures ; but they only
formed in the Directorate a minority which was
powerless against the Triumvirs Barras, Rewbel,
and La ReveillSre, who soon entered upon a
struggle with the two Councils. . . . There were,
doubtless, amongst [their opponents] in the two
Councils, some Royalists, and ardent reactionists,
who desired with all their hearts the restoration
of the Bourbons ; but, according to the very best
testimony, the majority of the names which were
drawn from the electoral urn since the promul-
gation of the Constitution of the Year III. were
strangers to the Royalist party. ' They did not
desire,' to use the words of an eminent and im-
partial historian of our own day [De Barante,
'Life of Royer-Collard'], ' a counter-revolution,
but the abolition of the revolutionary laws which
were still in force. They wished for peace and
true liberty, and the successive purification of a
Directorate which was the direct heir of the Con-
vention. . . . But the Directorate was as much
opposed to the Moderates as to the Royalists. ' It
1352
FRANCE, 1T97.
The 18th Fructidor.
FRANCE, 1797-1798.
pretended to regard these two parties as one, and
falsely represented them as conspiring in com-
mon for the overthrow of the Repul)lio and the
re-establislimeut of monarchy. . . . If there were
few Royalists in the two Councils, there were
also few men determined to provoke on the part
of the Directors a recourse to violence against
their colleagues. But as a great number of their
members had sat in the Convention, they natu-
rally feared a too complete reaction, and, affect-
ing a great zeal for the Constitution, they founded
at the Hotel Salm, under the name of the Con-
stitutional Club, an a.ssociation which was widely
opposed in its spirit and tendency to that of the
Hotel Clichy, in which were assembled the most
ardent members of the reactionary party [and
hence called Clichyans], . . . The Council of
Five Hundred, on the motion of a member of the
Clichy Club, energetically demanded that the
Legislative power should have a share in de-
termining questions of peace or war. No gen-
eral had exercised, in this respect, a more arbitrary
power than had Bonaparte, who had negotiated
of his own mere authority several treaties, and
the preliminaries of the peace of Campo Formio.
He was offended at these pretensions on the part
of the Council of Five Hundred, and entreated
the Government to look to the army for support
against the Councils and the reactionary press.
He even sent to Paris, as a support to the policy
of the Directors, General Augereau, one of the
bravest men of his army, but by no means scru-
pulous as to the employment of violent means,
and disposed to regard the sword as the supreme
argument in politics, whether at home or abroad.
The Directory gave him the command of the
military division of Paris. . . . Henceforth a coup
d'etat appeared inevitable. The Directors now
marched some regiments upon the capital, in de-
fiance of a clause of the Constitution which pro-
hibited the presence of troops within a distance of
twelve leagues of Paris, unless in accordance with
a special law passed in or near Paris itself. The
Councils burst forth into reproaches and threats
against the Directors, to which the latter replied
by fiery addresses to the armies, and to the Cgun-
cils themselves. It was in vain that the Direc-
tors Camot and Barthelemy endeavoured to quell
the rising storm ; their three colleagues refused
to listen to them, and fixed the 18th Fructidor
[September 4] for the execution of their criminal
projects. During the night preceding that day,
Augereau marched 12,000 men into Paris, and in
the morning these troops, under his own com-
mand, supported by 40 pieces of cannon, sur-
rounded the Tuileries, in which the Councils held
their sittings. The grenadiers of the Councils'
guard joined Augereau, who arrested with his
own hand the brave Ramel, who commanded that
guard, and General Piehegru, the President of
the Council of Five Hundred. . . . The Direc-
tors . . . published a letter written by Moreau,
which revealed Pichegru's treason; and at the
same time nominated a Committee for the ijur-
pose of watching over the public safety. . . .
Forty-two members of the Council of Five
Hundred, eleven members of that of the An-
cients, and two of the Directors, Carnot [who
escaped, however, into Switzerland] and Bar-
thelemy, were condemned to be transported to
the fatal district of Sinnamari. . . . The Directors
also made the editors of 35 journals the victims
of their resentment. They had the laws passed
in favour of the priests and emigrants reversed,
and annulled the elections of 48 departments.
Merlin de Douai and Francois de Neufchateau
were chosen as successors to Carnot and Bar-
thelemy, who had been banished and proscribed
by their colleagues. That which took place on
the 18th Fructidor ruined the Constitutional and
Moderate party, whilst it resuscitated that of the
Revolution."— E. do Bonnechose, Hist, of France,
Ath period, hk. 2, cli. 4 (v. 2). — "During these two.
days, Paris continued perfectly quiet. The
patriots of the fauxbourgs deemed the punish-
ment of transportation too mild. . . . These
groups, however, which were far from numerous,
disturbed not in the least the peace of Paris.
The sectionaries of Vendemiaire . . . had no
longer suflicient energy to take up arms spon-
taneously. They suffered the stroke of policy
to be carried into effect without opposition. For
the rest, public opinion continued uncertain. The
sincere republicans clearly perceived that the
royalist faction had rendered an energetic meas-
ure inevitable, but they deplored the violation
of the laws and the intervention of the military
power. They almost doubted the culpability of
the conspirators on seeing such a man as Carnot
mingled in their ranks. They apprehended that
hatred had too strongly influenced the determina-
tions of the Directory. Lastly, even, though
considering its determinations as necessary, they
were sad, and not without reason ; for it became
evident that that constitution, on which they had
placed all their hope, was not the termination of
our troubles and our discord. The mass of the
population submitted and detached itself much
on that day from political events. . . . From
that day, political zeal began to cool. Such
were the consequences of the stroke of policy ac-
complished on the 18th of Fructidor. It has
been asserted that it had become useless at the
moment when it was executed ; that the Direc-
tory, in frightening the royalist faction, had
already succeeded in overawing it ; that, by per-
sisting in this stretch of power, it paved the way
to military usurpation. . . . But . . . the royal-
ist faction. . . . on the junction of the new tliird
. . . would infallibly have overturned every-
thing, and mastered the Directory. Civil war
would then have ensued between it and the
armies. The Directory, in foreseeing this move-
ment and timely repressing it, prevented a civil
war ; and, if it placed itself under the protection
of the military, it submitted to a melancholy but
inevitable necessity." — A. Thiers, Hist, of the
French Rev. (Am. ed.), i\ 4, pp. 20.5-206.
A. D. 1797-1798 (December — May). — Revo-
lutionary intrigues in Rome. — French troops
in possession of the city. — Formation of the
Roman Republic. — Removal of the Pope. — "At
Rome a permanent conspiracy was established at
the French Embassy, where Joseph Bonaparte, as
the ambassador of the Republic, was the centre of
a knot of conspirators. On the 28th of December,
1797, came the first open attempt at insurrection.
General Duphot, a hot-headed young man, one
of the military attaches of the French Embassy,
put himself at the head of a handful of the dis-
affected, and led them to the attack of one of the
posts of the pontifical troops. In the ensuing
skirmish a chance shot struck down the French
general, and the rabble which followed him dis-
persed in all directions. It was just the oppor-
tunity for which the Directory had been waiting
1353
FRANCE, 1797-1798.
Bonaparte^s
Expedition to Egypt.
FRANCE, 1798.
in order to break the treaty of Tolentino ami
seize upon Rome. Joseph Bonaparte left the
city the morning- after the fimeute, and a column
of troops was immediately detached from his
brother's army in the north of Italy and ordered
to march on Rome. It consisted of General Ber-
thier's division and 6,000 Poles under Dombrow-
ski, and it received the ominous title of I'armee
vengeresse — the avenging army. As they ad-
vanced through the Papal territory they met
■nrith no sympathy, no assistance, from the in-
habitants, who looked upon them as invaders
rather than deliverers. ' The army, ' Berthier
wrote to Bonaparte, ' has met with nothing but
the most profound consternation in this country,
without seeing one glimpse of the spirit of inde-
pendence; only one single patriot came to me,
and offered to set at liberty 3,000 convicts.' This
liberal offer of a re-inforcement of 3,000 scoun-
drels the French general thought it better to de-
cline. ... At length, on the 10th of February,
Berthier appeared before Rome. . . . Wishing
to avoid a useless effusion of blood, Pius VI.
ordered the gates to be thrown open, contenting
himself with addressing, through the comman-
dant of St. Angelo, a protest to the French gen-
eral, in which he declared that he yielded only to
overwhelming force. A few days after, a self-
elected deputation of Romans waited upon Ber-
thier, to request him to proclaim Rome a repub-
lic, under tlie protection of France. As Berthier
had been one of the most active agents in getting
up this deputation, he, of course, immediately
yielded to their request. The French general
then demanded of the Pope that he should for-
mall}' resign his temporal power, and accept the
new order of things. His reply was the same as
that of every Pope of whom such a demand has
been made: 'AVe cannot — we will not!' In the
midst of a violent thunder-storm he was torn
from his palace, forced into a carriage, and carried
away to Viterbo, and thence to Siena, where he
was kept a prisoner for three months. Rome
was ruled by the iron hand of a military governor.
. . . Sleanwhile, alarmed at the rising in Italy,
the Directory were conveying the Pope to a
French prison. . . . After a short stay at Gre-
noble he was transferred to the fortress of Valence,
where, broken down by the fatigues of his jour-
ney, he died on August 19th, 1799, praying for
his enemies with his last breath." — Chevalier
O'Clery, Hist, of the Italian Sevolution, ch. 3,
met. 1.
Also in : C. A. Fyffe, Biit. of Modern Eu-
rope, V. 1, ch. 4. — J. Miley, Hist, of the Papal
States, bk. 8, ch. 3 (». 3).— j. E. Darras, Hist, of
the Catholic Church, 8th period, ch. 6 {ii 4). — T.
Roscoe, Memoirs of Scipio cU Ricci, v. 3, ch. 4.
A. D. 1797-1798 (December — September). —
Invasion and subjugation of Switzerland. —
Creation of the Helvetic Republic. See Switz-
erland: A. D. 1793-1798.
A. D. 1797-1799. — Hostile attitude toward
the United States. — The X, Y, Z correspon-
dence. — Nearness of war. See ITnited States
OP Am. : A. D. 1797-1799.
A. D. 1798 (May— August). — Bonaparte's
expedition to Egypt. — His seizure of Malta.
— Pursuit by the English fleet under Nelson.
—The Battle of the Nile.— "The treaty of
Campo Formio, bj' which Austria obtained terms
highly advantageous to her interests, dissolved
the offensive and defensive alliance of the con-
tinental powers, and left England alone in arms.
The humiliation of this country was to be the
last and the greatest achievement of French am-
bition. . . . During the autumn and winter of
this j'ear [1797-8], preparations for a great arma-
ment were proceeding at Toulon, and other har-
bours in possession of the French. The army of
Italy, [clamorous for a promised donation of
1,000,000,000 francs, which the Directory were
unable to pay, had been flattered by the title of
the army of England, and appeased by the pros-
pect of the plunder of this country. But what-
ever might be the view of the Directory, or the
expectation of the army, Bonaparte had no in-
tention of undertaking an enterprise so rash as a
descent upon the coast of England, while the
fleets of England kept possession of the seas.
There was another quarter from which the Brit-
ish Empire might be menaced with a better
chance of success. India could never be secure
while Egypt and the great eastern port of the
Mediterranean were in the possession of one of
the great maritime powers. Egypt had been an
object of French ambition since the time of Louis
XIV. ... It was for Egypt, therefore, that the
great armament of Toulon was destined. The
project was not indeed considered a very hope-
ful one at Paris; but such was the dread and
hatred of the ruling faction for the great military
genius which had sprung out of the anarchy of
France, and of the 30,000 creditors whom they
were unable to satisfy, that the issue of the ex-
pedition which they most desired was, that it
might never return from the banks of the Nile.
. . . The fleet, consisting of thirteen ships of the
line, with several frigates, smaller vessels, and
transports conveying 28,000 picked troops, with
the fuU equipment for every kind of military
service, set sail on the 14th of May. Attached
to this singular expedition, destined for the in-
vasion of a friendly country, and the destruction
of an unolfending people, was a staff of pro-
fessors, furnished with books, maps, and philo-
sophical instruments for prosecuting scientific
researches in a land which, to a Christian and a
philosopher, was the most interesting portion of
the globe. The great armament commenced its
career of rapine by seizing on the important
island of Malta. Under the shallow pretence of
taking in water for a squadron which had left
its anchorage only two days, a portion of the
troops were landed, and, after a show of resis-
tance, the degenerate knights, who had already
been corrupted, surrendered Malta, Gozo, and Cu-
mino, to the French Republic. A great amount
of treasure and of munitions of war, besides the
possession of the strongest place in the Mediter-
ranean, were thus acquired without loss or delay.
A conquest of such importance would have
amply repaid and justified the expedition, if no
ulterior object had been pursued. But Bona-
parte suffered himself to be detained no more
than twenty-four hours by this achievement ; and
having left a garrison of 4,000 men in the island,
and established a form of civil government, after
the French pattern, he shaped his course direct
for Alexandria. On the 1st of July, the first
division of the French troops were landed at
Marabou, a few miles from tlie city. Aboukir
and Rosetta, which commanded the mouths of the
Nile, were occupied without difficulty. Alex-
andria itself was incapable of any effectual de-
fence, and, after a few skirmishes with the hand-
1354
FRANCE, 17
The Battle of
the Nile.
FRANCE, 1798-1799.
fulof Janissaries -which constituted the garrison,
the French entered the place; and for several
hours the inhabitants were given up to an indis-
criminate massacre. Bonaparte pushed forward
with his usual rapidity, undeterred by the horrors
of the sandy desert, and the sufferings of his
troops. After two victories over the Mamelukes,
one of which was obtained within sight of the
Pyramids [and called the Battle of the Pyra-
mids], the French advanced to Cairo; and such
was tlie terror which they had inspired, that the
capital of Egypt was surrendered without a blow.
Thus in three weeks the country had been over-
run. The invaders had nothing to fear from the
hostility of the people; a rich and fertile country,
the frontier of Asia, was in their possession ; but,
in order to held the possession secure, it was nec-
essary to retain the command of the sea. The
English Government, on their side, considered
the capture of the Toulon armament an object of
paramount importance; and Earl St. Vincent,
who was still blockading the Spanish ports, was
ordered to leave Cadiz, if necessary, with his
whole fleet, in search of the French ; but at all
events, to detach a squadron, under Sir Horatio
Nelson, on that service. . . . Nelson left Gib-
raltar on the 8th of May, with three ships of the
line, four frigates, and a sloop. . . . He was re-
inforced, on the 5th of June, with ten sail of the
line. His frigates had parted company with him
on the 20th of May, and never returned." Sus-
pecting that Egypt was Bonaparte's destination,
he made sail for Alexandria, but passed the
French expedition, at night, on the way, arrived
in advance of it, and, thinking his surmise mis-
taken, steered away for the Morea and thence to
Naples. It was not until the 1st of August that
he reached the Egyptian coast a second time,
and found the French fleet, of sixteen sail, "at
anchor in line of battle, in the Bay of Aboukir.
Nelson, having determined to fight whenever he
came up with the enemy, whether by day or by
night, immediately made the signal for action.
Although the French fleet lay in an open road-
stead, they had taken up a position so strong as
to justify their belief that they could not be suc-
cessfully attacked by a force less than double
their own. They lay close in shore, with a large
shoal in their rear ; in the advance of their line
was an island, on which a formidable battery
had been erected ; and their flanks were covered
by numerous gun-boats. . . . The general action
commenced at sunset, and continued throughout
the night until sis o'clock the following morning,
a period of nearly twelve hours. But in less
than two hours, five of the enemy's ships had
struck ; and, soon after nine o'clock, the sea and
shore, for miles around, were illuminated by a
fire which burst from the decks of the ' Orient, '
the French flag-ship, of 130 guns. In about
half an hour she blew up, with an explosion so
appalling that for seme minutes the action was
suspended, as if by tacit consent. At this time
the French Admiral Brueys was dead, . . . killed
by a chain-shot before the ship took fire. Nelson
also had been carried below, with a wound which
was, at first, supposed to be mortal. He had
been struck in the head with a fragment of lan-
gridge shot, which tore away a part of the scalp.
... At three o'clock in the morning four more
of the French ships were destroyed or taken.
There was then an interval of two hours, during
which hardly a shot was flred on either side. At
ten minutes to seven another ship of the linfc.
after a feeble attempt at resistance, hauled down
her colours. The action was now over. Of the
thirteen French ships of the line, nine had been
taken, and two had been burnt." Two ships of
the line and two frigates escaped. "The British
killed and wounded were 895. The loss of the
French, including prisoners, was 5,225. Such
was the great battle of the Nile." — W. Massey,
Hist, of Eng. during the Beign of Oeorge III., ch.
39 (p. 4).
Also in: E. J. De La Gravifire, Sketches of the
Last Naval War, v. 1, pt. 3. — R. Southey, Life
of Nelson, ch. 5. — Despatches and Letters of Lord
Nelson, v. 3. — Bonaparte, Memoirs Dictated at St.
Helena, v. 2. — A. T. Mahan, Influence of Sea
Power upon tlie French Eevolution and Empire,
ch. 9 (b. 1).
A. D. 1798-1799 (August — April). — Arming
against the Second European Coalition. — The
conscription. — Overthrow of the Neapolitan
kingdom. — Seizure of Piedmont. — Campaigns
in Switzerland, Italy, and on the upper Dan-
ube. — Early successes and final reverses. —
"The Porte declared war against the French, and
entered into an alliance with Russia and England
(12th August). A Russian fleet sailed from Se-
bastopol, and blockaded the Ionian Islands; the
English vessels found every Turkish port open to
them, and gained possession of the Levant trade,
to the detriment of France. Thus the failure of
the Egyptian expedition delivered the Ottoman
Empire into the hands of two Powers, the one in-
tent upon its dismemberment, the other eager to
make itself master of its commerce ; it gave Eng-
land the supremacy in the Mediterranean ; it in-
augurated the appearance of Russia in southern
Europe ; it was the signal for a second coalition. "
Russia, ' ' under Catherine, had but taken a nom-
inal part in the first coalition, being too much
occupied with the annihilation of Poland. . . .
But now Catherine was dead, Paul I., her son
and successor, took the emigres in his pay, of-
fered the Pretender an asylum at Mittau, prom-
ised his protection to the Congress at Rastadt,
and fitted out 100, 000 troops. Naples had been in a
great ferment since the creation of the Roman Re-
public. The nobles and middle classes, imbued
with French ideas, detested a Court sold to the
English, and presided over by the imbecile Fer-
dinand, who left the cares of his government to
his dissolute Queen. She hated the Fi-ench, and
now solicited Tuscany and Piedmont to unite with
her to deliver Italy from the sway of these Re-
publicans. The Austrian Court, of which Bona-
parte had been the conscious or unconscious dupe,
instead of disarming after the Treaty of Campo-
Formio, continued its armaments with redoubled
vigour, and now demanded indemnities, on the
pretext that it had suffered from the Republican
system which the French introduced into Switzer-
land and Italy. The Directory very naturally re-
fused to accede to this; and thereupon Austria
prepared for war, and endeavoured to drag Prus-
sia and the German Empire into it. . . . But
Frederick William's successor and the princess of
the empire declined to recommence hostilities
with France, of which they had reason to fear the
enmity, though at present she was scarcely able
to resist a second coalition. The French nation,
in fact, was sincerely eager for peace. . . .
Nevertheless, and though there was little unity
amongst them, the Councils and the Directory
1355
FRANCE. 1798-1799.
Fighting the
Coalition.
FRANCE, 1798-1799.
prepared their measures of defence; they in-
creased tlie revenue, by creating a tax on doors
and windows ; they authorised the sale of national
property to the amount of 125,000,000 francs ; and
finally, on the report of Jourdan, they passed the
famous law of conscription (5th September),
which compelled every Frenchman to serve in the
army from the age of 20 to that of 25, the first
Immediate levy to consist of 300, 000 troops. When
the victory of the Nile became known at Naples
the court was a prey to frenzied excitement.
Taxes had already been doubled, a fifth of the
population called to arms, the nobles and middle
classes were tortured into submission. And when
the report spread that the Russians were march-
ing through Poland, it was resolved to commence
hostilities by attacking the Roman Republic, and
to rouse Piedmont and Tuscany to rebellion.
Forty thousand Neapolitans, scarcely provided
with arms, headed by the Austrian general Mack,
made their way into the Roman states, guarded
only by 18,000 French troops, dispersed between
the two seas (12th November). Championnet,
their commander, abandoned Rome, took up a
position on the Tiber, near Civita-Castellana, and
concentrated all his forces on that point. The
King of Naples entered Rome, while Mack went
to encounter Championnet. The latter beat him,
routed or captured the best of his troops, and
compelled him to retire in disorder to the Neapoli-
tan territory. Championnet, now at the head of
25,000 men, returned to Rome, previous to march-
ing on Naples, where the greatest disorder pre-
vailed. At the news of his approach the Court
armed the lazzaroni, and fled with its treasures to
the English fleet, abandoning the town to pillage
and anarchy (20th Dec, 1798). Mack, seeing his
army deserting him, and his officers making com-
mon cause with the Republicans, concluded an
armistice with Championnet, but his soldiers re-
volted and compelled him to seek safety in the
French camp. On Championnet's appearance be-
fore Naples, which the lazzaroni defended with
fur}', a violent battle ensued, lasting for three
days ; however, some of the citizens delivered the
fort of St. Elmo to the French, and then the mob
laid down its arms (23rd January, 1799). The
Parthenopeian Republic [so called from one of
the ancient names of the city of Naples] was im-
mediately proclaimed, a provisional government
organised, the citizens formed themselves into a
National Guard, and the kingdom accepted the
Revolution. The demand of Championnet for a
war contribution of 27,000,000 francs roused the
Calabrians to revolt; anarchy prevailed every-
where ; commissioners were sent by the Directory
to re-establish order. The French general had
them arrested, but he was deposed and succeeded
by Macdonald. In commencing its aggression
the court of Naples had counted on the aid of the
King of Sardinia and the Grand Duke of Tus-
cany. But Piedmont, placed between three re-
publics, was herself sharing the Revolutionary
ferment; the King, who had concluded an alli-
ance with Austria, proscribed the democrats, who,
in their turn, declared war against him by means
of the Ligurian Republic, whither they had fled.
"When Championnet was compelled to evacuate
Rome, the Directory, afraid that Sardinia would
harass the French rear, had ordered Joubert, com-
manding the army of Italy, to occupy Piedmont.
The Piedmontese troops opened every place to
the French, entered into their ranks, and the King
[December 8, 1798] was forced to give up all
claims to Piedmont, and to take refuge in Sar-
dinia . . . [retaining the latter, but abdicating
the sovereignty of Piedmont]. Tuscany being
also occupied by the Republican troops, the mo-
ment war was declared against Austria, Italy was
virtually under French dominion. These events
but increased the enmity of the Coalition, which
hurried its preparations, while the Directory,
cheered by its successes, resolved to take the
offensive on all points. ... In the present strug-
gle, however, the conditions of warfare were
changed. The lines of invasion were no longer,
as formerly, short and isolated, but stretched from
the Zuyder Zee to the Gulf of Tarentum, open
to be attacked in Holland from the rear, and at
Naples by the English fleet. . . . Seventy thou-
sand troops, under the Archduke Charles, occu-
pied Bavaria ; General Hotze occupied the Vor-
arlberg with 25,000 men; Bellegarde was with
45,000 in the Tyrol; and 70,000 guarded the line
of the Adige, headed by Marshal Kray. Eighty
thousand Russians, in two equal divisions, were
on their way to join the Austrians. The division
under Suwarroff was to operate with Kray, that
one under Korsakoff with the Archduke. Finally,
40,000 English and Russians were to land in Hol-
land, and 20,000 English and Sicilians in Naples.
The Directory, instead of concentrating its forces
on the Adige and near the sources of the Danube,
divided them. Fifteen thousand troops were
posted in Holland, under Brune ; 8,000 at Mayenee,
under Bernadotte; 40,000 from Strasburg to
Bale, under Jourdan ; 30,000 in Switzerland, under
Massena; 50,000 on the Adige, under Scherer;
30,000 at Naples, under Macdonald. These va-
rious divisions were in reality meant to form but
one army, of which Massena was the centre, Jour-
dan and Scherer the wings, Brune and Macdonald
the extremities. To Massena was confided the
principal operation, namely, to possess himself of
the central Alps, in order to isolate the two im-
perial armies of the Adige and Danube and to
neutralise their efforts. The Coalition having
hit upon the same plan as the Directory, ordered
the Austrians under Bellegarde to invade the
Orisons, while on the other side a division was to
descend into the Valteline. " Massena's right wing,
under Lecourbe, defeated Bellegarde, crossed
the upper Rhine and made its way to the Inn.
Scherer also advanced by the Valteline to the up-
per Adige and joined operations with Lecourbe.
' ' While these two generals were spreading terror
in the Tyrol, Massena made himself master of the
Rhine from its sources to the lake of Constance,
receiving but one check in the fruitless siege of
Feldkirch, a position he coveted in order to be able
to support with his right wing the army of the
Danube, or with his left that of Italy. This check
compelled Lecourbe and Dessoles to slacken their
progress, and the various events on the Danube
and the Po necessitated their recall in a short
time. Jourdan had crossed' the Rhine at Kehl,
Bale, and SchaShausen (1st March), penetrated
into the defile of the upper Danube, and reached
the village of Ostrach, where he was confronted
by the Archduke Charles, who had passed the
Iller, and who, after a sanguinary battle [JIarch
21], compelled him to retreat upon Tutlingen.
The tidings of Massena's success having reached
Jourdan, he wished to support it by marching to
Stockach, the key to the roads of Switzerland and
Germany ; but he was once more defeated (35th
1356
FRANCE, 1798-1799.
Bonaparte in
Egypt and Syria.
FRANCE, 1798-1799.
March), and retreated, not into Switzerland,
whence he could have joined Massfena, but to the
Rhine, which he imagined to be threatened. . . .
In Italy the Directory had given orders to Scherer
to force the Adige, and to drive the Austrians
over the Piave and the Brenta. " He attacked and
carried the Austrian camp of Pastrengo, near
Rivoli, on the 35th of March, 1799, inflicting, a
loss of 8,000 on the enemy; but on the 5th of
April, when moving to force the lower Adige,
he was defeated by Kray at Magnano. " Scherer
lost his head, fled precipitately, and did not stop
until he had put a safe distance between himself
and the enemy. . . . The army of Switzerland,
under Massena, dispersed in the mountains, with
both its flanks threatened, had no other means of
salvation than to fall back behind the Rhine. " —
H. Van Laun, The French Revolutionary Epoch,
bk. 3, ch. 1, sect. 3 (». 1).
Also in; R. Southey, Life of Nelson, ch. 6 («. 3).
— A. Griffiths, French Revolutionary Oenerals, ch.
18. — A. Gallenga, Hist, of Piedmont, ». 3, ch. 5.
— P. Colletta, Hist, of the Kingdom of Naples, bk.
3, ch. 2;bk. 4, ch. 1 {v. 1).
A. D. 1798-1799 (August — August). — Bona-
parte's organization of government in Egypt.
— His advance into Syria and repulse at Acre.
— His victory at Aboukir and return to France.
— " On hearing of the battle of Aboukir [better
known as 'the battle of the Nile'], a solitary sigh
escaped from Napoleon. 'To France,' said he,
' the fates have decreed the empire of the land —
to England that of the sea.' He endured this
great calamity with the equanimity of a mascu-
line spirit. He gave orders that the seamen
landed at Alexandria should be formed into a
marine brigade, and thus gained a valuable ad-
dition to his army ; and proceeded himself to or-
ganise a system of government, under which the
great natural resources of the country might be
turned to the best advantage. ... He was care-
ful to advance no claim to the sovereignty of
Egypt, but asserted, that having rescued it from
the Mameluke usurpation, it remained for him
to administer law and justice, until the time
should come for restoring the province to the
dominion of the Grand Seignior. He then estab-
lished two councils, consisting of natives, princi-
pally of Arab chiefs and Moslem of the church
and the law, by whose advice all measures were,
nominally, to be regulated. They formed of course
a very subservient senate. . . . The virtuosi and
artists in his train, meanwhile, pursued with in-
defatigable energy their scientific researches;
they ransacked the monuments of Egypt, and
laid the foundation, at least, of all the wonderful
discoveries which have since been made concern-
ing the knowledge, arts, polity (and even lan-
guage), of the ancient nation. Nor were their ob-
jects merely those of curiosity. They, under the
General's direction, examined into the long-smoth-
ered traces of many an ancient device for im-
proving the agriculture of the country. Canals
that had been shut up for centuries were re-
opened ; the waters of the Nile flowed once more
where they had been guided by the skill of the
Pharaohs or the Ptolemies. Cultivation was
extended; property secured; and it cannot be
doubted that the signal improvements since intro-
duced in Egypt, are attributable mainly to the
wise example of the French administration. . . .
In such labours Napoleon passed the autumn of
1798. . . . General Dessaix, meanwhile, had pur-
sued Mourad Bey into Upper Egypt, where the
Mamelukes hardly made a single stand against
him, but contrived bj^ the excellence of their
horses, and their familiarity with the deserts, to
avoid any total disruption of their forces. . . .
The General, during this interval of repose, re-
ceived no communication from the French Gov-
ernment ; but rumours now began to reach his
quarters which might well give him new anx-
ieties. The report of another rupture with Aus-
tria gradually met with more credence; and it
was before long placed beyond a doubt, that the
Ottoman Porte, instead of being tempted into
any recognition of the French establishment in
Egypt, had declared war against the Republic,
and summoned all the strength of her empire to
pour in overwhelming numbers on the isolated
army of Buonaparte. . . . The General des-
patched a trusty messenger into India, inviting
Tippoo Saib to inform him exactly of the condi-
tion of the English army in that region, and sig-
nifying that Egypt was only the first post in a
march destined to surpass that of Alexander!
' He spent whole days,' writes his secretary, 'in
lying flat on the ground stretched upon maps of
Asia.' At length the time for action came.
Leaving 15,000 in and about Cairo, the division
of Dessaix in Upper Egypt, and garrisons in the
chief towns, — -Buonaparte on the 11th of Feb-
ruary 1799 marched for Syria at the head of
10,000 picked men, with the intention of crush-
ing the Turkish armament in that quarter, be-
fore their chief force (which he now knew was
assembling at Rhodes) should have time to reach
Egypt by sea. Traversing the desert which
divides Africa from Asia, he took possession of
the fortress El-Arish (Feb. 15), whose garrison,
after a vigorous assault, capitulated on condition
that they should bo permitted to retreat into
Syria, pledging their parole not to serve again
during the war. Pursuing his march, he took
Gazali (that ancient city of the Philistines) with-
out opposition; but at Jaffa (the Joppa of holy
writ), the Moslem made a resolute defence. The
walls were earned by storm, 3,000 Turks died
with arms in their hands, and the town was
given up during three hours to the fury of the
French soldiery — who never, as Napoleon con-
fessed, availed themselves of the license of war
more savagely than on this occasion. A party
of the garrison — amounting, according to Buona-
parte", to 1,300 men, but stated by others as
nearly 3, 000 in number — held out for some hours
longer in the mosques and citadel ; but at length,
seeing no chance of rescue, grounded their arms
on the 7th of March. ... On the 10th — three
days after their surrender — the prisoners were
marched out of Jaflia, in the centre of a battalion
under General Bon. When the.y had reached
the sand-hills, at some distance from the town,
they were divided into small parties, and shot or
bayoneted to a man. They, like true fatalists, sub-
mitted in silence ; and their bodies were gathered
together into a pyramid, where, after the lapse
of thirty years, their bones are still visible whiten-
ing the sand. Such was the massacre of Jaffa,
which will ever form one of the darkest stains
on the name of Napoleon. He admitted the fact
himself; — and justified it on the double plea,
that he could not afford soldiers to guard so
many prisoners, and that he could not grant them
the benefit of their parole, because they were the
very men who had already been set free on such
1357
FRANCE, 1798-1799.
Bonaparte in
Syria arid Egypt.
FRAN(?E, 1798-1799.
terms at El-Arish. . . . Buonaparte liad now
ascertained that the Pacha of Syria, Achmet-
Djezzar, -was at St. Jean D'Acre (so renowned in
the history of the crusades), and determined to
defend that place to extremity, witli the forces
■which had already been assembled for the in-
vasion of Egypt. He in vain endeavoured to
seduce this ferocious chief from his allegiance to
the Porte, by holding out the hope of a separate
independent government, under the protection of
France. The first of Napoleon's messengers re-
turned without an answer ; the second was put
to death ; and the army moved on Acre in all the
zeal of revenge, while the necessary apparatus
of a siege was ordered to be sent round by sea
from Alexandria. Sir Sidney Smith was then
cruising in the Levant with two British ships of
the line, the Tigre and the Theseus; and, being
informed by the Pacha of the approaching storm,
hastened to" support him in the defence of Acre.
Napoleon's vessels, conveying guns and stores
from Egypt, fell into his hands, and lie appeared
off the town two days before the French army
came in view of it. He had on board his ship
Colonel Philippeaux, a French royalist of great
talents (formerly Buonaparte's school-fellow at
Brienne) ; and the Pacha willingly permitted the
English commodore and this skilful ally to regu-
late for him, as far as was possible, the plan of
his defence. The loss of his own heavy artillery,
and the presence of two English ships, were in-
auspicious omens; yet Buonaparte doubted not
that the Turkish garrison would shrink before
his onset, and he instantly commenced the siege.
He opened his trenches on the 18th of March.
' On that little town ' said he to one of his gen-
erals, as they were standing together on an emi-
nence, which still bears the name of Richard Coeur
de-Lion — ' on yonder little town depends the fate
of the East. Behold the Key of Constantinople,
or of India.'. . . Meanwhile avast Mussulman
army had been gathered among the mountains of
Samaria, and was preparing to descend upon
Acre, and attack the besiegers in concert with
the garrison of Djezzar. Junot, with his divis-
ion, marched to encounter them, and would
have been overwhelmed by their numbers, had
not Napoleon himself followed and rescued him
(April 8) at Nazareth, where the splendid cavalry
of the Orientals were, as usual, unable to resist
the solid squares and well-directed musketry of
the French. Kleber with another division, was
in like manner endangered, and in like manner
rescued by the general-in-chief at Mount Tabor
(April 15). The Mussulmans dispersed on all
hands; and Napoleon, returning to his siege,
pressed it on with desperate assaults, day after
day, in which his best soldiers were thinned, be-
fore the united efforts of Djezzar 's gallantry, and
the skill of his allies." On the 2ist of May, when
the siege had been prosecuted for more than two
months. Napoleon commanded a final assault.
"The plague had some time before this appeared
in the camp ; every day the ranks of his legions
were thinned by this pestilence, as well as by the
weapons of the defenders of Acre. The hearts
of all men were quickly sinking. The Turkish
fleet was at hand to reinforce Djezzar; and upon
the utter failure of the attack of the 21st of May,
Napoleon yielded to stern necessity, and began
his retreat upon Jaffa. . . . The name of Jaffa
was already sufficiently stained ; but fame speed-
ily represented Napoleon as having now made it
the scene of another atrocity, not less shocking
than that of the massacre of the Turkish prisoners.
The accusation, which for many years made so
much noise throughout Europe, amounts to this:
that on the 2Tth of May, when it was necessary
for Napoleon to pursue his march from Jaffa for
Egypt, a certain number of the plague-patients
in the hospital were found to be in a state that
held out no hope whatever of their recovery ; that
the general, being unwilling to leave them to the
tender mercies of the Turks, conceived the notion
of administering opium, and so procuring for them
at least a speedy and an easy death ; and that a
number of men were accordingly taken off in
this method by his command. . . . Whether the
opium was really administered or not — that the
audacious proposal to that effect was made by
Napoleon, we have his own admission; and every
reader must form his opinion — as to the degree
of guilt which attaches to the fact of having
meditated and designed the deed. . . . The march
onwards was a continued scene of misery ; for
the wounded and the sick were many, the heat
oppressive, the thirst intolerable ; and the fero-
cious Djezzar was hard behind, and the wild
Arabs of the desert hovered round them on every
side, so that he who fell behind his company waa
sure to be slain, . . . Having at length accom-
plished this perilous journey [June 14], Buona-
parte repaired to his old head-quarters at Cairo,
and re-entered on his great functions as the es-
tablisher of a new government in the state of
Egypt. But he had not long occupied himself
thus, ere new rumours concerning the beys on
the Upper Nile, who seemed to have some strong
and urgent motive for endeavouring to force a
passage downwards, began to be mingled with,
and by degrees explained by, tidings daily re-
peated of some grand disembarkation of the
Ottomans, designed to have place in the neigh-
bourhood of Alexandria. Leaving Dessaix, there-
fore, once more in command at Cairo, he himself
descended the Nile, and travelled with all speed
to Alexandria, where he found his presence most
necessary. For, in eft'ect, the great Turkish fleet
had already run into the bay of Aboukir; and
an army of 18,000, having gained the fortress,
were there strengthening themselves, with tlie
view of awaiting the promised descent and junc-
tion of the Mamelukes, and then, with over-
whelming superiority of numbers, advancing to
Alexandria, and completing the ruin of the
French invaders. Buonaparte, reaching Alex-
andria on the evening of the 24th of July, found
his army already posted in the neighbourhood of
Aboukir, and prepared to anticipate the attack
of the Turks on the morrow. . . . The Turkish
outposts were assaulted early next morning, and
driven in with great slaughter; bat the French,
when they advanced, came within the range of
the batteries and also of the shipping that lay
close by the shore, and were checked. Their re-
treat might have ended in a route, but for the
undisciplined eagerness with which the Turks en-
gaged in the task of spoiling and maiming those
that fell before them — thus giving to Murat the
opportunity of charging their main body in flank
with his cavalry, at the moment when the French
infantry, profiting by their disordered and scat-
tered condition, and rallying under the eye of
Napoleon, forced a passage to the entrenchments.
From that moment the battle was a massacre.
. . . Six thousand surrendered at discretion;
1358
FRANCE, 1798-1799.
Suxcarroff and the
Russians m the field.
FRANCE, 1799.
12,000 perished on the field or in the sea. . . .
Napoleon once more returned to Cairo on the
9th of August ; but it was only to make some
parting arrangements as to the administration,
civil and military ; for, from the moment of his
victory at Aboukir, he had resolved to entrust
Egypt to other hands, and Admiral Gantheaume
was already preparing in secret the means of his
removal to France." — J. G. Lockhart, Life of
Napoleon Buonaparte, ch. 12.
Also dj : Duke of Rovigo, Memoirs, v. 1, ch.
Q-Xl.— Memoirs of Napoleon dictated at St. HeletM,
V. 2. — Letters from the army of Bonaparte in Egypt.
— M. de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of Napoleon,
V. 1, ch. 15-33.
A. D. 1799 (April — September). — Murder of
the French envoys at Rastadt. — Disasters in
North Italy. — Suvyarroff's victories. — Anglo-
Russian invasion of Holland and capture of the
Dutch fleet. — "While the French armies were
thus humiliated in the field, the representatives
of the republic at the congress of Rastadt [where
peace negotiations with the states of the emjjire
had been in progress for months] became the
victims of a sanguinary tragedy. As France
had declared war against the emperor [as sover-
eign of Austria], and not against the empire, the
congress had not necessarily been broken off;
but the representatives of the German states were
■withdrawn one after another, until the successes
of the Austrians rendered the position of the
French ministers no longer secure. At length
they received notice, from the nearest Austrian
commander, to depart within twenty-four hours ;
and the French ministers — Jean Debry, Bonnier,
and Roberjeot — left Rastadt with their families
and attendants late in the evening of the 8th of
Floreal (the 28th of April). The night was very
dark, and they appear to have been apprehensive
of danger. At a very short distance from Ras-
tadt they were surrounded by a troop of Austrian
hussars, who stopped the carriages, dragged the
three ministers out, and massacred them in the
presence of their wives and children. The hus-
sars then plundered the carriages, and took away,
especially, all the papers. Fortunately for Jean
Debry, he had been .stunned, but not mortally
wounded ; and after the murderers were gone
the cold air of the night restored him to life.
This crime was supposed to have been perpe-
trated at the instigation of tlie imperial court,
for reasons which have not been very clearly ex-
plained ; but the representatives of the German
states proclaimed loudly their indignation. The
reverses of the republican arms, and the tragedy
of Rastadt, were eagerly embraced by the oppo-
sition in France as occasions for raising a violent
outcry against the directory. ... It was in the
midst of this general unpopularity of the direc-
tors that the elections of the year VII. of the
republic took place, and a great majority of the
patriots obtained admission to the councils, and
thus increased the numerical force of the opposi-
tion. . . . The directory had made great efforts
to repair the reverses which had marked the
opening of the campaign. Jourdain had been
deprived of the command of the army of the
Danube, which had been placed, along with that
of Switzerland, under the orders of Massena.
The command of the army of Italy had been
transferred from Scherer to Moreau ; and Mac-
donald had received orders to withdraw his forces
from Naples and the papal states, in order to
unite them with the army in Upper Italy. The
Russians under Suwarrow had now joined the
Austrian army in Italy ; and this chief, who was
in the height of his reputation as a military
leader, was made commander-in-chief of the com-
bined Austro-Russian forces, Melas command-
ing the Austrians under him. Suwarrow ad-
vanced rapidly upon the Adda, which protected
the French lines ; and, on the 8th of Floreal (the
27th of April), forced the passage of that river
in two places, at Brivio and Trezzo, above and
below the position occupied by the division of
Serrurier, which formed the French left, and
which was thus cut off from the rest of the army.
Moreau, who took the command of the French
forces on the evening of the same day, made a
vain attempt to drive the enemy back over the
Adda at Trezzo, and thus recover his communi-
cation with Serrurier ; and that division was sur-
rounded, and, after a desperate resistance,
obliged to lay down its arms, with the exception
of a small number of men who made their way
across the mountains into Piedmont. Victor's
division effected its retreat without much loss,
and Jloreau concentrated his forces in the neigh-
bourhood of Milan. This disastrous engagement,
which took place on the 9th of Floreal, was
known as the battle of Cassano. Moreau re-
mained at Milan two days to give the members
of the government of the Cisalpine republic, and
all the Milanese families who were politically
compromised, time to make their escape in his
rear ; after which he continued his retreat. . . .
He was allowed to make this retreat without any
serious interruption; for Suwarrow, instead of
pursuing him actively, lost his time at Milan in
celebrating the triumph of the anti-revolutionary
party." Moreau first "established his army in
a strong position at the confluence of the Tanaro
and the Po, covered by both rivers, and com-
manding all the roads to Genoa ; so that he could
there, without great danger, wait the arrival of
Macdonald." But soon, finding his position made
critical by a general insurrection in Piedmont,
he retired towards the mountains of Genoa. ' ' On
the 6th of Prairial (the 25th of May), Macdonald
was at Florence; but he lost much time there;
and it was only towards the end of the republican
month (the middle of June), that he at length ad-
vanced into the plains of Piacenza to form his
junction with Moreau." On the Trebbia he en-
countered Suwarrow's advance, under General
Ott, and rashly attacked it. Having forced back
Ott's advanced guard, the French suddenly
found themselves confronted by Suwarrow him-
self and the main body of his army. ' ' Macdonald
now resolved to unite all his forces behind the
Trebbia, and there risk a battle ; but he was an-
ticipated by Suwarrow, who attacked him next
morning, and, after a very severe and sanguinary
engagement, the French were driven over the
Trebbia. The combat was continued next day,
and ended again to the disadvantage of the
French ; and their position had become so critical,
that Macdonald found it necessary to retreat
upon the river Nura, and to make his way round
the Apennines to Genoa. The French, closely
pursued, experienced considerable loss in their
retreat, until Suwarrow, hearing Moreau's can-
non in his rear, discontinued the pursuit, in order
to meet him." Moreau routed Bellegarde, in
Suwarrow's rear, and took 3,000 prisoners; but
no further collision of importance occurred dur-
1359
FRANCE, 1799.
Campaigns in
Italy and Switzerland.
FRANCE, 1799.
ing the nest two months of the summer. " Su-
warrow had been prevented by the orders of the
Aulic Council from following up with vigour
his victory on the Trebbia, and had been obliged
to occupy himself with sieges which employed
vnth little advantage valuable time. Recruits
were reaching the French armies in Italy, and
they were restored to a state of greater efficiency.
It was already the month of Thermidor (the
middle of July), and Moreau saw the necessity
of assuming the offensive and attacking the
Austro-Russians while they were occupied with
the sieges ; but he was restrained by the orders
of the directory to wait the arrival of Joubert.
The latter, who had just contracted an advan-
tageous marriage, by which the moderate party
had hoped to attach him to their cause, lost an
entire month in the celebration of bis nuptial
festivities, and only reached the army of Italy
in the middle of Thermidor (the beginning
of August), where he immediately succeeded
Moreau in the command ; but he prevailed upon
that able general to remain with him, at least
until after his first battle. The French army had
taken a good position in advance of Novi, and
were preparing to act against the enemy while
he was still occupied in the sieges, when news
arrived that Alessandria and Mantua had sur-
rendered, and that Suwarrow was preparing to
unite against them the whole strength of his
forces. Joubert immediately resolved to fall
back upon the Apennines, and there act upon
the defensive; but it was already too late, for
Suwarrow had advanced with such rapidity that
he was forced to accept battle in the position he
occupied, which was a very strong one. The
battle began early in the morning of the 38th of
Thermidor (the 15th of August); and very early
in the action Joubert received a mortal wound
from a ball which struck him near the heart.
The engagement continued with great fury dur-
ing the greater part of the day, but ended in the
entire defeat of the French, who retreated from
the field of battle in great confusion. The French
lost about 10,000 men in killed and wounded,
and a great number of prisoners. The news of
this reverse was soon followed by disastrous in-
telligence from another quarter. The English
had prepared an expedition against Holland,
which was to be assisted by a detachment of
Russian troops. The English forces, under Aber-
cromby, landed near the mouth of the Helder in
North'Holland, on the 10th of Fructidor (the 27th
of August), and defeated the French and Dutch re-
publican army, commanded by Brune, in a deci-
sive engagement [at the English camp, established
on a well-drained morass, called the Zyp] on the
22nd of Fructidor (the 8th of September). Brune
retreated upon Amsterdam ; and the Russian con-
tingent was thus enabled to effect its junction
with the English without opposition. As one of
the first consequences of this invasion, the Eng-
lish obtained possession of the whole Dutch fleet,
upon the assistance of which the French govern-
ment had counted in its designs against England.
This succession of ill news excited the revolu-
tionary party to a most unusual degree of vio-
lence."— T. Wright, Sist. of I¥ance, bh. 6, ch.
22-23 {v. 2).
Also m: H. Spalding, Suvoroff, ch. 7-8. —
L. M. P. de Laverne, Life of Field-Marshal Sou-
varof ch. 6. — E. Vehse, Memoirs of tlie Oourt of
Austria, ch. 15, sect. 2 {v. 2). — J. Adolphus, Sist.
ofEng.: Beign of Geo. TIL, ch. 108 (». 7).— Gen.
Sir H. Bunbury, Narratives of the Great War
with France, pp. 1-58.
A. D. 1799 (August — December). — Campaign
in Svyitzerland. — Battle of Zurich. — Defeat of
the Russians. — SuwarrofTs retreat across the
Alps. — Reverses in Italy, and on the Rhine. —
Fall of the Parthenopean and Roman Repub-
lics. — Since the retreat of Massena in June, the
Archduke Charles had been watching the French
on the Limmat and expecting the arrival of Rus-
sian reinforcements under Korsakoff; "but the
Aulic Council, with unaccountable infatuation,
ordered him at this important juncture to repair
with the bulk of his army to the Rhine, leaving
Switzerland to Korsakoff and the Russians. Be-
fore these injudicious orders, however, could be
carried into effect, Massena had boldly assumed
the offensive (Aug. 14) by a false attack on Zu-
rich, intended to maek the operations of his right
wing, which meanwhile, under Lecourbe, was
directed against the St. Gothard, in order to cut
oS. the communication between the allied forces
in Switzerland and In Italy. These attacks
proved completely successful, ... a French
detachment . . . seizing the St. Gothard, and
establishing itself at Airolo, on the southern de-
clivity. Lecourbe's left had meanwhile cleared
the banks of the lake of Zurich of the enemy,
who were driven back into Glarus. To obtain
these brilliant successes on the right, Massena
had been obliged to weaken his left wing; and
the Archduke, now reinforced by 20,000 Russians,
attempted to avail himself of this circumstance
to force the passage of the Limmat, below Zu-
rich (Aug. 16 and 17); but this enterprise, the
success of which might have altered the fate of
the war, failed from the defective construction of
the pontoons; and the positive orders of the
Aulic Council forbade his remaining longer In
Switzerland. Accordingly, leaving 25,000 men
under Hotze to support Korsakoff, he marched
for the Upper Rhine, where the French, at his
approach, abandoned the siege of Philipsburg,
and retired to Marmheim; but this important
post, the defences of which were imperfectly
restored, was carried by a coup-de-main (Sept.
18), and the French driven with severe loss over
the Rhine. But this success was dearly bought
by the disasters in Switzerland, which followed
the Archduke's departure. It had been arranged
that SuwarrofE was to move from Bellinzona (Sept.
21), and after retaking the St. Gothard combine
with Korsakoff in a front attack on JIassena,
while Hotze assailed him in flank. But Massena,
who was now the superior in numbers, deter-
mined to anticipate the arrival of SuwarrofE by
striking a blow, for which the presumptuous
confidence of Korsakoff gave him increased fa-
cility. On the evening of 24th September, the
passage of the river was surprised below Zurich,
and the heights of Closter-Fahr carried by storm ;
and, in the course of the next day, Korsakoff,
with his main army, was completely hemmed in
at Zurich by the superior generalship of the
French commander, who summoned the Russians
to surrender. But the bravery shown by Korsa-
koff in these desperate circumstances equalled
his former arrogance: on the 28th the Russian
columns, issuing from the town, forced their
way with the courage of despair through the
surrounding masses of French, while a slender
rear-guard defended the ramparts of Zurich till the
1360
FRANCE, 1799.
French reverses.
FRANCE, 1799.
remainder had extricated themselves. The town
was at length entered, and a frightful carnage
ensued in the streets, in the midst of which the
illustrious Lavater was barbarously shot by a
French soldier: while Korsakoff, after losing
8,000 killed and wounded, 5,000 prisoners, 100
pieces of cannon, and all his ammunition, stores,
and military chest, succeeded in reaching SchafE-
hausen. The attack of Soult above the lake
(Sept. 25) was equally triumphant. The gallant
Hotze, who commanded in that quarter, was
killed in the first encounter; and the Austrians,
giving way in consternation, were driven over the
Thur, and at length over the Rhine, with the
loss of 20 guns and 3,000 prisoners. Suwarroff
in the meantime was gallantly performing his
part of the plan. On the 23d of September, the
French posts at Airolo and St. Gothard were
carried, after a desperate resistance, by the Rus-
sian main force, while their flank was turned by
Rosenberg; and Lecourbe, hastily retreating,
broke down the Devil's Bridge to check the ad-
vance of the enemy. A scene of useless butchery
followed, the two parties firing on each other
from the opposite brinks of the impassable abyss ;
but the flank of the French was at length turned,
the bridge repaired, and the Russians, pressing
on in triumph, joined the Austrian division of
AufEenberg, at Wasen, and repulsed the French
beyond Altdorf. But this was the limit of the
old marshal's success. After effecting with se-
vere loss the passage of the tremendous defiles
and ridges of the Schachenthal, between Alt-
dorf and Mutten, he found that Linken and
Jellachich, who were to have moved from Coire
to co-opei'ate with him, had again retreated on
learning the disaster at Zurich ; and Suwarroff
found himself in the midst of the enemy, with
Massena on one side and Molitor on the other.
With the utmost difliculty the veteran conqueror
was prevailed upon, for the first time in his life,
to order a retreat, which had become indispensa-
ble, and the heads of his columns were turned
towards Glarus and the Orisons. But though
the attack of Massena on their rear in the Mut-
tenthal was repulsed with the loss of 2,000
men, their onward route was barred at Naefels
by Molitor, who defied all the efforts of Prince
Bagrathion to dislodge him; and in the midst
of a heavy fall of snow, which obliterated the
mountain paths, the Russian army wound its
way (Oct. 5) in single file over the rugged
and sterile peaks of the Alps of Glarus.
Numbers perished of cold, or fell over the
precipices; but nothing could overcome the
unconquerable spirit of the soldiers: without
fire or stores, and compelled to bivouac on the
snow, they still struggled on through incredible
hardships, till the dreadful march terminated
(Oct. 10) at Ilantz. Such was the famous pas-
sage of the Alps by Suwarroff. Korsakoff in
the meanwhile (Oct. 1-7) had maintained a des-
perate conflict near Constance, till the return of
the Archduke checked the efforts of the French ;
and the Allies, abandoning the St. Gothard, and
all the other posts they still held in Switzerland,
concentrated their forces on the Rhine, which
became the boundary of the two armies. ... In
Italy, after the disastrous battle of Novi, the
Directory had given the leadership of the armies,
both of Italy and Savoy, to the gallant Cham-
pionnet, but he could muster only 54,000 troops
and 6,000 raw conscripts to oppose Melas, who
had succeeded Suwarroff in the command, and
who had 68,000, besides his garrisons and de-
tachments. The proposition of Championnet
had been to fall back, with his army still entire,
to the other side of the Alps: but his orders
were positive to attempt the relief of Coni, then
besieged by the Austrians ; and after a desultory
warfare for several weeks, he commenced a de-
cisive movement for that purpose at the end of
October, with 35,000 men. But before the dif-
ferent French columns could effect a junction,
they were .separately assailed by Melas: the di-
visions of Grenier and Victor were overwhelmed
at Genola (Nov. 4), and defeated with the loss of
7,000 men; and though St. Cyr repulsed the Im-
perialists (Nov. 10) on the plateau of Novi, Coni
was left to its fate, and surrendered with all its
garrison (Dec. 4). An epidemic disorder broke
out in the French army, to which Championnet
himself, and numerous soldiers, fell victims : the
troops giving way to despair, abandoned their
standards by hundreds and returned to France ;
and it was with difficulty that the eloquent ex-
hortations of St. Cyr succeeded in keeping to-
gether a sufficient number to defend the Bochetta
pass, in front of Genoa, the loss of which would
have entailed destruction on the whole army.
The discomfited Republicans were driven back
on their own frontiers; and, excepting Genoa,
the tricolor flag was everywhere expelled from
Italy. At the same time the campaign on the
Rhine was drawing to a close. The army of
Massena was not strong enough to follow up the
brilliant success at Zurich, and the jealousies of
the Austrians and Russians, who mutually laid
on each other the blame of the late disasters, pre-
vented their acting cordially in concert against
him. Suwarroff at length, in a fit of exaspera-
tion, drew off his troops to winter quarters in
Bavaria, and took no further share in the war ;
and a fruitless attempt in November against
Philipsburg, by Lecourbe, who had been trans-
ferred to the command on the lower Rhine, closed
the operations in that quarter." — Epitome of Ali-
son's Hist, of Europe, sects. 245-251 {ch. 28, v. 7
of comfplete iDork). — Meantime, the French had
been entirely expelled from southern Italy. On
the withdrawal of Macdonald, with most of his
army, from Naples, "Cardinal Ruffo, a soldier,
churchman, and politician, put himself at the
head of a numerous body of insurgents, and
commenced war against such French troops as
had been left in the south and in the middle of
Italy. This movement was actively supported
by the British fleet. Lord Nelson recovered
Naples ; Rome surrendered to Commodore Trow-
bridge. Thus the Parthenopean and Roman re-
publics were extinguished forever. The royal
family returned to Naples, and that fine city and
country were once more a kingdom. Rome, the
capital of the world, was occupied by Neapolitan
troops." — Sir "W. Scott, Life of Napoleon, ch. 38.
Also in : L. M. P. de Laverne, Life of 8ou-
■narof, ch. 6.— H. Spalding, Samroff. — P. CoUetta,
Hist, of the Kingchm of Naples, bk. 4, ch. 2 and
bk. 5, ch. 1-3 (v. 1). — T. J. Pettigrew, Memoirs of
Lord Nelson, ii. 1, ch. 8-9.
A. D. 1799 (September — October).— Disas-
trous ending of the Anglo-Russian invasion of
Holland. — Capitulation of the Duke of York.
— Dissolution of the Dutch East India Com-
pany. — "It is very obvious that the Duke of
York was selected in an unlucky hour to be the
1361
FRANCE, 1799.
Anglo-Russian fiasco
in Holland.
FRANCE, 1799.
commander-in-chief of this Anglo-Russian expe-
dition, when we compare the time in which
Abercrombie was alone on the marshy promon-
tory of the Helder . . . with the subsequent
period. On the 10th of September Abercrom-
bie successfully repulsed the attack of General
Brune, who had come for the purpose from Haar-
lem to Alkmar; on the 19th the Duke of York
landed, and soon ruined everything. The first
division of the Russians had at length arrived on
the 15th, under the command of General Herr-
mann, for whom it was originally destined, al-
though unhappily it afterwards came into tlie
hands of General KorsakoS. The duke there-
fore thought he might venture on a general
attack on the 19th. In this attack Herrmann led
the right wing, which was formed by the Rus-
sians, and Abercrombie, with whom was the
Prince of Orange, the left, whilst the centre was
left to the Duke of York, the commander-in-
chief. This decisive battle was fought at Ber-
gen, a place situated to the north of Alkmar.
The combined army was victorious on both
wings, and Horn, on the Zuyder Zee, was occu-
pied ; the Duke of York, who was only a general
for parades and reviews, merely indulged the
centre with a few manoeuvres hither and thither.
. . . The Russians, therefore, who were left
alone in impassible marshes, traversed by ditches,
and unknown to their officers, lost many men,
and were at length surrounded, and even their
general taken prisoner. The duke concerned
himself very little about the Russians, and had
long before prudently retired into his trenches ;
and, as the Russians were lost, Abercrombie and
the Crown Prince were obliged to relinquish
Horn." The incapacity of the commander-in-
chief held the army paralyzed during the fort-
night following, suffering from sickness and
want, while it would still have been practicable
to push forward to South Holland. ' ' A series
of bloody engagements took place from the 2nd
till the 6th of October, and the object of the
attack upon the whole line of the French and
Batavian army would have been attained had
Abercrombie alone commanded. The English
and Russians, who call this the battle of Alkmar,
were indisputably victorious in the engagements
of the 2nd and 3rd of October. They even drove
the enemy before them to the neighbourhood of
Haarlem, after having taken possession of Alk-
mar ; but on the 6th, Brune, who owes his other-
wise very moderate military renown to this en-
gagement alone, having received a reinforcement
of some thousands on the 4th and 5tli, renewed
the battle. The fighting on this day took place
at Castricum, on a narrow strip of land between
the sea and the lake of Haarlem, a position fa-
vourable to the French. The French report is, as
usual, full of the boasts of a splendid victory;
the English, however, remained in possession
of the field, and did not retire to their trenches
behind Alkmar and to the marshes of Zyp till
the 7th. ... In not more than eight days after-
wards, the want in the army and the anxiety
of its Incapable commander-in-cliief became so
great, the number of the sick increased so rapidly,
and the fear of the difiiculties of embarkation in
winter so grew and spread, that the duke ac-
cepted the most shameful capitulation that had
ever been offered to an English general, except at
Saratoga. This capitulation, concluded on the
19th of October, was only granted because the
English, by destroying the dykes, had it in their
power to ruin the country."— F. C. Schlosser,
Hist, of tlie Eighteenth Century, v. 7, pp. 149-151.
— "For the failure in accomplishing the great ob-
jects of emancipating Holland and restoring its
legitimate ruler; for the clamorous joy with
which her enemies, foreign and domestic, hailed
the event; the government of Great Britain had
many consolations. . . . The Dutch fleet, which,
in the hands of an enterprising enemy, might
have been so injuriously employed, was a cap-
ture of immense importance : if Holland was ever
to become a friend and ally, we had abundant
means of promoting her prosperity and re-estab-
lishing her greatness; if an enemy, her means
of injury and hopes of rivalship were effectually
suppressed. Her East-India Company, . . . long
the rival of our own in power and prosperity,
who.se dividends in some years had risen to the
amount of 40 per cent., now finally closed its
career, making a paltry final payment in part of
the arrears of dividends for the present and three
preceding years." — J. Adolphus, Hist, of Eng. :
Reign of George III., ch. 109 (». 7).
Also in: G. R. Gleig, Life of Gen. Sir B.
Abereromhy {Eminent British Military Comman-
ders, 1). 3).
A. D. 1799 (November). — Return of Bona-
parte frqfn Egypt. — The first Napoleonic
Coup d'Etat. — Revolution of the 18th Bru-
maire. — End of the First Republic. — Creation
of the Consulate. — " When Bonaparte, by means
of the bundle of papers which Sidney Smith
caused to find their way through the French
lines, learned the condition of affairs in Europe,
there was but one course consistent with his
character for him to pursue. There was nothing
more to be done in Egypt ; there was everything
to be done in France. If he were to lead his
army back, even in case he should, by some
miracle, elude the eager eyes of Lord Nelson, the
act would be generally regarded as a confessioa
of disaster. If he were to remain with the army,
he could, at best, do nothing but pursue a purely
defensive policy; and if the army were to be
overwhelmed, it was no part of Napoleonism to
be involved in the disaster. ... It would be far
shrewder to throw the responsibility of the future
of Egypt on another, and to transfer himself to
the field that was fast ripening for the coveted
harvest. Of course Bonaparte, under such cir-
cumstances, did not hesitate as to which course
to pursue. Robbing the army of such good
oflScers as survived, he left it in command of the
only one who had dared to raise his voice in opposi-
tion to the work of the 18th Fructidor . . . the
heroic but indignant Kleber. AV as there ever a
more exquisite revenge V . . . On the arrival of
Bonaparte in Paris everything seemed ready to
his hand. . . . The policy which, in the seizure
of Switzerland and the Papal States, he had
taken pains to inaugurate before his departure
for Egypt had borne its natural fruit. As never
before in the history of Europe, England, Hol-
land, Russia, Austria, Naples, and even Turkey
had joined hands in a common cause, and as a
natural consequence the Directory had been de-
feated at every point. Nor was it unnatural for
the people to attribute all these disasters to the
inefficiency of the government. The Directory
had really fallen into general contempt, and at
the new election on the 30th Prairial it had been
practically overthrown. Rewbell, who by his
1362
FRANCE, 1799.
Overthrow
of the Directory.
FRANCE, 1799.
influence had stood at the head of affairs, had
been obliged to give way," and Sieyfis had been
put in his place. " By the side of this fantastic
statesman . . . Barras had been retained, prob-
ably for no other reason than that he was sure
to be found with the majority, while the other
members, Gohier, Moulins, and Roger-Ducos
were men from whose supposed mediocrity no very
decided opposition could be anticipated. Thus
the popular party was not only revenged for the
outrages of Fructidor, but it had also made up
the new Directory of men who seemed likely to
be nothing but clay in the hands of Bonaparte.
. . . The manner in which the General was re-
ceived can have left no possible doubt remaining
in his mind as to the strength of his hold on the
hearts of the people. It must have been apparent
to all that he needed but to declare himself, in order
to secure a well-nigh unanimous support and fol-
lowing of the masses. But with the political lead-
ers the case, for obvious reasons, was far different.
. . . His popularity was so overwhelming, that
in his enmity the leaders could anticipate nothing
but annihilation, in his friendship nothing but
insignificance. . . . The member of the govern-
ment who, at the time, wielded most influence,
was SieySs, a man to whom personally the Gen-
■eral had so unconquerable an aversion, that Jose-
phine was accustomed to refer to him as her
husband's bete noir. It was evident that Sieyfes
was the most formidable obstacle to the General's
-advance." As a first movement, Bonaparte en-
deavored to bring about the removal of Sieyfis
from the Directory and his own election to the
place. Failing this, his party attempted the im-
mediate creation of a dictatorship. When that,
too, was found impracticable, Sieyfs was per-
suaded to a reconciliation and alliance with the
ambitious soldier, and the two, at a meeting,
planned the proceedings ' ' which led to that dark
day in French history known as the 18th Bru-
maire [November 9, 1799]. It remained only to
get absolute control of the milit-ary forces, a task
at that time in no way difficult. The officers
who had returned with Bonaparte from Egypt
were impatient to follow wherever their master
might lead. Moreau, who, since the death of
Hoche, was regarded as standing next to Bona-
parte in military ability, was not reluctant to
cast in his lot with the others, and Macdonald as
well as Serurier soon followed his example.
Beruadotte alone would yield to neither flattery
nor intimidation. . . . While Bonajjarte was thus
marshalling his forces in the Rue de la Victoire,
the way was opening in the Councils. A com-
mission of the Ancients, made up of the leading
conspirators, had worked all night drawing up
the proposed articles, in order that in the morning
the Council might have nothing to do but to vote
theiu. The meeting was called for seven o'clock,
and care was taken not to notify those members
whose opposition there was reason to fear. . . .
The articles were adopted without discussion.
Those present voted, first, to remove the sessions
of the Councils from Paris to Saint Cloud (a privi-
lege which the constitution conferred upon the
Ancients alone), thus putting them at once beyond
the power of influencing the populace and of
standing in the way of Bonaparte. TThey then
passed a decree giving to Bonaparte the com-
mand of the military forces, at the same time
inviting him to come to the Assembly for the
purpose of taking the oath of allegiance to the
Constitution." Bonaparte appeared, accordingly,
before the Council ; but instead of taking an oath
of allegiance to the constitution, he made a
speech which he closed by declaring : ' ' We want
a Republic founded on true liberty and national
representation. We will have it, I swear; I
swear it in my own name and that of my com-
panions in arms." "Thus the mockery of the
oath-taking in the Council of Ancients was ac-
complished. The General had now a more dif-
ficult part to perform in the Council of Five
Hundred. As the meeting of the Assembly was
not to occur until twelve o'clock of the following
day, Bonaparte made use of the intervening time
in posting his forces and in disposing of the
Directory. . . . There was one locality in the
city where it was probable aggressive force would
be required. The Luxembourg was the seat of the
Directory, and the Directory must at all hazards
be crushed. . . . Bonaparte knew well how to
turn all such ignominious service to account.
In close imitation of that policy which had left
Kleber in Egypt, he placed the Luxembourg in
charge of the only man in the nation who could
now be regarded as his rival for popular favor.
Moreau fell into the snare, and by so doing lost
a popularity which he was never afterwards able
to regain. Having thus placed his military
forces, Bonaparte turned his attention to the
Directors. The resignations of Sieyfes and of
Roger-Ducos he already had upon his table. It
remained only to procure the others. Barras,
without warning, was confronted by Talleyrand
and Bruix, who asked him without circumlocu-
tion to resign his office," which he did, after
slight hesitation. Gohier and Moulins were ad-
dressed by Bonaparte in person, but firmly re-
sisted his importunities and his threats. They
were then made prisoners by Moreau. "The
night of the 18th passed in comparative tran-
quillity. The fact that there was no organized
resistance is accounted for by Lanfrey with a
single mournful statement, that ' nothing of the
kind could be expected of a nation that had been
decapitated. All the men of rank in France for
the previous ten years, either by character or
genius or virtue, had been mown down, first by
the scafEolds and proscriptions, next by war.' "
On the morrow, the 19th of Brumaire "(Novem-
ber 10) the sitting of the two councils began
at two o'clock. In the Council of Five Hvmdred
the partisans of Bonaparte were less numerous
than in that of the Ancients, and a powerful in-
dignation at the doings of the previous day began
quickly to show itself. In the midst of a warm
debate upon the resignation of Barras, which
had just been received, "the door was opened,
and Bonaparte, surrounded by his grenadiers,
entered the hall. A burst of indignation at
once arose. Every member sprang to his feet.
' What is this ? ' they cried, ' swords here ! armed
men! Awayl we will have no dictator here.'
Then some of the deputies, bolder than the others,
surrounded Bonaparte and overwhelmed him
with invectives. ' You are violating the sanctity
of the laws ; what are you doing, rash man ? '
exclaimed Bigonnet. ' Is it for this that you
have conquered ? ' demanded Destrem, advancing
towards him. Others seized him by the collar of
his coat, and, shaking him violently, reproached
him with treason. This reception, though the
General had come with the purpose of intimidat-
ing the Assembly, fairly overwhelmed him. Eye-
1363
FRANCE, 1799.
Bonaparte
First Consul.
FRANCE, 1799.
■witnesses declare that he turned pale, and fell
fainting into the arms of his soldiers, wlio drew
him out of the hall." His brother Lucien, who
was President of the Council, showed better
nerve. By refusing to put motions that were
made to vote, and finally by resigning his ofBce
and quitting the chair, he threw the Council into
confusion. Then, appearing to the troops out-
side, who supposed him to be still President of
the Council, he harangued them and summoned
them to clear the chamber. " The grenadiers
poured into the hall. A last cry of ' Vive la
Republique ' was raised, and a moment later the
hall was empty. Thus the crime of the con-
spirators was consummated, and the First French
Republic was at an end. After this action it
remained only to put into the hands of Bonaparte
the semblance of regular authority. ... A
phantom of the Council of Five Hundred — Cor-
net, one of them, says 30 members — met in the
evening and voted the measures which had been
previously agreed upon by the conspirators.
Bonaparte, SieySs, and Roger-Ducos were ap-
pointed provisional consuls ; 57 members of the
Council who had been most prominent in their
opposition were excluded from their seats ; a list
of proscriptions was prepared ; two commission-
ers chosen from the assemblies were appointed
to assist the consuls in their work of organiza-
tion ; and, finally, . . . they adjourned the legis-
lative body until the 20th of February." — C. K.
Adams, Democracy and Monarchy in France,
ch. 4.
Also ts: P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon I. — A.
Thiers, Hist, of the French Rev. (Am. ed.), v. 4,
pp. 407^30. — M. de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs
of Napoleon, v. 1, ch. 24r-27. — Count Miot de Melito,
Memoirs, ch. 9.
A. D. 1799 (November — December). — The
constitution of the consulate. — Bonaparte as
First Consul. — "During the three months which
followed the ISthBrumaire, approbation and ex-
pectation were general. A provisional govern-
ment had been appointed, composed of three
consuls, Bonaparte, Sieyes, and Roger-Ducos,
with two legislative commissioners, entrusted to
prepare the constitution and a definitive order of
things. The consuls and the two commissioners
were installed on the 21st Brumaire. This pro-
visional government abolished the law respecting
hostages and compulsory loans; it permitted the
return of the priests proscribed since the 18th
Fructidor ; it released from prison and sent out of
the republic the emigrants who had been ship-
wrecked on the coast of Calais, and who for four
years were captives in France, and were exposed
to the heavy punishment of the emigrant army.
All these measures were very favourably re-
ceived. But public opinion revolted at a pro-
scription put in force against the estrerae repub-
licans. Thirty-six of them were sentenced to
transportation to Guiana, and twenty-one were
put under serveillance in the department of
Charante-Inferieure, merely by a decree of the
consuls on the report of Fouche, minister of
police. The public viewed unfavourably all
who attacked the government, but at the same
time it exclaimed against an act so arbitrary and
imjust. The consuls, accordingly, recoiled be-
fore their own act; they first commuted trans-
portation into surveillance, and soon withdrew
surveillance itself. It was not long before a rup-
ture broke out between the authors of the 18th
Brumaire. During their provisional authority
it did not create much noise, because it took
place in the legislative commissions. The new
constitution was the cause of it. Sieyes and
Bonaparte could not agree on this subject: the
former wished to Institute France, the latter to
govern it as a master. . . . Bonaparte took part
in the deliberations of the constituent committee,
with his instinct of power, he seized upon every-
thing in the ideas of Siej^es which was calculated
to serve his projects, and caused the rest to be
rejected. ... On the 24th of December, 1799
(Nivose, year VIII.), forty-five days after the
18th Brumaire, was published the constitution
of the year VIII. ; it was composed of the wrecks
of that of Sieyes, now become a constitution of
servitude." — F. A. Mignet, Hist, of the French
Rev., ch. 14. — "The new constitution was still
republic in name and appearance, but monarchi-
cal in fact, the latter concealed, by the govern-
ment being committed, not to the hand of one
individual, but of three. The three persons so
fixed upon were denominated consuls, and ap-
pointed for ten years ; — one of them, however,
was really ruler, although he only obtained the
modest name of First Consul. The rights which
Bonaparte caused to be given to himself made all
the rest nothing more than mere deception. The
First Consul was to invite the others merely to
consultation on affairs of state, whilst he himself,
either immediately or througli the senate, was to
appoint to all places of trust and authority, to
decide absolutely upon questions of peace or
war, and to be assisted by a council of state.
... In order to cover and conceal the power of
the First Consul, especially in reference to the
appointment of persons to offices of trust and
authority, a senate was created, which neither
belonged to the people nor to the government,
but immediately from the very beginning was an
assembly of courtiers and placemen, and at a
later period became the mere tool of every kind
of despotism, by rendering it easy to dispense
with the legislative body. The senate consisted
of eighty members, a part of whom were to be
immediately nominated from the lists of notabil-
ity, and the senate to fill up its own body from
persons submitted to them by the First Consul,
the tribunate, and the legislative body. Each
senator was to have a salary of 25,000 f. ; tiieir
meetings were not public, and their business very
small. From the national lists the senate was
also to select consuls, legislators, tribunes, and
judges of the Court of Cassation. Large lists
were first presented to the communes, on which,
according to Roederer, there stood some 500,000
names, out of which the communes selected
50,000 for the departmental lists, from which
again 5,000 were to be chosen for the national
list. From these 5,000 names, selected from the
departmental list, or from what was termed the
national list, the senate was afterwards to elect
the members of the legislature and the high of-
ficers of government. The legislature was to
consist of two chambers, the tribunate and the
legislative body — the former composed of 100,
and the latter of 300 members. The chambers
had no power of taking the initiative, that is,
they were obliged to wait till bills were sub-
mitted to them, and could of themselves origi-
nate nothing : they were, however, permitted to
express wishes of all kinds to the government.
Each bill {projet de loi) was introduced into the
1364
FRANCE, 1799.
Kliber in Egyijt.
FRANCE, 1800-1801.
tribunate by three members of the council of
state, and there defended by them, because the
tribunate alone had the right of discussion,
whilst the mere power of saying Yea or Nay was
conferred upon the members of the legislative
body. The tribunate, having accepted the bill,
sent three of its members, accompanied by the
members from the council of state, to defend the
measure in the assembly of the legislative body.
Every year one-fifth of the members of the legisla-
tive body was to retire from office, being, how-
ever, always re-eligible as long as their names
remained on the national list. The sittings of the
legislative body alone were public, because they
were only permitted to be silent listeners to the
addresses of the tribunes or councillors of state,
and to assent to, or dissent from, the proposed
law. Not above 100 persons were, however, al-
lowed to be present as auditors ; the sittings were
not allowed to continue longer than four months ;
both chambers, however, might be summoned to
an extraordinary sitting. . . . "When the consti-
tution was ready to be brought into operation,
Sieyes terminated merely as he had begun, and
Bonaparte saw with pleasure that he showed
himself both contemptible and venal. He be-
came a dumb senator, with a yearly income of
25,000 f. ; and obtained 800,000 f. from the
directorial treasury, whilst Roger Ducos was
obliged to go away contented with a douceur
of 130,000 f . ; and, last of all, Sieyes conde-
scended to accept from Bonaparte a i^resent of
the national domain of Crosne, which he after-
wards exchanged for another estate. For col-
leagues in his new dignity Bonaparte selected
very able and skilful men, but wholly destitute
of all nobility of mind, and to whom it never
once occurred to offer him any opposition ; these
were Cambacer^s and Lebrun. The former, a
celebrated lawyer, although formerly a vehe-
ment Jacobin, impatiently waited till Bonaparte
brought forth again all the old plunder; and
then, covered with orders, he strutted up and
down the Palais Royal like a peacock, and ex-
hibited himself as a show. Lebrun, who was
afterwards created a duke, at a later period dis-
tinguished himself by being the first to revive
the use of hair powder; in fact, he was com-
pletely a child and partisan of the olden times,
although for a time he had played the part of a
Girondist. ... As early as the 25th and 36th of
December the First Consul took up his abode in
the Tuileries. There the name of citizen alto-
gether disappeared, for the consul's wife caused
herself again to be addressed as Madame. Every-
thing which concerned the government now began
to assume full activity, and the adjourned legis-
lative councils were summoned for the 1st of
January, in order that they might be dissolved."
— F. C. Schlosser, Hist, of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury, V. 7, pp. 189-192.
Also in : P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon I. , ».
1, eh. 13-14— A. Thiers, Hint, of the Consulate
and Empire, bk. 1-3 (». 1). — H. C. Lockwood,
Const. Hist, of Prance, ch. 3 a7id app. 4.
A. D. i8oo. — Convention with the United
States. See United States of Aji. : A. D.
1800.
A. D. i8oo (January — June). — Affairs in
Eg^pt. — The repudiated -Treaty of El Arish.
— Kl^ber's victory at Heliopolis. — His assas-
sination. — "Affairs in Egypt had been on the
whole unfavourable to the French, since that
army had lost the presence of the commander-in.
chief. Kleber, on whom the command devolved,
was discontented both at the unceremonious and
sudden manner in which the duty had been im-
posed upon him, and with the scarcity of means
left to support his defence. Perceiving himself
threatened by a large Turkish force, which was
collecting for the purpose of avenging the de-
feat of the vizier at Aboukir, he became desirous
of giving up a settlement which he despaired of
maintaining. He signed accordingly a convention
with the Turkish plenipotentiaries, and Sir Sid-
ney Smith on the part of the British [at El
Arish, January 28, 1800], by which it was pro-
vided that the French should evacuate Egypt,
and that Kleber and his army should be trans-
ported to France In safety, without being mo-
lested by the British fleet. When the British
government received advice of this convention
they refused to ratify it, on the ground that Sir
Sidney Smith had exceeded his powers in enter-
ing into it. The Earl of Elgin having been sent
out as plenipotentiary to the Porte, it was as-
serted that Sir Sidney's ministerial powers were
superseded by his appointment. . . . The truth
was that the arrival of Kleber and his army in
the south of France, at the very moment when
the successes of Suwarrow gave strong hopes of
making some impression on her frontier, might
have had a most material effect upon the events
of the war. . . . The treaty of El Arish was in
consequence broken off. Kleber, disappointed
of this mode of extricating himself, had recourse
to arms. The Vizier Jousseff Pacha, having
crossed the Desert and entered Egypt, received
a bloody and decisive defeat from the French
general, near the ruins of the ancient city of
Heliopolis, on the 30th of March, 1800 [follow-
ing which Kleber crushed with great slaughter a
revolt that had broken out in Cairo]. The meas-
ures which Kleber adopted after this victory
were well calculated to maintain the possession
of the country, and reconcile the inhabitants to
the French government. . . . While busied in
these measures, he was cut short by the blow of
an assassin. A fanatic Turk, called Soliman
Haleby, a native of Aleppo, imagined he was
inspired by Heaven to slay the enemy of the
Prophet and the Grand Seignior. He concealed
himself in a cistern, and springing out on Kleber
when there was only one man in company with
him, stabbed him dead [June 14]. . . . The
Baron Menou, on whom the command now de-
volved, was an inferior person to Kleber. . . .
Menou altered for the worse several of the regu-
lations of Kleber, and, carrying into literal exe-
cution what Buonaparte had only written and
spoken of, he became an actual Mahommedan."
— Sir W. Scott, Life of Napoleon Buonaparte,
eh. 40.
Also in : A. Thiers, Hist, of the Consulate and
Empire, bk. 5 {v. 1).
A. D. 1800-1801 (May — February). — Bona-
parte's second Italian campaign. — The cross-
ing of the Alps. — The Battle of Marengo. —
Moreau in Germany. — Hohenlinden. — Austrian
siege of Genoa. — " Preparations for the new cam-
paign in spring were completed. Moreau was
made commander-in-chief of the army of the
Rhine, 150,000 strong. The plan of the campaign
was concerted between the First Consul and Car-
not, who had superseded Berthier a.3 Minister at
War. The operations were conducted with the
1365
FRANCE, 1800-1801.
Bo}iaparte^s Second
Italian Campaign.
FRANCE, 1800-1801.
utmost secresy. Napoleon had detenniQed to
strike the decisive blow against Austria in Italy,
and to command there in person. By an article
in the Constitution the First Consul was forbid-
den to take command of an army. To this inter-
diction he cheerfully assented ; but he evaded it,
as soon as the occasion veas ripe, by giving the
nominal command of the army of Italy to Ber-
thier. He began to collect troops at Dijon, which
were, he publicly announced, intended to ad-
vance upon Italy. They consisted chiefly of con-
scripts and invalids, with a numerous staff, and
were called 'the army of reserve.' Meantime,
while caricatures of some ancient men with
wooden legs and little boys of twelve years old,
entitled 'Bonaparte's Army of Reserve,' were
amusing the Austrian public, the real army of
Italy was formed in the heart of France, and was
marching by various roads towards Switzerland.
. . . The artillery was sent piecemeal from dif-
ferent arsenals; the provisions necessary to an
army about to cross barren mountains were for-
warded to Geneva, embarked on the lake, and
landed at Villeneuve, near the entrance to the
valley of the Simplon. The situation of the
French army in Italy had become critical. Mas-
s6na had thrown himself into Genoa with 12,000
men, and was enduring all the rigours of a siege,
pressed by 30,000 Austrians under General Ott,
seconded b}' the British fleet. Suchet, with the
remainder of the French armj', about 10,000
strong, completely cut off from communication
with Massfina, had concentrated his forces on the
Var, was maintaining an unequal contest with
Melas, the Austrian commander-in-chief, and
strenuously defending the French frontier. Na-
polean's plan was to transport his army across
the Alps, plant himself in the rear of the Aus-
trians, intercept their communications, then ma-
noeuvre so as to place his own army and that of
MassSna on the Austrian right and left flanks re-
spectively, cut off their retreat, and finally give
them battle at the decisive moment. While all
Europe imagined that the multifarious concerns
of the Government held the First Consul at Paris,
he was travelling at a rapid rate towards Geneva,
accompanied only by Ids secretar}'. He left
Paris on the 6th of May, at two in the morning,
leaving Cambacerfes to preside until his return,
and ordering Fouche to announce that he was
about to review the army at Dijon, and might
possibly go as far as Geneva, but would return
in a fortnight. 'Should anything happen,' he
significantly added, ' I shall be back like a thun-
derbolt.'. . . On the 13th the First Consul re-
viewed the vanguard of his army, commanded by
General Lannes, at Lausanne. 'The whole army
consisted of nearly 70,000 men. Two columns,
each of about 6,000 men, were put in motion, one
under Tureau, the other under Chabran, to take
the routes of Mont Cenis and the Little St. Ber-
nard. A division consisting of 15, 000 men, imder
Moncey,' detached from the army of the Rhine,
was to march by St. Gothard. Moreau kept the
Austrian army of the Rhine, under General Kray,
on the defensive before Ulm [to which he had
forced his way in a series of important engage-
ments, at Engen, May 3, at Moeskirch, May 4, at
Biberach, May 9, and atHochstadt, June 19], and
held himself in readiness to cover the operations
of the First Consul in Italy. The main body of
the French army, in numbers about 40, 000, nomi-
nally commanded by Berthier, but in fact by the
First Consul himself, marched on the 15th from
Lausanne to the village of St. Pierre, at the foot
of the Great St. Bernard, at which all trace of a
practicable road entirely ceased. General Mare-
soot, the engineer who had been sent forward
from Geneva to reconnoitre, reported the paths
to be ' barely passable. ' ' Set forward imme-
diately ! ' wrote Napoleon. Field forges were
established at St. Pierre to dismount the guns,
the carriages and wheels were slung on poles,
and the ammunition-boxes carried b}' mules. A
number of trees were felled, then hollowed out,
and the pieces, being jammed into these rough
cases, 100 soldiers were attached to each and or-
dered to drag them up the steeps. . . . The
whole army effected the passage of the Great St.
Bernard in three days." — R. H. Home, Hist, of
Napoleon Bonaparte, ch. 18. — " From May 16 to
May 19, the solitudes of the vast mountain track
echoed to the din and tumult of war, as the French
soldiery swept over its heights to reach the val-
ley of the Po and the plains of Lombardy. A
hill fort, for a time, stopped the daring invaders,
but the obstacle was passed by an ingenious
stratagem; and before long Bonaparte, exulting
in hope, was marching from the verge of Pied-
mont on Milan, having made a demonstration
against Turin, in order to hide his real purpose.
By June 2 the whole French army, joined by the
reinforcement sent by Moreau, was in possession
of the Lombard capital, and threatened the line
of its enemy's retreat, having successfully accom-
plished the first part of the brilliant design of its
great leader. While Bonaparte was thus descend-
ing from the Alps, the Austrian commander had
been pressing forward the siege of Genoa and his
operations on the Var. Massena, however, stub-
bornly held out in Genoa ; and Suchet had defended
the defiles of Provence with a weak force with
such marked skill that his adversary had made
little progress. When first informed of the ter-
rible apparition of a hostile army gathering upon
his rear, Melas disbelieved what he thought im-
possible ; and when he could no longer discredit
what he heard, the movements by Mont Cenis
and against Turin, intended to perplex him, had
made him hesitate. As soon, however, as the real
design of the First Consul was fully revealed, the
brave Austrian chief resolved to force his way to
the Adige at any cost ; and, directing Ott to raise
the siege of Genoa, and leaving a subordinate to
hold Suchet in check, he began to draw his divi-
ded army together, in order to make a desperate
attack on the audacious foe upon his line of re-
treat. Ott, however, delayed some days to re-
ceive the keys of Genoa, which fell [June 4] after
a defence memorable in the annals of war ; and,
as the Austrian forces had been widely scattered,
it was June 12 [after a severe defeat at Monte-
bello, on the 9th, by Lannes] before 50,000 men
were assembled for an offensive movement round
the well-known fortresses of Alessandria. Mean-
while, the First Consul had broken up from
IVIilan ; and, whether ill-informed of his enemy's
operations, or apprehensive that, after the fall of
Genoa, Melas would escape by a march south-
wards, he had advanced from a strong position
he had taken between the Ticino, the Adda, and
the Po, and had crossed the Scrivia into the plains
of Marengo, with forces disseminated far too
widely. Melas boldly seized the opportunity to
escape from the weakened meshes of the net
thrown round him ; and attacked Bonaparte on
1366
FRANCE, 1800-1801.
Marenf/o
and Hohenlinden.
FRANCE, 1801.
the morning of June 14 with a vigor .and energy
which did him honor. The battle raged cou-
f usedly for several hours ; but the French had be-
gun to give way and fly, when the arrival of an
isolated division on the field [that of Desaix, who
had been sent soutliward by Bonaparte, and who
turned back, on his own responsibility, when he
heard the sounds of battle] and the unexpected
charge of a small body of horsemen, suddenly
changed defeat into a brilliant victory. The im-
portance was tlien seen of the commanding posi-
tion of Bonaparte on the rear of his foe ; the Aus-
trian army, its retreat cut off, was obliged to come
to terms after a single reverse ; and within a few
days an armistice was signed by which Italy to
the Mincio was restored to the French, and the
disasters of 1799 were effaced. . . . While Italy
had beeu regained at one stroke, the campaign
in Germany had progressed slowly ; and though
Moreaii was largely superior in force, he had met
more than one check near Ulm, on the Danube.
The stand, however, made ably by Kray, could
not lessen the effects of Marengo ; and Austria,
after that terrible reverse, endeavored to negoti-
ate with the dreaded conqueror. Bonaparte, how-
ever, following out a purpose which he had
already made a maxim of policy, and resolved if
possible to divide the Coalition, refused to treat
with Austria j ointly with England, except ou con-
ditions known to be futile ; and after a pause of
a few weeks hostilities were resumed with in-
creased energy. By this time, however, the
French armies had acquired largely preponderat-
ing strength ; and while Brune advanced victori-
ously to the Adige — the First Consul had re-
turned to the seat of government — Moreau in
Bavaria marclied ou the rivers which, descending
from the Alps to the Danube, form one of the
bulwarks of the Austrian Monarchy. He was at-
tacked incautiously by the Archduke John — • the
Archduke Charles, who ought to have been in
command, was in temporary disgrace at the Court
— and soon afterwards [December 3] he won a
great battle at Hohenlinden, between thelser and
the Inn, the success of the French being complete
and decisive, though the conduct of their chief
has not escaped criticism. This last disaster
proved overwhelming, and Austria and the States
of the Empire were forced to submit to the
terms of Bonaparte. After a brief delay peace
was made at LunevUle in February 1801." — W.
O'C. Morris, The Ft-eneh Rev. and First Empire,
eh. 10.
Also ln : C. Botta, Italy during the Consulate
and Empire of Napoleon, eh. 1-3. — Baron Joraini,
Life of Napoleon, eh. 6 (b. 1). — C. Adams, Great
Campaigns in Europe from XIQQ to \S1Q, eh. 3. —
Duke de Rovigo, Memoirs, v. 1, rh. 19-30.
A. D. 1800-1801 (June— February).— The
King of Naples spared at the intercession of
the Russian Czar. — The Czar won away
from the Coalition. — The Pope befriended. —
" Replaced in his richest territories by the allies,
the King of Naples was bound by every tie to
assist them in the campaign of 1800. He accord-
ingly sent an army into the march of Ancona,
under the command of Count Roger de Damas.
. . . Undeterred by the battle of Marengo, the
Count de Damas marched against the Prencli
general MioUis, who commanded in Tuscany,
and sustained a defeat by him near Sienna. Re-
treat became now necessary, the more especially
as the armistice which was entered into by Gen-
eral Melas deprived the Neapolitans of any assis>
tance from the Austrians, and rendered theii
whole expedition utterly hopeless. They were
not even included by name in the armistice, and
were thus left exposed to the whole vengeance of
the French. ... At this desperate crisis, the
Queen of the Two Sicilies took a resolution which
seemed almost as desperate, and could only have
been adopted by a woman of a bold and de-
cisive character. She resolved, notwithstanding
the severity of the season, to repair in person to
the court of the Emperor Paul, and implore his
intercession with the First Consul, in behalf of
her husband and his territories." The Russian
autocrat was more than ready to accede to her
request. Disgusted and enraged at the discom-
fiture of Suwarrow in Switzerland, dissatisfied
with the conduct of Austria in that unfortunate
campaign, and equally dissatisfied with England
in the joint invasion of the Batavian republic, he
made prompt preparations to quit the coalition
and to ally himself with the First Consul of
France. Bonaparte welcomed his overtures and
gave them every flattering encouragement, con-
ceding instantly the grace which he asked on be-
half of the King and Queen of Naples. "The
respect paid by the First Consul to the wishes of
Paul saved for the present the royal family of
Naples ; but Murat [who commanded the army
sent to central and southern Italy], nevertheless,
made them experience a full portion of the bitter
cup which the vanquished are generally doomed
to swallow. General Damas was commanded in
the haughtiest terms to evacuate the Roman
States, and not to presume to claim any benefit
from the armistice which had been extended to
the xVustrians. At the same time, while the Ne-
apolitans were thus compelled hastily to evacuate
the Roman territories, general surprise was ex-
hibited when, instead of marching to Rome, and
re-establishing the authority of the Roman Re-
public, Murat, according to the orders which he
had received from the First Consul, carefully re-
spected the territory of the Church, and rein-
stalled the oflicers of the Pope in what had been
long termed the patrimony of St. Peter's. This
unexpected turn of circumstances originated in
high policy on the part of Buonaparte. . . . Be-
sides evacuating the Ecclesiastical States, the
Neapolitans were compelled by Murat to restore
various paintings, statues, and other objects of
art, which they had, in imitation of Buonaparte,
taken forcibly from the Romans, — so captivating
is the influence of bad example. A French army
of about 18,000 men was to be quartered in
Calabria. . . . The harbours of the Neapolitan
dominions were of course to be closed against the
English. A cession of part of the isle of Elba,
and the relinquishment of all pretensions upon
Tuscany, summed up the sacrifices of the King
of Naples [stipulated in the truce of Foligno,
signed in February, 1801], who, considering how
often he had braved Napoleon, had great reason
to thank the Emperor of Russia for his effectual
mediation." — Sir W. Scott, Life of Napoleon, eh.
38.
A. D. 1801 (February).— The Peace of Lune-
ville.— The Rhine boundary confirmed. See
GERM.tNY: A. D. 1801-1803.
A. D. 1801 (March). — Recovery of Louisiana
from Spain. See Louisiana: A. D. 1798-1803.
A. D. 1801. — Expedition against the Blacks
ofHayti. See Hatti: A. D. 1633-1803.
1367
FRANCE, 1801-1802.
The Northern
Maritime League.
FRANCE, 1801-1803.
A. D. 1801-1802.— The import of the Peace of
Luneville. — Bonaparte's preparations for con-
flict with England. — The Northern Maritime
League. — English bombardment of Copen-
hagen and summary crushing of the League.
— Murder of the Russian Czar. — English ex-
pedition to Egypt. — Surrender of the French
army. — Peace of Amiens. — "The treaty of
Luuevllle was of far greater import than the
treaties -which had ended the struggle of the first
coalition. . . . The significance then of the Peace
of Luneville lay in this, not only that it was the
close of the earlier revolutionary struggle for
supremacy in Europe, the abandonment by France
of her effort to 'liberate the peoples,' to force
new institutions on the nations about her by
sheer dint of arms ; but that it marked the con
centration of all her energies on a struggle with
Britain for the supremacy of the world. For
England herself the event which accompanied
it, the sudden withdrawal of AVilliam Pitt from
office, which took place in the very month of
the treaty, was hardly less significant. . . . The
bul'ii of the old Jlinistry returned in a few days
to office with ^Ir. Addington at their head,
and his administration received the support of
the whole Tory party in Parliament. ... It
was with anxiety that England found itself
guided by men like these. . . . The country
stood utterly alone ; while the peace of Luneville
secured France from all hostility on the Conti-
nent. ... To strike at England's wealth had
been among the projects of the Directory: it
was now the dream of the First Consul. It was
in vain for England to produce, if he shut her
out of every market. Her carrying-trade must
be annihilated If he closed every port against
her ships. It was this gigantic project of a
' Continental System ' that revealed itself as soon
as Buonaparte became finally master of France.
From France itself and its dependencies in Hol-
land and the Netherlands English trade was
already excluded. But Italy also was shut
against her after the Peace of Luneville [and the
Treaty of Foligno with the King of Naples], and
Spain not only closed her own ports but forced
Portugal to break with her English ally. In the
Baltic, Buonaparte was more active than even in
the Mediterranean. In a treaty with America,
which was destined to bring this power also in
the end into his great attack, he had formally
recognized the rights of neutral vessels which
England was hourly disputing. . . . The only
powers which now possessed naval resources
were the powers of the North. . . . Both the
Scandinavian states resented the severity with
which Britain enforced that right of search which
had brought about their armed neutrality at the
close of the American war ; while Denmark was
besides an old ally of France, and her sympathies
were still believed to be French. The First Con-
sul therefore had little trouble in enlisting them
in a league of Neutrals, which was in effect a
declaration of war against England, and which
Prussia as before showed herself ready to join.
Russia indeed seemed harder to gain." But
Paul, the Czar, afraid of the opposition of Eng-
land to his designs upon Turkey, dissatisfied
with the operations of the coalition, and flattered
by Bonaparte, gave himself up to the influence
of the latter. ' ' It was to check the action of
Britain in the East that the Czar now turned to
the French Consul, and seconded his efforts for
the formation of a naval confederacy in the
North, while his minister, Rostopchin. planned
a division of the Turkish Empire in Europe be-
tween Russia and her allies. ... A squabble
over Malta, which had been blockaded since its
capture by Buonaparte, and which surrendered
at last [September, 1800] to a British fleet, but
whose possession the Czar claimed as his own on
the ground of an alleged election as Grand Mas-
ter of the Order of St. John, served as a pretext
for a quarrel with England ; and at the close of
1800 Paul openly prepared for hostilities. . . .
The Danes, who throughout the year had been
struggling to evade the British right of search,
at once joined this neutral league, and were fol-
lowed by Sweden in their course. . . . But dex-
terous as the combination was, it was shattered
at a blow. On the 1st of April, 1801, a British
fleet of 18 men-of-war [under Sir Hj'de Parker,
with Nelson second in command] forced the pas-
sage of the Belt, appeared before Copenhagen,
and at once attacked the city and its fleet. In
spite of a brave resistance from the Danish bat-
teries and gunboats six Danish ships were taken,
and the Crown Prince was forced to conclude an
armistice which enabled the English ships to
enter the Baltic. . . . But their work was really
over. The seizure of English goods and the
declaration of war had bitterly irritated the Rus-
sian nobles, whose sole outlet for the sale of the
produce of their vast estates was thus closed to
them ; and on the 24th of March, nine days be-
fore the battle of Copenhagen, Paul fell in a
midnight attack by conspirators in his own pal-
ace. With Paul fell the Confederacy of the
North. ... At the very moment of the attack
on Copenhagen, a stroke as effective wrecked
his projects in the East. ... In March, 1801, a
force of 15,000 men under General Abercrombie
anchored in Aboukir Bay. Deserted as they
were by Buonaparte, the French had firmly
maintained their hold on Egypt. . . . But their
army was foolishly scattered, and Abercrombie
was able to force a landing five days after his
arrival on the coast. The French however
rapidly concentrated ; and on the 21st of March
their general attacked the English army on the
ground it had won, with a force equal to its own.
The battle [known as the battle of Alexandria]
was a stubborn one, and Abercrombie fell mor-
tally wounded ere its close ; but after six hours'
fighting the French drew off with heavy loss;
and their retreat was followed by the investment
of Alexandria and Cairo. ... At the close of
June the capitulation of the 1.3,000 soldiers who
remained closed the French rule over Egypt."
Threatening preparations for an invasion of Eng-
land were kept up, and gunboats and flatboats
collected at Boulogne, which Nelson attacked
unsuccessfully in August, 1801. "The First
Consul opened negotiations for peace at the close
of 1801. His offers were at once met by the Eng-
lish Government. . . . The negotiations which
went on through the winter between England
and the three allied Powers of France, Spain,
and the Dutch, brought about in March, 1802,
the Peace of Amiens. " The treaty secured "a
pledge on the part of France to withdraw its forces
from Southern Italy, and to leave to themselves
the republics it had set up along its border in Hol-
land, Switzerland, and Piedmont. In exchange
for this pledge, England recognized the French
government, restored all the colonies which they
1368
FRANCE, 1801-1803.
First Consuc
for Life.
FRANCE. 1801-1803.
had lost, save Ceylon and Trinidad, to France
and its allies [including the restoration to
Holland of the Cape of Good Hope and Dutch
Guiana, and of Minorca and the citadel of Port
Mahon to Spain. whileTurkeyregained possession
of Egypt], acknowledged the Ionian Islands as
a free" republic, and engaged to restore Malta
within three months to its old masters, the
Knights of St. John."— J. R. Green, Mst. of the
Enqlish People, hk. 9, ch. 5 (». 4).
Also m: R. Southey, Life of Nelson, ch. t (». 3).
—J. Gifford, Political Life of Pitt, ch. AT! {v. 6).— C.
Joyneville, Lifeand Times of Alexander L, v. 1, c?i.
4— A Rambaud, Mst. of Russia, v. 3, ch. 11-13.
— G. R. Gleig, Life of Gen. Sir B. Abercromby
(Eminent Briiish 'Military Commanders, v. 3).
A. D. 1801-1803.— Domestic measures of
Bonaparte.— His Legion of Honor.- His
wretched educational scheme.— He is made
First Consul for life.— His whittling away of
the Constitution.— Revolutions instigated and
dictated in the Dutch, Swiss, and Cisalpine
Republics.— Bonaparte president of the Italian
Republic— " The concordat was succeeded by
the emigrants' recall, which resolution was pre-
sented and passed April 36. The irrevocability
of the sale of national property was again estab-
lished, and amnesty granted to all emigrants but
the leaders of armed forces, and some few whose
offences were specially grave. The property of
emigrants remaining unsold was restored, except-
ing forests, which Bonaparte reserved to be
gradually returned as bribes to great families.
. Two important projects were presented to
the Tribunal and Legislative Corps, the Legion
of Honor, and free schools. The Convention
awarded prizes to the troops for special acts of
daring, and the First Consul increased and ar-
ranged the distribution, but that was not enough :
he wanted a vast system of rewards, adapted to
excite amour propre, repay service, and give him
a new and potent means of Influencing civilians
as well as soldiers. He therefore conceived the
idea of the Legion of Honor, embracing all kinds
of service and title to public distinction. . . .
But this plan for forming an order of chivalry
was contested even by the Council of State as
offensive to that equality which its members
were to defend [under the oath prescribed to the
Legion], and as a renewal of aristocracy. It
only passed the Tribunal and Legislative Corps
by a very small majority, and this after the re-
moval of so many of the opposition party. The
institution of the Legion of Honor was specious,
and, despite the opposition it met with in its
early days, suits a people who love distinction,
despite their passion for equality, provided it be
not hereditary. As for the educational scheme,
it was wretched, doing absolutely nothing for
the primary schools. The state had no share in
It. The Commune was to provide the buildings
when the pupils could pay a teacher, thus for-
saking the plans of the great assemblies. The
wisest statesmen desired to sustain in an Im-
proved form the central schools founded by the
Convention ; but Bonaparte meant to substitute
barracks to educate young men for his service.
... He diminished scientific study ; suppressed
history and philosophy, which were incompatible
with despotism; and completed his system of
secondary instruction by creating 6,000 scholar-
ships, to be used as means of influence, like the
ribbon of the Legion of Honor. ... All his
measures succeeded, and yet he was not content:
he wanted to extend his power. . . . Cambaceres
.... when the Amiens treaty was presented to
the Tribunal and Legislature, . . . proposed,
through the president of the former, that the
Senate should be invited to give the First Consul
some token of national gratitude (May 6, 1803).
. The Senate only voted to prolong the First
Consul's power for ten years (May 8), with but
one protesting voice, that of Lanjuinais, who de-
nounced the flagrant usurpation that threatened
the Republic. This was the last echo of the
Gironde ringing through the tame assembli-S of
the Consulate. Bonaparte was very angry hav-
ing expected more; but CambacerSs calmed him
and suggested a mode of evading the question,
namely, to reply that an extension of power
could only be granted by the people, and then to
make the Council of State dictate the formula to
be submitted to the people, substituting a life-
consulate for ten years. This was accordingly
done. . . . The Council of State even added the
First Consul's right to name his successor. This
ho thought prematui-e and likely to make trouble,
and therefore erased it. . . . Registers were
opened at the record offices and mayoralties to
receive votes, and there were three million and
a half votes in the affirmative ; a few thousand
only daring to refuse, and many abstaining from
voting. La Fayette registered a ' no' . . . and
sent the First Consul a noble letter. ... La
Fayette then ceased tlie relations he had hitherto
maintained with the Fir.st Consul since his return
to France. . . . The Senate counted the popular
vote on the proposal they did not make, and
carried the result to the Tuileries in a body,
August 3, 1803 ; and the result was proclaimed
in the form of a Senatus-Consultum, in these
terms: ' The French people name and the Senate
proclaim Napoleon Bonaparte First Consul for
life.' This was the first official use of the pre-
nomen Napoleon, which was soon, in conformity
with royal custom, to be substituted for the
family name of Bonaparte. . . . The next day
various modifications of the Constitution were
offered to the Council of State. . . . The Senate
were given the right to interpret and complete
the Constitution, to dissolve the Legislature and
Tribunal, and, what was even more, to break the
judgment of tribilnals, thus subordinating jus-
tice to policy. But these extravagant preroga-
tives could only be used at the request of the
government. The Senate was limited to 130
members, 40 of whom the First Consul was to
elect. The Tribunal was reduced to 50 members,
and condemned to discuss with closed doors,
divided into sections. . . . Despotism concen-
trated more and more. Bonaparte took back his
refusal to choose his successor, and now claimed
that right. He also formed a civil list of sis
millions. . . . The Senate agreed to everything,
and the Senatus-Consultum was published Au-
gust 5 . . . The Republic was now but a name.
. . Early in 1803 things grew dark on the Eng-
lish shore," and " the loss of San Domingo [to
which Bonaparte had sent an expedition at the
beginning of 1801] seemed inevitable [see Hayti:
A D. 1633-1803]. While making this expedi-
tion, doomed to so fatal an end, Bonaparte con-
tinued his haughty policy on the European con-
tinent. By article second of the Luneville treaty
France and Austria mutually guaranteed the in-
dependence of the Dutch, Swiss, Cisalpme, and
1369
FRANCE, 1801-1803
Republic-making.
FRANCE, 1801-1804.
Ligurian republics, and their freedom in the
adoption of whatever form of government they
saw fit to choose. Bonaparte interpreted this
article by substituting for independence his own
more or less direct rule in those republics. . . .
During the negotiations preceding the Amiens
treaty he stirred up a revolution in Holland.
That country had a Directory and two Chambers,
as in the French Constitution of year III., and
he wished to impose a new constitution on the
Chambers, putting them more into his power;
they refused, and he expelled them by means of
the Directory, whom he had won over to his side.
The Dutch Directory, in this imitation of Novem-
ber 9, was sustained by French troops, occupying
Holland under Augereau, now reconciled to Bona-
parte (September, 1801). The new Constitution
was put to popular vote. A certain number
voted against it. The majority did not vote,
Silence was taken for consent, and the new Con-
stitution was proclaimed October 17, 1801. . . .
The English government protested, but did not
resist. At the same time he [Bonaparte] imposed
on the Cisalpine republic, but without conflict or
opposition, a constitution even more anti-liberal
than the French one of year VIII. ; the president
who there replaced the First Consul having su-
preme power. But who was to be that Presi-
dent? The Cisalpines for an instant were simple
enough to think that they could choose an Italian :
they decided on Count Jlelzi, well known in the
Milanese. They were soon undeceived, when
Bonaparte called Cisalpine delegates to Lj'ons in
midwinter. These delegates were landowners,
scholars, and merchants, some hundreds in num-
ber, and his agents explained to them that none
but Bonaparte ' was worthy to govern their re-
public or able to maintain it.' They eagerly
offered him the presidency, which he accepted in
lofty terms, and took Melzi for vice-president
(January 25, 1803). Italian patriots were con-
soled for this subjection by tlie change of name
from Cisalpine to Italian Republic, which seemed
to promise the unity of Italy. Bonaparte threw
out this hope, never meaning to gratify it. . . .
He acted as master in Switzerland as well as
Italy and Holland. Since Switzerland had
ceased to be the scene of war, she had been
given over to agitation, fluctuating between
revolutionary democracy and the old aristocracy
joined to the retrograde democracy of the small
Catholic cantons. Modern democracy was at
strife with itself. . . . Bonaparte encouraged the
strife, that Switzerland might call him in as ar-
biter. Suddenly, late in July, 1803, he withdrew
his troops, which had occupied Switzerland ever
since 1798. Civil war broke out at once; the
smaller Catholic cantons and the aristocrats of
Berne and Zurich overthrew the government es-
tablished at Berne by the moderate democrats.
The government retired to Lausanne, and the
country was thus divided. Bonaparte then an-
nounced that he would not suffer a Swiss counter-
revolution, and that if the parties could not agree
he must mediate between them. He summoned
the insurrectional powers of Berne to dissolve,
and invited all citizens who had held ofiice in the
central Swiss government within three years, to
meet at Paris and confer with him, announcing
that 30,000 men under General Ney were ready
to support his mediation. The democratic gov-
ernment at Lausanne were willing to receive the
French; the aristocratic government at Berne,
anxious to restore the Austrians, appealed to
European powers, who replied by silence, Eng-
land only protesting against French interference.
. . . Bonaparte responded to the English pro-
test by so extraordinary a letter that his charge
d'affaires at London dared not communicate it
verbatim. It said that, if England succeeded in
drawing the continental powers into her cause,
the result would be to force France to ' conquer
Europe ! Who knows how long it would take the
First Consul to revive the Empire of the West?'
(October 38, 1802). . . . There was slight resis-
tance to Ney's troops in Switzerland. All the
politicians of the new democracy and some of
the aristocrats went to Paris at the First Consul's
summons. He did not treat their country as he
had Holland and Italy, but gave her, instead, a
vain show of institutions, a constitution imposing
on the different parties a specious compromise.
. . . Switzerland was dependent on France in
regard to general policy, and was bound to fur-
nish her with troops; but, at least, she adminis-
tered her own affairs (January, 1803)." — H. Mar-
tin, Popular Hist, of Pi-ance from the First Rev.,
V. 3, ch. 8-9.
Also in : F. C. Schlosser, Hist, of the 18th Cen-
tury, v. 7, pp. 286-803.— Mrs. L. Hug and R.
Stead, Story of Switzerland, ch. 30-31.— C. Botta,
Italy during tlie Conmdate and Empire of Napo-
leon, ch. 3. — M. Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of
Napoleon, v. 2, ch. 30-30. — Duchess D'Abrantes,
Memoirs of Napoleon, v. 1, ch. 80. — Count M.
Dumas, Memoirs, ch. 9 (p. 2). — H. A. Taine, T/ie
Modern Regime, v. 1, bk. 3, ch. 3.
A. D. 1801-1804.— The Civil Code and the
Concordat. — "Four years of peace separated
the Treaty of Luneville from the next outbreak
of war between France and any Continental
Power. They were years of the extension of
French influence in every neighbouring State;
in France itself, years of the consolidation of
Bonaparte's power, and of the decline of every-
thing that checked his personal rule. . . . Among
the institutions which date from this period, two,
equally associated with the name of Napoleon,
have taken a prominent place in history, the
Civil Code and the Concordat. Since the middle
of the 18th century the codification of law had
been pursued with more or less success by almost
every Government in the western continent. The
Constituent Assembly of 1789 had ordered the
statutes by which it superseded the variety of
local customs in France to be thus cast into a
systematic form. . . . Bonaparte instinctively
threw himself into a task so congenial to his own
systematizing spirit, and stimulated the efforts
of the best jurists in Prance by his own personal
interest and pride in the work of legislation. A
Commission of lawj^ers, appointed by the First
Consul, presented the successive chapters of a
Civil Code to the Council of State. In the dis-
cussions in the Council of State Bonaparte him-
self took an active, though not always a bene-
ficial, part. ... In March, 1804, France received
the Code which, with few alterations, has formed
from that time to the present the basis of its
civil rights. ... It is probable that a majority
of the inhabitants of Western Europe believe
that Napoleon actually invented the laws which
bear his name. As a matter of fact, the sub-
stance of these laws was fixed by the successive
Assemblies of the Revolution ; and, in the final
revision which produced the Civil Code, Napo-
1370
FRANCE, 1801-1804.
Cwil Code
and Concordat,
FRANCE. 1802-1803.
leon appears to have originated neither more nor
less than several of the members of his Coun-
cil whose names have long been forgotten. He
is unquestionably entitled to the honour of a
great legislator, not, however, as one who, like
Solon or like Mahomet, himself created a new
body of law. . . . Four other Codes, appearing
at intervals from the year 1804 to the year 1810,
embodied, in a corresponding form, the Law of
Commei'ce, the Criminal Law, and the Rules of
Civil and of Criminal Process. . . . Far more
distinctively the work of Napoleon himself was
the reconciliation with the Church of Rome ef-
fected by the Concordat [July, 1801]. It was a
restoration of religion similar to that restoration
of political order which made the public service
the engine of a single will. The bishops and
priests, whose appointment the Concordat trans-
ferred from tlieir congregations to the Govern-
ment, were as much instruments of the First Con-
sul as his prefects and his gensdarmes. . . . An
alliance with the Pope offered to Bonaparte the
means of supplanting the popular organisation
of the Constitutional Church by an imposing
hierarchy, rigid in its orthodo.xy and imquestion-
ing in Its devotion to himself. In return for the
consecration of his own rule, Bonaparte did not
shrink from inviting the Pope to an exercise of
authority such as the Holy See had never even
claimed in France. The whole of the existing
French Bishops, both the exiled non-jurors and
those of the Constitutional Church, were sum-
moned to resign their sees into the hands of the
Pope ; against all who refused to do so sentence
of deposition was pronounced by the Pontiff. . . .
The sees were reorganised, and filled up by nomi-
nees of the First Consul. The position of the
great body of the clergy was substantially altered
in its relation to the Bishops. Episcopal power
was made despotic, like all other powers in
France. ... In the greater cycle of religious
change, the Concordat of Bonaparte appears in
another light. ... It converted the Catholicism
of France from a faith already far more indepen-
dent than that of Feuelon and Bossuet into the
Catholicism which incur day has outstripped the
bigotry of Spain and Austria in welcoming the
dogma of Papal infallibility." — C. A. Fyffe, Hist,
of Modern Europe, v. 1, ch. fi. — " It is . . . easy,
from the official reports which have been pro-
served, to see what part the First Consul took in
the framing of the Civil Code. While we recog-
nise that his intervention was advantageous on
some minor points, . . . we must say that his
views on the subjects of legislation in which this
intervention was most conspicuous, were most
often inspired by suggestions of personal interest,
or by political considerations which ought to
have no weight with the legislator. . . . Bona-
parte came by degrees to consider himself the
principal creator of a collective work to which
he contributed little more than his name, and
which probably would have been much better
if the suggestions of a man of action and execu-
tive authority had not been blended with the
views, necessarily more disinterested, larger and
more humane, of the eminent jurisconsults whose
glory he tried to usurp." — P. Lanfrey, Hist, of
Napoleon, v. 2, ch. 5.
Also in: A. Thiers, Hist, of the Consulate and
the Empire, v. 1, hk. 12-14. — W. H. Jervis, Hist,
of the Church of Ei'ance, b. 2, ch. 11. — J. E. Dar-
ras, General Hist, of the Catholic Church, -v. 4,
pp. 547-554. — The Cods-Napoleon, trans, by
Richards.
A. D. i8o2. — Fourcroy's education law. See
Education, Modern: Euiiope.\n Countries,
France: A. D. 1565-1802.
A. D. i8o2 (August — September). — Annexa-
tion of Piedmont, Parma, and the Isle of Elba.
— A "flagrant act of the First Consul's at this
time was the seizure and annexation of Piedmont.
Although that country was reconquered by the
Austro-Russian army in 1799, the King of Sar-
dinia had not been restored when, by the battle
of Marengo, it came again into the possession of
the French. Bonaparte then united part of it to
the Cisalpine Republic, and promised to erect
the rest into a separate State ; but he afterwards
changed his mind ; and by a decree of April 20th
1801, ordered that Piedmont should form a mili-
tary division of France. . . . Charles Emanuel,
disgusted with the injustice and insults to which
he was exposed, having abdicated his throne in
favour of his brother Victor Emanuel, Duke of
Aosta, June 4th 1802, Bonaparte . . . caused
that part of Piedmont which had not been united
to the Italian Republic to be annexed to Prance,
as the 27th Military Department, by a formal
Senatus-Consulte of September 11th 1802. A
little after, October 11th, on the death of Ferdi-
nand de Bourbon, Duke of Parma, father of the
King of Etruria, that duchy was also seized by
the rapacious French Republic. The isle of
Elba had also been united to France by a Senatus-
Consulte of August 26th. "— T. H. Dyer, Hist,
of Modern Europe, bk. 7, ch. 11 (». 4).
Also in: A. Gallenga, Hist, of Piedmont, v. 3,
ch. 5.
A. D. 1802-1803. — Complaints against the
English press. — The Peltier trial. — The First
Consul's rage. — War declared by Great Brit-
ain. — Detention of all the English in France,
Italy, Switzerland and the Netherlands.—
Occupation of Hanover. — "Mr. Addington was
wont to say in after years that the ink was
scarcely dry, after the signature of the treaty of
Amiens, when discontents arose which perilled
the new peace. On the 24th of May [1802], M.
Otto tolcl Lord Glenbervie that if the English
press were not controlled from censuring Napo-
leon, there must be a war to the death : and in
the course of the summer, six requisitions were
formally made to the British government, the
purport of which was that the press must be
controlled ; the royal emigrants sent to Warsaw ;
the island of Jersey cleared of persons disaffected
to the French government; and all Frenchmen
dismissed from Great Britain who wore the deco-
rations of the old monarchy. The reply was,
that the press was free in England ; and that if
any of the emigrants broke the laws, they should
be punished ; but that otherwise they could not
be molested. The government, however, used
its influence in remonstrance with the editors of
newspapers which were abusive of the French.
Cobbet was pointed out by name by Napoleon,
as a libeller who must be punished ; and Peltier,
a royalist emigrant, who had published some in-
centives to the assassination of the French ruler,
or prophecies which might at such a crisis be
fairly regarded as incentives. M. Peltier's object
was to use his knowledge of the tools of Napo-
leon, and his great political and literary experi-
ence, in laying bare the character and policy of
Napoleon ; and he began, in the summer of 1803,
1371
FRANCE, 1802-1803.
War with England.
FRANCE, 1803-1803.
a journal, the first number of which occasioned
the demand for his punishment. He was prose-
cuted by the Attorney-General, and defended by
Sir James Mackintosh, in a speech which was
translated into nearly all the languages of Eu-
rope, and uni%'ersally considered one of the most
prodigious efforts of oratory ever listened to in
any age. The Attorney-General, Mr. Percival,
declared in Court, that he could hardly hope for
an impartial decision from a jury whose faculties
had been so roused, dazzled and charmed. . . .
M. Peltier was found guilty ; but the Attorney-
General did not call for judgment on the instant.
War w'as then — at the close of February [1803]
— imminent; and the matter was dropped. M.
Peltier was regarded as a martyr, and, as far as
public opinion went, was rather rewarded than
punished in England. He was wont to say that
he was tried in England and punished in France.
His property was confiscated by the consular
agents; and his only near relations, his aged
father and his sister, died at Nantes, through
terror at his trial. By this time the merchants
of Great Britain were thoroughly disgusted
with France. Not only had Napoleon prevented
all commercial intercourse between the nations
throughout the year, but he had begun to con-
fiscate English merchant vessels, driven by stress
of weather into his ports. By this time, too, the
Minister's mind was made up as to the impossi-
bility of avoiding war. . . . Napoleon had pub-
lished [Jan. 30, 1803] a Report of an official agent
of his, Sebastiani, who had explored the Levant,
striving as he went to rouse the Mediterranean
States to a desertion of England and an alliance
with France. He reported of the British force
at Alexandria, and of the means of attack and
defence there; and his employer put forth this
statement in the ' Moniteur, ' his own paper, while
complaining of the insults of the English press
towards himself. Our ambassador at i'aris. Lord
Whitworth, desired an explanation: and the re-
ception of his demand by the First Consul . . .
was characteristic. ... He sent for Lord Whit-
worth to wait on him at nine in the morning of the
18th ; made him sit down ; and then poured out
his wratli 'in the style of an Italian bully,' as
tlie record has it : and the term is not too strong ;
for he would not allow Lord Whitworth to speak.
The first impression was, that it was his design
to ten-ify England : but Talleyrand's anxiety to
smooth matters afterwards, and to explain away
what his master had said, shows that the ebulli-
tion was one of mere temper. And this was
presently confirmed by his behaviour to Lord
Whitworth at a levee, when the saloon was
crowded with foreign ambassadors and their
suites, as well as with French courtiers. The
whole scene was set forth in the newspapers of
every country. Napoleon walked about, trans-
ported with passion: asked Lord Whitworth if
he did not know that a terrible storm had arisen
between the two governments; declared that
England was a violator of treaties ; took to wit-
ness the foreigners present that if England did
not immediately surrender Malta, war was de-
clared; and condescended to appeal to them
whether the right was not on his side ; and, when
Lord Wliitworth would have replied, silenced
him by a gesture, and observed that, Lady Whit-
worth being out of health, her native air would be
of service to her; and she should have it, sooner
than she expected . — After this, there could be little
hope of peace in the most sanguine mind. . . .
Lord Whitworth left Paris on the 12th of May;
and at Dover met General Andreossi, on his way
to Paris. On the 16th, it became publicly known
that war was declared: and on the same day
Admiral Cornwallis received telegraphic orders
which caused him to appear before Brest on the
18th. On the 17th, an Order in Council, direct-
ing reprisals, was issued ; and with it the procla-
mation of an embargo being laid on all French
and Dutch ships in British ports. ... On the
next day. May 18th, 1808, the Declaration of
War was laid before parliament, and the feverish
state, called peace, which had lasted for one year
and sixteen days, passed into one of open hos-
tility. The reason why the vessels of the Dutch
were to be seized with those of the French was
that Napoleon had filled Holland with French
troops, and was virtually master of the country.
... In July, the militia force amounted to 173,-
000 men; and the deficiency was in ofilcers to
command them. The minister proposed, in ad-
dition to all the forces actually in existence, the
formation of an army of reserve, amounting to
50,000 men: and this was presently agreed to.
There was little that the parliament and people
of England would not have agreed to at this
moment, under the provocation of Napoleon's
treatment of the English in France. His first
act was to order the detention, as prisoners of
war, of all the English then in the country, be-
tween the ages of 18 and 60. The exasperation
caused by this cruel measure was all that he
could have expected or desired. Many were the
young men thus doomed to lose, in wearing ex-
pectation or despair, twelve of the best years of
their lives, cut off from family, profession, mar-
riage, citizenship — everything that yoimg men
most value. Many were the parents separated
for twelve long years from the young creatures
at home, whom they had left for a mere pleasure
trip : and many were the grey -haired fathers and
mothers at home who went down to the grave
during those twelve years without another sight
of the son or daughter who was pining in some
small provincial town in France, without natural
occupation, and well nigli without hope. In
June, the English in Rouen were removed to the
neighbourhood of Amiens; those in Calais to
Lisle ; those at Brussels to Valenciennes. Before
the month was out, all the English in Italy and
Switzerland, in addition to those in Holland,
were made prisoners. How many the whole
amounted to does not appear to have been ascer-
tained : but it was believed at the time that there
were 11,000 in France, and 1,300 in Holland.
The first pretence was that these travellers were
detained as hostages for the prizes which Napo-
leon accused us of taking before the regular
declaration of war; but when proposals were
made for an exchange, he sent a savage answer
that he would keep his prisoners till the end of
the war. It is difficult to conceive how there
could be two opinions about the nature of the
man after this act. The naval captures of which
Napoleon complained, as made prior to a declara-
tion of war, were of two merchant ships taken
by English frigates: and we find notices of such
being brought into port on the 25th of May.
Whether they were captured before the 18th,
there is no record that we can find. . . . On the
sea, our successes seemed a matter of course ; but
meantime a blow was struck at Great Britain,
1372
FRANCE, 1802-1803.
Execution of the
Due (T Enghien.
FRANCE, 1804^1805.
and especially at her sovereign, which proved
that the national exasperation against France was
even yet capable of increase. On the breaking
out of the war, George III. issued a proclama-
tion, as Elector of Hanover, declaring to Ger-
many that the Germanic states had nothing to
fear "in regard to the new hostilities, as he was
entering into war as King of Great Britain, and
not as Elector of Hanover. Whatever military
preparations were going forward in Hanover
were merely of a defensive character. Napoleon,
however, set such defence at defiance. On the
13th of June, news amved of the total surrender
of Hanover to the French. . . . Government re-
solved to declare the Elbe and the "Weser, and
all the ports of Western Germany, in a state of
blockade ; as the French had now command over
all the intermediate rivers. It was calculated
that this would annoy and injure Napoleon
effectually, as it would cause the ruin of foreign
merchants trading from the whole series of ports.
English merchants would suffer deeply; but it
was calculated that English capital and stock
■would hold out longer than those of foreign mer-
chants. Thus was the sickening process of pri-
vate ruin, as a check to public aggression, entered
upon, before war had been declared a month. " —
H. Martineau, Hist, of Eng., 1800-1815, bk. 1,
ch. 4.
Also in: M. de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs
of Napoleon, v. 2, ch. 28-30. — Sir J. Mackintosh,
Speech in Defense of Jean Peltier (Miscellaneous
Works). — J. Ashton, English Caricature and
Satire on Napoleon I., v. 1, ch. 24-37.
A. D. 1803 (April — May). — Sale of Louisiana
to the United States of America. See Louisi-
ana: A. D. 1798-1803; and United States op
Am. : A. D. 1803,
A. D. 1803. — Loss of San Domingo, or
Hayti. See H.\.yti: A. D. 1632-1803.
A. D. 1804-1805. — Royalist plots and Bona-
parte's use of them. — The abduction and exe-
cution of the Due d'Enghien. — The First Con-
sul becomes Emperor. — His coronation by the
Pope. — His acceptance of the crown of Italy.
— Annexation of Genoa to France. — The rup-
ture with England furnished Bonaparte " with
the occasion of throwing off the last disguise and
openly restoring monarchy. It was a step which
required all his audacity and cunning. He had
crushed Jacobinism, but two great parties re-
mained. There was first the more moderate re-
publicanism, which might be called Girondism,
and was widely spread among all classes and
particularly in the array. Secondly, there was
the old royalism, which after many years of help-
less weakness had revived since Brumaire. These
two parties, though hostile to each other, were
forced into a sort of alliance by the new attitude
of Bonaparte, who was hurrying France at once
into a new revolution at home and into an abyss
of war abroad. England, too, after the rupture,
favoured the efforts of these parties. Royalism
from England began to open conmiunications
with moderate republicanism in France. Piche-
gru acted for the former, and the great representa-
tive of the latter was Moreau, who had helped to
make Brumaire in the tacit expectation probably
of rising to the consulate in due course when
Bonaparte's term should have expired, and was
therefore hurt in his personal claims as well as
in his republican principles. Bonaparte watched
the movement through his ubiquitous police, and
with characteristic strategy determined not mere-
ly to defeat it but to make it his stepping-stone to
monarchy. He would ruin Moreau by fastening
on him the stigma of royalism ; he would per-
suade France to make him emperor in order to
keep out the Bourbons. He achieved this with
the peculiar mastery which he always showed in
villainous intrigue. . . . Pichegru [who had re-
turned secretly to Prance from England some
time in January, 1804] brought with him wilder
partisans, such as Georges [Cadoudal] the Chouan.
No doubt Moreau would gladly have seen and
gladly have helped an insurrection against Bona-
parte. . . . But Bonaparte succeeded in associat-
ing him with royalist schemes and with schemes
of assassination. Controlling the Senate, he was
able to suppress the jury; controlling every
avenue of publicity, he was able to suppress
opinion; and the army, Moreau's fortress, was
won through its hatred of royalism. In this way
Bonaparte's last personal rival was removed.
There remained the royalists, and Bonaparte
hoped to seize their leader, the Comte d'Artois,
who was expected, as the police knew, soon to
join Pichegru and Georges at Paris. What Bona-
parte would have done with him we may judge
from the course he took when the Comte did not
come. On March 15, 1804, the Due d'Enghien,
grandson of the Prince de Conde, residing at
Ettenheim in Baden, was seized at midnight by a
party of dragoons, brought to Paris, where he
arrived on the 20th, confined in the castle of Vin-
cennes, brought before a military commission at
two o'clock the next morning, asked whether he
had not borne arms against the republic, which
he acknowledged himself to have done, con-
ducted to a staircase above the moat, and there
shot and buried in the moat. . . . That the Due
d'Enghien was innocent of the conspiracy, was
nothing to the purpose ; the act was political, not
judicial; accordingly he was not even charged
with complicity. That the execution would strike
horror into the cabinets, and perhaps bring about
a new Coalition, belonged to a class of considera-
tions which at this time Bonaparte systematically
disregarded. This affair led immediately to the
thought of giving heredity to Bonaparte's power.
The thought seems to have commended itself
irresistibly even to strong republicans and to
those who were most shocked by the murder. To
make Bonaparte's position more secure seemed
the only way of averting a new Reign of Terror
or new convulsions. He himself felt some em-
barrassment. Like Cromwell, he was afraid of
the republicanism of the army, and heredity pure
and simple brought him face to face with the
question of divorcing Josephine. To propitiate
the army, he chose from the titles suggested to
him — consul, stadtholder, &c. — that of emperor,
undoubtedly the most accurate, and having a
sufficiently military sound. The other difficulty
after much furious dissension between the two
families of Bonaparte and Beauharnais, was
evaded by giving Napoleon himself (but none of
his successors) a power of adoption, and fixing
the succession, in default of a direct heir, natural
or adoptive, first in Joseph and his descendants,
then in Louis and his descendants. Except ab-
staining from the regal title, no attempt was
made to conceal the abolition of republicanism.
. . . The change was made by the constituent
power of the Senate, and the Senatus-consulte is
dated May 18, 1804. The title of Emperor had
1373
PKANCE, 1804-1805.
Napoleon crowned
Emperor.
FRANCE, 1804-1805.
an ulterior meaning. Adopted at the moment
when Napoleon began to feel himself master
both in Italy and Germany, it revived the mem-
ory of Charles the Great. To himself it was the
more satisfactory on that account, and, strange
to say, it gave satisfaction rather than offence to
the Head of the Holy Roman Empire, Francis II.
Since Joseph, the Habsburg Emperors had been
tired of their title, which, being elective, was
precarious. They were desirous of becoming
hereditary emperors in Austria, and they now
took this title (though without as yet giving up
the other). Francis II. bartered his acknowledge-
ment of Napoleon's new title against Napoleon's
acknowledgement of his own. It required some
impudence to condemn Moreau for royalism at
the very moment that his rival was re-establish-
ing monarchy. Yet his trial began on May 15th.
The death of Pichegru, nominally by suicide, on
April 6th, had already furnished the rising sul-
tanism with its first dark mystery. Moreau was
condemned to two years' imprisonment, but was
allowed to retire to the United States." — J. R.
Seeley, Short Hist, of Napoleon I., ch. 3, sect. 4.
— C. C. Fauriel, The Last Days of the Co7isulate.
— Chancellor Pasquier, in his Memoirs, narrates
the circumstances of the seizure of the Due d'
Enghien at considerable length, and says: "This
is what really occurred, according to what I have
been told by those better situated to know. A
council was held on the 9th of March. It is almost
certain that previous to this council, which was
a kind of official affair, a more secret one had
been held at the house of Joseph Bonaparte. At
the first council, to which were convened only a
few persons, all on a footing of family intimacy,
it was discussed by order of the First Consul,
what would be proper to do with a prince of the
House of Bourbon, in case one should have him
in one's power, and the decision reached was that
if he was captured on French territory, one had
the right to take his life, but not otherwise. At
the council held on the 9th, and which was com-
posed of the three Consuls, the Chief Justice, the
Minister of Foreign Affairs, and M. Fouche, al-
though the latter had not then resumed the post
of Minister of Police, the two men who expressed
contrary opinions were M. de Talleyrand and M.
de Cambacer^s. M. de Talleyrand declared that
the prince should be sent to his death. M. Le-
brun, the Third Consul, contented himself with
saying that such an event would have a terrible
echo throughout the world. M. de CambacerSs
contended earnestly that it would be sufficient
to hold the prince as hostage for the safety of the
First Consul. The latter sided with M. de Talley-
rand, whose counsels then prevailed. The dis-
cussion was a heated one, and when the meeting
of the council was over, M. de Cambacerfes
thought it his duty to make a last attempt, so he
followed Bonaparte into his study, and laid be-
fore him with perhaps more strength than might
be expected from his character, the consequences
of the deed he was about to perpetrate, and the
universal horror it would excite. ... He spoke
in vain. In the privacy of his study, Bonaparte
expressed himself even with greater violence
than he had done at the council. He answered
that the death of the duke would seem to the
world but a just reprisal for what was being at-
tempted against him personally; that it was
necessary to teach the House of Bourbon that
the blows struck with its sanction were liable to
recoil on its own head ; that this was the only
way of compelling it to abstain from its dastardly
schemes, and lastly, that matters had gone too
far to retrace one's steps. M. de Talleyrand
supplied this last argument."— Chancellor Pas-
quier, Memoirs, v. 1, pp. 190-191.— "Bonaparte's
accession to the Empire was proclaimed with the
greatest pomp, without waiting to inquire whether
the people approved of his promotion or other-
wise. The proclamation was coldly received,
even by the populace, and excited little enthu.si-
asm. . . . The Emperor was recognised by the
soldiery with more warmth. He visited the en-
campments at Boulogne," and, afterwards, "ac-
companied with his Empress, who bore her
honours both gracefully and meekly, visited Aix-
la-Chapelle and the frontiers of Germany. They
received the congratulations of all the powers of
Europe, excepting England, Russia, and Sweden,
upon their new exaltation. . . . IBut the most
splendid and public recognition of his new rank
was yet to be made, by the formal act of coro-
nation, which, therefore. Napoleon determined
should take place witli circumstances of solem-
nity which had been beyond the reach of any tem-
poral prince, however powerful, for many ages.
. . . Though Charlemagne had repaired to Rome
to receive inauguration from the hands of the
Pontiff of that day, Napoleon resolved that he
who now owned the proud, and in Protestant
eyes profane, title of Vicar of Christ, should
travel to Prance to perform the coronation. . . .
The Pope, and the cardinals whom he consulted,
implored the illumination of Heaven upon their
councils ; but it was the stern voice of necessity
which assured them that, except at the risk of
dividing the Church by a schism, they could not
refuse to comply with Buonaparte's requisition.
The Pope left Rome on the 5th November. . . .
On the 2d December [1804] the coronation took
place in the ancient catliedral of Notre Dame.
. . . The crown having been blessed by the Pope,
Napoleon took it from the altar with his own
hands, and placed it on his brows. He then put
the diadem on the head of his Empress, as if de-
termined to show that his authority was the
child of his own actions. . . . The northern states
of Italy had followed the example of France
through all her change of models. . . . The
authorities of the Italian (late Cisalpine) Repub-
lic, had a prescient guess of what was expected
of them. A deputation appeared at Paris to de-
clare the absolute necessity which they felt, that
their government should assume a monarchical
and hereditary form. On the 17th March [1805],
they obtained an audience of the Emperor, to
whom they intimated the unanimous desire of
their countrymen that Napoleon, founder of the
Italian Republic, should be monarch of the Ital-
ian Kingdom. . . . Buonaparte granted the pe-
tition of the Italian States, and . . . upon tlie
11th April, . . . with his Empress, set off to go-
through the form of coronation as King of Ital}'.
. . . The new kingdom was, in all respects,
modeled on the same plan with the French Em-
pire. An order, called 'of the Iron Crown,' was
established on the footing of that of the Legion
of Honour. A large French force was taken into
Italian pay, and Eugene Beauharnais, the son of
Josephine by her former marriage, who enjoyed
and merited the confidence of his father-in-law,
was created viceroy, and appointed to represent,
in that character, the dignity of Napoleon. Napo-
1374
FRANCE, 1804-1805.
The Tliird Coalition.
FRANCE, 1805.
ieon did not leave Italy without further exten-
sion of his empire. Genoa, once the proud and
the powerful, resigned her independence, and licr
Doge presented to the Emperor a request tliat
the Ligurian Republic . . . should be considered
in future as a part of the French nation." — Sir
W. Scott, Life of Napoleon, ch. 4S(Paris ed., 1838).
— "Genoa and the Ligurian Republic were in-
corporated with France, June 3d 1805. . . . The
Duchies of Parma and Piacenza, which, together
with Guastalla, had been already seized, were
declared dependencies of the French Empire by
an imperial decree of July 31st. The principality
of Piombino was bestowed on Napoleon's sister
Eliza, wife of the Senator Bacciocchi, but on
conditions which retained it under the Emperor's
suzerainty : and the little state was increased by
the addition of the Republic of Lucca. " — T. H.
Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 7, ch. 11 (». 4).
Also in: C. Botta, Italy during the Consulate
and Empire of Napoleon, ch. 3-4. — Memoirs dic-
tated l>y Napoleon to Ms Generals at St. Helena, v. 6,
pp. 219-335.— J. Fouche, Memoirs, pp. 360-374.
— Count Miot de Melito, Memoirs, ch. 1(3-17. —
W. Hazlitt, Life of Napoleon, ch. 33-34 (v. 2).—
M'me de Remusat, Memoirs, bk. 1, ch. 4-10 (v. 1).
— P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon, v. 3, ch. 9-10. —
M. de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of Napoleon,
V. 8, ch. 1-13.
A. D. 1 80S (January — April).— The Third
European Coalition. — "In England Pitt re-
turned to office in May, 1804, and this in itself
was an evil omen for France. He enjoyed the
confidence, not only of his own nation but of
Europe, and he at once set to work to resume the
threads of that coalition of which England had
formerly directed the resources. Alexander I. of
Russia had begun to see through the designs of
Napoleon; he found that he had been duped in
the joint mediation in Germany, he resented the
occupation of Hanover and he ordered his court
to put on mourning for the duke of Enghieu.
Before long he broke off diplomatic relations with
Prance (Sept. 1804), and a Russian war was now
only a question of time. Austria was the power
most closely affected by Napoleon's assumption
of the imperial title. . . . While hastening to
acknowledge Napoleon, Austria was busied in
military preparations and began to resume its old
connection with England. Prussia was the power
on which France was accustomed to rely with
implicit confidence. But the occupation of Han-
over and the interference with the commerce of
the Elbe had weakened Frederick William III. 's
belief in the advantages of a neutral policy, and,
though he could not make up his mind to definite
action, he began to open negotiations with Russia
in view of a rupture with France. The fluctua-
tions of Prussian policy may be followed in the
alternating influence of the two ministers of for-
eign affairs, Haugwitz and Hardenberg. Mean-
while Napoleon, ignorant or reckless of the grow-
ing hostility of the great powers, continued his
aggressions at the expense of the lesser states.
. . . These acts gave the final impulse to the hos-
tile powers, and before Napoleon quitted Italy
the Coalition had been formed. On the 11th of
April, 1805, a final treaty was signed between
Russia and England. The two powers pledged
themselves to form an European league against
Prance, to conclude no peace without mutual con-
sent, to settle disputed points in a congress at
the end of the war, and to form a federal tribunal
for the maintenance of the system which should
then be established. The immediate objects of
the allies were the abolition of French rule in
Italy, Holland, Switzerland, and Hanover; the
restoration of Piedmont to the king of Sardinia;
the protection of Naples ; and the erection of a
permanent barrier against France by the union
of Holland and Belgium under the House of
Orange. The coalition was at once joined by Gus-
tavus IV. of Sweden, who inherited his father's
devotion to the cause of legitimate monarchy, and
who hoped to recover power in Pomerania. Aus-
tria, terrified for its Italian possessions by Bona-
parte's evident intention to subdue the whole
peninsula, was driven into the league. Prussia,
in spite of the attraction of recovering honour
and independence, refused to listen to the solici-
tations of England and Russia, and adhered to its
feeble neutrality. Of the other German states
Bavaria, Baden, and Wurtemberg were allies of
France. As far as effective operations were con-
cerned, the coalition consisted only of Austria
and Russia. Sweden and Naples, which had
joined secretly, could not make efforts on a great
scale, and England was as yet content with pro-
viding subsidies and the invaluable services of its
fleet. It was arranged that one Austrian army
under the archduke Charles should invade Lom-
bardy, while Mack, with a second army and the
aid of Russia, should occupy Bavaria and advance
upon the Rhine." — R. Lodge, Hist, of Modern
Europe, ch. 34, sect. 13-15.
Also m: Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, 1789-
1815, ch. 39 (». 9).
A. D. 1805 (March — December). — Napoleon's
plans and preparations for the invasion of
England. — Nelson's long pursuit of the French
fleets. — His victory and death at Trafalgar. —
Napoleon's rapid march to the Danube. — Ca-
pitulation of Mack at Ulm.^The French in
Vienna. — The great battle of Austerlitz. —
"While the coalition was forming, and Napo-
leon seemed wantonly to be insulting Europe
and ignoring the danger of exciting fresh enemies,
he was in fact urging on with all rapidity his
schemes for the invasion of England, which he
probably hoped might be so successful as to
paralyse all action on the part of the European
powers. The constantly repeated representa-
tions of his naval officers had forced him, much
against his will, to believe that his descent upon
England would be impracticable unless secured
by the presence of his fleet. In spite of the gen-
eral voice of those who knew the condition of
the French navy, he determined to act with his
fleet on the same principles as he would have
acted with his army ; a gigantic combination of
various squadrons was to be effected, and a fleet
great enough to destroy all hope of opposition to
sweep the Channel. For this purpose the 18
ships of the line at Brest under Admiral Gan-
theaume, the squadron at Rochefort under Ville-
neuve, and the Toulon fleet under Latouche-
Treville, were to unite. The last mentioned
admiral was Intrusted with the chief command.
Sailing up the coast of France, he was to liberate
from their blockade the squadrons of Rochefort
and Brest, and with their combined fleets appear
before Boulogne. But Latouche-Treville died,
and Napoleon intrusted his plans to Villeneuve.
Those plans, all of them arranged without re-
gard to the bad condition of the French ships,
or to the uncertainty of the weather, were tre-
1375
FRANCE, 1805.
Capitulation of
Mack.
FRANCE, 1805.
quently changed; at one time Villeneuve from
Toulon, and Slissiessy, his successor, at Roche-
fort, were to proceed to the West Indies, draw-
ing the English fleet thither ; then Gantheaums
was to appear from Brest, throw troops into Ire-
land, and thus cover the flotilla. At another
time, all the fleets were to assemble at the West
Indies, and, joining with the Spanish fleet at
Ferrol, appear in the Straits of Calais. To com-
plete this last measure Villeneuve set sail from
Toulon on the 30th of March 1805, joined Gra-
vina at Cadiz, and reached Martinique on the
13th of May with 20 ships of the line, and 7
frigates. His voyage was so slow that Missiessy
had returned from the West Indies to France,
and the junction failed. In hot pursuit of Ville-
neuve, Nelson, who had at length found out his
destination, had hurried. At Martinique Gan-
theaume, with the Brest fleet, should have joined
Villeneuve ; unfortunately forhim, Admiral Corn-
wallis blockaded his fleet. Villeneuve therefore
had to return to Europe alone, sailing for Ferrol
to pick up a squadron of 15 ships. He was then,
at the head of 35 ships, ordered to appear before
Brest, liberate Gantheaume, and appear in the
Channel. Back again in pursuit of him Nelson
sailed, but supposed that he would return to the
Mediterranean and not to Ferrol ; he therefore
again missed him ; but as he had found means to
inform the English Government that Villeneuve
was returning to Europe, Calder, with a fleet of
15 ships, was sent to intercept him. The fleets
encountered off Cape Finisterre. The French
had 27 vessels, Calder but 18, and after an inde-
cisive battle, in which two Spanish ships were
taken, he was afraid to renew the engagement,
and Villeneuve was thus enabled to reach Ferrol
in safety. However, all the operations towards
concentration had led to absolutely nothing, and
the English fleets, which the movements towards
the West Indies were to have decoyed from the
Channel, were either still off the coast of France
or in immediate pursuit of the fleet of Villeneuve.
Nelson returned to Gibralter, and as soon as he
found out where Villeneuve was, he joined his
fleet to that of Cornwallis before Brest, and him-
self returned to England. . . . Meanwhile Ville-
neuve had not been able to get ready for sea till
the 11th of August. ... He was afraid to ven-
ture northwards, and with the full approbation
of his Spanish colleague Gravina, determined to
avail himself of a last alternative which Napo-
leon had suggested, and sailed to Cadiz. This
was a fatal blow to the gigantic schemes of Na-
poleon. Up till the 22nd of August he still be-
lieved that Villeneuve would make his appear-
ance, and in fact wrote to him that day at Brest,
closing his letter with the words, 'England is
ours.' As the time for his great stroke drew
near he grew nervously anxious, constantly
watching the Channel for the approach of the fleet,
and at last, when his Minister of Marine, DecrSs,
told him that the fleet had gone to Cadiz, he
broke forth in bitter wrath against both his Minis-
ter and Villeneuve, whom he accused of the most
shameful weakness. But Napoleon was not a
man who let his success be staked upon one plan
alone. Though studiously hiding from his peo-
ple the existence of the coalition, and not scrup-
ling to have recourse to forged letters and fabri-
cated news for the purpose, he was fully aware
of its existence. . . . Without much difficulty,
therefore, he at once resigned his great plans
upon England, and directed his army towards
the eastern frontier." — J. F. Bright, Hist, of
England, period 3, pp. 1261-1364. — " In the first
days of September, 1805, Napoleon's great army
was in full march across France and Germany,
to attain the Danube. . . . The Allies . . . had
projected four separate and ill-combined attacks;
the first on Hanover and Holland by a Russian
and British force ; the second, on Lower Italy by
a similar body; the third, by a great Austrian
army on Upper Italy; and the fourth, by a
United Austrian and Russian army, moving
across Southern Germany to the Rhine. ... By
this time, the Austrian Mack had drawn close to
the Inn, in order to compel Bavaria to join the
Allies, and was even making his way to the Iller,
but his army was far distant from that of the
Russian chief, Kutusoff, and still further from
that of Buxhowden, the one in Galicia, the other
in Poland. . . . Napoleon had seized this posi-
tion of affairs, with the comprehensive know-
ledge of the theatre of war, and the skill of ar-
ranging armies upon it, in which he has no equals
among modern captains. He opposed Massena
to the Archdukes, with a much weaker force,
confident that his great lieutenant could hold
them in check. He neglected the attacks from
the North Sea, and the South ; but he resolved to
strike down Mack, in overwhelming strength,
should he advance without his Russian supports.
. . . The great mass of the Grand Army had
reached the Main and Rhine by the last week of
September. The left wing, joined by the Ba-
varian forces, and commanded by Bernadotte and
Marmont, had marched from Hanover and Hol-
land, and was around Wurtzburg; the centre,
the corps of Soult, and Davoust, moved from the
channel, was at Spire and Mannheim, and the
right wing, formed of the corps of Ney and
Lannes, with the Imperial Guard, and the horse
of Murat, filled the region between Carlsruhe and
Strasburg, the extreme right under Augereau,
which had advanced from Brittany, being still
behind but drawing towards Huningen. By this
time Mack was upon the Iller, holding the for-
tress of Ulm on the upper Danube, and extending
his forces thence to Memmingen. . . . By the first
days of October the great French masses . . .
were in full march from the Rhine to the Main,
across Wilrtemberg and the Franconian plains;
and cavalry filled the approaches to the Black
Forest, in order to deceive and perplex Mack.
. . . The Danube ere long was reached and
crossed, at Donauworth, Ingolstadt, and other
points ; and Napoleon already stood on the rear
of his enemy, interposing between him and
Vienna, and cut him off from the Russians, even
now distant. The net was quickly drawn round
the ill-fated Mack. ... By the third week of
October, the Grand Army had encompassed the
Austrians on every side, and Napoleon held his
quarry in his grasp. Mack . . . had not the
heart to strike a desperate stroke, and to risk a
battle ; and he capitulated at Ulm on the 19th of
October. Two divisions of his army had con-
trived to break out; but one was pursued and
nearly destroyed by Murat, and the other was
compelled by Augereau to lay down its arms, as
it was on its way to the hills of the Tyrol. An
army of 85,000 men had thus, so to speak, been
well-nigh effaced; and not 20,000 had effected
their escape. France meanwhile had met a
crushing disaster on the element which England
1376
FRANCE, 1805.
Trafalgar
and Austerlitz.
FRANCE, 1805.
had made her own. We have seen how Ville-
neuve had put into Cadiz, afraid to face tlie hos-
tile fleets off Brest, and how tliis had baffled the
project of the descent. Napoleon was indignant
with his ill-fated admiral. ... At a hint of dis-
grace the susceptible Frenchman made up his
mind, at any risk, to fight. By this time Nelson
had left England, and was off Cadiz with a pow-
erful fleet; and he actually weakened his force
by four sail-of-the-line, in order to lure his ad-
versary out. On the 20tlx of October, 1805, the
allied fleet was in the open sea; it had been de-
clared at a council of war, that a lost battle was
almost certain, so bad was the condition of many
of the crews ; but Villeneuve was bent on chal-
lenging Fate ; and almost courted defeat, in his
despair. ... On the morning of the 21st, the
allied fleet, 33 war ships, and a number of frig-
ates, was off Cape Trafalgar, making for the
Straits. . . . Nelson advanced slowly against his
doomed enemy, with 37 ships and their attendant
frigates ; the famous signal floated from his mast,
' England expects every man to do his duty ' ;
and, at about noon, Collingwood pierced Ville-
neuve's centre, nearly destroying the Santa Anna
with a single broadside. Ere long Nelson had
broken Villeneuve 's line, with the Victory, caus-
ing frightful destruction; and as other British
ships came up by degrees they relieved the lead-
ing ships from the pressure of their foes, and
completed the ruin already begun. At about
one, Nelson met his death wound, struck by
a shot from the tops of the Redoutable. . . .
Pierced through and through, the shattered allied
centre was soon a collection of captured wrecks.
. . . Only 11 ships out of 33 escaped; aud the
burning Achille, like the Orient at the Nile,
added to the grandeur and horrors of an appal-
ling scene. Villeneuve, who had fought most
honourably in the Bucentaure, was compelled to
strike his flag before the death of Nelson. The
van of the allies that had fled at Trafalgar, was
soon afterwards captured by a British squadron.
Though dearly bought by the death of Nelson,
the victory may be compared to Lepanto ; and it
blotted France out as a great Power on the ocean.
Napoleon . . . never tried afterwards to meet
England at sea. . . . His success, at this mo-
ment, had been so wonderful, that what he
called ' the loss of a few ships at sea, ' seemed a
trifling and passing rebuff of fortune. . . . He
had discomfitted the whole plan of the Allies;
and the failure of the attack on the main scene
of the theatre had caused all the secondary at-
tacks to fail. . . . Napoleon, throwing out de-
tachments to protect his flanks, had entered
Vienna on the 14th of November. . . . The
House of Hapsburg and its chief had fled. . . .
Extraordinary as his success had been, the posi-
tion of the Emperor had, in a few days, become
grave. . . . Napoleon had not one hundred
thousand men in hand — apart from the bodies
that covered his flanks — to make head against
his converging enemies. Always daring, how-
ever, he resolved to attack the Allies before they
could receive aid from Prussia ; and he marched
from Vienna towards the close of November,
having taken careful precautions to guard his
rear. ... By this time the Allies were around
Olmiitz, the Archdukes were not many marches
away, and a Prussian army was nearly ready to
move. Had the Russians and Austrians fallen
back from Olmiitz and effected their junction
13
with the Archdukes, they could, therefore, hive
opposed the French with a force more than two-
fold in numbers. . . . But the folly and pre-
sumption which reigned among the young nobles
surrounding the Czar — Alexander was now at
the head of his army — brought on the Coalition
deserved punishment, and pedantry had its part
in an immense disaster. The force of Napoleon
appeared small, his natural line of retreat was
exposed, and a theorist in the Austrian camp
persuaded the Czar and the Austrian Emperor,
who was at the head of his troops at Olmiitz, to
consent to a magnificent plan of assailing Napo-
leon by the well-known method of Freflerick
the Great, in the Seven Years' War, of turning
his right wing, by an attack made, in the oblique
order, in great force, and of cutting him off from
his base at Vienna, and driving him, routed, into
Bohemia. This grand project on paper, which,
involved a march across the front of the hostile
army within reach of the greatest of masters of
war, was hailed with exultation. . . . The Allies
were soon in full march from Olmiitz, and prep-
arations were made for the decisive movement
in the night of the 1st December, 1805. Napo-
leon had watched the reckless false step being
made by his foes with unfeigned delight ; ' that
army is mine,' he proudly exclaimed. . . . The
sun of Austerlitz rose on the 3nd, the light of
victory often invoked by Napoleon. . . . The
dawn of the winter's day revealed three large
columns, succeeded by a fourth at no great dis-
tance, toiling through a tract of marshes and
frozen lakes, to outflank Napoleon's right on the
Goldbach, the allied centre, on the tableland of
Prittzen, immediately before the French front,
having been dangerously weakened by this great
turning movement. The assailants were opposed
by a small force only, under Davoust, one of the
best of the marshals. . . . Ere long Napoleon,
who, like a beast of prey, had reserved his strength
until it was time to spring, launched Soult in
force against the Russian and Austrian centre,
enfeebled by the detachment against the French
right and exposed to the whole weight of Napo-
leon's attacks ; and Pratzeu was stormed after a
fierce struggle, in which Bernadotte gave the re-
quired aid to Soult. The allied centre was thus
rent asunder. Launes meanwhile had defeated the
allied right. . . . Napoleon now turned with
terrible energy and In overwhelming strength
against the four columns, that had assailed his
right, but had begun to retreat. His victorious
centre was aided by his right, now set free ; the
Russians and Austrians were struck with panic,
a horrible scene of destruction followed, the fly-
ing troops were slain or captured in thousands,
and multitudes perished, engulfed in the lakes,
the French artillery shattering their icy surface.
The rout was decisive, complete, and appalling ;
about 80,000 of the Allies were engaged; they
lost all their guns and nearly half their numbers,
and the remains of their army were a worthless
wreck. Napoleon had only 60,000 men in the
fight. .... The memorable campaign of 1805 is,
perhaps, the grandest of Napoleon's exploits in
war." — W. O'C. Morris, Napoleoii, ch. 7.
Also in : A. Thiers, Hist, of the Consulate and
Empire, bk. 33 (». 3).— R. Sou they. Life of Nel-
son, ch. 8-9 (». 3). — W. C. Russell, Nelson and
the Naval Supremacy of Eng., ch. 17-20. — Lord
Nelson, Dispatches and Letters, v. 6-7. — Capt. E.
J. de la Gravifere, Sketches of the last Naval War,
77
FRANCE, 1805.
King-malcing.
FRANCE, 1806.
pt. 6 (s. 2). — C. Adams, Oreat Campaigns in Eu-
rope, from 1796 to 1870, ch. 3. — Baron de Marbot,
Memoirs, v. 1, ch. 30-23.— A. T. Mahan, Influ-
etwes of Sea Power upon the French Rev. , ch. 15-
16 (». 2).
A. D. 1805-1806 (December— August).— The
Peace of Presburg. — Humiliation of Austria.
— Formation of the Confederation of the Rhine.
— Extinction of the Holy Roman Empire. — The
goading of Prussia to war. See Germany:
A. D. 1805-1806; and 1806 (.J.Ajf dary— August).
A. D. 1805-1806 (December — September). —
Dethronement of the dynasty of Naples. — Be-
stowal of the crown upon Joseph Bonaparte.
— The treaty of Presburg was " immediately fol-
lowed by a measure hitherto unprecedented in
European history — the pronouncing a sentence
of dethronement against an independent sover-
eign, for no other cause than his having con-
templated hostilities against the French Emperor.
On the 26th December [1805] a menacing proc-
lamation proceeded from Presburg . . . vphich
evidently bore marks of Napoleon's composition,
against the house of Naples. The conqueror an-
nounced that Marshal St. Cyr would advance by
rapid strides to Naples, ' to punish the treason
of a criminal queen, and precipitate her from the
throne. We have pardoned that infatuated king,
who thrice has done everything to ruin himself.
Shall we pardon him a fourth time ? . . . No !
The dynasty of Naples has ceased to reign — its
existence is incompatible with the repose of
Europe and the honour of my crown. "... The
ominous announcement, made from the depths of
Moravia, that the dynasty of Naples had ceased
to reign, was not long allowed to remain a dead
letter. Massena was busily employed, in Janu-
ary, in collecting his forces in the centre of Italy,
and before the end of that month 50,000 men,
under the command of Joseph Buonaparte, had
crossed the Pontifical States and entered the
Neapolitan territory in three columns, which
marched on Gaeta, Capua, and Itri. Resistance
was impossible ; the feeble Russian and English
forces which had disembarked to support the
Italian levies, finding the whole weight of the
war likely to be directed against them, withdrew
to Sicily ; the court, thunderstruck by the men-
acing proclamation of 27th December, speedily
followed their example. . . . In vain the intrepid
Queen Caroline, who still remained at Naples,
armed the lazzaroni, and sought to infuse into
the troops a portion of her own indomitable
courage; she was seconded by none; Capua
opened its gates; Gaeta was invested; the Cam-
pagna filled with the invaders ; she, vanquished
but not subdued, compelled to yield to necessity,
followed her timid consort to Sicily ; and, on the
15th February, Naples beheld its future sovereign,
Joseph Buonaparte, enter its walls. . . . During
the first tumult of invasion, the peasantry of
Calabria . . . submitted to the enemy. . . . But
the protraction of the siege of Gaeta, which oc-
cupied Massena with the principal army of the
French, gave them time to recover from their
consternation. ... A general insurrection took
place in the beginning of March, and the peas-
ants stood firm in more than one position; but
they were unable to withstand the shock of the
veterans of France, and in a decisive action in
the plain of Campo-Tenese their tumultuary
levies, though 15,000 strong, were entirely dis-
persed. The victorious Reynier penetrated even
to Reggio, and the standards of Napoleon waved
on its towers, in sight of the English videttes
on the shores of Sicily. When hostilities had
subsided, Joseph repaired in person to the theatre
of war. ... He received at Savigliano, the prin-
cipal town of the province, the decree by which
Napoleon created him king of the Two Sicilies.
By so doing, however, he was declared not to
lose his contingent right of succession to the
throne of France ; but the two crowns were never
to be united." — Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe,
1789-1815, ch. 40, sect. 150, and 43, sect. 31-23 {i\
9). — "Joseph's tenure of his new dominions was
yet Incomplete. The fortress of Gaeta still held
out, . . . and the British in Sicily (who had
already taken the Isle of Capri, close to the capi-
tal) sent 5,000 men to their aid under Sir John
Stuart, who encountered at Maida (July 6) a
French corps of 7,500, under Reynier. The
battle presented one of the rare instances in which
French and British troops have actually crossed
bayonets; but French enthusiasm sank before
British intrepidity, and the enemy were driven
from the field with the loss of half their number.
The victory of Maida had a prodigious moral
effect in raising the spirits and self-confidence of
the British soldiery; but its immediate results
were less considerable. The French were indeed
driven from Calabria, but the fall of Gaeta (July
18th), after the loss of its brave governor, the
Prince of Hesse-Philipsthal, released the main
army under Massena : the British, exposed to be
attacked by overwhelming numbers, re-embarked
(Sept. 5) for Palermo, and the Calabrian insurrec-
tion was suppressed with great bloodshed. But
an amnesty was at length . . . published by
Joseph, who devoted himself with great zeal and
admirable judgment to heal the wounds of his
distracted kingdom." — Epitome of Alison's Hist,
of Eu.ro2)e, sect. 398.
Also ln : P. Colletta, Sist. of tlie Kingdom of
I^aples, bk. 5, ch. 4, and bk. 6, ch. 1-3. — C. Botta,
Italy during the Consulate and Empire of Napo-
leon, ch. 4.
A. D. 1806 (January — October). — Napoleon's
triumphant return to Paris. — Death of Pitt. —
Peace negotiations with England. — King-
making and prince-making by the Corsican
Csesar. — On the 37th of December, the day after
the signing of the Treaty of Presburg, Napoleon
left Vienna for Paris. "En route for Paris he
remained a week at Munich to be present at the
marriage of Eugene Beauharnais to the Princess
Augusta, daughter of the King of Bavaria. Jose-
phine joined him, and the whole time was passed
in fetes and rejoicings. On this occasion he pro-
claimed Eugene his adopted son, and, in default
of issue of his own, his successor in the kingdom
of Italy. Accompanied by Josephine, Napoleon
re-entered Paris on the 36th of January, 1806,
amidst the most enthusiastic acclamations. The
national vanity was raised to the highest pitch by
the glory and extent of territory he had acquired.
The Senate at a solemn audience besought him
to accept the title of ' the Great ' ; and public re-
joicings lasting many days attested his popularity.
An important political event in England opened
new views of security and peace to the empire.
William Pitt, the implacable enemy of the Revo-
lution, had died on the 33rd of January, at the
early age of 47; and the Government was en-
trusted to the hands of his great opponent, Charles
James Fox. The disastrous results of the war of
1378
PKANCE, 1806.
British
Orders in Council.
FRANCE, 1806-1810.
which Pitt had been the mainstay probably has-
tened his death. After the capitulation of Ulm
he never rallied. The well-known friendship of
Fox for Napoleon, added to his avowed prin-
ciples, afforded the strongest hopes that England
and France were at length destined to cement the
peace of the world by entering into friendly rela-
tions. Aided by Talleyrand, who earnestly coun-
selled peace. Napoleon made overtures to the
English Government through Lord Yarmouth,
who was among the detenus. He offered to yield
the long-contested point of Malta — consenting to
the continued possession of that island, the Cape
of Good Hope, and other conquests in the East
and West Indies by Great Britain, and proposing
generally that the treaty should be conducted on
the uti possidetis principle: that is, allowing each
party to retain whatever it had acquired in the
course of the war. Turkey acknowledged Na-
poleon as Emperor and entered into amicable re-
lations with the French nation; and what was
still more important, Russia signed a treaty of
peace in July, influenced by the pacific inclina-
tions of the English Minister. Napoleon resolved
to surround his throne with an order of nobles, and
to place members of his family on the thrones of
the conquered countries adjoining France in order
that they might become parts of his system and
co-operate in his plans. Two decrees of the 31st
of March declared Joseph Bonaparte King of Na-
ples, and Murat Grand Duke of Berg and Cleves.
Louis Bonaparte was made King of Holland a
few months afterwards, and Jerome King of
Westphalia in the following year. The Princess
Pauline received the principality of Guastalla,
and Talleyrand, Bernadotte, and Berthier those
of Benevento, Ponte-Corvo, and Neufchatel. Fif-
teen dukedoms were created and bestowed on the
most distinguished statesmen and generals of the
empire, each with an income amounting to a fif-
teenth part of the revenue of the province at-
tached to it. These became grand fiefs of the
empire. Cambacerfes and Lebrun were made
Dukes of Parma and Placenza ; Savary, Duke of
Rovigo ; Junot, of Abrantes ; Lannes, of Monte-
bello, &c. The manners of some of these Repub-
lican soldiers were ill adapted to courtly forms,
and afforded amusement to the members of the
ancient and legitimate order. . . . Napoleon's
desire to conciliate and form alliances with the
established dynasties and aristocracies of Europe
kept pace with his daring encroachments on their
hitherto exclusive dignity. Besides the marriage
of Eugene Beauharnais to a Princess of Bavaria,
an alliance was concluded between the hereditary
Prince of Baden and Mademoiselle Stephanie
Beauharnais, a niece of the Empress. The old
French noblesse were also encouraged to appear
at the Tuileries. During the Emperor's visit at
Munich the Republican calendar was abolished
and the usual mode of computing time restored
in France. . . . The negotiations with England
went on tardily, and the news of Fox's alarming
state of health excited the gravest fears in the
French Government. Lord Lauderdale arrived
in Paris, on the part of England, in the mouth of
August; but difficulties were continually started,
and before anything was decided the death of Fox
gave the finishing blow to all hope of peace.
Lord Lauderdale demanded his passports and left
Paris in October. Napoleon wished to add Sicily
to his brother's new kingdom of Naples; but
British ships were able to protect the King and
Queen of Naples in that insular position, and the
English Government refused to desert their allies
on this occasion or to consent to any compensa-
tion or adjustment offered. On this point prin-
cipally turned the failure of the attempt at peace
as far as can be discovered from the account of
the negotiations. " — R. H. Home, Hist, of Napo-
leon, ch. 36.
Also in : M'me de Remusat, Memoirs, c7i. 16-31
(b. 8). — Duke of Rovigo, Memmrs, v. 1, pt. 2, ch.
18-21.— P. Lanfrey, Sist. of Napoleon, e. 3, ch. 15.
A. D. i8o6 (October).— The subjugation of
Prussia at Jena. See Germany: A. D. 1806
(October).
A. D. 1806-1807. — Napoleon's campaign
against the Russians. — Eylau and Friedland.
See Germany: A. D. 1806-1807; and 1807 (Feb-
nu.uiY — June).
A. D. 1806-1810. — Commercial vyarfare with
England. — British Orders in Council and Na-
poleon's Berlin and Milan Decrees. — The
"Continental System." — "As the war ad-
vanced, after the Peace of Amiens, the neutrals
became bolder and more aggressive. American
ships were constantly arriving at Dutch and
French ports witli sugar, coffee, and other pro-
ductions of the French and Spanish West Indies.
And East India goods were imported by them
into Spain, Holland, and France. . . . By the
rivers and canals of Germany and Flanders goods
were floated into the warehouses of the enemy, or
circulated for the supply of his customers in
neutral countries. ... It was a general com-
plaint, therefore, that the enemy carried on
colonial commerce under the neutral flag, cheaply
as well as safely ; that he was enabled not only
to elude British hostilities, but to rival British
merchants and planters in the European markets ;
that by the same means the hostile treasuries
were filled with a copious stream of revenue ; and
that by this licentious use of the neutral flag, the
enemy was enabled to employ his whole military
marine for purposes of offensive war, without
being obliged to maintain a squadron or a ship
for the defence of his colonial ports. . . . Such
complaints made against neutral states found a
powerful exposition in a work entitled ' War in
Disguise and the Frauds of the Neutral Flag,'
supposed to have been written by Mr. James
Stephen, the real author of the orders in Coun-
cil. The British Government did not see its
way at once to proceed in the direction of
prohibiting to neutral ships the colonial trade,
which they had enjoyed for a considerable time;
but the first step was taken to paralyse the re-
sources of the enemy, and to restrict the trade of
neutrals, by the issue of an order in Council in
May 1806, declaring that all the coasts, ports,
and rivers from the Elbe to Brest should be con-
sidered blockaded, though the only portion of
those coasts rigorously blockaded was that in-
cluded between the Ostend and the mouth of the
Seine, in the ports of which preparations were
made for the invasion of England. The northern
ports of Germany and Holland were left partly
open, and the navigation of the Baltic altogether
free. Napoleon, then in the zenith of his power,
saw, in this order in Council, a fresh act of wan-
tonness, and he met it by the issue of the Berlin
decree of November 21, 1806. In that document,
remarkable for its boldness and vigour. Napoleon
charged England with having set at nought the
dictates of International law, with having made
1379
FRANCE, 1806-1810.
The Berlin and
Milan Decrees.
FRANCE, 1806-1810.
prisoners of war of private individuals, and with
having taken the crews out of merchant ships.
He charged this country with having captured
private property at sea, extended to commercial
ports the restrictions of blockade applicable only
to fortified places, declared as blockaded places
which were not invested by naval forces, and
abused the right of blockade in order to benefit
her own trade at the expense of the commerce of
Continental states. He asserted the right of
combating the enemy with the same arms used
against himself, especially when such enemy
Ignored all ideas of justice and every liberal
sentiment which civilisation imposes. He an-
noimced his resolution to apply to England the
same usages which she had established in her
maritime legislation. He laid down the princi-
ples which France was resolved to act upon until
England should recognise that the rights of war
are the same on land as on sea. . . . And upon
these premises the decree ordered, 1st, That the
British islands should be declared in a state of
blockade. 2nd, That all commerce and corre-
spondence with the British islands should be pro-
hibited ; and that letters addressed to England or
Englishmen, written in the English language,
should be detained and taken. 3rd, That every
British subject found in a country occupied by
French troops, or by those of their allies, should
be made a prisoner of war. 4th, That all mer-
chandise and property belonging to British sub-
jects should be deemed a good prize. 5th, That
all commerce in English merchandise should be
prohibited, and that all merchandise belonging to
England or her colonies, and of British manufac-
ture, should be deemed a good prize. And 6th,
That no vessel coming direct from England or her
colonies be allowed to enter any French port, or
any port subject to French authority ; and that
every vessel which, by means of a false declara-
tion, should evade such regulations, should at
once be captured. The British Government lost
no time in retaliating against France for so bold
a course; and, on January 7, 1807, an order in
Council was issued, which, after reference to the
orders issued by France, enjoined that no vessel
should be allowed to trade from one enemy's
port to another, or from one port to another of
a French ally's coast shut against English ves-
sels; and ordered the commanders of the ships
of war and privateers to warn every neutral
vessel coming from any such port, and destined
to another such port, to discontinue her voy-
age, and that any vessel, after being so warned,
which should be found proceeding to another
such port should be captured and considered as
lawful prize. This order in Council having
reached Napoleon at Warsaw, he immediately
ordered the confiscation of all English merchan-
dise and colonial produce found in the Hanseatic
Towns. . . . But Britain, in return, went a step
further, and, by order in Council of November
11, 1807, declared all the ports and places of
France, and those of her allies, and of all coun-
tries where the English flag was excluded, even
though they were not at war with Britain, should
be placed under the same restrictions for com-
merce and navigation as if they were blockaded,
and consequently that ships destined to those
ports should be liable to the visit of British
cruisers at a British station, and there subjected
to a tax to be imposed by the British Parliament.
Napoleon was at Milan when this order in Coun-
cil was issued, and forthwith, on December 17,
tlie famous decree appeared, by which he im-
posed on neutrals just the contrary of what was
prescribed to them by England, and further de-
clared that every vessel, of whatever nation, that
submitted to the order in Council of November
11, should by that very act become denational-
ised, considered as British property, and con-
demned as a good prize. The decree placed the
British islands in a state of blockade, and ordered
that every ship, of whatever nation, and with
whatever cargo, proceeding from English ports
or English colonies to countries occupied by
English troops, or going to England, should be a
good prize. This England answered by the order
in Council of April 26, 1809, which revoked the
order of 1807 as regards America, but confirmed
the blockade of all the ports of France and Hol-
land, their colonies and dependencies. And then
France, still further incensed against England,
issued the tariff of Trianon, dated August 5,
1810, completed by the decree of St. Cloud of
September 12, and of Fontainebleau of October
19, which went the length of ordering the seizure
and burning of all British goods found in France,
Germany, Holland, Italy, Spain, and in every
place occupied by French troops. . . . The
princes of the Rhenish Confederation hastened to
execute it, some for the purpose of enriching
themselves by the wicked deed, some out of
hatred towards the English, and some to show
their devotion towards their master. From Carls-
ruhe to Munich, from Cassel to Dresden and
Hamburg, everywhere, bonfires were made of
English goods. And so exacting were the
French that when Frankfort exhibited the least
hesitation in carrying out the decree, French
troops were sent to execute the order. By means
such as these [known as the Continental System
of Napoleon] the commerce of the world was
greatly deranged, if not destroyed altogether,
and none suffered more from them than England
herself." — L. Levi, Hist, of British Cammerce, pt.
2, ch. 4 {with appended text of Orders and Decrees).
— "The object of the Orders in Council was
. . . twofold : to embarrass France and Napoleon
by the prohibition of direct import and export
trade, of all external commerce, which for them
could only be carried on by neutrals ; and at tlie
same time to force into the Continent all the
British products or manufactures that it could
take. . . . The whole system was then, and has
since been, roundly abused as being in no sense
a military measure, but merely a gigantic exhi-
bition of commercial greed ; but this simply begs
the question. To win her fight Great Britain
was obliged not only to weaken Napoleon, but
to increase her own strength. The battle be-
tween the sea and the land was to be fought out
on Commerce. England had no army wherewith
to meet Napoleon ; Napoleon had no navy to cope
with that of his enemy. As in the case of an
impregnable fortress, the only alternative for
either of these contestants was to reduce the
other by starvation. On the common frontier,
the coast line, they met in a deadly strife in
which no weapon was drawn. The imperial sol-
diers were turned into coast-guards-men to shut
out Great Britain from her markets ; the British
ships became revenue cutters to prohibit the
trade of France. The neutral carrier, pocketing
his pride, offered his service to either for pay,
and the other then regarded him as taking part
1380
FRANCE, 1806-1810.
Potver and weakness
of the Empire.
FRANCE, 1807.
In hostilities. The ministry, in the exigencies of
debate, betrayed some lack of definite conviction
as to their precise aim. Sometimes the Orders
were justified as a military measure of retalia-
tion ; sometimes the need of supporting British
commerce as essential to her life and to her naval
strength was alleged; and their opponents in
either case taunted them with inconsistency.
Napoleon, with despotic simplicity, announced
clearly his purpose of ruining England through
her trade, and the ministry really needed no
other arguments than his avowals. ' Salus civi-
tatis suprema lex.' To call the measures of
either not military, is as inaccurate as it would
be to call the ancient practice of circumvallation
unmilitary, because the only weapon used for it
was the spade. . . . The Orders in Council re-
ceived various modifications, due largely to the
importance to Great Britain of the American
market, which absorbed a great part of her manu-
factures; but these modifications, though sensi-
bly lightening the burden upon neutrals and in-
troducing some changes of form, in no sense
departed from the spirit of the originals. The
entire series was finally withdrawn in June, 1813,
but too late to avert the war with the United
States, which was declared in the same month.
Napoleon never revoked his Berlin and Milan
decrees, although by a trick he induced an over-
eager President of the United States to believe
that he had done so. . . . The true function of
Great Britain in this long struggle can scarcely
be recognized unless there be a clear appre-
ciation of the fact that a really great national
movement, like the French Revolution, or a
really great military power under an incompar-
able general, like the French Empire under
Napoleon, is not to be brought to terms by or-
dinary military successes, which simply destroy
the organized force opposed. ... If the course
of aggression which Bonaparte had inherited
from the Revolution was to continue, there were
needed, not the resources of the Continent only,
but of the world. There was needed also a
diminution of ultimate resistance below the
stored-up aggressive strength of France ; other-
wise, however procrastinated, the time must
come when the latter should fail. On both these
points Great Britain withstood Napoleon. She
shut him off from the world, and by the same
act prolonged her own powers of endurance be-
yond his power of aggression. This in tlie retro-
spect of history was the function of Great Britain
in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period ; and
that the successive ministries of Pitt and his fol-
lowers pursued the course best fitted, upon the
whole, to discharge that function, is their justifi-
cation to posterity." — Capt. A. T. Mahan, The
Influence of Sea Power upon the French Rev. and
Empire, eh. 18-19 (v. 3).
Also in: H. Adams, Sist. of the U. S., v. 3,
cJi. 4 and 16, and v. 4, ch. 4. — Lord Brougham,
Life and Times, by himself, ch. 10 (». 2). See
also : United States op Am. : A. D. 1804r-
1809.
A. D. 1807 (February — September). — The
Turkish alliance. — Ineffective attempts of
England against Constantinople and in Egypt.
—See Turks: A. D. 1806-1807.
A. D. 1807 (June — July). — The Treaties of
Tilsit with Russia and Prussia. — The latter
shorn of half her territory. — Formation of the
kingdom of Westphalia. — Secret understand-
ings between Napoleon and the Czar. See
Germany: A. D. 1807 (June— July).
A. D. 1807 (July— December).— The seemmg
power and real weakness of Napoleon's em-
pire.— "The dangers . . . that lay hid under
the new arrangement of the map of Europe [by
the Treaty of Tilsit], and in the results of French
conquests, were as yet withdrawn from almost
every eye ; and the power of Napoleon was now
at its height, though his empire was afterwards
somewhat enlarged. ... If England still stood
in arms against it, she was without an avowed
ally on the Continent ; and, drawing to itself the
great Power of the North, it appeared to threaten
the civilized world with that universal and set-
tled domination which had not been seen since the
fall of Rome. The Sovereign of Prance from
the Scheldt to the Pyrenees, and of Italy from
the Alps to the Tiber, Napoleon held under his
immediate sway the fairest and most favored
part of the Continent; and yet this was only the
seat and centre of that far-spreading and im-
mense authority. One of his brothers, Louis,
governed the Bataviau Republic, converted into
the kingdom of Holland ; another, Joseph, wore
the old Crown of Naples ; and a third, Jerome,
sat on the new throne of Westphalia ; and he had
reduced Spain to a simple dependency, while,
with Austria humbled and Prussia crushed, he
was supreme in Germany from the Rhine to the
Vistula, through his confederate, subject, or
allied States. This enormous Empire, with its
vassal appendages, rested on great and victorious
armies in possession of every point of vantage
from the Niemen to the Adige and the Garonne,
and proved as yet to be irresistible ; and as Ger-
many, Holland, Poland, and Italy swelled the
forces of France with large contingents, the
whole fabric of conquest seemed firmly cemented.
Nor was the Empire the mere creation of brute
force and the spoil of the sword ; its author en-
deavoured, in some measure, to consolidate it
through better and more lasting influences. Na-
poleon, indeed, suppressed the ideas of 1789
everywhere, but he introduced his Code and
large social reforms into most of the vassal or
allied States ; he completed the work of destroy-
ing Feudalism which the Revolution had daringly
begun ; and he left a permanent mark on the face
of Europe, far beyond the limit of Republican
France, in innumerable monuments of material
splendour. . . . Nor did the Empire at this time
appear more firmly established abroad than within
the limits of the dominant State which had be-
come mistress of Continental Europe. The pros-
perity of the greater part of France was im-
mense ; the finances, fed by the contributions of
war, seemed overflowing and on the increase;
and if sounds of discontent were occasionally
heard, they were lost in the universal acclaim
which greeted the author of the national great-
ness, and the restorer of social order and welfare.
... In the splendour and success of the Imperial
era, the animosities and divisions of the past dis-
appeared, and France seemed to form a united
people. If, too, the cost of conquest was great,
and exacted a tribute of French blood, the mili-
tary power of the Empire shone with the bright-
est radiance of martial renown ; Marengo, Aus-
terlitz, Jena, and Friedland could in part console
even thinned households. . . . The magnificent
public works with which Napoleon adorned this
part of his reign increased this sentiment of
1381
FRANCE, 1807.
The crushed
Nation.
FRANCE, 1807-1808.
national grandeur ; it was now tliat the Madeleine
raised its front, and the Column, moulded from
captured cannon; . . . and Paris, decked out
with triumphal arches, with temples of glory,
and with stately streets, put on the aspect of
ancient Rome, gathering into her lap the gor-
geous spoils of subjugated and dependent races.
. . . Yet, notwithstanding its apparent strength,
this structure of conquest and domination was
essentially weak, and liable to decay. The work
of the sword, and of new-made power, it was In
opposition to the nature of things. . . . The ma-
terial and even social benefits conferred by the
Code, and reform of abuses, could not compen-
sate vanquished but martial races for the mise-
ry and disgrace of subjection; and, apart from
the commercial oppression [of the Continental
System, which destroyed commerce in order to do
injury to England], . . . the exasperating pres-
sure of French officials, the exactions of the vic-
torious French armies, and the severities of the
conscription introduced among them, provoked
discontent in the vassal States on which the yoke
of the Empire weighed. . . . The prostration,
too, of Austria and Prussia . . . had a direct
tendency to make these powers forget their old
discords in common suffering, and to bring to an
end the internal divisions through which France
had become supreme in Germany. . . . The tri-
umphant policy of Tilsit contained the germs of
a Coalition against France more formidable than
she had yet experienced. At the same time, the
real strength of the instrument by which Napo-
leon maintained his power was being gradually
but surely impaired; the imperial armies were
more and more filled with raw conscripts and ill-
affected allies, as their size increased with the
extension of his rule ; and the French element in
them, on which alone reliance could be placed in
possible defeat, was being dissipated, exhausted,
and wasted. . . . Nor was the Empire, within
France Itself, free from elements of instability
and decline. The finances, well administered as
they were, were so burdened by the charges of
war that they were only sustained by conquest ;
and, flourishing as their condition seemed, they
had been often cruelly strained of late, and were
unable to bear the shock of disaster. The sea-
ports were beginning to suffer from the policy
adopted to subdue England. . . . Meanwhile,
the continual demands on the youth of the nation
for never-ceasing wars were gradually telling on
its military power; Napoleon, after Eylau, had
had recourse to the ruinous expedient of taking
beforehand the levies which the conscription
raised ; and though complaints were as yet rare,
the anticipation of the resources of France,
which filled the armies with feeble boys, unequal
to the hardships of a rude campaign, had been
noticed at home as well as abroad. Nor were the
moral ills of this splendid despotism less certain
than its bad material results. . . . The inevitable
tendency of the Empire, even at the time of its
highest glory, was to lessen manliness and self-
reliance, to fetter and demoralize the human
mind, and to weaken whatever public virtue and
mental independence France possessed; and its
authority had already begun to disclose some of
the harsher features of Caesarian despotism."—
W. O'C. Morris, The French Rev. and First Em-
pire, ch. 12. — " Notwithstanding so many brilliant
and specious appearances, France did not possess
either true prosperity or true greatness. She
was not really prosperous ; for not only was there
no feeling of securitj', a necessary condition for
the welfare of nations, but all the evils produced
by so many j'ears of war still weighed heavily on
her. . . . She was not really great, for all her
great men had either been banished or put to
silence. She could still point with pride to her
generals and soldiers, although the army, which,
if brave as ever, had gradually sunk from the
worship of the countrj' and liberty to that of
glory, and from the worship of glory to that of
riches, was corrupt and degenerate; but where
were her great citizens ? Where were her great
orators, her great politicians, her great philoso-
phers, her great writers of every kind ? Where,
at least, were their descendants ? All who had
shown a spark of genius or pride had been sac-
rificed for the benefit of a single man. They had
disappeared; some crushed under the wheels of
his chariot, others forced to live obscurely in
some unknown retreat, and, what was graver
still, their race seemed extinct. . . . France was
imprisoned, as it were, in an iron net, and the
issues were closed to all the generous and ardent
youth that had either intellectual or moral
activity." — P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon, v. 3,
ch. 5.
Also in: H. A. Taine, Tlie Modern Regime,
bk. 1, ch. 3, and bk. 3, ch. 3 (». 1).
A. D. 1807 (September — November). — For-
cible seizure of the Danish fleet by the Eng-
lish. — Frustration of Napoleon's plans. — Al-
liance ■with Denmark. — War with Sweden.
See SCANDINAVLW States: A. D. 1807-1810.
A. D. 1807 (October — November). — French
invasion and occupation of Portugal. — Flight
of the royal family to Brazil. — Delusive treaty
of partition with Spain. See Portugal; A. D.
1807.
A. D. 1 807-1 808. — Napoleon's alienation of
Talleyrand and others. — Charles jMaurice Tal-
leyrand de Perigord, made Bishop of Autun by
King Louis XVI. , in 1789, and Prince of Bene-
vento by Napoleon, in 1806, had made his first
appearance in public life as one of the clerical
deputies in the States-General of 1789, and had
taken the popular side. He was the only bishop
having a benefice in France who took the new
oath required of the clergy, and he proposed
the appropriation of church property to the
wants of the public treasury. He subsequently
consecrated the first French bishops appointed
under the new constitution, and was excommuni-
cated therefor by the Pope. On the approach of
the Terror he escaped from France and took
refuge first in England, afterwards in the United
States. In 1795 he was permitted to return to
Paris, and he took an important part in the revo-
lution of the 18th Brumaire which overthrew the
Directory and made Napoleon First Consul. In
the new government he received the post of
Minister of Foreign Affairs, which he retained
under the Empire, until ISO"?, when he obtained
permission to retire, with the title of "vice-grand
electeur." "M. de Talleyrand, the Empire once
established and fortunate, had attached himself
to it with a sort of enthusiasm. The poesy of
victory, and the eloquence of an exalted imagina-
tion, subdued for a time the usual nonchalance
and moderation of his character. He entered
into all Napoleon's plans for reconstituting an
empire of the Francs, and reviving the system
of flefs and feudal dignitaries. ..." Any other
1382
FRANCE, 1807-1808.
Napoleon and
Talleyrand.
FRANCE, 1807-1808.
system,' he said, 'but a military one, is in
our circumstances at present impossible. I am,
then, for making that system splendid, and com-
pensating France for her liberty by her gran-
deur.' The principality he enjoyed, though it
by no means satisfied him, was a link between
him and the policy under which he held it. . . .
But he had a strong instinct for the practical ; all
governments, according to his theory, might be
made good, except an impossible one. A govern-
ment depending on constant success in difficult
undertakings, at home and abroad, was, accord-
ing to his notions, impossible. This idea, after
the Peace of Tilsit, more or less haunted him.
It made him, in spite of himself, bitter against
his chief — bitter at first, more because he liked
him than because he disliked him. He would
still have aided to save the Empire, but lie was
irritated because he thought he saw the Empire
drifting into a system which would not admit of
its being saved. A sentiment of this kind, how-
ever, is as little likely to be pardoned by one
who is accustomed to consider that his will must
be law, as a sentiment of a more hostile nature.
Napoleon began little by little to hate the man
for whom he had felt at one time a predilection,
and if he disliked any one, he did that which it is
most dangerous to do, and most useless ; that is,
he wounded liis pride without dimiuisldng his
importance. It is true that M. de Talleyrand
never gave any visible sign of being irritated.
But few, whatever the philosophy with which
they forgive an injury, pardon an humiliation;
and thus, stronger and stronger grew by degrees
that mutual dissatisfaction which the one vented
at times in furious reproaches, and the other dis-
guised under a studiously respectful indifference.
This carelessness as to the feelings of those whom
it would have been wiser not to offend, was one
of the most fatal errors of the conqueror. . . .
He had become at this time equally indifferent to
the hatred and affection of his adherents; and
. . . fancied that everything depended on his
own merits, and nothing on the merits of his
agents. The victory of Wagram, and the mar-
riage with Marie-Louise, commenced, indeed, a
new era in his history. Fouche was dismissed,
though not without meriting a reprimand for his
intrigues; and Talleyrand fell into unequivocal
disgrace, in some degree provoked by his wit-
ticisms ; whilst round these two men gathered a
q\iiet and observant opposition, descending with
the clever adventurer to the lowest classes, and
ascending with the dissatisfied noble to the
highest. . . . M. de Talleyrand's house then (the
only place, perhaps, open to all persons, where
the government of the day was treated without
reserve) became a sort of ' rendezvous ' for a
circle which replied to a victory by a bon mot,
and confronted the borrowed ceremonies of anew
court by the natural graces and acknowledged
fashi'ons of an old one. " — Sir H. L. Bulwer, His-
torical Characters, v. 1 .■ Talleyrand, pt. 4, sect.
9-10.
Also est : C. K. McHarg, Life of Prince Talley-
rand, cli. 1-13. — Memoirs of Talleyrand, c. 1.
A. D. 1807-1808.— Napoleon's over-ingenious
plottings in Spain for the theft of the crown.
— The popular rising. See Spaix: A. D. 1807-
1808.
A. D. 1807-1808 (November — February). —
Napoleon in Italy. — His arbitrary changes in
the Italian constitution.^His annexation of
Tuscany to France. — His quarrel with the
Pope and seizure of the Papal States. — "Na-
poleon ... set out for Italy, where great politi-
cal changes were in progress. Destined, like all
the subordinate thrones which surrounded the
great nation, to share in the rapid mutations
which its government underwent, the kingdom
of Italy was soon called upon to accept a change
in its constitution. Napoleon, in consequence,
suppressed the legislative body, and substituted
in its room a Senate, which was exclusively in-
trusted with the power of submitting observa-
tions to government on the jjublic wants, and of
superintending the budget and public expendi-
ture. As the members of this Senate were nomi-
nated and paid by government, this last shadow
of representative institutions became a perfect
mockery. Nevertheless Napoleon was received
with unbounded adulation by all the towns of
Italy; their deputies, who waited upon him at
Milan, vied with eacli other in elegant flattery.
He was the Redeemer of France, but the Creator
of Italy: they had supplicated heaven for his
safety, for his victories ; they offered him the trib-
ute of their eternal love and fidelity. Napo-
leon received their adulation in the most gracious
manner ; but he was careful not to lose sight of
the main object of his policy, the consolidation of
his dominions, the rendering them all dependent
on his imperial crown, and the fostering of a
military spirit among his subjects. . . . From
Milan the Emperor travelled by Verona and Pa-
dua to Venice ; he there admired the marble pal-
aces, varied scenery, and gorgeous architecture
of the Queen of the Adriatic, which appeared to
extraordinary advantage amidst illuminations,
fireworks, and rejoicings; and returning to Mi-
lan, arranged, with an authoritative hand, all the
affairs of the peninsula. The discontent of Melzi,
who still retained a lingering partiality for the
democratic Institutions which he had vainly hoped
to see established in his country, was stifled by
the title of Duke of Lodi. Tuscany was taken
from the King of Etruria, on whom Napoleon
had settled it, and united to France by the title
of the department of Taro; while magnificent
public works were set on foot at Milan to dazzle
the ardent imagination of the Italians, and con-
sole them for the entire loss of their national in-
dependence and civil liberty. The cathedral was
daily adorned with fresh works of sculpture ; its
exterior decorated and restored to its original
purity, while thousands of pinnacles and statues
rose on all sides, glittering in spotless brilliancj'
in the blue vault of heaven. The Forum of Buo-
naparte was rapidly advancing; the beautiful
basso-relievos of the arch of the Simplon already
entranced the admiring gaze of thousands ; the
roads of the Simplon and Mount Cenis were kept
in the finest order, and daily attracted fresh
crowds of strangers to the Italian plains. But in
the midst of all this external splendour, the
remains of which still throw a halo round the
recollection of the French domination in Italy, the
finances of all the states were involved in hopeless
embarrassment, and suffering of the most grind-
ing kind pervaded all classes of the people. . . .
The encroachments thus made on the Italian
peninsula were not the only ones which Napoleon
effected, in consequence of the liberty to dispose
of western Europe acquired by him at the treaty
of Tilsit. The territory of the great nation was
rounded also on the side of Germany and Holland.
138^
FRANCE, 1807-1808.
The Assemblage
at Erfurt.
FRANCE, 1809.
On the 11th of November, the important town
and territory of Flushing were ceded to France
by the King of Holland, who obtained, in return,
merely an elusory equivalent in East Friesland.
On the 21st of January following, a decree of the
senate united to the French empire, besides these
places, the important towns of Kehl Cassel, and
Wesel, on the right bank of the Rhine. Shortly
after, the French troops, who had already taken
possession of the whole of Tuscany, in virtue of
the resignation forced upon the Queen of Etru-
ria, invaded the Roman territories, and made them-
selves masters of the ancient capital of the world.
They immediately occupied the castle of St.
Angelo, and the gates of the city, and entirely
dispossessed the papal troops [see Papacy : A. D.
1808-1814], . . . France now, without disguise,
assumed the right of annexing neutral and inde-
pendent states to its already extensive dominions,
by no other authority than the decree of its own
legislature." — Sir A. Alison, Sist. of Europe,
1789-1815, ch. 51, sect. 51-53 (v. 11).
Also in : C. Botta, Italy (hiring the Consulate
and Empire of Napoleon, ch. 5.
A. D. 1807-1809. — The American embargo
and non-intercourse laws. See United States
OF Am. : A. D. 1804-1809, and 1808.
A. D. 1808 (May — September).— Bestowal of
the Spanish crown on Joseph Bonaparte. — The
national revolt. — French reverses. — Flight of
Joseph Bonaparte from Madrid. — Landing of
British forces in the Peninsula. See Spain:
A. D. 1808 (Mat— September).
A. D. 1808 (September— October). — Imperial
conference and Treaty of Erfurt. — The as-
semblage of kings. — " Napoleon's relations with
the Court of Russia, at one time very formal, be-
came far more amicable, according as Spanish
affairs grew complicated. After the capitulation
of Baylen they became positively affectionate.
The Czar was too clear-sighted not to understand
the meaning of this gradation. He quickly
understood that the more difficulties Napoleon
might create for himself in Spain, the more would
he be forced to make concessions to Russia. . . .
The Russian alliance, which at Tilsit had only
been an arrangement to flatter Napoleon's am-
bition, had now become a necessity to him. Each
side felt this; hence the two sovereigns were
equally impatient to meet again; the one to
strengthen an alliance so indispensable to the suc-
cess of his plans, the other to derive from it all
the promised advantages. It was settled, there-
fore, that the desired interview should take place
at Erfurt towards the end of September, 1808.
. . . The two Emperors met on the 27th of Sep-
tember, on the road between Weimar and Erfurt.
They embraced each other with that air of per-
fect cordiality of which kings alone possess the
secret, especially when their intention is rather
to stifle than to embrace. They made their entry
into the town on horseback together, amidst an
immense concourse of people. Napoleon had
wished by its magnificence to render the recep-
tion worthy of the illustrious guests who had
agreed to meet at Erfurt. He had sent thither
from the storehouses of the crown, bronzes, porce-
lain, the richest hangings, and the most sumptu-
ous furniture. He desired that the Comedie-
Franfaise should heighten the brilliant effects of
these fetes by performing the chief masterpieces
of our stage, from ' Cinna ' down to ' La Mort de
Cesar, ' before this royal audience. . . . All the
natural adherents of Napoleon hastened to answer
his appeal by flocking to Erfurt, for he did not
lose sight of his principal object, and his desire
was to appear before Europe surrounded by a
court composed of kings. In this cortege were
to be seen those of Bavaria, of Wurtemburg, of
Saxony, of Westphalia, and Prince William of
Prussia ; and beside these stars of first magnitude
twinkled the obscure Pleiades of the Rhenish
Confederation. The reunion, almost exclusively
German, was meant to prove to German idealists
the vanity of their dreams. Were not all present
who had any weight in Germany from their
power, rank, or riches ? Was it not even hinted
that the Emperor of Austria had implored the
favour, without being able to obtain it, of ad-
mission to the conferences of Erfurt ? This re-
port was most improbable. . . . The kings of
intellect came in their turn to bow down before
Cfesar. Goethe and Wieland were presented to
Napoleon; they appeared at his court, and by
their glory adorned his triumph. German pa-
triotism was severely tried at Erfurt ; but it may
be said that of all its humiliations the one which
the Germans most deeply resented was that of
beholding their greatest literary genius decking
himself out with Napoleon's favours [the decora-
tion of the Legion of Honour, which Goethe ac-
cepted]. . . . The theatrical effect which Napo-
leon had in view in this solemn show at Erfurt
having once been produced, his principal object
was attained, for the political questions which
remained for settlement with Alexander could
not raise any serious difficulty. In view of the
immediate and certain session of two such im-
portant provinces as those of Wallachia and
Moldavia, the Czar, without much trouble, re-
nounced that division of the Ottoman Empire
with which he had been tantalised for more than
a year. . . . He bound himself ... by the Treaty
of Erfurt to continue his co-operation with Napo-
leon in the war against England (Article 2), and,
should it so befall, also against Austria (Article
10) ; but the affairs in Spain threw every attack
upon England into the background. . . . The
only very distinct engagement which the treaty
imposed on Alexander was the recognition of
' the new order of things established by France
in Spain.'" — P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon, r. 3,
ch. 10.
Also IN : Prince Tallej'rand, Memoirs, v. 1.
A. D. 1808-1809. — Reverses in Portugal. —
Napoleon in the field. — French victories re-
sumed. — The check at Corunna. See Spain:
A. D. 1808-1809 (August— January).
A. D. 1809 (January — September). — Re-
opened war with Austria. — Napoleon's ad-
vance to Vienna. — His defeat at Aspern and
victory at Wagram. — The Peace of Schon-
brunn. — Fresh acquisitions of territory. See
Germany: A. D. 1809 (January — June), and
(July — September).
A. D. 1809 (February — July). — Wellington's
check to the French in Spain and Portugal. —
His passage of the Douro. — Battle of Tala-
vera. See Spain: A. D. 1809 (February —
July).
A. D. 1809 (May). — Annexation of the States
of the Church. — Removal of the Pope to Sa-
vona. See Papacy: A. D. 1808-1814.
A. D. 1809 (December).— Withdrawal of the
English from Spain into Portugal. See Spain:
A. D. 1809 (August — December).
1384
FRANCE, 1810.
The Divorce of
Josephine.
FRANCE, 1810-1813.
A. D. j8io (February — December). — An-
nexations of territory to the empire. — Hol-
land, the Hanse Towns, and the Valais in
Switzerland. — Other reconstructions of the
map of Germany. — "It was not till December
10th 1810 [after the abdication of King Louis —
see Netherlands (Holland) : A. D. 1806-1810]
that Holland was united to France by a formal
senatus-consulte. By the first article of the same
law, the Hanse Towns [Hamburg, Bremen, and
Lubeck], the Duchy of Lauenburg, and the
countries situated between the North Sea and a
line drawn from the confluence of the Lippe with
the Rhine to Halteren, from Haltereu to the Ems
above Telgte, from the Ems to the confluence of
the Werra with the Weser, and from Stolzenau
on that river to the Elbe, above the confluence
of the Stecknitz, were at the same time incorpo-
rated with the French Empire. . . . The line de-
scribed would include the northern part of West-
phalia and Hanover, and the duchy of Olden-
burg. . . . The Duke of Oldenburg having ap-
pealed to the Emperor of Russia, the head of his
house, against this spoliation, Napoleon offered
to compensate him with the town and territory
of Erfurt and the lordship of Blaukenheim, which
had remained under French administration since
the Peace of Tilsit. But this offer was at once
rejected, and Alexander reserved, by a formal
protest, the rights of his relative. This annexa-
tion was only the complement of other incorpo-
rations with the French Empire during the year
1810. Early in the year, the Electorate of Han-
over had been annexed to the Kingdom of West-
phalia. On February 16th Napoleon had erected
the Grand Duchy of Frankfort, and presented it
to the Prince Primate of the Confederation of the
Rhine, with a reversal in favour of Eugene Beau-
harnais. On November 12th the Valais in Switz-
erland was also annexed to France, with the
view of securing the road over the Simplon. Of
all these annexations, that of the Hanse Towns
and the districts on the North Sea was the most
important, and one of the principal causes of the
war that ensued between France and Russia.
These annexations were made without the slight-
est negociation with any European cabinet, and
it would be superfluous to add, without even a
pretext of right, though the necessity of them
from the war with England was alleged as the
motive." — T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe,
bk. 7, ch. 15, 10 ith foot-note («. 4). — " 'The Eng-
lish,' said Napoleon, ' have torn asunder the
public rights of Europe ; a new order of things
governs the universe. Fresh guarantees having
become necessary to me, the annexation of the
mouths of the bcheldt, of the Meuse, of the
Rhine, of the Ems, of the Weser, and of the Elbe
to the Empire appears to me to be the first and
the most important. . . . The annexation of the
Valais is the anticipated result of the immense
works that I have been making for the past ten
years in that part of the Alps. ' And this was all.
To justify such violence he did not condescend
to allege any pretext — to urge forward oppor-
tunities that were too long in developing, or to
make trickery subserve the use of force — ■ he con-
sulted nothing but his policy ; in other words, his
good pleasure. To take possession of a country,
it was sufficient that the country suited him : he
said so openly, as the simplest thing in the world,
and thought proper to add that these new usur-
pations were but a beginning, the first, accord-
ing to his own expression, of those which seemed
to him still necessary. And it was Europe, dis-
contented, humbled, driven wild by the barbar-
ous follies of the continental system, that he thus
defied, as though he wished at any cost to con-
vince every one that no amicable arrangement or
conciliation was possible ; and that there was but
one course for governments or men of spirit to
adopt, that of fighting unto death. " — P. Lanfrey,
Hist, of Napoleon, v. 4, ch. 3.
A. D. 1810-1812. — Continued hostile atti-
tude towards the United States of America.
See United St.\tbs of Am. : A. D. 1810-1813.
A. D. 1810-1812.— The War in the Penin-
sula. — Wellington's Lines of Torres Vedras.
— French retreat from Portugal. — English ad-
vance into Spain. See Sp.un: A. D. 1809-1810
(October — September), and 1810-1813.
A. D. 1810-1812. — Napoleon's divorce from
Josephine and marriage to Marie-Louise of
Austria. — His rupture with the Czar and prep-
arations for war with Russia. — " Napoleon now
revived the idea which he had often entertained
before, of allying himself with one of the great
ruling families. A compliant senate and a packed
ecclesiastical council pronounced his separation
from Josephine Beauharnais, who retired with a
magnificent pension to Malmaison, where she
died. As previous marriage proposals to the
Russian court had not been cordially received.
Napoleon now turned to Austria. 'The matter
was speedily arranged with Metternich, and in
March, 1810, the archduchess Maria Louisa ar-
rived in France as the emperor's wife. The
great importance of the marriage was that it
broke the last links which bound Russia to France,
and thus overthrew the alliance of Tilsit. Alex-
ander had been exasperated by the addition of
Western Galicia to the grand-duchy of Warsaw,
which he regarded as a step towards the restora-
tion of Poland, and therefore as a breach of the
engagement made at Tilsit. The annexation of
Oldenburg, whose duke was a relative of the
Czar, was a distinct personal insult. Alexander
showed his irritation by formally deserting the
continental system, which was more ruinous to
Russia than to almost any other country, and by
throwing his ports open to British commerce
(Dec. 1810). . . . The chief grievance to Russia
was the apparent intention of Napoleon to do
something for the Poles. The increase of the
grand -duchy of Warsaw by the treaty of Vienna
was so annoying to Alexander that he began to
meditate on the possibility of restoring Poland
himself, and making it a dependent kingdom for
the Czar, in the same way as Napoleon had
treated Italy. He even went so far as to sound
the Poles on the subject ; but he found that they
had not forgotten the three partitions of their
country, and that their sympathies were rather
with France than with Russia. At the same time
Napoleon was convinced that until Russia was
subdued his empire was unsafe, and all hopes of
avenging himself upon England were at an end.
All through the year 1811 it was known thatwar
was inevitable, but neither power was in a hurry
to take the initiative. Meanwhile the various
powers that retained nominal independence had
to make up their minds as to the policy they
would pursue. For no country was the decision
harder than for Prussia. Neutrality was out of
the question, as the Prussian territories, lying
between the two combatants, must be occupied
1385
FRANCE. 1810-1812.
The Rufisian
Expedition.
FRANCE, 1812.
by one or the other. The friends and former
colleagues of Stein were unanimous for a Russian
alliance and a desperate struggle for liberty. But
Hardenberg, who had become chancellor in 1810,
was too prudent to embark in a contest which at
the time was hopeless. The Czar had not been
so consistent in his policy as to be a very desira-
ble ally; and, even with Russian assistance, it
was certain that the Prussian frontiers could not
be defended against the French, who had already
garrisons in the chief fortresses. Hardenberg
fully sympathised with the patriots, but he sacri-
ficed enthusiasm to prudence, and offered the
support of Prussia to France. The treaty was
an-anged on the 24th of February, 1812. Fred-
erick William gave the French a free passage
through his territories, and undertook to furnisli
20,000 men for service in the field, and as many
more for garrison duty. In return for this Na-
poleon guaranteed the security of the Prussian
kingdom as it stood, and held out the prospect of
additions to it. It was an unnatural and hollow
alliance, and was understood to be so by the
Czar. Scharnhorst, Gneisenau, and other friends
of Stein resigned their posts, and many Prussian
officers entered the service of the Czar. Austria,
actuated by similar motives, adopted the same
policy, but with less reluctance. After this ex-
ample had been set by the two great powers,
none of the lesser states of Germany dared to
disobey the peremptory orders of Napoleon.
But Turkey and Sweden, both of them old allies
of France, were at this crisis in the opposition.
. . . The Swedes were threatened with starva-
tion by Napoleon's stern command to close their
ports not only against English, but against all
German vessels. Bernadotte, who had just been
adopted as the heir of the childless Charles XIII. ,
determined to throw in his lot with his new coun-
try, rather than with his old commander. He
had also hopes of compensating Sweden for the
loss of Finland by wresting Norway from the
Danes, and this would never be agreed to by
Prance. Accordingly Sweden prepared to sup-
port the cause of Alexander." — R. Lodge, Hist,
of Modern Europe, ch. 24, sect. 38 andAl.- — "Na-
poleon's Russian expedition should not be re-
garded as an isolated freak of insane pride. He
himself regarded it as the unfortunate effect of
a fatality, and he betrayed throughout an un-
wonted reluctance and perplexity. ' The war
must take place,' he said, ' It lies in the nature of
things.' That is, it arose naturally, like the
other Napoleonic wars, out of the quarrel with
England. Upon the Continental system he had
staked everything. He had united all Europe in
the crusade against England, and no state, least
of all such a state as Russia, could withdraw
from the system without practically joining Eng-
land. Nevertheless, we may wonder tliat, if he
felt obliged to make war on Russia, he should
have chosen to wage it in the manner he did, by
an overwhelming invasion. For an ordinary
war his resources were greatly superior to those
of Russia. A campaign on the Lithuanian fron-
tier would no doubt have been unfavourable to
Alexander, and might have forced him to con-
cede the points at issue. Napoleon had already
experienced in Spain the danger of rousing na-
tional spirit. It seems, however, that this lesson
had been lost on him." — J. R. Seeley, Short Hist, of
Napoleon, ch. 5, sect. 3. — "Warnings and cautions
were not . . . wanting to him. He had been at
several different times informed of the desperate
plans of Russia and her savage resolve to destroy
all around him, provided he could be involved in
the destruction of the Empire. He was cau-
tioned, with even more earnestness, of the Ger-
man conspiracies. Alquicr transmitted to him
from Stockholm a significant remark of Alexan-
der's: ' If the Emperor Napoleon should experi-
ence a reverse, the whole of Germany will rise
to oppose his retreat, or to prevent the arrival of
his reinforcements.' His brother Jerome, who
was still better situated for knowing what was
going on in Germany, informed him, in the
month of January, 1811, of the proposal that had
been made to him to enter into a secret league
against France, but the only thanks he received
from Napoleon was reproach for having encour-
aged such overtures by his equivocal conduct.
. . . Marshal Davout and General Rapp trans-
mitted him identically the same information
from Hamburg and Dantzig. But far from en-
couraging such confidential communications. Na-
poleon was irritated by them. ... ' I do not
know why Rapp meddles in what does not con-
cern him [he wrote]. ... I beg you will not
place such rhapsodies under my eyes. My time
is too precious to waste on such twaddle. "...
In presence of such hallucination, caused by
pride and infatuation, we seem to hear Macbeth
in his delirium insulting the messengers who
announced to him the approach of the enemy's
armies." — P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon, «. 4, ch.
6. — " That period ought to have been esteemed
the happiest of Napoleon's life. What more
could the wildest ambition desire ? . . . AU
obeyed him. Nothing was wanting to make him
happy ! Nothing, if he could be happy who
possessed not a love of justice. . . . The being
never existed who possessed ampler means for
promoting the happiness of mankind. Nothing
was required but justice and prudence. The
nation expected these from him, and granted him
that unlimited confidence which he afterwards so
cruelly abused. . . . Instead of considering with
calmness and moderation how he might best em-
ploy his vast resources, he ruminated on projects
beyond the power of man to execute ; forgetting
what innumerable victims must be sacrificed in
the vain attempt. ... He aspired at universal
despotism, for no other reason than because a
nation, isolated from tlie continent and profiting
by its happy situation, had refused to submit to
his intolerable yoke. ... In the hope of con-
quering that invincible enemy, he vainly endeav-
oured to grasp the extremities of Europe. . . .
Misled by his rash and hasty temper, he adopted
a false line of politics, and converted in the north,
as he had done before in the south, the most use-
ful and powerful of his allies into a dangerous
enemy."— E. Labaume, Circumstantial Narrative
of the Campaign in Russia, pt. 1, bk. 1.
Also in : C. Joyneville, Life and Times of Al-
exaiuler I., v. 2, ch. 3. — Imbert de Saint Araand,
Memoirs of the Empress Mane Louise.
A. D. i8i2 (June). — The captive Pope
brought to Fontainebleau. See Pap.vcy ; A. D.
1808-1814.
A. D. i8i2 (June— August).— Defeat by the
English in Spain at Salamanca. — Abandon-
ment of Madrid by King Joseph. See Sp.\in':
A. D. 1812 (June— August).
A. D. i8i2 (June — December). — Napoleon's
Russian campaign. — The advance to Moscow.
1386
FRANCE, 1812.
Tke return from
Russia,
FRANCE, 1814.
—The burning of the city.— The retreat and
its horrors. See RussLV: A. D. 1813.
A. D. 1812-1813 (December — March).— Na-
poleon's return from Russia. — His measures
for creating a new army. — "Whilst Europe,
agitated at once by hope, by fear, and by hatred,
was inquiring what had become of Napoleon,
whether he had perished or had been saved, he
was crossing in a sledge — accompanied by the
Duke of Vicenza, the Grand Marshal Duroc,
Count Lobau, General Lefevre-Desnouettes, and
the Mameluke Rustan — the vast plains of Lith-
uania, of Poland, and of Saxony, concealed by
thick furs; for if his name had been imprudently
uttered, or his countenance recognised, a tragical
catastrophe would have instantly ensued. The
man who had so greatly excited the admira-
tion of nations, who was the object of their . . .
superstition, would not at that moment have es-
caped their fury. In two places only did he
allow himself to be known, Warsaw and Dres-
den. . . . That he might not occasion too great
surprise, he caused himself to be preceded by an
oflScer with a few lines for the ' Moniteur, ' saying
that on December 5 he had assembled his gen-
erals at Smorgoni, had delegated the command
to King Murat, only so long as military opera-
tions were interrupted by the cold, that he had
traversed Warsaw and Dresden, and that he was
about to arrive in Paris to take in hand the affairs
of the Empire. . . . Napoleon followed close on
the steps of the officer who was to announce his
arrival. On December 18, at half-past 11 P. M.,
he entered the Tuileries. . . . On the next morn-
ing, the 19th, he received the ministers and
grandees of the court . . . with extreme hauteur,
maintaining a tranquil but severe aspect, appear-
ing to expect explanations instead of affording
them himself, treating foreign affairs as of
minor consequence, and those of a domestic
nature as of principal import, demanding some
light upon these last, — in short, questioning
others in order to avoid being questioned himself.
... On Sunday, the 20th of December, the sec-
ond day after his arrival. Napoleon received the
Senate, the Council of State, and the principal
branches of the administration," which severally
addressed to him the most fulsome flatteries and
assurances of support. "After an infuriated
populace basely outraging vanquished princes,
nothing can be seen more melancholy than these
great bodies prostrating themselves at the feet
of a power, bestowing upon it a degree of ad-
miration which increases with its errors, speaking
with ardour of their fidelity, already about to
expire, and swearing to die in its cause when
they are on the eve of hailing the accession of
another. Happy are those countries whose es-
tablished Constitutions spare them these hu-
miliating spectacles!" As speedily as possible.
Napoleon applied himself to the recreation of
his lost army, by anticipating the conscription
for 1814, and by making new calls upon the
classes which had already furnished their con-
tingents. All his measures were submissively
sanctioned by the obsequious Senate ; but many
murmurs of discontent were heard among the
people, and some movements of resistance needed
to be put down. "However, when the en-
lightened classes of a country approve a measure,
their support is extremely efficacious. In Prance,
all those classes perceiving that it was necessary
energetically to defend the country against a for-
eign enemy, though the Government had been
still more in the wrong than they were, the
levies were effected, and the high functionaries,
sustained by a moral acquiescence which they
had not always obtained, fulfilled their duty,
though in heart full of sad and sinister forebod-
ings." — A. Thiers, Hist, of the Consulate and the
Empire, bk. 47 (■«. 4).
Also in : Duchess d'Abrantes, Memoirs of Na-
poleon, V. 2, ch. 43.
A. D. 1812-1813.— Germanic rising against
Napoleon. — War of Liberation. — Liitzen. —
Bautzen. — Dresden. — Leipsic. — The retreat
of the French from beyond the Rhine. See
Germany: A. D. 1813-1813, to 1813 (October-
December).
A. D. 1813 (February — March).— The new
Concordat signed and retracted by the Pope,
See Papacy: A. D, 1808—1814.
A. D. 1813 (June — November). — Defeat at
Vittoria and in the Pyrenees. — Retreat from
Spain. See Spain: A. D. 1813-1814.
A. D. 1813 (November — December) — Dutch
independence regained. See Netherlands
(Holland): A. D. 1813.
A. D. 1814 (January).— The Pope set free, to
return to Rome. See Papacy : A. D. 1808-1814.
A. D. 1814 (January — March). — The allied
invasion. — Napoleon's campaign of defense. —
His cause lost. — Surrender of Paris. — "The
battle of Leipzig was the overthrow of the French
rule in Germany; there only remained, as evi-
dence of what they had lost, 150,000 men, gar-
risons of the fortresses of the Vistula, the Oder,
and the Elbe. Each success of the allies had been
marked by the desertion of one of the peoples
that had furnished its contingent to the Grand
Army of 1813: after Prussia, Austria ; at Leipzig
the Saxons : the French had not been able to re-
gain the Rhine except by passing over the bodies
of the Bavarians at Hanau. Baden, Wurtem-
berg, Hesse, and Darmstadt declared their defec-
tion at nearly the same time ; the sovereigns were
still hesitating whether to separate themselves
from Napoleon, when their people and regiments,
worked upon by the German patriots, had already
passed into the allied camp. Jerome Bonaparte
had again quitted Cassel ; Denmark found itself
forced to adhere to the Coalition. Napoleon had
retired to the left bank of the Rhine. Would
Alexander cross this natural frontier of revolu-
tionary France ? ' Convinced, ' says M. Bogdano-
vitch, ' by the experience of many years, that
neither losses inflicted on Napoleon, nor treaties
concluded with him, could check his insatiable
ambition, Alexander would not stop at setting
free the involuntary allies of France, and resolved
to pursue the war till he had overthrown his
enemy. ' The allied sovereigns found themselves
reunited at Frankfort, and an immediate march
to Paris was discussed. Alexander, Stein, Blii-
cher, Gneisenau, and all the Prussians were on
the side of decisive action. The Emperor Francis
and Mettemich only desired Napoleon to be weak-
ened, as his downfall would expose Austria to
another danger, the preponderance of Russia on
the Continent. Bernadotte insisted on Napoleon's
dethronement, with the ridiculous design of ap-
propriating the crown of France, traitor as he was
to her cause. England would have preferred a
solid and immediate peace to a war which would
exhaust her in subsidies, and augment her already
enormous debt. These divergencies, these hesi-
1387
FRANCE, 1814.
T)ie Allies in
I>\ance.
FRANCE, 1814.
tations, gave Napoleon time to strengthen his
position. After Hanau, in the opinion of Ney,
'the allies might have counted their stages to
Paris. ' Napoleon had re-opened the negotiations.
The relinquishment of Italy (when Murat on his
side negotiated the preservation of his kingdom
of Naples), of Holland, of Germany, and of Spain,
and the confinement of France between her
natural boundaries of the Rhine and the Alps;
such were the ' Conditions of Frankfort.' Napo-
leon sent an answer to Metternich, ' that he con-
sented to the opening of a congress at Mannheim ;
that the conclusion of a peace which would in-
sure the independence of all the nations of the
earth had always been the aim of his policy.'
This reply seems evasive, but could the proposals
of the allies have been serious ? Encouraged by
disloyal Frenchmen, they published the declara-
tion of Frankfort, by which they affirmed ' that
they did not make war with France, but against
the preponderance which Napoleon had long ex-
ercised beyond the limits of his empire.' Deceit-
ful assurance, too obvious snare, which could
only take in a nation weary of war, enervated by
twenty -two years of sterile victories, and at the
end of its resources ! During this time Alexan-
der, with the deputies of the Helvetian Diet sum-
moned at Frankfort, discussed the basis of a new
Swiss Confederation. Holland was already raised
by the partisans of the house of Orange, and en-
tered by the Prussians. The campaign of France
began. Alexander issued at Freiburg a procla-
mation to his troops. . . . He refused to receive
Caulaincourt at Freiburg, declaring that he would
only treat in France. ' Let us spare the French
negotiator the trouble of the journey,' he said to
Metternich. " It does not seem to me a matter of
indifference to the allied sovereigns, whether the
peace with France is signed on this side of the
Rhine, or on the other, in the very heart of France.
Such an historical event is well worth a change
of quarters.' Without counting the armies of
Italy and the Pyrenees, Napoleon had now a mere
handful of troops, 80.000 men, spread from Nime-
guen to Bale, to resist 500,000 allies. The army
of the North (Wintzingerode) invaded Holland,
Belgium, and the Rhenish provinces; the array
of Silesia (Bliicher) crossed the Rhine between
Mannheim and Coblentz and entered Nancy ; the
army of Bohemia (Schwartzenberg) passed
through Switzerland, and advanced on Troyes,
where the Royalists demanded the restoration of
the Bourbons. Napoleon was still able to bar
for some time the way to his capital. He first
attacked the army of Silesia ; he defeated the van-
guard, the Russians of Sacken, at St. Didier,
and Bliicher at Brienne ; but at La Rothiere he
encountered the formidable masses of the Silesian
and Bohemian armies, and after a fierce battle
(1st February, 1814) had to fall back on Troyes.
After this victory had secured their junction, the
two armies separated again, the one to go down
the Marne, the other the Seine, with the intention
of reuniting at Paris. Napoleon profited by this
mistake. He threw himself on the left flank of
the army of Silesia, near Champeaubert, where
he dispersed the troops of Olsoufief and Polta-
ratski, inflicting on them a loss of 2,500 men, and
took the generals prisoners. At Montmirail, in
spite of the heroism of Zigrote and Lapoukhiue,
he defeated Sacken ; the Russians alone lost 2,800
men and five guns (11th February). At Chateau
Thierry, he defeated Sacken and York reunited,
and again the Russians lost 1,500 men and five
guns. At Vauchamp it was the turn of Bliicher,
who lost 3,000 Russians, 4,000 Prussians, and fif-
teen guns. The army of Silesia was in terrible
disorder. ' The peasants, exasperated by the dis-
order inseparable from a retreat, and excited by
exaggerated rumours of French successes, took
up arms, and refused supplies. The soldiers suf-
fered both from cold and hunger. Champagne af-
fording no wood for bivouac fires. When the
weather became milder, their shoes wore out, and
the men, obliged to make forced marches with
bare feet, were carried by hundreds into the hos-
pitals of the country ' (Bogdanovitch). Whilst
the army of Silesia retreated in disorder on the
army of the North, Napoleon, with 50, 000 soldiers
full of enthusiasm, turned on that of Bohemia,
crushed the Bavarians and Russians at Mormans,
the Wurtembergers at Montereaii, the Prussians
at Alery ; these Prussians made part of the army
of Bliicher, who had detached a corps to hang on
the rear of Napoleon. This campaign made a
profound impression on the allies. Castlereagh
expressed, in Alexander's presence, the opinion
that peace should be made before they were
driven across the Rhine. The military chiefs be-
gan to feel uneasy. Sesslavine sent news from
Joigny that Napoleon had 180,000 men at Troyes.
A general insurrection of the eastern provinces
was expected in the rear of the allies. It was the
firmness of Alexander which maintained the Coali-
tion, it was the military energy of Bliicher which
saved it. Soon after his disasters he received re-
inforcements from the army of the North, and
took the offensive against the marshals; then,
hearing of the arrival of Napoleon at La Ferte
Gaucher, he retreated in great haste, finding an
unexpected refuge at Soissons, which had just
been taken by the army of the North. At Craonne
(March 7) and at Laon (10th to 12th March), with
100,000 men against 30,000, and with strong posi-
tions, he managed to repulse all the attacks of
Napoleon. At Craonne, however, the Russian
loss amounted to 5,000 men, the third of their
effective force. The battle of Laon cost them
4,000 men. Meanwhile, De Saint Priest, a gen-
eral in Alexander's service, had taken Rheims by
assault, but was dislodged by Napoleon after
a fierce struggle, where the emigre commander
was badly wounded, and 4,000 of his men were
killed (13th March). The Congress of Chatillon-
sur-Seine was opened on the 28th of February.
Russia was represented by Razoumovski and Nes-
selrode, Napoleon by Caulaincourt, Austria by
Stadion and Metternich. The conditions pro-
posed to Napoleon were the reduction of France
to its frontiers of 1793, and the right of the allies
to dispose, without reference to him, of the recon-
quered countries. Germany was to be a confedera-
tion of independent States, Italy to be divided
into free States, Spain to be restored to Ferdinand,
and Holland to the house of Orange. 'Leave
France smaller than I found her ? Never I ' said
Napoleon. Alexander and the Prussians would
not hear of a peace which left Napoleon on the
throne. Still, however, they negotiated. Aus-
tria and England were both agreed not to push
him to extremities, and many times proposed to
treat. After Napoleon's great success against
Bliicher, Castlereagh declared for peace. ' It
wQuld not be a peace,' cried the Emperor of Rus-
sia ; ' it would be a truce which would not allow
us to disarm one moment. I cannot come 4(X)
1388
PRANCE, 1814.
TJie Allies in
Paris,
FRANCE, 1814.
leagues every day to your assistance. No peace,
as long as Napoleon is on tlie throne. ' Napoleon,
in his turn, intoxicated by his success, enjoined
Caulaiucourt only to treat on the basis of Prank-
fort — natural frontiers. . . . As fortune returned
to the allies, the congress was dissolved (19th of
March). The Bourbon princes were already in
France ; Louis XVIII. was ou the point of being
proclaimed. Alexander, tired of seeing the armies
of Bohemia and Silesia fly in turn before thirty
or forty thousand French, caused the allies to
adopt the fatal plan of a march ou Paris, which
was executed in eight days. Bliicher and
Schwartzenberg united, with 200,000 men, were
to bear down all opposition on their passage.
The first act in the drama was tlie battle of Arcis-
sur-Aube, where the Russians took six guns from
Napoleon. The latter conceived a bold scheme,
which perhaps might have saved him if Paris
could have resisted, but which was his ruin. He
threw himself on the rear of the allied army,
abandoning to them the route to Paris, but reck-
oning on raising Eastern France, and cutting off
their retreat to the Rhine. The allies, uneasy for
one moment, were reassured by an intercepted let-
ter of Napoleon's, and by the letters of the Parisian
royalists, which revealed to them the weakness
of the capital. ' Dare all ! ' writes Talleyrand to
them. They, in their turn, deceived Napoleon, by
causing him to be followed by a troop of cavalry,
continued their march, defeated Marmont and
Mortier, crushed the National Guards of Pacthod
(battle of La FSre-Champenoise), and arrived in
sight of Paris. Barclay de Tolly, forming the
centre, first attacked the plateau of Romaiuville,
defended by Marmont ; on his left, the Prince of
Wurtemberg threatened Vincennes; and ou his
right, Bliicher deployed before Montmartre, which
was defended by Mortier. The heights of Chau-
mont and those of Montmartre were taken ; Mar-
mont and Mortier with Moncey were thrown back
on the ramparts. Marmont obtained an armis-
tice from Colonel Orlof, to treat for the capitula-
tion of Paris. King Joseph, the Empress !Marie-
Louise, and all the Imperial Government had
already fled to the Loire. Paris was recom-
mended ' to the generosity of the allied monarchs ' ;
the army could retire on the road to Orleans.
Such was the battle of Paris ; it had cost, according
to M. Bogdauovitch, 8,400 men to the allies, and
4,000 to the French (30th March). . . . The allied
troops maintained a strict discipline, and were not
quartered on the inhabitants. Alexander had not
come as a friend of the Bourbons — the fiercest
enemy of Napoleon was least bitter against the
French ; he intended leaving them the choice of
their government. He had not favoured any of
the intrigues of the emigres, and had scornfully
remarked to Jomini, ' What are the Bourbons to
me ? ' " — A. Rambaud, JIM. of Russia, v. 2, ch. 13.
Also in: C. Joyneville, Life and Times of
Alexander I. , v. 3, ch. 1. — M. de Beauchamp, Nar-
rative of the Invasions of France, 1814-15. — Duke
de Rovigo, Memoirs, v. 3, pt. 3, ch. 20-32. — J.
Philippart, Campaign in Qermani/ and France,
1813, V. 1, p. 279 and after, and v. 2.
A. D. 1814 (January — May).— Desertion of
Napoleon by Murat. — Murat's treaty with the
allies. — French evacuation of Italy. See Italy :
A. D. 1814.
A. D. 1814 (February— April).— Reverses in
the south. — Wellington's invasion. See Spain :
A. D. 1813-1814.
A. D. 1814 (March — April). — Friendly recep-
tion of the Allies in Paris. — Collapse of the
empire. — Abdication of Napoleon. — Treaty of
Fontainebleau. — "At an early hour in the morn-
ing [of the 31st of March], the Allied troops had
taken possession of the barriers, and occupied the
principal avenues leading to the city. Picquets
of the Cossacks of the Guard were stationed at
the corners of the principal streets. Vast mul-
titudes thronged the Boulevards, in anxious and
silent expectation of pending events. The royal-
ists alone were active. The leaders, a small band
indeed, had early assembled in the Place Louis
XV., whence, with Bourbon banners displayed,
they proceeded along the principal streets, ha-
ranguing the people and National Guard; but
though not interfered with by the police, — for all
seemed to feel that the Imperial government was
at an end, — they were listened to with sucli per-
fect indifierence, that many began to think their
cause absolutely hopeless. It was between ten
and eleven o'clock when the procession began to
enter the city. Light horsemen of the Russian
Guard opened the march; at the head of the
main column rode the Emperor of Russia and
the King of Prussia. . . . Then followed 3.5,000
men, cavalry, infantry, and artillery, the elite of
the armies, in all the pride and circumstance of
war and conquest. At first the multitude looked
on in silent amazement ; but the affability of the
officers, above all, the condescending manner of
the Czar, dispelled any fear they might still enter-
tain ; and shouts of ' Vive Alexander ! ' began to be
heard ; cries of ' Vive le Roi de Prusse ! ' were soon
added. . . . The shouts of welcome increased at
every step. The conquerors were now hailed as
liberators; ' Vivent les Allies! ' ' Vivent nos libe-
rateurs!' sounded through the air, mingled at
last with the long-forgotten cry of ' Vive le Roi ! '
'Vivent les Bourbons!" . . . "rhe Emperor Alex-
ander had no sooner seen the troops file past on
the Place Louis XV., than he repaired to the
hotel of Talleyrand, where in the evening, a coun-
cil was assembled to deliberate on the important
step next to be taken, and on the best mode
of turning the glorious victories achieved to
an honourable and beneficial account. . . . The
points discussed were: I. The possibility, on
sufficient guarantees, of a peace with Napoleon;
II. The plan of regency under Marie Louise;
and. III. The restoration of the Bourbons. The
choice was not without difficulties. The first
plan was easily dismissed; as the reception of
the Allies proved clearly that the power of Na-
poleon was broken. The second seemed more
likely to find favour, as promising to please the
Emperor of Austria; but was finally rejected, as
being, in fact, nothing more than a continuance
of the Imperial reign under a different title.
Against the restoration of the Bourbons, it was
urged that the nation at large had evinced no
desire for their recall, and seemed to have almost
forgotten them. This, Talleyrand said, was ow-
ing entirely to the Congress of Chatillon, and the
negotiations carried on with Napoleon ; introduc-
ing at the same time, the Abbe de Pradt and Baron
Louis, who fully confirmed the assertion. On
being asked how he expected to obtain a declara-
tion in favour of the exiled family, Talleyrand
replied, that he was certain of the Senate ; and that
their vote would influence Paris, the example of
which would be followed by all France. Alexan-
der having on this assurance taken the oisinion
1389
FRANCE, 1814.
Abdication of
Napoleon.
FRANCE, 1814.
of the King of Prussia and Prince Schwarzenberg,
signed a declaration to the effect that ' the Allies
would treat no more with Napoleon Bonaparte,
or with any member of his family. ' A proclama-
tion was issued at the same time, calling on the
Conservative Senate to assemble and form a pro-
visional government, for the purpose of drawing
up a constitution suitable to the wishes of the
French people. This the Allies promised to
guarantee ; as it was their wish, they said, to see
France 'powerful, happy, and prosperous.' A
printer was ready in attendance ; and before dark,
this memorable decree was seen placarded in all
the streets of Paris. The inconstant populace had
not even waited for such a signal, and had been
already engaged in destroying the emblems of
the Imxjerial government; an attempt had even
been made to pull down the statue of Napoleon
from the summit of the column of Austerlitz, in the
Place Vendome I The decisive impulse thus given,
events moved rapidly forward. Caulaincourt's
zealous efforts in favour of his master could eifect
nothing after the declaration already noticed.
On the 2d, he took his departure for Fontain-
bleau; having, however, received the assurance
that Napoleon would be suitably provided for.
. . . The funds rose five per cent. , and all other
public securities in proportion, on the very day
after the occupation of the capital ; and wherever
the Allied Sovereigns appeared in public, they
were loudly cheered and hailed as liberators.
From the first, officers of the Allied armies filled
the public walks, theatres, and coffee-houses,
and mixed with the people as welcome guests
rather than as conquering invaders. The press,
so long enslaved by Napoleon, took the most
decided part against its oppressor; and from
every quarter injurious pamphlets, epigrams,
and satires, now poured upon the fallen ruler.
Madame de Stael had characterised him as ' Robes-
pierre on horseback ' ; De Pradt had more wit-
tily termed him ' Jupiter Scapin ' ; and these say-
ings were not forgotten. But by far the most
vivid sensation was produced by Chateaubriand's
tract of 'Bonaparte and the Bourbons'; 30,000
copies of which are said to have been sold in two
days. In proportion as the popular hatred of
the Emperor evinced itself, grew the boldness
of his adversaries. On the first of April, the
Municipal Council of Paris met and already de-
clared the throne vacant; on the next day, the
Conservative Senate formed a Provisional Govern-
ment, and issued a decree, declaring, first, ' That
Napoleon Bonaparte had forfeited the throne
and the right of inheritance established in his
family ; 3d, That the people and army of France
were disengaged and freed from the oath of
fidelity wliich they had taken to him and his
constitution.' . . . The members of the Legisla-
tive Assembly who happened to be in Paris, fol-
lowed the example of the Senate. The Assemlily
had been dissolved in January, and could not
meet constitutionally unless summoned by the
Sovereign ; this objection was, however, set aside,
and the Assembly having met, ratified the act of
deposition passed by the Senate. All the public
functionaries, authorities and constituted bodies
in and near Paris, hastened to send in their sub-
mission to the new powers : it was a general race in
which honour was not always the prize of speed ;
for every address, every act of submission sent in
to the new government, teemed with invectives
against the deposed ruler. . . It was in the
night between the 8d and 3d, that Caulaincourt
returned from his mission, and informed Na poleon
of the events which had passed. ... In what
manner the Emperor received these fatal tidings
we are not told. ... At first it would seem that
he entertained, or affected to entertain, thoughts
of resorting to arms; for in the morning he re-
viewed his Guard, and addressed them in the fol-
lowing terms: — ' Officers and soldiers of my Old
Guard, the enemy has gained three marches on
us, and outstripped us at Paris. Some factious
men, emigrants whom I liad pardoned, have
surrounded the Emperor Alexander; they have
mounted the white cockade, and would force us
to do the same. In a few days I shall attack the
enemy, and force them to quit the capital. I rely
on you : am I right ? ' "The troops readily re-
plied with loud cheers to this address, calling
out ' To Paris ! to Paris ! ' but the Marshals and
senior officers were by no means so zealous in the
cause. . . . The Generals and Marshals . . . fol-
lowed the Emperor to his apartments after the
review ; and having advised him to negotiate with
the Allies, on the principle of a personal abdica-
tion, ended by informing him, that they would
not accompany him if he persisted in the pro-
posed attack on Paris. The scene which followed
seems to have been of a very undignified descrip-
tion. Napoleon was almost convulsed with rage ;
he tore and trampled under foot the decree of
the Senate ; vowed vengeance against the whole
body, who should yet, he said, be made to pay for
their deed of ' felony ' ; but ended, nevertheless,
by ignobly signing the abdication demanded of
him. We say ignobly ; for nothing can be more
debasing in character, than to sink down from a
very tempest of passion to tame submission. . . .
The act of abdication was worded in the follow-
ing terms: 'The Allied powers having pro-
claimed that the Emperor Napoleon is tlie sole
obstacle to the re-establishment of peace in
Europe, the Emperor Napoleon, faithful to his
oath, declares that he is ready to descend from
the throne, to quit France, and even to relinquish
life, for the good of the country, which is in-
separable from the rights of his son, from those
of the regency in the person of the Empress, and
from the maintenance of the laws of the empire.
Done at our Palace of Fontainbleau, 4th April
1814. Napoleon.' Caulaincourt, Marshals Ney
and M'Donald, were appointed to carry this con-
ditional abdication to Paris. . . . The commis-
sioners on returning to Fontainbleau found the
Emperor in his cabinet, impatiently awaiting the
result of their mission. Marshal Ney was the
first to speak ; and in that abrupt, harsh and not
very respectful tone which he had lately assumed
towards his falling sovereign, told him at once,
that ' France, the array and the cause of peace,
demanded his unconditional abdication.' Cau-
laincourt added, that the full sovereignty of the
Isle of Elba, with a suitable establishment, had
been offered by the Emperor Alexander; and
Marshal M'Donald, who had so zealously de-
fended the cause of his master, confirmed the
statement, — declaring also that, ' in his opinion,
the Imperial cause was completely lost, as
they had all three' — the commissioners — 'failed
against a resolution irrevocably fixed.' ' What! '
exclaimed Napoleon, ' not only my own abdica-
tion, but that of Marie Louise, and of my son 1
Tills is rather too much at once. ' And with these
words he delayed the answer till next day.
1390
FRANCE, 1814.
The Bourbon
Restoration.
FRANCE, 1814.
intending, he said, to consider the subject, and
consult the army. . . . AVords ran high between
the fallen chieftain and his former subordinates;
there were altercations, recriminations, and pain-
ful scenes, and it was only when Napoleon had
signed the following unconditional abdication
chat perfect calm was restored: — 'The Allied
Sovereigns having declared that the Emperor
Xapoleon is the only obstacle to the re-establi.sli-
inent of a general peace, the Emperor Napoleon,
faithful to his oath, declares, that he renounces,
for himself and his heirs, the throne of France
and Italy ; and that there is no personal sacrifice,
not even that of life itself, which he is not will-
ing to make for the interest of Prance. Napo-
leon. Fontainbleau, 6th April 1814.' This de-
plorable document is written in so agitated and
faltering a hand as to be almost illegible, . . .
According to the treaty signed at Paris on the
10th, and usually called the Treaty of Fontain-
bleau, Napoleon, from being Emperor of France
and King of Italy, became Emperor of Elba I
He was to have a guard and a navy suited to
the extent of his dominions, and to receive from
France a pension of six millions of francs annu-
ally. The Duchies of Parma, Placentia and
Giiastala, were to be conferred in sovereignty on
Marie Louise and her heirs. Two millions and a
half of francs were further to be paid annually
by the French government to the Empress Jose-
phine and other members of the Bonaparte fam-
ily. Splendid as these terms were for a dethroned
and defenceless monarch, Napoleon ratified the
treaty with reluctance, and delayed the signature
as long as possible ; still clinging, it would seem,
to some vague hope of returning fortune. It is
even related by Fain, Norvins, Constant, and in
the pretended Memoirs of Caulaincourt, that he
attempted to commit suicide by talking poison,
and was only saved by the weakness of the dose,
and the remedies administered by his attendants,
who, hearing his groans, hastened to his bedside.
It is certain that he was very unwell on the
following morning, the 13th April, a circum-
stance easily accounted for by the anxiety he
had undergone ; but there can be little difticulty
in rejecting the tale of poison, for it is mentioned
in none of the St. Helena Memoirs. "^Lieut. -Col.
J. Mitchell, The Fall of Ifapoleon, bk. 3, ch. 8
(V. 2).
Also in: M. de Bourrienne, Private Memoirs
of Napoleon, v. 4, eh. 20-23. — Duke of Rovigo,
Memoirs, v. 4, pt. 1, ch. 4^10. — Prince Talleyrand,
Memoirs, pt. 7 (v. 2).
A. D. 1814 (April— June).— Departure of Na-
poleon for Elba. — Louis XVIII. called to the
throne. — Settlement of the constitution. —
Evacuation of France by the Allies. — The
Treaty of Paris. — Determination of the new
boundaries of the kingdom. — "April 20, every-
thing being ready for Napoleon's journey, and
the commissioners of the four great powers who
were to accompany him having arrived, the
former drew up the imperial guard in the grand
courtyard at Fontainebleau to take leave of them.
' Soldiers, ' said he, ' I have one mission left to
fulfil in life, — to recount to posterity the glori-
ous deeds we have done together.' Would to
Heaven he had kept his word and done nothing
else! He kissed the flag, and his brave soldiers,
who only saw the man who so often led them on
to victory, burst into tears. Seven or eight
hundred of them were to form the army left to
him who had had a million soldiers at his com-
mand, and they were sent in advance. Napoleon
going by another road, unescorted save by Gen-
eral Drouot, Bertrand, and the four foreign com-
missioners with their people. In the first de-
partments through which they passed . . . the
people who had been eye-witnesses of the inva-
sion forgot the evil wrought by Napoleon, and
only saw the defender of his country. They
shouted 'Long live the Emperor! Down with
foreigners!' But beyond Lyons, where the foe
never penetrated, the population became hostile :
old royalist and Catholic passions were revived
in proportion as they went farther south; the
mob cried ' Long live the King I down with the
tyrant ! ' and others howled ' Long live the allies ! '
At Avignon and Orgon a furious rabble attacked
the carriages, demanding that the tyrant should
be handed over to them to be hung or thrown
into the Rhone. The man who braved the storm
of shot and shell with utter indifference gave
way before these ignoble perils, and disguised
himself; otherwise the commissioners could
scarcely have saved his life at Orgon. The sad
journey closed at the Gulf of St. Raphael, on
the coast of Provence. . . . An English frigate
awaited him and bore him to Elba, where he
landed at Porto-Perraio, May 4. While the Em-
pire was crumbling to drust . . . and the fallen
Emperor went into exile, the new government
was working hard to hold its own at Paris. The
royalists were at sword's points with the national
sovereignty party in the commission chosen by
the senate to draw up a constitution. The pre-
tender's agent. Abbe de Montesquiou, failed to
win acceptance of the principle that royal right
is superior to the nation's will ; and the formula
adopted was as follows: 'The French people
freely call to the throne of France, Louis Stanis-
las Xavier de France, brother of the late king,
and, after him, the other members of the house
of Bourbon.' Thus they did not recognize in the
king whom they elected the title of Louis XVIII. ,
and did not admit that between him and his
brother, Louis XVI., there had been a rightful
king, the poor child who died in the Temple and
whom royalists called Louis XVII. Tlie reign
of Louis Stanislas Xavier was to date from the
day when he swore allegiance to the Constitution :
the executive power was vested in the king, who
shared the legislative power with the Senate and
a Chamber of Deputies. The Constitution sanc-
tioned individual liberty, freedom of worship
and the press, the sale of national goods, the
public debt, and proclaimed oblivion of all acts
committed since the beginning of the Revolution.
The principles of 1789 were maintained, and in
the sad state of Prance there was nothing better
to be done than to rally round this Constitution,
which was voted by the Senate, April 6, and ac-
cepted by the Legislature. . . . Tlie Senate's
lack of popularity gave the royalist party hope
that the act of April 6 might be retracted, and at
this time that party won a faint success in a
matter on which they laid great stress. Count
d'Artois was on his way to Paris, and declared
that he would not lay aside the white cockade on
entering. The temporary government ordered
the national guard to assume the white cockade,
and let Count d'Artois in without conditions
(April 12). He was received in solemn state, the
marshals marching before him, still wearing their
tri-colored cockades and plumes, which the gov-
1391
FRANCE, 1814.
The Peace of
Paris.
FRANCE, 1814-1815.
eminent dared not attack. The rabble was cold,
but the middle classes received the prince favor-
ably, and he proved gracious to every one. . . .
D'Artois . . . insisted on being recognized, un-
conditionally, as lieutenant-general of the king-
dom, as he had entered Paris without making
terms ; but this time the Senate and temporary
government did not yield. They intended that
the prince should make a solemn promise, in his
brother's name, in regard to the Constitution.
The czar interfered aad explained to D'Artois
that the allies were pledged to the Senate and the
nation, and he was forced to submit and receive
the lieutenant-generalcy of the kingdom from
the Senate, ' until Louis Stanislas Xavier of
France should accept the Constitutional Charter.'
. . . The day after his proclamation as lieu-
tenant-general, the white cockade was finally
adopted, and . . . Imposed upon the army and
various public buildings, though the national
cockade was still worn by many French soldiers
from the Garonne to the Elbe, and many warlike
deeds still signalized the final efforts of their
arms, even after Napoleon had laid aside his
sword. . . . By degrees the truce became uni-
versal, and the next question was to fix the terms
of peace. . . . The enemy held nothing but Paris
and the unfortified towns, French garrisons still
occupying all the strongholds of Prance, old and
new, and several important places far beyond the
Rhine. . . . This was a powerful means of gain-
ing, not the preservation of the natural frontiers,
which could no longer be hoped for, but at least
an important advance on the limits of the ancient
monarchy. Unluckily a movement, natural but
hasty, broke out all over France, to claim the
immediate evacuation of her soil by foreign
armies;" — an impatience wliich allowed no time
for bargaining in the matter, and which precipi-
tated an agreement (April 23) with the allied
powers "to leave the French dominion as it had
been on the 1st of January, 1793, in proportion
as the places still occupied beyond those limits
by French troops should be evacuated and re-
stored to the allies. . . . This compact surren-
dered to the allies, without any compensation,
53 strongholds, 12,600 pieces of ordnance, arse-
nals and magazines filled with vast supplies."
The new king, calling himself Louis XVIII. , ar-
rived in Paris on the 3d of May, from England,
where he had latterly resided. He had offended
the czar, ruffled public feeling in France, even
before he arrived, by saying publicly to the Eng-
lish people that he owed his restoration, under
Providence, to them. Negotiations for a definite
treaty of peace were opened at once. ' ' At Met-
ternich's suggestion, the allies decided to con-
clude their arrangements with France In Paris,
and to reserve general arrangements with Europe
for a congress at Vienna [see Vienna : The Con-
gress op]. Talleyrand did not object, although
this plan was evidently unfavorable to France.
. . . The royal council directed Talleyrand to try
to win for the northern frontier those million
people promised beyond the old limits ; but Louis
XVIII. , by angering the czar, completed the sad
work of April 23. Alexander thought of renew-
ing with the Bourbons the alliance that he had
planned with Napoleon, and marrying to the
Duke de Berri, Louis's nephew, that one of his
sisters to whom Napoleon preferred Marie Louise.
Louis . . . responded churlishly to the czar's
advances. Accordingly, when France demanded
a solid frontier, including the South of Belgium,
. . . Lord Castlereagh absolutely refused, and
was supported by Prussia, hostile to France, and
by Austria, indifferent on that score, but dis-
posed to follow England in everything. Russia
did not side with Prance. . . . The allies were
willing to grant, in place of the old dominion of
the monarchy, on the Rhine side, the line of the
Queich, which opened communication with Lan-
dau, and to the southeast the department of Vau-
cluse (once County Venaissin) given up by the
Pope, besides Chambery and a part of Savoy;
finally, in the Jura region, Moutbeliard. Tlua
made nearly 600,000 people. As for the colonies,
England reluctantly returned Martinique, Gua-
deloupe, and the Isle of Bourbon, but refused to
restore the Isle de France [or Mauritius, captured
in 1810], that great military post which is to the
Indian Ocean what Malta is to the Mediterranean.
This island was bravely defended for some years
by its governor. . . . The English declared that
they would also keep Malta, taken from Prance,
and the Cape of Good Hope, wrested from Hol-
land, saying that all these belonged to them,
being on the road to India. . . . Secret articles
provided that Holland, under the rule of the
House of Orange, should be increased by the
countries ceded by France, between the sea, the
French frontier of 1790, and the Meuse (Austrian
Netherlands and Liege). The countries ceded
by France on the left bank of the Rhine were to
be divided as ' compensation ' among the Ger-
man states. Austria was to have the country
bounded by the Po, Ticino, and Lake Maggiore,
that is, the old Venetian states, Milan, and Man-
tua. The territory of the former Republic of
Genoa was to be given to the King of Sardinia.
Such was the end of the wars of the Empire.
Republican France reached the goal of the old
monarchy, the natural limits of ancient Gaul ;
the Empire lost them." — H. Martin, Popular
Hist, of France, v. 2, ch. 17.— "The Peace of
Paris [signed May 30] was followed by some
subsidiary treaties. . . . By a Convention of
June 3rd between Austria and Bavaria, Maxi-
milian Joseph restored to Austria the T}'rol with
the Vorarlberg, the principality of Salzburg, the
district of the Inn and the Hausrilck. During
the visit of the Emperor Alexander and the King
of Prussia to London in June, it was agreed that
the Article of the Peace of Paris stipulating the
aggrandisement of Holland, should be carried
out by the annexation of Belgium to that coun-
try, an arrangement which was accepted by the
Sovereign of the Netherlands, July 21st 1814."
— T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, hk. 7, ch.
16.
Also in ; A. de Lamartine, Sut. of the Resto-
ration, bk. 13-14 and 16 (». 1-2).— E. E. Crowe,
Hist, of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Gltarles
X..V. 1, ch. 3.
A. D. 18x4-1815.- Ten months of Bourbon
rule and its follies. — Return of Napoleon from
Elba.— Flight of the King.— The Hundred
Days. — Preparations for war. — "The peace of
Paris did not endure a year. Ten months of
Bourbon rule, vengeful, implacable, stupid; alike
violent in act and in language ; sulBced to bring
France once more to the brink of revolution.
Two acts alone are sufficient to demonstrate the
folly of the royalists — the resumption of the
white flag, and the changing of the numbers of
the regiments. A prudent king would have
1392
FRANCE. 1814-1815.
Napoleon''s return.
FRANCE, 1814-1815.
adopted the tricolour when he agreed to a con-
stitutional charter, and would have refrained from
wounding military sensibility by destroying the
numbers of the regiments. Sut more stupid than
these acts was the political policy pursued, a
policy which aroused on all sides suspicions of
what was worse than the grinding but gilded
despotism of Napoleon — namely, that the Gov-
ernment favoured a forcible resumption of the
confiscated lands, the restoration of tithes, and of
the abolished exactions and imposts of feudalism.
It has been surmised, and with much reason,
that had Napoleon not reappeared a popular
movement would have extorted from the king a
really constitutional government. In that case
France might have taken some real steps towards
a free government, and the bases of liberty rather
than of equality might have been laid. But
while the Powers were wrangling at Vienna, and
the Bourbons were irritating France, Napoleon
was watching from Elba for the opportunity of
resuming empire. It was not in the nature of
the man to yield passively to anything, even to
the inevitable. So long as a chance remained he
looked out keenly for the propitious hour. He
selected Elba as a residence because thence ' he
could keep an eye upon France and upon the
Bourbons.' It was his duty, he said, to guard
the throne of France for his family and for his
son. Thus, in making peace at Fontainebleau,
he only bowed to a storm he could not then re-
sist, and cherished in his mind the project of an
imperial restoration. The hour for which he
waited came at length. In February, 1815, he
had arrived at the conclusion that with the aid
of the army he could overthrow the Bourbons,
whose government, he said, was good for priests,
nobles, and countesses of the old time, but worth
nothing to the living generation. The army, he
knew, was still, and would be always, devoted
to him. . . . He had weighed all the chances for
and against the success of his enterprise, and he
had arrived at the conclusion that he should suc-
ceed; for, 'Fortune had never deserted him on
great occasions. ' It has been said that his de-
parture was precipitated by a report of the disso-
lution of the Congress of Vienna. ... It is
possible, indeed, that the rumour of an intention
to confine him upon an island in the Atlantic
may have exercised some influence over him ; but
the real reasons for the selection of the 26th of
February were that he was tired of inactivity,
and convinced that the favourable moment had
arrived. Therefore, instructing Murat to second
him by assuming a strong position in front of
Ancona, he embarked his faithful Thousand, and
set sail for France. On the 1st of March he
landed on the shores of the Gulf of Juan, and on
the 20th he entered the Tuileries. As he had
predicted, the army rallied to the tricolour; the
generals could neither restrain nor guide their
soldiers; the Bourbon dukes and princes, and the
brave Duchess of Angouleme — 'the only man of
the family ' — were utterly powerless before the
universal military disaffection ; and one after the
other they were chased out of France. The army
had restored Napoleon. Louis XVIII. drove out
of Paris by the road to St. Denis on the 19th, a
few hours before Napoleon, on the 20th, drove
in by the Barrier of Italy ; and on the 23rd, after
a short stay at Lille, the King was safe in Ghent.
'The great question is,' wrote Lord Castlereagh
to the Duke of Wellington three davs afterwards,
^^ 1393
while yet in ignorance of the event, ' can the Bour-
bons get Frenchmen to fight for them against
Frenchmen?' The result showed that they could
not. In the then state of France the army was mas-
ter of France. Louis and his ministers had done
nothing to conciliate, and almost everything to
irritate, the people; and even so early as Novem-
ber, 1814,Wellington did not see what means the
King had of resisting the attack of a few hundred
officers determined to risk everything. During
the period occupied by Napoleon in passing from
Elba to Paris, the conduct of the sovereigns and
diplomatists assembled at Vienna offered a strik-
ing contrast to the weakness and inaptitude of
the Bourbons. . . . That there was fear in Vienna
is manifest, but the acts of the Allied Powers
show that fear speedily gave place to resolution.
For, as early as the 12th of March, before the
Allies knew where Napoleon was, or anything
about him, except that he was somewhere at
large in France, they drew up that famous de-
claration, and signed it the next day, in which
they declared that he had broken the sole legal
tie to which his existence was attached, and that
it was possible to keep with him ' neither peace
nor truce. ' ' The Powers, in consequence, ' so runs
this document, 'declare that Napoleon Buona-
parte is placed beyond the pale of civil and social
relations, and that, as a common enemy and dis-
turber of the peace of the world, he has delivered
himself over to public justice.' This declaration,
which has been the subject of vehement criti-
cism, was the natural consequence of the pre-
vailing and correct appreciation of Napoleon's
character. There was not a nation in Europe
which felt the slightest particle of confidence or
trust in him. Hence this declaration, made so
promptly, was drawn up in ignorance of any
professions he might make, because, beforehand,
Europe felt that no professions of his could be
relied on. The news of his success was followed
by a treaty, adopted on the 25th of Jlarch, re-
newing the alliance of Chaumont, whereby Great
Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia bound them-
selves to provide each 150,000 men; to employ,
in addition, all their resources, and to work to-
gether for the common end — the maintenance of
the Treaty of Paris, and of the stipulations deter-
mined on and signed at the Congress of Vienna.
Further, they engaged not to lay down their
arms but by common consent; nor before the
object of the war should have been attained ; nor,
continues the document, ' until Buonaparte shall
have been rendered absolutely unable to create
disturbance, and to renew attempts for possess-
ing himself of supreme power in France.' All the
Powers of Europe generally, and Louis XVIII.
specially, were invited to accede to the treaty;
but, at the instance of Lord Castlereagh, the
Four Great Powers declared in the most solemn
manner that, although they desired to see his
Most Christian Majesty restored to the throne,
and also to contribute to that 'auspicious result,'
yet that their ' principles' would not permit them,
to prosecute the war ' with a view of imposing
any particular Government on France.' With
Napoleon they refused to hold any communica-
tion whatever ; and when he sent couriers to an-
nounce that he intended to observe existing
treaties, they were stopped on the frontiers. . . .
Wellington, on his own responsibility, acted for
England, signed treaties, undertook heavy en-
gagements in her name, and agreed to command
FRANCE, 1814-1815.
The Waterloo
Campaign.
FRANCE, 1815.
an army to be assembled in Belgium; and hav-
ing satisfied, as well as he could, the clamour
of ' all ' for subsidies from England, he took his
departure from Vienna on the 89th of March, and
arrived in Brussels on the 4th of April. The
British Parliament and nation confirmed readily
the proceedings of the Government and of the
Duke of Wellington at Vienna. . . . Napoleon
had formed a Ministry on the very evening of
his return to the Tuileries. ... He felt certain
that war would ensue. Knowing that at the
moment when he returned from Elba a large
part of the best troops of England were in
America, that the German force on the Rhine
was weak, and that the Russian armies were in
Poland, he calculated that the Allied Powers
would not be in a position to open the campaign,
at the earliest, until the middle of July; and,
for a moment, he hoped that, by working on the
feelings of his father-in-law, the Emperor of
Austria, and by rousing the anger of the Em-
peror Alexander against his allies, he would be
able, if not to reduce his enemies to two, Eng-
land and Prussia, at least to defer the period of
hostilities until the autumn. . . . Before his great
schemes of military preparation were half com-
plete he found himself compelled by events to
begin the war. What he actually did accomplish
between March and June has been the subject
of fierce controversy. His friends exaggerate,
his enemies undervalue, his exertions and their
results. But no candid inquirer can fail to see,
that if his energetic activity during this period is
far below that of the Convention when threatened
by Europe, it is far above the standard fixed by
his passionate critics. The real reason why he
failed to raise a larger military force during the
hundred days was that his genius worked upon
exhausted materials. The nation, to use an ex-
pressive vulgarism, was ' used up. ' . . . The
proper conscription for 1815 had been levied in
the autumn of 1813. The drafts on the rising
generation had been anticipated, and hence there
remained little available except the old soldiers.
. . . The result of Napoleon's prodigious exer-
tions to augment the military force of France
appears to be this: Napoleon found ready to his
hand a force of 223,973 men of all arms, officers
included, giving a disposable effective of 155,000
men ready to take the field. By the 13th of June
he had raised this force to 276,982 men, officers
included: that is 247,609 of the line, and 29,373
of the Imperial Guard. The number disposable
for war was 198,130; and it therefore follows
that Napoleon had increased the general effective
by 53,010 men, and that part of it disposable for
•war by 43,130."— G. Hooper, Waterloo, bk. 1,
eh. 1.
Ax80 IK: Imbert de Saint- Amand, The Duch-
ess of Angouleme and the two Restorations, pt. 1. —
F. P. Guizot, Memoirs of My Time, v. 1, ch. 3. —
J. C. Ropes, The First Napoleon, lect. 6. — E. E.
Crowe, Hist, of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and
Charles X., v. 1, ch. 4-6.— R. H. Home, Life of
Napoleon, ch. 41-42. — Gen. Sir N. Campbell, Na-
poleon at Foniainebleau and Elba.
A. D. 1814-1815.- The Congress of Vienna
and the fruits of its labors. See Vienna, Tee
C0NQEEB8 OF,
A. D. 1815 (June).— Napoleon's last cam-
paign. — His final defeat and overthroTO' at
Waterloo. — "The nearest troops of the allies
were the Prussian army in the Rhenish prov-
inces, and the army of British, Dutch, Belgians,
Brunswickers, and Hanoverians, occupying Bel-
gium. Napoleon's scheme, the best in his des-
perate circumstances, was to expel the British
and Prussians, who were moving west, from
Belgium, win the Rhine frontier — to arouse the
enthusiasm of all France — before the Austrians
were ready, and carry the war out of France.
The Duke of Wellington proceeded to Belgium,
for the first and last time to measure his skill
with Napoleon's, and Marshal Blucher took over
from Kleist the command of the Prussians. The
two armies, the Prussian and the British, took'
up a line extending from Liege to the sea. The
country on this line was open along the west,
affording by nature little means of resisting an
invasion, but most of the fortresses commanding
the roads had been put in a state of moderate re-
pair. The Prussians held the line of the Meuse
and Sambre to beyond Charleroi, the head-quar-
ters being at Namur. They numbered about
117,000 men . . . with 312 guns. . . . The motley
mass of the British and their allies numbered
106,000 men . . . with 196 guns. ... So en-
tirely ignorant were the allies of Napoleon's
movements, that on the very day on which he
burst across the frontier, Wellington wrote to the
Czar, who was at Vienna, respecting the general
invasion of Prance. At that time the frontier
of France approached within six miles of Char-
leroi (which is itself but 34 miles by the main
road from Brussels). The Charleroi road was
not only the most direct to Brussels, but was un-
protected by fortresses ; and the line of the allied
armies was weakest here at the point of junction
between them. ... It was against the central
weak point that Napoleon resolved to move, down
the basins of the Sambre and the Meuse. . . .
The mass of the troops was being assembled
within a league of the frontier, but behind some
small hills which completely screened them from
the enemy's outposts. To conceal his designs to
the last moment, the line of sentries along the
frontier was tripled, and any attempt to pass the
line was forbidden under pain of death. The
arrangements were being carried out by Soult,
who on the 2nd June had been appointed chief
of the staff. . . . The army concentrated on the
frontier consisted (according to Colonel Chesney)
of 90,000 infantry and 22,000 cavalry — in all
112,000 men — with 344 guns. . . . Napoleon,
accompanied by his brother Jerome, arrived in
the camp, and in the evening of the 14th his
soldiers, already elated by his presence, were ex-
cited to the highest pitch of enthusiasm by an
address from Napoleon. ... A general order
fixed the attack upon the allies' position for three
o'clock in the following morning (15th)." At
the appointed time "the French left was in mo-
tion, Reille proceeding from Solre down the right
bank of the Sambre. He was soon brought into
collision with the Prussian outposts near Thuin :
he drove them back and secured at ten o'clock
the bridge of Marchiennes. " The movements of
other corps were delayed by various causes.
Nevertheless, "of the Prussians only Ziethen's
corps, and of Wellington's army only Perpon-
cher's Dutch-Belgians, were as yet near the
menaced position ; while 40,000 French had passed
the Sambre at 5Iarchiennes and 70,000 more were
entering Charleroi. When Reille deployed in
front of Gosselies, the Prussians called in their
detachments aud retired from it upon Fleurus,
1394
FRANCE, 1815.
Tlie Waterloo
Campaign.
PRANCE, 1815.
. . . leaving open the road through Quatre Bras
to Brussels. Nay, who had just come up, then
took command of the left, . . . which was now
directed upon Quatre Bras; and Napoleon gal-
loped off to the road between Charleroi and
Fleurus, where the retiring Prussians were con-
centrating. ... At dark Ziethen [with the First
Prussian corps] still held Fleurus with his ad-
vanced guard, and the wood on its south, the
bulk of his troops lay for the night upon the hill
of Ligny, above the village of Bry. His loss
during the day's manoiuvring has been estimated
at 2,000. On the French left, Ney ... had
come in contact with the advance guard of Wel-
lington's army, a battalion of Nassauers and a
light battery, in front of the village of Frasnes,
two miles from Quatre Bras, the name applied
to the furm-liuildings at the intersection of the
four main roads, — Brussels, Nivelles, Charleroi,
Namur. . . . After a few cannon-shots the out-
post fell back from Frasnes to Quatre Bras."
Nej', after a reconnoissance, postponed attack
until morning. "It had been intended by Napo-
leon that the whole army should have crossed the
Sarabre before noon ; but from the several delays
, . . wlien night fell on the 15th, half of the
cavalry of the guard, two of Grouchy's reserve
divisions, Lobau's corps, and one half of Gerard's
corps were still on the south of the river. Ap-
parently relying on secret information from Paris
— which contradicted the rumours that Napoleon
was about to join the army — Wellington had
been lulled into a false security, and the reports
as to the concentration had been neglected. News
of the enemy's advance across the Sambre did not
reach him till three o'clock in the afternoon of
the 15th, when the Prince of Orange in person
reported the skimiish at Thuin. As he did not
yet know the point of concentration, the British
general, ' never precipitate or nervous ' (Hooper),
merely issued orders for all the troops to be in
readiness. ... At night intelligence was re-
ceived from Mons that the French concentration
was at Charleroi, and orders were issued for the
immediate movement of the troops. . . . Wel-
lington and the Prince of Orange, with several
of the staff officers, went — it is said, to prevent
a panic in Brussels — to the Duchess of Rich-
mond's ball, where ' Belgium's capital had gath-
ered then her beauty and her chivalry,' and,
'while all went merry as a marriage bell,' the
staff officers stole away one by one. The Duke
himself, 'throwing away golden minutes ' (Ham-
ley), as if to show his contidence in his fortunes,
remained to a late hour to return thanks after sup-
per for the health of the Prince Regent of Great
Britain, which the Prince of Orange proposed.
. BU'icher had received, at his head-quarters
at Namur, news on the morning of the 14th of
the French concentration, and he had ordered
forward the corps of Pirch and Thielemann. . . .
Napoleon did not foresee Blilcher's promptitude,
and nothing was done in the early morning of
the 16th to proceed with the execution of the in-
tended surprise. . . . No orders were issued by
the Emperor till eight, when Napoleon's resolu-
tion was taken, — to strike at the Prussians, who
would, he believed, if defeated, retire upon their
natural base of communications, through Namur
and Liege, and he would thus be left to deal
separately with the British, who could not move
from their base, the sea. The French army was
to advance in two wings, the left under Ney, the
right under Grouchy, with the reserve under the
Emperor liimself. Ney was to capture Quatre
Bras, reconnoitre the Brussels road, and hold
himself in readiness to march to Brussels, which
Napoleon hoped to be able to enter the following
morning. . . . Napoleon had 64,000 men to at-
tack the position at Ligny ; Ney on the left wing
had 45,000 for Quatre Bras; Lobau had 10,000 to
support either wing of the Grand Army; 5,000
troops were in the rear; and the victorious wing,
whether Ney's or Grouchy's, was to wheel round
and manoeuvre in the direction of the other,
Thielemann having come up before the French
delivered their attack, Bliicher had 85,000 men
on the field. Wellington arrived at Quatre Bras
(which is 20 miles from Brussels) at 11 o'clock in
the forenoon. As Marshal Ney gave no sign of
an imminent attack, Wellington galloped over,
about seven miles, to confer with Bliicher. . . .
Wellington, after some discussion, in which he
expressed his disapproval of Blucher's position,
agreed to move to the rear of the Prussians, to
act as a reserve, if his own position at Quatre
Bras were not attacked. ... He reached Quatre
Bras when his own position was being assailed,
and no help could be sent to Bliicher, ... At
about three o'clock, when the heavy cannonade
a few miles to the west intimated that a desperate
battle was in progress at Quatre Bras, the signal
for attack [on the Prussians, at Ligny] was given.
The French left sped forward with impetuosity ;
the resistance was vigorous but futile, and the
enemy streamed through the village. Bliicher
immediately moved forward fresh troops and re-
took the village, but was unable to retain it. . . .
Thrice the Grenadiers forced their way into and
through the village, but only to be driven back
again." But " Bliicher gradually exhausted his
reserves, and when, in the dusk. Napoleon saw
the last battalion moved forward and the ground
behind Ligny vacant, he exclaimed, ' they are
lost I ' The Guards and the Cuirassiers were
immediately ordered to attack," and the wearied
Prussian infantry were broken by their onset.
"The fugitives fled precipitately over the fields
and along the roads to the east, and the order for
the whole to retire was immediately given. . . .
Bliicher himself gathered a few of his squadrons
to check the hot pursuit near Sombreffe, and
thrice led them to the charge. His squadrons
were broken, and after the last charge his horse
fell dead, and the veteran marshal lay under it.
His aid-de-camp, Nostitz, stood by him, and
covered him with a cloak; the Cuirassiers gal-
loped past without noticing him. . . . Gneisenau,
wlio took temporary command from the accident
to Bliicher, ordered a retreat upon Wavre, with
the view of joining Billow's corps and keeping
open the comniunications with Wellington. . . .
The loss on each side has been very variously
estimated. Napoleon put his own loss at 7,000
men, Charras puts it at 11,000, and the loss of
the Prussians at 18,000. The retreat upon Wavre
abandoned the communications with Namur and
Liege, through which the Prussian supplies came
from the lower Rhine, for a new line by Lou vain,
but it kept the Prussians on a line parallel to the
road on which Wellington must reUeat, and thus
still enabled the two armies to aid each other.
' This nol)le daring at once snatched from Napo-
leon the hoped-for fruits of his \-ictory, and the
danger Ligny had for a few hours averted was
left impending over him' (Chesney)." — H. R.
1395
FRANCE, 1815.
The Waterloo
Campaign,
FRANCE, 1815.
Clinton, The War in the Peninsula and Welling-
ton's Campaigns in France and Belgium, ch. 12.
— On "Wellington's return to Quatre Bras from
his interview with Blilcher, he found, as stated
above, that the Prince of Orange had already
■become desperately engaged with the superior
forces of Ney. ' ' The Duke's presence gave new
life to the battle, and when Picton's division,
followed by the Brunswickers and Van Merle's
Belgian horse, arrived, he took the offensive,
pushing forward right up to the edge of the
farm of Gemioncourt. Ney, reinforced by the
rest of Reille's corps and part of Kellermau's
cavalry, violently retorted, and in the charge,
which partially broke into spray before the
squares, Wellington ran the risk of death or
capture. But he leaped his horse over the
92d Highlanders lining the ditch on the Namur
road, while his gallant pursuers, cut up by
the infantry fire, were killed or driven off. Ney
■was further reinforced by more guns and cav-
alry, and Wellington's brigades continued to
arrive in parcels. The Marshal was always
superior in horsemen and cannon, but after 5
o'clock his opponent had larger numbers of foot.
Holding firmly to the cross-roads and the high-
way to Namur, Wellington became the stronger
as the day waned ; and when the Guards emerged
from the Nivelles road and the Allies pressed
forward, Ney, who had no fresh troops, was
driven back, and his antagonist remained at sun-
down master of the whole field of battle. The
position was maintained, but the cost was great,
for there were no fewer than 4,600 killed and
wounded, more than half being British soldiers.
The thunder of cannon to the eastward had also
died away, but none knew as yet at Quatre Bras
how Blucher had fared at the hands of his re-
doubtable foe. Wellington, who slept at his
head-quarters in Genappe, was on the field and
scrutinising his outposts at daybreak on the 17th.
Soon after came a report, confirmed a little later,
that the Prussians had retreated on Wavre. . . .
Napoleon had a belief that Blucher would retreat
upon LiSge, which caused him at a late hour in
the day to despatch Grouchy to that side, and
thus touch was lost. Wtiile the French were
cooking and Napoleon was pondering, definite
intelligence was brought to Wellington, who,
learning for certain that Blucher was at Wavre,
promised to stand fast himself at Mont St. Jean
and fight, if Blucher would support him with
two corps. The intrepid Marshal replied that he
■would come with his whole army, and Welling-
ton got the famous answer before night. Thus
■was made, between generals who thoroughly
trusted each other, that combination which led
to the Battle of Waterloo. It was no chance
combat, but the result of a deliberate design,
rendered capable of execution, even when Blucher
was ■wounded, by his resolve to retreat upon
Wavre, and by Napoleon, who acted on con-
jecture that the Prussians would hurry towards
their base at Liege. The morning at Quatre
Bras was peaceful ; the Allies cooked their food
before starting rearward. Wellington, it is said,
lay down for a moment, and snatched perhaps a
little sleep. There was no stir in front or on the
exposed left flank ; and, covered by a strong dis-
play of horsemen, the Allied divisions tramped
steadily towards Mont St. Jean. . . . The retreat
continued all day. A thunderstorm, so often a
precursor of Wellington's battles, deluged the
fields with rain, and pursuer and pursued strug-
gling through the mire, were drenched to the skin
by nightfall. . . . The results of t-wo days' war-
fare may be thus summed up. Napoleon had
inflicted a defeat, yet not a decisive defeat, upon
the Prussians, who escaped from his ken to
Wavre. He had then, at a late hour on the 17th,
detached Grouchy with 33,000 men to follow
them, and Grouchy at night from Gembloux re-
ported that they had retired in three directions.
Moving himself in the afternoon, Napoleon,
uniting with Ney, had pursued Wellington to
Mont St. Jean, and slept in the comfortable be-
lief that he had separated the Allies. At that
very time Wellington, ■who had assembled his
whole force except 17,000 men, . . . was in close
communication ■with Blucher, and intended on
the 18th to stop Napoleon by delivering battle,
and to hold him fast until Blucher could cut in
on his right flank and rear. Thus it was the
Allies who were united practically, and the
French army which was separated into two groups
unable to support each other. . . . The tempest
which burst over the retreating columns on the
17th followed them to their bivouacs and raged
all night, and did not cease until late on the fate-
ful Sunday. Wellington, mounting his faithful
Copenhagen at break of day, rode from the vil-
lage of Waterloo to the field, ■where the armies
on both sides, protected by watchful sentries,
were still contending with the mischiefs inflicted
by the storm. The position was the crest of a
gentle slope stretching from Sraohain to the
Nivelles road, having upon and in advance of its
right the chateau, garden, and wood of Hougou-
mont, and in the centre, where the Charleroi road
cut through the little ridge, the farm of La Haye
Sainte. Both these posts were occupied, but the
latter, unfortunately, not so solidly as Hougou-
mont. . . . The position was well filled by the
69,000 men of all arms and 156 guns which
were present that day. Napoleon, who slept at
the farm of Caillou, and who had been out on
foot to the front during the night, was also early
in the field, and glad of the gift wliich he thought
fortune had placed in his hands. When Reille
had joined him from Genappe, he had 72,000
men, all admirable soldiers, and 240 guns, with
which to engage in combat, and he reckoned that
the chances were ninety to ten in liis favour. He
mounted his charger, reconnoitred his oppo-
nent's position, and then gave the orders which,
promptly and finely obeyed, disclosed the French
array. ... It ■n'as now nearly eleven o'clock,
and, although his opponent knew it not, Welling-
ton had got news of the march from Wavre of
Bulow, whose leading troops were actually, at
that time, close to the wood of St. Lambert on
the French right ; while Grouchy TN'as at Sart les
Walhain, between Gembloux and Wavre. It is
not practicable here to give a full account of the
battle of Waterloo; we can only describe its
broad outlines. The first gun was fired about
twenty or thirty minutes past eleven, and pre-
luded a dashing and sustained attack on Hou-
goumont, which failed to carry the house, gar-
den, or orchard, but did gain the wood. It was
probably intended to divert attention from the
attack on the left and centre, which Ney, mass-
ing his guns opposite the British left, was pre-
paring to execute. Wellington watched and in
some measure controlled the fight for Hougou-
mont, and then rode off to the centre, taking post
1396
FRANCE, 1815.
The Waterloo
Campaign.
FRANCE, 1815.
at a solitary tree which grew near the Charleroi
road above La Haye Sainte. Ney at half past
one sent forward the whole of D'Erlon's corps,
aad although some of them pushed close up to
and over the Wavre road, stormed the orchard of
La Haye Sainte and took the Pappelotte farm,
yet at the critical moment Sir William Pon-
sonby's Union Brigade of horse charged into the
French infantry, already shattered by the fire of
Picton's troops, and the net result of the com-
bined operation was that two eagles and 3,000
prisoners were captured, while nearly that num-
ber of killed and wounded remained on the
ground. On the other side of La Ha^'e Sainte
tlie Household Brigade, led by Lord Anglesea in
person, charged in upon and routed a large body
of French cuirassiers. The grand attack thus
completely failed, and the centre, like the right,
remained intact. It was just before this combat
began that Napoleon saw something like troops
towards St. Lambert and despatched two bri-
gades of light cavalry to reconnoitre. A Prus-
sian staff officer was caught beyond Planchenoit,
and from him came the unexpected and unwel-
come information that the whole Prussian army
was approaching. . . . The signs of danger on
his right flank, the punishment of D'Erlon's
corps, the ineffectual attempt upon the British
Guards in and about Hougoumont, were followed
by a kind of pause and the combat reverted to
cannonading and skirmishing. But towards four
o'clock Napoleon, increasing the fire of his artil-
lery, threw forward a mass of cavalry, forty
squadrons, and then began that series of reiter-
ated onsets of horse which lasted for two hours.
. . . Twice they were driven down the slope,
and the third time, when they came on, they
were strengthened by Kellerman and Guyot un-
til they reached a force of 77 squadrons, or 13,000
men; but these also were repulsed, the British
horse, what remained of them, charging when
the French were entangled among the squares
and disordered by the musketry and guns. Four
times these fine troopers charged, yet utterly
failed to penetrate or move a single foot bat-
talion. But some time before the final effort,
Ney by a fierce attack got possession of La Haye
Sainte, and thus, just as the cavalry were ex-
hausted, the French infantry were established
within sixty yards of the Allied centre. And
although the Emperor was obliged to detach
one-half of his Guard to the right, because
Blucher had brought into play beyond Planche-
noit against Lobau nearly 30,000 men, still the
capture of La Haye Sainte was justly regarded
as a grave event. "Wellington during the cav-
alry fight had moved three brigades on his right
nearer to Hougoumont, and had called up
Chasse and his Belgians to support them ; and it
was a little before this time that he cried out to
Brigadier-General Adam, 'By G — , Adam, I
think we shall beat them yet!'. . . The crisis of
the battle had come for Napoleon. Unable after
eight hours' conflict to do more than capture La
Haye Sainte ; hardly pressed by the Prussians,
now strong and aggressive ; owing such success
as he had obtained to the valour and discipline
of his soldiers — the Emperor delivered his last
stroke, not for victory — he could no longer hope
to win — but for safety. He sent forward the
last ten battalions of his Guard to assail the Brit-
ish right, and directed the whole remaining in-
fantry force available to attack all along the line.
The Guard marched onward in two columns,
which came successively in contact with their
opponents. Napier's gunsand theBritisb Guards,
who rising from the ground showed across the
head of the first column, fired heavily and charg-
ing drove them in confusion back towards La
Belle Alliance ; and the second column, struck in
flank by the musketry of the 53nd and 95th was
next broken by a bayonet charge and pursued by
Colonel Colborne to and beyond the Charleroi
road. As Ziethen's Prussians were falling upon
the French near Pappelotte, and Pirch and
Bulow wrestling with the Imperial Guard in
Planchenoit, Wellington ordered the whole of the
British line to advance. The cheers arising on
the right where he was, extended along the front
and gave new strength to the wearied soldiers.
He led the way. As he neared the Charleroi
road, the riflemen, full of Peninsular memories,
began to cheer him as he galloped up, but he
called out, ' No cheering, my lads ; forward and
complete your victory.' He found that good
soldier, Colborne, halted for a moment before
three squares of the rallied Imperial Guard. ' Go
on, Colborne, ' he said ; ' better attack them, they
won't stand.' Nor did they. Wellington then
turned to the right, where Vivian's Light Cav-
alry were active in the gloom, and we next find
him once more with the 53nd near Rossomme, the
farthest point of the advance, where that regi-
ment halted after its grand march over the bat-
tlefield. Somewhere on the highway he met
Blucher, who had so nobly kept his word, and it
was then that Gneisenau undertook to chase the
fugitives over the frontier. The French, or per-
haps we should say the Napoleonic army, was
destroyed, and the power which its mighty
leader had built up on the basis of its astonishing
successes was gone forever." — G. Hooper, Wel-
lington, ch. 9.
Also in : D. Gardner, Quatre Bras, Ligny, and
Waterloo. — L't. Col. C. C. Chesney, Waterloo
Lett's. — W. Sibome, Hist, of the War in France
and Belgium in 1815. — Gen. Sir J. S. Kennedy,
Notes on the Battle of Waterloo. — W. H. Maxwell,
Life of Wellington, v. 3, ch. 28-33.— G. R. Gleig,
Story of the Battle of Waterloo.—^. O'C. Morris,
Great Commanders of Modern Times, and the
Campaign of 1815.
A. D. 1815 (June — August). — Napoleon's re-
turn to Paris. — His final abdication. — His sur-
render of himself to the English. — His cap-
tivity at St. Helena. — "The vanquished army
had lost 200 pieces of ordnance, and 30,000 men
hors de combat or prisoners; as many more re-
mained, independently of Grouchy 's 35,000 men;
but the difficulty was to rally them in presence
of an enemy, that had taken lessons in audac-
ity and activity from Napoleon himself. The
loss of the allies was not less considerable, but
there remained to them 150,000 men, the confi-
dence of victory, and the certainty of being
seconded by 300,000 allies, who were crossing
the Rhine from Mentz to Bale. Such was the
issue of this struggle, commenced imder such
happy auspices, and which resulted more fatal
to France than the battles of Poitiers and Azin-
court. It must be admitted, that this disaster
was the work of a multitude of unheard-of cir-
cumstances : if Napoleon can be reproached for
certain faults, it must be allowed that fortune
dealt cruelly with him in the lesser details, and
that his enemies, in return, were as fortunate as
1397
FRANCE, 1815.
The Second
Abdication of Napoleon.
FRANCK, 1815.
they showed themselves skillful. However un-
just be the spirit of party, we are forced to
render homage' to the merits of two generals,
who, unexpectedly attacked in their cantonments
extending from Dinant and LiSge to Renaix,
near Tournay, had taken such wise measures as
to be in condition next morning for giving battle
to equal forces, and for afterwards conquering
by an able concentration of the two armies. . . .
In the very battle of Waterloo, the French might
be censured for having attempted the first attack
in masses too deep. This system was never suc-
cessful against the murderous fire of English
infantry and artUlery. . . . There were likewise
extraordinary charges of cavalry, which, being
devoid of support, became heroic but useless
struggles. Notwithstanding all this, it is almost
certain that Napoleon would have remained
master of the field of battle, but for the arrival
of 65,000 Prussians on his rear; a decisive and
disastrous circumstance, that to prevent was not
entirely in his power. As soon as tlie enemy led
130,000 men on the battle-field, with scarcely
50,000 to oppose them, all was lost. . . . Napo-
leon had but one course left him, which was to
direct Grouchy through the Ardennes on Laon,
to collect at this point all that could be drawn
from the interior, from Metz and from Rapp's
corps, leaving but garrisons in Lorraine and Al-
sace. The imperial cause was very much shaken,
but not entirely lost; should all "Frenchmen de-
termine on opposing Evirope with the courage
of the Spartans of Leonidas, the energy of the
Russians in 1813, or of the Spaniards of Palafox.
Unfortunately for them, as for Napoleon, opinion
was very much divided on this subject, and the
majority still believing that the struggle inter-
ested only the power of the emperor and his
family, the fate of the country seemed of little
consequence. Prince Jerome had collected 25, 000
men in rear of Avesnes : he was ordered to lead
them to Laon ; there remained 200 pieces of ar-
tillery, beside those of Grouchy. . . . Reaching
Laon on the 19th, where he had at first resolved
to await the junction of Grouchy and Jerome,
the emperor discussed, with the small number
of the trustworthy who had followed him, the
course he should adopt after this frightful dis-
aster. Should he repair to Paris, and concert
with the chambers and his ministers, or else re-
main with the army, demanding of the chambers
to invest him with dictatorial power and an un-
limited confidence, under the conviction that he
would obtain from them the most energetic
measures, for saving France and conquering her
independence, on heaps of ruins ? As it always
happens, his generals were divided in opinion;
some wished him to proceed to Paris, and deposit
the crown into the hands of the nation's dele-
gates, or receive it from them a second time,
with the means of defending it. Others, with a
better appreciation of the views of the deputies,
affirmed, that far from sympathizing with Na-
poleon, and seconding him, they woiild accuse
him of having lost France, and would endeavor
to save the country by losing the emperor. . . .
Lastly, the most prudent thought that Napoleon
should not go to Paris, but remain at the head of
the army, in order to treat with the sovereigns
himself, by offering to abdicate in favor of his
son. It is said, that Napoleon inclined to the idea
of remaining at Laon with the army ; but the
advice of the greatest number determined him.
and he departed for Paris. " — Baron de Jomini,
Hist, of the Campaign of Waterloo, pp. 184-189.
— " It was a moment of unrelieved despair for
the public men who gathered round him on his
return to Paris, and among these were several
whose fame was of earlier date than his own.
La Fayette, the man of 1789; Carnot, organizer
of victory to the Convention ; Lucien, who had
decided the revolution of Brumaire, — all these
met in that comfortless deliberation. Carnot
was for a dictatorship of public safety, that is,
for renewing his great days of 1793 ; Lucien too
liked the Roman sound of the word dictator.
' Dare ! ' he said to his brother, but the spring of
that terrible will was broken at last. ' I have
dared too much already,' said Napoleon. Jlean-
while, in the Chamber of Representatives the
word was not dictatorship but liberty. Here
La Fayette caused the assembly to vote itself
permanent, and to declare guilty of high treason
whoever should attempt to dissolve it. He
hinted that, if the word abdication were not soon
pronounced on the other side, he would himself
pronounce the word ' decheance. ' The second
abdication took place on June 22d. ' I ofEer my-
self a sacrifice to the hatred of the enemies of
France. My public life is finished, and I pro-
claim my son, under the title of Napoleon II.,
Emperor of the French.' On the 25th he retired
to Malmaison, where Josephine had died the year
before. He had by no means yet ceased to hope.
AVhen his son was passed over by the Chamber
of Representatives, who named an executive
commission of five, he protested that he had not
intended to make way for a new Directory. . . .
On the 27th he went so far as to offer his services
once more as general, ' regarding myself still as
the first soldier of the nation. ' He was met by
a refusal, and left Malmaison on the 29th for
Rochefort, well furnished with books on the
United States. France was by this time entering
upon another Reign of Terror. Massacre had
begun at Marseilles as early as the 25th. What
should Napoleon do ? He had been formerly the
enemy of every other nation, and now he was
the worst enemy, if not of France, yet of the
triumphant faction in France. He lingered some
days at Rochefort, where he had arrived on July
3d, and then, finding it impossible to escape the
vigilance of the English cruisers, went on the
1.5th on board the ' Bellerophon ' and surrendered
himself to Captain Maitland. It was explained
to him that no conditions could be accepted, but
that he would be ' conveyed to England to be
received in such manner as the Prince Regent
should deem expedient.' He had written at the
lie d'Aix the following characteristic letter to
the Prince Regent: — ' Royal Highness, — A prey
to the factions which divide my country and to
the ermiity of the powers of Europe, I have ter-
minated my public career, and I come, like
Themistocles, to seat myself at the hearth of the
British people. I place myself under the pro-
tection of its laws, which I claim from your
Royal Highness as the most powerful, the most
constant, and the most generous of my enemies.'
It was perhaps the only course open to him. In
France his life could scarcely have been spared,
and Blilcher talked of executing him on the spot
where the Due d'Enghien had fallen. He there-
fore could do nothing but what he did. His
reference to Themistocles shows that he was con-
scious of being the worst enemy that England
]o98
FRANCE, 1815.
The Exile
to St. Helena.
FRANCE, 1815.
had ever had. Perhaps he remembered that at
the rupture of the treaty of Amiens he had
studied to envenom the contest by detaining tlie
EngUsh residents in France. Still he might re-
flect, on the other hand, that England was the
only great country which had not been trampled
down and covered with massacre by his soldiers.
It would have been inexcusable if the English
Government had given way to vindictive feel-
ings, especially as they could well afford to be
magnanimous, having just won the greatest of
all victories. But it was necessary to deprive
him of the power of exciting new wars, and the
experiment of Elba had shown that this involved
depriving him of his liberty. The frenzy which
had cost the lives of millions must be checked.
This was the principle laid down in the declara-
tion of March loth, by which he had been ex-
communicated as a public enemy. It was there-
fore necessary to impose some restraint upon
him. He must be separated from his party and
from aU the revolutionary party in Europe. So
long as he remained in Europe this would involve
positive imprisonment. The only arrangement
therefore which would allow him tolerable per-
sonal comfort and enjoyment of life, was to send
him out of Europe. From these considerations
grew the decision of the Government to send
him to St. Helena. An Act of Parliament was
passed ' for the better detaining in custody Na-
poleon Bonaparte,' and another Act for subject-
ing St. Helena to a special system of government.
He was kept on board the ' Bellerophon ' till
August 4tli, when he was transferred to the
' Northumberland. ' On October 15th he arrived
at St. Helena, accompanied by Counts Montholon,
Las Cases, and Bertrand, with their families.
General Gourgaud, and a number of servants.
In April, 1816, arrived Sir Hudson Lowe, an offi-
cer who had been knighted for bringing the
news of the capture of Paris in 1814, as governor.
The rest of his life, which continued till May 5,
1821, was occupied partly in quarrels with this
governor, which have now lost their interest,
partly in the task he had undertaken at the time
of his first abdication, that of relating his past
life. He did not himself write this narrative,
nor does it appear that he even dictated it word
for word. It is a report made partly by General
Gourgaud, partly by Count Montholon, of Na-
poleon's impassioned recitals; but they assure
us that this report, as published, has been read
and corrected throughout by him. It gives a
tolerably complete account of the period between
the siege of Toulon and the battle of Marengo.
On the later period there is little, except a memoir
on the campaign of 1815, to which the editors of
the Correspondence have been able to add another
on Elba and the Hundred Days." — J. R. Seeley,
Short Hist, of Napoleon I., ch. 6, sect. 5.
Also in : Count de Las Cases, Life, Exile and
Conversations of Napoleon. — Gen. Count Mon-
tholon, Hist, of the Captivity of Napoleon. — W.
Forsyth, Hist, of the Captivity of Napoleun.—B. E.
O'Meara, Napoleon in Exile. — Sir W. Scott, Life
of Napoleon, v. 3, ch. 49-56. — A. Thiers, Hist, of
the Consulate and the Empire, ch. 61-63 (v. 5).
A. D. i8is (July — November). — English and
Prussian armies in Paris. — Return of Louis
XVIII. — Restoration of the art-spoils of Napo-
leon. — Indemnities demanded. — Russian, Aus-
trian and Spanish armies on French soil. — The
second Treaty of Paris.— •'The 7th of July was
the proudest day in the annals of England. On
that day her victorious army, headed by Welling-
ton, made their public entry, alongwith the Prus-
sians, into Paris, where an English drum had not
been heard for nearly four hundred years. . . .
The French regarded them with melancholy
hearts and anxious looks. Few persons were to
be seen in the streets. . . . The English estab-
lished themselves in the Bois de Boulogne in a
regular camp ; the Prussians bivouacked in the
churches, on the quays, and in tlie principal
streets. On the following day Louis S VIII. , who
had followed in the rear of the English army from
Ghent, made his public entrance, escorted by
the national guard. But his entry was attended
by still more melancholy circumstances, and of
sinister augury to the future stability of his dy-
nasty. Even the royalists were downcast ; their
patriotic feelings were deeply wounded by the
defeat of France. . . . There was something in
the restoration of the monarch by the arms of the
old rivals and enemies of France which added in-
expressibly to its bitterness. . . . The reality of
subjugation was before their eyes. Blucher kept
aloof from all intercourse with the court, and
haughtily demanded a contribution of 100,000,-
000 francs . . . for the pay of his troops, as Na-
poleon had done from the Prussians at Berlin.
Already the Prussian soldiers insisted with loud
cries that the pillar of Austerlitz should be pulled
down, as Napoleon had destroyed the pillar of
Rosbach ; and Blucher was so resolute to destroy
the bridge of Jena, that he had actually begun
operations by running mines under the arches for
blowing it up. . . . Wellington as steadily re-
sisted the ruthless act, but he had great diificulty
in maintaining his point ; and it was only by his
placing a sentinel on the bridge, and repeated and
earnest remonstrances, that the destruction of that
beautiful monument was prevented. ... A still
more melancholy humiliation than they had yet
experienced ere long befell the French nation.
The Allied sovereigns now arrived in Paris, and
insisted upon the restoration of the objects of
art in the museum of the Louvre, which had been
pillaged from their respective states by the orders
of Napoleon. The justice of this demand could
not be contested : it was only wresting the prey
from the robber. . . . Nothing wounded the
French so profoundly as this breaking up of the
trophies of the war. It told them, in language
not to be misunderstood, that conquest had now
reached their doors : the iron went into the soul
of the nation. A memorial from all the artists of
Europe at Rome claimed for the Eternal City the
entire restoration of the immortal works of art
which had once adorned it. The Allied sovereigns
acceded to the j ust demand ; and Canova, impas-
sioned for the arts and the city of his choice, has-
tened to Paris to superintend the removal. It was
most effectually done. The bronze horses . . .
[from Venice] were restored to their old station
in front of the Church of St. Mark. The Trans-
figuration and the Last Communion of St. Jerome
resumed their place in the halls of the Vatican ;
the Apollo and the Laocoon again adorned the
precincts of St. Peter's; the Venus was enshrined
anew amidst beauty in the Tribune of Florence,
and the Descent from the Cross by Rubens was
restored to the devout worship of the Flemings
in the cathedral of Antwerp. . . . The claims
preferred by the different Allied powers for resti-
tution not merely of celebrated objects of art,
1399
FRANCE, 1815.
Second Treaty
of Paris.
FRANCE, 1815.
but of curiosities and valuable articles of all kinds,
which had been carried off by the French during
their occupation of the different countries of Eu-
rope, especially under Napoleon, were immense,
and demonstrated at once the almost incredible
length to which the system of spoliation and
robbery had been carried by the republican and
imperial authorities. Their amount may be esti-
mated by one instance from an official list, pre-
pared by the Prussian authorities in 1815. It
appears that, during the years 1806 and 1807,
there had been violently taken from the Prussian
states, on the requisition of M. Donore, and
brought to Paris, — statues, paintings, antiquities,
cameos, manuscripts, maps, gems, antiques, rari-
ties, and other valuable articles, the catalogue of
which occupies 53 closely printed pages of M.
Schoell's valuable Recueil. Among them are 127
paintings, many of them of the very highest
value, taken from the palaces of Berlin and Pots-
dam alone; 187 statues, chiefly antique, taken
from the same palaces during the same period ;
and 86 valuable manuscripts and documents
seized in the city of Aix-la-Chapelle, on the oc-
cupation of that city, then a neutral power, in
1803, by the armies of the First Consul on the in-
vasion of Hanover. The total articles reclaimed
by the Prussians exceeded two thousand. . . ,
The claims of states and cities for indemnity on
account of the enormous exactions made from
them by the French generals, under the authority
of the Convention and the Emperor, were still
more extraordinary. . . . The vast amount of
these claims for indemnities in money or terri-
tories, and the angry feelings with which they
were urged, were of sinister augury to the French
nation, and augmented, in a most serious degree,
the difficulties experienced by those who were in-
trusted with the conduct of the negotiations.
But, be they what they may, the French had no
means of resisting them ; all they could trust to
was the moderation or jealousies of their con-
querors. The force which, during the months of
July and August, advanced from all quarters into
their devoted territory, was immense, and such
as demonstrated that,, if Napoleon had not suc-
ceeded in dissolving the alliance by an early vic-
tory in the Netherlands, the contest, even with-
out the battle of Waterloo, would have been
hopeless. The united armies of Russians and
Austrians, 350,000 strong, under Schwartzenberg
and Barclay de ToUy, crossed the Rhine in various
places from Bale to Coblentz, and, pressing rap-
idly forward, soon occupied the whole eastern
provinces of France. The Austrians and Piedmon-
tese, a hundred thousand more, passed Mont
Cenis, or descended the Rhone from Geneva to
Lyons. The Spaniards made their appearance in
Beam or Roussillon. The armies of Blucher and
Wellington, now reinforced to 200,000 effective
men, occupied Paris, its environs, Normandy, and
Picardy. Eighty thousand Prussians and Ger-
mans, in addition, were advancing through the
Rhenish provinces and Belgium. Before the
Allied sovereigns returned to Paris, in the middle
of July, the French territory was occupied by
800,000 men, to oppose which no considerable
force remained but the army beyond the Loire,
which mustered 65, 000 combatants. . . . Austria
insisted upon getting back Lorraine and Alsace ;
Spain put in a claim to the Basque provinces;
Prussia alleged that her security would be incom-
plete unless Mayence, Luxembourg, and all the
frontier provinces of France adjoining her terri-
tory, were ceded to her; and the King of the
Netherlands claimed the whole of the French
fortresses of the Flemish barrier. The monarchy
of Louis seemed on the eve of dissolution; and
so complete was the prostration of the vanquished,
that there appeared no power capable of prevent-
ing it. It was with no small difficulty, and more
from the mutual jealousies of the dUIerent pow-
ers than any other cause, that these natural re-
prisals for French rapacity were prevented from
taking place. The negotiation was protracted at
Paris till late in autumn; Russia, which had
nothing to gain by the proposed partition, took
part with France throughout its whole continu-
ance ; and the different powers, to support their
pretensions in this debate, maintained their
armies, who had entered on all sides, on the
French soil ; so that above 800,000 foreign troops
were quartered on its inhabitants for several
months. At length, however, by the persevering
efforts of Lord Castlereagh, M. Nesselrode, and
M. Talleyrand, all difficulties were adjusted, and
the second treaty of Paris was concluded in No-
vember 1815, between France and the whole
Allied powers. By this treaty, and the relative
conventions which were signed the same day,
conditions of a very onerous kind were imposed
upon the restored government. The French fron-
tier was restored to the state in which it stood in
1790, by which means the whole of the territory,
far from inconsiderable, gained by the treaty of
1814, was resumed by the Allies. In consequence
of this, France lost the fortresses of Landau,
Sarre-Louis, Philipville, and Marienburg, with,
the adjacent territory of each. Versoix, with a
small district round it, was ceded to the canton
of Geneva ; the fortress of Huningen was to be
demolished ; but the little country of the Venai-
sin, the first conquest of the Revolution, was pre-
served to France. Seven hundred millions of
francs (£28,000,000 sterling) were to be paid to
the Allied powers for the expenses of the war;
in addition to which it was stipulated that an
army of 150,000 men, composed of 30,000 from
each of the great powers of England, Russia,
Austria, and Prussia, and the lesser powers of
Germany, was to occupy, for a period not less
than three, or more than five years, the whole
frontier fortresses of France ; . . . and this large
force was to be maintained entirely at the expense
of the French govermnent. In addition to this,
the different powers obtained indemnities for the
spoliations inflicted on them by France during
the Revolution, which amounted to the enormous
sum of 735,000,000 of francs more (£29,400,000
sterling). A hundred millions of francs were
also provided to the smaller powers as an indem-
nity for the expenses of the war ; so that the total
sums which France had to pay, besides maintain-
ing the army of occupation, amounted to no less
than fifteen hundred and thirty-five millions of
francs, or £61,400,000 sterling. . . . Great Brit-
ain, in a worthy spirit, surrendered the whole
sum falling to her out of the indemnity for the
war, amounting to nearly £5,000,000 sterling, to
the Eling of the Netherlands, to restore the
famous barrier against France which Joseph II.
had so insanely demolished." — Sir A. Alison,
Hist, of Europe, 1789-1815, ch. 95 (». 20).
Also in : Prince de Talleyrand, Menwirs, pt. 9
{v. 3).— E. Hertslet, TJie Map of Europe by Treaty,
No. 40 (B. 1).
1400
FRANCE, 1815.
Louis XVIII.
FRANCE, 1815-1830.
A. D. 1815 (September).— The Holy Alliance.
See Holt Alli.vnce.
A. D. 1815-1830. — The restored monarchy.
— Louis XVIII. and Charles X. — Careerof the
Reactionaries. — Conquest of Algiers. — Ordi-
nances of July. — Revolution. — Abdication and
exile of the king. — "France was defeated but
not crushed. Indeed she had gained Avignou
and some districts of Alsace since 1793, and she
had gained social and political stability by having
millions of peasants as small proprietors in the
soil; moreover, as Napoleon always waged his
wars at the expense of his conquered fnes, the
French national debt was after all the wars only
one-sixth of the debt of Great Britain. So France
soon rose to a position of strength and prosperity
hardly equalled in all Europe, in spite of bad
harvests, political unrest, and the foreign occu-
pation which ended in 1818. The royalists, after
a quarter of a century of repression, now re-
venged themselves witli truly French vehemence.
In France a victorious party generally crushes
its opponents ; and the elections, held during the
full swing of the royalist reaction, sent up to
Paris a Legislative Assembly ' more royalist than
the king himself.' Before it assembled, Louis
XVIII., in spite of his promise only to punish
those who were declared by the Assembly to be
traitors, proscribed fifty-seven persons who had
deserted to Napoleon in the 'Hundred Days.'
... Of the proscribed men thirty-eight were
banished and a few were shot. Among the latter
the most illustrious was Marshal Ney, whose
past bravery did not shield him from the extreme
penalty for the betrayal of the military oath.
. . . This impolitic execution rankled deep in
the breasts of all Napoleon's old soldiers, but for
the present all opposition was swept away in the
furious tide of reaction. Brune, one of Napo-
leon's marshals, was killed by the royalist popu-
lace of Avignon; and the Protestants of the
south, who were suspected of favouring Napo-
leon's home policy, suffered terrible outrages
at Nlmes and Uz6s in this ' white terror. ' The
restored monarchy had far stronger executive
powers than the old system wielded before 1789,
for it now drew into its hands the centralised
powers which, under the Directory and the Em-
pire, had replaced the old cumbrous provincial
system; but even this gain of power did not
satisfy the hot-headed royalists of the Chamber.
Thej- instituted judicial courts under a provost
(prevot), which passed severe sentences without
right of appeal. Dismissing the comparatively
Liberal ministers Talleyrand and Fouche, Louis
in September 1816 summoned a more royalist
ministry under the Due de Richelieu, which was
itself hurried on by the reactionaries. Chateau-
briand fanned the flames of royalist passion by
his writings, until the king even found it neces-
sary to dissolve this mischievous Chamber, and
the new deputies who assembled (February 1817)
showed a more moderate spirit. France was
soon delivered from the foreign armies of occu-
pation, for the sovereigns of Russia, Austria,
and Prussia, meeting at Aix-la-Chapelle (Sep-
tember 1818), in order to combat revolutionary
atteippts, decided that an early evacuation of
French territory would strengthen the Bourbon
rule in France ; and they renewed the Quadruple
Alliance, which aimed at upholding existing
treaties. The discontent in Germany and Italy
awakened a sympathetic echo in France, which
showed itself in the retirement of the Due de
Richelieu and the accession of a more progressive
minister, Decazes (November 1819). This check
to the royalist reaction was soon swept away by
an event of sinister import. The Due de Berry,
second son of the Comte d'Artois, was assassi-
nated (February 1820), as he was leaving the opera-
house, by a fanatic who aimed at cutting off the
direct Bourbon line (February 1830). His design
utterly failed, for a posthumous son, the cele-
brated Comte de Chambord, was born in Sep-
tember 1830 ; and the only result was a new out-
burst of royalist fury. Liberty of the press was
suspended, and a new complicated electoral sys-
tem restricted the franchise to those who paid at
least 1,000 francs a year in direct taxation: the
Chamber of Deputies, a fifth part of which was
renewed every year by an electorate now repre-
senting only the wealthy, became every year
more reactionary, while the Left saw its numbers
decline. The ultra-roj'alist ministry of Vill^le
soon in its turn aroused secret conspiracies, for
the death of Napoleon (May 5, 1821) was now
awakening a feeling of regret for the comparative
liberty enjoyed in France during the Empire.
Military conspiracies were formed, only to be
discovered and crushed, and the veteran republi-
can Lafayette was thought to be concerned in a
great attempt projected in the eastern depart-
ments with its headquarters at Belfort ; and the
terrible society of the Carbonari secretly spread
its arms through the south of France, where it
found soil as favourable as in Italy itself. . . .
A revolution in Spain held Ferdinand a prisoner
in his palace at Madrid. Louis determined to
uphold the throne of his Bourbon relative, and
sent an army which quickly effected its object
(1833). 'The Pyrenees no longer exist,' ex-
claimed Louis XVIII. In fact, everywhere in
Europe absolutism seemed to be triumphant,
and the elections of December 1833 sent up a
further reinforcement to the royalist party ; also
the approaching end of the sensible old king
foreshadowed a period of still more violent re-
action under his hot-headed brother Charles.
Louis XVIII. died on September 16, 1824. At
his death the restoration seemed firmly estab-
lished. . . . France had quickly recovered from
twenty years of warfare, and was thought to
have the strongest government in Europe. Al-
ways the chief of the reactionary nobles, Charles
had said, ' It is only Lafayette and I who have
not changed since 1789.' Honest, sincere, and
affable as the new king was, yet his popularity
soon vanished when it was seen how entirely he
was under the control of his confessor ; and the
ceremonies of his coronation at Rheims showed
that he intended to revive the almost forgotten
past. In Guizot's words, 'Louis XVIII. was a
moderate of the old system and a liberal-minded
inheritor of the 18th century : Charles X. was a
true Smigre, and a submissive bigot.' Among
the first bills which Charles proposed to the
Chambers was one to indemnify those who had
lost their lands in the Revolution, To give these
lands back would have caused general uusettle-
ment among thousands of small cultivators ; but
the former landowners received an indemnity of
a milliard of francs, which they exclaimed against
for its insufficiency just as loudly as the radicals
did for its extravagance: by this tardy act of
justice the State endeavoured to repair some of
the unjust confiscations of the revolutionary era.
1401
FRANCE, 1815-1830.
Charles X.
FRANCE, 1830-1840.
. . . The attempts made by the Jesuits to regain
their legal status in France, in spite of the pro-
hibition dating from before the fall of the old
regime, aroused further hostility to the king,
who was well known to favour their cause.
Nothing, however, so strengthened the growing
opposition in the Chambers and in the coimtry at
large as a rigorous measure aimed at the news-
papers, pamphlets, and books which combated
the clerical reaction. These publications were
to pay a stamp duty per page, while crushing
fines were devised to ruin the offending critics.
One of the leaders of the opposition, Casimir
Perier, exclaimed against this measure as ruin-
ous to trade: ' Printing would be suppressed in
France and transferred to Belgium. ' The king
persevered in his mad enterprise : he refused to
receive a petition from the most august literary
society in Europe, the Academic Pranfaise, and
cashiered its promoters as if they were clerks
under his orders. Strange to say, the Chamber
of Deputies passed the measure, while that of
the Peers rejected it — an event greeted by illumi-
nations all over Paris (April 1827). A few days
afterwards, at a review of the National Guards
in Paris, the troops raised cries for the liberty of
the press and for the charter granted in 1815.
The next day they were disbanded by royal
command, but were foolishly allowed to retain
their arms, which were soon to be used against
the government. Charles next created seventy-
six new peers to outvote his opponents in the
Upper House. He also dissolved the Chamber
of Deputies, but found the new members less
pliable. Finally, Charles had to give way for
the time, and accept a more moderate ministry
under Martignac in place of the reactionary
Villfele Cabinet. . . . Charles was soon able to
dismiss this ministry, the last liope of concili-
ation, and formed (August 1829) a ministry under
Coimt Polignac, one of whose colleagues was the
General Bourmont who had deserted to the allies
the day before Waterloo. The king's speech at
the opening of the next session (March 1830) was
curt and threatening, and the Chamber was soon
prorogued. Reform banquets, a custom which
the French borrowed from English reformers,
increased the agitation, which the Polignac min-
istry vainly sought to divert by ambitious proj-
ects of invasion and partition of some neigh-
bouring States. The only practical outcome of
these projects was the conquest of the pirate
stronghold of Algiers. This powerful fortress
had been bombarded and reduced by Lord Ex-
mouth with the British fleet in 1816, and the
captives, mostly Italians, were released from
that den of slave-dealers ; but the Dey of Algiers
had resumed his old habits, complaints from the
French were met by defiance, and at last the
French envoy quitted the harbour amid a shower
of bullets. A powerful expedition effected a
landing near the strongly-fortified harbour, and
easily beat back the native attack; and then
from the land side soon battered down the de-
fences of the city [see Barbary Statbs : A. D.
1830]. Thus the city whicli had long been the
terror of Mediterranean sailors became the nu-
cleus of the important French colony of Algeria
(July 4, 1830). The design of Charies X. and of
liis reactionary Polignac ministry to divert the
French people from domestic grievances to for-
eign conquest needed the genius and strength of
a Napoleon to ensure success. The mere fact of
the expedition being under the command of the
hated General Bourmont had made it unpopular.
... So, although the victory was triumphantly
announced throughout France, yet the elections
sent up a majority hostile to the king. Never-
theless, with his usual blind obstinacy, Charles
on the 25th July 1830 issued the famous ordi-
nances which brought matters to a crisis. The
first suspended the liberty of the press, and
placed books under a strict censorship; the
second dissolved the newly-elected Chamber of
Deputies; the third excluded licensed dealers
(patentes) from the franchise; the fourth sum-
moned a new Chamber under the new conditions,
every one of which violated the charter granted
by the late king. The Parisians at once flew
to arms, and raised barricades in the many nar-
row streets which then favoured street-defence.
Marmont, hated by the people as being the first
of Napoleon's marshals who had treated with the
allies, was to quell the disturbances with some
20,000 troops of the line; but on the second day's
fighting (July 28) the insurgents, aided by the
disbanded National Guards, and veterans of the
empire, beat back the troops ; and on the third
day the royal troops, cut off from food and sup-
plies, and exhausted by the heat, gave way be-
fore the tricolour flag ; the defection of two line
regiments left the Louvre unguarded; a panic
spread among other regiments, and soon the tri-
colour floated above the Tuileries. Charles there-
upon set the undignified example, soon to be fol-
lowed by so many kings and princes, of giving
way when it was too late. He offered to with-
draw the hated ordinances, but was forced to
flee from St. Cloud. He then tried the last ex-
pedient, also doomed to failure, of abdicating in
favour of his little grandson the Due de Bor-
deaux, since better known as the Comte de Cham-
bord. Retiring slowly with his family to Cher-
bourg, the batSed monarch set out for a second
and last exile, spent first at Holyrood Palace,
Edinburgh, and ended at GOritz in Bohemia.
More than 5,000 civilians and 700 soldiers were
killed or wounded in these terrible ' three days '
of July 1830, which ended all attempts to re-es-
tablish the tyranny of the old regime. The vic-
tims were appropriately buried in the Place de
la Bastille. They freed not France alone, but
dealt a'fierce blow at the system of Metternich."
— J. H. Rose, Century of Continental History, ch.
23.
Also in: D. Turnbull, The Frencit Ben. of
1830. — A. de Lamartine, The Restoration of Mon-
archy in France, bk. 32-50 (v. 3-4). — E. E. Crowe,
Hist, of the Reigns of Louis XVIII. and Charles
X. — Prince de Talleyrand, Memoirs, pt. 10 {v. 3-
4). — G. L. Dickinson, Revolution and Reaction in
Modern Pi-ance, ch. 3.
A. D. 1822. — The Congress of Verona. —
French intervention in Spain approved. See
Verona : The Congress of.
A. D. 1823-1827. — Interference in Spain, to
suppress the revolution and reinstate King
Ferdinand. See Spain: A. D. 1814-1827.
A. D. i827-i829.^Intervention on behalf of
Greece. — Battle of Navarino. See Greece:
A. D. 1821-1829.
A. D. 1830-1840. — The monarchy renewed
under Louis Philippe. — Its steady drift from
the constitutional course. — "The Constitutional
party set their hopes on Louis Philippe. Duke
of Orleans. This prince, born in 1773, was the
1401
FRANCE, 1830-1840.
Louis Philippe.
FRANCE, 1841-1848.
son of that notorious ' Egalite ' who during the
revolution had ended his checkered career under
the guillotine. His grandmother was the noble
Elizabeth Charlotte, a native of the Palatinate,
who had the misfortune to be the wife of the
effeminate Duke of Orleans, brother of Louis
XIV. Louis Philippe was a Bourbon, like King
Charles ; but the opposition of several members
of this Orleans branch of the royal house had
caused it to be regarded as a separate family.
From his youth up he had displayed a great deal
of popular spirit and common-sense. . . . Seem-
ingly created by his nature and career to be a
citizen king, he had long since, as early as 1814,
determined to accept the throne in case it were
offered him." The offer came in 1830 with
the revolution of July. On the 31st of that
month he accepted the office of lieutenant-gen-
eral of the kingdom, conferred by the vote of a
meeting of fifty delegates. ' ' The ' Society of the
Friends of the People ' [an organization of the
pronounced republicans], not very well pleased
with this result of the ' great week ' [as the week
of the revolution was called], laid before Lafay-
ette, on the following day," their programme,
" and commissioned him to make the duke guar-
antee the popular rights therein set forth by his
signature. With this document in his pocket,
Lafayette made his . . . visit to Louis Philippe
in the Palais Royal. In the course of conversa-
tion he said to him, ' You know that I am a re-
publican, and consider the American constitution
the most perfect.' 'I am of the same opinion,'
replied the duke ; ' no one could have been two
years in America and not share that view. But
do you think that that constitution could be
adopted in France in its present condition — with
the present state of popular opinion?' 'No,'
said Lafayette ; ' what France needs is a popular
monarchy surrounded by republican — thoroughly
republican — institutions. ' ' There I quite agree
with you,' rejoined Louis Philippe. Enchanted
with this political harmony, the old general con-
sidered it unnecessary to present the programme,
and went security to the republicans for the
duke, the patriot of 1789. ... On the 3d of
August the Chamber was opened by the Duke
of Orleans, and the abdication of the king and
dauphin announced. . . . The question whether
the constitution was to be changed, and how,
gave rise to an animated contest between radicals
and liberals. The confidence in Louis Philippe
was so great, that they were content with a few
improvements. The throne was declared vacant,
and Louis Philippe proclaimed king of the
French. . . . August 8th, Louis Philippe ap-
peared in the Palais Bourbon, took the oath to
the constitution, and was thereupon proclaimed
king. . . . None of the great monarchs had so
difficult a task as Louis Philippe. If he attached
himself to the majority of his people and showed
himself in earnest with ' the republican institu-
tions which ought to surround the throne,' he
had all the continental powers against him; if
he inclined toward the absolute system of the
latter, then not alone the extreme parties, but
also the men of the constitutional monarchy, . . .
rose against him. . . . His system, which he
himself named a happy medium (juste milieu),
would have been a happy medium if he had
struck the middle and kept it ; but he gradually
swerved so much toward the right that the mid-
dle was far to his left. From the outset he had
three parties against him — Legitimists, Bona-
partists, and Republicans." At intervals, there
were demonstrations and insurrections under-
taken in the interest of each of these. In July,
1835, the assassination of the king was attempted,
by the explosion of an infernal machine, which
killed and wounded sixty people. " The whole
Republican party was unjustly made responsible
for this attempt, and new blows were struck at
the juries and the Press. Every Press offence
involving a libel of the king or the administra-
tion was to be tried from this time on before the
Court of Peers, and the composition of that body
rendered conviction certain. With these ' Sep-
tember laws ' the reaction was complete, the
power of the Republicans was broken. Their
activity did not cease, however. Their numerous
societies continued to exist in secret, and to the
political affiliated themselves the social societies,
which . . . demanded, among other impossibili-
ties, the abolition of private property. It was
these baleful excrescences which deprived repub-
licanism of all credit, and outbreaks like that of
May 12th, 1839, where a few hundred members
of the ' Society of the Seasons,' with Barbfesand
Blanqui at their head, disarmed military posts
and proclaimed the republic, found not the
slightest response. The repeated attempts which
were made on the king's life were also unsuccess-
ful. " The relations of Louis Philippe ' ' to foreign
powers became better the more he approximated
to their system, putting restraints upon societies,
the Press, and juries, and energetically crushing
popular revolts. Naturally he was by this very
means constantly further estranging the mass of
the people. . . . What the Legitimists and Re-
publicans had not effected— a change of gov-
ernment — the Napoleouids now took in hand."
Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, son of ex-king Louis
of Holland and Hortense Beauharnais, made his
appearance among the soldiers of the garrison at
Strasburg, October 30, 1836, with the expectation
that they would proclaim him emperor and set
the example of a rising in his favor. But the
attempt was a wretched failure ; Louis Napoleon
was arrested and contemptuously sent out of the
country, to America, without punishment. In
1840 he repeated his undertaking, at Boulogne,
more abortively than in the first instance; was
again made prisoner, and was consigned, this
time, to the castle of Ham, from which he es-
caped six years later. ' ' All the world laughed at
his folly; but without the scenes of Strasburg
and Boulogne, and the martyrdom of a six years'
imprisonment, his name certainly would not have
produced such an effect in the year 1848." — W.
Mliller, Political History of Recent Times, sect. 7
and 14.
Also EN: L. Blanc, Hist, of Ten Tears, 1830-
1840. — F. P. Guizot, Memoirs to Illustrate the
Hist, of My Own Time, v. 3^.
A. D. 1831-1832. — Intervention in the Neth-
erlands. — Siege of Antwerp. See Nether-
lands: A. D. 1830-1833.
A. D. 1833-1840. — The Turko-Egyptian
question and its settlement. SeeTuKKS: A. D.
1831-1840.
A. D. 1833-1846. — The subjugation of Al-
geria.— War with Abd-el-Kader. See Barbart
St.ates: a. D. 1830-1846.
A. D. 1841-1848.— The limited electoral body
and its corruption. — Agitation for reform. —
The suppressed banquet at Paris and the
1403
FRANCE, 1841-1848.
The Revohtiion
of 1&J8.
FRANCE, 1841-1848.
revolution which followed. — Abdication and
flight of the king. — "The mouarchy of Louis
Philippe lasted for 18 years. But the experi-
ment was practicable only so long as the throne
rested on a small body of obedient electors. The
qualification for the franchise was so high that
it was held only by 300,000 people. So small a
constituency could be ' managed ' by the skill of
M. Guizot and M. Thiers [who were the chief
rivals of the time in political leadership]. It
could be ' managed ' through gifts of places,
bribes, the iuflilence of local magnates, and the
pressure of public officials. There was never
perhaps so corrupt an electoral body. . . . M.
Guizot, who was an austere puritan at home, and
who has entered into a competition with Saint
Augustin as a writer of religious meditations,
raised many sneers to the lips of worldlings, not
only by lending his hand to the infamous in-
trigue of the Spanish Marriages, but by allowing
his subordinates to traffic in places for the sake
of getting votes. His own hands, of course,
were clean ; no one spoke a whisper against his
personal purity. But he seemed to have much
practical sympathy with the advice which Pitt,
in one of Landor's 'Imaginary Conversations,'
gives to his young disciple Canning. Pecuniary
corruption was the very breath of tife to the con-
stitutional monarchy. The voters were bought as
freely as if they had stood in the market-place.
The system admirably suited the purpose of the
little family party of princes and parliamentary
chiefs who ruled the country. But it was as arti-
ficial and fleeting as the sand castles which a
child builds on the edge of the advancing tide." —
J. Macdonell, France since tli-e First Empire, pp.
172-174. — "The population of France was then
34,000,000, and the privilege of the political fran-
chise was vested exclusively in those who paid
in direct taxes a sum not less than £8. This
class numbered little more than 200,000. . . .
The government had 130,000 places at its dis-
posal, and the use which was made of these dur-
ing the 18 years of Louis Philippe's reign was
productive of corruption more widespread and
shameless than France had known since the first
revolution. In the scarcely exaggerated lan-
guage used by M. de Lamartine, the government
had ' succeeded in making of a nation of citizens
a vile band of beggars. ' It was obvious to all
who desired the regeneration of France that re-
form must begin with the representation of the
people. To this end the liberals directed much
effort. They did not as yet propose universal
suffrage, and their leaders were divided between
an extension of the franchise to all who paid £3
of direct taxes and an extension which went no
lower than £4. The demand for reform was
resisted by the government. . . . Among the
leaders of the liberal party were men of high
character and commanding influence. Arago,
Odillon Barrot, Louis Blanc, Thiers, Lamartine,
were formidable assailants for the strongest
government to encounter. Under their guidance
the agitation for reform assumed dimensions ex-
ceedingly embarrassing and even alarming. For
once France borrowed from England her method
of political agitation. Reform banquets, at-
tended by thousands of persons, were held in
all the chief towns, and the pressure of a peaceful
public opinion was employed to obtain the remedy
of a great wrong. The police made feeble at-
tempts to prevent such gatherings, but were
ordinarily unsuccessful. But the king and M.
Guizot, strong in the support of the army and a
purchased majority of the deputies, and appar-
ently little aware of the vehemence of the popu-
lar desire, made no effort to satisfy or propitiate.
Louis Philippe had wisely set a high value on
the maintenance of cordial relations with Eng-
land. . . . The Queen of England gratified him
by a visit [1843], which he returned a few months
after. . . . During these visits there was much
conversation regarding a Spanish matter which
was then of some interest. The Spanish govern-
ment was looking around to find suitable hus-
bands for their young queen and her sister. The
hands of the princesses were offered to two sons
of Louis Philippe. But . . . England looked
with disfavour upon a close alliance between the
crowns of France and Spain. The king would
not offend England. He declined the hand of
the Spanish queen, but accepted that of her
sister for his fourth son, the Due de Montpensier.
Queen Victoria and her ministers approved of
that marriage on the condition voluntarily offered
by King Louis, that it should not take place till
the Spanish queen was married and had children.
But in a few years the king violated his pledge,
and pressed upon Spain an arrangement under
which the two marriages were celebrated to-
gether [1846]. ... To Louis Philippe himself
the transaction was calamitous. He had broken
his kingly word, and he stood before Europe
and before his own people a dishonoured man.
. . . Circumstances made it easy for the opposi-
tion to enhance the general discontent. Many
evidences of shameless corruption were at this
time brought to light. . . . 'The crops failed in
1845 and 1846, and prices rose to a famine point.
. . . The demand for parliamentary reform be-
came constantly more urgent; but M. Guizot
heeded it not. The reformers took up again their
work of agitation. They announced a great
procession and reform banquet. The police,
somewhat hesitatingly, interdicted the demon-
stration, and its promoters resolved to submit;
but the people, Insutticiently Informed of these
movements, gathered for the procession in the
early morning. All that day [February 33, 1848]
the streets were thronged, and the excitement of
the people increased from hour to hour ; but few
soldiers were seen, and consequently no conflict
occurred. Next morning the strategic points of
the city were garrisoned by a strong force of
soldiers and national guards, and the people saw
that the government feared them. Business was
suspended, and the constantly rising agitation
foretold irrepressible tumults. The men of the
faubourgs appeared once more. Towards even-
ing a few barricades were thrown up, and a few
gunsmiths' shops were plundered. Worst of all,
the national guard appeared to sympathize with
the people. ... To appease the angry mob, no
measure seemed so hopeful as the sacrifice of the
ministry. Guizot resigned. Thiers and Odillon
Barrot, chiefs of the liberal party, were received
into the cabinet. Marshal Bugeaud was ap-
pointed to command the troops. But before the
day closed a disaster had occurred which made all
concession vain. Before one of the public oflSces
there was stationed a battalion of infantry,
around which there surged an excited crowd.
A shot came from the crowd, and was promptly
responded to by a volley which killed or wounded
50 persons. The bodies of the victims were
1404
FRANCE, 1841-1848.
The Provisional
Oovemment.
FRANCE, 1848.
placed on waggons and drawn along the streets,
that the fury of the people might be excited to
the highest "pitch. During that .sleepless night,
Marshal Bugeaud, skilfully directing the forces
which he commanded, had taken the barricades
and effectively checked the rioters. But in early
morning the new ministers ordered him to desist
and withdraw his troops. They deemed it use-
less to resist. Concession was, in their view,
the only avenue to tranquillity. The soldiers
retired; the crowds pressed on to the Tuileries."
The king, terrified by their approach, was per-
suaded to sign an abdication in favor of his
grandson, the Comte de Paris, and to fly in haste,
with his family, from the palace and from Paris.
A week later tlie royal family "reached the coast
and embarked for England, . . . their majesties
travelling under the lowly but well-chosen in-
cognito of Mr. and Mrs. Smith. . . . Immediately
on the departure of the king, a provisional gov-
ernment was organized, with M. Lamartine at its
head." — R. Mackenzie, The Nineteenth Century,
bk. 3, cli. 1.
Also m: F. P. Guizot, France under Louis
Philippe. — JI. Caussidi^re, Memoirs, v. 1.
A. D. 1848 (February— May).— The three
months of Provisional Government. — Its ex-
traordinary measures. — Its absolutism. ^Crea-
tion of the Ateliers Nationaux. — The conse-
quences. — On the morning of February 24th —
the morning of the king's flight — !M. de Lamar-
tine, entering the Palais Bourbon, where the
Chamber of Ceputies held its meetings, found in
the vestibule seven or eight persons waiting for
him. "Who they were we are not told — or
what they were, except that they belonged to the
newspaper press. Even the names of the papers
with which they were connected are not expressly
stated — though the ' National ' and ' Reforme '
are indicated. Thej' demanded a secret confer-
ence. Lamartine took them into a distant apart-
ment." There they " proposed to him to substi-
tute for Louis-Philippe the Comte de Paris as
king, and the Duchess of Orleans as regent, and
to place him [Lamartine] over them as minister."
" Lamartine does not appear to have been sur-
prised at the proposal. He does not appear to
have doubted the power of seven or eight journal-
ists to dethrone a king, create a regent, and ap-
point a minister ! And he was right. The ' Na-
tional ' and the ' Reforme, ' whose representatives
stood before him, did more than all this, a couple
of hours after. . . . He objected to their scheme
that such an arrangement would not last, and
declared himself in favour of a republic, i)ased
on universal suffrage ; . . . they expressed their
conviction, and separated, agreed, apparently,
on the course of action to be pursued." A few
hours later, the Chamber was invaded by a body
of rioters, fresh from the sack of the Tuileries.
The Duchess of Orleans, who had presented her-
self at the Chamber with her two children, fled
before them. "M. Sauzet, the President, disap-
peared. Lamartine [who was speaking] remained
in the tribune, and desired Dupont de I'Eure to
take the vacant chair." Thereupon a Provisional
Government was appointed, in some fashion not
clearly detailed. It underwent certain changes,
by unexplained additions, within the following
day or two, but ' ' in the ' Moniteur ' of February
27 (the third day of the existence of the Pro-
visional Government), its members are arranged
thus:— MM. Arago, Dupont de I'Eure, Albert
(ouvrier), F. Marrast, F. Flocon, Lamartine, Marie,
L. Blanc, Cremieux, Ledru Rollin, Garnier Pagfis.
. . . Within two days after its formation it was
on the brink of ruin under an attack from the
Terrorists [or Red Republicans, who assumed
the red flag as their standard]. . . . The contest
had left the members of the government in a
state of mind which M. de Lamartine thinks
peculiarly favourable to wise legislation. . . .
' Every member of the Council sought [he says],
in the depths of his heart and of his intellect, for
some great reform, some great legislative, politi-
cal, or moral improvement. Some proposed the
instantaneous abolition of negro slavery. Others,
the abolition of the restrictions imposed by the
laws of September upon the press. Some, the
proclamation of fraternity among nations, in
order to abolish war by abolishing conquest.
Some, the abolition of the qualification of elec-
tors. And all, the principles of mutual charity
among all classes of citizens. As quickly as
these great democratic truths, rather felt than
discussed, were converted into decrees, they were
printed in a press set up at the door of the coun-
cil-room, thrown from the windows to the crowd,
and despatched by couriers through the de-
partments.'. . . The important decrees, which
actually bear date February 25 or 26, and which
may therefore be referred to this evening of in-
stinct, inspiration, and enthusiasm, are these: —
The 18th, which sets at liberty all persons de-
tained on political grounds. The 19th, by which
the government — 1, Engages to secure the exis-
tence of the operative (ouvrier) by employment:
2, Engages to secure employment (garantir du
travail) to all citizens: 3, Admits that operatives
ought to combine in order to enjoy the fruits of
their labour: 4, And promises to return to the
operatives, whose property it is, the million
which will fall in from the civil list. The 22nd,
which dissolves the Municipal Guards. The 26th,
which declares that the actual government of
France is republican, and that the nation will
immediately be called on to ratify by its votes
this resolution of the government and of the peo-
ple of Paris. The 29th, which declares that
Royalty, under any name whatever, ... is
abolished. . . . And the 30th, which directs the
immediate establishment of national workshops
(ateliers nationaux). We confess that we agree
with Lamartine in thinking that they bear the
stamp of instinct much more than that of reason.
. . . The declaration that the actual government
of France was republican . . . was palpably un-
true. The actual government of France at that
time was as far removed from republicanism as
it was possible for a government to be. It was a
many -headed Dictatorship — a despotic oligar-
chy. Eleven men — some appointed in the offices
of a newspaper, and the others by a mob which
had broken into the Chamber of Deputies — ruled
France, during three months, with an absolute-
ness of which there is no other example in his-
tory. . . . Theydissolved the Chamber of Depu-
ties ; they forbade the peers to meet ; they added
200,000 men to the regular army, and raised
a new metropolitan army of 20,000 more at
double the ordinary pay; to meet this expense
they added 45 centimes to the direct taxes; they
restricted the Bank from cash payments; they
made its paper a legal tender, and then required
it to lend them fifty millions ; . . . they altered
the hours of labour throughout France, and sub-
1405
PRANCE, 1848.
Ateliers Nationaux.
FRANCE, 1848.
jected to heavy fines any master who should
allow his operatives to remain at work for the
accustomed period. . . . The necessary conse-
quence of the 19th decree, promising employ-
ment to all applicants, was the creation of the
ateliers nationaux by the 30th. These worlishops
were Immediately opened in the outskirts of
Paris. A person who wished to take advantage
of the offers of the Government took from the
person with whom he lodged a certificate that ho
was an inhabitant of the Department de la Seine.
This certificate he carried to the mairie of his
arrondissement, and obtained an order of admis-
sion to an atelier. If he was received and em-
ployed there, he obtained an order on his mairie
for forty sous. If he was not received, after
having applied at all of them, and found them
all full, he received an order for thirty sous.
Thirty sous is not high pay ; but it was to be
had for doing nothing; and hopes of advancement
were held out. Every body of eleven persons
formed an escouade ; and their head, the escoua-
dier, elected by his companions, got half a franc
a day extra. Five escouades formed a brigade ;
and the brigadier, also elected by his subordi-
nates, received three francs a day. Above these
again were the lieutenants, the chefs de com-
pagnie, the chefs de service, and the chefs d'ar-
rondissement, appointed by the Government, and
receiving progressively higher salaries. Besides
this, bread was. distributed to their families in
proportion to the number of children. The hours
supposed to be employed in labour were nine
and a half. . . . This semi-military organisation,
regular payment, and nominal work produced
results which we cannot suppose to have been un-
expected by the Government. M. Emile Thomas
tells us that in one mairie, that containing the
Faubourg St.-Antoine, a mere supplemental
bureau enrolled, from March 13 to 20, more than
1,000 new applicants every day. We have be-
fore us a list of those who had been enrolled on
May 19, and it amounts to 87,943. A month
later it amounted to 135,000 — i-epresenting, at
4 to a family, 600,000 persons — more than one
half of the population of Paris. To suppose that
such an army as this could be regularly organ-
ised, fed, and paid, for months in idleness, and
then quietly disbanded, was a folly of which the
Provisional Government was not long guilty.
They soon saw that the monster which they had
created could not be subdued, if it could be
subdued at all, by any means short of civil war.
... 'A thunder-cloud (says M. de Lamartine)
was always before our eyes. It was formed by
the ateliers nationaux. This army of 120,000
work-people, the great part of whom were idlers
and agitators, was the deposit of the misery, the
laziness, the vagrancy, the vice, and the sedition
which the flood of the revolution had cast up
and left on its shores.'. . . As they were man-
aged, the ateliers nationaux, it is now admitted,
produced or aggravated the very evils which
they professed to cure or to palliate. They pro-
duced or continued the stagnation of business
which they were to remedy ; and, when they be-
came absolutely intolerable, the attempt to put
an end to them occasioned the civil war which
they were to prevent." — N. AV. Senior, Journals
kept in Prance and Italy, 1848-1852, v. 1, pp.
14-59.
Also in: Marquis of Normanby, A Year of
Revolution, ch. 3-11 (ti. 1). — L. Blanc, Historical
Revelations, 1848. — A. de Lamartine, Hist, of the
Revolution of IMS. — J. P. Simpson, Pictures from
Revolutionary Paris.
A. D. 1848 (April— December). The Con-
stituent National Assembly, and the Consti-
tution of the Second Republic. — Savage and
terrible insurrection of the workmen of the
Ateliers Nationaux. — Vigorous dictatorship of
Cavaignac. — Appearance of Louis Napoleon.
— His election to the Presidency of the Re-
public. — The election by universal suffrage of
a Constituent National Assembly, twice deferred
on account of fears of popular turbulence, took
place on the 23d of April, and resulted in the
return of a very Conservative majority, largely
composed of Napolconists, Legitimists and Or-
leanists. The meeting of the Assembly was
opened on the 7th of May. "The moderates were
anxious to invest M. de Lamartine with a dicta-
torial authority," which he declined. "Event-
ually an executive commission of five was ap-
pointed. . . . The commission consisted of Arago,
Gamier Pag^s, Marie, Lamartine, and Ledru
Rollin. . . . This conciliatory executive com-
mission was elected by the Assembly on the 10th
of May. On the 15th, the ' conciliated ' mob broke
into the chamber, insulted the deputies, turned
them out, proclaimed a provisional government,
and then marched to the Hotel deVille, where they
were installed with due revolutionary solem-
nity ; " but the National Guard rallied to the sup-
port of the government, and the insurrection was
promptly suppressed. "Eleven vacancies in the
Assembly had to be filled in the department of the
Seine, on account of double returns. These elec-
tions produced fresh uneasiness in Paris. Eighth
on the list stood Louis Napoleon Bonaparte ; and
among the names mentioned as candidates was
that of Prince de Joinville, the most popular of
the Orleans princes. The executive commission
appears to have been more afraid of the latter
than of the former ; and to prevent the disagree-
able circumstance of France returning him to
the Assembly as one of her representatives, they
thought themselves justified in declaring the
whole Orleans family incapable of serving France
in any capacity. . . . Louis Napoleon, on the
first proclamation of the Republic, had at once
offered his services ; but was by the Provisional
Government requested to withdraw, as his great
name might trouble the republic. . . . Two Bo-
napartes had been elected members for Corsica,
and three sat in the Assembly ; but, as the next
heir of the Emperor, Louis Napoleon caused
them much uneasiness. . . . Already mobs liad
gone about the Boulevard crying 'Vive I'Bm-
pereur.' The name of Bonaparte was not un-
popular with the bourgeoisie ; it was a guarantee
of united and strong government to all. On his
election, Louis Napoleon wrote to the President
of the Assembly : a phrase in his letter gave con-
siderable offence. Some days before, Lamartine
had proposed his exclusion from the Assembly
and the country ; but, as it appeared he was in
no way implicated in the seditious cries, they
voted his admission by a large majority. The
phrase which gave umbrage was : ' If the coun-
try imposes duties upon me, I shall know how to
fulfil them.' . . . However, by a subsequent let-
ter, dated the 15th, he restored confidence, by
saying he would resign rather than be a cause of
tumult. But the real difficulties of the govern-
ment arose from a different cause. The National
1406
FRANCE, 1848.
Insurrection
of the Workmen.
FEANCE, 1848.
Assembly bore with impatience the expense of
the Ateliers Nationaux : it was enough to submit
to the factious spirit of those bodies ; but it was
too much to pay them for keeping on foot an or-
ganized insurrection, ever ready to break out
and deluge the capital in blood. The executive
commission had been desirous of finding means
gradually to lessen the numbers receiving wages;
and on the 13th of May, it was resolved to close
the lists. The commission foresaw that if the
Ateliers were at once abolished, it would pro-
duce a rebellion in Paris; and they hoped, first,
by preventing any more being inscribed, and
then by setting them to task-work, that they
should gradually get the numbers reduced. . . .
But the Assembly would not wait; they ordered
all the workmen between 18 and 25 years old,
and unmarried, to be drafted into the army, or
to be discharged ; and they were breaking them
up so rapidly, that if the workmen wanted to
fight it was evident that it must be done at once
or not at all. . . . General Cavaignao, who had
been sent for from Africa, was on his arrival in
Paris named Minister at War, and had command
of the troops. . . . Preparations for the conflict
commenced on Thursday the 22nd of June ; but
it was noon of the following day ere the first
shot was fired. It is said, that had the execu-
tive commission known what they were about,
the heads of the insurrection might have been
aU arrested in the meantime, for they were
walking about all day, and at one time met in
the Jardin des Plantcs. The fighting on the 23d
continued all day, with much slaughter, and
little practical result. . . . The extent of the in-
surgent lines swallowed up the troops, so that,
though great numbers were in Paris, there ap-
peared to be a deficiency of them, and loud com-
plaints were made against the inefficiency of the
executive commission. During the night the
fighting ceased, and both parties were occupied
in strengthening their positions. The Assembly
was sitting in permanence ; they were highly in-
censed against the executive commission, and
wished them to send in their resignations ; but the
latter refused, saying it was cowardly to do so
in the face of insurrection. The Assembly then
formally deposed the commission, and appointed
Cavaignac dictator; to which arrangement the
executive commission at once assented. The Gen-
eral instantly ordered the National Guards to pre-
vent assemblages in the streets, and that no one
should go out without a pass: any one going
about, out of uniform, without permission, was
walked home. In this manner many persons
carrying ammunition to the insurgents were ar-
rested. At noon, he sent a flag of truce with a
proclamation, ofliering an amnesty to the rebels,
at the suggestion of the ex-prefect CaussidiSre ;
but it was unhesitatingly rejected. This latter
personage, though he was not among the barri-
cades, was by many thought to be the head of
the insurrection. The troops of the insurgents
were managed with great military skill, showing
that persons of military knowledge must have
had the command; though no one knew who
were their leaders. . . . During the early part
of the day, the fighting was mainly on the south-
ern side of the river. The church of St. Gervais
and the bridges were carried with great slaugh-
ter, as well as the church of St. Severin, and
their great head-quarters the Pantheon ; and by
four o'clock, the troops had conquered the whole
of the south bank of the Seine. On the other
side, a hot engagement was going on in the Fau-
bourgs Poissonnifire and St. Denis: these were
carried with great loss at a late hour, whence
the insurrection was forced back to its great
stronghold, the Clos St. Lazare; which defied
every effort of General Lamoricifere to take it on
Saturday. An unfinished hospital served as a
citadel, and several churches and public build-
ings as out-posts ; while the old city wall, which
they had loop-holed, enabled them to fire on the
troops in comparative security ; but the buildings
were breached with cannon, and the insurgents
by four o'clock on Sunday were dispersed. . . .
A desperate struggle was going on at a late hour
in the Faubourg du Temple ; and on the Monday
morning the insurgents made a stand behind the
Canal St. Martin, where they sent to treat on con-
dition of retaining their arms. But Cavaignac
would hear of no terms. It was thought, at
one time, that they had surrendered ; when some
soldiers, going within the lines, were surprised
and murdered. Hostilities at once began again,
and the insurgents were finally subdued by one
o'clock on Monday the 26th. The victory was
dearly bought: 8,000 were ascertained to have
been killed or wounded; and, as many bodies
were thrown into the Seine unrecognised, this is
much under the number. Nearly 14,000 prison-
ers were taken, and 3,000 of these died of gaol
fever. . . . The excellent Archbishop of Paris,
Denis Auguste AfEre, fell a sacrifice to his Chris-
tian benevolence. Horrified at the slaughter, he,
attended by two of his vicars carrying the olive-
branch of peace, passed between the combatants.
The firing ceased at his appearance; but, from
the discharge of a single musket, it began again:
he, nevertheless, mounted the barricade and de-
scended into the midst of the insurgents, and was
in the act of addressing them, when some patriot,
fearing the effect of his exhortations, shot him
from a window. . . . General Cavaignac, imme-
diately after the pacification of Paris, laid down
the temporary dictatorship with which he had
been invested by the Assembly ; but their grati-
tude for the salvation of society led them to ap-
point him President of the Council, with the
power to name his own Ministry. He at once
sent adrift all the red republican party, and chose
a Ministry from among the moderate class of re-
publicans; to which he afterwards added some
members of the old opposition. . . . Prince Louis
Napoleon was again thrust upon the Assembly,
by being elected for Corsica; but he wrote a
letter on the 8th of July, saying, that though he
did not renounce the honour of one day sitting as
a representative of the people, he would wait till
the time when his return to France could not in
any way serve as a pretext to the enemies of the
republic. . . . On Tuesday, the 26th of Septem-
ber, shortly after the president had taken his
seat, Louis Napoleon appeared quietly in the
chamber, and placed himself on one of the back
benches. . . . The discussion of the constitution,
which had been referred to a committee, was the
only subject of interest, except the important
question of how the president should be elected.
It was proposed by some that the assembly itself
should elect a president, a proposition which was
eventually negatived by a large majority. The
real object was to exclude Louis Napoleon, whose
great name gave him every chance of success, if
an appeal were made to the universal suffrage of
1407
FRANCE, 1848.
Louis Napoleon^'
President.
FRANCE, 1851.
the nation, which the republicans distrusted.
Another amendment was moved to exclude all
pretenders to the throne ; on which, allusion be-
ing made to Louis Napoleon, he mounted the
rostrum, and denied that he was a pretender.
. . . The red republicans were desirous of hav-
ing no president, and that the constituent assem-
bly itself should name the ministers. It was not
the only constitutional point in dispute: for
weeks and months the debate on the constitution
dragged its weary length along; amendments
were discussed, and the work when turned out
was, as might have been expected, a botch after
all. ... It was eventually agreed, that to give
validity to the election of a president it should
be necessary that he should have more than a
half of all the votes given ; that is to say, more
votes than all the other candidates put together;
if not, the assembly was to choose between the
highest candidate on the list and his competitors,
by which means they hoped to be able to get rid
of Bonaparte. . . . The constitution was pro-
claimed on the 10th of November. . . . The
legitimist and Orleanist parties refused to start a
candidate for fear of weakening Bonaparte, and
thus throwing the choice into the hands of the
assembly, who would choose General Cavaignac.
Both these parties gave the former at least a
negative support; and as M. Thiers declared that
nine-tenths of the country were opposed to the
General as too revolutionary, it was clear that in
the country itself reaction was going on faster
than in the assembly. . . . Louis Napoleon's
chief support was from the inhabitants of the
country districts, the peasantry. . . . On the
10th of December, 5,534,530 votes were recorded
for Louis Napoleon. General Cavaignac had
1,448,303. Then came LedruRoUiu; then Ras-
pail. Lamartine got 17,914; 23,319 were dis-
allowed, as being given for some of the banished
royal family. The total number of voters was
7,449,471."— E. S. Cayley, The European Revolu-
tion of 1848, V. 1, ch. 4-5.
Also in : J. F. Corkran, Hist, of the ConMitaent
Natioiuil Assembly from May, 1848. — Marquis of
Normanby, A Year of Revolution, ch. 18-15 («. 2).
H. C. Lockwood, Const. Hist, of France, ch. 5,
and app. 8.
A. D. 1849. — Intervention at Rome, to crush
the revolutionary republic and restore the
Pope. — French capture and occupation of the
city. See Italy: A. D. 1848-1849.
A. D. 1849-1850. — Disagreement with Eng-
land in Greece. — The Don Pacifico affair. See
Greece: A. D. 1846-1850.
A. D. 1851.— The plot of the Coup d'Etat.—
"In the beginning of the winter of 1851 France
was still a republic; but the Constitution of 1848
had struck no root. There was a feeling that
the country had been surprised and coerced into
the act of declaring itself a republic, and that a
monarchical system of government was the only
one adapted for France. The sense of instability
which sprang from this belief was connected with
an agonising dread of insurrections. . . . More-
over, to those who watched and feared, it seemed
that the shadow on the dial was moving on with
a terrible steadiness to the hour when a return to
anarchy was, as it were, pre-ordained by law ;
for the constitution required that a new president
should be chosen in the spring of the following
year. ... In general, France thought it best
that, notwithstanding the Rul(5 of the Constitu-
tion, which stood in the way, the then President
should be quietly re-elected ; and a large majority
of the Assembly, faithfully representing this
opinion, had come to a vote which sought to give
it effect ; but their desire was baffled by an un-
wise provision of the Republican Charter which
had laid it down that no constitutional change
should take place without the sanction of three-
fourths of the Assembly. By this clumsy bar
the action of the State system was hampered, and
many whose minds generally inclined them to re-
spect legality were forced toaclinowledge that the
Constitution wanted a wrench. " The President of
the republic. Prince Louis Napoleon Bonaparte,
" had always wished to bring about a change in
the constitution, but, originally, he had hoped
to be able to do this with the aid and approval
of some at least of the statesmen and eminent
generals of the country." But, " although there
were numbers in France wlio would have been
heartily glad to see the Republic crushed by
some able dictator, there were hardly any public
men who believed that in the President of the
Republic thej' would find the man they wanted.
Therefore his overtures to the gentlemen of
France were always rejected. Every statesman
to whom he applied refused to entertain his pro-
posals. Every general whom he urged always
said that for whatever he did he must have ' an
order from the Minister of AVar. ' The President
being thus rebuffed, his plan of changing the
form of government with the assent of some of
the leading statesmen and generals of the coun-
try degenerated into schemes of a very different
kind; and at length he fell into the hands of
persons of the quality of Persigny, Morny, and
Fleury. . . . The President had been a promoter
of the law of the 31st of May, restricting the
franchise, but he now became the champion of
universal suffrage. To minds versed in politics
this change might have sufficed to disclose the
nature of the schemes upon which the Chief of
the State was brooding; but, from first to last,
words tending to allay suspicion had been used
with great industry and skill. From the mo-
ment of his coming before the public in Febru-
ary 1848, the Prince laid hold of almost every
occasion he could find for vowing, again and
again, that he harbored no schemes against the
Constitution. ... It was natural that in looking
at the operation which changed the Republic into
an Empire, the attention of the observer should
be concentrated upon the person who, already
the Chief of the State, was about to attain to
tlie throne ; and there seems to be no doubt that
what may be called the literary part of the trans-
action was performed by the President in person.
He was the lawyer of the confederacy. He no
doubt wrote the Proclamations, the Plebiscites,
and the Constitutions, and all such like things;
but it seems that the propelling power which
brought the plot to bear was mainly supplied by
Count de Morny, and by a resolute Major, named
Fleury. M. Morny was a man of great daring,
and gifted with more than common powers of
fascination. He had been a member of the
Chamber of Deputies in the time of the monar-
chy ; but he was rather known to the world as a
speculator than as a politician. He was a buyer
and seller of those fractional and volatile inter-
ests in trading adventures, which go by the name
of ' Shares. "... He knew how to found a ' com-
pany,' and he now undertook to establish institu-
1408
FRANCE, 1851.
The Plot of
the Coup d'Etat.
FRANCE, 1851.
tions which were destined to be more lucrative
to him than any of his former adventures. . . .
It seems, however, that the man who was the
most able to make the President act, to drive him
deep into his own plot, and fiercely carry him
through it, was Major Fleury. . . . He was dar-
ing and resolute, and his daring was of the kind
which holds good in the moment of danger. If
Prince Louis Bonaparte was bold and ingenious
in designing, Fleury was the man to execute.
. . . The language held by the generals who de-
clared that they would act under the authority
of the Minister of War and not without it, sug-
gested the contrivance which was resorted to.
Fleury determined to find a military man capable
of command, capable of secrecy, and capable of
a great venture. The person chosen was to be
properly sounded, and if he seemed willing, was
to be admitted into the plot. He was then to be
made Minister of War, in order that through him
the whole of the land forces should be at the dis-
posal of the plotters. Fleury went to Algeria to
find the instrument required, and he so well per-
formed his task that he hit upon a general oflicer
who was christened, it seems, Jacques Arnaud
Le Roy, but was known at this time as Achille
St. Arnaud. . . . He readily entered into the
plot. From the moment that Prince Louis Bona-
parte and his associates had entrusted their secret
to the man of Fleury 's selection, it was perhaps
hardly possible for them to flinch, for the exi-
gencies of St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy, were
not likely to be on so modest a scale as to consist
with the financial arrangements of a Rei^ublic
governed by law, and the discontent of a person
of his quality with a secret like that in his charge
would plainly bring the rest of the brethren into
danger. He was made Minister of War. This
was on the 37th of October. At the same time
M. Maupas or de Maupas was brought into the
Ministry. . . . Persigny, properly Fialin, was in
the plot. He was descended on one side of an
ancient family, and disliking his father's name
he seems to have called himself for many years
after the name of his maternal grandfather. . . .
It was necessary to take measures for paralyzing
the National Guard, but the force was under the
command of General Perrot, a man whose hon-
esty could not be tampered with. To dismiss
him suddenly would be to excite suspicion. The
following expedient was adopted : the President
appointed as Chief of the Staff of the National
Guard, a person named Vieyra. The past life
and the then repute of this person were of such
a kind, that General Perrot, it seems, conceived
himself insulted by the nomination, and instantly
resigned. That was what the brethren of the
Elysee wanted. On Sunday, the 30th, General
Lawfestine was appointed to the command. . . .
His function was — not to lead the force of
which he took the command but — to prevent it
from acting. . . . Care had been taken to bring
into Paris and its neighborhood the regiments
most likely to serve the purpose of the Elysee,
and to give the command to generals who might
be expected to act without scruples. The forces
in Paris and its neighborhood were under the
orders of General ]\Iagnan. . . . From time to
time the common soldiery were gratified with
presents of food and wine, as well as with an
abundance of flattering words, and their exaspera-
tion against civilians was so well kept alive that
men used to African warfare were brought into
the humor for calling the Parisians 'Bedouins.'
There was massacre in the very sound. The
army of Paris was in the temper required. It
was necessary for the plotters to have the con-
currence of M. St. Georges, the director of the
state printing-office. M. St. Georges was sub-
orned. Then all was ready. On the Monday
night between the 1st and 2d of December, the
President had his usual assembly at the Elysee.
Ministers who were loyally ignorant of what
was going on were mingled with those who were
in the plot. ... At the usual hour the assembly
began to disperse, and by eleven o'clock there
were only three guests who remained. These
were Morny (who had previously taken care to
show himself at one of the theatres), Maupas,
and St. Arnaud, formerly Le Roy. 'There was,
besides, an orderly oSicer of the President, called
Colonel Seville, who was initiated in the secret.
. . . They were to strike the blow that night.
. . . By and by they were apprised that an
order which had been given for the movement of
a battalion of gendarmerie, had duly taken effect
without exciting remark. . . . The President
entrusted a packet of manuscripts to Colonel
Seville, and despatched him to the state printing-
office. It was in the streets which surround this
buUding that the battalion of gendarmerie had
been collected. When Paris was hushed in
sleep, the battalion came quietly out, and folded
round the state printing-office. From that mo-
ment until their work was done the printers were
all close captives, for no one of them was suf-
fered to go out. ... It is said that there was
something like resistance, but in the end, if not
at first, the printers obeyed. Each compositor
stood whilst he worked between two policemen,
and, the manuscript being cut into many pieces,
no one could make out the sense of what he was
printing. By these proclamations the President
asserted that the Assembly was a hot-bed of
plots ; declared it dissolved ; pronounced for uni-
versal suffrage; proposed a new constitution;
vowed anew that his duty was to maintain the
Republic ; and placed Paris and the twelve sur-
rounding departments under martial law. In
one of the proclamations he appealed to the
army, and strove to whet its enmity against
civilians, by reminding it of the defeats inflicted
upon the troops in 1830 and 1848. The Presi-
dent wrote letters dismissing the members of the
Government who were not in the plot ; but he
did not cause these letters to be delivered until
the following morning. He also signed a paper
appointing Morny to the Home Ofiice. . . . The
order from the Minister of War was probably
signed by half-past two in the morning, for at
three it was in the hands of Magnan. At the
same hour Maupas (assigning for pretext the ex-
pected arrival of foreign refugees), caused a
number of Commissaries to be summoned in all
haste to the Prefecture of Police. At half-past
three in the morning these men were in atten-
dance. . . . It was then that, for the first time, the
main secret of the confederates passed into the
hands of a number of subordinate agents. Dur-
ing some hours of that night every one of those
humble Commissaries had the destinies of France
in his hands ; for he might either obey the Minis-
ter, and so place his country in the power of the
Elysee, or he might obey the law, denounce the
plot, and bring its contrivers to trial. Maupas
gave orders for the seizure at the same minute of
1409
FRANCE, 1851.
The Triumph of the
Coup (TEtat.
FRANCE, 1851.
the foremost Generals of France, and several of
her leading Statesmen. Parties of the police,
each under the orders of a Commissary, were to
be at the doors of the persons to be arrested some
time beforehand, but the seizures were not to
take place until a quarter past six. ... At the
appointed minute, and whilst it was still dark,
the designated houses were entered. The most
famous generals of France were seized. General
Changarnier, General Bedeau, General Lamori-
ciSre, General Cavaignac, and General Leflo
were taken from their beds, and carried away
through the sleeping city and thrown into prison.
In the same minute the like was done with some
of the chief members and officers of the Assem-
bly, and amongst others with Thiers, Miot, Baze,
Colonel Charras, Roger du Nord, and several of
the democratic leaders. Some men believed to
be the chiefs of secret societies were also seized.
The general object of these night arrests was
that, when morning broke, the army should be
without generals inclined to observe the law, that
the Assembly should be without the machinery
for convoking it, and that all the political parties
in the State should be paralyzed by the disap-
pearance of their chiefs. The number of men
thus seized in the dark was seventy-eight.
Eighteen of these were members of the Assem-
bly. Whilst it was still dark, Morny, escorted
by a body of infantry, took possession of the
Home Office, and prepared to touch the springs
of that wondrous machinery by which a clerk
can dictate to a nation. Already he began to
tell 40,000 communes of the enthusiasm with
which the sleeping city had received the an-
nouncement of measures not hitherto disclosed.
When the light of the morning dawned, people
saw the Proclamations on the walls, and slowly
came to hear that numbers of the foremost men
of France had been seized in the night-time, and
that every General to whom the friends of law
and order could look for help was lying in one
or other of the prisons. The newspapers, to
which a man might run in order to know truly
what others thought and intended, were all
seized and stopped. The gates of the Assembly
were closed and guarded, but the Deputies, who
began to flock thither, found means to enter by
passing through one of the official residences
which formed part of the building. They had
assembled in the Chamber in large numbers, and
some of them having caught Dupin, their reluc-
tant President, were forcing him to come and take
the chair, when a body of infantry burst in and
drove them out, striking some of them with the
butt-ends of their muskets. . . . Driven from
their Chamber, the Deputies assembled at the
Mayoralty of the 10th arrondissement. There,
upon the motion of the illustrious Berryer, they
resolved that the act of Louis Bonaparte was a
forfeiture of the Presidency, and they directed
the judges of the Supreme Court to meet and
proceed to the judgment of the President and
his accomplices. These resolutions had just
been voted, when a battalion of the Chasseurs de
Vincennes entered the courtyard. . . . An aide-
de-camp of General Magnan came with a written
order directing the officer in command of the
battalion to clear the hall, to do this if necessary
by force, and to carry off to the prison of Mazas
any Deputies offering resistance. . . . The num-
ber of Deputies present at this moment was 220.
The whole Assembly declared that they resisted.
and would yield to nothing short of force. . . .
T5iey were carried off, some to the Fort of Mount
Valerian, some to the fortress of Vincennes, and
some to the prison of Mazas. ... By the laws
of the Republic, the duty of taking cognizance
of offences against the Constitution was cast
upon the Supreme Court. The Court was sitting,
when an armed force entered the hall, and the
judges were driven from the bench, but not until
they had made a judicial order for the impeach-
ment of the President." — A. W. Kinglake, The
Invasion of the Crimea, v. 1, ch. 14.
Also in: E. Tenot, Pam in December, 1851, ch.
1-4. — V. Hugo, Napoleon the Little. — M. de
Maupas, The Story of the Coup d'Etat. — B. Jer-
rold. Life of Napoleon ILL, bk. 8 (». 3).
A. D. 1851.— The bloody Triumph of the
Coup d'Etat. — Destruction of the Second Re-
public. — "The second part of the Coup d'fetat,
which drenched the boulevards with innocent
blood, has cast a shade of horror over the whole
transaction that time has been unable to efface.
Paris is never so reduced in a crisis, whether the
cause be just or unjust, that she is bereft of
hands to erect and defend barricades in her
streets. In the Faubourg St. Antoine an incipi-
ent rising on the 2d was suppressed immediately
by the troops. The volcanic district from the
Hotel de Ville northward to the boulevards also
showed signs of uneasiness, and throughout the
morning of the 3d the military were busy pulling
down partially completed barricades and dispers-
ing small bodies of insurgents. There seems to
be little question that the army was embittered
against the populace. If this were so, the proc-
lamation circulated by the president through
the ranks on the 2d was not calculated to ap-
pease it. He styled the soldiers as the ' flower of
the nation, ' He pointed out to them that his in-
terests and theirs were the same, and that they
had suffered together in the past from the course
of the Assembly. He reminded them of the
years 1830 and 1848, when the army had fought
the people in the streets of Paris, and concluded
by an allusion to the military grandeur of the
Bonapartes. During the afternoon of the 3d and
morning of the 4th the troops remained inactive,
pending orders from the minister of war, and
in this interval several strong barricades were
erected in the restless quarters. On the after-
noon of the 4th the boulevards, from the Made-
leine to the Rue du Sentier, were occupied by a
great body of troops awaiting orders to move
east through the Boulevard Bonne Nouvelle upon
the barricaded district. The soldiers stood at
ease, and the officers lounged about, smoking
tlieir cigars. The sidewalks, windows, and
balconies were crowded with men, women,
and children, thoughtless onlookers of the great
military display. Suddenly a single shot was
heard. It was fired from a window near the
Rue du Sentier. The troops at the head of the
column faced sharply to the south, and com-
menced a deliberate fusillade upon the crowded
walks and balconies. The battalions farther
west caught the murderous contagion, until the
line of fire extended into the Boulevard des
Italiens. In a few moments the beautiful boule-
vards were converted into a bloody pandemonium.
The sidewalks were strewn with corpses and
stained with blood. The air was rent with
shrieks and groans and the breaking of glass,
while the steady, incessant rattling of the mus-
1410
FRANCE, 1851.
Fall of the Second
Republic.
FRANCE, 1851-1852.
ketry was intensified by an occasional can-
non-sliot, tliat brouglit down witli a crash the
masonry from some fine fafade. This continued
for nearly twenty minutes, when a lack of peo-
ple to kill seems to have restrained the mad vol-
leys of the troops. If any attempt was made by
officers to check their men, it was wholly un-
availing, and in some cases miserable fugitives
were followed into buildings and massacred.
Later in the day the barricades were attacked,
and their defenders easily overcome. By night-
fall insurgent Paris was thoroughly cowed.
These allegations, though conflicting with svforn
statements of Republicans and Imperialists, can
hardly be refuted. The efforts of the Napole-
onic faction to portray the thoughtless crowd of
the boulevards as desperate and bloody-minded
rebels have never been successful, while the op-
position so brilliantly represented by the author
of ' Histoire d'un Crime ' have been too fierce and
immoderate in their accusations to win public
credence. The questions as to who fired the first
shot, and whether it was fired as a signal for, or
a menace against the military, are points on
which Frenchmen of different political parties
still debate. It is charitable to accept M. Hugo's
insinuation that the soldiery were drunk with the
president's wine, even though the fact implies a
low state of discipline in the service. To what
extent was the president responsible for the
boulevard horror? M. Victor Hugo and M. de
Maupas do not agree upon this point, and it
seems useless to discuss it. Certain facts are in-
disputable. We Ivnow the army bore small love
toward the Parisians, and we know it was in the
streets by order of the president. We know that
the latter was in bad company, and playing a
dangerous game. We may discard M. Victor
Hugo's statement as to the orders issued by the
president from the Elysee on the fatal day, but
we cannot disguise the fact that the boulevard
horror subdued Paris, and crowned his cause
with success. In other words, Louis Napoleon
was the gainer by the slaughter of unoffending
men, women, and children, and in after-years,
when referring to the 4th of December, he found
it for his interest to distort facts, and make
figures lie. . . . Louis Napoleon had expressly
stated in the proclamation that astonished Paris
on the 2d that he made the people judge between
him and the Assembly. The citizens of France
were called upon to vote on the 20th and 21st of
December ' Yes ' or ' No ' to the question as to
whether the president should be sustained in the
measures he had taken, should be empowered to
draw up a new constitution, and should retain
the presidential chair for a period of ten years. "
— H. Murdock, T/ie Reconstruction of Europe,
ch. 2.
Also in: V. Hugo, History of a Cnme. — E.
Tenot, Paris in December, 18^51, ch. 5-6. — M. de
Mauoas, Story of the Coup (VEtat, ch. 18-24 (». 2).
— Count H. de Viel Castel, Memoirs, v. 1, ch. 4.
A. D. 1851-1852. — Transportation and exile
of republicans. — The dictator's constitution
for France. — Rapid progress of despotism. —
The Second Empire ordained. — Elevation of
Napoleon III. to the throne. — "The struggle
was over: terror of the victors followed. Thirty-
two departments were in a state of siege. More
than 100,000 citizens were languishing in prison.
Trial followed trial in rapid succession, the cases
being classed under three heads: 1st, persons
found armed, or against whom serious charges
existed ; 3d, persons charged with minor offences ;
3d, dangerous persons. The first class was judged
at once by a council of war, the second sent to
various tribunals, the third transported without
trial. Many prisoners were not even questioned.
Numbers were set free ; but multitudes were still
held. Under these conditions the date of the
plebiscite, December 20 and 21, approached.
Notices were posted to the effect that ' any per-
son seeking to disturb the polls or to question
the result of the ballot would be tried by a coun-
cil of war.' All liberty of choice was taken from
the electors, many of whom were arrested on
suspicion of exciting others to vote against the
president of the republic. When the lists were
published it was found that the ' ayes' had car-
ried the day, although many did not vote at all.
Indubitably the figures were notably swelled by
violence and fraud. . . . December 31, ex-Mln-
ister Baroche presented the result of the ballots
to the prince-president, — a strange title now
given to Louis Napoleon, for the time being, in
lieu of another. . . . Next day, January 1, 1853,
Archbishop Sibour celebrated a Te Deum in Notre
Dame, the prince-president sitting under a can-
opy. . . . While the man of December 2 lodged
in the palace of kings, the chief representatives
of the republic were cast into exile. The execu-
tors of the plot treated the captive representa-
tives very differently according as they were
conservative or repiiblican. When the prisoners
were told that a distinction was to be made
among them, they honorably refused to give their
names, but they were betrayed by an usher of
the Assembly. The republicans were then sent
to Mazas, and treated like common thieves, M.
Thiers alone being allowed a bed instead of the
ordinary hammock. The other party were soon
set free, with but few exceptions, and on the
8th of January the generals imprisoned at Ham,
with their companion, Questor Baze, were sent
to Belgium. Next day a series of proscriptions
came out. All persons ' convicted of taking part
in the recent insurrections ' were to be trans-
ported, some to Guiana, some to Algiers. A
second decree expelled from France, Algiers,
and the French colonies, ' as a measure of public
safety,' sixty representatives of the Left, includ-
ing Victor Hugo and certain others, for whom
it was reserved to aid in the foundation of a third
republic. A third decree commanded the tem-
porary absence from France and Algiers of
eighteen other representatives, including the gen-
erals, with Thiers, De Remusat, and several mem-
bers of the Left, among them Edgar Quinet and
Emile de Girardin. . . . The next step was to es-
tablish the famous 'mixed commissions 'in every
province. These commissions were to try the
numerous prisoners still held captive. . . . The
mixed commissions of 1853, as the historian of the
coup d'etat CM. Eugene Tenot) declares, ' decided,
without legal proceedings, without hearing of
witnesses, without public trial, the fate of thou-
sands and thousands of republicans.' They have
left the indelible memory of one of the most
monstrous events known in history. An act
equally extraordinary in another way was the
promulgation of the new constitution framed
by the dictator alone (January 14, 1852). . . .
The constitution of 1852 began by a ' recognition,
confirmation, and guarantee of the great prin-
ciples proclaimed in 1789, which are the founda-
1411
FRANCE, 1851-1852.
The Second Empire.
FRANCE, 1859.
tion of the public rights and laws of France.'
But it did not say one Tvord about the freedom
of the press, nor about freedom of clubs and
association. . . . ' The government of the French
republic is intrusted to Prince Louis Napoleon
Bonaparte for the term of ten years.' In the
preface Louis Napoleon threw aside the fiction
of irresponsibility ' which deceives public senti-
ment'; the constitution therefore declares the
leader of the state responsible to the French
people, but omits to say how this responsibility
may be realized ; the French people have no re-
source save revolution. . . . The legislative body
was to consist of 263 members (one for each 3,500
electors), chosen for five years by universal suf-
frage. This body would vote upon the laws
and taxes. Louis Napoleon, having profited so
largely by the repeal of the law of j\Iay 31, could
scarcely refuse to retain direct universal suffrage,
but he essentially altered its character by various
modifications. He also so reduced the impor-
tance of the only great body still elective, tliat
he had little or nothing to fear from it. Another
assembly, the Senate, was to be composed of
eighty members, which number might be in-
creased to 150. The senators were irremovable,
and were to be chosen by the president of the
republic, with the exception of cardinals, mar-
shals, and admirals, who were senators by right.
The president might give each senator an income
of 80,000 francs. The Senate was the guardian
of the constitution and of 'the public liberty.'
. . . The executive power chose all mayors, and
was at liberty to select them outside the town
council. In fact, the constitution of 1852 sur-
passed the constitution of the year VIII. as a
piece of monarchic reaction. It entailed no con-
sulate, but an empire, — dictatorship and total
confiscation of public liberty. . . . Despotism
spread daily in every direction. On the 17th of
February the liberty of the press was notably
reduced, and severe penalties were aflixedto any
infraction. In fact, the press was made depen-
dent on the good- will of the president. Educa-
tion was next attacked, a decree of March 9,
1852, stripping the professors of the University
of all the pledges and principles granted by the
First Empire. . . . The new power, in 1852,
labored to turn all the forces of the country to
material interests, while it stifled all moral inter-
ests. It suppressed education and the press, and
constantly stimulated the financial and industrial
movement. . . . Numberless railroad companies
now sprang to life, and roads were rapidly built
upon a grand scale. The government adopted
the system of grants on a long term of years, —
say ninety-nine, — plus the guarantee of a small
rate of interest. In everything the cry was for
instant success, at anj' cost. Great financial
operations followed on the heels of tha first
grants to railroad companies. . . . This year's
budget, like the constitution, was the work of a
single man. The dictator settled it by a decree ;
then, having ordered the elections for his Chamber
of Deputies, just before his constitution went
into operation, he raised the universal state of
siege (JIarch 28). This was only a feint, for his
government was a permanent state of siege. . . .
The official candidates presented, or rather im-
posed, were generally elected ; the republicans
failed to vote throughout a great part of the
country. . . . March 29, the prince-president
proceeded to install the great state bodies at the
Tuileries. It was thought that he would hint in
Ills speech that he expected the title of Emperor,
but he left that point vague, and still talked of
preserving the republic. . . . During the session
a rumor was current that Louis Napoleon was to
be proclaimed emperor on the 10th of May, after
the distribution of eagles to the army ; but this
was not carried out. The dictator had no desire
to be made emperor in this fashion. He meant
to do it more artfuUy, and to make it seem that
the nation forced the accomplishment of his
wishes upon him. He therefore undertook a
fresh journey through the provinces. . . . The
watchword was everywhere given by the au-
thorities and influential persons, whose example
was imitated by the crowd, irreconcilable oppo-
nents keeping silent. ... He returned to Paris,
October 16, and was received in state at the Or-
leans station. The official bodies greeted him
with shouts of ' Long live the Emperor ! ' . . .
Next day, the following paragraph appeared In
the ' Moniteur ' : ' The tremendous desire for the
restoration of the empire manifested through-
out France, makes it incumbent upon the presi-
dent to consult the Senate upon the subject.'
The Senate and Legislature were convened No-
vember 4; the latter was to verify the votes,
should the Senate decide that the people must
be consulted in regard to a change in the form
of government, which no one doubted would be
the case. . . . The Senate . . . passed a decree
for the submission of the restoration of the he-
reditary empire for popular acceptance (Novem-
ber 7) ; the senators then went in a body to St.
Cloud to inform the prince-president of this de-
cision. . . . The people were then called upon
to vote for the plebiscite decreed by the Senate
(November 20 and 21). Republican and legiti-
mist protests were circulated in despite of the
police, the government publishing them in the
official organ, the ' Moniteur,' as if in defiance,
thinking that the excessive violence of the re-
publican proscripts of London and Guernsey
would alarm the peace-loving public. The result
of the vote was even greater than that of Decem-
ber 20, 1851 ; the authenticity of the figures may
indeed be doubted, but there is not a doubt that
there was really a large majority in favor of the
plebiscite. France abandoned the struggle ! On
the evening of December 1, the three great state
bodies, the two Chambers and the State Council,
went to St. Cloud, and the president of the Legis-
lature presented the result of the ballot to the
new emperor, who sat enthroned, between his
uncle Jerome and his cousin Napoleon." — H.
Martin, Popular Hist, of France, 1789-1878, v. 3,
ch. 15.
Axso m: H. C. Lockwood, Const. Hist, of
France, ch. 6, and app. 9.
A. D. 1853-1856.— The Crimean war. See
Russi.i ; A. D. 1853-1851, to 18.54-1856.
A, D. 1855-1895. Acquisitions in Africa.
See Afrka: A. D. 1855, 1876-1880, and after.
A. D. 1857-1860. — Operations with England
in China. See China : A. L). 1856-1860.
A. D. 1858. — Orsini attempt to assassinate
Napoleon III. See England : A. I). 1858-1S59.
A. D. 1858-1886.— Conquest of Tonkin and
Cochin China. See Tonkin.
A. D. 1859.— Alliance with Sardinia and
war with Austria. — Acquisition of Savoy and
Nice. See IrKhX : A. D. 1806-1859, and 1809-
1861.
1412
FRANCE, 1860.
The Hohenzollern
Incident.
FRANCE, 1870.
A. D. i860. — The Chevalier-Cobden com-
mercial treaty with England. See Taeiff
Legislation (France): A. D. 1853-1860.
A. D. 1860-1870. — Modifications of the im-
perial constitution. — "Originally . . . the
power of the Legislative Body was limited to vot-
ing and rejecting as a whole the laws submitted
to it by the Executive ; there was no such thing
as criticism or control of the general policy of
the reign: but the year 1860 opened a period of
development in the direction of liberty ; by a
decree of the November of that year the Emperor
permitted the Deputies to draw up an address in
answer to his speech, giving them thereby the
opportunity to criticise his policy; by that of
December 1861 he allowed them to vote the
budget by sections, that is to say, to discuss and,
if desirable, reject its items; by that of January
1867 he substituted for the Address the right of
questioning the Ministers, who might be dele-
gated to the Chamber by the Emperor to take
part in certain definite discussions; lastly, by that
of September 1869 he gave to the Legislative
Body the right of initiating laws, removed the re-
strictions hitherto retained on the right of amend-
ment and of questions, and made the Ministers
responsible to the Chamber. Thus the Constitu-
tion was deliberately modified, by the initiative
of the Emperor himself, from the form of im-
perial despotism to that of parliamentary mon-
archy: this modified Constitution was submitted
to a plebiscite in May 1870, and once more the
people ratified the Empire by over seven million
votes against a million and a half." — G. L. Dick-
inson, Bevolution and Reaction in Modern France,
eh. 7, sect. 3.
A. D. 1861-1867. — Intervention in Mexico
and its humiliating failure. See Mexico: A. D.
1861-1867.
A. D. 1862. — Commercial treaty with Ger-
many. See Tariff Legislation (Germany):
A. D. 1853-1893.
A. D. 1866. — Withdrawal of troops from
Rome. See Italy: A. D. 1863-1866.
A. D. 1866-1870. — Territorial concessions
demanded from Germany. — The Luxemburg
question. — War temporarily averted. See Ger-
many: A. D. 1866-1870.
A. D. 1867. — Last defense of Papal sov-
ereignty at Rome. — Defeat of Garibaldi at
Mentana. See Italy: A. D. 1807-1870.
A. D. 1870 (June— July).— " The Hohenzol-
lern incident." — Unjustifiable declaration of
war against Prussia. — "Towards the last of
June, 1870, there arose what is known as the
' Hohenzollern incident,' which assumed so much
importance, as it led up to the Franco-German
War. In June, 1868, Queen Isabella had been
chased from Spain, and had sought refuge in
France. The Spanish Cortes, maintaining the
monarchical form, offered the Crown of Spain to
Prince Hohenzollern, a relation of the King of
Prussia [see Spain: A. D. 1866-1873]. The
French Minister at Madrid telegraphed that
Prince Leopold Hohenzollern had been nomi-
nated to the throne of Spain, and had accepted.
This produced the utmost excitement and indig-
nation among the French people. The Paris
press teemed with articles more or less violent,
calling on the government to prevent this out-
rage, even at the cost of war. The journals of
all shades were unanimous in the matter, con-
tending that it was an insult and a peril to
France, and could not be tolerated. The Oppo-
sition in the Chamber made the incident an occa-
sion for attacking the government, alleging that
it was owing to its weak and vacillating policy
that France was indebted to her fresh humilia-
tion. The government journals, however, laid
the whole blame upon the ambition of Count Bis-
marck, who had become to them a bete noire.
. . . Both parties vied with each other in showing
the extent of their dislike to the great Prussian
Chancellor. Much pressure was soon brought
to bear in the proper quarters ; the result of this
was the withdrawal of the Hohenzollern candi-
dacy. Explanations were made, better counsels
seemed to prevail, and all immediate trouble
appeared averted. It seemed quite certain that
all danger of a war between France and Ger-
many was at an end, and all being quiet on the
banks of the Seine, on the 3d of July I left
Paris in pursuit of health and recreation at the
healing waters of Carlsbad, of far-off Bohemia.
I was in excellent relations with the Duke de
Gramont, and everything appeared to be serene.
I had hardly reached Carlsbad, when scanty
news was received of a somewhat threatening
character. I could hardly believe that anything
very serious was likely to result; yet I was
somewhat uneasy. Going to drink the water at
one of the health-giving springs, early in the
morning of July 15th, my Alsatian valet brought
me the startling news, that a private telegram,
received at midnight, gave the intelligence that
France had declared war against Germany. The
news fell upon the thousands of visitors and the
people of Carlsbad, like a clap of thunder in a
cloudless sky, and the most intense excitement
prevailed. The nearest railroad station to Carls-
itad, at that time, was Eger. ... I rode all night
from Carlsbad to Eger. Taking the railroad
from Eger to Paris, and passing through Bavaria,
Baden, Darmstadt and the valley of the Rhine,
the excitement was something prodigious, recall-
ing to me the days at home of the firing upon
Sumter, in 1861. The troops were rushing to
the depots; the trains were all blocked, and
confusion everywhere reigned supreme. After
great delays, and much discomfort, and a jour-
ney of fifty -two hours, I reached Paris at ten
o'clock at night, July 18th. The great masses of
people, naturally so excitable and turbulent, had
been maddened by the false news so skilfully '
disseminated, that King William, at Ems, had in-
sulted the French nation through its Ambassa-
dor. ... It soon turned out that all the reports
which had been spread over Paris, that King
William had insulted the French Ambassador
were utterly false, and had not the slightest
foundation. The French Ambassador, M. Bene-
detti, denied that he had received the least indig-
nity from the Emperor. . . . The exaggerations
in Paris and France of this simple incident sur-
passed all bounds, and they were apparently
made to inflame the people still more. It really
appeared that the Government of France had de-
termined to have war with Germany, coute que
coOte. The alleged causes growing out of the
talk that Germany was to put a German prince
on the throne of Spain were but a mere pretext.
. . . After eighteen years of peace, the courtiers
and adventurers who surrounded the Emperor
seemed to think that it was about time to have
a war."' — E. B. Washburne, Recolleciions of a
Minister to Prance, v. 1, ch. 3. — "It is a popular
1413
FEANCE, 1870.
Beginning of
War with Pfussia.
FRANCE, 1870.
fiction that the king turned his back on Benedetti,
or that he answered that he ' had nothing more to
say to him,' or that he out and out refused him
an audience. An extra of the German papers of
July 14th did indeed read to that effect : Bis-
marck himself had drawn up the notice for the
papers. He had made no false additions, but
here and there he had erased and omitted some
of the words spoken at Ems, thus rendering
possible at least the whole false conception of the
matter. Bismarck ventured on such a step, hav-
ing clearly counted the costs ; the result showed
how closely he had made his calculations. . . .It
was the war of 1870 that fundamentally changed
the relations of the chancellor to the mass of the
people. After 1871 he was immensely popular.
. . . People believed that he could do anything,
that he could make possible what was impossible
for other men. . . . Bismarck was very soon
surrounded with an almost mythical halo." — W.
Maurenbrecher, Gri'indung den deutscTien Beichs
(trans, from the Oerman). pp. 13-258.
Also nsr: W. Milller, Political Rist. of Becent
Times, sect. 35. — G. B. Malleson, The Refounding
of the German Empire, ch. 11. — W. Rilstow, The
War for the Rhine Frontier, 1870, ch. 6 (s. 1).
A. D. 1870 (July — August). — Disastrous open-
ing of the war. — Defeats at Worth, Spichern
and Gravelotte. — Bazaine's army shut up in
Metz. — "July 23d Napoleon intrusted the re-
gency to the empress for the period of his absence
from Paris. . . . On the 28th, . . . accompanied
by his son, [he] left for Metz, to assume com-
mand of the army. . . . The army consisted of
eight corps. Of these, the 1st, under Marshal
ilacMahon, was statrioned at Strasburg ; the 2d,
under General Frossard, at St. Avoid; the 3d,
under Marshal Bazaine, at Metz ; the 4th, under
General Ladmirault, at Diedenhofen (Thionville) ;
the 5th, under General Failly, at Bitsch ; the 6th,
under Marshal Canrobert, in the camp at Chalons ;
the 7th, under General Felix Douay, at Belfort;
the 8th, — the Imperial Guard — under General
Bourbaki, at Nancy. Accordingly, the French
forces were divided into two groups, the larger
stationed on the Moselle, and the smaller in
Alsace. To the latter belonged the 1st and 7th
corps, both of which were placed under the com-
mand of Marshal MacMahon, with orders to pre-
vent the crown prince's army from entering Al-
sace. The larger group comprised the 2d, 3d,
and 4th corps. . . . The 6th and 8th were to
have formed the reserve ; but the greatly superior
numbers of Prince Frederic Charles and Stein-
metz, who were advancing against this larger
group, necessitated the immediate bringing of
those corps to the front. The connection be-
tween the two groups was to be maintained by
the 5th corps, stationed at Bitsch. Skirmishing
of the advanced posts and collisions between re-
connoitering parties began on the 19th of July.
The most important of these minor engagements
■was that at Saarbrilcken, on the 2d of August
[the French claiming a victory]. . . . August
4th the crown prince crossed the French frontier
and attacked the town of Weissenburg, on the
little river Lauter. . . . Weissenburg was suc-
cessfully carried by Prussian and Bavarian bat-
talions combined, and the Geisberg by sixteen
battalions of Prussians alone. . . . August 5th
MacMahon with his corps took up his position
at W5rth, fortifying the heights westward from
Sauerbach, together with the villages of Frosch-
weiler and Elsasshausen, in the intention of meet-
ing at that place the advancing columns of the
crown prince, whose attack he expected on the
7th. To strengthen his army sufficiently for the
task required of it he endeavored to bring up
General Felix Douay's corps from Belfort and
Miihlhausen, and that of General Failly from
Bitsch; but only one division of the former ar-
rived in time, and a division of the latter which
was sent to his support did not reach the neigh-
borhood of the battle-field until the evening of
the 6th, in time to afford a partial protection on
the retreat. Consequently, MacMahon was left
with not more than 45,000 men to face the crown
prince's whole army. . . . On the morning of
the 6th the advance guard of the 5th corps be-
came involved in a sharj) action with the enemy,"
and "from a mere skirmish of the advance guard
resulted the decisive battle of Worth. . . . After
AViJrth itself had been carried, the fighting was
most severe around the fortified village of Frosch-
weiler. This was finally taken, and a desperate
charge of the French cuirassiers repulsed. 'There-
upon MacMahon's army broke and fled in wild
confusion, some toward the passes of the Vosges,
others to Strasburg ®r Bitsch. . . . The trophies
of victory were numerous and valuable : 200 oSi-
cers and 9,000 men prisoners. . . . The French
lost 6,000 dead and wounded; the German loss
was 489 officers and 10,153 men — a loss greater
than that of Sadowa. . . . Mac^Mahon, with
about 15,000 of his defeated troops, reached
Zabern on the morning of the 7th, and set out
thence for Chalons, whither Generals Douay and
Failly were also directed to lead their forces. A
new army was to be formed at that point, and
northern Alsace was abandoned to the crown
prince's victorious troops. The Badish division
received orders to march against Strasburg, and
by the 9th the whole corps was assembled before
that city, Hagenau having been taken by the
cavalry on the wa}'. . . . Preparations for a siege
were made, a regular siege corps being formed
. . . and placed under the command of General
Werder. With the remainder of the third army
the crown prince left WOrth on the 8th of August,
marched through the unguarded passes of the
Vosges, and entered Nancy on the 16th. . . .
Detachments were left behind to blockade Bitsch
and Pfalzburg. At Nancy the prince rested for
a few days and waited for decisive news from
the Saar and Moselle. A second victory was
won on the 6th of August at Spichern [or For-
bach]. Like the battle of Worth, this action
was not the result of a strategical combination,
but rather of a misunderstanding. . . . Frossard
[whose corps was encountered at Spichern] fell
Ijack on Metz by way of Saargemilnd. Bazaine,
who, although not more than seven or eight
miles from the field of battle, had made no at-
tempt to come to Frossard's assistance, led his
corps to the same place. In this battle, owing
to the unfavorable nature of the ground, the
losses of the conquerors were heavier than those
of the conquered. The Germans had 223 officers
and 4,648 men dead, wounded, and missing;
while the French, according to their own reports,
lost 249 officers and 3,829 men, 2,000 of whom
were taken prisoners. August 7th the victors
continued their forward march, capturing great
stores of provisions in Forbach. On the 9th St.
Avoid was taken, and foraging parties advanced
almost to Metz. Marching through the Rhenish
1414
FRANCE, 1870.
Bazaine in Metz.
PRANCE, 1870.
Palatinate, part of Prince Frederic Charles's army-
directed its course toward Metz by way of Saar-
briicken, and part tlirougli Saargemilnd. . . .
In the imperial head-quarters at Metz the greatest
consternation prevailed. ... It was [finally] de-
cided to concentrate five army corps on the right
bank of the Moselle, at Metz, and to form a
second army, consisting of four corps, under
MacMahon's command, in the camp at Chalons.
The first line of defence on the Rhine and Saar
had been abandoned, and France was to be de-
fended on the Moselle. By this decision Alsace
and Lorraine were surrendered to the foe at the
very outset." On the 9th of August the French
emperor transferred the chief command from
himself to Marshal Bazaine, while Lebceuf at
the same time withdrew from the direction of the
staff. Simultaneously, at Paris, the Grammont-
OUivier ministry resigned, and was succeeded by
a cabinet formed under the presidency of Count
Palikao (General Montauban). "New levies were
called into the field, comprising all unmarried
men between the ages of 25 and 30 not already
enrolled in the ' garde mobile. "... In the Ger-
man head-quarters ... it was resolved in some
way to make Bazaine's army harmless, either by
shutting him up in Metz or by pushing him
northward to the Belgian frontier. . . . The task
was a difficult one. . . . All depended upon what
course Bazaine might conclude to pursue, and
the energy with which he executed his plans.
It was his purpose to leave Metz with the field
army and join MacJIahon at Chalons. There
would then be 300,000 French at that place to
block the German march to Paris. In that event
the Germans would have to leave 60,000 men be-
fore Metz . . . and Diedenhofen, and would not
have enough left to venture an attack on the
united and well-intrenched armies at Chalons.
Accordingly, the union of those two armies must
be prevented at any price, and Bazaine be at-
tacked before Metz. The execution of this plan
led to the severe fighting near that city — the
battle of Colombey-Nouilly (Borny), on the 14th,
Vionville on the 16th, and Gravelotte on the
18th." The battle of Gravelotte was "the first
battle in the war in which a pre-arranged plan
[Moltke's] was actually carried out. ... It was
a brilliant victory, and followed by important
results. Bazaine's army was shut up in the for-
tress and among the outlying forts, and ren-
dered unavailable for further service in the field.
The losses of the French amounted to about
13,000 men, including 600 officers; the Ger-
man loss was 899 officers and 19,260 men, of
whom 328 officers and 4,909 men were killed out-
right. The number of combatants on the side of
the French was about 140,000, on the side of the
Germans 178,818, the former having 550, and the
latter 823 cannon. It must be remembered, how-
ever, that the French occupied a position very
much of the nature of a fortress, which had to
be carried by storm." — W. Miiller, Political His-
tory of Recent Times, sect. 25.
Also in: Count H. von Moltke, TJie Franco-
German War of 1870-71, sect. 1.— Col. A. Borb-
staedt and Maj. F. Dwyer, The Franco-Oerman
War, ch. 10-29.
A. D. 1870 (August— September).— Invest-
ment of Metz by the Germans. — Disastrous
attempt of MacMahon to rescue Bazaine. —
The catastrophe at Sedan. — "The huge, stub-
born, vehement and bloody conflict waged in the
rural tract between the northern edges of the
Bois de Vaux and the Forest of Jaumont, which
the French Marshal called the ' Defence of the
Lines of Amanvillers,' the French Army, 'the
Battle of St. Privat,' and the Germans the battle
of 'Gravelotte — St. Privat,' established the mas-
tery of the latter over 'the Army of the Rhine.'
JIarshal Bazaine had not proved strong enough
to extricate the Army he was suddenly appointed
to command from the false position in which it
had been placed by the errors and hesitations of
the Emperor and Marshal Leboeuf. . . . The
German leaders forthwith resolved, and acted on
the resolve, to take the largest advantage of suc-
cess. When the broadening day showed that the
French were encamped under the guns of the
fort, and that they did not betray the faintest
symptom of fighting for egress on any side, the
place was deliberately invested. . . . Soon the
blockade was so far completed that only adven-
turous scouts were able at rare intervals to work
their way through the German lines. As early
as the forenoon of the 19th, the King had de-
cided to form what came to be called the ' Army
of the Meuse ' out of the Corps which were not
needed to uphold the investment of Metz, and
thus place himself in a condition to assail the
French Army collecting at Chalons. . . . This
formidable force was put under the command of
the Crown Prince of Saxony, who had shown
himself to be an able soldier. Consequently,
there remained behind to invest Bazaine, seven
Corps d'Armee and a Division of Reserve under
General von Kummer. . . . One Army had been
literally imprisoned, another remained at large,
and behind it were the vast resources of France.
Three Marshals were cooped up in the cage on
the Moselle; one, MacMahon, and the Emperor
were still in the field ; and upon the forces with
them it was resolved to advance at once, because
prudence required that they should be shattered
before they could be completely organized, and
while the moral effect of the resounding blows
struck in Alsace and Lorraine had lost none of
its terrible power. Therefore the King and Gen-
eral von Moltke started on the morrow of victory
to march on Paris through the plains of Cham-
pagne." — G. Hooper, The CamjMign of Sedan,
ch. 10. — "While the German invasion had thus
been rolling from Lorraine into the flats of Cham-
pagne, the shattered right wing of the army of
the Rhine, with reinforcements sent off from
Paris, had been drawn together in the well-
known plains made memorable by the defeat of
Attila. By 20 Aug. the first and fifth French
corps marched rapidly from the Upper Moselle
to the Marne, had been joined by the seventh
corps from Belfort and by the twelfth formed in
and despatched from Paris ; and this force, num-
bering perhaps 130,000 men, with from 400 to
500 guns, had been concentrated round the great
camp of ChSlons. Macmahon was given the
supreme command, and the first operations of
the experienced chief showed that he understood
the present state of affairs, and were in accord
with the rules of strategy. Bazaine, he knew,
was in peril near Metz, and certainly had not
attained the Meuse ; and he was at the head of
the last army which France could assemble for
tlie defence of her capital. In these circum-
stances, impressed perhaps by the grand mem-
ories of the campaign of 1814, he most properly
resolved to fall back towards Paris; but as
1415
FRANCE, 1870.
MacMahon''3 march
to the Me use.
FRANCE, 1870.
Bazaine was possibly not far distant, and a position
on the flank of the German advance might afford
a favourable opportunity to strike, he withdrew
northwards on the 21st to Rheims, in the double
hope that he would approach his colleague and
threaten the communications of the advancing
enemy. This, we repeat, was following the art
of war, and had JIacmahon firmly adhered to his
purpose, there would have been no Sedan and no
treaty of Frankfort. Unhapi3ily the marshal, a
hero in the field, was deficient in real strength of
character, and at this critical moment evil coun-
sels and false information shook, and at last
changed, a resolve that ought to have never fal-
tered. A new administration had been formed
in Paris, and Palikao, the minister of war, de-
voted to the Empire, and especially bent on sat-
isfying the demands of the excited capital, which
passionately insisted on the relief of Bazaine,
had conceived a project by which he hoped that
this great object would be effected and the 'dy-
nasty ' be restored in popular opinion. The army
of the Meuse, he argued, was near that stream,
round Verdun ; the third army was far away to
the south ; there was a considerable interval be-
tween the two masses ; and the army of Chalons,
then at Rheims, was not far from the Upper
Meuse. In those circumstances it was quite
practicable, should Macmahon rapidly advance
to the Meuse, to overpower with his largely
superior force the army of the Meuse before sup-
port could be sent from the distant third army ;
and the enemy in his path being swept aside,
the marshal could then descend on Metz, fall
with the collected strength of the army of Cha-
lons on the divided fragments of the investing
force, and triumphantly effect his junction with
Bazaine, having routed, perhaps, the first and
second armies before the third could appear on
the scene. The defiles and woods of the Argonne
and the Ardennes, stretching between the French
and the German armies, Palikao Insisted, would
form a screen to conceal the advance of the army
of Chalons, and would greatly facilitate the pro-
posed movement. This project reached Macma-
hon on 21 Aug., and may be pronounced one of
the most reckless ever designed by a desperate
gambler in war. . . . Macmahon at first refused
to listen to what he condemned as a hopeless proj-
ect; but bad advisers found their way to him,
and his resolution was already yielding when a
calamitous event fixed his shifting purpose. A
despatch from Bazaine, obscure and untrue, an-
nounced that he was on his way northward.
Macmahon inferred that his beleaguered col-
league had left Metz and eluded his foes, and,
thinking that he would reach Bazaine before
long, in an evil hour for France and for himself,
he consented to attempt the march to the Meuse. "
W. O'C. Morris, The Campaign of Sedan {Eng-
lish Historical Bev., ApHl, 1888). — "It was not
until the afternoon of August 23 that MacMa-
hon's array passed through Rheims. Anxious,
and knowing that everything depended on speed,
he addressed some columns as they toiled on-
wards, reminding them that French soldiers had
marched thirty miles a day under the sun of
Africa. The difference, however, was great be-
tween raids made by a few light reginients and
the advance of a raw unwieldy mass ; and though
the marshal endeavoured to huny them forward,
he was confronted with almost insurmountable
obstacles. Scarcely had the army made a march
towards establishing itself at Bethniville, on the
Suippe, when commissariat difficulties obliged
him to re-approach the line of the railway. He
made a movement on his left, and reached Rethel
on the 24th, in order to obtain for his troops sev-
eral days' subsistence. This distribution occu-
pied the whole of the 25th. ... As the direction
of the French movement could not now be con-
cealed, at this point MacMahon made arrange-
ments for marching with all possible rapidity.
It may be doubted, however, whether Napoleon
himself, at the head of the grand army could
have made the haste which the marshal designed
with his raw and partly demoralized troops. . . .
His army was altogether unequal to forced
marches, and moved at this critical moment with
the sluggishness inherent in its defective organ-
ization. Encumbered with stragglers, badly
pioneered, and checked by hindrances of every
kind, it made hardly ten miles a day ; and it was
the 27th of August before its right column, still
far from the Meuse, passed through Vouziers,
and the left reached Le ChSne. ... On the 27th
it was openly boasted of in Paris that MacJIahon
had gained at least forty-eight hours' start of the
Crown Prince, and his coming success was firmly
counted on by the imperialist cabinet, whereas,
in reality, the whole scheme was foiled before-
hand by Von Moltke's and General Blumenthal's
prompt combination. ... If in fighting, in the
boldness of their cavalrj', the activity of their
staff, the cool firing of their infantry, and the
skilful tactical use of their guns, the superiority
of the Germans to their antagonists had been
already proved; it only required the contrast
now presented between the movements of the
two armies to show, that in no point had the
difference of training and moral feeling told more
in favour of the invaders than in that of the
marching, on which the elder Napoleon so often
relied for his advantage over these very Germans
. . . Between the 27th and the morning of the
29th, the right column of the French army had
only its outposts at Buzancy, while the left,
though its outposts touched Stenay, was only at
Stonne and Beaumont, both columns spreading a
long way backward ; in other words, they were
still a march from the Meuse, which they ought
to have passed three days before, and their rear-
ward divisions were yet distant. The German
armies, from the 26th to the 29th, made astonish-
ing exertions to close on MacMahon as he crossed
towards the Meuse, and success was already
within their grasp. The force of the Crown
Prince of Saxony, in two columns, had reached
the Meuse at Dun on the 27th, and was thus in a
position to arrest and retard the vanguard of the
French whenever it attempted to cross the river.
Meanwhile the army of the Crown Prince of
Prussia, hastening forward by Varennes and
Grand Pre, and to the left by Senuc and Suippe,
had arrived close to the line of march of MacMa-
hoa's right column, and by the evening of the
28th had occupied it about Vouziers. A step
farther, and this immense army would be upon
the positions of the luckless French, who, as-
sailed in flank and rear by superior numbers,
could not fail to be involved in terrible disaster.
. . . JIacMahon [on the 27th], observing that
the enemy so completelj' surrounded him, felt-
more than ever satisfied that it would be impos-
sible to carry out the plan which had been pre-
scribed to him at Paris; and to save, if possible,
1416
FRANCE, 1870.
Sedan.
FRANCE, 1870.
the sole army which France had at her disposal,
he accordingly resolved to turn back in a westerly
direction. . . . The same evening he sent . . .
[a] telegram to the Count Palikao, at Paris. . . .
In reply to this, the government sent a telegram
to the emperor at eleven o'clock the same night,
telling him that if they abandoned Bazaine there
would certainly be a revolution in Paris, and
they would themselves be attacked by all the
enemy's forces. . . . The emperor admits that
he could unquestionably have set this order aside,
but ' he was resolved not to oppose the decision
of the regency, and had resigned himself to sub-
mit to the consequences of the fatality which at-
tached itself to all the resolutions of the govern-
ment.' As for MacMahon, he again bowed to
the decision intimated to him from Paris, and
once more turned towards ]Metz. These orders
and counter-orders naturally occasioned further
delay, and the French headquarters had reached
no farther than Stonne on the 28th. ... On
Monday, August 29, De Failly occupied the
country between Beaumont and Stonne, on the
left bank of the Meuse ; wliile the main body of
the French army, under ilacMahon in person, had
crossed the river, and were encamped on the right
bank at Vaux, between Mouzon and Carignan,
and on the morning of the 30th tlie emperor
telegraphed to Paris that a brilliant victory might
be expected. MacMahon's position was in a
sharp wedge of country formed by the conflu-
ence of the rivers Meuse and Chiers, and it was
his intention to advance towards Montmfedy.
The other part of his army was close to the river
on its left bank. . . . The battle — or rather
series of battles, for the fighting extended over
three days — which was to decide whether or not
he would reach Metz and liberate Bazaine, began
in earnest a little before noon on Tuesday, Au-
gust 30." — H. M. Hozier, The Fntnco-Prussian
War, V. 1, fh. 13. — "The retreating French were
concentrated, or rather massed, under the walls
of Sedan, in a valley commonly called the Sink
of Givonne. The army consisted of twenty-
nine brigades, fifteen divisions, and four corjjs
d'armee, numbering ninety thousand men. ' It
was there,' says Victor Hugo, 'no one could
guess what for, without order, without disci-
pline, a mere crowd of men, waiting, as it seemed,
to be seized by an immensely powerful hand.
It seemed to l3e under no particular anxiety.
The men who composed it knew, or thought they
knew, that the enemy was far away. Calculat-
ing four leagues as a day's march, they believed
the Germans to be at three days' distance. The
commanders, however, towards nightfall, made
some preparations for safety. The whole army
formed a sort of horse-shoe, its point turning
towards Sedan. This disposition proved that its
chiefs believed themselves in safety. The valley
was one of those which the Emperor Napoleon
used to call a "bowl," and which Admiral Van
Tromp designated by a less polite name. No
place could have been better calculated to shut
in an army. Its very numbers were against it.
Once in, if the way out were blocked, it could
never leave it again. Some of the generals, —
General Wimpfen among them — saw this, and
were uneasy; but the little court around the em-
peror was confident of safety. "At worst,"
they said, "we can always reach the Belgian
frontier." The commonest military precautions
were neglected. The army slept soundly on
the night of August 31. At the worst they be-
lieved themselves to have a Hue of retreat open
to Mezifires, a town on the frontier of Belgium.
No cavalry reconnoissance was made that night;
the guards were not doubled. The French be-
lieved themselves more than forty miles from the
German army. They behaved as if they thought
tliat army unconceutrated and ill-informed, at-
tempting vaguely several things at once, and in-
capable of converging on one point, namely,
Sedan. They thought they knew that the column
under the Prince of Saxony was marching upon
Chalons, and that the Crown Prince of Prussia
was marching upon Metz. But that night, while
the French army, in fancied security, was sleep-
ing at Sedan, this is what was passing among
the enemy. By a quarter to two A. M. the army
of the Prince of Saxony was on its march east-
ward with orders not to fire a shot till five o'clock,
and to make as little noise as possible. They
marched without baggage of any kind. At the
same hour another division of the Prussian army
marched, with equal noiselessness, from another
direction on Sedan, while the Wiirtemburgers
secured the road to Meziires, thereby cutting off
the possibility of a retreat into Belgium. At the
same moment, namely, five o'clock, — on all the
hills around Sedan, at all points of the compass,
appeared a dense dark mass of German troops,
with their commanders and artillery. Not one
sound had been heard by the French army, not
even an order. Two hundred and fifty thousand
men were in a circle on the heights round the
Sink of Givonne. They had come as stealthily
and as silently as serpents. They were there
when the sun rose, and the French army were
prisoners.' [Victor Hugo, Chases Vues\ — The
battle was one of artillery. The German guns
commanded every part of the crowded valley.
Indeed the fight was simply a massacre. There
was no hope for the French, though they fought
bravely. Their best troops, the Garde Imperiale,
were with Bazaine at Metz. Marshal MacMahon
was wounded very early in the day. The com-
mand passed first to General Ducrot, who was
also disabled, and afterwards to Wimpfen, a
brave African general who had hurried from Al-
geria just in time to take part in this disastrous
day. He told the emperor that the only hope
was for the troops to cut their way out of the
valley ; but the army was too closely crowded,
too disorganized, to make this practicable. One
Zouave regiment accomplished this feat, and
reached Belgium. That night — the night of
September 1 — an aide-de-camp of the Emperor
Napoleon carried this note to the camp of the
king of Prussia; — Monsieur Mou FrJre, — Not
having been able to die in midst of my troops, it
only remains for me to place my sword in the
hands of your Majesty. I am your Majesty's
good brother. Napoleon. . . . With Napoleon
III. fell not only his own reputation as a ruler,
but the glory of his uncle and the prestige of his
name. The fallen emperor and Bismarck met in
a little house upon the banks of the Meuse.
Chairs were brought out, and they talked in the
open air. It was a glorious autumn morning.
The emperor looked care-worn, as well he might.
He wished to see the king of Prussia before the
articles of capitulation were drawn up : but King
William declined the interview. When the ca-
pitulation was signed, however, he drove over to
visit the captive emperor at a chateau where the
1417
FRANCE, 1870.
Fall of the
Second Empire.
FRANCE, 1870.
latter had taken refuge. Their interview was
private; only the two sovereigns were present.
The French emperor afterwards expressed to the
Crown Prince of Prussia his deep sense of the
courtesy shown him. He was desirous of pass-
ing as unnoticed as possible through French ter-
ritory, where, indeed, exasperation against him,
as the first cause of the misfortunes of France,
was so great that his life would have been in
peril. The next day he proceeded to the beau-
tiful palace at Cassel called Wilhelmshohe, or
William's [Height]. It had been built at ruinous
expense by Jerome Bonaparte while king of West-
phalia, and was then called Napoleon's Rest.
'. . . Thus eighty thousand men capitulated at
Sedan, and were marched as prisoners into Ger-
many; one hundred and seventy-five thousand
French soldiers remained shut up in Metz, be-
sides a few thousand more in Strasburg, Phals-
bourg, Toul, and Belfort. But the road was
open to Paris, and thither the various German
armies marched, leaving the Landwehr, which
could not be ordered to serve beyond the limits
of Germany, to hold Alsace and Lorraine, already
considered a part of the Fatherland." — E. W.
Latimer, Prance in the Nineteenth Century, ch.
13. — -"The German army had lost in the battle
of Sedan about 460 officers and 8, 500 men killed
and wounded. On the French side the loss sus-
tained in the battle and at the capitulation
amounted according to their returns to the fol-
lowing: Killed 3, 000 men; wounded 14,000; pris-
oners (in the battle) 21,000; prisoners (at the
capitulation) 83,000; disarmed in Belgium 3,000;
Xat&WiA,mO."— The Franco-German War: Ger-
man Official Account, pt. 1, v. 2, p. 408.
Also m: Capt. G. Fitz-George, Plan of the
battle of Sedan, with Memoir. — A. Forbes, My
Experiences of the War bet. Prance and Germany,
pt. 1, ch. 4 (v. 1).— Col. A. Borbstaedt and Maj.
F. Dwyer, The Franco-German War, ch. 30-40.
— G. B. Malleson, The Befoundiny of the German
Empire, ch. 14.
A. D. 1870 (September). — Revolution at
Paris. — Collapse of the empire. — Self-con-
stitution of the Government of National De-
fense. — At Paris, the whole truth of the tre-
mendous disaster at Sedan was but slowly
learned. On the afternoon of Saturday, Septem-
ber 3, Count de Palikao intimated a little part of
it, only, " in a statement to the Corps Legislatif,
announcing that Marshal Bazaiue, after a vigorous
sally, had been obliged to retire again under the
walls of Metz, and that Macmahon, after a series
of combats, attended by reverses and successes —
having at the outset driven a part of the enemy's
array into the Meuse — had been compelled to
retreat to Sedan and Mezifires, a portion of his
army having taken refuge in Belgium. The
junction of the two armies had therefore not been
made. The situation was serious, calmly ob-
served the Minister of War, but not hopeless.
Not hopeless I when the truth was that one army
was blockaded and the other prisoner, and that
there were no reserves. ... At a midnight sit-
ting Count de Palikao, still determined to con-
ceal a portion of the truth, intimated that part of
Marshal Macmahon's army had been driven back
into Sedan, that the remainder had capitulated,
and that the Emperor had been made prisoner. M.
Jules Favre met this announcement of fresh dis-
asters by a motion, declaring the Emperor and
his dynasty to have forfeited all rights conferred
by the Constitution, demanding the appointment
of a Parliamentary Committee invested with the
governing power, and having for its special mis-
sion the expulsion of the enemy from French terri-
tory, and further maintaining General Trochu in
his post as Governor of Paris. The Chamber then
adjourned till the morrow. But Paris had touched
one of those crises when, as Pascal says, a grain
of sand will give a turn to history and change the
life of nations, and the morrow brought with it
the downfall of the Ministry, of the dynasty, of
the Empire, and of that bizarre constitutional
edifice which had been kept waiting so long for
its complemental crown. ... It had been in-
timated that the Corps Legislatif would reas-
semble at noon, before which time numerous
groups collected on the Place de la Concorde, and
eventually swelled to a considerable crowd. The
bridge leading to the Palais Bourbon was guarded
by a detachment of mounted gendarmes, and
numerous sergents-de-ville. . . . Battalions of
National Guards having, however, arrived, the
gendarmes, after flourishing their swords, opened
their ranks and allowed them to pass, followed
by a considerable portion of the crowd, shouting
' Vive la Republique ! ' and singing the ' Chant
du Depart.' The iron gates of the Palais Bour-
bon having been opened to admit a deputation
of National Guards, the crowd precipitated itself
forward, and in a few minutes the steps and
courtyard were alike invaded. Cries of 'Vive
la Garde Nationale ! ' ' Vive la Ligne ! ' ' Vive la
Republique ! ' resounded on all sides, and the
soldiers who occupied the court of the Palais
Bourbon, after making a show of resistance,
ended by hoisting the butt ends of their rifles in
the air in sign of sympathy, joining at the same
time in the shouts of the crowd, while the latter,
encountering no further opposition, proceeded
to invade the passages of the Chamber, at the
moment Count de Keratry was attacking the
Ministry for surrounding the Corps Legislatif
with troops and sergents-de-ville, contrary to the
orders of General Trochu. Count de Palikao,
having explained the relative positions of the
Governor of Paris and the Minister of War, in-
troduced a bill instituting a Council of Govern-
ment and National Defence, composed of five
members elected by the Legislative Body, the
ministers to be appointed with the approval of
the members of this Council, and he, Count de
Palikao, to occupy the post of Lieutenant-Gen-
eral. M. Jules Favre having claimed priority
for the motion which he had introduced the day
before, M. Thiers, pleading the necessity for
union, next moved that: — 'In view of existing
circumstances, the Chamber appoints a Com-
mission of Government and National Defence.
A Constituent Assembly will be convoked as soon
as circumstances permit.' The Chamber having
declared in favour of their urgency, these several
propositions were eventually referred to the
Bureau, and the sitting was suspended. It was
during this period that the crowd penetrated into
the Salles des Quatre Colonnes and de la Paix.
... At half-past two, when the sitting was re-
sumed, the galleries were crowded and very
noisy. The members of tlie Left only were in
their places. It was in vain the President at-
tempted to obtain silence, in vain the solemn
huissiers commanded it. MM. Gambetta and
Cremieux appeared together at the tribune, and
the former begged of the people to remain quiet.
1418
FRANCE, 1870.
The Government
of National Defense.
FRANCE, 1870.
... A partial silence having been secured,
Count de Palikao, followed by a few members
of the majority, entered the Chamber, but did not
essay to speak. ... A minute or two after-
wards, the clamour arose again, and a noisy
multitude commenced invading the floor of the
hall. . . . Nothing was left to the President
but to put on his hat and retire, which he did,
together with Count de Palikao and the mem-
bers by whom the latter had been accompanied.
By this time the Chamber was completely in-
vaded by National and Mobile Guards, in com-
pany with an excited crowd, whose advance it
was in vain now to attempt to repel. M. Jules
Favre, having mounted the tribune, obtained a
moment's silence. ' No scenes of violence,' cried
he ; ' let us reserve our arms for our enemies. '
Finding it utterly impossible to obtain any fur-
ther hearing inside the Chamber, M. Gambetta,
accompanied by the members of the Left, pro-
ceeded to the steps of the peristyle, and there
announced the dethronement of the Emperor to
the people assembled outside. Accompanied by
one section of the crowd, they now hurried to the
Hotel de Ville, and there installed themselves as
a Provisional Government, whilst another section
took possession of the Tuileries — whence the
Empress had that morning taken flight — as na-
tional property. A select band of Republicans,
mindful of what Count — now Citoyen — Henri
Rochefort had done to bring Imperialism into
disrepute, proceeded to the prison of Sainte
Pelagic and conducted the author of the Lan-
teme, and other political prisoners, in triumph
to the Hotel de Ville. The deputies who quitted
the Chamber when it was invaded by the mob,
met that same afternoon at the President's resi-
dence, and sent a deputation to the Hotel de
Ville, with a proposal to act in common with the
new Government. This proposition was, how-
ever, declined, on the score of the Republic
having been already proclaimed and accepted by
the population of Paris. At an evening meeting
of nearly two hundred deputies, held under the
presidency of M. Thiers, MM. Jules Favre and
Simon attended on the part of the Provisional
Government to explain that they were anxious
to secure the support of the deputies, whom they
hinted, however, could best serve their country
in the departments. After this unequivocal re-
buff, the deputies, who had in the meantime been
apprised that seals had been placed on the doors
of the Corps Legislatif , saw that nothing remained
to them but to protest, and protest they accord-
ingly did against the events of the afternoon.
. . . Not one of the two hundred deputies pres-
ent so much as dared suggest the breaking of the
seals and the assembling in the Legislative Cham-
ber. . . . The Government which grasped the
reins of power on the utter collapse of Imperial
institutions was a mob-named one in the fullest
sense of the term, the names having been chalked
by the populace on the pillars of the portico of the
Palais Bourbon during that invasion of the Cham-
ber on the Sunday afternoon which resulted in
the overthrow of the Imperial regime. The list
appears to have been accepted by the principal
members of the Left, who, although they would
have preferred disassociating themselves from M.
Rochefort, nevertheless felt that it was impossible
to leave him out of the combination, and there-
fore adroitly — and not inappropriately, as the
safety of Paris was especially in their keeping —
made it embrace all the deputies for Paris, save,
as M. Jules Simon observed, the most illustrious
— meaning M. Thiers, who refused to join it.
. . . The Government of National Defence, as it
elected to style itself, on M. Rochefort's sugges-
tion, was composed of the following members : —
General Trochu, president; Jules Favre, Vice
President and Minister for Foreign Aifairs;
Emanuel Arago; Cremieux, Minister of Justice ;
Jules Ferry, Secretary ; Leon Gambetta, Minister
of the Interior ; Garnier-Pag6s ; Glais-Bizoin ; Eu-
gene Pelletan ; Ernest Picard, Minister of Finance ;
Henri Rochefort; and Jules Simon, Minister of
Public Instruction. Subsequently it associated
with it General Le Flo, Minister of War; Ad-
miral Fourichon, Minister of Marine ; M. Dorian,
Minister of Public Works ; and M. Magnin, Min-
ister of Agriculture and Commerce. These, with
Count de Keratry, charged with the Prefecture
of Police, M. Etienne Arago, appointed Mayor of
Paris, composed altogether no less than eighteen
members, upwards of two-thirds of whom were
Bretons, advocates, or journalists. . . . For some
days the new Government was prodigal of proc-
lamations and decrees. Its first acts were to close
the doors of the Palais Bourbon and the Palais
du Luxembourg, and dissolve the Corps Legis-
latif and abolish the Senate as bouches inutiles
politiques, to issue proclamations to the army,
or rather the debris of one, justifying the Revo-
lution and appealing to the troops to continue
their heroic efforts for the defence of the country,
and to the National Guard, thanking them for
their past, and asking for their future patriotism.
It released all functionaries from their oaths, dis-
missed the ambassadors at foreign courts, ap-
pointed prefects in all the departments, and new
mayors in the twenty arrondissementsof the capi-
tal, proclaimed the complete liberty of the press,
ordered all Germans not provided with special
permission to remain, to quit the departments of
the Seine and Seine-et-Oise within four-and-
twenty hours. ... It pressed forward the pro-
visioning of the city and its works of defence,
increased the herds of sheep and oxen and the
stores of corn and flour, provisionally abolished all
local customs and octroi dues, and fixed the
price of butcher's meat, armed the outer forts
and the enceinte, blew up or mined all the
bridges and fired all the woods in the environs,
razed thousands of houses to the ground, felled
roadside trees, and constructed huge barricades
with them ; laid in fact all the beautiful suburbs
in waste ; listened to the thousand and one wild
schemes put forth by patriotic madmen for ex-
terminating the invaders, and launched a huge
captive balloon, which hovered daily over Paris
to give timely notice of their dreaded arrival." —
H. Vizetelly, ed. Paris in Peril, ch. 1.
Also in : J. Favre, Tke Oov't of the National
Defence, June — October. — W. Rustow, The War
for tlie Rhine Prontier, ch. 22 (». 2).
A. D. 1870 (September— October).— Futile
striving for allies and for peace without ter-
ritorial sacrifices. — Investment of Paris. —
Garabetta's organization of defense in the
provinces. — Bazaine's surrender at Metz. —
" The Government of National Defence . . . im-
agined that the fall of the Empire would sim-
plify the cruel position of France towards the
enemy. The Dynasty which had declared war
being reversed, and the men now in power hav-
ing been throughout opposed to war and in favour
1419
FRANCE, 1870.
Siege of Paris.
FRANCE, 1870-1871.
of German unity, and now demanding nothing
but peace, what motive could the King of Prus-
sia have to continue the invasion of France ? It
was further to be considered that free France
would defend her integrity to the last drop of her
blood ; that she would voluntarily give up neither
an inch of her territory nor a stone of her for-
tresses. Such were the ideas which the new Min-
ister of Foreign Affairs, M. Jules Favre, expressed
on the 6th of September, in a circular addressed
to the French agents in foreign countries. The
Cabinet of Berlin was not slow in disabusing
him of these convictions. Far from accepting
the view that the Emperor Napoleon was the sole
promoter of war. Count Bismarck, in two de-
spatches of the 13th and of the 16th of Septem-
ber, threw the responsibility of the conflict on the
French nation. He stated that the vast majority
of the Chambers had voted for war, and that the
Emperor was justified iii assuring the King that
he had been forced into a war to which he was
personally averse. ... In order to be secure
against future aggression, Germany -would ask
for guarantees from the French nation itself, and
not from a transitory Government. ... In any
case, Germany would require Strasburg and Metz.
Thus the accession to power of the Republican
Governmeut did not modify the reciprocal posi-
tions of the two belligerents. Nevertheless, hope
was entertained in Paris that the friendly inter-
vention of the great powers might induce the
victor to soften his rigour; " but iutervention was
declined by the Berlin Cabinet and not under-
taken. "On the 19th of September the invest-
ment of Paris was completed. At the desire of
the French Government, the English Cabinet ap-
plied to the German bead-quarters, with the ob-
ject of obtaining for M. Jnles Favre an interview
with Count Bismarck. This request having been
granted, the two statesmen held conferences, on
the 19th and 30th of September, at Ferri^res, a
castle of Baron Rothschild near Jleaux. During
these interviews the French Minister was senti-
mental and the German Minister coldly logical.
They could not come to an agreement on any sin-
gle point. . . . The Government of Paris . . .
again proclaimed that France would not cede an
inch of her territory. Meanwhile, in consequence
of the investment of Paris, the Government of
National Defence was divided into two parts;
some of its Delegates withdrew to Tours, form-
ing a delegation of the central Government which
remained in Paris. The German armies had con-
tinued their onward march, as well as their opera-
tions against the fortresses. Toul capitulated on
the 23rd and Strasburg on the 28th of September.
On the otli of October, King AVilliam had estab-
lished his headquarters at Versailles. " Meantime
"the Government of National Defence made a
last attempt to secure allies, or at least the help
of powerful mediators. With this object M.
Thiers, who had placed himself at the disposal of
the Administration of the 4th of September, was
sent on a mission to the European Courts. From
the 12th of September till the 20th of October,
the old statesman visited in succession London,
Vienna, St. Petersburg, and Florence. In none
of these cities were his measures attended with
happy results." At St. Petersburg and at Lon-
don he was told — and he was himself convinced
— "that the King of Prussia was compelled to
consider the public opinion of Germany, and that
France would have to resign herself to territorial
sacrifices. " He returned to France to advise, and
to procure authority for, a conference with the
German Chancellor. But events had already oc-
curred which aggravated the forlorn condition of
France. "The youngest and most enterprising
member of the Government of Paris, M. Gam-
betta, had left the Capital on the 8th of October
in a balloon for Tours. It was his intention to
organise national defence in the Provinces. The
day after his arrival at Tours, he issued a fiery
Proclamation to the French people. . . . With an
energy that called forth universal admiration, the
Government of Tours, over which Gambetta pre-
sided as Dictator, organised resistance, formed a
new army, and gathered together every possible
resource for defence both in men and in materials.
All these efforts could not arrest the progress of
the invasion. From the 11th to the 31st of Octo-
ber, the Germans took successively Orleans, Sois-
sons, Schlestadt and Dijon. Round Paris they
repulsed the sallies of Malmaison, Champigny,
and le Bourget. But all these defeats of heroic
soldiers waned when compared to the appalling
and decisive catastrophe of Metz. After the bat-
tle of Gravelotte, Marshal Bazaine had unsuccess-
fully attempted several sallies. ... On the 7th
of October, after an unfortunate battle at Woippy,
lasting nine hours, Bazaine considered the situa-
tion desperate. His only thought was to obtain
the most favourable conditions he could, and with
this object he sent General Boyer to the head-
quarters at Versailles." After two weeks of ne-
gotiation, "on the 21st of October, the army en-
camped within the walls of Metz found itself
without provisions. . . . Negotiations with Prince
Frederick Charles, nephew of the King and Com-
mander-in-chief of the besieging Army, were
opened on the 25th, and terminated on the 37th
of October. The conditions were identical with
those of Sedan : capitulation of the town and its
forts with all the material of war, all the army of
the Rhine to be prisoners and the officers to be
liberated on parole." — E. Simon, The Emp&ror
William and his Reign, ch. 13 (e. 2). — "The
French Army of the Rhine at the time of the sur-
render still numbered 178,000 men, inclusive of
6,000 officers and 20,000 men remaining tempora-
rily in Metz as sick or convalescent. ' ' — Tlie Franco-
Oerinan War: German Official Account, pt. 2, v.
1, p. 201.
Also in : A. Forbes, My Experiences of the War
between France and Oermany, pt. 2 (ji. 1).
A. D. 1870-1871. — The war in the provinces.
— Unsuccessful attempts to relieve the capital.
— Distress in Paris. — Capitulation and armis-
tice. — "The surrender of Metz and the release
of the great army of Prince Frederick Charles
by which it was besieged fatally changed the
conditions of the French war of national defence.
Two hundred thousand of the victorious troops
of Germany under some of their ablest generals
were set free to attack the still untrained levies
on the Loire and in the north of France, which,
with more time for organisation, might well have
forced the Germans to raise the siege of Paris.
The army once commanded by Steinmetz was
now reconstituted, and despatched under Gen-
eral Manteuffel towards Amiens ; Prince Frederick
Charles moved with the remainder of his troops
towards the Loire. Aware that his approach
could not long be delayed, Gambetta insisted that
Aurelle de Paladines should begin the march on
Paris. The general attacked Tann at Coulmiers
1420
FRANCE, 1870-1871.
War in
the Provinces.
FRANCE, 1870-1871.
on the 9th of November, defeated him, and
re-occupied Orleans, the first real success that
the French had gained in the war. There was
great alarm at the German headquarters at Ver-
sailles; the possibility of a failure of the siege
was discussed; and 40,000 troops were sent
southwards in haste to the support of the Bava-
rian general. Aurelle, however, did not move
upon the capital : his troops were still unfit for
the enterprise; and he remained stationary on
the north of Orleans, in order to improve his or-
ganisation, to await reinforcements, and to meet
the attack of Frederick Charles in a strong posi-
tion. In the third week of November the lead-
ing divisions of the army of Metz approached,
and took post between Orleans and Paris. Gam-
betta now insisted that the effort should be made
to relieve the capital. Aurelle resisted, but was
forced to obey. The garrison of Paris had
already made several unsuccessful attacks upon
the lines of their besiegers, the most vigorous
being that of Le Bourget ou the 30th of October,
in which baj'onets were crossed. It was arranged
that in the last days of November General Tro-
ohu should endeavour to break out on the south-
ern side, and that simultaneously the army of the
Loire should fall upon the enemy in front of it
and endeavour to force its way to the capital.
On the 28th the attack upon the Germans ou the
north of Orleans began. For several days the
struggle was renewed by one division after an-
other of the armies of Aurelle and Prince Fred-
erick Charles. Victory remained at last with the
Germans ; the centre of the French position was
carried; the right and left wings of the army
were severed from one another and forced to re-
treat, the one up the Loire, the other towards
the west. Orleans on the 5th of December passed
back into the hands of the Germans. The sortie
from Paris, which began with a successful attack
by General Ducrot upon Champigny beyond the
Marne, ended after some days of combat in the
recovery by the Germans of the positions which
they had lost, and in the retreat of Ducrot into
Paris. In the same week Manteuffel, moving
against the relieving army of the north, encoun-
tered it near Amiens, defeated it after a hard
struggle, and gained possession of Amiens itself.
After the fall of Amiens, Manteuffel moved upon
Rouen. This city fell into his hands without re-
sistance. . . . But the Republican armies, unlike
those which the Germans had first encountered,
were not to be crushed at a single blow. Under
the energetic command of Faidherbe the army
of the north advanced again upon Amiens. Goe-
ben, who was left to defend the line of the
Somme, went out to meet him, defeated him on
the 23rd of December, and drove him bask to
Arras. But again, after a week's interval, Faid-
herbe pushed forward. On the 3rd of January
he fell upon Goeben's weak division at Bapaume,
and handled it so severely that the Germans
would on the following day have abandoned
their position, if the French had not themselves
been the first to retire. Faidherbe, however, had
only fallen back to receive reinforcements. After
some days' rest he once more sought to gain
the road to Paris, advancing this time by the
eastward line through St. Quentin. In front of
this town Goeben attacked him. The last battle
of the army of the North was fought on the 19th
of January. The French general endeavoured
to disguise his defeat, but the German comman-
der had won all that he desired. Faidherbe's
army was compelled to retreat northwards in
disorder; its part in the war was at an end.
During the last three weeks of December there
was a pause in the operations of the Germans on
the Loire. . . . Gambetta . . . had . . . deter-
mined to throw the army of Bourbaki, strength-
ened by reinforcements from the south, upon
Germany itself. The design was a daring one,
and had the . . . French armies been capable of
performing the work which Gambetta required
of them, an inroad into Baden, or even the re-
conquest of Alsace, would most seriously have
affected the position of the Germans before Paris.
But Gambetta miscalculated the power of young,
untrained troops, imperfectly armed, badly fed,
against a veteran army. In a series of hard-
fought struggles the army of the Loire under
General Chanzy was driven back at the begin-
ning of January from Vendome to Le Mans. On
the 12th, Chanzy took post before this city and
fought his last battle. While he was making a
vigorous resistance in the centre of the line, the
Breton regiments stationed on his right gave
way ; the Germans pressed round him, and gained
possession of the town. Chanzy retreated to-
wards Laval, leaving thousands of prisoners in
the hands of the enemy, and saving only the
debris of an army. Bourbaki in the meantime,
with a numerous but miserably equipped force,
had almost reachetl Bel fort. . . . Werder had
evacuated Dijon and fallen back xiponVesoul;
part of his army was still occupied in the siege
of Belfort. As Bourbaki approached he fell
back with the greater part of his troops in order
to cover the besieging force, leaving one of his
lieutenants to make a flank attack upon Bour-
baki at Villersexel. This attack, one of the fiercest
in the war, delayed the French for two days, and
gave Werder time to occupy the strong positions
that he had chosen about Montbeliard. Here, on
the 15th of January, began a struggle which
lasted for three days. The French, starving and
perishing with cold, though far superior in num-
ber to their enemy, were led with little effect
against the German entrenchments. On the 18th
Bourbaki began his retreat. Werder was unable
to follow him ; ]\Ianteuffcl with a weak force was
still at some distance, and for a moment it seemed
possible that Bourbaki, by a rapid movement
westwards, might crush this isolated foe. Gam-
betta ordered Bourbaki to make the attempt: the
commander refused to court further disaster with
troops who were not fit to face an enemy, and
retreated towards Pontarlier in the hope of mak-
ing his way to Lyons. But IVIanteuffel now de-
scended in front of him; divisions of Werder's
army pressed down from the north ; the retreat
was cut off; and the unfortunate French general,
whom a telegram from Gambetta removed from
his command, attempted to take his own life.
On the 1st of February, the wreck of his army,
still numbering 85,000 men, but reduced to the
extremity of weakness and misery, sought refuge
beyond the Swiss frontier. The war was now
over. Two days after Bourbaki's repulse at
Montbeliard the last unsuccessful sortie was made
from Paris. There now remained provisions only
for another fortnight; above 40,000 of the inhab-
itants had succumbed to the privations of the
siege ; all hope of assistance from the relieving
armies before actual famine should begin disap-
peared. On the 23rd of January Favre sought
U21
FRANCE, 1870-1871.
Capitulation
of Paris. — Peace.
FRANCE, 1871.
the German Chancellor at Versailles in order to
discuss the conditions of a general armistice and
of the capitulation of Paris. The negotiations
lasted for several days ; on the 28th an armistice
was signed with the declared object that elections
might at once be freely held for a National As-
sembly, which should decide whether the war
should be continued, or on what conditions peace
should be made. The conditions of the armistice
were that the forts of Paris and all their material
of war should be handed over to the German
army ; that the artillery of the enceinte should
be dismounted; and that the regular troops in
Paris should, as prisoners of war, surrender their
arms. The National Guard were permitted to
retain their weapons and their artillery. Imme-
diately upon the fulfilment of the first two con-
ditions all facilities were to he given for the
entry of supplies of food into Paris. The articles
of the armistice were duly executed, and on the
30th of January the Prussian flag waved over
the forts of the French capital."— C. A. FyfCe,
Mist, of Modern Europe, v. 3, ch. 6.
Also ln: H. Murdock, The Beconstruciion of
Europe, ch. 29-30. — Daily News Corr. of the War,
ch. 18-31.— Cassell's Ms«. of the War, v. 1, ch. 36,
V. 2, ch. 1-18. — Comte d'Herrison, Journal of a
Staff Officer in Paris.— E. B. Washburne, Mecol-
lections of a Minister to France, r. 1, cli. 5-10. —
J. A. O'Shea, An Iron-bound City.—F. T. Jlar-
zials, Life of Oambetta, ch. 5. — H. von Moltke,
The Franco- German War of 1870-71, sects. 3-
7.— T. G. Bowles, Th^ Defence of Paris.— W.
Rilstow, The War for the Rhine Frontier, 1870,
V. 3.
A. D. 1871 (January — May). — Preliminaries
of Peace signed at Versailles. — The Treaty
of Frankfort. — Cession of Alsace and one-fifth
of Lorraine. — Five milliards of indemnity. —
" On the afternoon of January 28 [1871] the
capitulation of Paris was signed, and an armis-
tice agreed upon to expire on February 19 at
noon. The provinces occupied by the armies of
Bourbaki and Manteuffel were alone excluded
from this agreement. On January 29 the Ger-
man troops quietly took possession of the Paris
forts. The regulars and mobiles became prison-
ers of war, with the exception of 12,000 men
who were left under arms to preserve order. At
the earnest request of Favre the National Guard
were allowed to retain their arms. If Pavre
urged this as a measure to counteract the impe-
rialistic ideas supposed to be still cherished by
the prisoners returning from Germany, it was a
political crime as well as a military folly. The
National Guard became the armed Commune.
. . . While the armies withdrew to the lines
stipulated in the armistice, the elections went
quietly forward. The assembly convened at
Bordeaux, and manifested a spirit that won for
it universal respect. On February 17 M. Thiers
was appointed chief of the executive power, and
having named his ministry, he repaired to Ver-
sailles to arrange the preliminaries of peace.
The conferences that followed with the German
chancellor were perhaps the most trying ordeals
to which the Frenchman had ever been subjected.
No peace was possible save on the basis of the
cession of miles of territory and the strongest of
fortresses. France must also pay a war indem-
nity of no less than five milliards of francs.
Bismarck, it is true, thought Thiers 'too sentimen-
tal for business, . . . hardly fit indeed to buy or
sell a horse,' but no diplomatist, however astute,
could have made better terms for stricken France.
So thought the assembly at Bordeaux ; and when
Thiers announced the result of his mission with
a quivering lip, he had its sympatliy and sup-
port. On the 2d of March the assembly formally
ratified the peace preliminaries by a vote of 54ft
to 107. It had been stipulated in the armistice
that the German troops should not occupy Paris.
The extension of time granted by the Germans
entitled them to some compensation, and the entry
of Paris was the compensation claimed. The
troops detailed for this purpose were not chosen
at random. To the Frenchman who on the 1st
day of March beheld them pass along the Ave-
nue de Malakoff or the Champs Elysees it was an
ominous pageant. It was a German and not a
Prussian army that he beheld. . . . That night
the Hessians smoked their pipes on the Trocadero,
and the Bavarians stacked their arms in the
Place de la Concorde, while the lights blazing
from the palace of the Elysee announced the
German military headquarters. On the third
day of the month, the Bordeaux Assembly hav-
ing ratified the peace preliminaries, the German
troops marched out, and Paris was left to herself
again. The war was over. Be3'ond the Rhine-
land, in Bavaria and Wilrtemberg as well as in
the north, all was joy and enthusiasm over the
return of the army that had answered before the
world the question, ' What is the German Father-
land ? ' On the 10th of Maj' the definite treaty
of peace was signed at Frankfort by which
Prance ceded Alsace and a portion of Lorraine,
including the fortresses of INIetz and Strasburg,
to her conqueror. " — H. Murdock, Tl(c Reconstruc-
tion of Europe, ch. 30. — The following are the
heads of the Preliminary Treaty concluded at
Versailles, to which the final Treaty of Frank-
fort conformed : "1. France renounces in favour
of the German Empire the following rights: the
fifth part of Lorraine including Metzand Thion-
ville, and Alsace less Belfort. 2. France will
pay the sum of five milliards of francs, of which
one milliard is to be paid in 1871 and the remain-
ing four milliards by instalments extending over
three years. 3. The German troops will begin
to evacuate the French territory as soon as the
Treaty is ratified. They will then evacuate the
interior of Paris and some departments lying in
the western region. The evacuation of the other
departments will take place gradually after pay-
ment of the first milliard, and proportionately to
the payment of the other four milliards. Inter-
est at the rate of five per cent, per annum will
be paid on the amount remaining due from the
date of the ratification of the Treaty. 4. The
German troops will not levy any requisitions in
the departments occupied by them, but will be
maintained at the cost of France. A delay will
be granted to the inhabitants of the territories
annexed to choose between the two nationalities.
6. Prisoners of war will be immediately set at
liberty. 7. Negotiations for a definitive Treaty
of Peace will be opened at Brussels after the
ratification of this Treaty. 8. The administra-
tion of the departments occupied by the German
troops will be entrusted to French officials, but
under the control of the chiefs of the German
Corps of occupation. 9. The present Treaty
confers upon the Germans no rights whatever in
the portions of territories not occupied. 10.
This Treaty will have to be ratified by the
1422
FRANCE, 1871.
Insurrection of the
Commune.
FRANCE, 1871.
National Assembly of France."— C. Lowe, Prince
Bismarck, v. 1, ch. 9.
Also in: E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe ly
Treaty, v. 3, 7ios. 438 and 446.
A. D. 1871 (March — May). — Insurrection of
the Communists of Paris. — Second siege and
reduction of the capital. — " On the 3d of March
the German army of occupation — which had
been in the assigned part of tlie city since the 1st
— marched off through the Arc de Triomphe, and
on the 7th the German headquarters were moved
from Versailles. The great Franco-Prussian War
was over . . . But before . . . peace could be
attained, the country had yet to suffer from the
so-called patriots of the Red Republicans worse
outrage than it had endured at the hands of the
German invaders. When the negotiations for
the capitulation of Paris were in progress. Count
Bismarck had warned M. Favre of the danger of
allowing, as he proposed, the National Guard to
retain their arms; and the members of the Gov-
ernment of National Defence might themselves
have seen the risk they were incurring, had they
calmly considered the various emeutes that had
taken place during the siege, and in which the
National Guard had always played such a con-
spicuous part on the side of disaffection. Now,
in the full consciousness of their strength —
somewhere about 100,000 — and in their posses-
sion of a powerful artillery, — for during the Ger-
man occupation they had, on the pretext of keep-
ing them safe, got a large number of carmon into
their hands, — they seemed determined to attempt
the revival of the Reign of Terror. . . . The ap-
pointment of General d'Aurelle de Paladines as
their commander gave great offence, and on the
9th March an attempt to place the tricolor on the
column in the Place de la Bastille instead of the
red flag of revolution led to an outbreak. A
promise in the event of the cannon being given
up, of the continuance of pay till ' ordinary work
was resumed,' was disregarded, and the dismissal
of D'Aurelle and the full recognition of the right
of the National Guard to elect its own officers de-
manded. An effort of the government to seize
the cannon in the Place des Vosges failed, and it
was now clear enough that more energetic action
than negotiations must take place. On the morn-
ing of the 18th March a large force of regular
troops under Generals Viuoy and Lecomte pro-
ceeded to Montmarte and took possession of the
guns; but the want of horses for their immediate
removal gave time for the Reds to assemble and
frustrate the effort, while, worst of all, a large
number of the regular troops fraternized with
the insurgents. General Lecomte and General
Clement Thomas were taken prisoners and a' most
immediately shot. The outbreak, thus begun,
spread rapidly; for, througli some unaccounta-
ble timidity of the government, the government
forces were withdrawn from the city, and the
insurgents left free to act as they pleased. They
seized General Chanzy at the Orleans railway
station, took possession of the Ministry of Justice
and the Hotel de Ville, and threw up barricades
round all the revolutionary quarters. The Cen-
tral Committee of the National Guard, the lead-
ing man of which was Assi, . . . summoned the
people of Paris to meet ' in their comitia for the
communal elections,' and declared their intention
of resigning their power into the hands of the
Commune thus chosen. The National Assembly
removed from Bordeaux and held its sittings at
Versailles ! but bitter as was the feeling of the
majority of the Deputies against the new turbu-
lence, the position of affairs prevented any action
from being taken against the insurgents. The
removal of General d'Aurelle and the appoint-
ment of Admiral Saisset in his place was of no
avail. A number of the inhabitants of Paris,
styling themselves 'Men of Order,' attempted to
influence affairs by a display of moral force, but
they were flred on and dispersed. The Assembly
was timid, and apparently quite unable to bring
its troops into play. . . . Through Admiral
Saisset concessions were offered, but the demands
of the Communists increased with the prospect
of obtaining anything. They now modestly de-
manded that they should supersede the Assembly
wherever there was any prospect of collision of
power, and be allowed to control the finances;
and as a very natural consequence the negotia-
tions were abandoned. This was on the 35th of
March, and on the 26th the Commune was elected,
the victory of the Reds being very easily gained,
as hardly any of those opposed to them voted.
Two days afterwards the Commune was pro-
claimed at the Hotel de Ville, the members who
had been elected being seated on a platform in
red arm-chairs. The leading man of the new
system was the honest but hot-headed and Utopian
Delescluze ; Cluseret, a man of considerable mili-
tary genius, who had led a life of a very wild
nature in America, and who was the soul of the
resistance when the actual fighting began, was
Delegate of War; Grousset, of Foreign Affairs;
and Rigault, of Public Safety. The new gov-
ernment applied it,self vigorously to changes;
conscription was abolished, and the authority of
the Versailles government declared 'null and
void.' Seeing that a desperate struggle must in-
evitably ensue, a very large number of the in-
habitants of Paris quitted the city, and the Ger-
man authorities allowed the prisoners from Metz
and Sedan to return so as to swell the forces at
the disposal of M. Thiers. They also intimated
that, in view of the altered circumstances, it
might again become necessary for them to oc-
cupy the forts they had already evacuated. The
first shot in the second siege of Paris, in which
Frenchmen were arrayed against Frenchmen,
was fired on the 2d April, when a strong division
of the Versailles array advanced against the Na-
tional Guards posted at Courbevoie, and drove
them into Paris across the Pont de Neuilly.
During the ensuing night a large force of in-
surgents gathered, and were on the morning of
the 3d led in three columns against Versailles.
Great hopes had been placed on the sympathy of
the regular troops, but they were doomed to dis-
appointment. . . . The expedition . . . not only
failed, but it . . . cost the Commune two of its
leading men, — Duval, and that Flourens who
had already made himself so conspicuous in con-
nection with revolutionary outbreaks under the
Empire and the Government of National Defence,
— both of whom were taken and promptly shot
by the Versailles authorities. The failure and
the executions proved so exasperating tliat the
' Commune of Paris ' issued a proclamation de-
nouncing the Versailles soldiers as banditti. . . .
They had ample means of gratifying their pas-
sion for revenge, for they had in their hands a
number of leading men, including Darboy, Arch-
bishop of Paris, and M. Bonjean, President of
the Court of Cassation, and these — two hundred
1423
FRANCE, 1871.
The Government of
the Commune.
FRANCE, 1871.
in all — they proclaimed their intention of hold-
ing as hostages. M. Thiers was still hesitating,
and waiting for a force sufficiently powerful to
crush all opposition ; and in this he was no douht
right, for any success of the Communists, even
of the most temporary character, would have
proved highly dangerous. The Germans had
granted permission to the government to increase
their original 30,000 troops to 150,000, and pris-
oners of Metz and Sedan had been pouring
steadily back from Germany for this purpose.
On the 8th April Marshal MacMahon took com-
mand of tlie forces at Versailles. A premature
attack on the forts of Issy, Vanves, and Mont-
rouge on the 11th failed, but on the 17th and
19th several of the insurgent positions were car-
ried ; on the 35th the bombardment of Issy and
Vanves was begun, and from that time onwards
operations against the city were carried on with
the greatest activity, the insurgents being on all
occasions put to the sword in a most merciless
manner. Issy was taken on the 8th May, and
Vanves on the 4th, and the enceinte laid bare.
Inside Paris all this time there was nothing but
jealousy. . . . First one leader, and then another,
was tried, found wanting, and disgraced. . . . On
the 21st May the defenders of the wall at the gate
of St. Cloud were driven from their positions by
the heavy artillery fire, and the besieging army,
having become aware of the fact, pushed forward
and secured this entrance to the city ; and by the
evening of the 22d there were 80,000 Versaillists
within the walls. Next day they gained fresh
ground, and were ready to re-occupy the Tuileries
and the Hotel de Ville ; but before this was pos-
sible the Communists, mad with despair, had re-
solved on that series of outrages against humanity
that will make their names detested and their
cause distrusted as long as the story of their
crimes stands recorded in the annals of history.
They had already perpetrated more than one act
of vandalism. ... On the 12th May, in accord-
ance with a public decree, they had destroyed
the private residence of M. Thiers with all its
pictures and books ; on the 16th the magnificent
column erected in the Place Vendome in memory
of Napoleon I. , and crowned by liis statue, was
undermined at one side and then pulled to the
ground by means of ropes and utterly destroyed ;
and now on the 24th, in the last efforts of des-
pairing rage, bands of men and women, still more
frantic and eager for blood than were those of
the Reign of Terror, rushed through the doomed
city. Early in the morning the Tuileries, the
Hotel de Ville, the Ministry of Finance, the Palais
d'Orsay, and other public and private buildings
were seen to be on fire. The Louvre, too, with
all its inestimable treasures, was in flames, and
was saved with the greatest difficulty. If the
Commune was to perish, it had clearly resolved
that the city was to perish with it. Men and
women marched about in bands with petroleum,
and aided the spread of the conflagration by fir-
ing the cit}' in different places. Heedless of the
flames, the Versailles troops pressed on, eager, if
possible, to save the lives of the 200 hostages,
but, alas, in vain. A passion for blood had
seized on the Commune, and its last expiring
effort was to murder in cold blood, not only a
large number of the hostages, but also batches of
fresh victims, seized indiscriminately about the
streets by bands of men and women, and dragged
off to instant death. On the 26th Belleville was
Recollections of a
5-7.— P. Vesinier,
-P. O. Lissagaray,
-W. P. Fetridge,
-J. Leigh-
captured, and on the 27th and 28th the Cemetery
of Pere la Chaise was the scene of the final strug-
gle, — a struggle of such a desperate nature —
for there was no quarter— that, for days after,
the air of the district was literally fraught with
pestilence. Many of the leaders of the Commune
had fallen in the final contest, and all the others
who were captured by the Versailles troops dur-
ing the fighting were "at once shot. Of the 30,000
prisoners who had fallen into the hands of the
government, a large number, both men and
women, were executed without mercy, and the
rest distributed in various prisons to await trial,
as also were Rossel, Assi, Grousset, and others, who
were captured after the resistance was at an end.
Cluseret succeeded in making good his escape.
... Of the prisoners, about 10,000 were set free
without trial, and the others were sentenced by
various courts-martial during the following
months and on through the coming year, either
to death, transportation or imprisonment." — H.
Martin, Popular Hist, of France from the First
Eewlution, v. 3, ch. 24.
Also in : E. B. Washbume,
Minister to France, v. 2, ch.
Hist, of the Commune of Paris.-
Hist. of the Cotnmune of 1871.-
Pise and Fall of the Paris Commiine.-
ton, Paris iindcr the Commune.
A. D. 1 87 1 (April— May).— The government
of the Commune in Paris. — "For the conduct
of affairs the Communal Council divided itself
into ten 'commissions,' of finance, war, public
safety, external relations, education, justice,
labour and exchange, provisions, the public ser-
vice, and the general executive. Of these the
most efficient appears to ha ve been that of finance ;
by advances from the bank and by the revenues of
the post, the telegraph, the octrois, &c., means
were found to provide for the current expendi-
ture. The other commissions were admittedly
inefficient, and especially the one which was most
important for the moment, that of war: — 'as to
a general plan, ' says Lissagaray, ' there never was
one : the men were abandoned to themselves, be-
ing neither cared for nor controlled ; ' ' at the
Ministry,' says Gastyne, 'no one is at his place.
They pass their time in running after one another.
The most insignificant Lieutenant will take orders
from nobody, and wants to give them to every-
body. They smoke, chat and chaff. They dis-
pute with the contractors. They buy irresponsi-
bly right and left because the dealers give com-
missions or have private relations with the ofii-
cials ; ' ' in the army of Versailles, ' said a member
of the Commune, 'they don't get drunk: incurs
they are never sober;' 'the administration of
war,' said another, 'is the organisation of dis-
organisation;' ' I feel myself,' said Rossel, on re-
signing his command, 'incapable of any longer
bearing the responsibility of a command where
every one deliberates and no one obeys. The
central committee of artillery has deliberated and
prescribed nothing. The Commune has deliber-
ated and resolved upon nothing. The Central
Committee deliberates and has not yet Imown how
to act. . . . My predecessor committed the fault
of struggling against this absurd situation. I re-
tire, and have the honour to ask you for a cell
at Mazas.' The same incompetence, leading to
the same result of anarchy, was displayed by the
Executive Commission: — 'in less than a fort-
night,' said Grosset, ' conflicts of every kind had
1424
FRANCE. 1871.
The Founding of the
Third Republic,
FRANCE, 1871-1876.
arisen; the Executive Commission gave orders
which were not executed ; each particular com-
mission, thinking itself sovereign in its turn, gave
orders too, so that the Executive Commission
could have no real responsibility.' On April 20
the Executive Commission was replaced by a com-
mittee, composed of a delegate from each of the
nine other commissions; still efficiency could not
be secured, and at the end of the mouth it was
proposed to establish a Committee of Public
Safety. This proposition was prompted by the
traditions of 1793, and brouglit into overt antag-
onism the two conflicting tendencies of the Com-
mune : there were some of its members who were
ready to save the movement by a despotism, to
secure at every cost a strong administration, and
Impose the Commune, if need be by terror, upon
Paris and the provinces. ... On the other hand
there was a strong minority which opposed the
proposal, on the ground that it was tantamount
to an abdication on the part of the Communal
Council. . . . The appointment of the Commit-
tee was carried by forty-live votes to twenty-
three ; many of those who voted for it regarded
it as merely another 'Executive Commission,'
subordinate to, and at any moment subject to
dismissal by, the Commune ; and so, in effect, it
proved ; it was neither more terrible nor more
efficient than the body to whicli it succeeded ; it
came into existence on the 1st of May, and on the
9th the complaint was already advanced that
'your Committee of Public Safety has not
answered our expectations; it has been an ob-
stacle, instead of a stimulus; ' on the 10th a new
committee was appointed, with similar results;
all that the innovation achieved was to bring into
clear relief the fact that there existed in the Com-
mune a Jacobin element ready to recur to the tra-
ditions of 1793, and to make Paris the mistress of
France by the guillotine or its modern equiva-
lent." — G. L. Dickinson, Revolution and Beactioii
ill Modern France, pp. 267-270.
A. D. 1871-1876.— The Assembly at Bor-
deaux. — Thiers elected Chief of the Executive
Power. — The founding of the Republic. — The
recovery of order and prosperity. — Resigna-
tion of Thiers. — Election of Marshal Mac-
Mahon. — Plans of the Monarchists defeated.
—Adoption of the Constitution of 1875. — "The
elections passed off more quietly than was to be
expected, and the Assembly which came to-
gether at Bordeaux on tlie 13th of February ex-
actly represented the sentiment of the nation at
that particular moment. France being eager for
peace, the Assembly was pacific. It was also
somewhat unrepublican, for the Republic had
been represented in the provinces only by Gam-
betta, the promoter of war to the knife, who
had sacrificed the interests of the Republic to
what he conceived to be the interests of the
national honor. Politics had, in truth, been little
thought of, and Thiers was elected in 27 de-
partments upon very diverse tickets, rather
on account of his opposition to the war and
his efforts in favor of peace than on account
of his fame as a liberal orator and historian.
Moved by the same impulse, the Assembly
almost unanimously appointed him Chief of the
Executive Power of the French Republic, and
intrusted to him the double task of governing
the country and of treating with the German Em-
peror. ... It was apparently in the name of the
Republic that peace was negotiated and the Gov-
1425
ernment gradually reconstructed. . . . The As-
sembly, however, which was all-powerful, held
that to change the form of government was one
of its rights. It might have been urged that the
electors had scarcely contemplated this, and that
the Monarchists were in the majority simply be-
cause they represented peace, while in the prov-
inces the Republic had meant nothing but war
to the hilt. But these distinctions were not
thought of in the press of more urgent business,
namely, the treaty which was to check the shed-
ding of blood, and the rudiments of administra-
tive reconstruction. No monarchy would have
been willing to assume the responsibility of this
Treaty. . . . The Right accordingly consented
to accept the name of Republic as a make-
shift, provided it should be talked about as little
as possible. Thiers had come to think, especi-
ally since the beginning of the war, that the Re-
public was the natural heir of Napoleon III.
. . . He had, however, been struck with the
circumstance that so many Legitimists had been
elected to the Assembly, and he was no more
eager than they to stop to discuss constitutions.
. . . He was the more disposed to wait, inas-
much as he saw in the Chamber the very rapid
formation and growth of a group in which he
had great confidence. Of these deputies M.
Jules Simon has given a better definition than
they could themselves formulate,^ for this polit-
ical philosopher has written a masterly history of
these years. . . . Here is what Simon says of
this party in the Assembly : ' There were in this
body some five-score firm spirits who were alike
incapable either of forsaking the principles
whereon all society rests, or of giving up free-
dom. Of all forms of government they would
have preferred constitutional monarchy, had they
found it established, or could they have restored
it by a vote without resort to force. But they
quickly perceived that neither the Legitimists
nor the Bonapartists would consent to the con-
stitutional form; that such a monarchy could
obtain a majority neither in the Parliament nor
among the people. . . . Some of these men en-
tertained for the Republic a distrust which, at
first, amounted to aversion. Being persuaded,
however, that they must choose between the Re-
public and the Empire . . . they did not de-
spair of forming a Republic at once liberal and
conservative. In a word, they thrust aside the
Legitimate Monarchy as chimerical. Republican
and Caesarian dictatorship as alike hateful. . . .
Of this party M. Thiers was not merely the head,
but the body also.'. . . But there was another
party, which, although the least numerous in the
Assembly and split into factions at that, was the
most numerous in the country, — the Republican
party." — P. de Remusat, Thiers, ch. 6-7. — "In
the wake of Thiers followed such men as Remu-
sat, Casimir Perier, Leon Say, and Lafayette.
This added strength made the Republicans the
almost equal rivals of the other parties combined.
So great was Thiers' influence that, despite his
conversion to Republicanism, he was still able to
control the Monarcliical Assembly. A threat of
resignation, so great was the dread of what
might follow it, and so jealous were the Mon-
archists of two shades and the Imperialists of
each other, was enough to bring the majority to
the President's terms. It was under such polit-
ical conditions that the infant Republic, during
its first year, undertook the tasks of preserving
FRANCE, 1871-1876.
Presidency of Thiers
and MacMahon.
FRANCE, 1871-1876.
peace, of maintaiiiing internal order, of retrieving
disaster, of tempting back prosperity and thrift
to the desolated land, of relieving it of the bur-
dens imposed b)' war, and, at the same time, of
acquiring for itself greater security and perma-
nency. The recovery of France was wonderfully
rapid ; her people began once more to taste sweet
draughts of liberty ; the indemnity was almost
half diminished ; and her industries, at the end of
the year, were once more in full career. But the
Republic was a long way from complete and un-
questioned recognition. The second year of the
Republic (1873-73) was passed amid constant con-
flicts between the rival parties. Thiers still main-
tained his ascendency, and stoutly adhered to
his defence of Republican institutions ; but the
Assembly was restive under him, and energetic
attempts were made to bring about a fusion be-
tween the Legitimists and the Orleanists. These
attempts were rendered futile by the obstinacy of
the Count of Chambord, who would yield nothing,
either of principle or even of symbol, to his
cousin of Orleans. The want of harmony among
the Iilonarchists postponed the consideration of
what should be the permanent political constitu-
tion of France until November of the year 1873,
when a committee of thirty was chosen to rec-
ommend constitutional articles. Against this
the Republicans protested. They declared that
the Assembly had only been elected to make
peace with Germany ; . . . that dissolution was
the only further act that the Assembly was com-
petent to perform. This indicated the confidence
of the Republicans in their increased strength in
the country; and the fact that the Monarchists
refused to dissolve shows that they were not far
from holding this opinion of their opponents.
Despite the rivalries and bitterness of the fac-
tions, the Republic met with no serious blow
from the time of its provisional establishment in
February, 1871, until :May, 1873. Up to the latter
period two thirds of the enormous indemnity had
been paid, and the German force of occupation
had almost entirely retired from French territory.
. . . But in May, 1873, a grave misfortune, alike
to France and to the Republican institutions, oc-
curred. At last the Monarchical reactionists of
the Assembly had gathered courage to make open
war upon President Thiers. Perceiving that his
policy was having the effect of nourisliing and
adding ever new strength to the Republican cause,
and that every month drifted them further from
the opportunity and hope of restoring Mon-
archy or Empire . . . they now forgot their
own difierences, and resolved, at all hazards, to
get rid of the Republic's most powerful pro-
tector The Due de Broglie, the leader of
the reactionary Monarchists, offered a resolution
in the Assembly which was tantamount to a
proposition of want of confidence in President
Thiers. After an acrimonious debate, in which
Thiers himself took part, De Broglie's motion
was passed by a majority of fourteen. The
President had no alternative but to resign ; and
thus the executive power, at a critical moment,
passed out of Republican into Monarchical hands.
Marshal MacMahon was at once chosen President.
. . . MacMahon was strongly Catholic in re-
ligion ; and so far as he was known to have any
political opinions, they wavered between Legiti-
mism and Imperialism — they were certainly as
far as possible from Republicanism. Now was
formed and matured a deliberate project to over-
throw the young Republic, and to set up Mou
archy in its place. All circumstances combined
to favor its success. The new President was
found to be at least willing that the thing should,
if it could, be done. His principal minister, De
Broglie, entered warmly into the plot. The
Orleanist princes agreed to waive their claims,
and the Count of Paris was persuaded to pay a
visit to the Count of Chambord at his retreat at
Frohsdorf, to aclinowledge the elder Bourbon's
right to the throne, and to abandon his own pre-
tensions. The Assembly was carefully can-
vassed, and it was found that a majority could
be relied upon to proclaim, at the ripe moment,
Chambord as king, with the title of Henry V.
The Republic was now, in the early autumn of
1873, in the most serious and real peril. It
needed but a word from the Bourbon pretender
to overthrow it, and to replace it by the tlirone
of the Capets and the Valois. Happily, the old
leaven of Bourbon bigotry existed in ' Henry V.'
He conceded the point of reigning with parlia-
mentary institutions, but he would not accept the
tricolor as the flag of the restored monarchy. He
insisted upon returning to France under the
white banner of his ancestors. To him the
throne was not worth a piece of cloth. To his
obstinacy in clinging to this trifle of symbolism
the Republic owed its salvation. The scheme to
restore the monarchy thus fell through. The re-
sult was that the two wings of Monarchists flew
apart again, and the Republicans, being now
united and patient under the splendid leadership
of Gambetta, once more began to wax in strength.
It only remained to tlie Conservatives to make the
best of the situation — to proceed to the forming
of a Constitution, and to at least postpone to as
late a period as possible the permanent establish-
ment of the Republic. The first step was to con-
firm MacMahon in the Presidency for a definite
period; and 'the Septennate,' giving him a lease
of power for seven years — that is, until the
autumn of 1880 — ^was voted. ... It was not
until late in the year 1875 that the Constitution
which is now the organic law of France was
finally adopted [see Constitution of Fr.«cce].
The chief circumstance which impelled a major-
ity of the Assembly to take this decisive step was
the alarming revival of Imperialism in the coun-
try. This was shown in the success of Bonapart-
ists in isolated elections to fill vacancies. Much
as the Royalists distrusted a Republic, they
dreaded yet more the restoration of the Empire ;
and the rapid progress made by the jiartisans of
the Empire forced them to adopt what was really
a moderate Republican Constitution. This Con-
stitution provided that the President of the Re-
public should be elected by a joint convention of
the Senate and the Chamber of Deputies; that
the Senate should consist of 300 members, of
whom 75 were to be elected for life by the As-
sembly, and the remaining 335 by electoral col-
leges, composed of the deputies, the councillors-
general, the members of the councils d'arron-
dissement, and delegates chosen from municipal
councils ; that the vacancies in the life senator-
ships should be filled by the Senate itself, while
the term of the Senators elected by the colleges
should be nine years, one third retiring every
three years; that the Chamber of Deputies
should consist of 533 members, and that the
deputies should be chosen by single districts, in-
stead of, as formerly, in groups by departments;
1426
FRANCE, 1871-1876.
Jules Grivy,
President.
FRANCE, 1875-1889.
that the President could only dissolve the Cham-
ber of Deputies with the consent of the Senate ;
that money bills should originate in the Lower
Chamber, and that the President should have
the right of veto. The 'Septennate' organized
and the Constitution adopted, the Assembly,
which had clung to power for about five years,
had no reason for continued existence, and at last
dissolved early in 1876, having provided that the
first general election under the new order of
things should take place in February. . . . The
result of the elections proved three things — the
remarkable growth of Republican sentiment; the
great progress made, in spite of the memory of
Sedan, by the Bonapartist propaganda; and the
utter hopelessness of any attempt at a Royalist
restoration." — G. M. Towle, Modern France, ch. 4.
Also in : J. Simon, The Gov't of M. Thiers,
F. Le Goff. Life of Thiers, ch. 8-9.
A. D. 1872-1889. — Reform of Public Instruc-
tion. See Education, Modern: Eueopean
Countries.— France: A. D. 1833-1889.
A. D. 1875-1889.— Stable settlements of the
Republic. — -Presidencies of MacMahon and
GrIvy. — Military operations in Tunis, Mada-
gascar and Tonquin. — Revision of the consti-
tution. — Expulsion of the princes. — Boulan-
gerism. — Election of M. Sadi Carnot to the
presidency. — "The last day of the year 1875
saw a final prorogation of this monarchist as-
sembly which had established the Republic. It
had been in existence nearly five years. The
■elections to the Senate gave a small majority to
the Republicans, Those to the Chamber of Depu-
ties (February, 1876) gave about two-thirds of its
533 seats to Republicans, mostly moderate Re-
publicans. The ministry to which the leadership
of this assembly was soon confided, was therefore
naturally a ministry of moderate Republicans.
M. Dufaure was prime minister, and M. Leon
Say minister of finance. . . . The Dufaure min-
istry was not long-lived, being succeeded before
the year 1876 closed, by a ministry led by M.
Jules Simon, a distinguished orator and writer.
The tenure of French cabinets in general has been
so little permanent under the Third Republic,
that in the nineteen years which have elapsed
since the fall of the Empire, twenty-five cabinets
have had charge of the executive government.
. . . Few events had marked the history of the
Simon ministry when, suddenly, in May, 1877,
the President of the Republic demanded its resig-
nation. jMuch influenced of late by Monarchist
advisers, he had concluded that the moderate
Republican cabinets did not possess the confi-
dence of the chambers, and, feeling that the
responsibility of maintaining the repose and se-
curity of France rested upon him, had resolved,
rather than allow the management of the affairs
of the country to fall into the hands of M. Gam-
betta and the Radicals, to appoint a ministry of
conservatives, trusting that the country would
ratify the step. A ministry was organized under
the Duke of Broglie, and the Chamber of Depu-
ties was first prorogued, and then, with the con-
sent of the Senate, dissolved. The death of M.
Thiers in September caused a great national
demonstration in honor of that patriotic states-
man, ' the liberator of the territory." The result
of the ensuing elections was a complete victory
for the Republicans, who secured nearly three-
fourths of the seats in the new Chamber. The
Marshal, appointing a ministry composed of ad-
herents of his policy who were not members of
the Assembly, attempted to make head against
the majority, but was forced in December to
yield to the will of the people and of their repre-
sentatives, and to recall M. Dufaure and the
moderate Republicans to office. The year 1878
therefore passed off quietly, being especially dis-
tinguished by the great success of the universal
exhibition held at Paris. ... At the beginning
of 1879 elections were held in pursuance of the
provisions of the constitution, for the renewal of
a portion of the Senate. . . . Elections were held
for the filling of 82 seats. Of these the Republi-
cans won 66, the Monarchist groups 16. This
was a loss of 42 seats on the part of the latter,
and assured to the Republicans a full control of
the Senate. It had also the effect of definitively
establishing the Republic as the permanent gov-
ernment of France. The Republican leaders
therefore resolved to insist upon extensive
changes in the personnel of the Council of State
and the judiciary body. . . . When they also
proposed to make extensive changes in other de-
partments, Marshal MacMahon, who foresaw the
impossibility of maintaining harmonious rela-
tions with the cabinets which the Republican
majority would now demand, took these new
measures as a pretext, and, on January 30, 1879,
resigned the office of President of the Republic.
On the same day the Senate and Chamber, united
in National Assembly, elected as his successor,
for the constitutional term of seven years, M.
Jules Grevy, president of the Chamber of Depu-
ties a moderate Republican who enjoyed general
respect. M. Grevy was 71 years old. M. Gam-
betta was chosen to succeed him as president of
the Chamber. The cabinet was remodelled, M.
Dufaure resigning his office and being succeeded
by M. Waddington. In the reorganized ministry
one of the most prominent of the new members
was M. Jules Perry, its minister of education.
He soon brought forward two measures which
excited violent discussion: the one dealing with
the regulation of superior education, the other
with the constitution of the Supreme Council
of Public Instruction. ... In March, 1880, the
Senate rejected the bill respecting universities.
The ministry, now composed of members of the
' pure Left ' (instead of a mixture of these and
the Left Centre) under M. deFreycinet, resolved
to enforce the existing laws against non-author-
ized congregations. The Jesuits were warned
to close their establishments ; the others, to apply
for authorization. Failing to carry out these
decrees, M. de Freycinet was forced to resign,
and was succeeded as prime minister by M.
Ferry, under whose orders the decrees were exe-
cuted in October and November, establishments
of the Jesuits and others, to the number of nearly
300, being forcilily closed and their inmates dis-
persed. Laws were also passed in the same year
and in 1881 for the extension of public education,
and a general amnesty proclaimed for persons en-
gaged in the insurrection of the commune. In
April and May, 1881, on pretext of chastising
tribes on the Tunisian frontier of Algeria, who
had committed depredations on the French terri-
tories in Northern Africa, a military force from
Algeria entered Tunis, occupied the capital, and
forced the Bey to sign a treaty by which he put
himself and his country under the protectorate
of France. . . . The elections, in August, re-
sulted in a Chamber composed of 467 Republi-
1427
FRANCE, 1875-1889.
Military
Operations,
FRANCE, 1875-1889.
cans, 47 Bonapartists, and 43 Royalists, whereas
its predecessor had consisted of 387 Republicans,
81 Bonapartists, and 61 Royalists. In response
to a general demand, M. Gambetta became prime
minister on the meeting of the new Assembly in
the autumn. . . . But his measures failed to re-
ceive the support of the Chamber, and he was
forced to resign after having held the office of
prime minister but two months and a half (Janu-
ary, 1882). On the last day of that year 31.
Gambetta, still the most eminent French states-
man of the time, died at Paris, aged forty-four.
. . . The death of Gambetta aroused the Mon-
archists to renewed activity. Prince Napoleon
issued a violent manifesto, and was arrested.
Bills were brought in which were designed to
exclude from the soil of France and of FVeneh
possessions all members of families formerly
reigning in France. Finally, however, after a
prolonged contest, a decree suspending the dukes
of Aumale, Chartres, and Alengon from their
functions in the army was signed by the Presi-
dent. Some months later, August, 1883, the
Count of Chambord (' Henry V.') died at Frohs-
dorf ; by this event the elder branch of the house
of Bourbon became extinct and the claims urged
by both Legitimists and Orleanists were united
in the person of the Count of Paris. During the
year 1883 alleged encroachments upon French
privileges and interests in the northwestern por-
tion of Madagascar had embroiled France in con-
flict with the Hovas, the leading tribe of that
island. The French admiral commanding the
squadron in the Indian Ocean demanded in 1883
the placing of the northwestern part of the island
under a French protectorate, and the payment
of a large indemnity. These terms being refused
by the queen of the Hovas, Tamatave was bom-
barded and occupied, and desultory operations
continued until the summer of 1883, when an ex-
pedition of the Hovas resulted in a signal defeat
of the French. A treaty was then negotiated,
in accordance with which the foreign relations
of the island were put under the control of
France, while the queen of Madagascar retained
the control of internal affairs and paid certain
claims. A treaty executed in 1874 between the
emperor of Annam and the French had conceded
to the latter a protectorate over that country.
His failure completely to carry out his agreement,
and the presence of Chinese troops in Tonquin,
were regarded as threatening the securitj- of tlie
French colony of Cochin China. A small expe-
dition sent out [1882] under Commander Riviere
to enforce the provision of the treaty was de-
stroyed at Hanoi. Reinforcements were sent
out. But tlie situation was complicated by the
presence of bands of 'Black Flags,' brigands
said to be unauthorized by the Annam govern-
ment, and by claims on tlie part of China to a
suzerainty over Tonquin. A treaty was made
with Annam in August, 1883, providing for the
cession of a province to France, and the estab-
lishment of a French protectorate over Annam
and Tonquin. This, however, did not by any
means wholly conclude hostilities in that province.
Sontay was taken from the Black Flags in De-
cember, and Bacninh occupied in March, 1884.
The advance of the French into regions over
which China claimed suzerainty, and which were
occupied by Chinese troops, brought on hostili-
ties with that empire. In August, 1884, Admiral
Courbet destroyed the Chinese fleet and arsenal
at Foo-chow ; in October he seized points on the
northern end of the island of Formosa, and pro-
claimed a blockade of that portion of the island.
On the frontier between Tonquin and China the
French gained some successes, particularly in
the capture of Lang-Son; yet the climate, and
the numbers and determination of the Chinese
troops, rendered it impossible for them to secure
substantial results from victories. Finally, after
a desultorj' and destructive war, a treaty was
signed in June, 1885, which arranged that For-
mosa should be evacuated, that Annam should
in future have no diplomatic relations except
through France, and that France should have
virtually complete control over both it and Ton-
quin, though the question of Chinese suzerainty
was left unsettled. ... It was not felt that the
expeditions against Madagascar, Annam, and
China had achieved brilliant success. Tliey had,
moreover, been a source of much expense to
France ; at first popular, they finally caused the
downfall of the ministry which ordered them.
That ministry, the ministry of M. Jules Ferry,
. . . remained in power an unusual length of
time, — a little more than two years. Its princi-
pal achievement in domestic affairs consisted in
bringing about the revision of the constitution,
which, framed by the Versailles Assembly in
1875, was felt b}' many to contain an excessive
number of Monarchical elements. ... In 1885,
after the fall of the Ferry cabinet, a law was
passed providing for scrutin de liste ; each de-
partment being entitled to a number of deputies
proportioned to the number of its citizens, the
deputies for each were to be chosen on a general
or departmental ticket. In the same year a law
was passed declaring ineligible to the office of
President of the Republic, senator or deputy,
any prince of families formerly reigning in
France. ... In December the National Assembly
re-elected M. Grevy President of the Republic.
In the ministry led by jM. de Freycinet, which
held office during the year 1886, great promi-
nence was attained by the minister of war, Gen-
eral Boulanger, whose management of his de-
partment and political conduct won him great
popularity. . . . The increasing activity of the
agents of the Monarchist party, the strength
which that party had shown in the elections of
the preceding year, and the demonstrations which
attended the marriage of the daughter of the
Count of Paris to the crown prince of Portugal,
incited the Republican leaders to more stringent
measures against the princes of houses formerly
reigning in France. The government was in-
trusted by law ■nith discretionary power to expel
them all from France, and definitely charged to
expel actual claimants of the throne and their
direct heirs. The Count of Paris and his son the
Duke of Orleans, Prince Napoleon and his son
Prince Victor, were accordingly banished by
presidential decree in June, 1886. General Bou-
langer struck off from the army -roll the names
of all princes of the Bonaparte and Bourbon
families. The Duke of Aumale, indignantly
protesting, was also banished; in the spring of
1889 he was permitted to return. Meanwhile,
within the Republican ranks, dissensions in-
creased. The popularity c' General Boulanger
became more and more threatening to the cabi-
nets of which he was a member. An agitation
in his favor, conducted with much skill, caused
fear lest he were aspiring to a military dictator
1428
FRANCE, 1875-1889.
FRANCIS.
ship of France. ... In the autumn of 1887, an
inquiry into the conduct of General CafiEarel,
deputy to the commander-in-chief, accused of
selling decorations, implicated M. Daniel Wilson,
son-in-law of M. Grevy, who was alleged to have
undertaken to obtain appointments to office and
lucrative contracts in return for money. M.
Grevy's unwise attempts to shield his son-in-law
brought about his own fall. The chambers, de-
termined to force his resignation, refused to
accept any ministry proposed by him. After
much resistance and irritating delays he submit-
ted, and resigned the presidency of the Republic
on December 3, 1887. On the next day the
houses met in National Assembly at Versailles to
choose the successor of M. Grevy. . . . The most
prominent candidates for the Republicans were
M. Ferry and M. de Freycinet ; the former, how-
ever, was unpopular with the country. The
followers of both, finding their election impossi-
ble, resolved to cast their votes for M. Sadi Oar-
not, a Republican of the highest integrity and
universally respected. M. Carnot, a distinguished
engineer, grandson of the Carnot wlio had, as
minister of war, organized the victories of the
armies of the Revolution, was accordingly elected
Presidentof the French Republic. . . . The chief
difficulties encountered by the cabinet arose out
of the active propagandism exercised in behalf
of General Boulauger. . . . His name . . . be-
came the rallying-point of those who were hostile
to the parliamentary system, or to the Republi-
can government in its present form. Alarmed
both by his singular popularity and by his po-
litical intrigues, the government instituted a
prosecution of him before the High Court of
Justice ; upon this he fled from the country, and
the dangers of the agitation in his favor were,
for the time at least, quieted. On May 5, 1889,
the one-hundredth anniversary of the assembly
of the States-General was held at Versailles. On
the nest day, President Carnot formally opened
the Universal Exhibition at Paris."— V. Duruy,
Hist, of France, pp. 666-677.
Also in : H. C. Lockwood, Const. Hist, of
France, ch. 7, and app. 10.— F. T. Marzials, Life
of Oambetta. — Annals of the Amer. Academy
of Political and Social Science, March, 1893, sup-
plement.
A. D. 1877-1882.— Anglo-French control of
Egyptian finances. See Egypt : A. D. 1875-
1883 ; and 1883-1883.
A. D. 1881-1895. — Territorial claims and
acquisitions in Africa. See Africa : A. D.
1881-1887, and after.
A. D. 1892.— New Protective Tariff. See
T.\RiFP Legislation : A. D. 1871-1893.
A. D. 1892-1893. — The Panama Canal scan-
dal. See Pan.\ma Canal.
A. D. 1894-1895. — Assassination of Presi-
dent Carnot. — Election and resignation of M.
Casimir-Perier. — Election of M. Faure to the
Presidency. — The most startling of all the deeds
in the recent revival of anarchistic activity was
the assassination of M. Carnot, President of the
French Republic, on the 24th of June. While
driving through the streets of Lyons, he was
mortally stabbed by an Italian Anarchist named
Santo Caserio. A joint convention of the two
chambers of the legislature was immediately
summoned for a presidential election. The con-
vention met at Versailles, June 37, and on the
first ballot chose M. Casimir-Perier by 451 out of
a total of 851 votes. On the 15th of January,
1895, M. Casimir-Perfer astonished the world
and threw France into consternation, almost, by
suddenly and peremptorily resigning the Presi-
dency. The reason given was the intolerable
powerlessness and practical inutility of the
President under the existing constitution. The
exciting crisis which this resignation produced
was passed through without disorder, and on the
17th the National Assembly elected M. Fran9ois
Felix Faure to the office of President.
FRANCE, BANK OF. See Money and
Banking : 17TH-19Tn Centuries.
FRANCE, ISLE OF. See ]VL4.scarene
Islands.
FRANCHE COMTE.— In the dissolution of
the last kingdom of Burgundy (see Burgundy,
THE last Kingdom : A. D. 1033), its northern
part maintained a connection with the Empire,
which had then become Germanic, much longer
than the southern. It became divided into two
chief states — the County Palatine of Burgundy,
known afterwards as Franche Comte, or the
"free county," and Lesser Burgundy, which em-
braced western Switzerland and northern Savoy.
"The County Palatine of Burgundy often passed
from one dynasty to another, and it is remarkable
for the number of times that it was held as a
separate state by several of the great princes of
Europe. . . . But, through all these changes of
dynasty, it remained an acknowledged fief of the
Empire, till its annexation to France under
Lewis the Fourteenth. The capital of this county,
it must be remembered, was Dole. The ecclesi-
astical metropolis of Besanyon, though sur-
rounded by the county, remained a free city of
the Empire from the days of Frederick Barba-
rossa [A. D. 1153-1190] to those of Ferdinand
the Third [A. D. 1637-1657]. It was then merged
in the county, and along with the county it
passed to France." — E. A. Freeman, Histcrical
Oeography of Europe, ch. 8, sect. 5.
A. D. 1512. — Included in the Circle of Bur-
gundy. See Germany: A. D. 1493-1519.
A. D. 1648.— Still held to form a part of the
Empire. See Germany: A. D. 1648.
A. D. 1659.— Secured to Spain. See France:
A. D, 1659-1661.
A. D. 1674. — Final conquest by Louis XIV.
and incorporation with France. See Nether-
lands (Holland) : A. D. 1674-1678 ; also, Nime-
guen. Peace op.
FRANCHISE, Elective, in England. See
England: A. D. 1884-1885.
FRANCIA, Doctor, The Dictatorship of.
See Paraguay : A. D. 1608-1873.
FRANCIA. See France: 9th Century;
also, Germany : A. D. 843-963.
FRANCIS (called Phoebus), King of Na-
varre, A. D. 1479-1.50.3 Francis I. (of Lor-
raine),GerraanicEmperor,174.5-1765 Fran-
cis I., King of France, 151.5-1.547 Francis
I., King of Naples or the Two Sicilies, 1835-
1830 Francis II., Germanic Emperor, 1793-
1806 ; Emperor of Austria, 1806-1835 ; King of
Hungary and Bohemia, 1793-1835 Francis
II., King of France, 1.5.59-1.560 Francis 11.,
King of Naples or the Two Sicilies, A. D.
1859-1861 Francis Joseph I., Emperor of
1429
FRANCIS.
FRANKS.
Austria, 1848 ; King of Hungary and Bohemia,
1848-.
FRANCISCANS. See Mendicant Orders,
also. Beguines, etc.
FRANCO- GERMAN, OR FRANCO-
PRUSSIAN WAR, The. See France : A. D.
1870 (.June— July), to 1870-1871.
FRANCONIA : The Duchy and the Circle.
— "Among the great duchies [of the old Ger-
manic kingdom or empire of the ninth, tenth and
eleventh centuries], that of Eastern Francia,
Franken, or Franconia is of much less impor-
tance iu European history than that of Saxony.
It gave the ducal title to the bishops of Wilrz-
hurg; but it cannot be said to be in any sense
continued in any modern state. Its name gradu-
ally retreated, and the circle of Franken or Fran-
conia [see Germany : A. D. 1493-1519] took in
only the most eastern part of the ancient duchy.
The western and northern part of the duchy, to-
gether with a good deal of territory which was
strictly Lotharingian, became part of the two
Rhenish circles. Thus Fulda, the greatest of
German abbeys, passed away from the Frankish
name. In north-eastern Francia, the Hessian
principalities grew up to the north-west. Within
the Franconiau circle lay Wiirzburg, the see of
the bishops who bore the ducal title, the other
great bishopric of Bamberg, together with the
free city of Nlirnberg, and various smaller prin-
cipalities. In the Rhenish lands, both within and
without the old Francia, one chief characteristic
is the predominance of the ecclesiastical princi-
palities, Mainz, Koln, Worms, Speyer, and Strass-
burg. The chief temporal power which arose in
this region was the Palatinate of the Rhine, a
power which, like others, went through many
unions and divisions, and spread into four circles,
those of Upper and Lower Rhine, Westfalia, and
Bavaria. Tliis last district, though united with
the Palatine Electorate, was, from the early part
of the fourteenth century, distinguished from the
Palatinate of the Rhine as the Oberpfalz or Up-
per Palatinate." — E. A. Freeman, Historical
Oeog. of Europe, cTi. 8, sect. 1. — See, also, Ale-
MANNi : A. D. 496-504.
FRANCONIA, The Electorate of. See Ger-
many: A. D. 112.5-11.53.
FRANCONIAN OR SALIC IMPERIAL
HOUSE. — The emperors, Conrad II., Henry
III., Henry IV., and Henry V., who reigned from
1034 until 1125, over the Germanic-Roman or
Holy Roman Empire, were of the Salic or Fran-
coniau house. See GERSi.-i.NY : A. D. 973-1133.
FRANKALMOIGN. See Feudal Tenures.
FRANKFORT, Treaty of. See France:
A. D. 1871 (January— May),
FRANKFORT ON THE MAIN, Origin
of. See Ai.emanni : A. D. 49(3-504.
A. D. 1287. — Declared an imperial city. See
Cities, Imperial and Free, op Germany.
A. D. 1525. — Formal establishment of the
Reformed Religion. See Papacy : A. D. 1522-
1523.
A. D. 1744.— The " Union " formed by Fred-
erick the Great. See Austria : A. D. 1743-
1744.
A. D. 1759.— Surprised by the French. See
Germany : A. D. 17.59 (April — August).
A. D. 1801-1803 — One of six free cities
which survived the Peace of Luneville. See
Germany : A. D. 1801-1803.
A. D. 1806. — Loss of municipal freedom. —
Transfer, as a grand duchy, to the ancient
Elector of Mayence. See Germany : A. D.
1805-1806.
A. D. 1810. — Erected into a grand duchy by
Napoleon. See France: A. D. 1810 (February
— December).
A. D. 1810-1815. — Loss and recovery of au-
tonomy as a " free city." See Cities, Imperial
AND free, of Germany ; and Vienna, The Con-
gress OF.
A. D. 1848-1849. — Meeting of the German
National Assembly. — Its work, its failure, and
its end. — Riotous outbreak in the city. See
GERM.1.NY: A. D. 1848 (M.\rch— September) ;
and 1848-1850.
A. D. 1866. — Absorption by Prussia. See
Germany: A. D. 1866.
FRANKLIN, Benjamin, and the Press.
See Printing : A. D. 1704-1729 Electrical
Discovery. See Electrical Discovery : A.
D. 1745-1747 Plan of Union in 1754. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1754 Colo-
nial Representative in England. — Examina-
tion before Parliament. See Pennsylvania :
A. D. 1757-1762 ; and United States op Am. :
A. D. 1765-176S, 1766 Signing of the Dec-
laration. See United States op Am. : A. D.
1776 (July) Mission to France. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1776-1778, 1778
(Febru.\ry). 1783 (September — November).
. . . . Framing of the Constitution. See United
States of Am, : A. D. 1787.
FRANKLIN, Sir John. See Polar Explo-
r.\tion : A. D. 1819-1823, and after.
FRANKLIN, The ephemeral state of. See
Tennessee : A, D, 1785 ; and 1785-1796,
FRANKLIN, Tenn., Battles at and near.
See United States op Am. : A, D, 1863 (Febru-
ary — April : Tennessee), and 1864 (No\'ember:
Tennessee).
FRANKLIN, OR FRANKLEYN, The.—
" 'There is scarce a small village,' says Sir John
Fortescue [15th century] 'in which you may not
find a knight, an escjuire, or some substantial
householder (paterfamilias) commonly called a
frankleyn, possessed of considerable estate ; be-
sides others who are called freeholders, and many
yeomen of estate sufficient to make a substantial
jury.' . . . By a frankleyn in this place we are
to understand what we call a country squire, like
the frankleyn of Chaucer ; for the word esquire
in Fortcscue's time was only used in its limited
sense, for the sons of peers and knights, or such
as had obtained the title."— H. Hallam, The
Middle A'/es. ch. S, ]it. 3, icitlinote (f. 3).
FRANKPLEDGE.— An old English law re-
quired all men to combine in associations of ten,
and to become standing sureties for one another,
— which was called " frankpledge."
FRANKS : Origin and earliest history. —
" It is well known that the name of 'Frank' is
not to be found in the long list of German tribes
preserved to us in the ' Germania ' of Tacitus.
Little or nothing is heard of them before the
reign of Gordian III. In A. D. 340 Aurelian,
then a tribune of the sixth legion stationed on
the Rhine, encountered a body of marauding
Franks near Mayence, and drove them back into
their marshes. The word 'Francia 'is also found
at a still earlier date, in the old Roman chart
1430
FRANKS.
FRANKS, A. r>. 410-420.
called the ' Charta Peutingeria,' and occupies on
the map the right bank of the Rhine from op-
posite Coblentz to the sea. The origin of the
Franks has been the subject of frequent debate,
to which French patriotism has occasionally lent
some asperity. . . . At the pre.sent day, however,
historians of every nation, including the French,
are unanimous in considering the Franks as a
powerful confederacy of German tribes, who in
the time of Tacitus inhabited the north-western
parts of Germany bordering on the Rhine. And
this theor}' is so well supported by many scattered
notices, sliglit in themselves, but powerful when
combined, that we can only wonder that it should
ever have been called in question. Nor was this
aggregation of tribes under the new name of
Franks a singular instance ; the same took place
in the case of the Alemanni and Saxons. . . .
The etymology of the name adopted by the new
confederacy is also uncertain. The conjecture
which lias most probability in its favour is that
adopted long ago by Gibbon, and confirmed in
recent times by the authority of Grimm, which
connects it with the German word Frank (free).
. . . Tacitusspeaksof nearly all the tribes, whose
various appellations were afterwards merged in
that of Frank, as living in the neighbourhood of
the Rhine. Of these the principal were the
Sicambri (the chief people of the old Isctevonian
tribe), who, as there is reason to believe, were
identical with the Salian Franks. The confedera-
tion further comprised the Bructeri, the Chamavi,
Ansibarii, Tubantes, Marsi, and Chasuarii, of
whom the five last had formerly belonged to the
celebrated Cheruscan league, which, under the
hero Arminius, destroyed three Roman legions
in the Teutoburgian Forest. The strongest evi-
dence of the identity of these tribes with the
Franks, is the fact that, long after their settle-
ment in Gaul, the distinctive names of the origi-
nal people were still occasionally used as synony-
mous with that of the confederation. . . . The
Franks advanced upon Gaul from two different
directions, and under the different names of
Salians, and Ripuarians, the former of whom we
have reason to connect more particularly with
the Sicambrian tribe. The origin of the words
Salian and Ripuarian, which are first used re-
spectively by Ammianus Marcellinus and Jor-
nandes, is very obscure, and has served to ex-
ercise the ingenuity of ethnographers. There
are, however, no sufficient grounds for a decided
opinion. At the same time it is by no means im-
probable that the river Yssel, Isala or Sal (for it
has borne all these appellations), may have given
its name to that portion of the Franks who lived
along its course. With still greater probability
may the name Ripuarii, or Riparii, be derived
from ' Ripa, ' a term used by the Romans to sig-
nify the Rhine. These dwellers on ' the Bank '
were those that remained in their ancient settle-
ments while their Salian kinsmen were advanc-
ing into the heart of Gaul." — W. C. Perry, The
Franks, cli. 3.
Also in: P. Godwin, Hist, of France: Ancient
Oaul, bk. 3, ch. 9 and 11. — T. Smith, Arminius,
pt. 2, ch. 3.
A. D. 253. — First appearance in the Roman
world. — " When in the year 353 the different gen-
erals of Rome were once more fighting each other
for the imperial dignity, and the Rhine-legions
marched to Italy to fight out the cause of their
emperor Valerianus against . . . Aemilianus of
the Danube-army, this seems to have been the
signal for the Germans pushing forward, es-
pecially towards the lower Rhine. These Ger-
mans were the Franks, who appear here for the
first time, perhaps new opponents only in name ;
for, although the identification of them, already
to be met with in later antiquity, with tribes for-
merly named on the lower Rhine — partly, the
Chamavi settled beside the Bructeri, partly the
Sugambri formerly mentioned subject to the
Romans — is uncertain and at least inadequate,
there is here greater probability than in the case
of the Alamanni that the Germans hitherto de-
pendent on Rome, on the right bank of the Rhine,
and the Germanic tribes previously dislodged
from the Rhine, took at that time — under the
collective name of the ' Free ' — the offensive in
concert against the Romans." — T. Mommsen.
Hist, of Home, bk. 8, c7i. 4.
A. D. 277. — Repulse from Gaul, by Probus.
See Gaul: A. D. 277.
A. D. 279. — Escape from Pontus. See Stka-
cuse: a. D. 279.
A. D. 295-297. — In Britain. See Britain:
A. D. 288-297.
A. D. 306.— Defeat by Constantine. — Con-
stantino the Great, A. D. 306, fought and defeated
the Saliau Franks in a great battle and ' ' carried
off a large number of captives to Treves, the
chief residence of the emperor, and a rival of
Rome itself in the splendour of its public build-
ings. It was in the circus of this city, and in
the presence of Constantine, that the notorious
' Ludi Francici ' were celebrated ; at which several
thousand Pranks, including their kings Regaisus
and Ascaricus,were compelled to fight with wild
beasts, to the inexpressible delight of the Chris-
tian spectators." — W. C. Perry, The Franks, ch. 3.
A. D. 355. — Settlement in Toxandria. See
Gaul: A. D. 35.5-361; also, Toxandria.
5th-ioth Centuries. — Barbarities of the con-
quest of Gaul. — State of society under the
rule of the conquerors. — Evolution of Feudal-
ism. See Gaul: 5th-8th, and 5th-10th Cen-
turies.
A. D. 406-409. — Defense of Roman Gaul.
See Gaul: A. D. 406-409.
A. D. 410-420. — The Franks join in the at-
tack on Gaul. — After vainly opposing the en-
trance of Vandals, Burguudians and Sueves into
Gaul, A. D. 406, "the Franks, the valiant and
faithful allies of the Roman republic, were soon
[about A. D. 410-420] tempted to imitate the
invaders whom they had so bravely resisted.
Treves, the capital of Gaul, was pillaged by their
lawless bands; and the humble colony which
they so long maintained in the district of Tox-
andria, in Brabant, insensibly multiplied along
the banks of the Meuse and Scheldt, till their
independent power filled the whole extent of the
Second, or Lower, Germany. . . . The ruin of
the opulent provinces of Gaul may be dated from
the establishment of these barbarians, whose al-
liance was dangerous and oppressive, and who
were capriciously impelled, by interest or passion,
to violate the public peace." — E. Gibbon, Decline
and Fall of the Roman Empire, ch. 31. — "They
[the Franks] resisted the great invasion of the
Vandals in the time of Stilicho, but did not
scruple to take part in the subsequent ravages.
Among the confusions of that disastrous period,
indeed, it is not improbable that they seized
the cities of Spires, Strasburg, Amiens, Arras,
1431
FRANKS, A. D. 410-430.
PRANKS, A. D. 511-753.
Therouane and Tournai, and by their assaults on
Treves compelled the removal of the prsfectural
government to Aries. Chroniclers who flourished
two centuries later refer to the year 418 large
and permanent conquests in Gaul by a visionary
king called Pharamund, from whom the French
monarchy is usually dated. But history seelis
in vain for any authentic marks of his perform-
ances. " — P. Godwin, Hist, of France : Ancient
Oaul, bk. 3, ch. 11, sect. 5.
A. D. 448-456. — Origin of the Merovingian
dynasty. — The royal dynasty of the kingdom of
the Franks as founded by Clovis is called the
Merovingian. " It is thought that the kings of
the different Prankish people were all of the same
family, of which the primitive ancestor was Mero-
veus (Meer-wig, warrior of the sea). After him
those princes were called Merovingians (Meer-
wings); they were distinguished by their long
hair, which they never cut. A Meroveus, grand-
father of Clovis, reigned, it is said, over the
Franks between 448 and 456 ; but only his name
remains, in some antient historians, and we know
absolutely nothing more either of his family, his
power, or of the tribe which obeyed him: so that
we see no reason why his descendants had taken
his name. . . . The Franks appear in history for
the first time in the year 241. Some great captain
only could, at this period, unite twenty different
people in a new confederation; this chief was,
apparently, the Meroveus, whose name appeared
for such a long time as a title of glory for his de-
scendants, although tradition has not preserved
any trace of his victories." — .1. C. L. S. de Sis-
mondi, The French under tlie Meroeinr/ians, ch. 3.
A. D. 451.— At the battle of Chalons. See
Huns: A. D. 451.
A. D. 481-511.— The kingdom of Clovis.—
"The Salian Franks had . . . associated a Ro-
man or a Romanized Gaul, Aegidius, with their
native chief in the leadership of the tribe. But,
in the year 481, the native leadership passed into
the hands of a chief who would not endure a
Roman colleague, or the narrow limits within
which, in the general turmoil of the world, his
tribe was cramped. He is known to history by
the name of Clovis, or Chlodvig, which througli
many transformations, became the later Ludwig
and Louis. Clovis soon made himself feared as
the most ambitious, the most unscrupulous, and
the most energetic of the new Teutonic founders
of states. Ten years after the fall of the West-
ern empire [which was in 476], seven years before
the rise of the Gothic kingdom of Theoderic,
Clovis challenged the Roman patrician, Syagrius
of Soissons, who had succeeded to Aegidius, de-
feated him in a pitched field, at Nogent, near
Soissons (486), and finally crushed Latin rivalry
in northern Gaul. Ten years later (496), in another
famous battle, Tolbiac (Ziilpich), near Cologne,
he also crushed Teutonic rivalry, and established
his supremacy over the kindred Alamanni of the
Upper Rhine. Then he turned himself with bit-
ter hostility against the Gothic power in Gaul.
The Franks hated the Goths, as the ruder and
fiercer of the same stock hate those who are a de-
gree above them in the arts of peace, and are sup-
posed to be below them in courage and the pur-
Buits of war. There was another cause of an-
tipathy. The Goths were zealous Arians; and
Clovis, under the influence of his wife Clotildis,
the niece of the Burgundian Gundobad, and in
consequence, it is said, of a vow made in battle
at Tolbiac, had received Catholic baptism from
St. Remigius of Rheims [see Christianity : A. D.
496-800]. The Frank king threw his sword into
the scale against the Arian cause, and became the
champion and hope of the Catholic population all
over Gaul. Clovis was victorious. He crippled
the Burgundian kingdom (500), which was finally
destroyed by his sons (534). In a battle near
Poitiers, he broke the power of the West Goths
in Gaul ; he drove them out of Aquitaine, leaving
them but a narrow slip of coast, to seek their last
settlement and resting-place in Spain ; and, when
he died, he was recognized by all the world, by
Theoderic, by the Eastern emperor, w-ho honoured
him with the title of the consulship, as the master
of Gaul. Nor was his a temporary conquest.
The kingdom of the West Goths and the Bur-
gundians had become the kingdom of the Franks.
The invaders had at length arrived who were to
remain. It was decided that the Franks, and not
the Goths, were to direct the future destinies of
Gaul and Germany, and that the Catholic faith,
and not Arianism, was to be the religion of these
great realms." — R. W. Church, Beginning of the
Middle Ages, c7i. 2.
Alsoin: W. C. Perry, The Franks, ch. 2. — J.
C. L. S. deSismondi, The TVench under the Mero-
vingians, trans, by Bellingham, ch. 4-5. — See, also,
Goths (Visigoths): A. D. 507-509.
A. D, 481-768. — Supremacy in Germany, be-
fore Charlemagne. See Germany: A. D. 481-
768.
A. D. 496. — Conversion to Christianity. — See
above: A. D. 481-511; also, Ale.manni: A. D.
496-504.
A. D. 496-504. — Overthrovs- of the Alemanni.
See Alemanni: A. D. 496-504; also, Sdevi:
A. D. 460-500.
A. D. 511-752. — The house of Clovis. — As-
cendancy of the Austrasian Mayors of the
Palace. — On the death of Clovis, his dominion,
or, speaking more strictly, the kingly ofl3ce in
his dominion, was divided among his four sons,
who were lads, then, ranging in age from twelve
to eighteen. The eldest reigned in Metz, the
second at Orleans, the third in Paris, and the
youngest at Soissons. These princes extended
the conquests of their father, subduing the Thu-
ringians (A. D. 515-538), overthrowing the king-
dom of the Burgundians (A. D. 538-534), dimin-
ishing the possessions of the Visigoths in Gaul
(A. D. 531-533), acquiring Provence from the
Ostrogoths of Italy and securing from the Em-
peror Justinian a clear Roman-imperial title to
the whole of Gaul. The last survivor of the
four brother-kings, Clotaire I., reunited tlie whole
Frank empire under his own sceptre, and on his
death, A. D. 561, it was again divided among
his four sons. Six years later, on tlie death of
the elder, it was redivided among the three sur-
vivors. Neustria fell to Chilperic, whose capital
was at Soissons, Austrasia to Sigebert, who
reigned at Metz, and Burgundia to Guntram,
who had his seat of government at Orleans.
Each of the kings took additionally a third of
Aquitaine, and Provence was shared between
Sigebert and Guntram. " It was agreed on this
occasion that Paris, which was rising into great
importance, should be held in common by all,
but visited by none of the three kings without
the consent of the others." The reign of these
three brothers and their sons, from 561 to 613,
was one long revolting tragedy of civil war,
1432
FRANKS, A. D. 511-753.
FRANKS, A. D. 539-553.
murder, lust, and treachery, made horribly inter-
esting by the rival careers of the evil Frede-
gunda and the great unfortunate Brunhilda,
queens of Neustria and Austrasia, respectively.
In 613 a second Clotaire surviving his royal liin,
united the Frank monarchy once more under a
single crown. But power vpas fast slipping from
the hands of the feeble creature who wore the
crown, and passing to that one of his ministers
who succeeded in making himself the representa-
tive of royalty — namely, the Mayor of the Pal-
ace. There was a little stir of energy in his son,
Dagobert, but from generation to generation,
after him, the Merovingian kings sank lower
into that character which gave them the name of
the faineant kings ("rois faineans") — the sloth-
ful or lazy kings — while the mayors of the pal-
ace ruled vigorously in their name and tumbled
them, at last, from the throne. ' ' While the Mero-
vingian race in its decline is notorious in history
as having produced an unexampled number of
imbecile mouarchs, the family which was des-
tined to supplant them was no less wonderfully
prolific in warriors and statesmen of the highest
class. It is not often that great endowments are
transmitted even from father to son, but the line
from which Charlemagne sprang presents to our
admiring gaze an almost uninterrupted succes-
sion of five remarkable men, within little more
than a single century. Of these the first three
held the mayoralty of Austrasia [Pepin of Lan-
den, Pepin of Heristal, and Carl, or Charles
Martel, the Hammer] ; and it was they who pre-
vented the permanent establishment of absolute
power on the Roman model, and secured to the
German population of Austrasia an abiding vic-
tory over that amalgam of degraded Romans and
corrupted Gauls which threatened to leaven the
European world. To them, under Providence,
we owe it that the centre of Europe is at this
day German, and not Gallo-Latin. " Pepin of
Heristal, JIayor in Austrasia, broke the power of
a rival Neustrian family in a decisive battle
fought near the village of Testri, A. D. 687, and
gathered the reins of the three kingdoms (Bur-
gundy included) into his own hands. His still
more vigorous son, Charles Martel, won the same
ascendancy for himself afresh, after a struggle
which was signalized by three sanguinary bat-
tles, at Ambl^ve (A. D. 716), at Vinci, near Cam-
brai (717) and at Soissons (718). When firm in
power at home, he turned his arms against the
Frisians and the Bavarians, whom he subdued,
and against the obstinate Saxons, whose country
he harried six times without bringing them to
submission. His great exploit in war, however,
was the repulse of the invading Arabs and Moors,
on the memorable battle-field of Tours (A. D.
782), where the wave of Mahommedan invasion
was rolled back in western Europe, never to ad-
vance beyond the Pyrenees again. Karl died in
741, leaving three sons, among whom his power
■was, in the Frank fashion, 'divided. But one of
them resigned, in a few years, his sovereignty,
to become a monk; another was deposed, and
the third. Pepin, surnamed "The Little," or
"The Short," became supreme. He contented
himself, as his father, his grandfather, and his
great grandfather had done, with the title of
Mayor of the Palace, until 752, when, with the
approval of the Pope and by the act of a great
assembly of leudes and bishops at Soissons, he
was lifted on the shield and crowned and an-
nointed king of the Franks, while the last of
the Merovingians was shorn of his long royal
locks and placed in a monastery. The friendli-
ness of tlie Pope in this matter was the result
and the cementation of an alliance which bore
important fruits. As the champion of the church,
Pepin made war on the Lombards and conquered
for the Papacy the first of its temporal dominions
in Italy. In his own realm, he completed the
expulsion of the Moors from Septimania, crushed
an obstinate revolt in Aquitaine, and gave a firm
footing to the two thrones which, when he died
in 768, he left to his sons, Carl and Carloman, and
which became in a few years the single throne of
one vast empire, under Carl — Carl the Great' —
Charlemagne. — W. C. Perry, Tlie Franks, ch.Z-6.
Also en : P. Godwin, Hist, of Prance : Ancient
Gaul, eh. 13-15.— J. C. L. S. de Sismondi, The
French wider the Meramngiana, eh. 6-13. — See,
also, Austrasia and Nedstkia, and Mayor of
THE Palace.
A. D. 528. — Conquest of Thuringia. See
Thuklngians, The.
A. D. 539-553. — Invasion of Italy. — Formal
relinquishment of Gaul to them. — During the
Gothic war in Italy, — when Belisarius was re-
conquering the cradle of the Roman Empire for
the Eastern Empire which still called itself
Roman, although its seat was at Constantinople,
— -both sides solicited the help of the Franks.
Theudebert, who reigned at Metz, promised his
aid to both, and kept his word. " He advanced
[A. D. 539, with 100,000 men] toward Pavia,
where the Greeks and Goths were met, about to
encounter, and, with an unexpected impartiality,
attacked the astonished Goths, whom he drove to
Ravenna, and then, while the Greeks were yet re-
joicing over his performance, fell upon them
with merciless fury, and dispersed them through
Tuscany." Theudebert now became fired with
an ambition to conquer all Italy ; but his savage
army destroyed everything in its path so reck-
lessly, and pursued so unbridled a course, that
famine and pestilence soon compelled a retreat
and only one-third of its original number re-
crossed the Alps. Notwithstanding this treach-
ery, the emperor Justinian renewed his offers of
alliance with the Franks (A. D. 540), and " pledged
to them, as the price of their fidelity to his cause,
besides the usual subsidies, the relinquishment
of every lingering claim, real or pretended,
which the empire might assert to the sovereignty
of the Gauls. The Franks accepted the terms,
and ' from that time,' say the Byzantine authori-
ties, ' the German chiefs presided at the games
of the circus, and struck money no longer, as
usual, with the effigy of the emperors, but with
their own image and superscription. Theude-
bert, who was the principal agent of these trans-
actions, if he ratified the provisions of the treaty,
did not fulfill them in person, but satisfied him-
self with sending a few tributaries to the aid of
his ally. But his first example proved to be more
powerful than his later, and large swarms of
Germans took advantage of the troubles in Italy
to overrun the country and plunder and slay at
will. For twelve years, under various leaders,
but chiefly under two brothers of the Alemans,
Lutherr and Bulihelin, they continued to harass
the unhappy object of all barbaric resentments,
till the sword of Narses finally exterminated
them [A. D. 553]."— P. Godwin, Hist, of France:
Ancient Gaul, bk. 3, ch. 12.
1433
FRANKS, A. D. 539-553.
FRANKS, A. D. 768-814.
Also in: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, ch. 41.
A. D. 547. — Subjugation of Bavarians and
Alemanni. See Bavaria: A. D. 547.
A. D. 768-814. — Charlemagne, Emperor of
the Romans. — As a crowned dynasty, the Car-
lovingians or Carolingians or Cartings begin
their history with Pepin tlie Short. As an estab-
lished .sovereign house, they find their founder
in King Pepin's father, the great palace mayor,
Carl, or Charles Martel, if not in his grandfather,
Pepin Heristal. But the imperial splendor of
the house came to it from the second of its kings,
whom the French call ' Charlemagne,' but whom
English readers ought to know as Charles the
Great. The French form of the name has been
always tending to represent ' Charlemagne ' as a
king of France, and modern historians object to
it for that reason. ' ' France, as it was to be and
as we know it, had not come into existence in
his [Charlemagne's] days. What was to be the
France of history was then but one province of
the Frank kingdom, and one with which Charles
was personally least connected. . . . Charles,
king of the Franks, was, above all things, a Ger-
man. ... It is entirely to mistake his place and
his work to consider him in the light of a speci-
ally ' French ' king, a predecessor of the kings
who reigned at Paris and brought glory upon
France. . . . Charles did nothing to make modern
France. The Prank power on which he rose to
the empire was in those days still mainly Ger-
man ; and his characteristic work was to lay the
foundations of modern and civilized Germany,
and, indirectly, of the new commonwealth of
nations, which was to arise in the West of Eu-
rope." — R. W. Church, The Beyinnings of the
Middle Ages, ch. 7. — " At the death of King Pip-
pin the kingdom of the Franks was divided into
two parts, or rather . . . the government over
the kingdom was divided, for some large parts
of the territory seem to have been in the hands
of the two brothers together. The fact is, that
we know next to nothing about this division,
and hardly more about the joint reign of the
brothers. The only thing really clear is, that
they did not get along very well together, that
Karl was distinctly the more active and capable
of the two, and that after four years the younger
brother, Karlmann, died, leaving two sons. Here
was a chance for the old miseries of division to
begin again ; but fortunately the Franks seem by
this time to have had enough of that, and to have
seen that their greatest hope for the future lay
in a united government. The widow and chil-
dren of Karlmann went to the court of the Lom-
bard king Desiderius and were cared for by
him. The whole Prankish people acknowledged
Charlemagne as their king. Of course he was
not yet called Charlemagne, but simply Karl,
and he was yet to show himself worthy of the
addition 'Magnus.' . . . The settlement of Saxony
went on, with occasional military episodes, by
the slower, but more certain, processes of educa-
tion and religious conversion. It appears to us
to be anything but wise to force a religion upon
a people at the point of the sword ; but the
singular fact is, that in two generations there
was no more truly devout Christian people, ac-
cording to the standards of the time, than just
these same Saxons. A little more than a hun-
dred years from the time when Charlemagne had
thrashed the nation into unwilling acceptance of
Frankish control, the crown of the Empire he
founded was set upon the head of a Saxon prince.
The progress in friendly relations between the
two peoples is seen in the second of the great
ordinances by which Saxon affairs were regu-
lated. This edict, called the ' Capitulum Saxoni-
cum,' was published after a great diet at Aachen,
in 797, at which, we are told, there came together
not only Franks, but also Saxon leaders from all
parts of their country, who gave their approval
to the new legislation. The general drift of these
new laws is in the direction of moderation. . . .
The object of this legislation was, now that the
armed resistance seemed to be broken, to give
the Saxons a government which should be as
nearly as possible like that of the Franks. The
absolute respect and subjection to the Christian
Church is here, as it was formerly, kept always
in sight. The churches and monasteries are still
to be the centres from which every effort at
civilization is to go out. There can be no doubt
that the real agency in this whole process was
the organized Church. The fruit of the great
alliance between Frankish kingdom and Roman
papacy was beginning to be seen. The papacy
was ready to sanction any act of her ally for the
fair promise of winning the great territory of
North Germany to its spiritual allegiance. The
most solid result of the campaigns of Charle-
magne was the founding of the great bishoprics
of Minden, Paderborn, Verden, Bremen, Osna-
briick, and Halberstadt. . . . About these bish-
oprics, as, on the whole, the safest places, men
came to settle. Roads were built to connect
them ; markets sprang up in their neighborhood ;
and thus gradually, during a development of
centuries, great cities grew up, which came to be
the homes of powerful and wealthy traders, and
gave shape to the whole politics of the North.
Saxony was become a part of the Frankish Em-
pire, and all the more thoroughly so, because
there was no royal or ducal line there which had
to be kept in place." — E. Emerton, Introd. to the
Study of the Middle Ayes, ch. 13. — Between 768
and 800 Charlemagne extinguished the Lombard
kingdom and made himself master of Italy, as
the ally and patron of the Pope, bearing the old
Roman title of Patrician ; he crossed the Pyre-
nees, drove the Saracens southward to the Ebro,
and added a "Spanish March" to his empire
(see Spain : A. D. 778); he broke the obstinate
turbulence of the Saxons, in a series of bloody
campaigns which (see Saxons: A. D. 772-804)
consumed a generation ; he extirpated the trouble-
some Avars, still entrenched along the Danube,
and he held with an always firm hand the whole
dominion that came to him by inheritance from
his father. "He had won his victories with
Frankish arms, and he had taken possession of
the conquered countries in the name of the
Frankish people. Every step which he had taken
had been with the advice and consent of the na-
tion assembled in the great meetings of the spring-
time, and his public documents carefully express
the share of the nation in his great achieve-
ments. Saxony, Bavaria, Lombardy, Aquitaine,
the Spanish Mark, all these great countries, lying
outside the territory of Frankland proper, had
been made a part of its possession by the might
of his arm and the wisdom of his counsel. But
when this had all been done, the question arose,
by what right he should hold all this power, and
secure it so that it should not fall apart as soon
1434
FRANKS, A. D. 768-814.
FRANKS, A. D. 768-814.
as he should be gone. As king of the Franks it
was Impossible that he should not seem to the
conquered peoples, however mild and beneficent
his rule might be, a foreign prince ; and though
he might be able to force them to follow his
banner in war, and submit to his judgment in
peace, there was still wanting the one common
interest which should bind all these peoples,
strangers to the Franks and to each other, into
one united nation. About the year 800 this prob-
lem seems to have been very much before the
mind of Charlemagne. If we look at the boun-
daries of his kingdom, reaching from the Eider
in the north to the Ebro and the Garigliano in the
south, and from the ocean in the west to the Elbe
and the Enns in the east, we shall say as the
people of his own time did, ' this power is Im-
perial.' That word may mean little to us, but
in fact it has often in history been used to de-
scribe just the kind of power which Charlemagne
in the year 800 really had. . . . The idea of em-
pire includes under this one term, kingdoms,
duchies, or whatever powers might be in exis-
tence ; all, however, subject to some one higher
force, which they feel to be necessary for their
support. . . . But where was the model upon
wliich Charlemagne might build his new empire ?
Surely nowhere but in that great Roman Empire
whose western representative had been finally
allowed to disappear by Odoacer the Heruliau
in the year 476. . . . After Odoacer the Eastern
Empire, with its capital at Constantinople, still
lived on, and claimed for itself all the rights
which had belonged to both parts. That Eastern
Empire was still alive at the time of Charle-
magne. We have met with it once or twice in
our study of the Franks. Even Clovis had been
tickled with the present of the title of Consul,
sent him by the Eastern Emperor; and from
time to time, as the Pranks had meddled with
the affairs of Italy, they had been reminded that
Italy was in name still a part of the Imperial
lands. . . . But now, when Charlemagne him-
self was thinking of taking the title of Emperor,
he found himself forced to meet squarely the
question, whether there could be two indepen-
dent Christian Emperors at the same time. . . .
On Christmas Day, in the year 800, Charlemagne
was at Rome. He had gone thither at the re-
quest of the Pope Leo, who had been accused of
dreadful crimes by his enemies in the city, and
had been for a time deprived of his office. Char-
lemagne had acted as judge in the case, and had
decided in favor of Leo. According to good
Teutonic custom, the pope had purified himself
of his charges by a tremendous oath on the H0I3'
Trinity, and had again assumed the duties of
the papacy. The Christmas service was held in
great state at St. Peter's. While Charlemagne
was kneeling in prayer at the grave of the
Apostle, the pope suddenly approached him, and,
in the presence of all the people, placed upon his
head a golden crown. As he did so, the people
cried out with one voice, ' Long life and victory
to Charles Augustus, the mighty Emperor, the
Peace-bringer, crowned by God ! ' Einhard, who
ought to have Icnown, assures us that Charles was
totally surprised by the coronation, and often
said afterward that if he had known of the plan
he would not have gone into the church, even
upon so high a festival. It is altogether proba-
ble that the king had not meant to be crowned
at just that moment and in just that way; but
that he had never thought of such a possibility
seems utterly incredible. By this act Charle-
magne was presented to the world as the suc-
cessor of the ancient Roman Emperors of the
West, and so far as power was concerned, he was
that. But he was more. His power rested, not
upon any inherited ideas, but upon two great
facts: first, he was the head of the Germanic
Race ; and second, he was the temporal head of
the Christian Church. The new empire which
he founded rested on these two foundations." — •
E. Emerton, Introd. to the Study of the Middle
Ages, ch. 14. — The great empire which Charles
labored, during all the remainder of his life, to
organize in this Roman imperial character, was
vast in its extent. "As an organized mass of
provinces, regularly governed by imperial offi-
cers, it seems to have been nearly bounded, in
Germany, by the Elbe, the Saale, the Bohemian
mountains, and a line drawn from thence cross-
ing the Danube above Vienna, and prolonged to
the Gulf of Istria. Part of Dalmatia was com-
prised in the duchy of Friuli. In Italy the em-
pire extended not much beyond the modern fron-
tier of Naples, if we exclude, as was the fact, the
duchy of Benevento from anything more than a
titular subjection. The Spanish boundary . . .
was the Ebro." — H. Hallam, The Middle Ages,
ch. 1, pt. 1. — "The centre of his realm was the
Rhine ; his capitals Aachen [or Aix-la-Chapelle]
and Engilenheim [or Ingelheim] ; his army
Prankish; his sympathies as they are shewn in
the gathering of the old hero-lays, the composition
of a German grammar, . . . were all for the race
from which he sprang. . . . There were in his
Empire, as in his own mind, two elements ; those
two from the union and mutual action and re-
action of which modern civilization has arisen.
These vast domains, reaching from the Ebro to
the Carpathian mountains, from the Eyder to the
Liris, were all the conquests of the Frankish
sword, and were still governed almost exclusively
by viceroys and officers of Prankish blood. But
the conception of the Empire, that which made
it a State and not a mere mass of subject tribes,
. . . was inherited from an older and a grander
system, was not Teutonic but Roman — Roman
in its ordered rule, in its uniformity and pre-
cision, in its endeavour to subject the individual
to the system — Roman in its effort to realize a
certain limited and human perfection, whose
very completeness shall exclude the hope of
further progress." With the death of Charles in
814 the territorial disruption of his great empire
began. "The returning wave of anarchy and
barbarism swept up violent as ever, yet it could
not wholly obliterate the past: the Empire,
maimed and shattered though it was, had struck
its roots too deep to be overthrown by force."
The Teutonic part and the Romanized or Latin-
ized part of the empire were broken in two, never
to unite again; but, in another century, it was
on the German and not the Gallo-Latin side of
the line of its disruption that the imperial ideas
and the imperial titles of Charlemagne came to
life again, and his Teutonic Roman Empire —
the "Holy Roman Empire," as it came to be
called — was resurrected by Otto the Great, and
established for eight centuries and a half of
enduring influence in the politics of the world.
— J. Bryce, Th^i Holy Roman Empire, ch. 5. —
"Gibbon has remarked, that of all the heroes to
whom the title of 'The Great' has been given,
1435
FBANKS, A. D. 768-814.
FRANKS, A. D. 814-962.
Charlemagne alone has retained it as a permanent
addition to his name. The reason may perhaps
be, that in no other man were ever united, in so
large a measure, and in such perfect harmony,
the qualities which, in their combination, con-
stitute the heroic character, such as energy, or
the love of action ; ambition, or the love of power ;
curiosity, or the love of knowledge; and sensi-
bility, or the love of pleasure — not, indeed, the
love of forbidden, of unhallowed, or of enervat-
ing pleasure, but the keen relish for those blame-
less delights by which the burdened mind and
jaded spirits recruit and renovate their powers.
. . . For the charms of social intercourse, the
play of a buoyant fancy, the exhilaration of
honest mirth, and even the refreshment of athletic
exercises, require for their perfect enjoyment
that robust and absolute health of body and of
mind which none but the noblest natures possess,
and in the possession of which Charlemagne ex-
ceeded all other men. His lofty stature, his open
countenance, his large and brilliant eyes, and the
dome-like structure of his head, imparted, as we
learn from Eginhard, to all his attitudes the
dignity which becomes a king, relieved by the
graceful activity of a practiced warrior. . . .
Whether he was engaged in a frolic or a chase —
composed verses or listened to homilies — fought
or negotiated — cast down thrones or built them
up — studied, conversed, or legislated, it seemed
as if he, and he alone, were the one wakeful and
really living agent in the midst of an inert, vision-
ary, and somnolent generation. The rank held
by Charlemagne among great commanders was
achieved far more by this strange and almost
superhuman activity than by any pre-eminent
proficiency in the art or science of war. He was
seldom engaged in any general action, and never
undertook any considerable siege, excepting that
of Pavia, which, in fact, was little more than a
protracted blockade. But, during forty -six years
of almost unintermitted warfare, he swept over
the whole surface of Europe, from the Ebro to
the Oder, from Bretagne to Hungary, from Den-
mark to Capua, with such a velocity of move-
ment, and such a decision of purpose, that no
power, civilized or barbarous, ever provoked his
resentment without rapidly sinking beneath his
prompt and irresistible blows. And though it be
true, as Gibbon has observed, that he seldom, if
ever, encountered In the field a really formidable
antagonist, it is not less true that, but for his mili-
tar)' skill, animated by his sleepless energy, the
countless assailants by whom he was encompassed
must rapidly have become too formidable for re-
sistance. For to Charlemagne is due the introduc-
tion into modern warfare of the art by which a
general compensates for the numerical inferiority
of his own forces to that of his antagonists — the
art of moving detached bodies of men along remote
but converging lines with such mutual concert as
to throw their united forces at the same moment
on any meditated point of attack. Neither the
Alpine marches of Hannibal nor those of Napoleon
were combined with greater foresight, or executed
with greater precision, than the simultaneous pas-
sages of Charlemagne and Count Bernard across
the same mountain ranges, and their ultimate
union in the vicinity of their Lombard enemies. " —
Sir J. Stephen, Lect's on the Hist, of France, lect. 3.
Also in: E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, ch. 49. — See, also, Germany:
A. D. 800.
A. D. 814-962. — Dissolution of the Carolin-
gian Empire. — Charlemagne, at his death, was
succeeded by his son Ludwig, or Louis the Pious
— the single survivor of three sons among whom
he had intended that his great empire should be
shared. Mild in temper, conscientious in char-
acter, Louis reigned with success for sixteen
years, and then lost all power of control, through
the turbulence of his family and the disorders of
his times. He "tried in vain to satisfy his sons
(Lothar, Lewis, and Charles) by dividing and re-
dividing: they rebelled; he was deposed, and
forced by the bishops to do penance, again re-
stored, but without power, a tool in the hands of
contending factions. On his death the sons flew
to arms, and the first of the dynastic quarrels of
modern Europe was fought out on the field of
Fontenay. In the partition treaty of Verdun
[A. D. 843] which followed, the Teutonic prin-
ciple of equal division among heirs triumphed
over the Roman one of the transmission of an
indivisible Empire : the practical sovereignty of
all three brothers was admitted in their respec-
tive territories, a barren precedence only reserved
to Lothar, with the imperial title which he, as
the eldest, already enjoyed. A more important
result was the separation of the Gaulish and Ger-
man nationalities. . . . Modern Germany pro-
claims the era of A. D. 843 the beginning of her
national existence and celebrated its thousandth
anniversary [in 1843]. To Charles the Bald was
given Francia Occidentalis, that is to say, Neus-
tria and Aquitaine ; to Lothar, who as Emperor
must possess the two capitals, Rome and Aachen,
a long and narrow kingdom stretching from the
North Sea to the Mediterranean, and including
the northern half of Ital}' ; Lewis (suruamed, from
his kingdom, the German) received all east of the
Rhine, Franks, Saxons, Bavarians, Austria, Ca-
rinthia, with possible supremacies over Czechs
and Moi-avians beyond. Throughout these re-
gions German was spoken ; through Charles's
kingdom a corrupt tongue, equally removed from
Latin and from modern French. Lothar's, being
mixed and having no national basis, was the
weakest of the three, and soon dissolved into the
separate sovereignties of Italy, Burgundy and
Lotharingia, or, as we call it, Lorraine. On the
tangled history of the period that follows it is
not possible to do more than touch. After pass-
ing from one branch of the Carolingian line to
another, the imperial sceptre was at last possessed
and disgraced by Charles the Fat, who united all
the dominions of his great-grandfather. This un-
worthy heir could not avail himself of recovered
territory to strengthen or defend the expiring
monarchy. He was driven out of Italy in A. D.
887 and his death in 888 has been usually taken
as the date of the extinction of the Carolingian
Empire of the West. . . . From all sides the
torrent of barbarism which Charles the Great had
stemmed was rushing down upon his empire.
. . . Under such strokes the already loosened
fabric swiftly dissolved. No one thought of
common defence or wide organization ; the strong
built castles, the weak became their bondsmen,
or took shelter under the cowl: the governor —
count, abbot, or bishop — tightened his grasp,
turned a delegated into an independent, a per-
sonal into a territorial authority, and hardly
owned a distant and feeble suzerain. ... In Ger-
many, the greatness of the evil worked at last
its cure. When the male line of the eastern
1436
Iivngitxtde Ea»t
CENTRAL EUROPE
888 A. D.
The Boundaries of the Separate Kingdoma formed on the
disintegration of Che Empire are ahown thus:-*- .4..+ .+
Zongitude Eaat 10 friym Oreenwieh 1&'
1437
FRANKS, A. D. 814-963.
FREE MASONS.
branch of the Carolingians had ended in Lewis
(surnamed the Child), son of Amulf [A. D. 911],
the chieftains chose and the people accepted
Conrad the Franconian, and after him Henry the
Saxon duke, both representing the female line of
Charles. Henry laid the foundations of a firm
monarchy, driving hack the Magyars and Wends,
recovering Lotharingia, founding towns to be
centres of orderly life and strongholds against
Hungarian irruptions. He had meant to claim
at Rome his kingdom's rights, rights which Con-
rad's weakness had at least asserted by the de-
mand of tribute; but death overtook him, and
the plan was left to be fulfilled by Otto his son. "
—J. Bryce, Ths Holy Roman Einjnre, ch. 6. — "The
division of 888 was really the beginning of the
modern states and the modern divisions of
Europe. The Carolingian Empire was broken up
into four separate kingdoms: the Western King-
dom, answering roughly to France, the Eastern
Kingdom or Germany, Italy, and Burgundy. Of
these, the three first remain as the greatest na-
tions of the Continent : Burgundy, by that name,
has vanished ; but its place as a European power
is occupied, far more worthily than by any King
or Csesar, by the noble confederation of Switzer-
land." — E. A. Freeman, The Franks and the
Oauls. (Historical Essays, \st series, no. 7.)
Also in : E. F. Henderson, Select Hist. Does,
of the Middle Ages, bk. 2, no. 3. — P. Godwin,
Hist, of France: Ancient Gaul, ch. 18. — R. W.
Church, The Beginning of the Middle Ages, eh. 8.
— F. Guizot, Hist, of Civilization, led. 24. — Sir
F. Palgrave, Hist, of Normandy and France, v.
1-2.— See, also, Germ,\ny: A. D. 843-963; and
France: A. D, 843, and after.
A. D. 843-962. — Kingdom of the East
Franks. See Germany: A, D. 843-962.
FRATRES MINORES. See Mendicant
Orders.
FRATRICELLI, The. See Beguines, etc.
FRAZIER'S FARM, OR GLENDALE,
Battle of. See United States of Am. : A. D.
1862 (June — July : Virginia).
FREDERICIA, Battle of (1849). See Scan-
dinavian States (Denmark) : A. D. 1848-1863.
Siege of (1864). See Germany: A. D. 1861-
1866.
FREDERICK I. (called Barbarossa), Em-
peror, A. D. 1155-1190; King of Germany,
1152-1190; King of Italy, 11.55-1190 Fred-
erick I., King of Denmark and Norway, 1523-
1533 Frederick I., King of Prussia, 1701-
1713; III., Elector of Brandenburg, 168S-1713.
Frederick I., Elector of Brandenburg,
1417-1440 Frederick II., Emperor, 1220-
1350; King of Germany, 1312-1350. See Italy:
A. D. 1183-13.00; and Germany: A. D. 1138-
1368 Frederick II., King of Denmark and
Norway, 15.58-1.588 Frederick II., King of
Naples, 1496-1,503 Frederick II. (called
The Great), King of Prussia, 1740-1786
Frederick II., King of Sicily, 139.5-1337
Frederick II., Elector of Brandenburg, 1440-
1470 Frederick III., Emperor, and King of
Germany, 1440-1493 Frederick III., Ger-
man Emperor and King of Prussia, 1888,
March— .Tune Frederick III., King of Den-
mark and Norway, 1648-1670 Frederick
III., King of Sicily, 1355-1377. ...Frederick
IV., King of Denmark and Norway, 1699-1730.
Frederick V., King of Denmark and Nor-
way, 1746-1766 Frederick V., Elector of
the Palatinate (and King-elect of Bohemia),
and the Thirty Years' War. See Germany-
A. D. 1618-1630, 1620, 1621-1633, 1631-1632, and
1648 Frederick VI., King of Denmark and
Norway, 1808-1814; King of Denmark, 1S14-
1839 Frederick VII., King of Denmark,
1848-1863 Frederick Augustus I., Elector
of Saxony, 1694-1733; King of Poland, 1697-
1704 (deposed), and 1709-1733 Frederick
Augustus II., Elector of Saxony and King of
Poland, 1733-1763 Frederick Henry, Stadt-
holder of the United Provinces, 1625-1647
Frederick William (called The Great Elector),
Elector of Brandenburg, 1640-1688 Fred-
erick William I., King of Prussia, 1713-1740.
....Frederick William II., King of Prussia,
1786-1797 Frederick William III., King of
Prussia, 1797-1840 Frederick William IV.,
King of Prussia, 1840-1861.
Battle of. See
D. 1863 (October-
FREDERICKSBURG,
United States of Am. : A
December: Virginia).
Sedgfwick's demonstration against. See
United States op Am. : A. D. 1863 (April —
May: Virgini.\).
FREDERICKSHALL. — Siege by the
Swedes.— Death of Charles XII. (1718). See
Scandinavian States (Sweden): A. D. 1707-
1718.
FREDERICKSHAMN, Peace of (1809).
See ScANDiNAvrAN Statk.s : A. I). 1S()7_1810.
FREDLINGEN, Battle of (1703). See
Netherlands : A. I). 17(13-1704.
FREE CHURCH OF SCOTLAND. See
Scotland: A. D. 1843.
FREE CITIES. See Cities, Imperial and
FREE, OP Germany ; also, Italy: A. D. 1056-
1153, and after ; and Hansa Towns.
FREE COMPANIES, The. See Italy:
A. D. 1343-1393; and Fr.^-ce: A. D. 1360-1380.
FREE LANCES. See L.oices. Free.
FREE MASONS.— " The fall of the Knights
Templars has been connected with the origin of
the Freemasons, and the idea has prevailed that
the only secret purpose of the latter was the re-
establishment of the suppressed order. Jacques
de Molai, while a prisoner in Paris, is said to have
created four new lodges, and the day after his
execution, eight knights, disguised as masons, are
said to have gone to gather up the ashes of their
late Grand blaster. To conceal their designs, the
new Templars assumed the symbols of the trade,
but took, it is said, the name of Francs 'Masons'
to distinguish themselves from ordinary crafts-
men, and also in memory of the general appella-
tion given to them in Palestine. Even the alle-
gories of Freemasonry, and the ceremonies of its
initiations, have been explained by a reference to
the history of the persecutions of the Templars.
The Abbe Barruel says, that ' every thing — the
signs, the language, the names of grand master, of
knight, of temple — all, in a word, betray the
Freemasons as descendants of the proscribed
knights.' Lessing, in Germany, gave some au-
thority to this opinion, by asserting positively
that ' the lodges of the Templars were in the very
highest repute in the twelfth and thirteenth cen-
turies, and that out of such a lodge, which had
1438
FREE MASONS.
FREMONT.
been constantly kept up in London, was estab-
lished the society of Freemasons, in the seven-
teenth century, by Sir Christopher Wren.' Les-
sing is of opinion that the name Mason has nothing
to do with the English meaning of the word, but
comes from Massonney, a ' lodge ' of the Knights
Templars. This idea may have caused the Free-
masons to amalgamate the external ritual of the
Templars with their own, and to found the higher
French degrees which have given colour to the
very hypothesis which gave rise to their introduc-
tion. But the whole story appears to be most
improbable, and only rests upon the slight foun-
dation of fancied or accidental analogies. At-
tempts have also been made to show that the
Freemasons are only a continuation of the frater-
nities of architects which are supposed to have
originated at the time of the building of Solomon's
Temple. The Egyptian priests are supposed to
have taught those who were initiated a secret and
sacred system of architecture ; this is said to have
been transmitted to the Dionysiac architects, of
whom the first historical traces are to be found
in Asia Minor, where they were organized into a
secret faternity. ... It is, however, a mere mat-
ter of speculation whether the Jewish and Dionys-
iac architects were closely connected, but there
is some analogy between tlie latter and the Ro-
man guilds, which Numa is said to have first in-
troduced, and which were probably the proto-
types of the later associations of masons which
flourished until the end of the Roman Empire.
The hordes of barbarians which then ruthlessly
swept away whatever bore the semblance of
luxury and elegance, did not spare the noblest
specimens of art, and it was only when they be-
came converted to Christianity, that the guilds
' were re-established. During the Lombard rule
they became numerous in Italy. ... As their
numbers increased, Lombardy no longer sufficed
for the exercise of their art, and they travelled
into all the countries where Christianity, only re-
cently established, required religious buildings.
. . . These associations, however, became nearly
crushed by the power of the monastic institutions,
so that in the early part of the Middle Ages the
words artist and priest became nearly synony-
mous; but in the twelfth century they emanci-
■ pated themselves, and sprang into new life. The
names of the authors of the great architectural
creations of this period are almost all unknown ;
for these were not the work of individuals, but
of fraternities. ... In England guilds of masons
are said to have existed in the year 926, but this
tradition is not supported by history ; in Scotland
similar associations were established towards the
end of the fifteenth century. The Abbe Grandi-
dier regards Freemasonry as nothing more than
a servile imitation of the ancient and useful fra-
ternity of true masons established during the
building of the Cathedral of Strasburg, one of the
masterpieces of Gothic architecture, and which
caused the fame of its builders to spread through-
out Europe. In many towns similar fraternities
were established. . . . The origin of the Free-
masons of the present day is not to be attributed
to these fraternities, but to the Rosicrucians [see
RosicRUCiAi^s] who first appeared at the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century. " — A. P. Marras,
Secret Fraternities of the Middle Ages, ch. 7-8.
Also in: J. G. Findel, Hist, of IPreeinasonry.
— C. W. Heckethom, Secret Societies of all Ages
and Countries, hk. 8 {v. 1).
FREE-SOIL PARTY, The. See United
St.\tes of Am. : A. D. 1848.
FREE SPIRIT, Brethren and Sisters of
the. See Beguines.
FREE TRADE IN ENGLAND. See Tar-
iff Legisl.\tion (Engl.\nd): A. D. 1836-1839;
1843; 1845-1846; and 1846-1879.
FREEDMEN OF THE SOUTH.— The
emancipated slaves of the United States.
FREEDMEN'S BUREAU, The. See
United St.\tes op Am.: A. D. 186.5-1866.
FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE. See
Toleration, Religious.
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS: A. D. 1695.
— Expiration of the Censorship lav7 in Eng-
land. See PrintIi\g : A. D. 16!)").
A. D. 1734. — Zenger's trial at Nev7 York. —
See New York ; A. D. 1720-1734.
A. D. 1755. — Liberty attained in Massachu-
setts. See Printing : A. D. 153.5-1709.
A. D. 1762-1764. — Prosecution of John
Wilkes. See Englanb: A. D. 1762-1764.
A. D. 1771. — Last contest of the British
Parliament with the Press. See Engl.^nd:
A. D. 1771.
A. D. 1817.— The trials of William Hone.
See England: A. D. 1816-1830.
FREEHOLD. See Feudal Tenures.
FREEMAN'S FARM, Battle of. See
United States op Am. ; A. D. 1777 (July —
October).
FREGELL./E. — Fregellffi, a Latin colony,
founded by the Romans, B. C. 329, in the Vol-
scian territory, on the Liris, revolted in B. C. 135.
and was totally destroyed. A Roman colony,
named Fabrateria, was founded near the site. —
G. Long, Decline of the Roman Reiniblio, v. 1, ch. 17.
FREIBURG (in the Breisgau).— Freiburg
became a free city in 1120, but lost its freedom a
century later, and passed, in 1868, under the
domination of the Hapsburgs.
A. D. 1638. — Capture by Duke Bernhard.
See Germany: A. D. 1634-1639.
A. D. 1644. — Siege and capture by the Im-
perialists. — Attempted recovery by Cond6 and
Turenne. — The three days battle. See Ger-
many: A. D. 1643-1644.
A. D. 1677. — Taken by the French. See
Netherl-^nds (Holland) : A. D. 1674-1678.
A. D. 1679. — Retained by France. See
Nimeguen, 'The Peace op.
A. D. 1697. — Restored to Germany. See
France: A. D. 1697.
A. D. 1713-1714. — Taken and given up by
the French. See Utrecht: A. D. 1712-1714.
A. D. 1744-1748. — Taken by the French and
restored to Germany. See Austria : A. D. 1744-
1745; and Aix-la-Chapblle: The Congress.
FREJUS, Origin of. See Forum Julii.
FREMONT, General John C, and the con-
quest of California. Sec C.\lifornia : A. D.
1846-1847 Defeat in Presidential election.
See United States op Am. : A. D. 1856
Command in the west. — Proclamation of Free-
dom. — Removal. See United States op Am. :
A. D. 1861 (July — September: Missouri), and
(August — October : Missouri) Command
in West Virginia. See United States of Am. :
A. D. 1863 (M.A.y— June: Virginia).
1439
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.
FUGGERS.
FRENCH AND INDIAN WAR.— The four
intercolonial wars of the 17th and 18th centuries,
in America, commonly known, respectively, as
"King William's War," "Queen Anne's War,"
" King George's War," and the French and In-
dian War, were all of them conflicts with the
French and Indians of Canada, or New France ;
but the last of the series (coincident with the
' ' Seven Years War " in Europe) became especially
characterized in the colonies by that designation.
Its causes and chief events are to be found re-
lated under the following headings: C.\nada:
A. D. 1730-1753, 1755, 1736, 1756-1757, 1758,
1759, 1760; Nova Scotia: A. D. 1749-1755, 1753;
Ohio (Valley): A. D. 1748-1754, 1754, 1755;
Cape Breton Island: A. D. 1758-1760; also,
for an account of the accompanying Cherokee
War, South Carolina : A. D. 1759-1761.
FRENCH FUR'y, The. See Netherlands :
A. D. 1581-1584.
FRENCH SPOLIATION CLAIMS. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1800.
FRENCHTOWN (now Monroe, Mich.),
Battle at. See United States of Am. : A. D.
1813-181:1 Harrison's Campaign.
FRENTANIANS, The. SeeSABiNES.
FRIARS.— "Carmelite Friars," "White
Friars." See Carmelite Friars. — Austin
Friars. See Austin Canons. — " Preaching
Friars," " Begging Friars," "Minor Friars,"
" Black Friars," " Grey Friars." See Mendi-
cant Orders.
FRIEDLAND, Battle of. See Germany:
A. D. 1807 (FEBRU-iRY — June).
FRIEDLINGEN, Battleof. SeeGBRMANY:
A. D. 1703.
FRIENDLY ISLANDS. See Tonga.
FRIENDLY SOCIETIES. See Insurance.
FRIENDS, The Society of. See Qitakers
FRIENDS OF THE PEOPLE, The So-
ciety of the. See France: A. D. 1830-1840.
FRIESLAND.— See Netherlands: A. D.
1417-1430.
FRIGIDUS, Battle of the (A. D. 394). See
Rome ; A. D. 379-395.
FRILING, The. See L^tl
FRIMAIRE, The month. See France:
A. D. 1793 (October).
FRISIANS, The.— "Beyond the Batavians,
upon the north, dwelt the great Frisian family,
occupying the regions between the Rhine and
Ems. The Zuyder Zee and the Dollart, both
caused by the terrific inundations of the 13th
century, and not existing at this period [the
early Roman Empire], did not then interpose
boundaries between kindred tribes."— J. L. Mot-
ley, Rise of the Dutch Republic, introd., sect. 2. —
"The Frisians, adjoining [the Batavi] ... in
the coast district that is still named after them,
as far as the lower Ems, submitted to Drusus and
obtained a position similar to that of the Batavi.
There was imposed on them instead of tribute
simply the delivery of a number of bullocks'
hides for the wants of the army ; on the other
hand they had to furnish comparatively large
numbers of men for the Roman service. They
were the most faithful allies of Drusus as after-
wards of Germanicus." — T. Mommsen, Hist, of
R)me, bk. 8. ch. 4.
A. D. 528-729. — Struggles against the Frank
dominion, before Charlemagne. See Germ.\ny:
A D 481-768.
FRITH-GUILDS. See Guilds, Medieval.
FROEBEL AND THE KINDERGAR-
TEN. See Education, Modern: Reforms
&c. : 1816-1893,
FROG'S POINT, Battle At. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1776 (September — No-
vember).
FRONDE, FRONDEURS, The. See
Fr.^nce: a. D. 1647-1648, 1649, 1650-1651, 1651-
1653; and Borde.\ux: A. D. 1653-1653.
FRONT ROYAL, Stonewall Jackson's cap-
ture of. See United States of Am. : A. D. 1862
(May — June: Virginia).
FRONTENAC, Count, in New France.
See Canada: A, D. 1669-1687, to 1696.
FRONTENAC, Fort. See Kingston, Can-
ada.
FRUCTIDOR, The Month. See France:
A. D. 1793 (October).
The Coup d'Etat of the Eighteenth of.
France : A. D. 1797 (September).
See
FRUELA I., King of Leon and the Astu-
rias, or Oviedo, A. I). 757-768 Fruela II.,
King of Leon and the Asturias, or Oviedo,
A. D. 933-925.
FRUMENTARIAN LAW, The First. See
Rome: B. C. 133-131.
FUEGIANS, The. See American Aborigi-
nes: P.ATAGONIANS.
FUENTES D'ONORO, Battle of (i8n).
See Spain: A. D. 1810-1813.
FUFIAN LAW, The. See ^lian and Fu-
FIAN Laws.
FUGGERS, The.— "Hans Fugger was the
founder of the Fugger family, whose members
still possess extensive estates and authority as
princes and counts in Bavaria and Wurtemburg.
He came to Augsburg in 1365 as a poor but ener-
getic weaver's apprentice, acquired citizenship
by marrying a burgher's daughter, and, after
completing an excellent masterpiece, was ad-
mitted into the guild of weavers. . . . Hans
Fugger died in 1409, leaving behind him a for-
tune of 3,000 florins, which he had made by his
skill and diligence. This was a considerable
sum in those da3's, for the gold mines of the New
World had not yet been opened up, and the nec-
essaries of life sold for very low prices. The
sons carried on their father's business, and with
so much skill and success that they were always
called the rich Fuggers. The importance and
wealth of the family increased every day. By
the year 1500 it was not easy to find a frequented
route by sea or land where Pugger's wares were
not to be seen. On one occasion the powerful
Hanseatic league seized twenty of their ships,
which were sailing with a cargo of Hungarian
copper, down the Vistula to Cracow and Dantzic.
Below ground the miner worked for Fugger,
above it the artisan. In 1448 they lent 150,000
florins to the then Archdukes of Austria, the
Emperor Frederick the Third (father of Maxi-
milian) and his brother Albert. In 1509 a cen-
tury had passed since the weaver Hans Fugger
had died leaving his fortune of 3,000 florins, ac-
quired by his laborious industry. His grand-
children were now the richest merchants in
Europe; without the aid of their money the
mightiest princes of the continent could not com-
plete any important enterprise, and their family
was connected with the noblest houses by the
1440
FUGGERS.
GALATA.
ties of relationship. They were raised to the
rank of noblemen and endowed with honourable
privileges by the Emperor Maximilian the First."
— A. W. Grube, Heroes of History and Legend,
ch. 13.
FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW, AND ITS
REPEAL. See United States of Am. : A. D.
179.3, ISoO, and 1864 (June).
FULAHS.The. See Africa : The inhabit-
ING RACES.
FULFORD, Battle of. See England : A. D.
1066 (September).
FULTON'S FIRST STEAMBOAT. See
Steam Navigation : The Beginnings.
FUNDAMENTAL AGREEMENT OF
NEW HAVEN. See Connecticut: A. D.
1639.
FUNDAMENTAL ORDERS OF CON-
NECTICUT. See Connecticut: A. D. 1636-
1639.
FUORUSCITI.— In Italy, during the Guelf
and Gbibelline contests of the 13th and 14th cen-
turies (see Italy: A. D. 1315-1293), "almost
every city had its body of ' f uorusciti ' ; — literally,
' those who had gone out ' ; — prescripts and exiles,
in fact, who represented the minorities ... in
the different communities; — Ghibelline f uorus-
citi from Guelph cities, and Guelph fuorusciti
from Ghibelline cities." — T. A. Trollope, Hist, of
the Commomoealth of Florence, v. 1, p. 380.
FORST. — Prince; the equivalent Gterman
title. See Germany: A. D. 1135-1272.
FURY, The French. See Netherlands;
A. D. 1581-1584.
FURY, The Spanish. See Netherlands:
A D 1575—1577
FUSILLADES. See France: A. D. 1793-
1794 (October — April).
FUTTEH ALI SHAH, Shah of Persia,
A. D. 1798-1834.
FUTTEHPORE, Battle of (1857). See In-
DL\: A. D. 18.57-1858 (July— June).
FYLFOT-CROSS, The. See Tri-Skehon.
FYRD, The. — "The one national army [in
Saxon England, before the Norman Conquest] was
the fyrd, a force which had already received in
the Karolingian legislation the name of landwehr
by which the German knows it stiU. The fyrd
was in fact composed of the whole mass of free
landowners who formed the folk : and to the last
it could only be summoned by the voice of the
folk-moot. In theory therefore such a host rep-
resented the whole available force of the country.
But in actual warfare its attendance at the king's
war-call was limited by practical difficulties.
Arms were costly ; and the greater part of the
fyrd came equipped with bludgeons and hedge-
stakes, which could do little to meet the spear
and battleaxe of the invader." — J. R. Green, The
Conquest of England, p. 133.
G.
GA, The. See Gau.
GABELLE, The. — "In the spring of the year
1343, the king [Philip de Valois, king of France]
published an ordinance by which no one was
allowed to sell salt in France unless he bought it
from the store-houses of the crown, which gave
him the power of committing any degree of ex-
tortion in an article that was of the utmost neces-
sity to his subjects. This obnoxious tax, which
at a subsequent period became one of the chief
sources of the revenue of the crown of France,
was termed a gabelle, a word of Prankish or
Teutonic origin, which had been in use from the
earliest period to signify a tax in general, but
which was from this time almost restricted to the
extraordinary duty on salt. . . . This word ga-
belle is the same as the Anglo-Saxon word ' gaf ol, '
a tax." — T. "Wright, Hist, of Prance, v. 1, p. 364,
and foot-note. — See, also, Tallle and Gabelle.
GABINIAN law, The. See Rome: B.C.
69-63.
gachupines and GUADALUPES.—
In the last days of Spanish rule in Mexico, the
Spanish official party bore the name of Gachu-
pines, while the native party, which prepared for
revolution, were called Guadalupes. — E. J. Payne.
Hist, of European Colonies, ;;. 303. — The name of
the Guadalupes was adopted by the Mexicans
"in honour of 'Our Lady of Guadalupe,' the
tutelar protectress of Mexico;" while that of
the Gachupines " was a sobriquet gratuitously
bestowed upon the Spanish faction." — W. H.
Chynoweth, The Fall of Maximilian, p. 3.
GADEBUSCH, Battle of (1712). See Scan-
dinavian States (Sweden) : A. D. 1707-1718.
GADENI, The. See Britain, Celtic
Tribes.
GADES (Modern Cadiz), Ancient commerce
of. — "At this period [early in the last century
1441
before Christ] Gades was undoubtedly one of the
most important emporiums of trade in the world :
her citizens having absorbed a large part of the
commerce that had previously belonged to Car-
thage. In the time of Strabo they still retained
almost the whole trade with the Outer Sea, or At-
lantic coasts. " — E. H. Bunbury, Hist, of Ancient
Oeog., ch. 18, sect. 6 (v. 2). — See, also, Utica.
GADSDEN PURCHASE, The. See Ari-
zona: A. D. 1853.
GAEL. See Celts.
GAETA : A. D. 1805-1806.— Siege and Cap-
ture by the French. See France : A. D. 1805-
1806 (December — September).
A. D. 1848.— The refuge of Pope Pius IX.
See Italy: A. D. 1848-1849.
GAFOL. — A payment in money, or kind, or
work, rendered in the way of rent by a villein-
tenant to his lord, among the Saxons and early
English. The word signified tribute. — F. See-
bohm, English Village Community, ch. 3 and 5.
GAG, The Atherton. See United States of
Am. : A. D. 1836.
GAGE, General Thomas, in the command
and government at Boston. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1774 fMARCH— April) ;
1775 (April), (April — May), and (June).
GAI SABER, El. See Provence: A. D.
1179-1207.
GAIN AS, The. See Englaot): A. D. 547-
"gAINES' mill. Battle of. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1863 (June — July: Vir-
ginia).
GALATA, The Genoese colony. See Genoa:
A. D. 1361-1299; also Constantinople: A. D.
1361-1453, and 1348-1355.
GALAT^.
GANGWAY.
GALATjE, The. See Gauls.
GALATIA.— GALATIANS.— In 280 B. C.
a l)ody of Gauls, or Celts, invaded Greece, under
Brennus, and in the following year three tribes
of them crossed into Asia Minor. There, as in
Greece, they committed terrilile ravages, and
were a desolating scourge to tlie land, sometimes
employed as mercenaries by one and another of
the princes who fought over the fragments of
Alexander's Empire, and sometimes roaming for
plunder on their own account. Antiochus, son
of Seleucus, of Syria, is said to have won a great
victory over them ; but it was not until 239 B. C.
that they were seriously checked by Attains,
King of Pergamus, who defeated them in a great
battle and forced them to settle in the part of
ancient Phrj'gia which afterwards took its name
from them, being called Galatia, or Gallo-Grsecia,
or Eastern Gaul. When the Romans subjugated
Asia Minor they found the Galatse among their
most formidable enemies. The latter were per-
mitted for a time to retain a certain degree of
independence, under tetrarchs, and afterwards
under kings of their own. But finally Galatia
became a Roman province. "When St. Paul
preached among them, they seemed fused Into
the Hellenistic world, speaking Greek like the
rest of Asia; yet the Celtic language long lin-
gered among them and St. Jerome says he found
the country people still using it in his day (fourth
cent. A. D.). " — J. P. Mahaffy, Story of Alexander's
Eminre, ch. 8,— See, also, Gaitls: B. C. 280-279.
Invasion op Greece.
GALBA, Roman Emperor, A. D. 68-69.
GALEN, and Ancient Medical Science^
See Medical Science : 2d Century.
GALERIUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 305-
311.
GALICIA (Spain), Settlement of Sueves
and Vandals in. See Spain ; A. D. 409-414.
GALILEE. — The Hebrew name Galil, ap-
plied originally to a little section of country, be-
came in the Roman age, as Galilsea, the name of
the whole region in Palestine north of Samaria
and west of the river Jordan and the Sea of
Galilee. Ewald interprets the name as meaning
the "march "or frontier land; but in Smith's
"Dictionary of the Bible" it is said to signify a
" circle "or " circuit." It had many heathen in-
habitants and was called Galilee of the Gentiles.
— H. Ewald, Hist, of Israel, bk. 5, sect. 1.
GALLAS, The. See Africa: The Inhab-
iting Races; and Abyssinia: 15th-19th Cen-
turies.
GALLATIN, Albert, Negotiation of the
Treaty of Ghent. See United States of Am. :
A. D. 1814 (December).
GALLDACHT. See Pale, The English.
GALLEON OR GALEON.— GALERA.-
GALEAZA.— GALEASSES. See Car.vvels;
also, England: A. D. 1588; also, Peru: A. D.
1550-1816.
GALLI, The. See Gauls.
GALLIA. See Gaul.
GALLIA BRACCATA, COMATA AND
TOGATA. — "The antient historians make some
allusion to another division of Gaul, perhaps intro-
duced by the soldiers, for it was founded solely
upon the costume of the inhabitants. Gallia To-
gata, near the Rhone, comprehended the Gauls
who had adopted the toga and the Roman manners.
In Gallia Comata, to the north of the Loire, the
inhabitants wore long plaited hair, which we tind
to this day among the Bas Britons. Gallia Bra-
cata, to the south of the Loire, wore, for the na-
tional costume, trousers reaching from the hips
to the ancles, called 'braccte.'" — J. C. L. S. de
Sismondi, The French under the Merovingians,
trans, by Bellingham, ch. 2, note.
GALLIA CISALPINA. See Rome: B. C.
390-347.
GALLICAN CHURCH: A. D. 1268.— The
Pragmatic Sanction of St. Louis. See France :
A. D. 1268.
A. D. 1438. — The Pragmatic Sanction of
Charles VII., affirming some of the decrees
of the reforming Council of Basel. See
Fk.^nce : A. D. 1438.
A. D. 15x5-1518. — Abrogation of the Prag-
matic Sanction. — The Concordat of Bologna.
See France: A. D. 1515-1518.
A. D. 1653-1713. — The conflict of Jesuits
and Jansenists. — Persecution of the latter. —
The Bull Unigenitus and its tyrannical en-
forcement. See Port Royal and the Jansen-
ists.
A. D. 1791-1792. — The civil constitution of
the clergy. — The oath prescribed by the Na-
tional Assembly. See France: A. D. 1789-
1791 ; 1790-1791 ; and 1791-1792.
A. D. 1793. — Suppression of Christian wor-
ship in Paris and other parts of France. — The
worship of Reason. See Prance: A. D. 1793
(November).
A. D. 1802. — The Concordat of Napoleon. —
Its Ultramontane influence. See France;
A. D. 1801-1804.
A. D. 1833-1880.— The Church and the
Schools. See Education, Modern: France:
A. D. 1833-1889.
GALLICIA, The kingdom of. See Spain:
A. D. 713-737.
GALLIENUS, Roman Emperor, A. D. 253-
268.
GALLOGLASSES.— The heavy-armed foot-
soldiers of the Irish in their battles with the
English during the 14th century. See, also,
Rapparee.
GALLS. See Ireland : 9th-1 0th Centuries.
GALVANI. See Electrical DiscovEiiT :
A. 1). 1786-1800.
GAMA, Voyage of Vasco da. See Portu-
gal: A. D. 1463-1198.
GAMBETTA AND THE DEFENSE OF
FRANCE. Sec- France i A. D. 1870 (Septem-
ber—October), and 1870-1871.
GAMMADION, The. See Tri-skelion.
GAMORI. See Geomori.
GANAWESE OR KANAWHAS, The.
See American Aborigines: Algonquian Fam-
ily.
GANDARIANS, Jhe. See Gedrosians.
GANDASTOGUES, OR CONESTOGAS,
The. See American Aborigines: Susquehan-
NAS.
GANGANI, The. See Ireland, Tribes op
Early Celtic Inhabitants.
GANGWA'V, The.— On the floor of the Eng-
lish House of Commons, " the long lines of seats
rise gradually on each side of the chair — those
to the Speaker's right being occupied by the up-
holders of the Government, and those to the left
accommodating the Opposition. One length of
seating runs iri an unbroken line beneatli each
1442
GANGWAY.
of the side galleries, and these are known as the
'back benches.' The other lengths are divided
into two nearly equal parts by an unseated gap
of about a yard wide. This is 'the gangway.'
Though nothing more than a convenient means
of access for members, this space has come tobe
regarded as the barrier that separates the thick
and thin supporters of the rival leaders from
their less fettered colleagues — that is to say, the
steady men from the Radicals, Nationalists, and
free-lances geneTaUy."— Popular Acc't of Pa/rlia-
mentary Procedure, p. 6.
GAON.— THE GAONATE. See Jews: 7th
Centuhy. .
GARAMANTES, The.— The ancient inhab-
itants of the north African region now called
Fezzan, were known as the Garamantes. — E. H.
Bunbury, Hist, of Ancient Oeog., cJt. 8, sect. 1.
GARCIA, King of Leon and the Asturias,
or Oviedo, A. D. 910-914 Garcia I., King
of Navarre, 885-891 Garcia II., King of
Spain, 925-970 Garcia III., King of Na-
varre, 1035-1054 Garcia IV., King of Na-
varre, 1134-1150.
GARFIELD, General James A.— Campaign
in Kentucky. See United States op Am. :
A. D. 1862 (J AOTJAKY— February: Kentucky—
Tennessee) Presidential election. — Ad-
ministration. — Assassination. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1880, and 1881.
GARIBALD, King of the Lombards, A. D.
672-673.
GARIBALDI'S ITALIAN CAMPAIGNS.
See Italy: A. D. 1848-1849; 1856-1859; 1859-
1861; 1862-1866; and 1867-1870.
GARIGLIANO, Battle of the (1503)- See
Italy: A. D. 1501-1504.
GARITIES, The. See Aquitaine: The
Ancient Ti;ibes.
GARRISON, William Lloyd, and the
American Abolitionists. See Slatbky, Negro :
A. D. 1828-1832.
GARTER, Knights of the Order of the.—
"About this time [A. B. 1343] the king of Eng-
land [Edward III] resolved to rebuild and em-
bellish the great castle of Windsor, which king
Arthur had first founded in time past, and where
he had erected and established that noble round
table from whence so many gallant knights had
issued forth, and displayed the valiant prowess
of their deeds at arms over the world. King
Edward, therefore, determined to establish an
order of knighthood, consisting of himself, his
children, and the most gallant knights in Chris-
tendom, to the number of forty. He ordered it
to be denominated 'knights of the blue garter,'
and that the feast should be celebrated every
year at Windsor, upon St. George's day. He
summoned, therefore, all the earls, barons, and
knights of his realm, to inform them of his inten-
tions ; they heard it with great pleasure ; for it
appeared to them highly honourable, and capable
of increasing love and friendship. Forty knights
were then elected, according to report and esti-
mation the bravest in Christendom, who sealed,
and swore to maintain and keep the feast and the
statutes which had been made. The king founded
a chapel at Windsor, in honour of St. George,
and established canons, there to serve God, with
a handsome endowment. He then issued his proc-
lamation for this feast by his heralds, whom he
sent to France, Scotland, Burgundy, Hainault,
Flanders, Brabant, and the empire of Germany,
6AU.
and offered to all knights and squires, that might
come to this ceremony, passports to last for fifteen
days after it was over. The celebration of this
order was fixed for St. George's day next ensu-
ing, to be held at Windsor, 1344."— Froissart
(Johnes), Chronicles, bk. 1, ch. 100.— "The popu-
lar tradition, derived from Polydore Vergil, is
that, having a festival at Court, a lady chanced
to drop her garter, when it was picked up by the
King. Observing that the incident made the bye-
standers smile sTgnificantly, Edward exclaimed
in a tone of rebuke, ' Honi soit qui mal y pense '
— ' Dishonoured be he who thinks evil of it ' : and
to prevent any further inuendos, he tied the garter
round his own knee. This anecdote, it is true,
has been characterized by some as an improbable
fable : why, we know not. ... Be the origin of
the institution, however, what it may, no Order
in Europe is so ancient, none so illustrious, for
' it exceeds in majesty, honour and fame all
chivalrous fraternities in the world.' ... By a
Statute passed on the 17th January, 1805, the
Order is to consist of the Sovereign and twenty-
five Knights Companions, together with such
lineal descendants of George III. as may be
elected, always excepting the Prince of Wales,
who is a constituent part of the original institu-
tion. Special Statutes have since, at different
times, been proclaimed for the admission of Sov-
ereigns and extra Knights. "—Sir B. Burke, Book
of Orders of Knighthood, p. 98.
Also in: J. Buswell, Hist. Acc't of the Knights
of the Garter.— C. M. Yonge, Cameos from Eng.
Hist., 2d series, c. 3.
GARUMNI, The Tribe of the. See Aqui-
taine : The Ancient Tribes.
GASCONY. — GASCONS: Origin. See
Aquitaine : A. D. 681-768.
A. D. 778. — The ambuscade at Roncesvalles.
See Spain : A. D. 778.
A. D. 781.— Embraced in Aquitaine. See
Aquitaine: A. D. 781.
nth Century.- The Founding of the Duke-
dom. See Burgundy: A. D. 1032.
GASIND, The. See Comitatus.
GASPE, The burning of the. See United
States op Am. : A. D. 1772.
GASTEIN, Convention of (1865). See Ger-
many: A. D. 1801-1866.
GATES, General Horatio, and the Ameri-
can Revolution. See United States op Am. :
A D 1775 (:May— August) ; 1777 (July- Octo-
ber); 1777-1778; 1780 (Februakt— August) ;
1780-1781.
GATH. See Philistines.
GATHAS, The. See Zoroastiiians.
GAU, OR GA, The.— "Next [after the Mark,
in the settlements of the Germanic peoples] in
order of constitution, if not of time, is the union
of two, three, or more Marks in a federal bond
for purposes of a religious, judicial, or even po-
litical character. The technical name for such a
union is in Germany a Gau or Bant ; in England
the ancient name 6a has been almost universally
superseded by that of Scir or Shire. For the
most part the natural divisions of the country
are the divisions also of the Ga ; and the size of
this depends upon such accidental limits as well
as upon the character and dispositions of the
several collective bodies which we have called
Marks. The Ga is the second and final form of
1443
GAU.
GAUL, B. C. 58-51.
unsevered possession ; for every larger aggregate
is but tlie result of a gradual reduction of such
districts, under a higher political or administra-
tive unity, different only in degree and not in
kind from what prevailed individually in each.
The kingdom is only a larger Ga than ordinary ;
indeed the Ga itself was the original kingdom.
. . . Some of the modem shire-divisions of Eng-
land in all probability have remained unchanged
from the earliest times ; so that here and there a
now existent Shire may be identical in territory
with an ancient Ga. But it may be doubted
whether this observation can be very extensively
applied." — J. M. Kemble, The Saxons in Eng-
land, bk. 1, c?i. 3.
GAUGAMELA, OR ARBELA, Battle of
(B. C. 331). See Macedonia: B. C. 334^330.
GAUL: described by Caesar. — "Gallia, in
the widest sense of the term, is divided into
three parts, one part occupied by the Belgae, a
second by the Aquitani, and a third by a people
whom the Romans name Galli, but in their own
tongue tliey are named Celtae. Tliese three
people differ in language and social institutions.
The Garumna (Garonne) is the boundary between
the Aquitani and the Celtae ; the rivers Matrona
(Mame, a branch of the Seine) and the Sequana
(Seine) separate the Celtae from the Belgae. . . .
That part of Gallia which is occupied by the
Celtae begins at the river Rhone: it is bounded
by the Garonne, the Ocean and the territory of
the Belgae ; on the side of the Sequani and the
Helvetii it also extends to the Rhine. It looks to
the north. The territory of the Belgae begins
where that of the Celtae ends : it extends to the
lower part of tlie Rliine; it looks towards the
north and the ri.sing sun. Aquitania extends
from the Garonne to the Pyrenean mountains and
that part of the Ocean which borders on Spain.
It looks in a direction between the setting sun
and the north." — Julius Caesar, Oallic Wars, bk.
1, ch. 1; trans, by O. Long (Decline of the Soman
Republic, v. 3, ch. 22).
B. C. 125-121. — First Roman conquests.
See Salyes ; Allobroges ; and ^DUi.
B. C. 58-51. — Cffisar's conquest. — Caesar was
consul for the year 695 A. U. (B. C. 59). At the
expiration of his consulship he secured, by vote
of the people, the government of the two Gauls
(see Rome : B. C. 63-58), not for one year, which
was the customary term, but for five years —
afterwards extended to ten. Cisalpine Gaul
(northern Italy) had been fully subjugated and
was tranquil ; Transalpine Gaul (Gaul west and
north of the Alps, or modern Prance, Switzer-
land and Belgium) was troubled and threatening.
In Transalpine Gaul the Romans had made no
conquests beyond the Rhone, as yet, except along
the coast at the south. The country between the
Alps and the Rhone, excepting certain territories
of Massilia (Marseilles) which still continued to
be a free city, in alliance with Rome, had been
fully appropriated and organized as a province
— the Provence of later times. The territory
between the Rhone and the Cevennes mountains
was less fully occupied and controlled. Csesar's
first proceeding as proconsul in Gaul was to ar-
rest the migration of the Helvetii, who had
determined to abandon their Swiss valleys and to
seize some new territory in Gaul. He blocked
their passage through Roman Gaul, then followed
them in their movement eastward of the Rhone,
attacked and defeated them with great slaughter,
and forced the small remnant to return to their
deserted mountain homes. The same year (B. C.
58) he drove out of Gaul a formidable body of
Sue vie Germans who had crossed the Rhine some
years before under their king, Ariovistus. They
were almost annihilated. The next year (B. C.
57) he reduced to submission the powerful tribes
of the Belgian region, who had provoked attack
by leaguing themselves against the Roman in-
trusion in Gaul. The most obstinate of those
tribes — the Nervii — were destroyed. In the
following year (B. C. 56) Cfesar attacked and
nearly exterminated the Veueti, a remarkable
maritime people, who occupied part of Armorica
(modern Brittany); he also reduced the coast
tribes northwards to submission, while one of his
lieutenants, Crassus, made a conquest of Aqui-
tania. The conquest of Gaul was now apparently
complete, and next year (B. C. 55), after routing
and cutting to pieces another horde of Germanic
invaders — the Usipetes and Tenctheri — who had
ventured across the lower Rhine, Coesar traversed
the channel and invaded Britain. This first in-
vasion, which had been little more than a rccon-
noissance, was repeated the year following (B. C.
54), with a larger force. It was an expedition
having small results, and Caesar returned from it
in the early autumn to find his power in Gaul
undermined everywhere by rebellious conspira-
cies The first outbreak occurred among the
Belgae, and found its vigorous leader in a young
chief of the Eburones, Ambiorix by name. Two
legions, stationed in tlie midst of the Eburones,
were cut to pieces while attempting to retreat.
But the effect of this great disaster was broken
by the bold energy of Coesar, who led two legions,
numbering barely 7,000 men, to the rescue of his
lieutenant Cicero (brother of the orator) whose
single legion, camped in the Nervian territory,
was surrounded and besieged by 60,000 of the
enemy. Ciesar and his 7,000 veterans sufficed
to rout the 60,000 Belgians. Proceeding with
similar vigor to further operations, and raising
new legions to increase his force, the proconsul
had stamped the rebellion out before the close of
the year 53 B. C. , and the Eburones, who led in
it, had ceased to exist. But the next year (B. C.
53) brought upon him a still more serious rising,
of the Gallic tribes in central Gaul, leagued with
the Belgians. Its leader was Vercingetorix, a
gallant and able young chief of the Arverni. It
was begun by the Carnutes, who massacred the
Roman settlers in their town of Genabum (prob-
ably modern Orleans, but some say Gien, farther
up the Loire). Caesar was on the Italian side of
the Alps when the news reached him, and the
Gauls expected to be able to prevent his joining
the scattered Roman forces in their country.
But his energy baffled them, as it had baffled
them many times before. He was across the
Alps, across the Rhone, over the Cevennes —
through six feet of snow in the passes — and in
their midst, with such troops as he could gather
in the Province, before they dreamed of lying in
wait for him. Then, leaving most of these forces
with Decimus Brutus, in a strong position, he
stole away secretly, recrossed the Cevennes, put
himself at the head of a small body of cavalry at
Vienne on the Rhone, and rode straight through
the country of the insurgents to join his veteran
legions, first at Langres and afterwards at Sens.
In a few weeks he was at the head of a strong
1444
GAUL, B. C. 58-51.
GAUL, A. D. 406-409.
.nrmy, had taken the guilty town of Genabum
and had given it up to fire and the sword. A
little later the capital of the Bituriges, Avaricum
(modern Bourges), suffered the same fate. Next,
attempting to reduce the Arvernian town of Ger-
govia, ho met with a check and was placed in a
serious strait. But with the able help of his
lieutenant Labienus, who defeated a powerful
combination of the Gauls near Lutetia (modern
Paris), he broke the toils, reunited his army,
which he had divided, routed Vercingetorix in
a great battle fought in the valley of the Vin-
geanne, and shut him up, with 80,000 men, in the
city oi: Alesia. The siege of Alesia (modern
Allse-Sainte-Reine, west of Dijon) which fol-
lowed, was the most extraordinary of Csesar's
military exploits in Gaul. Holding his circum-
vallation of the town, against 80,000 within its
walls and thrice as many swarming outside of it,
he scattered the latter and forced the surrender
of the former. His triumph was his greatest
shame. Like a very savage, he dragged the
knightly Vercingetorix in his captive ti-ain, ex-
hibited him at a subsequent " triumph" in Rome,
and then sent him to be put to death in the
ghastly Tullianum. The fall of Alesia practi-
cally ended the revolt; although even the next
year found some fighting to be done, and one
stronghold of the Cadurci, Uxellodunum (modern
Puy-dTssolu, near Vayrac), held out with great
obstinacy. It was taken by tapping with a tun-
nel the spring which supplied the besieged with
water, and Caesar punished the obstinacy of the
garrison by cutting off their hands. Gaul was
then deemed to be conquered and pacified, and
Caesar was prepared for the final contest with his
rivals and enemies at Rome. — Csesar, GallicWar.
Also in : G. Long, Decline of tlie Roman, Re-
public, V. 4. — Napoleon IIL, History of CcBsar. —
T. A. Dodge, Ca-mr, c/i. 4-25,
2d-3d Century. — Introduction of Christian-
ity. See Chkisti.inity : A. D. 100-312 (Gaul).
2d-7th Century. — Ancient Commerce. See
Tr.\db.
A. D. 277. — The invaders driven back by
Probus. — "The most important service which
Probus [Roman Emperor, A. D. 276-282] ren-
dered to the republic was the deliverance of
Gaul, and the recovery of seventy flourishing
cities oppressed by the barbarians of Germany,
who, since the death of Aurelian, had ravaged
that great province with impunity. Among the
various multitude of those fierce invaders, we
may distinguish, with some degree of clearness,
three great armies, or rather nations, successively
vanquished by the valour of Probus. He drove
back the Pranks into their morasses; a descrip-
tive circumstance from whence we may infer that
the confederacy known by the manly appellation
of ' Free ' already occupied the flat maritime
country, intersected and almost overflown by the
stagnating waters of the Rhine, and that several
tribes of the Frisians and Batavians had acceded
to their alliance. He vanquished the Burgun-
dians [and the Lygians], . . . The deliverance
of Gaul is reported to have cost the lives of 400,-
000 of the invaders — a work of labour to the
Romans, and of expense to the emperor, who
gave a piece of gold for the head of every bar-
barian." — E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, ch. 12. — See, also, Ltgians.
A. D. 287. — Insurrection of the Bagauds.
See Bagauds; also, Dedititius.
' A. D. 355-361. — Julian's recovery of the prov-
ince from the barbarians. — During the civil
wars and religious quarrels which followed the
deatli of Constantine the Great — more especially
in the three years of the usurpation of Magnen-
tius, in the west (A. D. 350-353), Gaul was not
only abandoned, for the most part, to the bar-
barians of Germany, but Franks and Alemanni
were invited by Constantius to enter it. " In a
little while a large part of the north and east of
Gaul were in their almost undisputed possession.
The Alamans seized upon the countries which
are now called Alsace and Lorraine; the Franks
secured for themselves Batavia and Toxandria:
forty -five flourishing cities, among them Cologne,
Treves, Spires, Worms, and Strasburg, were
ravaged; and, in short, from the sources of the
Rhine to its mouth, forty miles inland, there re-
mained no safety for the population but in the
strongly fortified towns." In this condition of
the Gallic provinces, Julian, the j'oimg nephew
of the emperor, was raised to the rank of Csesar
and sent thither with a trifling force of men to
take the command. "During an administration
of six j'ears [A. D. 355-361] this latest Caesar re-
vived in Gaul the memory of the indefatigable
exploits and the vigorous rule of the first Caesar.
Insufficient and ill-disciplined as his forces were,
and bafiled and betrayed as he was by those who
should have been his aids, he drove the fierce and
powerful tribes of the Alamans, who were now
the hydra of the western provinces, beyond the
Upper Rhine; the Chamaves, another warlike
tribe, he pursued into the heart of their native
forests ; while the still fiercer and more warlike
Franks were dislodged from their habitations on
the Meuse, to accept of conditions from his
hands. ... A part of these, called the Salians,
and destined to figure hereafter, were allowed to
settle in permanence in Toxandria, between the
Meuse and the Scheld, near the modern Tongres.
. . . By three successful expeditions beyond the
Rhine [he] restored to their friends a multitude
of Roman captives, recovered the broken and
down-trodden lines of the empire, humiliated
many of the proud chiefs of the Germans, and
impressed a salutary awe and respect upon their
truculent followers. ... He spent the intervals
of peace which his valor procured in recuperat-
ing the wasted energies of the inhabitants. Their
dilapidated cities were repaired, the excesses of
taxation retrenched, the deficient harvests com-
pensated by large importations of corn from
Britain, and the resources of suspended indus-
try stimulated into new action. Once more, says
Libanius, the Gauls ascended from the tombs to
marry, to travel, to enjoy the festivals, and to
celebrate the public games." — P. Godwin, Hist,
of France: Ancient Gaul, bk. 2, eh. 7.
Also in : E. Gibbon, Decline and Fall of the
Roman Empire, ch. 19.
A. D. 365-367. — Expulsion of the Alemanni
by Valentinian. See Alemanni: A. D. 365-367.
A. D. 378. — Invasion of the Alemanni. —
Their destruction by Gratian. See ALEM.\j«m :
A. D. 378.
A. D. 406-409. — The breaking of the Rhine
barrier. — The same year (A. D. 406) in which
Radagaisus, with his motley barbaric horde,
invaded Italy and was destroyed by Stilicho, a
more fatal assault was made upon Gaul. Two
armies, in which were gathered up a vast multi-
tude of Suevi, Vandals, Alans and Burgundians,
1445
GAUL, A. D. 406-409.
GAUL, 5TH-10TH CENTURIES.
passed the Rhine. The Franks opposed them as
faithful allies of the Roman power, and defeated
a Vandal army in one great battle, where 20,000
of the invaders were slain; but the Alans came
opportunely to the rescue of their friends and
forced the Frank defenders of Gaul to give way.
"The victorious confederates pursued their
march, and on the last day of the year, in a sea-
son when the waters of the Rhine were most
probably frozen, they entered without opposition
the defenceless provinces of Gaul. This mem-
orable passage of the Suevi, the Vandals, the
Alani, and the Burgundians, who never after-
wards retreated, may be considered as the fall of
the Roman empire in the countries beyond the
Alps ; and the barriers which had so long separa-
ted the savage and the civilized nations of the
earth were, from that fatal moment, levelled
with the ground. . . . The flourishing city of
Mentz was surprised and destroyed, and many
thousand Christians were inhumanly massacred
iu the church. Worms perished after a long and
obstinate siege ; Strasburg, Spires, Rheims, Tour-
nay, Arras, Amiens, experienced the cruel op-
pression of the German yoke ; and the consum-
ing flames of war spread from the banks of the
Rhine over the greatest part of the seventeen
provinces of Gaul. That rich and extensive
country, as far as the ocean, the Alps, and the
Pyrenees, was delivered to the barbarians, who
drove before them in a promiscuous crowd the
bishop, the senator, and the virgin, laden with
the spoils of their houses and altars. " — E. Gib-
bon, Decline and Fall of the R^ma/i Empire, ch. 30.
A. D. 407-411. — Reign of the usurper Con-
stantine. See Britain: A. D. 407.
A. D. 410-419. — Establishment of the Visi-
goths in the kingdom of Toulouse. See Goths
(Visigoths): A. D. 410-419.
A. D. 410-420. — The Franks join in the at-
tack on Gaul.— See Franks: A. D. 410-430.
Sth-8th Centuries. — Barbarities of the Frank
conquest.— The conquestsof the Franks in Gaul,
under Clovis, began in 486 and ended with his
death in 511 (see Fr-UTEs: A. D. 481-511). "In
the year 533, Theoderik, one of the sons and
successors of Chlodowig, said to those Fraukish
warriors whom he commanded : ' Follow me as
far as Auvergne, and I will make you enter a
country where you will take as much gold and
silver as you possibly can desire ; where you can
carry away in abundance flocks, slaves, and
garments.' The Franks took up arms and once
more crossing the Loire, they advanced on the
territory of the Bituriges and Arvernes. These
paid with interest for the resistance they had
dared to the first invasion. Everything amongst
them was devastated ; the churches and monas-
teries were razed to their foundations. The
young men and women were dragged, their
hands bound, after the luggage to be sold as
slaves. The inhabitants of this unfortunate coun-
try perished in large numbers or were ruined by
the pillage. Nothing was left them of what
they had possessed, says an ancient chronicle,
except the land, which the barbarians could not
carry away. Sucl> were the neighbourly rela-
tions kept up by the Franks with the Gallic
populations whicli liad remained beyond their
limits. Their conduct with respect to the natives
of the northern provinces was hardly less hostile.
When Hilperik, the son of Chlother, wished, in
the year 584, to send his daughter in marriage to
the king of the West Goths, or Visigoths, settled
in Spain, he came to Paris and carried away from
the houses belonging to the ' fisc ' a great num-
ber of men and women, who were heaped up in
chariots to accompany and serve the bride elect.
Those who refused to depart, and wept, were
put in prison: several strangled themselves in
despair. Many people of the best families en-
listed by force into this procession, made their
will, and gave their property to the churches.
' The son,' says a contemporary, ' was separated
from his father, the mother from her daughter;
they departed sobbing, and pronouncing deep
curses ; so many persons in Paris were in tears
that it might be compared to the desolation of
Egypt. ' In their domestic misfortunes the kings
of the Franks sometimes felt remorse, and trem-
bled at the evil they had done. . . . But this
momentary repentance soon yielded to the love
of riches, the most violent passion of the Franks.
Their incursions into the south of Gaul recom-
menced as soon as that country, recovered from
its terrors and defeats, no longer admitted their
garrisons nor tax collectors. Karle, to whom the
fear of his arms gave the surname of Marteau,
made an inroad as far as Slarseilles; he took
possession of Lyons, Aries, and Vienne, and car-
ried off an immense booty to the territory of the
Franks. When this same Karle, to insure his
frontiers, went to fight the Saracens in Aquita-
nia, he put the whole country to fire and sword;
he burnt Bergiers, Agde, and Nflnes ; the arenas
of the latter city still bear traces of the fire. At
death of Karle, his two sons, Karlemann and
Peppin, continued the great enterprise of re-
placing the inhabitants of the south, to whom
the name of Romans was still given, under the
yoke of the Pranks. . . . Southern Gaul was to
the sons of the Franks what entire Gaul had been
to their fathers ; a country, the riches and climate
of which attracted them incessantly, and saw
them return as enemies, as soon as it did not
purchase peace of them." — A. Thierry, Narra-
tives of the Merovingian Era, Historical Essays,
etc. , essay 24.
5th-ioth Centuries. — The conquerors and
the conquered. — State of society under the
barbarian rule. — The evolution of Feudalism.
— "After the conclusion of the great struggles
which took place in the fourth and fifth centuries,
whether between the German conquerors and the
last forces of the empire, or between the nations
which had occupied different portions of Gaul,
until the Franks remained sole masters of the
country, two races, two populations, which had
nothing in common but religion, appear forcibly
brought together, and, as it were, face to face
with each other, in one political community.
The GaUo-Roman population presents under the
same law very different 'and very unequal condi-
tions; the barbarian population comprises, to-
gether with its own peculiar classifications of
ranks and conditions, distinct laws and nationali-
ties. In the first we find citizens absolutely free,
coloni, or husbandmen belonging to the lands of
a proprietor, and domestic slaves deprived of all
civil rights; in the second, we see the Prankish
race divided into two tribes, each having its own
peculiar law [the law of the Salic Franks or Salic
law, and the law of the Ripuarian Franks or
Ripuarian law] ; the Burgundians, the Goths, and
the rest of the 'Teutonic races, who became sub-
jected, either of their own accord or by force, to
1446
GAUL, 5TH-10TH CENTURIES.
GAUL, 5TH-10TH CENTURIES.
the Frankish empire, governed by other and en-
tirely different laws; but among them all, as
well as among the Franks, we find at least three
social conditions — two degrees of libertj', and
slavery. Among these incongruous states of ex-
istence, the criminal law of the dominant race
established, by means of the scale of damages for
crime or personal injury, a lund of hierarchy —
the starting-point of that movement towards an
assimilation and gradual transformation, which,
after the lapse of four centuries, from the fifth to
the tenth, gave rise to the society of the feudal
times. The first rank in the civil order belonged
to the man of Frankish origin, and to the Bar-
barian who lived under the law of the Franks ; in
the second rank was placed the Barbarian, who
lived under the law of his own country; next
came the native freeman and proprietor, the
Roman possessor, and, in the same degree, the
Lidus or German colonus ; after them, the Roman
tributary — i. e., the native colonus; and, last of
all, the slave, without distinction of origin.
These various classes, separated on the one hand
by distance of rank, on the other by difference of
laws, manners, and language, were far from
being equally distributed between the cities and
the rural districts. All that was elevated in the
Gallo-Roman population, of whatever character
it might be, was found in the cities, where its
noble, rich, and industrious families dwelt, sur-
rounded by their domestic slaves; and, among
the people of that race, the only constant resi-
dents in the country were the half-servile coloni
and the agricultural slaves. On the contrary,
the superior class of the German population es-
tablished itself in the country, where each family,
independent and proprietary, was maintained on
its own domain by the labour of the Lidi whom
it had brought thither, or of the old race of
coloni who belonged to the soil. The only Ger-
mans who resided in the cities were a small num-
ber of officers in the service of the Crown, and of
individuals without family and patrimony, who,
in spite of their original habits, sought a liveli-
hood by following some employment. The
social superiority of the dominant race rooted it-
self firmly in the localities inhabited by them,
and passed, as has been already remarked, from
the cities to the rural districts. By degrees, also,
it came to pass that the latter drew off from the
former the upper portion of their population,
who, in order to raise themselves still higher,
and to mix with the conquerors, imitated, as far
as they were able, their mode of life. . . . "While
Barbarism was thus occupying or usurping all the
vantage points of the social state, and civil life
in the intermediate classes was arrested in its
progress, and sinking gradually to the lowest
condition, even to that of personal servitude, an
ameliorating movement already commenced be
fore the fall of the empire, still continued, and
declared itself more and more loudly. The
dogma of a common brotherhood in the eyes of
God, and of one sole redemption for all mankind,
preached by the Church to the faithful of every
race, touched the heart and awakened the mind
in favour of the slave, and, in consequence, en-
franchisements became more frequent, or a treat-
ment more humane was adopted on the part of
the masters, whether Gauls or Germans by origin.
The latter, moreover, had imported from their
country, where the mode of life was simple and
without luxury, usages favourable to a modified
slavery. The rich barbarian was waited upon
by free persons — by the children of his relatives,
his clients and his friends; the tendcncj' of his
national manners, different from that of the
Roman, induced him to send the slave out of his
house, and to establish him as a labourer or ar-
tisan on some portion of land to which he then
became permanently attached, and the destina-
tion of which he followed, whether it were in-
herited or sold. . . . Domestic slavery made the
man a chattel, a mere piece of moveable property.
The slave, settled on a spot of land, from that
time entered into the category of real property.
At the same time that this last class, which
properly bore the name of serfs, was increased
at the expense of the first, the classes of the
coloni and Lidi would naturally multiply simul-
taneously, by the very casualties of ruin and ad-
verse circumstances which, at a period of inces-
sant commotions, injured the condition of the
freemen. ... In the very heart of the Barbarian
society, the class of small proprietors, which had
originally formed its strength and glory, de-
creased, and finally became extinct by sinking
into vassalage, or a state of still more ignoble
dependence, which partook more or less of the
character of actual servitude. . . . The freemen
depressed towards servitude met the slave who
had reached a sort of half liberty. Thus, through
the whole extent of Gaul, was formed a vast body
of agricultural labourers and rural artisans, whose
lot, though never uniform, was brought more and
more to a level of equality; and the creative
wants of society produced a new sphere of indus-
try in the country, while the cities remained
stationary, or sank more and more into decay.
. . . On every large estate where improvement
flourished, the cabins of those employed, Lidi,
coloni or slaves, grouped as necessity or conveni-
ence suggested, were multiplied and peopled
more numerously, till they assumed the form of
a hamlet. "When these hamlets were situated in
a favourable position . . . they continued to in-
crease till they became villages. . . . The build-
ing of a church soon raised the village to the
rank of a parish ; and, as a consequence, the new
parish took its place among the rural circon-
scriptions. . . . Thence sprung, altogether spon-
taneously, under the sanction of the intendant,
joined to that of the priest, rude outlines of a
municipal organization, in which the church be-
came the depository of the acts which, in accor-
dance with the Roman law, were inscribed on the
registers of the city. It is in this wa}' that be-
yond the towns, the cities, and the boroughs,
where the remains of the old social condition
lingered in an increasing state of degradation,
elements of future improvement were formed.
. . . This modification, already considerably ad-
vanced in the ninth century, was completed in
the course of the tenth. At that period, the last
class of the Gallo-Frankish society disappeared
— viz., that of persons held as chattels, bought,
exchanged, transferred from one place to another,
like any other kind of moveable goods. The
slave now belonged to the soil rather than to
the person; his service, hitherto arbitrary, was
changed into customary dues and regulated em-
ployment; he had a settled abode, and, in conse-
quence, a right of possession in the soil on which
he was dependent. This is the earliest form in
which we distinctly trace the first impress of the
modern world upon the civil state. The word
144
GAUL, 5TH-10TH CENTURIES.
GAULS.
serf henceforward took its definite meaning; it
became the generic name of a mixed condition of
servitude and freedom, in which we find blended
together the states of the colonus and Lidus —
two names which occur less and less frequently
in the tenth century, till they entirely disappear.
This century, the point to which all the social
efforts of the four preceding ones which had
elapsed since the Prankish conquest had been
tending, saw the intestine struggle between the
Roman and German manners brought to a con-
clusion by an important revolution. The latter
definitively prevailed, and from their triumph
arose the feudal system; that is to say, a new
form of the state, a new constitution of property
and domestic life, a parcelling out of the sover-
eignty and jurisdiction, all the public powers
transformed into demesnial privileges, the idea of
nobility devoted to the profession of arms, and
that of ignobility to industry and labour. By a
remarkable coincidence, the complete establish-
ment of this system is the epoch when the dis-
tinction of races terminates in Frankish Gaul —
when all the legal consequences of diversity of
origin between Barbarians and Romans, conquer-
ors and subjects, disappear. The law ceases to
be personal, and becomes local; the German
codes and the Roman code itself are replaced by
custom ; it is the territory and not the descent
which distinguishes the inhabitant of the Gallic
soil ; finally, instead of national distinctions, one
mixed population appears, to which the historian
is able henceforward to give the name of French. "
— A. Thierry, Formation and Progress of the
Tiers Etat in France, v. 1, ch. 1.
A. D. 412-453. — The mixed administration,
Roman and barbarian. — "A praetorian prefect
still resided at Treves; a vicar of the seventeen
Gallic provinces at Aries: each of these provinces
had its Roman duke; each of the hundred and
fifteen cities of Gaul had its count; each city its
curia, or municipality. But, collaterally with
this Roman organisation, the barbarians, assem-
bled in their ' mallum,' of which their kings were
presidents, decided on peace and war, made laws,
or administered justice. Each division of the
army had its Graf Jarl, or Count ; each subdivi-
sion its centenary, or hundred-man ; and all these
fractions of the free population had the same
right of deciding by suffrage in their own mal-
lums, or peculiar courts, all their common affairs.
In cases of opposition between the barbarian and
the Roman jurisdiction, the overbearing arro-
gance of the one, and the abject baseness of the
other, soon decided the question of supremacy.
In some provinces the two powers were not con-
current: there were no barbarians between the
Loire and the Meuse, nor between the Alps and
the Rhone ; but the feebleness of the Roman gov-
ernment was only the more conspicuous. A few
great proprietors cultivated a part of the prov-
ince with the aid of slaves; the rest was desert,
or only inhabited by Bagaudse, runaway slaves,
who lived by robbery. Some towns still main-
tained a show of opulence, but not one gave the
slightest sign of strength; not one enrolled its
militia, nor repaired its fortifications. . . . Hono-
rius wished to confer on the cities of southern
Gaul a diet, at which they might have deliberated
on public affairs: he did not even find public
spirit enough to accept the offered privilege. " —
J. C. L. de Sismondi, Fall of tlie Rwnan Empire,
ch. 7 (-0. 1).
A. D. 451. — Attila's invasion. See Htjjts:
A. D. 4.51.
A. D. 453-484. — Extension of the Visigothic
kingdom. See Goths (Visigoths): A. D. 453-
484.
A. D. 457-486.— The last Roman sover-
eignty. — The last definite survival of Roman sov-
ereignty in Gaul lingered until 486 in a district
north of the Seine, between the Marne and the
Oise, which had Soissons for its capital. It was
maintained there, in the first instance, by ^gi-
dius, a Gallic noble whom Marjorian, one of the
last of the emperors at Rome, made Master-Gen-
eral of Gaul. The respect commanded by jEgi-
dius among the surrounding barbarians was so
great that the Salian Franks invited him to rule
over them, in place of a licentious young king,
Childeric, whom they had driven into exile. He
was king of these Franks, according to Gregory
of Tours, for eight years (457-464), until he died.
Childeric then returned, was reinstated in his
kingdom and became the father of Clovis (or
Chlodwig), the founder of the great Frank mon-
archy. But a son of ^gidius, named Syagrius,
was still the inheritor of a kingdom, known as
the "Kingdom of Syagrius," embracing, as has
been said, the country around Soissons, between
the Seine, the Marne and the Oise, and also in-
cluding, in the opinion of some writers, Troyes
and Auxerre. The first exploit of Clovis — the
beginning of his career of conquest — was the
overthrow of this "king of the Romans," as Sya-
frius was called, in a decisive battle fought at
oissons, A. D. 486, and the incorporation of his
kingdom into the Frank dominions. Syagrius es-
caped to Toulouse, but was surrendered to Clovis
and put to death. — P. Godwin, Sist. of Frarvae:
Ancient QaiiX, bk. 3, ch. 11.
Also in : W. C. Perry, The Franks, ch. 2.
A. D. 474. — Invasion of Ostrogoths. See
Goths (Ostrogoths) : A. D, 473-474.
A. D. 507-509. — Expulsion of the Visigoths.
See Goths (Visigoths) : A. D. 507-509.
A. D. 540. — Formal relinquishment of the
country to the Franks by Justinian. See
Franks: A. D. 539-558.
GAULS. — "The Gauls, properly so called,
the Galatse of the Greeks, the Galli of the Romans,
and the Gael of modern history, formed the van
of the great Celtic migration which had poured
westward at various intervals during many hun-
dred 3'ears. . . . Having overrun the south of
Gaul and penetrated into Spain, they lost a part
of the territory thus acquired, and the restoration
of the Iberian fugitives to Aquitania placed a
barrier between the Celts in Spain and their breth-
ren whom they had left behind them in the north.
In the time of the Romans the Galli were found
established in the centre and east of the country
denominated Gaul, forming for the most part a
great confederation, at the head of which stood
the Arvemi. It was the policy of the Romans to
raise the .(Edui into competition with this domi-
nant tribe. . . . The Arvemi, whose name is re-
tained in the modern appellation of Auvergne,
occupied a large district in the middle and south
of Gaul, and were surrounded by tributary or de-
pendent clans. The iEdui lay more to the north
and east, and the centre of their possessions is
marked by the position of their capital Bibracte,
the modem Autun, situated in the highlands
which separate the waters of the Loire, the Seine
1448
GAULS.
GEDROSIANS.
and the Saone. . . . Other Gallic tribes stretched
beyond the Saone : the Sequani, who afterwards
made an attempt to usurp this coveted preemi-
nence (the valley of the Doubs formed the centre
of the Sequanese territory, which reached to the
Jura and the Rhine) ; the Helvetii and othermoun-
tain races, whose scanty pastures extended to the
sources of the Rhine ; the Allobroges, who dwelt
upon the Isere and Rhone, and who were the first
of their race to meet and the first to succumb be-
fore the prowess of the Roman legions. Accord-
ing to the classification both of Caesar and Strabo,
the Turones, Pictones and Santones must be com-
prised under the same general denomination. " —
C. Merivale, Hist, of the Romans, ch. 5 (». 1). —
See, also, Celts.
B.C. 390-347. — Invasions of Italy. — De-
struction of Rome. See Rome : B. C. .390-347.
B. C. 295-191. — Roman conquest of the Cis-
alpine tribes. See Ro.me: B. C. 295-191.
B. C. 280-279. — Invasion of Greece. — In the
year 280 B. C. the Gauls, who had long before
passed from northern Italy around the Adriatic
to its eastern coast, made their first appearance
in Macedonia and northern Greece. The Mace-
donian throne was occupied at the time by the
infamous usurper, Ptolemy Ceraunus (see Mace-
donia: B. C. 297-380), and the Celtic savages
did one good service to Greece by slaying him,
in the single battle that was fought. The whole
open country was abandoned to them, for a time,
and they swept it, as far southward as the valley
of the Peneus, in Thessaly ; but the walled cities
were safe. After ravaging the country for some
months the Gauls appear to have retired ; but it
was only to return again the next year in more
formidable numbers and under a chief, Brennus,
of more vigor and capability. On this occasion
the country suffered fearfully from the barbaric
swarm, but defended itself with something lilie
the spirit of the Greece of two centuries before.
The .iEtolians were conspicuous in the struggle ;
the Peloponnesian states gave little assistance.
The policy of defense was much the same as at
the time of the Persian invasion, and the enemy
was confronted in force at the pass of Thermop-
ylae. Brennus made a more desperate attempt
to force the pass than Xerxes had done and was
beaten back with a tremendous slaughter of his
Gauls. But he found traitors, as Xerxes had
done, to guide him over the mountains, and the
Greeks at Thermopylse, surrounded by the enemy,
could only escape by sea. The Gauls marched
on Delphi, eager for the plunder of the great
temple, and there they met with some fatal dis-
aster. Precisely what occurred is not known.
According to the Greeks, the god protected his
sanctuary, and the accounts they have left are
full of miracles and prodigies — of earthquakes,
lightnings, tempests, and disease. The only clear
facts seem to be that Delphi was successfully
defended ; that the Gauls retreated in disorder
and were destroyed in vast numbers before the
remnant of them got away from the country.
Brennus is said to have killed himself to escape
the wrath of his people for the failure of the ex-
pedition. One large body of the great army had
separated from the rest and gone eastward into
Thrace, before the catastrophe occurred. These
subsequently passed over to Asia and pursued
there an adventurous career, leaving a historic
name in the country — see Galatia. — C. Thirl-
wall. Hist, of Gh-eece, ch. 60.
GAULS, Praefect of the. See PR.fflTORiAK
T' 1? y?r IT p" f r s
GAUSARAPOS, OR GUUCHIES, The.
See American Aborigines: Pampas Tribes.
GAVELKIND, Irish.— "The Irish law of
succession in landed property, known as that of
Irish gavelkind, was a logical consequence of the
theory of tribal ownership. If a member of the
tribe died, his piece of land did not descend by
right to his eldest son, or even to all his children
equally. Originally, it reverted to its sole abso-
lute owner, the tribe, every member of which
had a right to use proportionate to his tribal
status. This was undoubtedly the essential prin-
ciple of inheritance by gavelkind." — S. Bryant,
Celtic Ireland, ch. 6.
Also en: Sir H. Maine, Early Hist, of Institu-
tions, led. 7.
GAVELKIND, Kentish. See Feudal Ten-
ures.
GAVEREN, Battle of (1453). See Ghent:
A. D. 1451-1453.
GAZA: Early history. See Philistines.
B. C. 332.— Siege by Alexander. — In his
march from Phoenicia to Egypt (see Macedonia,
&c. : B. C. 334-330), Alexander the Great was
compelled to pause for several months and lay
siege to the ancient Philistine city of Gaza. It
was defended for the Persian king by a brave
eunuch named Batis. In the course of the siege,
Alexander received a severe wound in the shoul-
der, which irritated his savage temper. When
the town was at length taken by storm, he gave
no quarter. Its male inhabitants were put to
the sword and the women and children sold to
slavery. The euuuch Batis, being captured alive,
but wounded, was dragged by the feet at the tail
of a chariot, driven at full speed by Alexander
himself. The "greatest of conquerors" proved
himself often enough, in this way, to be the
greatest of barbarians — in his age. — G. Grote,
Hist, of (Greece, pt. 2, ch. 93.
B. C. 312.— Battle between Ptolemy and
Demetrius. See Macedonia : B. C. 315-310.
B. C. 100. — Destruction by Alexander Jan-
naeus. — Gaza having sided with the Egyptian
king, in a war between Alexander Jannseus, one
of the Asmoneau kings of the Jews, and Ptolemy
Lathyrus of Egypt and Cyprus, the former laid
siege to the city, about 100 B. C., and acquired
possession of it after several months, through
treachery. He took his revenge by massacring
the inhabitants and reducing the city to ruins.
It was rebuilt not long afterwards by the Romans.
— G. Long, Decline of the Boman Republic, v. 8,
ch. 9.
A. D. 1516. — Defeat of the Mamelukes by
the Turks. See Turks: A. D. 1481-1530.
GAZACA. See Ecbatana.
GAZARI, The. See Cathajiists.
GAZNEVIDES, OR GHAZNEVIDES.
See Turks: A. D. 999-1183.
GEARY ACT, The. See United States op
Am. : A. D. 1892.
GEDDES, Jenny, and her stool. See Scot-
land: A. D. 1637.
GEDROSIANS, The.— "Close to the Indus,
and beyond the bare, hot, treeless shores of the
ocean, the southern part of the plain [of eastern
Iran] consists of sandy flats, in which nothing
grows but prickly herbs and a few palms. The
1449
GEDROSIANS.
GENEVA.
springs are a day's journey from each other, and
often more. This region Tvas possessed by a
people whom Herodotus calls Sattagydis and the
companions of Alexander of Macedonia, Gedro-
sians. . . . Neighbours of the Gandarians, who,
as we know, dwelt on the right bank of the Indus
down to the Cabul, the Gedrosians led a wander-
ing, predatory life ; under the Persian kings they
were united into one satrapy with the Gandari-
ans." — M. Duncker, Hist, of Antiquity, bk. 7,
ell. 1 (v. 5).
GEIZA II., King of Hungary, A. D. 1141-
1160.
GELA, Founding of. See Stracusb, Found-
ing OF.
GELASIUS 11., Pope, A. D. 1118-1119.
GELEONTES. See Phyl^.
GELHEIM, Battle of {1298). SeeGBRMANT:
A. D. 1273-1308.
GELONI, The. — An ancient colony of Greeks
Intermixed with natives which shared the coun-
try of the Budini, on the steppes between, the
"Ural Mountains and the Caspian Sea. — 6. Grote,
Hist, of Greece, pt. 2, ■». 3, ch. 17.
GELVES, Battle of (1510). See Baebaey
States: A. D. 1505-1510.
GEMARA, The. See TALsruD.
GEMBLOURS, Battle of (1578). SeeNETH-
EKL.ANDs: A. D. 1577-1581.
GEMEINDE. — GEMEINDERATH. See
Switzerland: A. D. 1848-1890.
GEMOT. — A meeting, assembly, council,
moot. See Witenagbmot.
GENABUM, OR CENABUM.— The prin-
cipal town of the Gallic tribe called the Carnutes;
identified by most archaeologists with the modem
city of Orleans, France, though some think its
site was at Gien. See Gaul, C.iEsar's conquest
OP.
GENAUNI, The. See Riletians.
GENERAL PRIVILEGE OF ARAGON.
See Cortes, The early Spanish.
GENERALS, Execution of the Athenian.
See Greece: B.C. 406.
GENET, " Citizen," the mission of. See
United States of Am. : A. D. 1793.
GENEVA: Beginnings of the city. SeeHBL-
VETn, The Arrested Migr.vtion op the.
A. D. SOD. — Under the Burgundians. See
Burgundians: a. D. 500.
loth Century. — In the kingdom of Aries. See
Burgundy: A. D. 843-933.
A. D. 1401. — Acquisition of the Genevois, or
County, by the House of Savoy. — The city sur-
rounded. See Savoy: Hth-ISth Centuries.
A. D. 1504-1535.— The emancipation of the
city from the Vidomme and the Prince-Bishop.
— Triumph of the Reformation. — "Geneva was
nominally a free city of the Empire, but had in
reality been governed for some centuries by its
own bishop, associated with a committee of lay-
assessors, and controlled by the general body of
the citizens, in whose hands the ultimate power
of taxation, and of election of the magistrates and
regulation of the police, rested. The prince-
bishop did not exercise his temporal jurisdiction
directly, but through an officer called the Vi-
domme (vice-dominus), whose rights had in the
15th century become hereditary in the dukes of
Savoy. These rights appear to have been exer-
cised without any considerable attempt at en-
croachment till the beginning of the following
century, when Charles III. succeeded to the
ducal crown (1504). To his ambition the bishop,
John, a weak and willing tool of the Savoy
famil}', to which he was nearly allied, ceded
everything ; and the result was a tyrannical at-
tempt to destroy the liberties of the Genevese.
The Assemblj' of the citizens rose in arms; a
bitter and sanguinary contest ensued between
the Eidgenossen [Confederates] or Patriot party
on the one side, and the Mamelukes or monarch-
ical party on the other side. By the help of the
free Helvetian states, particularly Berne and
Friburg, the Patriots triumphed, the friends of
Savoy were banished, the Vidommate abolished,
and its powers transferred to a board of magis-
trates. The conduct of the bishops in this con-
flict . . . helped greatly, as may be imagined,
to shake the old hierarchical authority in Geneva ;
and when, in 1533, Farel first made his appear-
ance in the city, he found a party not indisposed
to join him in his eager and zealous projects of
reform. He had a hard fight for it, however,
and was at first obliged to yield, and leave the
city for a time; and it was not till August 1535
that he and Viret and Froment succeeded in
abolishing the mass, and establishing the Prot-
estant faith." — J. Tulloch, Leaders of the Bef-
ormation, pp. 161-162.
Also in : J. Planta, Hist, of tlie Helvetic Con-
federacy, bk. 2, ch. 6 («. 2). — I. Spon, Hist, of
the City and State of Oeneva, bk. 2. — See, also,
Switzerland: A. D. 1531-1648.
A. D. 1536. — The coming of Calvin. See
Papacy: A. D. 1521-1535.
A. D. 1536-1564. — Calvin's Ecclesiastical
State. — " Humanly speaking, it was amereaeci-
dent which caused Calvin to yield to the en-
treaties of his friends to remain in the city where
he was to begin his renowned efforts in the cause
of reform. Geneva had been from ancient times
one of the most flourishing imperial cities of the
Burgundian territory; it was situated on the
frontiers of several countries where the cross
roads of various nationalities met. The city,
which fh itself was remarkable, belonged origi-
nally to the German empire ; the language of its
inhabitants was Romanic; it was bounded on
one side by Burgundy, on the other by German
Switzerland. . . . Geneva was apparently in a
state of political, ecclesiastical, and moral decay.
With the puritanical strictness of Geneva, as it
afterwards became, before the mind's eye, it is
diflScult to picture the Geneva of that day. An
unbridled love of pleasure, a reckless wanton-
ness, a licentious' frivolity had taken possession
of Genevan life, while the State was the play-
thing of intestine and foreign feuds. . . . Re-
formers had already appeared in the city: Vinet,
Farel, Theodore Beza; they were Frenchmen,
Farel a near neighbour of Geneva. These French
Reformers are of quite a different stamp from
our Germans, who, according as Luther or Mel-
ancthon is taken as their type, have either a
plebeian popular, or learned theological charac-
ter. They are either popular orators of great
power and little polish, or they belong to the
learned circles, and keep strictly to this charac-
ter. In France they were mostly men belonging
not to the lower, but to the middle and higher
ranks of society, refined and cultivated ; and in
this fact lay the weakness of Calvinism, which
knew well how to rule the masses, but never to
gain their affection. . . . His [Calvin's] great-
1450
GENEVA.
The Rule of
Calvin.
GENEVA.
ness . . . was shown in the fanatical zeal with
which he entered the city, ready to stake his life
for his cause. He began to teach, to found a
school, to labour on the structure which was the
idea of his life, to introduce reforms in doctrine,
worship, the constitution and discipline of the
Church, and he preached with that powerful elo-
quence only possessed by those in whom char-
acter and teaching are in unison. The purified
worship was to take place within bare, unadorned
walls; no picture of Christ, nor pomp of any
kind, was to disturb the aspirations of the soul.
Life outside the temple was also to be a ser-
vice of God ; games, swearing, dancing, singing,
worldly amusements, and pleasure were re-
garded by him as sins, as much as real vice and
crime. He began to form little congregations,
like those in the early ages of the Church, and it
need scarcely be said that even in this worldly
and pleasure-loving city the apparition of this
man, in the full vigour of life, all conviction and
determination, half prophet and half tribune,
produced a powerful impression. The number
of his outward followers increased, but they were
outward followers only. Most of them thought
it would be well to make use of the bold Re-
former to oppose the bishop, and that he would
find means of establishing a new and independent
Church, but they seemed to regard freedom as
libertinism. Calvin therefore regarded the course
things were taking with profound dissatisfaction.
... So he delivered some extremely severe ser-
mons, which half frightened and half estranged
his hearers; and at Easter, 1538, when the con-
gregation came to partake of the Lord's Supper,
he took the imheard-of step of sending them all
back from the altar, saying, ' You are not worthy
to partake of the Lord's body ; you are just what
you were before ; your sentiments, your morals,
and your conduct are unchanged.' This was
more than could be hazarded without peril to
his life. The effect was indescribable ; his own
friends disapproved of the step. But that did
not dismay him. He had barely time to flee for
his life, and he had to leave Geneva in a state of
transition — a chaos which justified a saying of
his own, that defection from one Church is not
renovation by another. He was now once more
an exile. He wandered about on the frontiers of
his country, in the German cities of Strasburg,
Basle, &c., and we several times meet with him
in the religious discussions between 1540 and
1550. . . . But a time came wlien they wished
him back at Geneva. ... In September, 1541,
he returned and began his celebrated labours,
Endowed with supreme power, like Lycurgus
at Sparta, he set to work to make Geneva a city
of the Lord — to found an ecclesiastical state in
which religion, public life, government, and the
worship of God were to be all of a piece, and an
extraordinary task it was. Calvinistic Geneva
became the school of reform for western Europe,
and scattered far and wide the germs of similar
institutions. In times when Protestantism else-
where had become cool, this school carried on the
conflict with the mediaeval Church. Calvin was
implacable in his determination to purify the
worship of God of all needless adjuncts. All
that was calculated to charm and affect the senses
was abolished ; spiritual worship should be inde-
pendent of all earthly things, and should consist
of edification by the word, and simple spiritual
songs. All the traditional externals that Luther
had retained — altars, pictures, ceremonials, and
decorations of every kind — were dispensed with.
. . . Calvin next established a system of Church
discipline which controlled the individual in
every relation of life, and ruled him from the
cradle to the grave. He retained all the means
by which ecclesiastical authority enforced obedi-
ence on the faithful in the Middle Ages — bap-
tism, education up to confirmation, penance,
penal discipline, and excommunication. . . .
Calvin began his labours late in the autumn of
1541, and he acquired and maintained more
power than was ever exercised by the most pow-
erful popes. He was indeed only the ' preacher
of the word,' but through his great influence he
was the lawgiver, the administrator, the dictator
of the State of Geneva. There was nothing in
the commonwealth that had not been ordained
by him, and this indicates a remarkable aspect
of his character. The organization of the State
of Geneva began with the ordinances of the 2nd
of January, 1542. There were four orders of
officials — pastors, teachers, elders, and deacons.
The Consistory was formed of the pastors and
elders. ... It was the special duty of the Consis-
tory, which was composed of the clergy and
twelve laymen, to see that the ordinances were
duly observed, and it was the supreme tribunal
of morals. The twelve laymen were elected for
a year, by the council of two hundred, on the
nomination by the clergy. The Consistory met
every Thursday to see that everything in the
church was in order. They had the power
of excommunication, but this only consisted in
exclusion from the community of the faithful,
and the loss of the privilege of partaking of the
Lord's Supper. It also decided questions relat-
ing to marriage. The deacons had the care of
the poor and of almsgiving. Calvin himself
was the soul of the whole organization. But he
was a cold, stiff, almost gloomy being, and his
character produces a very different impression
from the genial warmth of Luther, who could be
cheerful and merry with his family. Half Old
Testament prophet, half Republican demagogue,
Calvin could do anything in his State, but it was
by means of his personal influence, the authority
of his words, 'the majesty of his character,' as
was said by a magistrate of Geneva after his
death. He was to the last the simple minister,
whose frugal mode of life appeared to his ene-
mies like niggardliness. After a reign of twenty -
three years, he left behind him the possessions of
a mendicant monk. . . . No other reformer es-
tablished so rigid a church discipline. . . . All
noisy games, games of chance, dancing, singing
of profane songs, cursing and swearing, were
forbidden, and . . . church-going and Sabbath-
keeping were strictly enjoined. The moral po-
lice took account of everything. Every citizen
had to be at home by nine o'clock, under heavy
penalties. Adultery, which had previously been
punished by a few days' imprisonment and a
small fine, was now punished by death. ... At
a time when Europe had no solid results of re-
form to show, this little State of Geneva stood
up as a great power ; year by year it sent forth
apostles into the world, who preached its doc-
trines everywhere, and it became the most dreaded
counterpoise to Rome, when Rome no longer had
any bulwark to defend her. ... It formed a
weighty counterpoise to the desperate efforts
which the ancient Church and monarchical power
U51
GENEVA.
GENOA, 1261-1299.
were making to crush the spirit of the Reforma-
tion. It was impossible to oppose Caraffa, Philip
II., and the Stuarts, with Luther's passive resis-
tance ; men were wanted who were ready to wage
war to the knife, and such was the Calvinistio
school. It everywhere accepted the challenge;
throughout all the conflicts for political and re-
ligious liberty, up to the time of the tirst emi-
gration to America, in France, the Netherlands,
England, and Scotland, we recognise the Genevan
school. A little bit of the world's history was
enacted in Geneva, which forms the proudest
portion of the sixteenth and seventeenth cen-
turies." — L. Hausser, The Period of the Reforma-
tion, ch. 18.
Also m : P. Henry, Life and Times of Calvin,
pt. 2-3.— J. H. Merle D'Aubigne, Hist, of the
Reformation in the time of Calvin, bk. 9 and 11. — •
F. P. Guizot, Calvin, ch. 12-23.— L. von Ranke,
Civil Wars and Monarchy in Fi'aiice, 16i/t-17<A
Centuries, ch. 8.
A. D. 1570. — Treaty with the Duke of Sa-
voy. — Agreement of non-molestation. See Sa-
voy: A. D. 1559-1580.
A. D. 1 602-1603. — The escalade of the Sa-
voyards and its repulse. — Treaty of St. Julien.
— Finding a pretext in some hostile manifesta-
tions which had appeared among the Genevese
during a conflict between the French king and
himself, Charles Emanuel I. , duke of Savoy, chose
to consider himself at war with Geneva, and
"determined to flght out his quarrel without
further notice. The night of the 11th to the 12th
of December, 1602, is forever memorable in the
annals of Geneva. 4,000 Savoyards, aided by
darkness, attempted the escalade of its walls ; an
unforeseen accident disconcerted them ; the citi-
zens exhibited the most heroic presence of mind ;
the ladders by which the aggressors ascended
were shot down by a random cannon-ball; the
troops outside fell into confusion ; those who had
already entered the town were either mowed
down in fight or hung on the scafEold on the
morrow; thus the whole enterprise miscarried.
It was in vain that the Duke came forward with
his whole host, and tried to prevail by open force
where stratagem had failed. He was thwarted
by the intervention of the French and Swiss, and
compelled by their threats to sign the Treaty of
St. Julien (July 21st, 1603), which secured the
independence of the Genevese. Charles never-
theless did not, to his last day, give up his de-
signs upon that city." — A. Gallenga, Hist, of
Piedmont, v. 3, ch. 2.
A. D. 1798. — Forcibly united to the French
Republic. See Switzerland: A. D. 1792-
1798.
A. D. 1814. — United with the Swiss Con-
federation. See Switzerland: A. D. 1803-
1848.
A. D. 1815. — United as a canton to the
Swiss Confederation, by the Congress of
■Vienna. See Vienna, The Congress of.
GENEVA CONVENTION, The. See Red
Cross.
GENEVA TRIBUNAL OF ARBITRA-
TION. See Al.^ama Claims: A. D. 1871, and
1871-1873.
GENEVOIS, The. See Savoy am) Pied-
mont: 11th-15th Centuries.
GENGHIS KHAN, The conquests of. See
Mongols: A. D. 1153-1327.
GENOA: Origin and rise of the city. — "Gen-
oa, anciently Genua, was the chief maritime
city of Liguria, and afterwards a Roman muni-
cipium. tfnder the Lombards the constant inva-
sions of the Saracens united the professions of
trade and war, and its greatest merchants be-
came also its greatest generals, while its naval
captains were also merchants. The Crusades
were of great advantage to Genoa [see Crusades:
A. D. 1104-1111] in enabling it to establish trad-
ing settlements as far as the Black Sea ; but the
power of Pisa in the East, as well as its posses-
sion of Corsica and Sardinia, led to wars between
it and Genoa, in which the Genoese took Corsica
[see Corsica: Eaklt History] and drove the
Pisans out of Sardinia. By land the Genoese
territory was extended to Nice on one side and to
Spezia on the other." — A. J. C. Hare, Cities of
Northern and Central Italy, v. 1, p. 30.
A. D. 1256-1257.— Battles with the Vene-
tians at Acre. See Venice: A. D. 1256-1258,
A. D. 1261-1299. — The supplanting of Venice
at Constantinople and in the Black Sea trade.
— Colonies in the Crimea. — Wars with Venice.
— Victory at Curzola and favorable treaty of
peace. — " During the Latin dynast)^ in Constan-
tinople the Genoese never gained the first place
in the commerce of the Black Sea. ... It was
Venice who held the key of all this commerce, at
Constantinople ; when, after diverting the whole
course of the fourth Crusade, she induced Chris-
tendom to waste its energies on subduing the
Greek empire for her benefit [see Byzantine
Empire: A. D. 1303-1204]. With the exiled Greek
dynasty, however, the Genoese were always on
the best of terms, at Trebizond, Nicea, and in
Roumania ; and recognizing that as long as the
Latins were all-powerful in Constantinople she
would have to relinquish the cream of the Black
Sea commerce to the Queen of the Adriatic, she
at length determined to strike a bold stroke and
replace a Greek again on the throne." This was
accomplished in 1261, when Baldwin II. fled from
the Byzantine capital and Michael Paleologus
took possession of his throne and crown (see
Greek Empire op Nicea: A. D. 1204-1261).
For the assistance given in that revolution, the
Genoese obtained the treaty of Niufeo, ' ■ which
firmly established their influence in the Black
Sea. . . . Thus did the brave mariner-town of
Genoa turn the scale of the vast, but rotten.
Eastern Empire ; and her reward was manifold.
The grateful emperor gave her streets and quays
in Constantinople, immunity from tribute, and a
free passage for her commerce. ... In addition
to these excellent terms in the treaty of Ninfeo,
the emperor conceded to various Genoese private
families numerous Islands in the Archipelago.
. . . But the great nucleus of this power was the
streets, churches, and quays in Constantinople
which were allotted to the Genoese, and formed
a vast emporium of strength and commerce,
which must have eventually led to entire pos-
session of Constantinople, had not the ' podesta, ' or
ruler of the Genoese colony there, thought fit,
from personal motives, or from large offers made
him by the Venetians, to attempt a restoration of
the Latin line. . . . His conspiracy was dis-
covered, and the Genoese were sent away in a
body to Eraclea. However, on representation
from home that it was none of their doing, and
that Guercio had been acting entirely on his own
account, the emperor yielded in perpetuity to the
1452
GENOA, 1261-1299.
GENOA, 1378-1379.
Genoese the town of Pera, on the sole condition
that the governors should do him homage [see,
also, CoNSTAKTiKOPLE : A. D. 1261-1453]. . . .
Thus were the Genoese established in this com-
manding position ; here they had a separate gov-
ernment of their own, from here they ruled the
road of commerce from China to Europe ; and,
taking advantage of the weakness of the em-
perors, they were able to do much as they wished
about building fortresses and palaces, with gar-
dens to the water's edge ; and thus from Pera,
with its citadel of Galata behind it, they were
enabled to dictate what terms they pleased to
ships passing to and from the Bosphorus." In
the Black Sea, "from time immemorial, the small
tongue of land now known as the Crimea, then
as the Tauric Chersonese, was the mart towards
which all the caravan trade of Asia was directed
by this northern road, and upon this tongue of
land sprang up a group of noble cities which,
until finally seized by the Turks, were without
exception Genoese property. Of these, Caffa was
the chief. When this city was built on the
ruins of Theodosia, and by whom, is somewhat
shrouded in mystery. Certain it is that Genoa
had a colony here soon after the first Crusade.
. . . Second only to Caffa in importance, and bet-
ter known to us by name, was the town of Crim,
which gave its name eventually to the whole
peninsula, which originally it had got from the
Crim Tatars. . . . Prior to its cession to the
Genoese, it had been the residence of a Tatar
emperor, . . . Here, then, in this narrow tongue
of land, which we now call the Crimea, was the
kernel of Genoess prosperity. As long as she
flourished here she flourished at home. And
when at length the Turkish scourge swept over
this peninsula and swallowed up her colonies, the
Ligurian Republic, by a process of slow decay,
withered like a sapless tree." The supplanting
of the Venetians at Constantinople by the Genoese,
and the great advantages gained by the latter in
the commerce of the Black Sea, led necessarily
to war between the rival republics. "To main-
tain her newly acquired influence in the East,
Genoa sent forth a fleet under the joint command
of Pierino Grimaldi, a noble, and Perchelto Mal-
lone, the people's representative. They encoun-
tered the Venetian squadron at Malvasia [1263]
which was greatly inferior to their own. But
as the combatants were just warming to their
work, Mallone, actuated by party spirit, with-
drew his ships and sailed away. The Venetians
could scarcely believe what they saw ; they an-
ticipated some deep laid stratagem, and withdrew
for a while from the contest. When however
they beheld Mallone's galleys fairly under sail,
they wonderingly attacked Grimaldi and his 13
ships and obtained an easy victory. Grimaldi
fell at his post. . . . This fatal day of Malvasia
[sometimes called the battle of Sette Pozzi]
might easily have secured Venice her lost place
in the Black Sea had she been able to follow up
her victory, but with inexplicable want of vigour
she remained inactive." Genoa, meantime, re-
covered from the disaster and sent out another
fleet which captured a rich squadron of Venetian
merchant ships in the Adriatic, taking large
booty. "It surprises us immensely to find how
for the nest thirty years Genoa was able to keep
up a desultory warfare with Venice, when she
was at the height of her struggle with Pisa ; and
it surprises us still more that Venice raised not a
hand to assist Pisa, though she was on most
friendly terms with her, and when by so doing
she could have ruined Genoa. . . . After the fall
of Pisa at Meloria, in 1296 [1384], Genoa could
transfer her attention with all the greater vigour
to her contest against Venice. Four years after
this victory men's minds were again bent on war.
Venice cared not to pay a tax to her rival on all
ships which went to Caffa, Genoa resented the
treatment she had received in Cyprus, and thus
the rivals prepared for another and more deter-
mined contest for supremac}'." The Venetians
sent a fleet to operate in the Black Sea. ' ' Fire was
set to the houses of Galata, irreparable damage
was done to Caffa, and in the Ai'chipelago every-
thing Genoese was burnt, and then off they sailed
for Cyprus, whilst the Genoese were squabbling
amongst themselves. With much trouble the
many rulers of Genoa succeeded at length in ad-
justing their difference, and a goodly array of 76
galleys was entrusted to the care of Lamba D'Oria
to punish the Venetians for their depredations.
. . . Much larger was the force Venice produced
for the contest, and when the combatants met off
Curzola, amongst the Dalmatian islands, the
Genoese were anxious to come to terms, and
sought them, but the Venetians haughtily re-
fused. . . . This battle of Curzola [September
8, 1298] was a sharp and vehement struggle, and
resulted In terrible loss to the Venetians, four of
whose galleys alone escaped to tell the tale. . . .
Had Lamba D'Oria but driven the contest home,
Venice was ill-prepared to meet him ; as it was,
he determined to sail off to Genoa, taking with
him the Venetian admiral . . . Dandolo. Chained
to the mast of his own vessel, and unable to sus-
tain the effects of his humiliation, there, as he
stood, Dandolo dashed his head against the mast
and died. . . . The natural result of such a vic-
tory was a most favourable peace for Genoa,
signed under the direction of Matteo Visconti,
lord of Milan, in 1299; and thus the century
closed on Genoa as without doubt the most
powerful state in Italy, and unquestionably the
mistress of the Mediterranean. . . . The next
outbreak of war between the two Republics had
its origin in the occupation of the island of Chios,
in 1349," and Genoa in that struggle encountered
not the Venetians alone, but the Greeks and
Catalans in alUance with them (see Constanti-
nopi.e: a. D. 1348-1355).— J. T. Bent, Genoa;
ch. 6 and 8. See, also, Tr.^de.
Also ik: W. C. Hazlitt, Hist, of the Venetian
Republic, ch. 11 (». 2).
A. D. 1282-1290. — War with Pisa. — The
great victory of Meloria. — Capture of the chain
of the Pisan harbor. See Pisa ; A. D. 1063-1293.
A. D. 1313. — Alliance with the Emperor
Henry VII. against Naples. See Italy: A. D.
1310-1313.
A. D. 1318-1319. — Feuds of the four great
families.— Siege of the city by the exiles and
the Lombard princes, and its defense by the
King of Naples. See Italy ; A. D. 1313-1330.
A. D. 1348-1355. — War with the Greeks,
Venetians and Aragonese. See Constantino-
ple; AD. 1348-1355.
A. D. 1353. — Annexed by the Visconti to
their Milanese principality. See Milan : A. D.
1277-1447.
A. D. 1378-1379. — Renewed war with Ven-
ice.— The victory at Pola. See Venice: A. D.
1378-1379.
1453
GENOA, 1379-1381.
GENOA, 1500-1507.
A. D. 1379-1381. — The disastrous war of
Chioggia. — Venice triumphant. See Venice:
A. D. 1379-1381.
A. D. 1381-1422. — A succession of foreign
masters : — The King of France, the Marquis
of Monferrat and the Duke of Milan. — The
history of Genoa for more than a century after
the disastrous War of Chioggia "is one long
and melancholy tissue of internal and external
troubles, coming faster and faster upon one
another as the inherent vitality of the Republic
grew weaker. . . . During this period we have
a constant and unhealthy craving for foreign
masters, be they Marquises of Slonferrato, Dukes
of Milan, or the more formidable subverters of
freedom, the kings of France. ... In 1396 . . .
Adorno [then doge of Genoa], finding himself un-
able to tyrannize as he wished, decided on hand-
ing over the government to Charles VI. of France.
In this he was ably backed up by many members
of the old nobility, as the signatures to the treaty
testify. The king was to be entitled ' Defender
of the Commune and People,' and was to respect
in every way the existing order of things. So
on the 37th of November, in that year, the great
bell in the tower of the ducal palace was rung,
the French standard was raised by the side of the
red cross of Genoa, and in the great council hall,
where her rulers had sat for centuries, now sat
enthroned the French ambassadors, whilst Anto-
niotto Adorno handed over to them the sceptre
and keys of the city. These s3'mbols of govern-
ment were graciously restored to him, with the
admonition that he should no longer be styled
'doge,' but 'governor' in the name of France.
Thus did Adorno sell his country for the love of
power, preferring to be the head of many slaves,
rather than to live as a subordinate in a free com-
munity. The first two governors sent by France
after Adorno's death were unable to cope with
the seething mass of corruption they found within
the city walls, until the Marshal Boucicault was
sent, whose name was far famed for cruelty in
Spain against the Moors, in Bulgaria against the
Turks, and in France against the rebels." The
government of Boucicault was hard and cruel,
and " his name is handed down by the Genoese as
the most hateful of her many tyrants. " In 1409
they took advantage of his absence from the city
to bring in the Marquis of Monferrato, wlio es-
tablished himself in his place. "It was but for
a brief period that the Genoese submitted to the
Marquis of Monferrato ; they preferred to return
to their doges and internal quarrels. . . . Through-
out the city nothing was heard but the din of
arms. Brother fought against brother, father
against son, and for the whole of an unusually
chill December, in 1414, there was not a by-path
in Genoa which was not paved with lances, bat-
tle-axes and dead bodies. . . . Out of this fiery
trial Genoa at length emerged with Tommaso
Campofregoso as her doge, one of the few bright
lights which illumined Liguria during the early
part of this century. . . . The Genoese arms
during this time of quiescence again shone forth
■with something of their ancient brilliancy. Cor-
sica was subdued, and a substantial league was
formed with Henry V. of England, . . . 1431, by
which perpetual friendship and peace by land
and sea was sworn. Short, however, was the
period during which Genoa could rest contented
at home. Campofregoso was driven from the
dogeship, and fMlippo Maria, Visconti of Milan,
was appointed protector of the Republic [1423],
and through this allegiance the Genoese were
drawn into an unprofitable war for the succession
in Naples, in which the Duke of Milan and the
Pope supported the claims of Queen Joanna and
her adopted son, Louis of Anjou. against Al-
phonso of Aragon." — J. T. Bent, Genoa, ch. 9. —
The Universal Hist., ch. 73, sect. 3-4 (ti. 2.5)..
A. D. 1385-1386.— Residence of Pope Urban
VI. See Italy (Southern): A. D. 1343-1389.
A. D. 1407-1448.— The Bank of St. George.
— "The Bank of St. George was founded in
Genoa in the year 1407. It was an immense suc-
cess and a great support to the government. It
gradually became a republic within the republic,
more peaceful and better regulated than its mis-
tress. " In 1448 the administration of Corsica and
of the Genoese colonies in the Levant was trans-
ferred to the Bank, which thenceforward ap-
pointed governors and conducted colonial affairs.
— G. B. Malleson, Studies from Genoese History,
p. 75.
Also in: J. T. Bent, Genoa, ch. 11. — See, also,
Corsica : Early history.
A. D. 1421-1435. — Submission to the Duke
of Milan, and recovery of the freedom of the
city. See Italy: A. D. 1412-1447.
A. D. 1458-1464. — Renewed struggles of do-
mestic faction and changes of foreign masters.
— Submission to the Dukes of Milan. — "Gen-
oa, wearied with internal convulsions, which
followed each other incessantly, had lost all in-
fluence over the rest of Italy ; continually op-
pressed by faction, it no longer preserved even
the recollection of liberty. In 1458, it had sub-
mitted to the king of France, then Charles VII. ;
and John of Anjou, duke of Calabria, had come
to exercise the functions of governor in the
king's name. He made it, at the same time, his
fortress, from whence to attack the kingdom of
Naples [see Italy: A. D. 1447-1480]. But this
war had worn out the patience of the Genoese ;
they rose against the French ; and, on the 17th of
July, 1461, destroyed the army sent to subdue
them by Rene of Anjou. The Genoese had no
sooner thrown ofE a foreign yoke than they be-
came divided into two factions, — the Adorni and
the Fregosi [severally partisans of two families
of that name which contended for the control of
the republic] : both had at different times, and
more than once, given them a doge. The more
violent and tyrannical of these factious magis-
trates was Paolo Fregoso, also archliishop of
Genoa, who had returned to his country, in 1462,
as chief of banditti ; and left it again, two years
afterwards, as chief of a band of pirates. The
Genoese, disgusted with their independence,
which was disgraced by so many crimes and
disturbances, had, on the 13th of April, 1464,
yielded to Francesco Sforza, duke of Milan ; and
afterwards remained subject to his son Galeazzo. "
— J. C. L. de Sismondi, Hist, of the Italian Be-
])ublics, ch. 11.
Also in: B. Duffy, The Tuscan Republics, ch.
23.
A. D. 1475. — Loss of possessions in the
Crimea. See Turks: A. D. 1451-1481.
A. D. 1500-1507. — Capitulation to Louis
XII. of France, conqueror of Milan. — Revolt
and subjugation. — Bv the conquest of Milan
(see Italy: A. D. 1499-1500), Louis XII. of
France acquired the signoria of Genoa, which
had been held by the deposed duke, Ludovico
1454
GENOA, 1500-1507.
GENS.
Sforza. "According to the capitulation, one
half of the magistrates of Genoa should be noble,
the other half plebeian. They were to be chosen
by the suffrages of their fellow-citizens; they
' were to retain the government of the whole of
Liguria, and the administration of their own
finances, with the reservation of a fl.xed sum
payable yearly to the king of France. But the
French could never comprehend that nobles were
on an equality with villains; that a king was
bound by conditions imposed by his subjects ; or
that money could be refused to him who had
force. All the capitulations of Genoa were succes-
sively violated ; while the Genoese nobles ranged
themselves on the side of a king against their
country: they were known to carry insolently
about them a dagger, on which was inscribed,
' Chastise villains ' ; so impatient were they to
separate themselves from the people, even by
meanness and assassination. That people could
not support the double yoke of a foreign master
and of nobles who betrayed their country. On
the 7th of February, 1507, they revolted, drove
out the French, proclaimed the republic, and
named a new doge ; but time failed them to or-
ganize their defence. On the 3d of April, Louis
advanced from Grenoble with a powerful army.
He soon arrived before Genoa: the newly-raised
militia, unable to withstand veteran troops, were
defeated. Louis entered Genoa on the 29th of
April; and immediately sent the doge and the
greater number of the generous citizens, who
had signalized themselves in the defence of their
country, to the scaffold. " — J. C. L. de Sismondi,
nist. of the Italian Eepublics, ch. 14.
AiiSO IN : L. von Ranke, Hist, of the Latin and
Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, p. 260.
A. D. 1527-1528. — French dominion momen-
tarily restored and then overthrown by An-
drew Doria. — The republic revived. See
Italy: A. D. 1527-1529.
A. D. 1528-1559. — The conspiracy of Fiesco
and its failure. — Revolt and recovery of Cor-
sica. — "Sustained by the ability of Doria, and
protected by the arms of Charles V. , the Repub-
lic, during near nineteen years subsequent to
this auspicious revolution, continued in the en-
joyment of dignified independence and repose.
But, the memorable conspiracy of Louis Fiesco,
Count of Lavagna, the Catiline of Liguria, had
nearly subverted Genoa, and reduced it anew to
the obedience of France, or exposed it once more
to all the misfortunes of anarchy. The massacre
of Doria and his family constituted one of the
primary objects of the plot; while the dissimu-
lation, intrepidity, and capacity, which marked
its leader . . . have rendered the attempt one of
the most extraordinary related in modern history.
It was accompanied with complete success till the
moment of its termination, jeannetin Doria, the
heir of that house, having perished by the dag-
ger, and Andrew, his uncle, being with difficulty
saved by his servants, who transported him out
of the city, the Genoese Senate was about to
submit unconditionally to Fiesco, when that
nobleman, by a sudden and accidental death, at
once rendered abortive his own hopes and those
of his followers. The government, resuming
courage, expelled the surviving conspirators ; and
Doria, on his return to the city, sullied the lustre
of his high character, by proceeding to acts of
cruelty against the brothers and adherents of the
Count of Lavagna. Notwithstanding this cul-
pable and vindictive excess, he continued invari-
ably firm to the political principles which he had
inculcated, for maintaining the freedom of the
Commonwealth. Philip, Prince of Spain, son of
Charles V., having visited Genoa in the suc-
ceeding year, attempted to induce the senate,
under specious pretences of securing their safety,
to consent to the construction of a citadel, garri-
soned by Spaniards. But he found in that as-
sembly, as well as in Doria, an insurmountable
opposition to the measure, which was rejected
with unanimous indignation. The island of
Corsica, which had been subjected for ages to
Genoa, and which was oppressed by a tyrannical
administration, took up arms at this period [1558-
1559] ; and the French having aided the insur-
gents, they maintained a long and successful
struggle against their oppressors. But the peace
concluded at Cateau between Philip, King of
Spain, and Henry 11., in which the Spanish court
dictated terms to France, obliged that nation to
evacuate their Corsican acquisitions, and to re-
store the island to the Genoese [see France:
A. D. 1547-1559]. Soon afterwards [1559], at
the very advanced age of ninety, Andrew Doria
expired in his own palace, surrounded by the
people on whom he had conferred freedom and
tranquillity ; leaving the Commonwealth in do-
mestic repose and undisturbed by foreign war."
—Sir N. W. Wraxall, Hist, of France, 1574^
1610, ■». 3, pp. 43-44.
Also ln: G. B. Malleson, Studies from, Genoese
History, ch. 1-3.
A. D. 1625-1626. — Unsuccessful attack by
France and Savoy. See France : A. D. 1624^
1626.
A. D. 1745. — The republic sides with Spain
and France in the War of the Austrian Suc-
cession. See Italy: A. D. 1745.
A. D. 1746-1747. — Surrendered to the Aus-
trians. — Popular rising. — Expulsion of the
Austrian garrison. — Long siege and deliver-
ance of the city. See Italy: A. D. 1746-1747.
A. D. 1748. — Territory secured by the Treaty
of Aix-la-Chapelle. See Alx-la-Chapelle:
A. D. 1748.
A. D. 1768. — Cession of Corsica to France.
See Corsica: A. D. 1729-1769.
A. D. 1796. — Treaty of peace with France.
See France : A. D. 1796 (October).
A. D. 1797. — Revolution forced by Bona-
parte. — Creation of the Ligurian Republic.
See France: A. D. 1797 (M.\y— October).
A. D. 1800. — Siege by the Austrians. — Mas-
s^na's defense. — Surrender of the city. See
France: A. D. 1800-1801 (May— February).
A. D. 1805. — Surrender of independence. —
Annexation to France. See France: A. D.
1804-1805.
A. D. 1814.— Reduction of the forts by Eng-
lish troops. — Surrender of the French garri-
son. See Italy: A. D. 1814.
A. D. 1814-1815.— Annexation to the king-
dom of Sardinia. See Prance: A. D. 1814
(April — June) ; and Vienna, The Congress of.
GENOLA, Battle of (1799). See France:
A. D. 1799 (August — December).
GENS, GENTES, GENTILES.— "When
Roman history begins, there were within the
city, and subordinate to the common city gov-
ernment, a large number of smaller bodies, each
of which preserved its Individuality and some
1455
GENS.
GEORGE.
semblance of governmental machinery. These
were clans [gens], and in prehistoric times eacli
of tliem is taken to have had an independent po-
litical existence, living apart, worshiping its own
gods, and ruled over by its own chieftain. This
clan organization is not supposed to have been
peculiar at all to Rome, but ancient society in
general was composed of an indefinite number of
such bodies, which, at the outset, treated with
each other in a small way as nations might treat
with eacli other to-day. It needs to be noted,
however, that, at any rate, so far as Rome is
concerned, this is a matter of inference, not of
historical proof. The earliest political divisions
in Latium of which we have any trace consisted of
sucli clans united into communities. If they ever
existed, separately, therefore their union must
have been deliljerate and artificial, and the body
thus formed was the canton (' civitas' or ' popu-
lus '). Each canton had a fixed common strong-
hold ('capitoliura,' ' height,' or 'arx' — cf. 'arceo'
— 'citadel') situated on some central elevation.
The clans dwelt around in hamlets (' vici ' or
' pagi') scattered through the canton. Original-
ly, the central stronghold was not a place of
residence like the 'pagi,' but a place of refuge
. . . and a place of meeting. ... In all of this,
therefore, the clan seems to lie at tlie very foun-
dation. . . . Any clan in the begirming, of
course, must have been simply a family. When
it grew so large as to be divided into sections,
the sections were known as families ('familise')
and their union was the clan. In this view the
family, as we find it existing in the Roman state,
wa3 a subdivision of the clan. In other words,
historically, families did not unite to form clans,
but the clan was the primitive thing, and the
families were its branches. Men thus recog-
nized kinship of a double character. They were
related to all the members of their clan as ' gen-
tiles, ' and again more closely to all the members
of their branch of the clan at once as ' gentiles '
and also as ' agnati. ' As already stated, men be-
longed to the same family ('agnati ') when they
could trace their descent through males from a
common ancestor who gave its name to the
family, or, what is the same thing, was its epo-
nym. Between the members of a clan the chief
evidence of relationship in historical times was
tradition. . . . We have thus outlined what is
known as the patriarchal tlieory of society, and
hinted at its application to certain facts in Roman
history. It should be remembered, however,
that it is only a theory, and that it is open to
some apparent and to some real criticism. " — A.
Tighe, Development of the Jionuin Goiist., ch. 2. —
T. Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, bk. 1, ch. 5. — "The
patricians were divided into certain private asso-
ciations, called Gentes, which we may translate
Houses or Clans. All the members of each Gens
were called gentiles; and they bore the same
name, which always ended in -ius ; as for instance,
every member of the Julian Gens was a Julius;
every member of the Cornelian Gens was a
Cornelius, and so on. Now in every Gens there
were a number of Families which were distin-
guished by a name added to the name of the
Gens. Thus the Scipios, SuUas, Cinnas, Cethegi,
Lentuli, were all families of the Cornelian Gens.
Lastly, every person of every Family was denoted
by a name prefixed to the name of the Gens.
The name of the person was, in Latin, pranomen ;
that of the Gens or House, nomen , that of the
Family, cognomen. Thus Caius Julius Csesar
was a person of the Csesar Family in the Julian
Gens; Lucius Cornelius Scipio was a person of
the Scipio Family in the Cornelian Gens ; and so
forth."— H. G. Liddell, Hist, of Rome, bk. 1, ch.
3. — "There is no word in the English language
which satisfactorily renders the Latin word ' gens. '
The term ' clan ' is apt to mislead ; for the Scotch
Highland clans were very different from the
Roman ' gentes.' The word 'House' is not quite
correct, for it always implies relationship, which
was not essential in the ' gens ' ; but for want of
a better word we shall use ' House ' to express
' gens,' except where the spirit of the language
rejects the term and requires ' family ' instead.
The German language has in the word ' Ge-
schlecht ' an almost equivalent term for the Latin
'gens'." — W. lime, Hist, of Rome, bk. 1, ch. 13,
foot-note.
Also ik: Fustel de Coulanges, Tlie Ancient
City, bk. 2, ch. 10. — On the Greek gens, see Pht-
GENSERIC AND THE VANDALS. See
Vakdals: a. D. 439-439.
GENTILES. See Gens.
GENUCIAN LAW, The.— A law which
prohibited the taking of interest for loans is said
to have been adopted at Rome, B. C. 343, on the
proposal of the tribune Genucius; but modern
historians are skeptical as to the actual enact-
ment of the law. — ^W. Ihne, Hiat. of Rome, bk. 3,
ch. 5.
GEOK TEPE, Siege and capture of (i88i).
See Russia: A. D. 1869-1881.
GEOMORI, OR GAMORI, The.— "As far
as our imperfect information enables us to trace,
these early oligarchies of the Grecian states,
against which the first usurping despots con-
tended, contained in themselves more repulsive
elements of inequality, and more mischievous
barriers between the component parts of the
population, than the oligarchies of later days.
. . . The oligarchy was not (I'ke the government
so denominated in subsequent times) the govern-
ment of a rich few over the less rich and the
poor, but that of a peculiar order, sometimes a
Patrician order, over all the remaining society.
. . . The country-population, or villagers who
tilled the land, seem in these early times to have
been" held to a painful dependence on the great
proprietors who lived in the fortified town, and
to have been distinguished by a dress and habits
of their own, which often drew upon them an
unfriendly nickname. . . . The governing pro-
prietors went by the name of the Gamori, or
Geomori, according as the Doric or Ionic dialect
might be used in describing them, since they
were found in states belonging to one race as
well as to the other. They appear to have con-
stituted a close order, transmitting their privi-
leges to their children, but admitting no new
members to a participation. The principle called
by Greek thinkers a Timocracy (the apportion-
ment of political rights and privileges according to
comparative property) seems to have been little,
if at all, applied in the earlier times. We Itnow
no example of it earlier than Solon." — G. Grote,
Hist, of Greece, pt. 3, ch. 9.
GEONIM, The. See Jews: 7th Century.
GEORGE L, King of England (first of the
Hanoverian or Brunswick line), A. D. 1714-
173? George II., King of England, 1727-
1760 George III., King of England, 1760-
1456
GEORGE.
GEORGIA, 1734.
. George IV., King of England, 1820-
1820.
1830.
GEORGE, HENRY, and the Single Tax
Movement. See Social Movements : A. D. 1880.
GEORGIA : The Aboriginal Inhabitants.
See American Aborigines: ApAL.\cnES, Musk-
HOGEAN Family, Cherokees.
A. D. 1539-1542. — Traversed by Hernando
deSoto. See Florida: A. D. 1528-1.543.
A. D. 1629. — Embraced in the Carolina
grant to Sir Robert Heath. See America:
A. D. 1029.
A. D. 1663. — Embraced in the Carolina
grant to Monk, Clarendon, and others. See
North Carolina : A. D. 1663-1670.
A. D. 1732-1739. — Oglethorpe's colony. —
"Among the members of Parliament during the
rule of Sir Robert Walpole was one almost un-
known to us now, but deserving of honour be-
yond most men of his time. His name was James
Oglethorpe. He was a soldier, and had fought
against the Turks and in the great Marlborough
wars against Louis XIV. In advanced life he
became the friend of Samuel Johnson. Dr. John-
son urged him to write some account of his ad-
ventures. ' I know no one, ' he said, ' whose life
would be more interesting : if I were furnished
with materials I should be very glad to write it.'
Edmund Burke considered him ' a more extraor-
dinary person than any he had ever read of.'
John Wesley ' blessed God that ever he was born. '
Oglethorpe attained the great age of ninety-si.x,
and died in the year 1785. ... In Oglethorpe's
time it was in the power of a creditor to im-
prison, according to his pleasure, the man who
owed him money and was not able to pay it. It
was a common circumstance that a man should
be imprisoned during a long series of years for a
trifling debt. Oglethorpe had a friend upon
whom this hard fate had fallen. His attention
was thus painfully called to the cruelties which
were inflicted upon the unfortunate and helpless.
He appealed to Parliament, and after inquiry a
partial remedy was obtained. The benevolent
exertions of Oglethorpe procured liberty for mul-
titudes who but for him might have ended their
lives in captivity. This, however, did not con-
tent him. Liberty was an incomplete gift to men
who had lost, or perhaps had scarcely ever pos-
sessed, the faculty of earning their own mainte-
nance. Oglethorpe devised how he might carry
these unfortunates to a new world, where, under
happier auspices, they might open a fresh career.
He obtained [A. D. 1732] from King George II.
a charter by which the country between the Sa-
vannah and the Alatamaha, and stretching west-
ward to the Pacific, was erected into the province
of Georgia. It was to be a refuge for the de-
serving poor, and next to them for Protestants
suffering persecution. Parliament voted £10,000
in aid of the humane enterprise, and many be-
nevolent persons were liberal with their gifts.
In November the first exodus of the insolvent
took place. Oglethorpe sailed with 120 emi-
grants, mainly selected from the prisons — penni-
less, but of good repute. He surveyed the coasts
of Georgia, and chose a site for the capital of his
new State. He pitched his tent where Savannah
now stands, and at once proceeded to mark out
the line of streets and squares. Next year the
colony was joined by about a hundred German
Protestants, who were then under persecution
92
145
for their beliefs. . . . The fame of Oglethorpe's
enterprise spread over Europe. All struggling
men, against whom the battle of life went hard,
looked to Georgia as a land of promise. They
were the men who most urgently required to
emigrate; but they were not always the men
best fitted to conquer the difficulties of the im-
migrant's life. The progress of the colony was
slow. The poor persons of whom it was origi-
nally composed were honest but ineffective, and
could not in Georgia more than in England find
out the way to become self-supporting. Encour-
agements were given which drew from Germany,
from Switzerland, and from the Highlands of
Scotland men of firmer texture of mind — better
fitted to subdue the wilderness and bring forth
its treasures. With Oglethorpe there went out,
on his second expedition to Georgia [1736], the
two brothers John and Charles Wesley. Charles
went as secretary to the Governor. John was even
then, although a very young man, a preacher of
unusual promise. ... He spent two years in
Georgia, and these were unsuccessful years. His
character was unformed ; his zeal out of propor-
tion to his discretion. The people felt that he
preached ' personal satires ' at them. He involved
himself in quarrels, and at last had to leave the
colony secretly, fearing arrest at the instance of
some whom he had offended. He returned to be-
gin his great career in England, with the feeling
that his residence in Georgia had been of much
value to himself, but of very little to the people
whom he sought to benefit. Just as Wesley
reached England, his fellow-labourer George
Whitefield sailed for Georgia. ... He founded
an Orphan-House at Savannah, and supported It
by contributions — obtained easily from men un-
der the power of his unequalled eloquence. He
visited Georgia very frequently, and his love for
that colony remained with him to the last. Sla-
very was, at the outset, forbidden in Georgia.
It was opposed to the gospel, Oglethorpe said,
and therefore not to be allowed. He foresaw,
besides, what has been so bitterly experienced
since, that slavery must degrade the poor white
labourer. But soon a desire sprung up among
the less scrupulous of the settlers to have the use
of slaves. Within seven years from the first
landing, slave-ships were discharging their car-
goes at Savannah." — R. Mackenzie, America: A
History, bk. 1, ch. 10.
Also in: T. M. Harris, Biog. Memoriah of
James Ogletlurrpe, ch. 1-10. — R. Wright, Memoir
of Gen. Jos. Oglethorpe, ch. 1-9.
For text of charter, etc., see in G. White, Hist.
Coil's of Georgia, pp. 1-20.
A. D. 1734.— The settlement of the Salz-
burgers. — "As early as October the 12th, 1732,
the ' Society for the Propagation of Christian
Knowledge ' expressed to the Trustees a desire'
' that the persecuted Salzburgers should have
an asylum provided for them in Georgia.'. . .
These Germans belonged to the Archbishopric of
Salzburg, then the most eastern district of Ba-
varia; but now forming a detached district in
upper Austria, and called Salzburg from the
broad valley of the Salzer, which is made by the
approximating of the Norric and Rhetian Alps.
Their ancestors, the Vallenges of Piedmont, had
been compelled by the barbarities of the Dukes of
Savoy, to find a shelter from the storms of perse-
cution in the Alpine passes and vales of Salz-
burg and the Tyrol, before the Reformation; and
7
GEORGIA, 1734.
GEORGIA, 1738-1743.
frequently since had they been hunted out by
the hirelings and soldiery of the Church of Rome.
. . . The quietness which they had enjoyed for
nearly half a century was now rudely broken in
upon by Leopold, Count of Firraian and Arch-
bishop of Salzburg, who determined to reduce
them to the Papal faith and power. He began
in the year 1729, and, ere he ended in 1732, not
far from 30,000 had been driven from their
homes, to seek among the Protestant States of
Europe that charity and peace which were denied
them in the glens and fastnesses of their native
Alps. More than two-thirds settled in the Prus-
sian States ; the rest spread themselves over Eng-
land, Holland, and other Protestant countries.
Thrilling is the story of their exile. The march of
these Salzburgers constitutes an epoch in the
history of Germany. . . . The sympathies of Re-
formed Christendom were awakened on tiieir be-
half, and the most hospitable entertainment and
assistance were everywhere given them. " Forty-
two families, numbering 78 persons, accepted an
invitation to settle in Georgia, receiving allot-
ments of land and provisions until they could
gather a harvest. They arrived at Savannah in
March, 1734, and were settled at a spot which
they selected for themselves, about thirty miles
in the interior. "Oglethorpe marked out for
them a town ; ordered workmen to assist in build-
ing houses ; and soon the whole body of Germans
went up to their new home at Ebeuezer." — W.
B. Stevens, Hist, of Georgia, bk. 2, ch. 3 (8. 1).
Also in: F. Shoberl, Persecutions of Popery,
ch. 9 {v. 2).— E. B. Speirs, The Salzburgers (Eng.
Hist. Bev., Oct., 1890).
A. D. 1735-1749. — The Slavery question. —
Original exclusion and subsequent admission
of negro slaves. — Among the fundamental regu-
lations of the Trustees was one prohibiting negro-
slavery in the colony. " It was policy and not
philanthropy which prohibited slavery; for,
though one of the Trustees, in a sermon to recom-
mend charity, declared, ' Let avarice defend it as
it will, there is an honest reluctance in humanity
against buying and selling, and regarding those
of our own species as our wealth and posses-
sions ' ; and though Oglethorpe himself, speaking
of slavery as against ' the gospel as well as the
fundamental law of England ', asserted, ' we re-
fused, as Trustees, to make a law pennitting
such a horrid crime ' ; yet in the otRcial publica-
tions of that body its inhibition is based onl}' on
political and prudential, and not on humane and
liberal grounds; and even Oglethorpe owned a
plantation and negroes near Parachucla in South
Carolina, about forty miles above Savannah. . . .
Their [the Trustees'] design was to provide for
poor but honest persons, to erect a barrier be-
tween South Carolina and the Spanish settle-
ments, and to establish a wine and silk-growing
colony. It was thought by the Trustees that
neither of these designs could be secured if
slavery was introduced. . . . But while the Trus-
tees disallowed negroes, they instituted a system
of white slavery which was fraught with evil to
the servants and to the colony. These were
white servants, consisting of Welch, English, or
German, males and females — families and in-
dividuals — who were indented to individuals
or the Trustees, for a period of from four to
fourteen years. ... On arriving in Georgia,
their service was sold for the term of inden-
ture, or apportioned to the inhabitants by the
magistrates, as their necessities required. . . .
Two years had not elapsed since the landing
of Oglethorpe before many complaints origi-
nated from this cause; and in the summer of
1735 a petition, signed by seventeen freeholders,
setting forth the unprofitableness of white ser-
vants, and the necessity for negroes, was carried
by Mr. Hugh Sterling to the Trustees, who, how-
ever, resented the appeal as an insult to their
honour. . . . The plan for substitutmg white for
black labour failed through the sparscness of the
supply and the refractoriness of the servants.
As a consequence of the inability of the set-
tlers to procure adequate help, the lands granted
them remained uncleared, and even those which
the temporary industry of the first occupants
prepared remained uncultivated. . . . There
accumulated on the Trustees' hands a body of
idle, clamourous, mischief-making men, who em-
ployed their time in declaiming against the very
government whose charity both fed and clothed
them. . . . For nearly fifteen years from 1733,
the date of the first petition for negroes, and the
date of their express law against their importa-
tion, the Trustees refused to listen to any similar
representations, except to condemn them," and
they were supported by the Salzburgers and the
Highlanders, both of whom opposed the intro-
duction of negro slaves. But finally, in 1749,
the firmness of the Trustees gave way and they
yielded to the clamor of the discontented colony.
The importation of black slaves was permitted,
under certain regulations intended to diminish
the evils of the institution. "The change in the
tenure of grants, and the permission to hold
slaves, had an immediate effect on the prosperity
of the colony. " — W. B. Stevens, Hist, of Georgia,
bk. 2, ch. 9 (B. 1).
A. D. 1738-1743.— War with the Spaniards
of Florida. — Discontents in the colony. — "The
assieuto enjoj-ed under the treaty of Utrecht by
the English South Sea Company, the privilege,
that is, of transporting to the Spanish colonies a
certain number of slaves annually, . . . was
made a cover for an extensive smuggling trade
on the part of the English, into wliich private
merchants also entered. ... To guard against
these systematic infractions of their laws, the
Spaniards maintained a numerous fleet of vessels
in the preventive service, known as 'guarda
costas.'by which some severities were occasion-
ally exercised on suspected or detected smug-
glers. These severities, grossly exaggerated,
and resounded throughout the British dominions,
served to revive in England and the colonies a
hatred of the Spaniards, which, since the time of
Philip II., had never wholly died out. Such
was the temper and position of the two nations
when the colonization of Georgia was begun, of
which one avowed object was to erect a baiTier
against the Spaniards, among whom the run-
away slaves of South Carolina were accustomed
to find shelter, receiving in Florida an assign-
ment of lands, and being armed and organized
into companies, as a means of strengthening that
feeble colony. A message sent to St. Augustine
to demand the surrender of the South Carolina
runaways met with a point blank refusal, and
the feeling against the Spaniards ran very high
in consequence. . . . Oglethorpe . . . returned
from his second visit to England [Sept. 1738],
with a newly-enlisted regiment of soldiers, and
the apijointment. also, of military commander
1458
GEORGIA, 1738-1743.
GEORGIA, 1743-1764.
for Georgia and the Caroliuas, with orders 'to
give no offense, but to repel force by force.'
Both in Spain and England the administrators
of the government were anxious for peace. . . .
I'he ferocious clamors of the merchants and the
mob . . . absolutely forced Walpole into a war
[see ENGL.VND: A. t). 1739-1741.— The War of
Jenkins' Eak]. Travelling 300 miles through
the forests, Oglethorpe held at Coweta, on the
Chattahoochee, just below the present site of
Columbus, a new treaty with the Creeks, by
which they confirmed their former cessions, ac-
knowledged themselves subject to the King
of Great Britain, and promised to exclude from
their territories all but English settlers. After
finishing the treaty, Oglethorpe returned through
the woods by way of Augusta to Savannah,
where he found orders from England to make an
attack on Florida. He called at once on South
Carolina and the Creeks for aid, and in the mean
time made an expedition, in which he captured
the Fort of Picolata, over against St. Augustine,
thus securing the navigation of the St. John's,
and cutting off the Spaniards from their forts at
St. Mark's and Pensacola. South Carolina en-
tered very eagerly into the enterprise. Money
was voted ; a regiment, 500 strong, was enlisted,
partly in North Carolina and Virginia. This
addition raised Oglethorpe's force to 1,200 men.
The Indians that joined him were as many more.
Having marched into Florida, he took a small
fort or two, and, assisted by several ships of war,
laid siege to St. Augustine. But the garrison
was 1,000 strong, besides militia. The fortifica-
tions proved more formidable than had been ex-
pected. A considerable loss was experienced by
a sortie from the town, falling heavily on the
Highland Rangers. Presently the Indians de-
serted, followed by part of the Carolina regiment,
and Oglethorpe was obliged to give over the en-
terprise. . . . From the time of this repulse, the
good feeling of the Carolinians toward Ogle-
thorpe came to an end. Many of the disappoint-
ed Georgia emigrants had removed to Charleston,
and many calumnies against Oglethorpe were
propagated, and embodied in a pamphlet pub-
lished there. The Moravians also left Georgia,
unwilling to violate their consciences by bearing
arms. Most unfortunately for the new colony,
the Spanish war withdrew the Highlanders and
others of the best settlers from their farms to
convert them into soldiers." — R. Hildreth, Hist,
of the U. 8., ch. 25 (». 2). — "After the late incur-
sion into Florida, the General kept possession
of a southern region which the Spaniards had
claimed as their own; and, as they had taken
encouragement from the successful defence of St.
Augustine, and the well-known dissensions on
the English side, it was to be expected that they
would embrace the earliest opportunity of taking
their revenge. . . . The storm, which had been
so long anticipated, burst upon the colony in the
year 1742. The Spaniards had . . . fitted out,
at Havana, a fleet said to consist of 56 saU and
7,000 or 8,000 men. The force was probably not
quite so great ; if it was, it did not all reach its
destination," being dispersed by a storm, "so
that only a part of the whole number succeeded
in reaching St. Augustine. The force was there
placed under the command of Don Manuel de
Monteano, the Governor of that place. . . . The
fleet made its appearance on the coast of Georgia
on the 21st of June " ; but all its attempts, first to
take possession of the Island of Amelia, and
afterwards to reduce the forts at Frederica, were
defeated by the vigor and skill of General Ogle-
thorpe. After losing heavily in a fight called
the Battle of the Bloody Marsh, the Spaniards
retreated about the middle of July. The follow-
ing year they prepared another attempt; but
Oglethorpe anticipated it by a second demonstra-
tion on his own part against St. Augustine, which
had no other result than to disconcert the plans
of the enemy. — W. B. O. Peabody, Life of Ogle-
tlwrpe (Library of Am. Biog. , 2d series, v. 3), ch.
11-12. — "While Oglethorpe was engaged in re-
pelling the Spaniards, the trustees of Georgia
had been fiercely assailed by their discontented
colonists. They sent Thomas Stevens to England
with a petition containing many charges of mis-
management, extravagance, and peculation, to
which the trustees put in an answer. After a
thorough examination of documents and wit-
nesses in committee of the whole, and hearing
counsel, the House of Commons resolved that ' the
petition of Thomas Stevens contains false, scan-
dalous, and malicious charges'; in consequence
of which Stevens, the next day, was brought to
the bar, and reprimanded on his knees. . . .
Oglethorpe himself had been a special mark of
the malice and obloquy of the discontented set-
tlers. . . . Presently his lieutenant colonel, a
man who owed everything to Oglethorpe's favor,
re-echoing the slanders of the colonists, lodged
formal charges against him. OgJethorpe pro-
ceeded to England to vindicate his character,
and the accuser, convicted by a court of inquiry
of falsehood, was disgraced and deprived of his
commission. Appointed a major general, or-
dered to join the army assembled to oppose the
landing of the Pretender, marrying also about
this time, Oglethorpe did not again return to
Georgia. The former scheme of administration
having given rise to innumerable complaints, the
government of that colony was intrusted to a
president and four counselors." — R. Hildreth,
Hist, of the U. S., ch. 25 (v. 3).
Also in : C. C. Jones, Hist, of Georgia, ch. 17-
22 (ti. 1).
A. D. 1743-1764. — Surrender to the Crown.
— Government as a royal province. — " On Ogle-
thorpe's departure [1743], William Stephens, the
secretary, was made President, and continued in
office until 1751, when he was succeeded by
Henry Parker. 'The colony, when Stephens came
into office, comprised about 1,500 persons. It
was almost at a stand-still. The brilliant pros-
pects of the early days were dissipated, and im-
migration had ceased, thanks to the narrow policy
and feeble government of the Trustees. An In-
dian rising, in 1749, headed by Mary Musgrove,
Oglethorpe's Indian Interpreter, and her husband,
one Bosomworth, who laid claim to the whole
country, came near causing the destruction of
the colony, and was only repressed by much ne-
gotiation and lavish bribes. The colony, thus
feeble and threatened, struggled on, until it was
relieved from danger from the Indians and from '
the restrictive laws, and encouraged by the ap-
pointment of Parker, and the establishment of a
representative government. This produced a
turn in the affairs of Georgia. Trade revived,
immigration was renewed, and everything began
to wear again a more hopeful look. Just at this
time, however, the original trust was on the point
of expiring by limitation. There was a party iu
1459
GEORGIA, 1743-1764.
GEORGIA, 1816-1818.
the colony who desired a renewal of the charter ;
but the Trustees felt that their scheme had failed
in every way, except perhaps as a defence to
South Carolina, and when the limit of the charter
was reached, they turned the colony over to the
Crown. ... A form of government was estab-
lished similar to those of the other royal prov-
inces, and Captain John Reynolds was sent out
as the first Governor." The administration of
Reynolds produced wide discontent, and in 1757
he "was recalled, being "succeeded by Henry
Ellis as Lieutenant-governor. The change proved
fortunate, and brought rest to the colony. Ellis
ruled peaceably and with general respect for more
than two years, and was then promoted to the
governorship of Nova Scotia. In the same year
his successor arrived at Savannah, in the person
of James Wright, who continued to govern the
province until it was severed from England by
the Revolution. The feebleness of Georgia had
prevented her taking part in the union of the
colonies, and she was not represented in the Con-
gress at Albany. Georgia also escaped the rav-
ages of the French war, partly by her distant
situation, and partly by the prudence of Governor
Ellis ; and the conclusion of that war gave Florida
to England, and relieved the colony from the con-
tinual menace of Spanish aggression. A great
Congress of southern Governors and Indian chiefs
followed, in which Wright, more active than his
predecessor, took a prominent part. Under his
energetic and firm rule, the colony began to pros-
per greatly, and trade increased rapidly ; but the
Governor gained at the same time so much in-
fluence, and was a man of so much address, that
he not only held the colony down at the time of
the Stamp Act, but seriously hampered its action
in the years which led to revolution." — H. C.
Lodge, Short Hist, of tlie Eng. Colonies in Am. ,
ch. 9.
A. D. 1760-1775. — Opening events of the
Revolution. See United States of Am. : A. D.
1760-1775, to 1775.
A. D. 1775-1777. — The end of royal govern-
ment. — • Constitutional organization of the
state. — "The news of the battle of Lexington
reached Savannah on the night of the 10th of
May, 1775, and produced intense excitement
among all classes. On the night of the 11th,
Noble Wimberly Jones, Joseph Habersham, Ed-
ward Telfair, and a few others, impressed with
the necessity of securing all military stores, and
m-eserving them for colonial use, took from the
King's magazine, in Savannah, about 500 pounds
of powder. . . . Tradition asserts that part of
this powder was sent to Boston, and used by the
militia at the battle of Bunker Hill. . . . The
activity of the Liberty party, and its rapid in-
crease, . . . gave Governor Wright just cause
for alarm; and he wrote to General Gage, ex-
pressing his amazement ' that these southern
provinces should be left in the situation they are,
and the Governors and King's ofiicers, and friends
of Government, naked and exposed to the resent-
ment of an enraged people. ' . . . The assistance
so earnestly solicited in these letters would have
been promptly rendered, but that they never
reached their destination. The Committee of
Safety at Charleston withdrew them from their
envelopes, as they passed through the port, and
substituted others, stating tliat Georgia was
quiet, and there existed no ueed either of troops
or vessels. " The position of Governor Wright
soon became one of complete powerlessness and
he begged to be recalled. In Januarj^ 1776,
however, he was placed under arrest, by order of
the Council of Safety, and gave his parole not to
leave town, nor communicate with the men-of-
war which had just arrived at Tybee; notwith-
standing which he made his escape to one of the
Iving's ships on the 11th of February. ' ' The first
effective organization of the friends of liberty in
the province took place among the deputies from
several parishes, who met in Savannah, on the
18th January, 1775, and formed what has been
called ' A Provincial Congress.' Guided by the
action of the other colonies, a ' Council of Safety '
was created, on the 23d June, 1775, to whom was
confided the general direction of the measures
proper to be pursued in carrying out resistance
to the tyrannical designs of the King and Parlia-
ment. William Ewen was the first President of
this Council of Safety, and Seth John Cuthbert
was the Secretary. On the 4th July, the Pro-
vincial Congress (now properly called such, as
every parish and district was represented) met in
Savannah, and elected as its presiding officer
Archibald Bulloch. This Congress cortferred
upon the 'Council of Safety,' 'full power upon
every emergency during the recess of Congress.' "
Soon finding the need of a more definite order of
government, the Provincial Congress, on the 15th
of April, 1776, adopted provisionally, for six
months, a series of "Rules and Regulations,"
under which Archibald Bulloch was elected Presi-
dent and Commander-in-chief of Georgia, and
John Glen, Chief Justice. After the Declaration
of Independence, steps were taken toward the
settling of the government of the state on a per-
manent basis. On the proclamation of President
Bulloch a convention was elected which met in
Savannah in October, and which framed a con-
stitution that was ratified on the 5th of February,
1777. — W. B. Stevens, Hist, of Georgia, hk. 4, ch.
2, and hk. 5, ch. 1 (ii. 2).
A. D. 1776-1778. — The V7ar in the North. —
The Articles of Confederation. — The alliance
with France. See United States op Aja. : A.D.
1776, to 1778.
A. D. 1778-1779. — Savannah taken and the
state subjugated by the British. See United
States of Am. ; A. D. 1778-1779.
A. D. 1779. — Unsuccessful attack on Savan-
nah by the French and Americans. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1779 (September — Octo-
ber).
A. D. 1780. — Successes of the British arms
in South Carolina. See United States op Am. :
A. D. 1780 (February — August).
A. D. 1780-1783. — Greene's campaign in the
South. — Lafayette and Washington in Vir-
ginia. — Siege of Yorktown and surrender of
Cornwallis. — Peace. See United States op
Am. : A. D. 1780, to 1783.
A. D. 1787-1788. — The formation and adop-
tion of the Federal Constitution. See United
States op Am. : A. D. 1787, and 1787-1789.
A. D. 1802. — Cession of Western land claims
to the United States. See United States of
Am.: a. D. 1781-1786; and Mississippi: A.D.
1798-1804.
A. D. 1813-1814. — The Creek War. See
United States op Am. : A. D. 1813-1814 (Au-
gust — April).
A. D. 1816-1818.— The First Seminole War
See Florida: A. D. 1816-1818.
1460
GEORGIA, 1861.
GERMAN EMPIRE.
A. D. 1861 (January). — Secession from the
Union. See United States op Am. : A. D. 1861
(Jahu AST— February).
A. D. 1861 (October — December). — Savan-
nah threatened. — The Union forces in posses-
sion of the mouth of the river. See United
States of Am. : A. D. 1861 (October — Decem-
ber: South Carolina — Georgia).
A. D. 1862 (February — April). — Reduction
of Fort Pulaski and sealing up of the port of
Savannah by the National forces. See United
States op Am. : A. D. 1863 (February — April:
Georgia — Florida).
A. D. 1864 (May — September). — Sherman's
campaign against Atlanta. — The capture of
the city. See United States op Am. : A. D.
1864 (May: Georgia), and (May — September:
Georgia).
A. D. i864(September— October).— Military
occupation of Atlanta. — Removal of the in-
habitants. — Hood's Raid to Sherman's rear.
See United States op Am. : A. D. 1864 (Sep-
tember—October: Georgia).
A. D. 1864 (November — December). — De-
struction of Atlanta. — Sherman's March to
the Sea. See United St.ites of Am. : A. D.
1864 (November — December : Georgia).
A. D. 1865 (March — May).— Wilson's Raid.
— End of the Rebellion. See United States
OP Am. : A. D. 1865 (April— May).
A. D. i865-i868.^Reconstruction. See Uni-
ted States op Am. : A. D. 1865 (May — July),
and after, to 1868-1870.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY. See
Education, Modern: America: A.D. 1769-1884,
GEOUGEN, The. See Turks : 6th Centy
GEPIDjE, The. See Goths: Origin of;
Huns; Lombards: Early History; and Avars.
GERALDINES, The.— The Geraldines of
Irish history were descendants of Maurice and
William Fitzgerald, two of the first among the
Anglo-Norman adventurers to engage in the con-
quest of Ireland, A. D. 1169-1170. Their mother
was a "Welsh princess, named Nest, or Nesta,
who is said to have been the mistress of Henry
I. of England, and afterwards to have married
the Norman baron, Gerald Fitz Walter, who be-
came the father of the Fltzgeralds. ' ' Maurice
Fitzgerald, the eldest of the brothers, became
the ancestor both of the Earls of Kildare and
Desmond; William, the younger, obtained an
immense grant of land in Kerry from the Mc-
Carthys, — indeed as time went on the lordship
of the Desmond Fitzgeralds grew larger and
larger, until it covered nearly as much ground as
many a small European kingdom. Nor was this
all. The White Knight, the Knight of Glyn,
and the Knight of Kerry were all three Fitzger-
alds, all descended from the same root, and all
owned large tracts of country. The position of
the Geraldines of Kildare was even more impor-
tant, on account of their close proximity to Dub-
lin. In later times their great keep at Maynooth
dominated the whole Pale, while their followers
swarmed everywhere, each man with a G. em-
broidered upon his breast in token of his allegi-
ance. By the beginning of the 16th century
their power had reached to, perhaps, the highest
point ever attained in these islands by any sub-
i'ect. Whoever might be called the Viceroy in
reland it was the Earl of Kildare who practically
governed the country." — Hon. E. Lawless, The
Story of Ireland, ch. 14. — See, also, Ireland:
A. D. 1515; and for some account of the subse-
quent rebellion and fall of the Geraldines, see
Ireland: A. D. 1535-1553.
GERALDINES, League of the. See Ire-
land; A. D. 1559-1603.
GERBA, OR JERBA, The disaster at
(1560). See Barbary States: A. D. 1543-
1560.
GEREFA. — " The most general name for the
fiscal, administrative and executive officer among
the Anglosaxons was Gerefa, or as it is written
in very early documents geroefa : but the pecu-
liar functions of the individuals comprehended
under it were further defined by a prefix com-
pounded with it, as scirgerefa, the reeve of the
shire or sheriff : tungeref a, the reeve of the farm
or baDlff. The exact meaning and etymology of
this name have hitherto eluded the researches of
our best scholars." — J. M. Kemble, The Saxons
in England, bk. 2, ch. 5 (v. 2). — See, also, Shebe;
and Ealdorman.
GERGESENES, The.— One of the tribes of
the Canaanites, whose territory is believed by
Lenormant to have "included all Decapolis and
even Galilee," and whose capital he places at
Gerasa, now Djerash, in Perea. — F. Lenormant
and E. Chevallier, Manual of Ancient Hist., bk.
6, ch. 1 (». 2).
GERGITHIAN SIBYL. See Cum^.
GERGITHIANS, The. See Troja; and
Asia Minor : The Greek Colonies.
GERGOVIA OF THE ARVERNL— "The
site of Gergovia of the Arverni is supposed to
be a hill on the bank of the Allier, two miles
from the modern Clermont in Auvergne. The
Romans seem to have neglected Gergovia, and to
have founded the neighbouring city, to which
they gave the name Augustonemetum. The
Roman city became known afterwards as Civitas
Arvernorum, in the middle ages Arverna, and
then, from the situation of its castle, clarus mons,
Clermont." — C. Merivale, Hist, of the Romans, ch.
12 (v. 2, p. 20, foot-?iote). — For an account of
Cfesar's reverse at Gergovia of the Arverni, see
Gaul: B.C. 58-51.
GERGOVIA OF THE BOIANS. See
BOIANS.
GERIZIM.— "The sacred centre of the Sa-
maritans is Gerizim, the ' Mount of Blessings. ' On
its summit a sacred rock marks the site where,
according to their tradition, Joshua placed the
Tabernacle and afterwards built a temple, re-
stored later by Sanballat, on the return of the
Israelites from captivity." C. R. Conder, Syrian
Stone Lore, ch. 4.
GERM THEORY OF DISEASE, Origin
and development of the. See Medical Sci-
ence : 17-18TH Centuries, and 19th Century.
GERMAN, High and Low.— The distinction
made between High German and Low German is
that resulting from differences of language, etc. ,
between the Germanic peoples which dwelt an-
ciently in the low, flat countries along the Ger-
man Ocean and the Baltic, and those which occu-
pied the higher regions of the upper Rhine,
Elbe and Danube.
GERMAN EAST AFRICAN AND
WEST AFRICAN ASSOCIATIONS. See
Africa: A, D. 1884-1891.
GERMAN EMPIRE, The Constitution of
the new. See Constitution of Germany.
1461
GERMAN FLATS.
GERMANY.
GERMAN FLATS: A. D. 1765.— Treaty
with the Indians. See United States of Am. :
A. D. 1765-1768.
A. D. 1778. — Destruction by Brant. See
United States op Am. : A. D. 1778 (June-No-
vember).
GERMAN NATIONS, The wandering of.
See Goths ; Franks ; Alemanni ; Maucomanki;
QuADi ; GEPID.E ; Saxons ; Angles ; Burgun-
DiANS ; Vandals ; Suevi : Lombards.
GERMAN SOUTHWEST AFRICA.—
The whole regiou on the western coast of S.
Africa, between Cape Colony and Portuguese
territory, comprising Great Namaqualand and
Damaralaud, except Waltish Bay (which England
holds), was taken up by Germany in 1883-.').
GERMAN UNIVERSITIES. See Educa-
tion, MEDI.iEVAL: GeR.MANT.
GERMANIA. "The meaning of the name
may be either ' good shouters ' (Grimm), or,
accordingto other writers, 'East-men,' or 'neigh-
bours.'" — "W". Stubbs, Go7ist. Hist, of England, d.
1, p. 17, note.
GERMANIC CONFEDERATION, The
First. See Germany: A. D. 1814-1820 The
Second. See Germany : A. D. 1870 (Septem-
ber — Dece.mbek).
GERMANIC DIET, The. Sec Diet. Ger-
manic.
GERMANIC PEOPLES OF THE ALE-
MANNIC LEAGUE. See Alemanni: A. D.
•213.
GERMANICUS, Campaigns of. See Ger-
M.\NY: A. D. 14-16.
GERMANTOWN, Battle of. See United
States of Am. ; A. D. 1777 (January— Decem-
ber).
GERMANY.
The national name. — "The nations of the
Germania had no common name recognised by
themselves, and were content, when, ages after,
they had realised their unity of tongue and de-
scent, to speak of their language simply as the
Lingua Theotisca, the language of the people
(theod). . . . Whence the name 'Deutsch.' Zeuss
derives it rather from the root of ' deuten,' to ex-
plain, so that 'theotisc' should mean 'signifi-
cant. ' But the root of ' theod ' and ' deuten ' is
the same. . . . The general name by which the
Romans knew them [Germani] was one which
they had received from their Gallic neighbours."
— W. Stubbs, Co7ist. Hist, of England, v. 1, ch. 3,
and foot-note. — "In Gothic we have 'thiuda,'
people; 'thiudisks,' belonging to the people.
. . . The High-German, which looks upon San-
skrit 't' and Gothic 'th' as 'd,' possesses the
same word, as 'diot,' people; 'diutisc,' popu-
laris; hence Deutsch, German, and 'deuten,' to
explain, literally to Germanize." — F. Max Milller,
Lects. on the Science of Language, 2d series, lect. 5.
— The account which Tacitus gives of the origin
of the name Germany is this : ' ' The name Ger-
many . . . they [the Germans] say, is modern
and newly Introduced, from the fact that the
tribes which first crossed the Rhine and drove
out the Gauls, and are now called Tungrians,
■were then called Germans. Thus what was the
name of a tribe, and not of a race, gradually pre-
vailed, till all called themselves by this self-in-
vented name of Germans, which the conquerors
had first employed to inspire terror." — Tacitus,
Oermany; trans, by Church and Brodrihb, ch. 2.
— " It is only at the mouth of the Elbe that the
Germany of the really historical period begins:
and this is a Germany only in the eyes of scholars,
antiquarians, and generalizing ethnologists. Not
one of the populations to whom the name is here
extended would have attached any meaning to
the word, except so far as they had been in-
structed by men who had studied certain Latin
writers. 'There was no name which was, at one
and the same time, native and general. There
were native names, but they were limited to
special populations. There was a general name,
but it was one which was applied by strangers
and enemies. What this name was for the north-
em districts, we know beforehand. It was that
of Saxones and Saxonia in Latin; of Sachsen
and Sachsenland in the ordinary German. Evi-
dence, however, that any German population
ever so named Itself is wholly wanting, though
it is not impossible that some unimportant tribe
may have done so : the only one so called being
the Saxons of Ptolemy, who places them, along
with several others, in the small district between
the Elbe and the Eyder, and on three of the
islands off the coast. . . . The Franks gave it its
currency and generality; for, in the eyes of a
Frank, Saxony and Friesland contained all those
parts of Germany which, partly from their dif-
ference of dialect, partly from their rudeness,
partly from their paganism, and partly from the
obstinacy of their resistance, stood in contrast to
the Empire of Charlemagne and his successors.
A Saxon was an enemy whom the Franks had to
coerce, a heathen whom they had to convert.
What more the term meant is uncertain." — R. G.
Latham, Introd. to Kemble's " Horm Ferales." —
See, also, Teutones.
As known to Tacitus. — " Germany is sepa-
rated from the Galli, the Rhseti, and Parmonii,
by the rivers Rhine and Danube; mountain
ranges, or the fear which each feels for the other,
divide it from the Sarmatse and Daci. Elsewhere
ocean girds it, embracing broad peninsulas and
islands of unexplored extent, where certain tribes
and kingdoms are newly known to us, revealed
by war. The Rhine springs from a precipitous
and inaccessible height of the Rhsetian Alps,
bends slightly westward, and mingles with the
Northern Ocean. The Danube pours down from
the gradual and gently rising slope of Mount
Abnoba, and visits many nations, to force its
way at last through six channels into the Pontus ;
a seventh mouth is lost in marshes. The Ger-
mans themselves I should regard as aboriginal,
and not mixed at all with other races through
immigration or intercourse. For, in formertimes,
it was not by land but on shipboard that those
who sought to emigrate would arrive ; and the
boundless and, so to speak, hostile ocean beyond
us, is seldom entered by a sail from our world.
And, besides the perils of rough and unknown
seas, who would leave Asia, or Africa, or Italy
for Germany, with its wild country, its inclement
skies, its sullen manners and aspect, unless in-
1461
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GERMANY.
Roman
Campaigns.
GERMANY.
deed it were his liome ? In tlieir ancient songs,
their only way of remembering or recording the
past, they celebrate an earth-born god, Tuisco,
and his son Mannus, as the origin of their race,
as their founders. To Mannus they assign three
sons, from whose names, they say, the coast tribes
are called Ingfevones ; those of the interior, Her-
minones; all the rest, Istoevones. Some, with the
freedom of conjecture permitted by antiquity,
assert that the god had several descendants, and
the nation several appellations, as Marsi, Gam-
brivii, Suevi, Vaudilii, and that these are genuine
old names. The name Germany, on the other
hand, they say, is modern and newly Introduced."
—Tacitus, Oermany; trans, by A. J. Church and
W. J. Brodribb, ch. 1-3.
B.C. 12-9. — Campaigns of Drusus.— The
first serious advance of the Roman arms beyond
the Rhine was made in the reign of Augustus,
by the emperor's step-son, Drusus. Caesar had
crossed the river, only to chastise and terrify the
tribes on the right bank which threatened Gaul.
Agrippa, some years later, repeated the opera-
tion, and withdrew, as Ca?sar had done. But
Drusus invaded Germany with intentions of con-
quest and occupation. His first campaign was
undertaken in the spring of the year 12 B. C. He
crossed the Rhine and drove the Usipetes into
their strongholds ; after which he embarked his
legions on transport ships and moved them down
the river to the ocean, thence to coast northwards
to the mouth of the Ems, and so penetrate to the
heart of the enemy's country. To facilitate this
bold movement, lie had caused a channel to be
cut from the Rhine, at modern Arnheim, to the
Zuyder Zee, utilizing the river Yssel. The ex-
pedition was not successful and retreated overland
from the Frisian coast after considerable disaster
and loss. The next year, Drusus returned to
the attack, marching directly into the German
country and advancing to the banks of the
Weser, but retreating, again, with little to show
of substantial results. He established a fortified
outpost, however, on the Lippe, and named it
Aliso. During the same summer, he is said to
have fixed another post in the country of the
Chatti. Two years then passed before Drusus
was again permitted by the emperor to cross the
Rhine. On his third campaign he passed the
Weser and penetrated the Hercynian forest as
far as the Elbe,— the Germans declining every-
where to give him battle. Erecting a trophy on
the bank of the Elbe, he retraced his steps, but
suffered a fall from his horse, on the homeward
march, which caused his death. "If the Ger-
mans were neither reduced to subjection, nor
even overthrown in any decisive engagement, as
the Romans vainly pretended, yet their spirit of
aggression was finally checked and from thence-
forth, for many generations, they were fully oc-
cupied with the task of defending themselves."
— C. Merivale, Hist, of the Eomans, ch. 36.
B. C. 8— A. D. II.— Campaigns of Tiberius.
—The work of Roman conquest in Germany, left
unfinished by Drusus, was taken up by his
brother Tiberius (afterwards emperor) under the
direction of Augustus. Tiberius crossed the Rhine,
for the first time, B. C. 8. The frontier tribes
made no resistance, but offered submission at
onca Tiberius sent their chiefs to Augustus,
then holding his court at Lugdunum (Lyons), to
make terms with the emperor in person, and
Augustus basely treated them as captives and
threw them into prison. The following year
found the German tribes again under arms, and
Tiberius again crossed the Rhine ; but it was only
to ravage the country, and not to remain. Then
followed a period of ten j;ears, durmg which the
emperor's step-son, dissatisfied with his position
and on ill terms with Augustus, retired to Rhodes.
In the summer of A. D. 4, he returned to the
command of the legions on the Rhine. Mean-
time, under other generals,— Domitius and Viui-
cius,— they had made several campaigns beyond
the river; had momentarily crossed the Elbe;
had constructed a road to the outposts on the
Weser; had fought the Cherusci, with doubtful
results, but had not settled the Roman power in
Germany. Tiberius invaded the country once
more, with a powerful force, and seems to have
crushed all resistance in the region between the
lower Rhine and the Weser. The following
spring, he repeated, with more success, the move-
ment of Drusus by land and sea, sending a flo-
tilla around to the Elbe and up that stream, to a
point where it met and co-operated with a column
moved overland, through the wilderness. A
single battle was fought and the Germans de-
feated ; but, once more, when winter approached,
the Romans retired and no permanent conquest
was made. Two years later (A. D. 6), Tiberius
turned his arms against the powerful nation of
the Marcomanni, which had removed itself from
the German mark, or border, into the country
formerly occupied by the Boii — modern Bohe-
mia. Here, under their able chief Marbod, or
Maroboduus, they developed a formidable mili-
tary organization and became threatening to the
Roman frontiers on the Upper Danube. Two
converging expeditions, from the Danube and
from the Rhine, were at the point of crushing the
Marcomanni between them, when news of the
alarming revolt, in Pannonia and Dalmatia, called
the "Batoaian War," caused the making of a
hasty peace with Maroboduus. The Batonian or
Pannonian war occupied Tiberius for nearly
three years. He had just brought it to a close,
when intelligence reached Rome of a disaster in
Germany which filled the empire with horror
and dismay. The tribes in northwestern Ger-
many, between the lower Rhine and the Elbe,
supposed to be cowed and submissive, had now
found a leader who could unite them and excite
them to disdain the Roman yoke. This leader
was Arminius, or Hermann, a young chief of the
Cherusci, who had been trained in the Roman
military service and admitted to Roman citizen-
ship but who hated the oppressors of his coun-
try with implacable bitterness. The scheme of
insurrection organized by Arminius was made
easy of execution by the insolent carelessness and
the incapacity of the Roman commander in Ger-
many, L. Quintilius Varus. It succeeded so well
that Varus and his army,— three entire legions,
horse, foot and auxiliaries,— probably 20,000 men
in all,— were overwhelmed in the Teutoburger
Wald' north of the Lippe, and destroyed. Only
a few skulking fugitives reached the Rhine and
escaped to tell the fate of the rest. This was
late in the summer of A. D. 9. In the following
spring Tiberius was sent again to the Rhine-fron-
tier, with as powerful a levy of men and equip-
ments as the empire could collect. He was ac-
companied by his nephew, Germanicus, son of
Drusus, destined to be his successor in the field
of German conquest. But dread and fear were
1463
GERJIANY.
Wandering
of the Natio7is.
GERilANY, 3D CENTURY.
in the Roman heart, and the ciimpaign of Tibe-
rius, delayed another twelve months, until A. D.
11, was conducted too cautiously to accomplish
any important result. He traversed and ravaged
a considerable region of the German country, but
withdrew again across the Rhine and left it, ap-
parently, unoccupied. This was his last cam-
paign. Returning to Rome, he waited only two
years longer for the imperial sovereignty to
which he succeeded on the death of Augustus,
who had made him, by adoption, his son and his
heir. — C. Merivale, Jlist. of the Romans, ch.
36-38.
Also in : T. Mommsen, Hist, of Home, bk. 8,
ch. 1. — Sir E. Creasy, Fifteen Decisive Battles of
the World, ch. 5. — T. Smith, Arminius, pt. 1, ch.
4-6.
A. D. 14-16. — Campaigns of Germanicus. —
Germanicus — the son of Drusus — was given
the command on the Rhine at the beginning of
the year 13 A. D. The following year, Augus-
tus died and Tiberius became emperor; where-
upon Germanicus found himself no longer re-
strained from crossing the river and assuming
the offensive against Arminius and his tribes.
His first movement, that autumn, was up the
valley of the Lippe, which he laid waste, far
and wide. The next spring, he led one column,
from Mentz, against the Chatti, as far as the
upper branches of the Weser, while he sent
another farther north to chastise the Cherusci
and the Marsi, surprising and massacring the
latter at their feast of Tanfana. Later in the
same year, he penetrated, by a double expedition,
— moving by sea and by land, as his father had
done before, — to the country between the Ems
and the Lippe, and laid waste the territory of
the Bructeri, and their neighbors. He also vis-
ited the spot where the army of Varus had per-
ished, and erected a monument to the dead. On
the return from this expedition, four legions,
under Caecina, were beset in the same manner
that Varus had been, and under like difficulties ;
but their commander was of different stuff and
brought them safely through, after punishing
his pursuers severely. But the army had been
given up as lost, and only the resolute opposition
of Agrippina, the wife of Germanicus, had pro-
vented the Roman commander at Vetera, on tlie
Rhine, from destroying the bridge there, and
abandoning the legions to their supposed fate.
In the spring of A. D. 16, Germanicus again em-
barked his army, 80,000 strong, at the mouth of
the Rhine, on board transports, and moved it to
the moutli of the Ems, where the fleet remained.
Thence he marched up the Ems and across to the
Weser, and was encountered, in the country of
the Cherusci, by a general levy of the German
tribes, led by Arminius and Inguiomerus. Two
great battles were fought, in which the Romans
were victorious. But, when returning from this
campaign, the fleet encountered a storm in which
so much of it perished, with the troops on board,
that the disaster threw a heavy cloud of gloom
over the triumph of Germanicus. The young
general was soon afterwards recalled, and three
years later he died, — of poison, as is supposed, —
at Antioch. "The central government ceased
from this time to take any warm interest in the
s>ib j ugation of the Germans ; and the dissensions
of their states and princes, which peace was not
slow in developing, attracted no Roman emissa-
ries to the barbarian camps, and rarely led the
legions beyond the frontier, which was now al-
lowed to recede finally to the Rhine." — C. Meri-
vale, Hist, of the Somans, ch. 42.
Also IN ; T. Mommsen, Hist, of Rome, bk. 8,
ch. 1. — T. Smith, Armimus, pt. 1, ch. 7.
3d Century. — Beginning of the "Wandering
of the Nations." — " Towards the middle of the
third century, ... a change becomes perceptible
in the relations and attitude of the German
peoples. Many of the nations, which have been
celebrated in the annals of the classical writers,
disappear silently from history ; new races, new
combinations and confederacies start into life,
and the names which have achieved an imperisha-
ble notoriety from their connection with the long
decay and the overthrow of the Roman Empire,
come forward, and still survive. On the soil
whereon the Sigambri, Marsi, Chauci, and Che-
rusci had struggled to preserve a rude indepen-
dence, Franks and Saxons lived free and formid-
able; Alemanni were gathered along the foot of
the Roman wall which connected the Danube
with the Rhine, and had, hitherto, preserved in-
violate the Agri decumates ; while eastern Ger-
many, allured by the hope of spoil, or impelled
by external pressure, precipitated itself under
the collective term of Goths upon the shrinking
settlements of the Dacia and the Danube. The
new appellations which appear in western Ger-
many in the third century have not unnaturally
given rise to the presumption that unknown
peoples had penetrated through the land, and
overpowered the ancient tribes, and national
vanity has contributed to the delusion. As the
Burgundians . . . were flattered by being told
they were descendants of Roman colonists, so
the barbarian writers of a later period busied
their imaginations in the solitude of monastic
life to enhance the glory of their countrymen, by
the invention of what their inkling of classical
knowledge led them to imagine a more illustrious
origin. . . . Fictions like these may be referred
to as an index of the time wlien the young bar-
barian spirit, eager after fame, and incapable of
balancing probabilities, first gloated over the
marvels of classical literature, though its refined
and delicate beauties eluded their grosser taste ;
but they require no critical examination ; there
are no grounds for believing that Franks, Saxons,
or Alemanni, were other than the original inhabi-
tants of the country, though there is a natural
difliculty arising from the want of written con-
temporary evidence in tracing the transition, and
determining the tribes of which the new con-
federacies were formed. At the same time,
though no immigration of strangers was pos-
sible, a movement of a particular tribe was not
unfrequent. The constant internal dissensions
of the Germans, combined with their spirit of
warlike enterprise, led to frequent domestic wars;
and the vanquished sometimes chose rather to seek
an asylum far from their native soil, where they
might live in freedom, than continue as bondmen
or tributaries to the conqueror. Of such a nature
were the wanderings of the Usipites and Tcuch-
teri [Tenchteri] in Cfesar's time, the removal of the
Ubii from Nassau to the neighbourhood of Coin
and Xanthen; and to this must be ascribed the
appearance of the Burgundians, who had dwelt
beyond the Oder, in the vicinity of the Main and
the Necker. Another class of national emigra-
tions, were those which implied a final abaiuion-
ment of the native Germany with the object of
1464
GERMANY, 3D CENTURY.
Wandering
of the Nations.
GERMANY, A. D. 481-768.
seeking a new settlement among the possessions
of tlie sinking empire. Those of the Goths, Van-
dals, Alans, Sueves, the second movement of the
Burgundians, may be included in this categorj' ;
the invasions of the Franks, Aleraanni, and Sax-
ons, on the contrary, cannot be called national
emigrations, for they never abandoned, with their
families, their original birthplace ; their outwan-
derings, like the emigrations of the present day,
were partial; their occupation of the enemy's
territory was, in character, military and progres-
sive; and, with the exception of the Anglo-Saxon
settlement in Britain, their connection with the
original stock was never interrupted. In all the
migrations of German peoples spoken of from
Csesar downwards, the numbers of the emigrants
appear to be enormously exaggerated. The
Usipites and Teuohteri are estimated by CiEsar
at 430,000 souls. How could such a multitude
find nourishment during a three years' wander-
ing? If 80,000 Burgundian Wehrmen came to
the Rhine to the assistance of Valentinian, as
Cassiodorius, Jerome, and other chroniclers state,
the numbers of the whole nation must have ap-
proached 400,000, and it is impossible to believe
that such a mass could obtain support in the
narrow district lying between the Alemanni, the
Hermunduri, and the Chatti. In other cases,
vague expressions, and still more the wonderful
achievements of the Germans in the course of
their emigrations, have led to the supposition of
enormous numbers ; but Germany could not find
nourishment for the multitudes which have been
ascribed to it. Corn at that period was little
cultivated; it was not the food of the people,
whose chief support was flesh. . . . The con-
quests of the barbarians may be ascribed as much
to the weakness of their adversaries, to their
want of energy and union, as to their own
strength. There was, in fact, no enemy to meet
them in the field ; and their domination was, at
least, as acceptable to the provincial inhabitants
as that of the imbecile, but rapacious ministers
of the Roman government. ... It was not the
lust of wandering, but the influence of external
circumstances which brought them to the vicin-
ity of the Danube : at first the aggressions of the
Romans, then the pressure of the Huns and the
Sclavonic tribes. The whole intercourse of Ger-
many with Rome must be considered as one long
war, which began with the invasion of Csesar;
which, long restrained by the superior power of
the enemy, warmed with his growing weakness,
and only ended with the extinction of the Roman
name. The wars of the third, fourth, and fifth
centuries, were only a continuance of the ancient
hostility. There might be partial truce, or occa-
sional intermission ; some tribes might be almost
extirpated by the sword ; some, for a time, bought
off by money ; but Rome was the universal
enemy, and much of the internal restlessness of
the Germans was no more than the natural move-
ment towards the hostile borders. As the inva-
sion of northern Germany gave rise to the first
great northern union, so the conquest of Dacia
brought Goths from the Vistula to the south,
while the erection of the giant wall naturally
gathered the Suevic tribes along its limits, only
waiting for the opportunity to break through.
Step by step this battle of centuries was fought ;
from the time of Caracalla the flood turned, wave
followed wave like the encroaching tide, and the
ancient landmarks receded bit by bit, till Rome
itself was buried beneath the waters. . . . Three
great confederacies of German tribes, more or
less united by birth, position, interest, or lan-
guage, may be discerned, during this period, in
immediate contact with the Romans — the Ale-
raanni, the Goths, and the Pranks. A fourth,
the Saxons, was chiefly known from its maritime
voyages off the coast of Gaul and Britain. There
were also many independent peoples which can-
not be enumerated among any of the political
confederacies, but which acted for themselves,
and pursued their individual ends: such were
the Burgundians, the Alans, the Vandals, and
the LomlDards." — T. Smith, Arminius, pt. 2, ch. 1.
Also IK: R. G. 'La,t\ia.ia,NationaUties of Europe,
V. 3, ch. 21. — See, also, Ai,emanni; Marcomanni;
QcADi; Goths; Gepid^; Saxons; Angles,
Franks; Burgundians; Vandals; Suevi; Lom-
bards; and, also. Appendix A, vol. 5.
A. D. 277. — Invasion by Probus. — The vigor-
ous emperor Probus, who, in the year 2T7, drove
from Gaul the swarms of invaders that had rav-
aged the unhappy province with impunity for
two years past, then crossed the Rhine and har-
ried the country of the marauders, as far as the
Elbe and the Neckar. " Germany, exhausted by
the ill success of the last emigration, was aston-
ished by his presence. Nine of the most consid-
erable princes repaired to his camp and fell pros-
trate at his feet. Such a treaty was humbly
received by the Germans as it pleased the con-
queror to dictate. " Probus then caused a stone
wall, strengthened at intervals with towers, to
be built from the Danube, near Neustadt and
Ratisbou, to Wimpfen on the Neckar, and thence
to the Rhine, for the protection of the settlers of
the " Agri Decumates." But the wall was thrown
down, a few years afterwards, by the Alemanni.
— E. Gibbon, Decline and Pall of the Boman Em-
pire, ch. 12.
Sth Century. — Conversion of the Franks.
See Ciiristianity: A. D. 496-800.
A. D. 481-768. — Acquisition of supremacy by
the Franks. — The original dominions of Clovis,
or Chlodwig — with whose reign the career of
the Franks as a consolidated people began — cor-
responded nearly to the modern kingdom of Bel-
gium. His first conquests were from the Romans,
in the neighboring parts of Gaul, and when those
were finished, " the king of the Franks began to
look round upon the other German nations settled
upon its soil, with a view to the further exten-
sion of his power. A quarrel with the Alemanni
supplied the first opportunity for the gratification
of his ambition. For more than a century the
Alemanni had been in undisturbed possession of
Alsace, and the adjoining districts; Mainz,
Worms, Speyer, Strasburg, Basel, Constanz, Bre-
genz, lay within their territory. . . . The Vose-
gen range was a bulwark on the side of Gaul,
waste lands separated them from the Burgun-
dians, who were settled about the Jura and in the
south-west part of Helvetia, and the Moselle di-
vided them from the Ripuarian Franks. It is un-
known whether they formed a state distinct from
their brethren on the right of the Rhine ; prob-
ably such was the case, for the Alemanni, at all
times, were divided into separate tribes, between
which, however, was generally a common union ;
nor is it certain whether the Alsatian Alemanni
were under one or several Adelings ; a single king
is mentioned as having fallen in the battle with
Chlodwig, who may have been merely an elected
1466
GERMANY, A. D. 481-768.
The Franks.
GERMANY, A. D. 481-768.
military leader. Equally obscure is the cause of
their war with Chlodwig, though it has been
assumed, perhaps too hastily, by all recent his-
torians, that the Frank king became involved in
it as an ally of the Ripuarians. The Ripuarian
Franks were settled, as the name imports, upon
the banks of the Rhine, from the Moselle down-
wards ; their chief seat was the city of Cologne.
It is probable that they consisted of the remains
of the ancient Ubii, strengthened by the adven-
turers who crossed over on the iirst invasion, and
the name implies that they were regarded by the
Romans as a kind of limitanean soldiery. For,
in the common parlance of the Romans of that
period, the tract of land lying along the Rhine
was called Ripa, in an absolute sense, and even
the river itself was not unfrequently denominated
by the same title. Ripuarii are Ripa-wehren,
Hreop, or Hrepa-wehren, defenders of the shore.
About the close of the iif th century these Ripuarii
were under the government of a king, named
Sigebert, usually called ' the lance. ' The story
told by modern writers is, that this Sigebert, hav-
ing fallen into dispute with the Alemanni, called
upon Chlodwig for assistance, a call which the
young king willingly listened to. The Alemanni
had invaded the Ripuarian territory, and ad-
vanced within a short distance of Cologne, when
Chlodwig and his Franks joined the Ripuarii; a
battle took place at Zlilpich, about twenty -two
English miles from Cologne, which, after a fierce
struggle, ended in the defeat of the Alemanni.
. . . Chlodwig was following up his victory over
the Alemanni, perhaps with unnecessary feroci-
ty, when he was stopped in his course by a flatter-
ing embassy from the great Theodorich. Many
of the Alemanni had submitted, after the death
of their chief, on the field of battle. ' Spare us,'
they cried, ' for we are now thy people ! ' but
there were many who, abhorring the Frank yoke,
fled towards the south, and threw themselves
under the protection of the Ostrogothic king,
who had possessed himself of the ancient Rhsetia
and Vindelicia." — T. Smith, Arminius, pt. 3, ch.
4. — The sons of Clovis pushed their conquests on
the Germanic as well as on the Gallic side of the
Rhine. Theodoric, or Theuderik, who reigned
at Metz, with the aid of his brother Clotaire, or
Chlother, of Soissons, subjugated the Thurin-
gians, between A. D. 515 and 528. "How he
[Theuderik] acquired authority over the Ale-
mans and the Bavarians is not known. Perhaps
in the subjugation of Thuringia he had taken
occasion to extend his sway over other nations ;
but from this time forth we find not only these,
but the Saxons more to the north, regarded as
the associates or tributaries of the Eastern or
Ripuarian Franks. From the Elbe to the Meuse,
and from the Northern Ocean to the .sources of
the Rhine, a region comprising a great part of
ancient Germany, the ascendency of the Franks
was practically acknowledged, and a kingdom
was formed [Austrasia — Oster-rike — the East-
ern Kingdom] which was destined to overshadow
all the other Merovingian states. The various
tribes which composed its Germanic accretions,
remote and exempt from the influences of the
Roman civilization, retained their fierce customs
and their rude superstitions, and continued to
be governed by tlieir hereditary dukes; but
their wild masses marched under the standards
of the Franks, and conceded to those formidable
conquerors a certain degree of political suprem-
acy." When, in 558, Clotaire, by the death of
his brothers, became the sole king of the Franks,
his empire embraced all Roman Gaul, except Sep-
timania, still held by the Visigoths, and Brittany,
but slightly subjected; "while in ancient Ger-
many, from the Rhine to the Weser, the power-
ful duchies of the Alemans, the Thuringians, the
Bavarians, the Frisons, and the Saxons, were re-
garded not entirely as subject, and yet as tribu-
tary provinces." During the next century and
a half, the feebleness of the Merovingians lost
their hold upon these German tributaries. " As
early as the time of Chlother II. the Langobards
had recovered their freedom; under Dagobert
[623-638], the Saxons; under Sighebert II. [638-
656], the Thuringians; and now, during the late
broils [670-687], the Alemans, the Bavarians and
the Frisons." But the vigorous Mayors of the
Palace, Pepin Heristal and Karl Martel, applied
themselves resolutely to the restoration of the
Frank supremacy, in Germany as well as in
Aquitaine. Pepin "found the task nearly im-
possible. Time and again he assailed the Frisons,
the Saxons, the Bavarians, and the Alemans,
but could Isind them to no truce nor peace for
any length of time. No less than ten times
the Frisons resumed their arms, while the revolts
of the others were so Incessant that he was com-
pelled to abandon all hope of recovering the
southern or Roman part of Gaul, in order to
direct his attention exclusively to the Germans.
The aid which he received from the Cliristian
missionaries rendered him more successful among
them. Those intrepid propagandists pierced
where his armies could not. . . . The Franks
and the Popes of Rome had a common interest in
this work of the conversion of the Germans, the
Franks to restrain irruptions, and the Popes to
carry their spiritual sway over Europe." Pepin
left these unfinished German wars to his son Karl,
the Hammer, and Karl prosecuted them with
characteristic energy during his first years of
power. ' ' Almost every month he was forced into
some expedition beyond the Rhine. . . . The
Alemans, the Bavarians, and the Prisons, he suc-
ceeded in subjecting to a formal confession at least
of the Prankish supremacy ; but the turbulent
and implacable Saxons batfled his most strenu-
ous efforts. Their wild tribes had become, witliin
a few years, a powerful and numerous nation;
they had appropriated the lands of the Thurin-
gians and Hassi, or Catti, and joined to themselves
other confederations and tribes; and, stretching
from the Rhine to the Elbe, offered their marshes
and forests a free asylum to all the persecuted
sectaries of Odhinn, to all the lovers of native and
savage independence. Six times in succession
the armies of Karl penetrated the wilderness they
called their home, ravaging their fields and burn-
ing their cabins, but the Saxon war was still
renewed. He left it to the energetic labors of
other conquerors, to Christian missionaries, . . .
to break the way of civilization into those rude and
darkened realms." Karl's sons Pepin and Karlo-
man crushed revolts of the Alemans, or Suabians,
and the Bavarians in 743, and Karloman humbled
the Saxons in a great campaign (744), compelling
them in large numbers to submit to Christian
baptism. After that, Germany waited for its first
entire master — Charlemagne. — P. Godwin, Hist,
of Prance: Ancient Oaul, ch. 13-15.
Also in: W. C. Perry, The Franks, ch. 2-6.—
See, also, Franks, and Austrasia.
1466
GERMANY, A. D. 687-800. Tlie Carolingians. GERMANY, A. D. 687-800.
A. D. 687-800. — Rise of the Carolingians
and the Empire of Charlemagne. — "Towards
the close of the Merovingian period, . . . the
kingdom of the Franks . . . was divided into
four great districts, or kingdoms as they were
called : Austrasia, or the eastern kingdom, from
the river Rhine to the Meuse, with Metz as its
principal city; Neustria, or the western king-
dom, extending from Austrasia to the ocean on
the west, and to the Loire on the south ; Aqui-
taine, south of that river to the foot of the Pyre-
nees; and Burgundy, from the Rlione to the
Alps, including Switzerland. These four king-
doms became, before the extinction of the Mero-
vingian race, consolidated into two, — viz., Aus-
trasia and Neustria, Eastern and Western Francia,
— modern Germany and modern France, roughly
speaking, — of which the first was to gain the
pre-eminence, as it was the seat of the power of
that race of Charlemagne which seized upon the
kingdoms of the Merovingians. But in these
kingdoms, while the family of Clovis occupied
them, the roj'al power became more and more
feeble as time went on, a condition which is illus-
trated by the title given in history to these kings,
— that of ' rois faineants. "... The most power-
ful officer of a Frankish king was his steward,
or, as he was called, the mayor of his palace.
... In Austrasia the office had become heredi-
tary in the family of Pepin of Landen (a small
village near Lifige), and under its guidance the
degenerate children of Clovis in that kingdom
fought for the supremacy with those equally de-
generate in Neustria, at that time also under the
real control of another mayor of the palace,
called Ebroin. The result of this struggle, after
much bloodshed and misery, was reached in the
year 687 at the battle of Testry, in which the
Austrasians completely defeated the Neustrians.
. . . The Merovingian princes were still nomi-
nally kings, while all the real power was in the
hands of the descendants of Pepin of Landen,
mayors of the palace, and the policy of govern-
ment was as fully settled by them as if they had
been kings de jure as well as de facto. This
family produced in its earlier days some persons
who have become among the most conspicuous
figures in history: — Pepin, the founder; Pepin
le Gros, of Heristal ; Charles, his son, commonly
called Martel, or the Hammerer ; Pepin le Bref ,
under whom the Carlovingian dynasty was, by
aid of the Pope, recognized as the lawful suc-
cessor of the Merovingians, even before the ex-
tinction of that race ; and, lastly, Charles, sur-
named the Great, or Charlemagne, one of the
few men of the human race who, by common
consent, have occupied the foremost rank in
history. . . . The object of Pepin of Heristal
was two-fold, — to repress the disposition of the
turbulent nobles to encroach upon the royal au-
thority, and to bring again under the yoke of
the Pranks those tribes in Germany who had re-
volted against the Frankish rule owing to the
weakness of the Merovingian government. He
measurably accomplished both objects. . . . He
seems to have had what perhaps is the best test
at all times of the claims of a man to be a real
statesman : some consciousness of the true nature
of his mission, — the establishment of order. . . .
His son and successor, Charles Martel, was even
more conspicuous for the possession of this genius
of statesmanship, but he exhibited it in a some-
what different direction. He, too, strove to hold
the nobles in check, and to break the power of
the Frisian and the Saxon tribes ; and he fought
besides, fortunately for his fame, one of the fif-
teen decisive battles in the history of the world,
that of Poitiers, In 733, by which the Saracens,
who had conquered Spain, and who had strong
hopes of gaining possession of the whole of
Western Europe, were driven back from North-
ern France, never to return. . . . His son, Pepin
le Bref, is equally conspicuous with the rest in
history, but in a somewhat different way. He
continued the never-ending wars in Germany
and in Gaul with the object of securing peace
by the sword, and with more or less success.
But his career is noteworthy principally because
he completed the actual deposition of the last of
the Merovingian race, whose nominal servants
but real masters he and his predecessors, mayors
of the palace, had been, and because he sought
and obtained the sanction of the Church for this
usurpation. . . . The Pope's position at this time
was one of very great embarrassment. Har-
assed by the Lombards, who were not only rob-
bers, but who were also Arians, and who admit-
ted -none of the Catholic clergy to their councils,
— with no succor from the Emperors at Constan-
tinople (whose subject he nominally was) against
the Lombards, and, indeed, in open revolt against
them because as bishop and patriarch of the
West he had forbidden the execution of the de-
cree against the placing of images in the churches,
— for these and many such reasons he sorely
needed succor, and naturally in his necessity he
turned to the powerful King of the Franks. The
coronation of Pepin le Bref, first by St. Boni-
face, and then by the Pope himself, was the first
step in the fulfilment of the alliance on his part.
Pepin was soon called upon to do his share of the
work. Twice at the bidding of the Pope he de-
scended from the Alps, and, defeating the Lom-
bards, was rewarded by him and the people of
Rome with the title of Patrician. . . . On the
death of Pepin, the Lombards again took up arms
and harassed the Church's territory. Charle-
magne, his successor, was called upon to come
to the rescue, and he swept the Lombard power
in Italy out of existence, annexing its territory to
the Frankish kingdom, and confirming the grant
of the Exarchate and of the Pentapolis which his
father had made to the Popes. "This was in the
year 774. . . . For twenty-five years Charle-
magne ruled Rome nominally as Patrician, under
the supremacy, equally nominal, of the Emperor
at Constantinople. The true sovereign, recog-
nized as such, was the Pope or Bishop of Rome,
but the actual power was in the hands of the
mob, who at one time towards the close of the
century, in the absence of both Emperor and
Patrician, assaulted the Pope while conducting
a procession, and forced him to abandon the city.
This Pope, Leo, with a fine instinct as to the
quarter from which succor could alone come,
hurried to seek Charlemagne, who was then in
Germany engaged in one of his never-ending
wars against the Saxons. The appeal for aid
was not made in vain, and Charles descended
once more from the Alps in the summer of 799,
with his Frankish hosts. On Christmas day,
A. D. 800, in the Church of St. Peter . . .
Pope Leo, during the mass, and after flie reading
of the gospel, placed upon the brow of Charle-
magne, who had abandcttied his northern furs for
the dress of a Roman patrician, the diadem of
1467
GERMANY. A. D.
37-800. Charlemagiie's Restora- GERMANY, A. D. 814-843.
tion of the Empire.
the Csesars, and hailed him Imperator Semper
Augustus, while the multitude shouted, ' Carolo,
Augusto a Deo coronato maguo et pacifico Im-
peratori Vita et Victoria.' In that shout and
from that moment one of the most fruitful epochs
of history begins." — C. J. Stille, Studies in Me-
diceval History, ch. 3. — See, also, Fkauks: A. D.
768-814.
A. D. 8oo. — Charlemagne's restoration of
the Roman Empire. — "Three hundred and
twenty -four years had passed since the last
CiEsar of the West resigned his power into the
hands of the senate, and left to his Eastern
brother the sole headship of the Roman world.
To the latter Italy had from that time been nom-
inally subject; but it was only during one brief
interval, between the death of Totila the last
Ostrogothic king and the descent of Alboin the
first Lombard, that his power had been really
effective. In the further provinces, Gaul, Spain,
Britain, it was only a memory. But the idea of
a Roman Empire as a necessary part of the
world's order had not vanished: it had been ad-
mitted by those who seemed to be destroying it ;
it had been cherished by the Church ; was still
recalled by laws and customs ; was dear to the
subject populations, who fondly looked back to
the days when slavery was at least mitigated by
peace and order. . . . Both the extinction of the
Western Empire in [A. D. 476] . . . and its revival
in A. D. 800 have been very generally misunder-
stood in modem times. . . . When Odoacer
compelled the abdication of Romulus Augustu-
lus, he did not abolish the Western Empire as a
separate power, but caused it to be reunited with
or sink into the Eastern, so that from that time
there was, as there had been before Diocletian,
a single undivided Roman Empire. In A. D.
800 the very memory of the separate Western
Empire, as it had stood from the death of Theo-
dosius till Odoacer, had, so far as appears, been
long since lost, and neither Leo nor Charles nor
any one among their advisers dreamt of reviving
it. They, too, like their predecessors, held the
Roman Empire to be one and indivisible, and
proposed by the coronation of the Frankish king,
not to proclaim a severance of the East and
West, but to reverse the act of Constantine, and
make Old Rome again the civil as well as the
ecclesiastical capital of the Empire that bore her
name. . . . Although therefore we must in prac-
tice speak during the next seven centuries (down
till A. D. 1453, when Constantinople fell before
the Mohammedan) of an Eastern and a Western
Empire, the phrase is in strictness incorrect, and
was one which either court ought to have repu-
diated. The Byzantines always did repudiate
it; the Latins usually; although, yielding to
facts, they sometimes condescended to employ it
themselves. But their theory was always the
same. Charles was held to be the legitimate
successor, not of Romulus Augustulus, but of
Basil, Heraclius, Justinian, Arcadius, and all
the Eastern line. . . . North Italy and Rome
ceased for ever to own the supremacy of Byzan-
tium; and while the Eastern princes paid a
shameful tribute to the Mussulman, the Frankish
Emperor — as the recognised head of Christen-
dom — received from the patriarch of Jerusalem
the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and the banner
of Calvary ; the gift of the Sepulchre itself, says
Eginhard, from Aaron king of the Persians [the
Caliph Haroun el Rashid]. . . . Four centuries
later, when Papacy and Empire had been forced
into the mortal struggle by which the fate of
both was decided, three distinct theories regard-
ing the coronation of Charles will be found ad-
vocated by three different parties, all of them
plausible, all of them to some extent misleading.
The Swabian Emperors held the crown to have
been won by their great predecessor as the prize
of conquest, and drew the conclusion that the
citizens and bishop of Rome had no rights as
against themselves. The patriotic party among
the Romans, appealing to the early history of the
Empire, declared that by nothing but the voice
of their senate and people could an Emperor be
lawfully created, he being only their chief mag-
istrate, the temporary depositary of their author-
ity. 'The Popes pointed to the indisputable fact
that Leo imposed the crown, and argued that as
God's earthly vicar it was then his, and must
always continue to be their right to give to
whomsoever they would an office which was
created to be the handmaid of their own. Of
these three it was the last view that eventually
prevailed. " — J. Bryce, Tlie Holy Roman Empire,
ch. 4-5.
Also ln: J. I. Mombert, Hist, of GJiarles the
Great, ch. 14.— See, also, Pbanks: A.D. 768-814.
A. D. 805. — Conquest of the Avars. — Crea-
tion of the Austrian March. See Avabs, and
Austria; A. D. 805-1246.
A. D. 814-843. — Division of the Empire of
Charlemagne. — "There was a manifest conflict,
during his later years, in the court, in the coun-
cils, in the mind of Charlemagne [who died in
814], between the King of the Franks and the
Emperor of the West ; between the dissociating,
independent Teutonic principle, and the Roman
principle of one code, one dominion, one sover-
eign. The Church, though Teutonic in descent,
was Roman in the sentiment of unity. . . . That
unity had been threatened by the proclaimed
division of the realm between the sons of Char-
lemagne. The old Teutonic usage of equal dis-
tribution seemed doomed to prevail over the au-
gust unity of the Roman Empire. What may
appear more extraordinary, the kingdom of Italy
was the inferior appanage: it carried not vrith
it the Empire, which was still to retain a certain
supremacy; that was reserved for the Teutonic
sovereign. It might seem as if this were but the
continuation of the Lombard kingdom, which
Charlemagne still held by the right of conquest.
It was bestowed on Pepin ; after his death en-
trusted to Bernhard, Pepin's illegitimate but
only son. Wiser counsels prevailed. The two
elder sons of Charlemagne died without issue;
Louis the third son was summoned from his
kingdom of Aquitaine, and solemnly crowned
[813] at Aix-la-Chapelle, as successor to the
whole Empire."— H. H. Milman, Hist, of Latin
Christianity, bk. 5, ch. 3 (v. 3).— "Instead of
being preoccupied with the care of keeping the
empire united, Louis divided it in the year 817
by giving kingdoms to his three sons. The eld-
est, Lothaire, had Italy ; Louis, Bavaria ; Pepin,
Aquitaine. A nephew of the emperor, Bernard,
Imagined himself wronged by this partition, and
took up arms to hold Italy. Vanquished with-
out striking a blow, he delivered himself up to
his uncle, who caused his eyes to be put out.
He expired under that torture. Louis reproached
himself later for that cruel death, and to expiate
it, subjected himself to a public penance. In
1468
GERMANY, A. D. 814-843.
Division of the
Empire.
GERMANY, A. D. 911.
833, there was born to him a fourth son. To
make him a sharer of his inlicritance, the em-
peror, annulling in 829 the partition of 817, gave
him German}', thus depriving his elder sons of
part of the inheritance jjreviously assigned them.
This provoked the resentment of those princes;
they rose iu rebellion against their father, and
the rest of the reign of Louis was only a suc-
cession of impious contests with his turbulent
sons. In 833, he deposed Pepin, and gave his
kingdom of Aquitaine to his youngest born,
Charles. Twice deposed himself, and twice re-
stored, Louis only emerged from the cloister, for
which he was so well fitted, to repeat the same
faults. AVhen Louis the Good-natured died in
840, it was not his cause only which he had lost
through his weakness, but that of the empire.
Those intestine quarrels presaged its dismember-
ment, which ere long happened. The sons of
Louis, to serve their own ambition, had revived
the national antipathies of the different races.
Lothaire placed himself at the head of the Ital-
ians ; Louis rallied the Germans round him, and
Charles the Bald the Franks of Gaul, who were
henceforward called Frenchmen. Those three
peoples aspired to break up the union whose bond
Charlemagne had imposed upon them, as the
three brothers aspired to form each for himself a
kingdom. The question was decided at the great
battle of Fontanet, near Auxerre, in 841. Lo-
thaire, who fought therein for the preservation
of the empire and of his authority, was con-
quered. By the treaty of Verdun [843 — see
Verdun, Treaty of] it was decided that Louis
should have Germany to the east of the Rhine;
Charles, France to the west of the Scheld, the
■Meuse, the Saone, and the. Rhone; finally, Lo-
thaire, Italy, with the long range of country com-
prised between the Alps and the Cevennes, the
Jura, the Saone, the Rhine, and the Meuse, which
from his name was called Lotharingia. This
designation is still to be traced in one of the
recently French provinces, Lorraine." — S. Men-
zies. Hist, of Europe from the Decadence of the
Western Empire to the Reformation, eh. 13.
A. D. 843. — Accession of Louis XL
A. D. 843-962. — Treaty of Verdun. — Definite
separation from France. — The kingdom of the
East Franks. — The partition of the empire of
Charlemagne among his three grandsons, by the
Treaty of Verdun, A. D. 843 (see Verdun, Treaty
OF; also, Franks: A. D. 814-962), gave to Charles
the Bald a kingdom which nearly coincided with
France, as afterwards existing under that name,
"before its Burgundian and German annexations.
It also founded a kingdom which roughly an-
swered to the later Germany before its great ex-
tension to the East at the expense of the Slavonic
nations. And as the Western kingdom was
formed by the addition of Aquitaine to the West-
ern Francia, so the Eastern kingdom was formed
by the addition of the Eastern Francia to Bavaria.
Lewis of Bavaria [surnamed ' the German '] be-
came king of a kingdom which we are tempted
to call the kingdom of Germany. Still it would
as yet be premature to speak of France at all,
or even to speak of Germany, except in the
geographical sense. The two kingdoms are
severally the kingdoms of the Eastern and of
the Western Franks. . . . The Kings had no
special titles, and their dominions had no special
names recognized in formal use. Every king
who ruled over any part of the ancient Francia
was a king of the Franks. . . . The East-
ern part of the Fraukish dominions, the lot of
Lewis the German and his successors, is thus
called the Eastern Kingdom, the Teutonic King-
dom. Its king is the King of the East-Franks,
sometimes simply the King of the Eastern men,
sometimes the King of Germany. . . . The title
of King of Germany is often found in the ninth
century as a description, but it was not a formal
title. The Eastern king, like other kings, for
the most part simply calls himself ' Rex,' till the
time came when his rank as King of Germany,
or of the East-Franks, became simply a step
towards the higher title of Emperor of the Ro-
mans. . . . This Eastern or German kingdom, as
it came out of the division of 887 [after the de-
position of Charles III., called Charles the Fat,
who came to the throne in 881, and who had
momentarily reunited all the Frankish crowns, ex-
cept that of Burgundy], had, from nortli to south,
nearly the same extent as the Germany of later
times. It stretched from the Alps to the Eider.
Its southern boundaries were somewhat fluctuat-
ing. Verona and Aquileia are sometimes counted
as a German march, and the boundary between
Germany and Burgundy, crossing the modern
Switzerland, often changed. To the north-east
the kingdom hardly stretched beyond the Elbe,
except in the small Saxon land between the Elbe
and the Eider [called ' Saxony beyond the Elbe '
— modern Holstein]. The great extension of the
German power over the Slavonic lands beyond
the Elbe had hardly yet begun. To the south-
east lay the two border-lands or marks ; the East-
ern Mark, which grew into the later duchy of
Oesterreich or the modern Austria, and to the
south of it the mark of Kfirnthen or Carinthia.
But the main part of the kingdom consisted of
the great duchies of Saxony, Eastern Francia,
Alemannia, and Bavaria. Of these the two names
of Saxony and Bavaria must be carefully marked
as having widely different meanings from tho.se
which they bear on the modern map. Ancient
Saxony lies, speaking roughly, between the
Eider, the Elbe, and the Rhino, though it never
actually touches the last-named river. To the
south of Saxony lies the Eastern Francia, the
centre and kernel of the German kingdom. The
Main and the Neckar both join the Rhine within
its borders. To tlie south of Francia lie Ale-
mannia and Bavaria. This last, it must be remem-
bered, borders on Italy, with Bijtzen for its fron-
tier town. Alemannia is the land in which both
the Rhine and the Danube take their source ; it
stretches on both sides of the Bodensee or Lake
of Constanz, with the Rsetian Alps as its southern
boundary. For several ages to come, there is no
distinction, national or even provincial, between
the lands north and south of the Bodensee." —
E. A. Freeman, Historical Oeog. of Europe, ch. 6,
sect. 1.
Also in : Sir F, Palgrave, Hist, of Normandy
and England, v. 1-3. — On the indefiniteness of
the name of the Germanic kingdom in this period,
see France : 9th Century.
A. D. 881.— Accession of Charles III. (called
The Fat), aftervyards King of all the Franks
and Emperor.
A. D. 888. — Accession of Arnulf, afterwards
Emperc.
A. D. 899. — Accession of Louis III. (called
The Child).
A. D. 911. — Election of Conrad I.
1469
GERMANY, A. D. 911-936. The Saxon line. GERMANY, A. D. 936-973.
A. D. 911-936. — Conrad the Franconian and
Henry the Fowler.— Beginning of the Saxon
line. — Hungarian invasion. — The building of
towns. — In 911, on the death of Louis, surnaraed
the Child, the German or Bast-Frank branch of
the dynasty of Charlemagne had become e.xtinct.
"There remained indeed Charles the Simple, ac-
knowledged as king in some parts of France, but
rejected in others, and possessing no personal
claims to respect. The Germans therefore wise-
ly determined to chose a sovereign from among
themselves. They were at tliis time divided into
five nations, eacli under its own duke, and distin-
guished by difference of laws, as well as of origin ;
the Franks, whose territory, comprising Fran-
conia and the modern Palatinate, was considered
as the cradle of the empire, and who seem to have
arrogated some superiority over tlie rest, the Sua-
bians, tlie Bavarians, the Sa.xons . . . and the
Lorrainers, who occupied tlie left bank of the
Rhine as far as its termination. The choice of
these nations in their general assembly fell upon
Conrad, duke of Franconia. according to some
writers, or at least a man of high rank, and de-
scended througli females from Charlemagne.
Conrad dying without male issue, the crown of
Germany was bestowed [A. D. 919] upon Henry
the Fowler, duke of Saxony, ancestor of the
three Othos, who followed him in direct succes-
sion. To Henry, and to the first Otho [A. D. 936-
973], Germany was more indebted tlian to any
sovereign since Charlemagne. " — H. Hallam, The
Middle Ages, ch.5. — " In 934, the Hungarians, who
were as much dreaded as the angel of destruction,
re-appeared. They came from the grassy plains
of Hungary, mounted on small and ugly, but
strong horses, and swept along the Danube like
a hailstorm. Wlierever they came they set fire
to farms, hamlets, and towns, and killed all liv-
ing creatures or carried tliem off. And often they
bound their prisoners to the tails of their horses,
and dragged them along till tliey died from the
dreadful torture. Their very figures inspired
disgust and terror, for their faces were brown,
and disfigured by scars to absolute hideousness ;
their heads were shaven, and brutal ferocity and
rapacity shone out of their deep-set eyes. And
though the Germans fought bravely, these ene-
mies always overmatched tliem, because they ap-
peared now here, now there, on their fleet horses,
and fell upon isolated districts before they were
expected or could be stopped. . . . When on a
sudden the terrible cry, ' The Hungarians are
coming, the Hungarians are coming,' resounded
through the land, all fled who could, as if tlie wild
legions of hell were marching through Saxony and
Thuringia. King Henry, however, would not fly,
but encountered them in combat, like a true
knight. Yet he lost the battle, either because he
was ill, or because his soldiers were too few, and
unaccustomed to the enemy's mode of fighting,
which enabled them to conquer while they were
fleeing. Henry was obliged to shut himself up
in tlie royal palace of Werla. near Goslar, which
he bravely defended. The Hungarians stormed
it again and again, but they could not scale the
w'alls ; while Henry's men by a daring sally took
a Hungarian chieftain prisoner, which so terrified
the besiegers that they concluded a truce for nine
years on condition tliat their chief should be re-
leased, and that Henry should engage to pay a
yearly tribute. Henry submitted to the dislionour-
able sacrifice that he might husband his strength
for better times. . . . How important it was to
have fortified places which could not be stormed
by cavalry, and therefore afforded a safe refuge
to the neiglibouring peasantry, Henry recognised
in 939, when the Hungarians marched through
Bavaria and Suabia to Lorraine, plundered the
time-honoured monastery of St. Gall, and burnt
the suburbs of Constance, but could not take the
fortified town itself. Henry, accordingly, pub-
lished an order throughout the land, that at suit-
able places large fortresses should be built, in
which every ninth man from the neighbouring
district must take garrison duty. Certainly liv-
ing in towns was contrary to the customs of the
North Germans, and here and there there was
much resistance; but they soon recognised the
wisdom of the royal order, and worked night and
day with such diligence that there soon arose
throughout the land towns with stately towers
and strong walls, behind whose battlements the
armed burghers defiantly awaited the Hungarians.
Hamburg was then fortified, Itzehoe built, the
walls of Magdeburg, Halle, and Erfurt extended,
for these towns had stood since the time of Charle-
magne. Quedlinburg, Merseburg, Meissen, Wit-
tenberg, Goslar, Soest, Nordhausen, Duderstadt,
Gronau, PSlde, were rebuilt, and many others of
which the old chroniclers say nothing. Those
who dwelt in the cities were called burghers, and
in order that they might not be idle they began
to practise many kinds of industry, and to barter
their goods with the peasants. The emperor en-
couraged the building of towns, and granted
emancipation to every slave who repaired to a
town, allowed the towns to hold fairs and mar-
kets, granted to them the light of coining money
and levying taxes, and gave them many landed
estates and forests. Under such encouragement
town life rapidly developed, and the emperor, in
his disputes with the lawless nobility, always re-
ceived loyal support from his disciplined burgh-
ers. After a few centuries tlie towns, which had
now generally become republics, under the name
of 'free imperial towns,' became the seats of the
perfection of European trade, science, and cul-
ture. . . . These incalculable benefits are due to
Henry's order to build towns." — A. W. Griibe,
Heroes of History and Legend, ch. 8. — At the ex-
piration of the nine years truce, the Hungarians
resumed their attacks, and were defeated by
Henry in two bloody battles.
A. D. 936-973. — Restoration of the Roman
Empire by Otho L, called the Great. — " Otho
the Great, sou and successor of Henry I., added
the kingdom of Italy to the conquests of his father,
and procured also the Imperial dignity for him-
self, and his successors in Germany. Italy had
become a distinct kingdom since the revolution,
which happened (888) at the death of the Emperor
Charles the Fat. Ten princes in succession oc-
cupied the throne during the space of seventy-
three years. Several of these princes, such as
Guy, Lambert, Arnulf, Louis of Burgundy, and
Berenger I., were invested with the Imperial
dignity. Berenger I., having been assassinated
(934), this latter dignity ceased entirely, and the
city of Rome was even dismembered from the
kingdom of Italy. The sovereignty of that city
was seized by the famous Marozia, widow of a
nobleman named Alberic. She raised her son to
the pontificate by the title of John XI. ; and the bet-
ter to establish lier dominion, she espoused Hugo
King of Italy (932), who became, in consequence
1470
GERMANT, A. D. 936-973.
The restored
Roman Empire.
GERMANY, A. D. 936-973.
of this marriage, master of Rome. But Alberic,
another son of Marozia, soon stirred up the people
against this aspiring princess and her husband
Hugo. Having driven Hugo from the throne,
and slmt up his mother in prison, he assumed to
himself the sovereign authority, under the title
of Patrician of the Romans. At his death (954)
he transmitted the sovereignty to his son Octa-
vian, who, though onl}' nineteen years of age,
caused himself to be elected pope, by the title of
John XII. This epoch was one most disastrous
for Italy. The weakness of the government ex-
cited factions among the nobility, gave birth to
anarchy, and fresh opportunity for the depreda-
tions of the Hungarians and Arabs, who, at this
period, were the scourge of Italy, which they
ravaged with impunity. Pavia, the capital of
the kingdom, was taken, and burnt by the Hun-
garians. These troubles increased on the acces-
sion of Berenger II. (950), grandson of Berenger
I. That prince associated his son Adelbert with
him in the royal dignity ; and the public voice
accused them of having caused the death of King
Lothaire, son and successor of Hugo. Lothaire
left a young widow, named Adelaide, daughter
of Rodolph II., King of Burgundy and Italy. To
avoid the importunities of Berenger II., who
wished to compel her to marry his son Adelbert,
this princess called in the King of Germany to her
aid. Otho complied with the solicitations of the
distressed queen ; and, on this occasion, undertook
his first expedition into Italy (951). The city of
Pavia, and several other places, having fallen
into his hands, he made himself be proclaimed
King of Italy, and married the young queen, his
protegee. Berenger and his son, being driven
for shelter to their strongholds, had recourse to
negociation. They succeeded in obtaining for
themselves a confirmation of the royal title of
Italy, on condition of doing homage for it to the
King of Germany. ... It appears that it was
not without the regret, and even contrary to the
wish of Adelaide, that Otho agreed to enter into
terms of accommodation with Berenger. . . .
Afterwards, however, he lent a favourable ear to
the complaints which Pope John XII. and some
Italian noblemen had addressed to him against
Berenger and his son ; and took occasion, on their
account, to conduct a new army into Italy (961).
Berenger, too feeble to oppose him, retired a
second time within his fortifications. Otho
marched from Pavia to Milan, and there made
himself be crowned King of Italy ; from thence
he passed to Rome, about the commencement of
the following year. Pope John XII. , who had
himself invited him, and again implored his pro-
tection against Berenger, gave him, at first, a
very brilliant reception; and revived the Imperial
dignity in his favour, which had been dormant
for thirty-eight years. It was on the 2d of Feb-
ruary, 962, that the Pope consecrated and
crowned him Emperor; but he had soon cause to
repent of this proceeding. Otho, immediately
after his coronation at Rome, undertook the
siege of St. Leon, a fortress in Umbria, where
Berenger and his queen had taken refuge. While
engaged in the siege, he received frequent in-
timations from Rome, of the misconduct and
immoralities of the Pope. The remonstrances
which he thought It his duty to make on this
subject, offended the young pontiff, who resolved,
in consequence, to break off union with the Em-
peror. Hurried on by the impetuosity of his char-
acter, he entered into a negociation with Adelbert;
and even persuaded him to come to Rome, in
order to concert with him measures of defence.
On the first news of this event, Otho put himself
at the head of a large detachment, with which
he marched directly to Rome. The Pope, how-
ever, did not think it advisable to wait his ap-
proach, but fled with the King, his new ally.
Otho, on arriving at the capital, exacted a solemn
oath from the clergy and the people, that hence-
forth they would elect no pope without his coun-
sel, and that of the Emperor and his successors.
Having then assembled a council, he caused Pope
John XII. to be deposed; and Leo VIII. was
elected in his place. This latter Pontiff was
maintained in the papacy, in spite of all the
efforts which his adversary made to regain it.
Berenger II. , after having sustained a long siege at
St. Leon, fell at length (964) into the hands of the
conqueror, who sent him into exile at Bamberg,
and compelled his son, Adelbert, to take refuge
in the court of Constantinople. All Italy, to the
extent of the ancient kingdom of the Lombards,
fell under the dominion of the Germans; only a
few maritime towns in Lower Italy, with the
greater part of Apulia and Calabria, still remained
in the power of the Greeks. This kingdom, to-
gether with the Imperial dignity, Otho transmit-
ted to his successors on the throne of Germany.
From this time the Germans held it to be an in-
violable principle, that as the Imperial dignity
was strictly united with the royalty of Italy,
kings elected by the German nation should, at
the same time, in virtue of that election, become
Kings of Italy and Emperors. The practice of
this triple coronation, viz., of Germany, Italy,
and Rome, continued for many centuries; and
from Otho the Great, till Maximilian I. (1508), no
king of Germany took the title of Emperor, un-
til after he had been formally crowned by the
Pope." — C. W. Koch, Tlie Eevolutio7i» of Europe,
period 3. — " At the first glance it would seem as
if the relation in which Otho now stood to the
pope was the same as that occupied by Charle-
magne ; on a closer inspection, however, we find
a wide difference. Charlemagne's connexion
with the see of Rome was produced by mutual
need; it was the result of long epochs of political
combination embracing the development of vari-
ous nations; their mutual understanding rested
on an internal necessity, before which all oppos-
ing views and Interests gave way. The sover-
eignty of Otho the Great, on the contrary, rested
on a principle fundamentally opposed to the en-
croachment of spiritual influences. The alliance
was momentary ; the disruption of it inevitable.
But when, soon after, the same pope who had
invoked his aid, John XII., placed himself at the
head of a rebellious faction, Otho was compelled
to cause him to be formally deposed, and to
brush the faction that supported him by repeated
exertions of force, before he could obtain perfect
obedience ; he was obliged to raise to the papal
chair a pope on whose co-operation he could rely.
The popes have often asserted that they trans-
ferred the empire to the Germans ; and if they
confined this assertion to the Carolingian race,
they are not entirely wrong. The coronation of
Charlemagne was the result of their free deter-
mination. But if they allude to the German
emperors, properly so called, the contrary of their
statement is j ust as true ; not only Carlmann and
Otho the Great, but their successors, constantly
1471
GERMANY, A, D. 936-973.
The restored
Roman Empire.
GERMANY, A. D. 973-1122.
had to conquer the imperial throne, and to
defend it, when conquered, sword in hand. It
has been said that the Germans would have done
more wisely if they had not meddled with the
empire ; or, at least, if they had first worked out
their own internal political institutions, and then,
with matured minds, taken part in the gen-
eral affairs of Europe. But the things of this
world are not wont to develop themselves so
methodically. A nation is often compelled by
circumstances to increase its territorial extent, be-
fore its internal growth is completed. For was
it of slight importance to its inward progress
that Germany thus remained in unbroken con-
nexion with Italy? — the depository of all that
remained of ancient civilisation, the source
whence all the forms of Christianity had been
derived. The mind of Germany has always un-
folded itself by contact with the spirit of an-
tiquity, and of the nations of Roman origin. . . .
The German imperial government revived the
civilising and Christianising tendencies which
had distinguished the reigns of Charles Martell
and Charlemagne. Otho the Great, in following
the course marked out by his illustrious pre-
decessors, gave it a fresh national importance
by planting German colonies in Slavonian coun-
tries simultaneously with the diffusion of Chris-
tianity. He Germanised as well as converted
the population he had subdued. He con-
firmed his fathers conquests on the Saale and
the Elbe, by the establishment of the bishoprics
of Meissen and Osterland. After having con-
quered the tribes on the other side the Elbe in
those long and perilous campaigns where he
commanded in person, he established there, too,
three bishopries, which for a time gave an ex-
traordinary impulse to the progress of conver-
sion. . . ." And even where the project of Ger-
manising the population was out of the question,
the supremacy of the German name was firmly
and actively maintained. In Bohemia and Po-
land bishoprics were erected under German met-
ropelitans ; from Hamburg Christianity found its
way into the north; missionaries from Passau
traversed Hungary, nor is it improbable that the
influence of these vast and sublime efforts ex-
tended even to Russia. The German empire was
the centre of the conquering religion; as itself
advanced, it extended the ecclesiastico-military
State of which the Church was an integral part;
it was the chief representative of the unity of
western Christendom, and hence arose the neces-
sity under which it lay of acquiring a decided
ascendancy over the papacy. This secular and
Gtermanic principle long retained the predomi-
nancy it had triumphantly acquired. . . . How
magnificent was the position now occupied by
the German nation, represented in the persons of
the mightiest princes of Europe and united under
their sceptre ; at the head of an advancing civi-
lisation, and of the whole of western Christendom ;
in the fullness of youthful aspiring strength!
We must here however remark and confess, that
Germany did not wholly understand her position,
nor fulfil her mission. Above all, she did not
succeed in giving complete reality to the idea of
a western empire, such as appeared about to be
established under Otho I. Independent and often
hostile, though Christian powers arose through
all the borders of Germany ; in Hungary and in
Poland, in the northern as well as in the southern
possessions of the Normans ; England and France
were snatched again from German influence.
Spain laughed at the German claims to a uni-
versal supremacy ; her kings thought themselves
emperors; even the enterprises nearest home —
those across the Elbe — were for a time stationary
or retrograde. If we seek for the causes of these
unfavourable results, we need only turn our eyes
on the internal condition of the empire, where
we find an incessant and tempestuous struggle of
all the forces of the nation. Unfortunately the
establishment of a fixed rule of succession to the
imperial crown was continually prevented by
events." — L. Ranke, Hist, of the Reformation in,
Oermany, introd. — See, also, Italy: A. D. 961-
1039 ; and Roman EMPraE, The Holy.
A. D. 955. — Great defeat and repulse of the
Hungarians by Otho I. See Hungarlvns: A. D.
934-955.
A. D. 973-1122. — End of the Saxon line. —
Election of the Franconians. — Reformation of
the Papacy. — Contest of Henry IV. with the
Head of the Church. — The question of Investi-
tures. — " Otho II. had a short and troubled reign,
973-983 A. D., having to repress the Slavi, the
Danes, the Greeks of Lower Italy, and to defend
Lorraine against the French. He died at Rome
in his twenty-eighth year, 983 A. D. Otho III.
(aged three years) succeeded under the regency
of his mother, Theophania (a Greek princess),
who had to contend with the rebellious nobles,
the Slavi, the Poles, the Bohemians, and with
France, which desired to conquer Lorraine. This
able lady died 991 A. D. Otho III. made three
expeditions into Italy, and in 998 A. D. put down
the republic of Rome, which had been created by
the patrician Crescentius. The resistance of
Crescentius had been pardoned the preceding
year, but on this occasion he was publicly be-
headed on the battlements of Rome, in view of
the army and of the people. In 999 A. D. Otho
placed ills tutor Gerbert in the papal chair as
Sylvester II. The tutor and the emperor were
in advance of their age. The former had gleaned
from Saracen translations from the Greek, as well
as from Latin literature, and was master of the
science of the day. It is supposed that they had
planned to remove the seat of empire to Rome —
a project which, had he lived, he would not
have been able to carry out, for the centre of
political power had long moved northward : he
died at the early age of twenty-two, 1003 A. D.
Henry II. (the Holy), Duke of Bavaria, was
elected emperor, and had to battle, like hi? pre-
decessors, with rebellious nobles, with the Poles,
and Bohemians, and the Slavi. He was thrice in
Italy, and died 1024 A. D. 'Perhaps, with the
single exception of St. Louis IX., there was no
other prince of the middle ages so uniformly
swayed by justice.' Conrad II. (the Salic) of
Franconia was elected emperor in a diet in the
plains between Mentz and Worms, near Oppeu-
heim, which was attended by princes, nobles,
and 50,000 people altogether. His reign wap
remarkable for the justice and mercy which he
always kept in view. The kingdom of Aries
and Burguudv was united to the empire, 1033
A. D. He checked the Poles, the Hungarians,
and the Lombards, and gave Schleswick to Den-
mark as a fief. In 1037 A. D. he granted to the
lower vassals of the empire the hereditary suc-
cession to their oflices and estates, and so ex-
tended the privileges of the great nobles, as to
make them almost Independent of the crown.
1472
GERMANY, A. D. 973-1122.
The Papacy ami
the Empire,
GERMANY, A. D. 973-1122.
Henry HI. succeeded, 1039 A. D. , and establislied
the imperial power with a high hand. " — -W. B.
Boyce, Introduction to the Study of History, pp.
330-231. — "Henry HI. was, as sovereign, able,
upright, and resolute ; and liis early deatli — for
his reign was cut short by disasters that preyed
upon liis health — is one of the calamities of his-
tory. The cause of the Roman Court he j udged
with vigor and good sense. His strong hand,
more than any man's, dragged the Cliurcli out of
the slough it had fallen into [see Ro.me: A, D.
962-1057]. ... A few years before, in 1033, a
child ten years old, son of one of the noble
houses, had been put cm the papal throne, under
the name of Benedict IX. ; and was restored to it
by force of arms, five years later, when he had
grown into a lewd, violent, and wilful boy of
fifteen. At the age of twenty-one he was weary
of the struggle, and sold out, for a large sum of
money paid down, to a rich jnirchaser, — first
plundering the papal treasury of all the funds he
could lay his hands on. His successor, Gregory
VI., naturally complained of his hard bargain,
which was made harder by another claimant
(Sylvester III.), elected by a different party;
while no law that could possibly be quoted or
invented would make valid the purchase and sale
of the spiritual sovereignty of the world, wliich
in theory the Papacy still was. Gregory appears
to have been a respectable and even conscientious
magistrate, by the standard of that evil time.
But his open purchase of the dignity not only
gave a shock to whatever right feeling there was
left, but it made the extraordinary dilemma and
scandal of three popes at once, — a knot which
the German king, now Emperor, was called in
to cut. . . . The worthless Benedict was dis-
missed, as having betrayed his charge. The im-
potent Sylvester was not recognized at all. The
respectable Gregory was duly convinced of his
deep guilt of Simony, — because he had ' thought
that the gift of God could be purchased with
money, ' — and was suffered as a penitent to end
his days in peace. A fourth, a German ecclesi-
astic, who was clean of all these intrigues, was
set in the chair of Peter, where he reigned right-
eously for two years under the name of Clement
II." — J. H. Allen, Christian History in its Tliree
Orait Periods : Second period, pp. 57-58. — "With
the popes of Henry's appointment a new and
most powerful force rose to the control of the
papacy — a strong and earnest movement for ref-
ormation which had arisen outside the circle of
papal influence during the darkest days of its
degradation, indeed, and entirely independent of
the empire. This had started from the monas-
tery of Cluny, founded in 910, in eastern France,
as a reformation of the monastic life, but it in-
volved gradually ideas of a wider reformation
throughout the whole church. Two great sins
of the time, as it regarded them, were especially
attacked, the marriage of priests and simony, or
the purchase of ecclesiastical preferment for
money, including also appointments to church
offices by temporal rulers. . . . The earnest spirit
of Henry III. was not out of sympathy with the
demand for a real reformation, and with the third
pope of his appointment, Leo IX., in 1048, the
Ideas of Cluny obtained the direction of affairs.
. . . One apparently insignificant act of Leo's
had important consequences. He brought back
with him to Rome the monk Hildebrand. He
had been brought up in a monastery in Rome in
93 ^^73
the strictest ideas of Cluny, had been a supporter
of Gregory VI. , one of the three rival popes de-
posed by Henry, who, notwithstanding his out-
right purchase of the papacy, represented the
new reform demand, and had gone with him into
exile on his deposition. It does not appear that
he exercised any decisive influence during the
reign of Leo IX., but so great was his ability
and such the power of his personality that very
soon he became the directing spirit in the papal
policy, though his influence over the papacy be-
fore his own pontificate was not so great nor so
constant as it has sometimes been said to have
been. So long as Henry lived the balance of
power was decidedly in favor of the emperor,
but in 1056 happened that disastrous event,
which occurred so many times at critical points
of imperial history, from Arnulf to Henry VI.,
the premature death of the emperor. His son,
Henry IV. , was only six years old at his father's
deatli, and a minority followed just in the crisis
of time needed to enable the feudal princes of
Germany to recover and strengthen their inde-
pendence against the central government, and to
give free hands to the papacy to carry out its
plans for throwing off the imperial control.
Never again did an emperor occujij', in respect
either to Germany or the papacy, the vantage-
ground on which Henry HI. had stood. . . . The
triumph of the reform movement and of its eccle-
siastical theory is especially connected with the
name of Hildebrand, or Gregory VII., as he called
himself when pope, and was very largely, if not
entirely, due to his indomitable spirit and iron
will, which would yield to no persuasion or
threats or actual force. He is one of the most
interesting personalities of history. . . . The
three chief points which the reform party at-
tempted to gain were the independence of the
church from all outside control in the election of
the pope, the celibacy of the clergy, and the abo-
lition of simony or the purchase of ecclesiastical
preferment. The foundation for the first of these
was laid under Nicholas II. by assigning the
selection of the pope to the college of cardinals
in Rome, though it was only after some consid-
erable time that this reform was fully secured.
The second point, the celibacy of the clergy, had
long been demanded by the church, but the re-
quirement had not been strictly enforced, and in
many parts of Europe married clergy were the
rule. ... As interpreted by the reformers, the
third of their demands, the suppression of simony,
was as great a step in advance and as revolution-
ary as the first. Technically, simony was the
sin of securing an ecclesiastical office by bribery,
named from the incident recorded in the eighth
chapter of the Acts concerning Simon Magus.
But at this time the desire for the complete in-
dependence of the church had given to it a new
and wider meaning which made it include all
appointment to positions in the church by lay-
men, including kings and the emperor. . . . Ac-
cording to the conception of the public law the
bisliop was an officer of the state. He had, in
the great majority of cases, political duties to
perform as important as his ecclesiastical duties.
The lands which formed the endowment of his
office had always been considered as being, still
more directly than any other feudal land, the
property of the state. ... It was a matter of
vital importance whether officers exercising such
important functions and controlling so large a
GERMANY, A. D. 973-1133.
Henry IV.
and Hildebrand.
GERMANY, A. D. 973-1133.
part of its area — probably everywhere as much
as one-third of the territory — should bo selected
by the state or by some foreign power beyond
its reach and having its own peculiar interests to
seek. But this question of lay investiture was
as vitally important for the church as for the
state. ... It was as necessary to the centraliza-
tion and independence of the church that it
should choose these officers as that it should elect
the head of all — the pope. This was not a ques-
tion for Germany alone. Every northern state
had to face the same difficulty. . . . The struggle
was so much more bitter and obstinate with the
emperor than with any other sovereign because
of the close relation of the two powers one to
another, and because the whole question of their
relative rights was bound up with it. It was an
act of rebellion on the part of the papacy against
the sovereign, who had controlled it with almost
absolute power for a century, and it was rising
into an equal, or even superior, place beside the
emperor of what was practically a new power, a
rival for his imperial position. ... It was abso-
lutely impossil)le that a conflict with these new
claims should be avoided as soon as Henry IV.
arrived at an age to take the government into
his own hands and attempted to exercise his im-
perial rights as he understood them." — G. B.
Adams, Civilization During the Middle Ages, ch.
10. — "At Gregory's accession, he [Henry] was a
young man of twenty-three. His violence had
already driven a whole district into rebellion.
. . . The Pope sided with the insurgents. He
summoned the young king to his judgment-seat
at Rome ; threatened at his refusal to ' cut him
off as a rotten limb ' ; and passed on him the awful
sentence of excommunication. The double terror
of rebellion at home and the Church's curse at
length broke down the passionate pride of Henry.
Humbled and helpless, he crossed the Alps in
midwinter, groping among the bleak precipices
and ice-fields, — the peasants passing him in a
rude sledge of hide down those dreadful slopes,^
and went to beg absolution of Gregory at the
mountain castle of Canossa. History has few
scenes more dramatic than that which shows the
proud, irascible, crest-fallen young sovereign
confronted with the fiery, little, indomitable old
man. To quote Gregory's own words: — 'Here
he came with few attendants, and for three days
before the gate — his royal apparel laid aside,
barefoot, clad in wool, and weeping abundantly
— he never ceased to implore the aid and com-
fort of apostolic mercy, till all there present were
moved with pity and compassion ; insomuch that,
interceding for him with many prayers and tears
they all wondered at my strange severity, and
some even cried out that it was not so much the
severe dignity of an apostle as the cruel wrath of
a tyrant. Overcome at length by the urgency
of his appeal and the entreaties of all present, I
relaxed the bond of anathema, and received him
to the favor of communion and the bosom of
our holy Mother the Church.' It was a truce
which one party did not mean nor the other hope
to keep. It was policy, not real terror or con-
viction, that had led Henry to humble himself
bsfore the Pope. It was policy, not contrition
or compassion, that had led Gregory (against his
better judgment, it is said) to accept his Sover-
eign's penance. In the war of policy, the man
of the world prevailed. Freed of the Church's
curse, he quickly won back the strength he had
lost. He overthrew in battle the rival whom
Gregory upheld. He swept his rebellious lands
with sword and flame. He carried his victorious
army to Rome, and was there crowned Emperor
by a rival Pope [1084]. Gregory himself was
only saved by his ferocious allies, Norman and
Saracen, at cost of the devastation of half the
capital, — that broad belt of ruin which still
covers the half mile between the Coliseum and
the Lateran gate. Then, hardlj- rescued from
the popular wrath, he went away to die, defeated
and heart-broken, at Salerno, with the almost
despairing words on his lips ; ' I have loved
righteousness and hated iniquity, and therefore
I die in exile ! ' But ' a spirit hath not flesh or
bones,' as a body hath, and so it will not stay
mangled and bruised. The victory lay, after
all, with the combatant who could appeal to
fanaticism as well as force. " — J. H. Allen, Chris-
tian History in its Three Creat Periods : second
period, pp. 69-73. — " Meanwhile, the Saxons had
recognized Hermann of Ijuxemburg as their
King, but in 1087 he resigned the crown; and
another claimant, Eckbert, Margrave of Meissen,
was murdered. The Saxons were now thoroughly
weary of strife, and as years and bitter experi-
ence had softened the character of Henry, they
were the more willing to return to their alle-
giance. Peace was therefore, for a time, restored
in Germany. The Papacy did not forgive Henry.
He was excommunicated several times, and in
1091 his son Conrad was excited to rebel against
him. In 1104 a more serious rebellion was headed
by the Emperor's second son Henry, who had
been crowned King, on promising not to seize the
government during his father's lifetime, in 1099.
The Emperor was treated very cruelly, and had
to sign his own abdication at Ingelheim in 1105.
A last effort was made on his behalf by the Duke
of Lotharingia; but worn out by his sorrows
and struggles, Henry died in August, 1106. His
body lay in a stone coffin in an unconsecrated
chapel at Speyer for five years. Not till 1111,
when the sentence of excommunication was re-
moved, was it properly buried. Henry V. was
not so obedient to the Church as the Papal party
had hoped. He stoutly maintained the very
point which had brought so much trouble on his
father. The right of investiture, he declared,
had always belonged to his predecessors, and he
was not to give up what they had handed on to
him. In 1110 he went to Rome, accompanied by
a large army. Next 3'ear Pope Paschal II, was
forced to crown him Emperor; but as soon as
the Germans had crossed the Alps again Paschal
renewed all his old demands. The struggle soon
spread to Germany. The Emperor was excom-
municated ; and the discontented princes, as eager
as ever to break the royal power, sided with the
Pope against him. Peace was not restored till
1133, when Calixtus II. was Pope. In that year,
in a Diet held at Worms, both parties agreed to
a compromise, called the Concordat of Worms. "
— J. Sime, History of Germany, ch. 8. — "The
long-desired reconciliation was effected in the
form of the following concordat. The emperor
renounced the right of investiture with the ring
and crosier, and conceded that all bishoprics of the
empire should be filled by canonical election and
free consecration ; the election of the German
bishops (not of the Italian and Burgundian)
should be held in presence of the emperor; the
bishops elect should receive investiture, but only
1474
GERMANY, A. D. 973-1122.
The College of
Electors.
GERMANY, 1135-1272.
of their fiefs and regalia, by the sceptre in Ger-
many before, in Italy and in Burgundy after,
their consecration ; for these grants they should
promise fidelity to tlie emperor; contested elec-
tions should be decided by the emperor in favour
of him who should be considered by the pro-
vincial synod to possess the better right. Finally
he should restore to the Roman Church all the
possessions and regalia of St. Peter. This con-
vention secured to the Church many things, and
above all, the freedom of ecclesiastical elections.
Hitherto, the different Churches had been com-
pelled to give their consent to elections that had
been made by the king, but now the king was
pledged to consent to the elections made by the
Churches; and although these elections took
place in his presence, he could not refuse his con-
sent and investiture without violating the treaty,
in which he had promised that for the future
elections should be according to the canons.
This, and the great difference, that the king,
when he gave the ring and crosier, invested the
bishop elect with his chief dignity, namely, his
bishopric, but now granted him by investiture
with the sceptre, only the accessories, namely
the regalia, was felt by Lothaire, the successor
of Henry, when he required of pope Innocent II.
the restoration of the right of investiture. Upon
one important point, the homage which was to
be sworn to the king, the concordat was silent.
By not speaking of it, Calixtus seemed to toler-
ate it, and the Roman see therefore permitted it,
although it had been prohibited by Urban and
Paschal. It is certain that Calixtus was as fully
convinced as his predecessors, that the condition
of vassals, to which bishops and abbots were re-
duced by their oath of homage, could hardly be
reconciled with the nature and dignity of the
episcopacy, or with the freedom of the Church,
but he perhaps foresaw, that by insisting too
strongly upon its discontinuance, he might awaken
again the unholy war, and without any hopes of
benefit, inflict many evils upon the Church.
Sometime later Adrian endeavoured to free the
Italian bishops from the homage, instead of
which, the emperor was to be content with an
oath of fidelity : but Frederick I. would not re-
nounce the homage unless they resigned the re-
galia. The greatest concession made by the
papal see in this concordat, was, that by its
silence it appeared to have admitted the former
pretensions of the emperors to take a part in the
election of the Roman pontiff. ... In the fol-
lowing year the concordat was ratified in the
great council of three hundred bishops, the ninth
general council of the Church, which was con-
vened by Calixtus in Rome." — J. J. I. D&llinger,
History of the Church, v. 3, jyp. 345-347.— See,
also, Papacy: A. D. 1056-1122; Canossa; Rome:
A. D. 1081-1084; and Saxony: A. D. 1073-1075.
Also in ; A. F. Villemain, Life of Gregory VII.,
Ik. 2. — Comte C. F. Montalembert, The Monks of
the ^yest, bk. 19.— H. H. Milman, Hist, of Latin
Christianity, bk. 6-8. — W. R. W. Stephens, Hil-
defrrand and His Times. — E. F. Henderson, Select
Hist. Docs, of the Middle Ages, bk. 4.
A. D. iioi. — Disastrous Crusade under
Duke Welfof Bavaria. See Crusades: A. D.
1101-1103.
A. D. 1125. — Election of Lothaire II., King,
afterwards Emperor.
A. D. 1 125-1272. — The rise of the College
of Electors. — The election of Lothaire II., in
1125, when a great assembly of nobles and church
dignitaries was convened at Mentz, and when
certain of the chiefs made a selection of candi-
dates to be voted for, has been regarded by some
historians — Hallam, Comyn and Dunham, for
example — as indicating the origin of the German
electoral college. They have held that a right
of " pretaxation," or preliminary choice, was
gradually acquired by certain princes, which
grew into the finally settled electoral right. But
this view is now looked upon as more than
questionable, and is not supported by the best
authorities. " At the election of Rudolph [1272
or 3 ?J we meet for the first time the fully de-
veloped college of electors as a single electoral
body ; the secondary matter of a doubt regard-
ing what individuals composed it was definitely
settled before Rudolph's reign had come to an
end. How did the college of electors develop
itself? . . . The problem is made more difficult
at the outset from the fact that in the older form
of government in Germany there can be no ques-
tion at all of a simple electoral right in a modern
sense. The electoral right was amalgamated
with a hereditary right of that family which had
happened to come to the throne : it was only a
right of selection from among the heirs available
within this family. Inasmuch now as such
selection could — as well from the whole charac-
ter of German kingship as in consequence of its
amalgamation with the empire — take place al-
ready during the lifetime of the ruling member
of the family, it is easy to understand that in
ages in which the ruling race did not die out
during many generations, the right came to be
at last almost a mere form. Usually the king,
with the consent of those who had the right of
election, would, already- during his lifetime,
designate as his successor one of his heirs, — if
possible his oldest son. Such was the rule in the
time of the Ottos and of the Salian emperors. It
was a rule which could not be adhered to in
the first half of the 12th century after the ex-
tinction of the Salian line, when free elections,
not determined beforehand by designation, took
place in the years 1135, 1138 and 1152. Neces-
sarily the element of election now predominated.
But had any fixed order of procedure at elections
been handed down from the past ? The very
principle of election having been disregarded in
the natural course of events for centuries, was
it any wonder that the order of procedure should
also come to be half forgotten 1 And had not in
the meantime social readjustments in the elec-
toral body so disturbed this order of procedure,
or such part of it as had been important enough
to be preserved, as necessarily to make it seem
entirely antiquated? AVith these questions the
electoral asseniblies of the year 1125 as well as
of the year 1138 were brought face to face, and
they found that practically only those precedents
could be taken from what seemed to have been
the former customary mode of elections which
provided that the archbishop of Mainz as chan-
cellor of the empire should first solemnly an-
nounce the name of the person elected and the
electors present should do homage to the new
king. This was at the end of the whole election,
after the choice had to all intents and purposes
been already made. For the material part of
the election, on the other hand, the part that
preceded this announcement, they found an ap-
parently new expedient A committee was to
U75
GERMANY, 1135-127
The College of Electors. GERMANY, 1125-1372.
draw up an agreement as to the person to be
chosen ; in the two cases iu question the manner
of constituting tliis committee differed. Some-
thing essential had now been done towards es-
tablishing a mode of procedure at elections
which should accord with the changed circum-
stances. One case however had not been pro-
vided for in these still so informal and uncertain
regulations ; the case, namely, that those taking
part in the election could come to no agreement
at all with regard to the person whose choice
was to be solemnly announced by the archbishop
of Mainz. And how could men have foreseen
such a case in the first half of the 13th century ?
Up till then double elections had absolutely never
taken place. Anti-kings there had been, indeed,
but never two opposing kings elected at the
same time. In the year 1198, however, this con-
tingency arose ; Philip of Suabia and Otto IV.
were contemporaneously elected and the final
unanimity of choice that in 11.52 had still been
counted on as a matter of course did not come
about. As a consequence questions with regard
to the order of procedure now came up which
had hardly ever been touched upon before.
First and foremost this one : can a better right
of one of the elected kings be founded on a ma-
jority of the votes obtained ? And in connec-
tion with it this other : who on the whole has a
right to cast an electoral vote ? Even though
men were inclined now to answer the first ques-
tion in the affirmative, the second, the presup-
position for the practical application of the prin-
ciple that had been laid down iu the first, oflFcred
all the greater difficulties. Should one, after the
elections of the years 1125 and 1152 and after
the development since 1180 of a more circum-
scribed class of princes of the realm, accept the
existence of a narrower electoral committee ?
Did this have a right to elect exclusively, or did
it only have a simple right of priority in the
matter of casting votes, or perhaps only a cer-
tain precedence when the election was being dis-
cussed ? And how were the limits to be fixed
for the larger circle of electors below this elec-
toral committee ? These are questions which the
German electors put to themselves less soon and
less clearly than did the pope. Innocent III.,
whom they had called upon to investigate the
double election of the year 1198. . . . He speaks
repeatedly of a narrower electoral body with
which rests chiefly the election of the king, and
he knows only princes as the members of this
body. And beyond a doubt the repeated ex-
pressions of opinion of the pope, as well as this
whole matter of having two kings, at the begin-
ning of the 13th century, gave men iu German}'
cause for reflection with regard to these weighty
questions concerning the constitutional forms of
the empire. One of the most important results
of this reflection on the subject is to be found in
the solution given by the Sachsenspiegel. whicli
was compiled about 1230. Eike von Repgow
knows in his law-book only of a precedence at
elections of a smaller committee of princes, but
mentions as belonging to this committee certain
particular princes : the three Rhenish arch-
bishops, the count Palatine of the Rhine, the
duke of Saxony, the margrave of Brandenburg
and — his right being questionable indeed — the
king of Bohemia. ... So far, at all events, did
the question with regard to the limitation of the
electors seem to have advanced towards its solu-
tion by the year 1230 that an especial electoral
college of particular persons was looked upon as
the nucleus of those electing. But side by side
with this view the old theory still held its own,
that certainly all princes at least had an equal
right in the election. Under Emperor Frederick
II., for instance, it was still energetically up-
held. A decision one way or the other could
only be reached according to the way in which
the next elections should actually be carried out.
Henry Raspe was elected in the year 1246 almost
exclusively by ecclesiastical princes, among them
the three Rhenish archbishops. He was the first
' priest-king' (Pfaffenkonig). The second 'priest-
king ' was William of Holland. He was chosen
by eleven princes, among whom was only one
layman, the duke of Brabant. The others were
bishops ; among them, in full force, the arch-
bishops of the Rhine. Present were also many
counts. But William caused himself still to be
subsequently elected by the duke of Saxony and
the margrave of Brandenburg, while the king of
Bohemia was also not behindhand in acknowl-
edging him — that, too, with special empliasis.
What transpired at the double election of Al-
phonse and Richard in the year 1257 has not
been handed down with perfect trustworthiness.
Richard claimed later to have been elected by
Mainz, Cologne, the Palatinate and Bohemia ;
Alphonse by Treves, Saxony, Brandenburg and
Bohemia. But in addition to the princes of
these lands, other German princes also took part,
— according to the popular view by assenting,
according to their own view, in part at least, by
actually electing. All the same the lesson
taught by all these elections is clear enough.
The general right of election of the princes dis-
appears almost altogether ; a definite electoral
college, which was looked upon as possessing
almost exclusively the sole right of electing,
conies into prominence, and the component parts
which made it up correspond in substance to the
theory of the Sachsenspiegel. And whatever in
the year 1257 is not established firmly and com-
pletely and in all directions, stands there as in-
controvertible at the election of Rudolph. The
electors, and they only, now elect ; all share of
others in the election is done away with. Al-
though in place of Ottocar of Bohemia, who was
at war with Rudolph, Bavaria seems to have been
given the electoral vote, yet before Rudolph's
reign is out, in the year 1290, Bohemia at last
attains to the dignity which the Sachsenspiegel,
even if with some hesitation, had assigned to it.
One of the most important revolutions in the
German form of government was herewith ac-
complished. From among the aristocratic class
of the princes an oligarchy had raised itself up,
a representation of the princely provincial powers
as opposed to the king. Uncon.sciously, as it
were, had it come into being, not exactly desired
by any one as a whole, nor yet the result of a
fixed purpose even as regarded its separate
parts. It must clearly have corresponded to a
deep and elementary and gradually developing
need of the time. Undoubtedly from a national
point of view it denotes progress ; henceforward
at elections the danger of ' many heads many
minds ' was avoided ; the era of double elections
was practically at an end." — K. Laniprecht,
Deutsche Geschichte (trans, from the Oerman), v.
4, pp. 23-28.— In 1356 the Margraf of Branden-
burg was recognized in the Golden Bull as one
1476
GERMANY, 1135-1273.
Causes nf GERMANY, 12-13TH CENTURIES.
Disintegration.
of the Kurf firsts, — that is as " one of the Seven
who have a right ... to choose, to 'kieren'
the Romish Kaiser; and who are therefore called
Kur Princes, Kurfilrste, or Electors. . . . Flirst
(Prince) I suppose is equivalent originally to our
noun of number, ' First.' The old verb ' kieren'
(participle ' erkoren' still in use, not to mention
'Val-kyr' and other instances) is essentially the
same word as our 'choose,' being written ' kiesen'
as well as 'kieren.' Nay, say the etymologists,
it is also written ' Kussen' (' to kiss,' — to choose
with such emphasis !), and is not likely to fall ob-
solete in that form. — The other Six Electoral
Dignitaries, who grew to Eight by degrees, and
may be worth noting once by the readers of this
book, are: 1. Three Ecclesiastical, Mainz, Coin,
Trier (Mentz, Cologne, Treves), Archbishops all.
... 2. Three Secular, Sachsen, Pfalz, Bohmen
(Saxony, Palatinate, Bohemia) ; of which the last,
Bohmen, since it fell from being a kingdom in
itself, to being a province of Austria, is not very
vocal in the Diets. These Six, with Branden-
burg, are the Seven Kurfiirsts in old time : Scp-
temvirs of the Country, so to speak. But now
Pfalz, in the Thirty-Years War (under our Prince
Rupert's Father, whom the Germans call the
'Winter-King'), got abrogated, put to the ban,
so far as an indignant Kaiser could ; and the vote
and Kur of Pfalz was given to his Cousin of
Baiern (Bavaria), — so far as an indignant Kaiser
could [see Gkum-^nt: A. D. 1631-1623]. How-
ever, at the Peace of Westphalia (1648) it was
found incompetent to any Kaiser to abrogate
Pfalz, or the like of Pfalz, a Kurfi'irst of the
Empire. So, after jargon inconceivable, it was
settled. That Pfalz must be reinstated, though
with territories much clipped, and at the bottom
of the list, not the top as formerly ; and that
Baiern, who could not stand to be balked after
twenty-years possession, must be made Eighth
Elector [see Germ.\ny : A. D. 1648]. The Ninth,
we saw (Year 1693), was Gentleman Ernst of
Hanover [see Germ.\ny : A. D. 1648-170,5].
There never was any Tenth." — T. Carlyle, Fred-
erick the Orcat, bk. 3, ch. 4. — " All the rules and
requisites of the election were settled bv Charles
the Fourth in the Golden Bull [A. D. 13.56 — see
below: A. D. 1347-1493], thenceforward a fun-
damental law of the Empire." — J. Bryce, The
Holy RiiniDi Empire, eh. 14.
i2-i3th Centuries. — Causes of the Disinte-
gration of the Empire. — "The whole differ-
ence between French and German constitutional
history can be summed up in a word : to the
ducal power, after its fall, the crown fell heir in
France ; the lesser powers, which had been its
own allies, in Germany. The event was the same,
the results were different : in France centraliza-
tion, in Germany disintegration. The fall of the
power of the stem-duchies is usually traced to
the subjugation of the mightiest of the dukes,
Henry the Lion [see Saxony: A. D. 1178-1183],
who refused military service to the Emperor
Frederick Barbarossa just when the latter most
needed him in the struggle against the Lom-
bards. . . . The emperor not only banned the
duke, he not only took away his duchy to be-
stow it elsewhere, but he entirely did away
with this whole form of rule. The western part,
Westphalia, went to the archbishops of Cologne;
in the East the different margraves were com-
pletely freed from the last remnants of depen-
dence that might have continued to exist. In
14
the intervening space the little ecclesiastical and
secular lords came to be directly vmdcr the em-
peror without a trace of an intermediate power
and with the title of bishop or abbot, imperial
count, or prince. If one of these lords, Bernard
of Ascanium, received the title of Saxon duke,
that title no longer betokened the head of a
stem or nation but simply an honorary distinc-
tion above other counts and lords. What hap-
pened here had already begun to take place in
the other duchy of the Guelphs, in Bavaria,
through the detachment from it of Austria ;
sooner or later the same process came about in all
parts of the empire. With the fall of the old
stem-duchies those lesser powers which had been
under their shadow or subject to them gained
everywhere an increase of power ; partly by this
acquiring the ducal title as an honorary distinc-
tion by the ruler of a smaller district, partly by
joining rights of the intermediate powers that
had just been removed to their own jurisdictions
and thus coming into direct dependence on the
empire. . . . Such was the origin of the idea of
territorial supremacy. The ' dominus terras '
comes to feel himself no longer as a person com-
missioned by the emperor but as lord in his own
land. ... As to the cities, behind their walls,
remnants of old Germanic liberty had been pre-
served. Especially in the residences of the bish-
ops had artisans and merchants thriven and these
classes had gradually thrown off their bondage,
forming, both together, the new civic community.
. . . The burghers could find no better way to
show their independence of the princes than that
the community itself should exercise the rights
of a territorial lord over its members. Thus did
the cities as well as the principalities come to
form separate territories, only that the latter had
a monarchical, the former a republican form of
government. . . . Itisanatiual question to ask,
on the whole, when this new formation of terri-
tories was completed. . . . The question ought
really only to be put in a general way : at what
period in German history is it an established fact
that there are in the empire and under the em-
pire separate territorial powers (principalities
and cities) ? As such a period we can designate
approximately the end of the 13th and beginning
of the 13th centuries. From that time on the
double nature of imperial power and of terri-
torial power is an established fact and the
mutual relations of these two make up the whole
internal history of later times. . . . The last ruler
who had spread abroad the glory of the imperial
name had been Frederick II. For a long time
after him no one had worn the imperial crown
at all, and of those kings who reigned during a
whole quarter of a century not one succeeded in
making himself generally recognized. There
came a time when the duties of the state, if they
were fulfilled at all, were fulfilled by the terri-
torial powers. Those are the years which pass
by the name of the interregnum. . . . Rudolph of
Hapsburg and his successors, chosen from the
most different houses and pursuing the most
different policies, have quite the same position
in two regards: on the one hand the crown, in
the weak state in which it had emerged from the
interregnum, saw itself compelled to make per-
manent concessions to the territorial powers in
order to maintain itself from one moment to
another ; on the other hand it finds no refuge for
itself but in the constant striving to found its
77
GERMANY, 12-13TH CENTURIES. The Hohenstnufen
dynasty.
GERMANY, 1138-1268.
own power on just such privileged territories.
When the kings strive to make the princes and
cities more powerful by .giving them numerous
privileges, and at the same time by bringing to-
gether a dynastic appanage to gain for them-
selves an influential position: this is no policy
that wavers between conceding and maintaining.
. . The crown can only keep its place above
the territories by first recognizing the territorial
powers and then, through just such a recognized
territorial power by creating for itself the means
of upholding its rights. . . . The next great step
in the onward progress of the territorial power
was the codification of the privileges which the
chief princes had obtained. Of the law called
the ' Golden Bull' only the one provision is gen-
erally known, that the seven electors shall
choose the emperor ; yet so completely does the
document in question draw the affairs of the
whole empire into the range of its provisions
that for centuries it could pass for that empire's
fundamental law. It is true that for the most
part it did not create a new system of legislation,
but only sanctioned what already existed. But
for the position of all the princes it was signifi-
cant enough that the seven most considerable
among them were granted an independence
which comprised sovereign rights, and this not
by way of a privilege but as a part of the law of
the land. A sharply defined goal, and herein
lies the deepest significance, was thus set up at
which the lesser territories could aim and which,
after three centuries, they were to attain. . . .
This movement was greatly furthered when on
the threshbold of modern times the burning
question of church reform, after waiting in vain
to be taken up by the emperor, was taken up
by the lower classes, but with revolutionary
excesses. . . . The mightiest intellectual move-
ment of German history found at last its only
political mainstay in the territories. . . . This
whole development, finally, found its political
and legal completion through the Thirty Years
War and the treaty of peace which concluded it.
The new law which the Peace of Westphalia
now gave to the empire proclaimed expressly
that all territories should retain their rights,
especially the right of making alliances among
themselves and' with foreigners so long as it
could be done without violating the oath of
allegiance to the emperor and the empire. Here-
with the territories were proclaimed . . . states
under the empire." — I. Jastrow, OeschicMe der
deutschen Einheitstraum vnd seiner Erfulliing
(tni IIS. from the German), jip. 30-37.
A. D. 1 138-1268. — The house of Suabia, or
the Hohenstaufen.— Its struggles in Germany
and Italy, and its end. — The Factions of the
Guelfs and Ghibellines.— Frederick Barba-
rossa and Frederick the Second. — On the
death of Henry V., in 1125, the male line of the
house of Franconia became extinct. Frederick,
duke of Suabia, and his brother Conrad, duke
of the Franks, were grandchildren of Henry IV.
on their mother's side, and, inheriting the patri-
monial estates, were plainly the heirs of the
crown, if the crown was to be recognized as
hereditary and dynastic. But jealousy of their
house and a desire to reassert the elective de-
pendence of the imperial office prevailed against
their claims and their ambition. At an election
which was denounced as irregular, the choice
fell upon Lothaire of Saxony. The old imperial
family was not only set aside, but its bitterest
enemies were raised over it. "The consequences
wore a feud and a struggle which grew and
widened into the long-lasting, far-reaching, his-
torical conflict of Guelfs and Ghibellines (see
Guelfs and Ghibellines; also, Saxony: Dis-
solution OF THE old Ducht). The Saxon em-
peror Lothaire found his strongest support in the
great "WOlf, Welf, or Guelf nobleman, Henry the
Proud, duke of Bavaria, to whom he (Lothaire)
now gave his daughter in marriage, together
with the dukedom of Saxony, and whom he in-
tended to make his successor on the imperial
throne. But the scheme failed. On Lothaire's
death, in 1138, the partisans of the Suabian
family carried the election of Conrad (the Cru-
sader — see Crusades: A. D. 1147-1149), and
the dynasty most commonly called Hohenstaufen
rose to power. It took the name of Hohenstaufen
from its original family seat on the lofty hill
of Staufen, in Suabia, overlooking the valley of
the Rems. Its party, in the wars and factions of
the time, received the name of the Waiblingen,
from the birth-place of the Suabian duke Fred-
erick — the little town of Waiblingen in Fran-
conia. Under the tongue of the Italians, when
these party names and war-cries were carried
across the Alps, Waiblingen became Ghibelline
and Welf became Guelf. During the first half
century of the reign of the Hohenstaufen, the
history of Germany is the history, for the most
part, of the strife in which the Guelf dukes,
Henry the Proud and Henry the Lion, are the
central figures, and which ended in the breaking
up of the old powerful duchy of Saxony. But
Italy was the great historical field of the energies
and the ambitions of the Hohenstaufen emperors.
There, Frederick Barbarossa (Frederick Redbeard,
as the Italians called him), the second of the line,
and Frederick II., his adventurous grandson,
fought their long, losing battle with the popes and
with the city-republics of Lombardy and Tuscany.
— U. Balzani, The Popes and the Holienstaufen.
— Frederick Barbarossa, elected Emperor in
1153, passed into Italy in 1154. "He came there
on the invitation of the Pope, of the Prince of
Capua, and of the toyvns which had been sub-
jected to the ambition of Milan. He marched at
the head of his German feudatories, a splendid
and imposing array. His first object was to
crush the power of Milan, and to exalt that of
Pavia, the head of a rival league. Nothing
could stand against him. At Viterbo he was
compelled to hold the stirrup of the Pope, and
in return for this submission he received the
crown from the Pontiff's hands in the Basilica of
St. Peter. He returned northwards by the valley
of the Tiber, dismissed his army at Ancona, and
with diflSculty escaped safely into Bavaria. His
passage left little that was solid and durable be-
hind it. He had effected nothing against the
King of Naples. His friendship with the Pope
was illusory and short-lived. The dissensions of
the North, which had been hushed for a moment
by his presence, broke out again as soon as his
back was turned. He had, however, received
the crown of Charles the Great from the hands of
the successor of St. Peter. But Frederick was
not a man to brook easily the miscarriage of his
designs. In 1158 he collected another armyat
Ulm. Brescia was quickly subdued ; Lodi, which
had been destroyed by the Milanese, was rebuilt,
and Milan itself was reduced to terms. This
1478
GERMANY, 1138-1268.
Frederick Barbarossa
and Frederick II.
GERMANY, 1138-1268.
peace lasted but for a short time ; Milan revolted,
and was placed under the ban of the Empire.
The fate of Cremona taught the Milanese what
they had to expect from the clemency of the
Emperor. After a desultory warfare, regular
siege was laid to the town. On March 1, 1162,
Milan, reduced by famine, surrendered at discre-
tion, and a fortnight later all the inhabitants were
ordered to leave the town. The circuit of the
walls was partitioned out among the most piti-
less enemies of its former greatness, and the in-
habitants of Lodi, of Cremona, of Pavia, of No-
vara, and of Como were encouraged to wreak
their vengeance on their defeated rival. For six
days the imperial army laboured to overturn the
walls and public buildings, and when the Em-
peror left for Pavia, on Palm Sunday 1162, not a
fiftieth part of the city was standing. This ter-
rible vengeance produced a violent reaction.
The homeless fugitives were received by their
ancient enemies, and local jealousies were merged
in common hatred of the common foe. Frederick
had already been excommunicated by Pope Alex-
ander III. as the supporter of his rival Victor.
Verona undertook to be the public vindicator of
discontent. Five years after the destruction of
Milan the Lombard league numbered fifteen
towns amongst its members. Venice, Verona,
Vicenza, Treviso, Perrara, Brescia, Bergamo,
Cremona, Milan, Lodi, Piacenza, Parma, Modena,
and Bologna. The confederation solemnly en-
gaged to expel the Emperor from Italy. The
towns on the frontier of Piedmont asked and ob-
tained admission to the league, and to mark the
dawn of freedom a new town was founded on
the low marshy ground which is drained by the
Bormida and the Tanaro, and which afterwards
witnessed the victory of Marengo. It was named
by its founders Alessandria, in honour of the
Pope, who had vindicated their independence of
the Empire. . . . The Lombard league had un-
fortunately a very imperfect constitution. It
had no common treasure, no uniform rules for
the apportionment of contributions; it existed
solely for the purposes of defence against the ex-
ternal foe. The time was not yet come when
self-sacrifice and self-abnegation could lay the
foundations of a united Italy. Frederick spent
six years in preparing vengeance. In 1174 he
laid siege to the new Alexandria, but did not
succeed in taking it. A severe struggle took
place two years later. In 1176 a new army ar-
rived from Germany, and on May 29 Frederick
Barbarossa, was entirely defeated at Legnano.
In 1876 the seventh hundred anniversary of the
battle was celebrated on the spot where it was
gained, and it is still regarded as the birthday of
Italian freedom." — O. Browning, Ouelplis and
Ohibellinea, cli. 1. — See, also, Italy: A. D. 1154-
1162 to 1174-1183.— "The end was that the Em-
peror had to make peace with both the Pope and
the cities, and in 1183 the rights of the cities
were acknowledged in a treaty or law of the Em-
pire, passed at Constanz or Constance in Swabia.
In the last years of his reign, Frederick went on
the third Crusade, and died on the way [see Cru-
sades: A. D. 1188-1193]. Frederick was suc-
ceeded by his son Henry the Sixth, who had al-
ready been chosen King, and who in the next year,
1191, was crowned Emperor. The chief event of
his reign was the conquest of the Kingdom of
Sicily, which he claimed in right of his wife
Constance, the daughter of the first King "Wil-
liam. He died in 1197, leaving his son Frederick
a young child, who had already been chosen
King in Germany, and who succeeded as heredi-
tary King in Sicily. The Norman Kingdom of ■
Sicily thus came to an end, except so far as it
was continued through Frederick, who was de-
scended from the Norman Kings through his
mother. On the death of the Emperor Henry,
the election of young Frederick seems to have
been quite forgotten, and the crown was dis-
puted between his uncle Philip of Swabia and
Otto of Saxony. He was son of Henry the Lion,
who had been Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, but
who had lost the more part of his dominions in
the time of Frederick Barbarossa. Otto's mother
was Matilda, daughter of Henry the Second of
England. . . . Both Kings were crowned, and,
after the death of Philip, Otto was crowned Em-
peror in 1209. But presently young Frederick
was again chosen, and in 1230 he was crowned
Emperor, and reigned thirty years till his death
in 1250. This Frederick the Second, who joined
together so many crowns, was called the Wonder
of the World. And he well deserved the name,
for perhaps no King that ever reigned had
greater natural gifts, and in thought and learn-
ing he was far above the age in which he lived.
In his own kingdom of Sicily he could do pretty
much as he pleased, and it flourished wonder-
fully in his time. But in Germany and Italy he
had constantly to struggle against enemies of all
kinds. In Germany he had to win the support
of the Princes by granting them pi-ivileges which
did much to undermine the royal power, and on
the other hand he showed no favour to tlie rising
power of the cities. In Italy he had endless
strivings with one Pope after another, with In-
nocent the Third, Honorius the Third, Gregory
the Ninth, and Innocent the Fourth ; as well as
with the Guelfic cities, which withstood him
much as they had withstood his grandfather.
He was more than once excommunicated by the
Popes, and in 1345 Pope Innocent the Fourth
held a Council at L3'ons, in which he professed
to depose the Emperor. More than one King
was chosen in opposition to him in Germany,
just as had been done in the time of Henry the
Fourth, and there were civil wars all his time,
both in Germany and in Italy, while a great part of
the Kingdom of Burgundy was beginning to slip
away from the Empire altogether." — E. A. Free-
man, General Sketch of European Hist., ch. 11. —
"It is probable that there never lived a human
being endowed with greater natural gifts, or
whose natural gifts were, according to the means
afforded him by his age, more sedulously culti-
vated, than the last Emperor of the House of
Swabia. There seems to be no aspect of human
nature which was not developed to the highest
degree in his person. In versatility of gifts, in
what we may call manysidedness of character,
he appears as a sort of mediteval Alkibiad§s,
while he was imdoubtedly far removed from Al-
kibiadgs' utter lack of principle or steadiness of
any kind. Warrior, statesman, lawgiver, scholar,
there was nothing in the compass of the political
or intellectual world of his age which he failed
to grasp. In an age of change, when, in every
corner of Europe and civilized Asia, old king-
doms, nations, systems, were falling and new
ones rising, Frederick was emphatically the man
of change, the author of things new and unheard
of — he was stupor muudi et immutator mirabilis.
1479
GERMANY, 1138-1268.
Frederick 11.
GERMANY, 1138-126
A suspected heretic, a suspected Mahometan, he
was the subject of all kinds of absurd and self
contradictory charges ; but the charges mark real
features in the character of the man. He was
something unlike any other Emperor or any
other man. ... Of all men, Frederick the Second
might have been expected to be the founder of
something, the beginner of some new era, politi-
cal or intellectual. He was a man to whom some
great institution might well have looked back as
its creator, to whom some large body of men,
some sect or party or nation, might well have
looked back as their prophet or founder or deliv-
erer. But the most gifted of the sons of men
has left behind him no such memory, while men
whose gifts cannot bear a comparison with his
are reverenced as founders by grateful nations,
churches, political and philosophical parties.
Frederick in fact founded nothing, and he sowed
the seeds of the destruction of many things. His
great charters to the spiritual and temporal
princes of Germany dealt the death-blow to the
Imperial power, while he, to say the least, looked
coldly on the rising power of the cities and on
those commercial Leagues which were in his
time the best element of German political life.
In fact, in whatever aspect we look at Frederick
the Second, we find him, not the first, but the
last, of every series to which he belongs. An
English writer [Capgrave], two hundred years
after his time, had the penetration to see that he
was really the last Emperor. He was the last
Prince in whose style the Imperial titles do not
seem a mockery ; he was the last under whose
rule the three Imperial kingdoms retained any
practical connexion with one another and with
the ancient capital of all, ... He was not only
the last Emperor of the whole Empire ; he might
almost be called the last King of its several King-
doms. After his time Burgundy vanishes as a
kingdom. . . . Italy too, after Frederick, van-
ishes as a kingdom; any later exercise of the
royal authority in Italy was something which
came and went wholly by fits and starts. . . .
Germany did not utterly vanish, or uttei'ly split
in pieces, like the sister kingdoms; but after
Frederick came the Great Interregnum, and after
the Great Interregnum the royal power in Ger-
many never was what it had been before. In
his hereditary Kingdom of Sicily he was not ab-
solutely the last of his dynasty, for his son Man-
fred ruled prosperously and gloriously for some
years after his death. But it is none the less clear
that from Frederick's time the Sicilian Kingdom
was doomed. . . . Still more conspicuously than
all was Frederick the last Christian King of Jeru-
salem, the last baptized man who really ruled
the Holy Land or wore a crown in the Holy
City. ... In the world of elegant letters Fred-
erick has some claim to be looked on as the
founder of that modern Italian language and lit-
erature wliich first assumed a distinctive shape
at his Sicilian court. But in the wider field of
political history Frederick appears nowhere as a
creator, but rather everywhere as an involuntary
destroyer. . . . Under Frederick the Empire and
everything connected with It seems to crumble
and decay while preserving its external splen-
dour. As soon as its brilliant possessor is gone, it
at once falls asunder. It is a significant fact that
one who in mere genius, in mere accomplish-
ments, was surely the greatest prince who ever
wore a crown, a prince who held the greatest
place on earth, and who was concerned during a
long reign in some of the greatest transactions
of one of the greatest ages, seems never, even
from his own flatterers, to have received that
title of Great which has been so lavishly bestowed
on far smaller men. . . . Many causes combined
to produce this singular result, that a man of the
extraordinary genius of Frederick, and possessed
of every advantage of birth, office, and oppor-
tunity, should have had so little direct effect
upon the world. It is not enough to attribute
his failure to the many and great faults of his
moral character. Doubtless they were one cause
among others. But a man who influences future
ages is not necessarily a good man. . . . The
weak side in the brilliant career of Frederick is
one which seems to have been partly inherent in
his character, and partly the result of the cir-
cumstances in which he found himself. Capable
of every part, and in fact playing every part by
turns, he had no single definite object, pursued
honestly and steadfastly, throughout his whole
life. With all his powers, with all his brilliancy,
his course throughout life seems to have been in
a manner determined for him by others. He was
ever drifting into wars, into schemes of policy,
which seem to be hardly ever of his own choos-
ing. He was the mightiest and most dangerous
adversary that the Papacy ever had. But he
does not seem to have withstood the Papacy
from any personal choice, or as the voluntary
champion of any opposing principle. He be-
came the enemy of the Papacy, he planned
schemes which involved the utter overthrow of
Papacy, yet he did so simply because he found
that no Pope would ever let him alone. . . .
The most really successful feature in Frederick's
career, his acquisition of Jerusalem [see Cru-
sades: A. D. 1216-1229], is not only a mere epi-
sode in his life, but it is something that was
absolutely forced upon him against his will. . . .
"With other Crusaders the Holy War was, in some
cases, the main business of their lives; in all
cases it was something seriously undertaken as a
matter either of policy or of religious duty. But
the Crusade of the man who actually did recover
the Holy City Is simply a grotesque episode in
his life. Excommunicated for not going, ex-
communicated again for going, excommunicated
again for coming back, threatened on every side,
he still went, and he succeeded. What others
had failed to win by arms, he contrived to win
by address, and all that came of his success was
that it was made the ground of fresh accusations
against him. . . . For a man to influence his
age, he must in some sort belong to his age. He
should be above it, before it, but he should not
be foreign to it. . . . But Frederick belongs to
no age; intellectually he is above his own age,
above every age ; morally it can hardly be denied
that he was below his age ; but in nothing was
he of his age." — E. A. Freeman, The Emperor
Frederick the Second {Historical Essays, v. 1, Es-
say 10). — For an account of Frederick's brilliant
Sicilian court, and of some of the distinguishing
features of his reign in Southern Italy, as well as
of the end of his family, in the tragical deaths of
his son Manfred and his grandson Conradin
(1268), see It.\ly: A. D. 1183-1250.
Also in: T. L. Kington, Hist, of Frederick the
Second. — J. Bryce, The Holy Roman Empire,
eh. 10-13.— H. H. Milman, Hist, of Latin Chris-
tianity, bk. 8, ch. 7, and bk. 9.
1480
GERMANY, 1143-1153.
The great
Interregnum.
GERMANY, 1350-1373.
A. D. 1142-1152. — Creation of the Elector-
ate of Brandenburg. See Br.vndenedrg : A. D.
1143-1152.
A. D. 1156. — The Margravate of Austria
created a Duchy. See Austria: A. D. 805-
134G.
A. D. 1180-1214. — Bavaria and the Palati-
nate of the Rhine acquired by the house of
Wittelsbach. See B.vvaiua: A. U. 1180-1356.
A. D. 1196-1197. — The Fourth Crusade. See
Crusades: A. D. 1196-1197.
13th Century. — The rise of the Hanseatic
League. See IIansa Towts's.
13th Century. — Cause of the multiplication
of petty principalities and states. — " AVliile
the duchies and counties of Germany retained
their original character of offices or governments,
they were of course, even though considered as
hereditary, not subject to partition among chil-
dren. When they acquired the nature ot fiefs,
it was still consonant to the principles of a feudal
tenure that the eldest son should inherit accord-
ing to the law of primogeniture ; an inferior pro-
vision or api)anage, at most, being reserved for
the younger children. The law of England fa-
voured the eldest exclusively; that of France
gave him great advantages. But in Germany a
different rule began to prevail about the thir-
teenth century. An equal partition of the in-
heritance, without the least regard to priority of
birth, was the general law of its piincipalities.
Sometimes this was effected by undivided pos-
session, or tenancy in common, the brothers re-
siding together, and reigning jointly. This
tended to preserve the integrity ot dominion;
but as it was frequently incommodious, a more
usual practice was to divide the territory. From
such partitions are derived those numerous inde-
pendent principalities of the same house, many
of which still subsist in Germany. In 1589 there
were eight reigning princes of the Palatine family ;
and fourteen, in 1675, of that of Saxony. Origi-
nally these partitions were in general absolute
and without reversion; but, as their effect in
weakening families became evident, a practice
was introduced of making compacts of reciprocal
succession, by which a fief was prevented from
escheating to the empire, until all the male pos-
terity of the first feudatory should be extinct.
Thus, while the German empire survived, all the
princes of Hesse or of Saxony had reciprocal
contingencies of succession, or what our lawyers
call cross-remainders, to each other's dominions.
A different system was gradually adopted. By
the Golden Bull of Charles IV. the electoral ter-
ritory, that is, the particular district to which the
electoral suffrage was inseparably attached, be-
came incapable of partition, and was to descend
to the eldest son. In the 15tli century the pres-
ent house of Brandenburg set the first example
of establishing primogeniture by law ; the princi-
palities of Anspach and Bayreuth were dismem-
bered from it for the benefit of younger branches ;
but it was declared that all the other dominions
of the family should for the future belong ex-
clusively to the reigning elector. This politic
measure was adopted in several other families;
but, even in the 16th century, the prejudice
was not removed, and some German princes de-
nounced curses on their posterity, if they should
introduce the impious custom of primogeniture.
. . . Weakened by these subdivisions, the princi-
palities of Germany in the 14th and 15th centu-
ries shrink to a more and more diminutive size in
the scale of nations." — H. Hallam, The Middle
Ages, eh. 5 (». 2). — See, also, Cities, Imperiai,
AND FREE, OF GeRMANT.
A. D. I2I2.— The Children's Crusade. See
Crusades: A. D. 1213.
A. D. 1231-1315. — Relations of the Swiss
Forest Cantons to the Empire and to the
House of Austria. See Switzerland: The
Three Forest Cantons.
A. D. 1250-1272. — Degradation of the Holy
Roman Empire. — The Great Interregnum. —
Anarchy and disorder universal. — Election of
Rudolf of Hapsburg.— " With Frederick [the
Second] fell the Empire. From the ruin that
overwhelmed the greatest of its houses it emerged,
living indeed, and destined to a long life, but
so shattered, crijjpled, and degraded, that it
could never more be to Europe and to Germany
what it once had been. . . . The German king-
dom broke down beneath the weight of the Roman
Empire. To be universal sovereign Germany had
sacrificed her own political existence. The neces-
sity which their projects in Italy and disputes
with the Pope laid the Emperors under of pur-
chasing by concessions the support of their own
princes, the ease with which in their absence the
magnates could usurp, the difficulty which the
monarch returning found in resuming the priv-
ileges of his crown, the temptation to revolt and
set up pretenders to the throne which the Holy
See held out, these were the causes whose steady
action laid the foundation of that territorial in-
dependence which rose into a stable fabric at the
era of the Great Interregnum. Frederick II. had,
by two Pragmatic Sanctions, A. D. 1330 and 1232,
granted, or rather confirmed, rights already cus-
tomary, such as to give the bishops and nobles
legal sovereignty in their own towns and terri-
tories, except when the Emperor should be pres-
ent; and thus his direct jurisdiction became re-
stricted to his narrowed domain, and to the cities
immediately dependent on the crown. With so
much less to do, an Emperor became altogether a
less necessary personage; and hence the seven
magnates of the realm, now by law or custom
sole electors, were in no haste to fill up the place
of Conrad IV., whom the supporters of his father
Frederick had acknowledged. AVilliam of Hol-
land [A. D. 1254] was in the field, but rejected by
the Swabian party : on his death a new 'election
was called for, and at last set on foot. The arch-
bishop of Cologne advised his brethren to choose
some one rich enough to support the dignity, not
strong enough to be feared by the electors: both
requisites met in the Plantagenet Richard, earl of
Cornwall, brother of the English Henry III. He
received three, eventually four votes, came to
Germany, and was crowned at Aachen [A. D.
1256]. But three of the electors, finding that his
bribe to them was lower than to the others, se-
ceded in disgust, and chose Alfonso X. of Castile,
who, shrewder than his competitor, continued to
watch the stars at Toledo, enjoying the splen-
dours of his title while troubling himself about
it no further than to issue now and then a
proclamation. Meantime the condition of Ger-
many was frightful. The new Didius Julianus,
the chosen of princes baser than the praetorians
whom they copied, had neither the character
nor the outward power and resources to make
himself respected. Every floodgate of anarchy
was opened: prelates and barons extended their
1481
GERMANY, 1250-1272.
Rudolf
of Hapsburg.
GERMANY, 1273-1308.
domains by war : robber-knights infested the high-
ways and "the rivers: the misery of the weak, the
tyranny and violence of the strong, were such as
had not been seen for centuries. Tilings were
even worse than under the Saxon and Franconian
Emperors; for the petty nobles who had then
been in some measure controlled by their dukes
were now, after the extinction of the great houses,
left without any feudal superior. Only in the
cities was shelter or peace to be found. Those of
'the Rhine had already leagued themselves for
mutual defence, and maintained a struggle in the
interests of commerce and order against universal
brigandage. At last, when Richard had been
some time dead, it was felt that such things
could not go on for ever : with no public law, and
no courts of justice, an Emperor, the embodiment
of legal government, was the only resource. The
Pope himself, having now sufficiently improved
the weakness of his enemy, found the disorgani-
zation of Germany beginning to tell upon his
revenues, and threatened that if the electors did
not appoint an Emperor, he would. Thus urged,
they chose,in 1373 [1273?], Rudolf, countof Haps-
burg, founder of the house of Austria. From
this point there begins a new era. We have seen
the Roman Empire revived in A. D. 800, by a
prince whose vast dominions gave ground to his
claim of universal monarchy; again erected, in
A. D. 962, on the narrower but firmer basis of the
German kingdom. We have seen Otto the Great
and his successors during the three following cen-
turies, a line of monarchs of unrivalled vigour
and abilities, strain every nerve to make good
the pretensions of their office against the rebels in
Italy and the ecclesiastical power. Those efforts
had now failed signally and hopelessly. Each
successive Emperor had entered the strife with
resources scantier than his predecessors, each had
been more decisively vanquished by the Pope,
the cities, and the princes. The Roman Empire
might, and, so far as its practical utility was con-
cerned, ought now to have been suffered to ex-
pire; nor could it have ended more gloriously
than with the last of the Hohenstaufen. That it
did not so expire, but lived on 600 years more,
tUl it became a piece of antiquarianism hardly
more venerable than ridiculous — till, as Voltaire
said, all that could be said about it was that it
was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire —
was owing partly indeed to the belief, still un-
shaken, that it was a necessary part of the world's
order, yet chiefly to its connection, which was by
this time indissoluble, with the German king-
dom. The Germans had confounded the two
characters of their sovereign so long, and had
grown so fond of the style and pretensions of a
dignity whose possession appeared to exalt them
above the other peoples of Europe, that it was
now too late for them to separate the local from
the universal monarch. If a German king was
to be maintained at all, he must be Roman Em-
peror; and a German king there must still be.
. . . That head, however, was no longer what he
had been. The relative position of Germany and
France was now exactly the reverse of that which
they had occupied two centuries earlier. Ru-
dolf was as conspicuously a weaker sovereign
than Philip III. of France, as the Franconian
Emperor Henry III. had been stronger than the
Capetian Philip I. In every other state of Eu-
rope the tendency of events had been to central-
ize the administration and increase the power of
the monarch, even in England not to diminish it.
in Germany alone had political union become
weaker, and tlie independence of the princes more
confirmed. " — J. Bryce, T/ie Holy Roman Empire,
ch. 13.— See, also, It.ua': A. D. 1250-1530.
A. D. 1273-1308. — The first Hapsburg kings
of the Romans, Rodolph and Albert. — The
choice made (A. D. 1273) by the German Electors
of Rodolph of Hapsburg for King of the Ro-
mans (see Austria: A. D. 1246-1282), was duly
approved and confirmed by Pope Gregory X.,
who silenced, by his spiritual admonitions, the
rival claims of King Alfonso of Castile. But
Rodolph, to secure this papal confirmation of
his title, found it necessary to promise, through
his ambassadors, a renewal of the Capitulation
of Otho IV., respecting the temporalities of the
Pope. This he repeated in person, on meeting
the Pope at Lausanne, in 1275. On that occasion,
"an agreement was entered into which after-
wards ratified to the Church the long disputed gift
of Charlemagne, comprising Ravenna, Emilia,
Bobbio, Cesena, Forumpopoli, Forli, Faenza,
Imola, Bologna, Ferrara, Comacchio, Adria, Ri-
mini, Urbino, Monteferetro, and the territory of
Bagno. Rodolph also bound himself to protect
the privileges of the Church, and to maintain
the freedom of Episcopal elections, and the right
of appeal in all ecclesiastical causes ; and having
stipulated for receiving the imperial crown in
Rome he promised to undertake an expedition to
the holy land. If Rodolph were sincere in these
last engagements, the disturbed state of his Ger-
man dominions afforded him an apology for their
present non-fulfilment : but there is good reason
for believing that he never intended to visit
either Rome or Palestine ; and his indifference to
Italy has even been the theme of panegyric with
his admirers. The repeated and mortifying re-
verses of the two Frederics were before his eyes;
there was little to excite his sympathy with the
Italians ; and tliough Lombardy seemed ready to
acknowledge his supremacy, the Tuscan cities
evinced aspirations after Independence." Dur-
ing the early years of Rodolph's reign he was em-
ployed in establishing his authority, as against
the contumacy of Ottocar, King of Bohemia,
and the Duke of Bavaria (see Austria: A. D.
1246-1282). Meantime, Gregory X. and three
short-lived successors in the papal office passed
awa3% and Nicholas III. had come to it (1377).
That vigorous pontiff called Rodolph to account
for not having yet surrendered the states of the
Church in due form, and whispered a hint of ex-
communication and interdict. ' ' Rodolph was
too prudent to disregard this admonition: he
evaded the projected crusade and journey to
Rome ; but he took care to send thither an emis-
sary, who in his name surrendered to the Pope
the territory already agreed on. . . . During his
entire reign Rodolph maintained his indifference
towards Italy. " His views ' ' were rather directed
to the wilds of Hungary and Germany than to
the delicious regions of the south. ... He com-
pelled Philip, Count of Savoy, to surrender
Morat, Payerne, and Guminen, which had been
usurped from the Empire. By a successful ex-
pedition across the Jura, he brought back to
obedience Otho IV. Count of Burgundy; and
forced him to renounce the allegiance he had
proffered to Philip III. King of France. . . .
He crushed an insurrection headed by an impos-
tor, who had persuaded the infatuated multitude
1482
GERMANY, 1373-1308.
Henry
of Luxemburg.
GERMANY, 1308-1313.
to believe that he was the Emperor Frederic II.
And he freed his dominions from rapine and
desolation by the destruction of several castles,
whose owners infested the country with their
predatory incursions." Before his death, in 1391,
Rodolph ' ' grew anxious to secure to his son Albert
the succession to the throne, and his nomination
by the Electors ere the grave closed upon himself.
. . . But all his entreaties were unavailing; he
was coldly reminded that he himself was still
the 'King,' and that the Empire was too poor to
support two kings. Rodolph might now repent
his neglect to assume the imperial crown: but
the character of Albert seems to have been the
real obstacle to his elevation. With many of the
great qualities of his father, this prince was de-
ficient in his milder virtues; and his personal
bravery and perseverance were tainted with pride,
haughtiness, and avarice." On Rodolph's death,
the Electors chose for his successor Adolphus,
Count of Nassau, a choice of which they soon
found reason to repent. By taking pay from
Edward I. of England, for an alliance with the
latter against the King of France, and by at-
tempts to enforce a purchased claim upon the
Landgraviate of Thuringia, Adolphus brought
himself into contempt, and in 1298 he was sol-
emnly deposed by the Electors, who now con-
ferred the kingship upon Albert of Austria whom
they had rejected six years before. "The de-
posed sovereign was, however, strongly sup-
ported ; and he promptly collected his adherents,
and marched at the head of a vast army against
Albert, who was not unprepared for his recep-
tion. A. great battle took place at Gelheim, near
"Worms; and, after a bloody contest, the troops
of Adolphus were entirely defeated," and he
himself was slain. But Albert, now unopposed
ia Germany, found his title disputed at Rome.
Boniface VIII., the most arrogant of all popes,
refused to acknowledge the validity of his elec-
tion, and drove him into a close alliance with the
Pope's implacable and finally triumphant enemy,
Philip IV. of France (see P.\pact: A. D. 1294-
1348). He was soon at enmity, moreover, with
a majority of the Electors who had given the
crown to him, and they, stimulated by the Pope,
were preparing to depose him, as they had de-
posed Adolphus. But Albert's energy broke up
their plans. He humbled their leader, the Arch-
bishop-Elector of Mentz, and the rest became
submissive. The Pope now came to terms with
him, and invited him to Rome to receive the im-
perial crown ; also offering to him the crown of
France, if he would take it from the head of the
excommunicated Philip; but while these pro-
posals were under discussion, Boniface suffered
humiliations at the hands of the French king
which caused his death. During most of his
reign, Albert was busy with undertakings of
ambition and rapacity which had no success.
He attempted to seize the counties of Holland,
Zealand, and Friesland, as fiefs reverting to the
crown, on the death of John, Count of Holland,
in 1299. He claimed the Bohemian crown in
1306, when Wenceslaus V. , the young king, was
assassinated, and invaded the country ; but only
to be beaten back. He was defeated at Lucka,
in 1308, when attempting to grasp the inheri-
tance of the Landgrave of Thuringia — under the
very transaction which had chiefly caused his
predecessor Adolphus to be deposed, and he him-
lelf invested with the Roman crown. Finally,
he was in hostilities with the Swiss Forest Can-
tons, and was leading his forces against them, in
May, 1308, when he was assassinated by several
nobles, including his cousin John, whose enmity
he had incurred.— Sir R. Comyn, Hist, of the
Western Empire, ch. 14-17 («. 1).
Also in : W. Coxe, Hist, of the House of Aus-
tria, ch. 5 (v. 1).
A. D. 1282. — Acquisition of the duchy of
Austria by the House of Hapsburg. See Aus-
tria: A. D. 134(3-1283.
A. D. 1308-1313.— The reign of Henry of
Luxemburg. — The king (subsequently crowned
emperor) chosen to succeed Albert was Count
Henry of Luxemburg, an able and excellent
prince. The new sovereign was crowned as
Henry VH. "Henry did not make the extension
of his private domains his object, yet favoring
fortune brought it to him in the largest measure.
Since the death of Wenzel III., the succession
to the throne of Bohemia had been a subject of
constant struggles. A very small party was in
favor of Austria; but the chief power was in the
hands of Henry of Carinthia, husband of Anna,
AVenzel's eldest daugliter. But he was hated by
the people, whose hopes turned more and more
to Elizabeth, a younger daughter of Wenzel;
though she was kept in close confinement by
Henry, who was about to marry her, it was sup-
posed, below her rank. She escaped, fled to the
emperor, and implored his aid. He gave her in
marriage to his young son John, sending him to
Bohemia in charge of Peter Aichspalter, to take
possession of the kingdom. He did so, and it
remained for more than a century in the Luxem-
burg family. This King John of Bohemia was
a man of mark. His life was spent in the cease-
less pursuit of adventure — from tournament to
tournament, from war to war, from one enter-
prise to another. We meet him now in Avignon,
and now in Paris; then on the Rhine, in Prussia,
Poland, or Hungary, and then prosecuting large
plans in Italy, but hardly ever in his own king-
dom. Yet his restless activity accomplished very
little, apart from some important acquisitions in
Silesia. Henry then gave attention to the public
peace ; came to an understanding with Leopold
and Frederick, the proud sons of Albert, and put
under the ban Everard of Wirtemberg, long a
fomenter of disturbances, sending against him a
strong imperial army. ... At the Diet of Spires,
in September, 1309, it was cheerfully resolved
to carry out Henry's cherished plan of reviving
the traditional dignity of the Roman emperors
by an expedition to the Eternal City. Henry
expected thus to renew the authority of his title
at home, as well as in Italy, where, in the tradi-
tional view, the imperial crown was as impor-
tant and as necessary as in Germany. Every
thing here had gone to confusion and ruin since
the Hohenstaufens had succumbed to the bitter
hostility of the popes. The contending parties
still called themselves Guelphs and Ghibellines,
though they retained little of the original char-
acteristics attached to these names. A formal
embassy, with Matteo Visconti at its head, in-
vited Henry to Milan; and the parties every
where anticipated his coming with hope. The
great Florentine poet, Dante, hailed him as a
saviour for distracted Italy. Thus, with the
pope's approval, he crossed the Alps in the
autumn of 1310, attended by a splendid escort
of princes of the empire. The news of his
1483
GERMANY, 1308-1313. Lewis and Frederick. GERMANY, 1314-1347.
approach excited general wonder and expectation,
and liis reception at Milan in December was like
a triumph. He was crowned King of Lombardy
■without opposition. But when, in the true im-
perial spirit, he announced that he had come to
serve the nation, and not one or another party,
and proved liis sincerity by treating both parties
alike, all whose selfish hopes were deceived con-
spired against hira. Brescia endured a frightful
siege for four months, showing that the national
hatred of German rule still survived. At length
a union of all his adversaries was formed under
King Robert of Naples, the grandson of Charles
of Anjou, who put Conradin to death. Mean-
while Henry VII. went to Rome, May 1312, and
received the crown of the Coesars from four car-
dinals, plenipotentiaries of the pope, in the church
of St. John Lateran, south of the Tiber, St.
Peter's being occupied by tlie Neapolitan troops.
But many of his German soldiers left him, and
he retired, with a small army, to Pisa, after an
unsuccessful effort to take Florence. From the
faithful city of Pisa he proclaimed King Robert
under the ban, and, in concert with Frederick of
Sicily, prepared for war by land and sea. But
the pope, now a mere tool of the King of France,
commanded an armistice; and when Henry, in
an independent spirit, hesitated to obey, Clement
V. pronounced the ban of the Church against
him. It never reached the emperor, who died
suddenly in the monastery of Buon-Convento:
poisoned, as the German annalists assert, by a
Dominican monk, in the sacramental cup, Au-
gust 24, 1313. He was buried at Pisa. Mean-
while his array in Bohemia had been completely
successful in establishing King John on the
throne." — C. T. Lewis, A Hist, of Germany, bk.
3, ch. 10.— See, also, Italy: A. D. 1310-1313.
A. D. 1314-1347. — Election of rival emperors,
Lewis (Ludowic) of Bavaria and Frederic of
Austria.— Triumph of Lewis at the Battle of
Miihldorf. — Papal interference and excommu-
nication of Lewis. — Germany under interdict.
— Unrelenting hostility of the Church. — "The
death of Heinric [Henry] replunged Germany
into horrors to which, since tlie e.xtinction of the
Swabian line of emperors, it had been a stranger.
Tlie Austrian princes, who had never forgiven
the elevation of the Luxemburg famil}^, espoused
the interests of Frederic, their head; the Bohemi-
ans as naturally opposed them. From the acces-
sion of John, the two houses were of necessity
hostile ; and it was evident that there could be
no peace in Germany until one of them was sub-
jected to the other. The Bohemians, indeed,
could not hope to place their king on the vacant
throne, since their project would have found an
insurmountable obstacle in the jealousy of the elec-
tors ; but they were at least resolved to support
the pretensions of a prince hostile to the Aus-
trians. . . . The diet being convoked at Frank-
fort, the electors repaired thither, but with very
different views; for, as their suffrages were
already engaged, while the more numerous party
proclaimed the duke of Bavaria as Ludowic V",
another no less eagerly proclaimed Frederic.
Although Ludowic was a member of the Austro-
Hapsburg family — his mother being a daughter
of Rodolf I. — he had always been the enemy of
the Austrian princes, and in the same degree the
ally of the Luxemburg faction. The two candi-
dates being respectively crowned kings of the
Bomans, Ludowic at Aix-la-Chapelle, by the
arclibishop of Mentz — Frederic at Bonn, by the
metropolitan of Cologne, a civil war was inevit-
able : neither had virtue enough to sacrifice hia
own rights to the good of the state. . . . The
contest would have ended in favour of the Aus-
trians, but for the rashness of Frederic, who, in
September 1322, without waiting for the arrivai'
of his brother Leopold, assailed Ludowic between
3Iahldorf and Ettingeu in Bavaria. . . . The bat-
tle was maintained with equal valour from the
rising to the setting sun ; and was evidently in
favour of the Austrians, when an unexpected
charge in flank by a body of cavalry under the
margrave of Nuremburg decided the fortune of
the day. Heinric of Austria was first taken pris-
oner ; and Frederic himself, who disdained to flee,
was soon in the same condition. To his ever-
lasting honour, Ludowic received Frederic with
the highest assurances of esteem ; and though the
latter was conveyed to the strong fortress of
Trapnitz, in the Upper Palatinate, he was treated
with every indulgence consistent with his safe
custody. But the contest was not yet decided ; the
valiant Leopold was still at the head of a sep-
arate force; and pope John XXII., the natural
enemy of the Ghibelins, incensed at some suc-
cours which Ludowic sent to that party in Lom-
bardy, excommunicated the king of the Romans,
and declared him deposed from his dignity.
Among the ecclesiastics of the empire this iniqui-
tous sentence had its weight ; but had not other
events been disastrous to the king, he might have
safely despised it. By Leopold he was signally
defeated ; he had the mortification to see the in-
constant king of Bohemia join the party of Aus-
tria ; and the still heavier misfortune to learn that
the ecclesiastical and two or three secular electors
were proceeding to another choice— that of
Charles de Valois, whose interests were warmly
supported by the pope. In this emergency, his
only chance of safety was a reconciliation with his
enemies ; and Frederic was released on condition
of his renouncing ah claim to the empire. But
though Frederic sincerely resolved to fulfil his
share of tlie compact, Leopold and the other
princes of his family refused ; and their refusal
was approved by the pope. "With the magnanim-
ity of his character, Frederic, unable to execute
the engagements which lie had made, voluntarily
surrendered himself to his enemy. But Ludowic,
who would not be outdone in generosity, re-
ceived him, not as a prisoner, but a friend. ' They
ate,' says a contemporary writer, 'at the same
table, slept on the same couch ; ' and when the
King left Bavaria, the administration of that
duchy was confided to Frederic. Two such men
could not long remain even politically hostile;
and by another treaty, it was agreed that they
should exercise conjointly the government of the
empire. Wlien this arrangement was condemned
both by the pope and the electors, Ludowic pro-
iwsed to take Italy as his seat of government, and
leave Germany to Frederic. But the death [1326]
of the war-like Leopold — the great support of
the Austrian cause — and the continued opposi-
tion of the states to any compromise, enabled
Ludowic to retain the sceptre of the kingdom;
and in 1329, that of Frederic strengthened his
part}'. But his reign was destined to be one of
troubles. . . . His open warfare against the heai
of the church did not much improve his affairs,
the vindictive pope, in addition to the former
sentence, placing all Germany under an interdict.
1484
GERMANY, 131^1347.
T)ie Golden Bull
of Charles IV.
GERMANY, 1347-1493.
. . In 1338, the diet of Frankfort issued a dec-
laration for ever memorable in the annals of free-
dom. That the imperial authority depended on
God alone; that the pope had no temporal in-
fluence, direct or indirect, within the empire;
... it concluded by empowering the emperor
(Ludowic while in Italy [see Italy: A. D. 1313-
1330] had received the imperial crown from the
anti-poj^e whom he had created in opposition to
John XXII.) to raise, of his own authority, the
interdict which, during four years, had oppressed
the country. Another diet, held the following
year, ratified this bold declaration. . . . But this
conduct of the diet was above the comprehension
of the vulgar, who still regarded Ludowic as
under the curse of God and the church. . . . Un-
fortunately for the national independence, Ludo-
wic himself contradicted the tenor of his hitherto
spirited conduct, by mean submissions, by humili-
ating applications for absolution. They were un-
successful; and he had the mortitication to see
the king of Bohemia, who had always acted an
unaccountable part, become his bitter enemy. . . .
From this moment the fate of Ludowic was de-
cided. In conjunction with the pope and the
French king, Charles of Bohemia, who in 1346
succeeded to his father's kingdom and antipathy,
commenced a civil war; and in the midst of these
troubled scenes the emperor breathed his last
[October 11, 1347]. Twelve mouths before the
decease of Ludowic, Charles of Bohemia [son of
John, the blind king of Bohemia, who fell, fight-
ing for the French, at the battle of Crecy], assisted
by Clement VI., was elected king of the Romans."
— S. A. Dunham, Hist, of the Oermanic Empire,
bk. 1, ch. 4 (i). 1).
Also in: J. I. von Dollinger, Studies in Euro-
pean History, ch. 5. — -J. C. Robertson, Hist, of the
Christian Church, bk. 8, ch. 3, «. 7.— M. Creigh-
ton. Hist, of the Papacy durinrj the Period of the
Reformation, introd., ch. 3.
A. D. 1347-1493.— The Golden Bull of
Charles IV. — The Luxemburg line of emper-
ors, and the reappearance of the Hapsburgs.
— The Holy Roman Empire as it was at the
end of the Middle Ages. — "John king of Bo-
hemia did not himself wear the imperial crown ;
but three of his descendants possessed it, with
less interruption than could have been expected.
His son Charles IV. succeeded Louis of Bavaria
in 1347 ; not indeed without opposition, for a
double election and a civil war were matters of
course in Germany. Charles IV. has been treated
with more derision by his contemporaries, and
consequently by later writers, than almost any
prince in history ; yet he was remarkably suc-
cessful in the only objects that he seriously pur-
sued. Deficient in personal courage, insensible
of humiliation, bending without sliame to the
pope, to the Italians, to the electors, so poor and
so little reverenced as to be arrested by a butcher
at Worms for want of paj'ing his demand,
Charles IV. affords a proof that a certain dex-
terity and cold-blooded perseverance may occa-
sionally supply, in a sovereign, the want of
more respectable qualities. He has been re-
proached with neglecting the empire. But he
never deigned to trouble himself about the em-
pire, except for his private ends. He did not
neglect the kingdom of Bohemia, to which he
almost seemed to render Germany a province.
Bohemia had been long considered as a fief of
the empire, and indeed could pretend to an elec-
toral vote by no other title. Charles, however,
gave the states by law the right of choosing a
king, on the extinction of the royal family, which
seems derogatory to the imperial prerogative.
... He constantly resided at Prague, where he
founded a celebrated university, and embellished
the city with buildings. This kingdom, aug-
mented also during his reign by the acquisition
of Silesia, he bequeathed to his son Wenceslaus,
for whom, by pliancy towards the electors and
the court of Rome, he had procured, against all
recent example, the imperial succession. The
reign of Charles IV. is distinguished in the con-
stitutional history of the empire by his Golden
Bull [1356] ; an instrument which finally ascer-
tained the prerogatives of the electoral college
[see above: A. D. 1125-1153]. The Golden Bull
terminated the disputes which had arisen between
different members of the same house as to their
right of suffrage, which was declared inherent in
certain definite territories. The number was ab-
solutely restraiued to seven. The place of legal
imperial elections was fixed at Frankfort; of
coronations, at Aix-la-Chapelle ; and the latter
ceremony was to be performed by the arch-bishop
of Cologne. These regulations, though conso-
nant to ancient usage, had not always been ob-
served, and their neglect had sometimes excited
questions as to the validity of elections. The
dignity of elector was enhanced by the Golden
Bull as highly as an imperial edict could carry it ;
they were declared equal to kings, and conspiracy
against their persons incurred the penalty of high
treason. Many other privileges are granted to
render them more completely sovereign within
their dominions. It seems extraordinary that
Charles should have voluntarily elevated an oli-
garchy, from whose pretensions his predecessors
had frequently suffered injury. But he had
more to apprehend from the two great families
of Bavaria and Austria, whom he relatively de-
pressed by giving such a preponderance to the
seven electors, than from anj' members of the
college. By his compact with Brandenburg [see
Brandenburg: A. D. 1168-1417] he had a fair
prospect of adding a second vote to his own.
. . . The next reign, nevertheless, evinced the
danger of investing the electors w;ith such pre-
ponderating authority. Wenceslaus [elected in
1378], a supine and voluptuous man, less re-
spected, and more negligent of Germany, if pos-
sible, than his father, was regularly deposed by
a majority of the electoral college in 1400. . . .
They chose Robert count palatine instead of
Wenceslaus ; and though the latter did not cease
to have some adherents, Robert has generally
been counted among the lawful emperors. Upon
his death [1410] the empire returned to the house
of Luxemburg ; Wenceslaus himself waiving his
rights in favour of his brother Sigismund of
Hungary." On the death of Sigismund, in 1437,
the house of Austria regained the imperial throne,
in the person of Albert, duke of Austria, who
bad married Sigismund's only daughter, the
queen of Hungarj' and Bohemia. ' ' He died in
two years, leaving his wife pregnant with a son,
Ladislaus Posthumus, who afterwards reigned in
the two kingdoms just mentioned ; and the choice
of the electors fell upon Frederic duke of Styria,
second-cousin of the last emperor, from whose
posteritj' it never departed, except in a single in-
stance, upon the extinction of his male line in
1740. Frederic III. reigned 53 years [1440-1493],
1485
GERMANY, 1347-1488.
The Hohenzollems.
GERMANY, 1417.
a longer period than any of his predecessors; and
his personal character was more insignificant.
. . . Frederic, always poor, and scarcely able to
protect himself in Austria from the seditions of
his subjects, or the inroads of the king of Hun-
gary, was yet another founder of his family, and
left their fortunes incomparably more prosperous
than at his accession. Tlie marriage of his son
Maximilian with the heiress of Burgundy [see
Netherlands: A. D. 1477] began that aggran-
dizement of the house of Austria wliich Frederic
seems to have anticipated. The electors, who
had lost a good deal of their former spirit, and
were grown sensible of the necessity of choosing
a powerful sovereign, made no opposition to
Maximilian's becoming king of the Romans in
his father's lifetime." — H. Hallam, The Middle
Ages, ch. 5 («. 2). — "It is important to remark
that, for more than a century after Charles IV.
had fixed his seat in Bohemia, no emperor ap-
peared, endowed with the vigour necessary to
uphold and govern the empire. The bare fact
that Charles's successor, Wenceslas, was a pris-
oner in the hands of the Bohemians, remained
for a long time unknown in Germany : a simple
decree of the electors sufficed to dethrone him.
Rupert the Palatine only escaped a similar fate
by death. When Sigismund of Luxemburg,
(who, after many disputed elections, kept posses-
sion of the field.) four years after his election,
entered the territory of the empire of which he
was to be crowned sovereign, he found so little
sympatliy that he was for a moment inclined to
return to Hungary without accomplishing the
object of his journey. The active part he took
in the affairs of Bohemia, and of Europe gener-
ally, has given him a name ; but in and for the
empire, he did nothing worthy of note. Between
the years 1422 and 1430 he never made his ap-
pearance beyond Vienna; from the autumn of
1431 to that of 1433 he was occupied with his
coronation journey to Rome; and during the
three years from 1434 to his death he never got
beyond Bohemia and Moravia; nor did Albert
II., who has been the subject of such lavish
eulogy, ever visit the dominions of the empire.
Frederic III. , however, far outdid all his prede-
cessors. During seven-and-twenty years, from
1444 to 1471, he was never seen within the boun-
daries of the empire. Hence it liappened that
the central action and tlie visible manifestation
of sovereignty, in as far as any such existed in the
empire, fell to the share of the princes, and more
especially of tlie prince-electors. In the reign of
Sigismund we find them convoking the diets,
and leading the armies into the field against the
Hussites : tlie operations against the Bohemians
were attributed entirely to them. In this man-
ner the empire became, like the papacy, a power
which acted from a distance, and rested chiefly
upon opinion. . . . The emperor was regarded,
in the first place, as the supreme feudal lord,
who conferred on property its highest and most
sacred sanction. . . . Although he was regarded
as the head and source of all temporal jurisdic-
tion, yet no tribunal found more doubtful obedi-
ence than his own. The fact that royalty ex-
isted in Germany had almost been suffered to fall
into oblivion ; even the title had been lost. Henry
VII. thought it an affront to be called King of
Germany, and not, as he had a right to be called
before any ceremony of coronation, King of the
Romans. In the 15th century the emperor was
regarded pre-eminently as the successor of the
ancient Roman Ciesars, whose rights and digni-
ties had been transferred, first to the Greeks, and
tlien to the Germans in the persons of Charle-
magne and Otho the Great ; as the true secular
head of Christendom. . . . The opinion was con-
fidently entertained in Germany that the other
sovereigns of Christendom, especially those of
England, Spain, and France, were legally subject
to the crown of the empire : the only controversy
was, whether their disobedience was venial, or
ought to be regarded as sinful." — L. von Ranke.
Hist, of the Reformation in Oermany, v. 1, pp.
52-56.
Also m: Sir R. Comyn, Hist, of the Western
Empire, ch. 24 (v. 1). — E. F. Henderson, Select
Hist. Doc's of the Middle Ages, bk. 2, no. 10. —
See, also, Austria: A. D. 1330-1364, to 1471-
1491.
A. D. 1363-1364. — Tyrol acquired by the
House of Austria, v(rith the reversion of the
crowns of Bohemia and Hungary. See Austria :
A. D. 1330-1364.
A. D. 1378. — Final surrender of the Arelate
to France. See Burgundy : A. D. 1127-1378.
A. D. 1386-1388.— Defeat of the Austrians
by the Swiss at Sempach and Naefels. See
Switzerland: A. D. 1386-1388.
A. D. 1405-1434.— The Bohemian Reforma-
tion and the Hussite wars. See Bohemia : A. D.
1405-1415, and 1419-1434.
A. D. 1414-1418. — Failure of demands for
Church Reform in the Council of Constance.
See Pap.^cy: A. D. 1414-1418.
A. D. 1417. — The Electorate of Branden-
burg conferred on the Hohenzollems. — "The
March of Brandenburg is one of those districts
which was first peopled by the advance of the
German nation towards the east during the
twelftli and thirteenth centuries. It was in the
beginning, like Silesia, Mecklenburg, Pomerania,
Prussia, and Livonia, a German colony settled
upon an almost uncultivated soil : from the very
first, however, it seems to have given the greatest
promise of vigour. . . . Possession was taken of
the soil upon the ground of the rights of the
princely Ascanian house — we know not whether
these rights were founded upon inheritance, pur-
chase, or cession. The process of occupation
was so gradual that the institutions of the old
German provinces, like those constituting the
nortliern march, had time to take firm root in the
newly-acquired territory ; and owing to the con-
stant necessity for unsheathing the sword, the
colonists acquired warlike habits which tended
to give them spirit and energy. . . . The As-
canians were a warlike but cultivated race, in-
cessantly acquiring new possessions, but gener-
ous and openhanded ; and new life followed in
their footsteps. They soon took up an important
political position among the German princely
houses: their possessions extended over a great
part of Thuringia, Moravia, Lausitz, and Silesia;
the electoral dignity wliich they assumed gave
to them and to their country a high rank in the
Empire. In the Neumark and in Pomerellen the
Poles retreated before them, and on the Pome-
ranian coasts they protected tlie towns founded
by the Teutonic order from the invasion of the
Danes. It has been asked whether this race
miglit not have greatly extended its power ; but
they were not destined even to make the attempt.
It is said that at the beginning of the fourteenth
1486
GERMANY, 1417.
Bundschuh
insurrections.
GERMANY, 1493-1519.
century nineteen members of this family were
assembled on the Margrave's Hill near Rathenau.
In the year 1330, of all these not one remained,
or had even left an heir. ... In Brandenburg
... it really appeared as if the e.xtinction of the
ruling family would entail ruin upon the coun-
try. It had formed a close alliance with the im-
perial power — which at that moment was the
subject of contention between the two great
families of Wittelsbach and Lu.xemburg — was
involved in the quarrels of those two races,
injured by all their alternations of fortune, and
sacrificed to their domestic and foreign policy,
which was totally at variance with the interests
of Brandenburg. At the very beginning of the
struggle the March of Brandenburg lost its
dependencies. ... At length the Emperor Sig-
mund, the last of the house of Luxemburg, found
himself so fully occupied with the disturbances
In the Empire and the dissensions in the Church,
that he could no longer maintain his power in
the March, and intrusted the task to his friend
and relation, Frederick, Burgrave of Niirnberg,
to whom he lay under very great obligations, and
who liad assisted him with money at his need.
... It was a great point gained, after so long a
period of anarchy, to find a powerful and pru-
dent prince ready to undertake the government
of the province. He could do nothing in the
open field against the revolted nobles, but he
assailed and vanquished them in their hitherto
impregnable strong-holds surrounded with walls
fifteen feet thick, which he demolished with
his clumsy but effective artillery. In a few
years he had so far succeeded that he was able to
proclaim a Landfriede, or public peace, accord-
ing to which each and every one who was an
enemy to him, or to those compreliended in the
peace, was considered and treated as the enemy
of all. But the effect of all this would have been
but transient, had not the Emperor, who had no
son, and who was won by Frederick's numerous
services and by his talents for action, made the
Electorate hereditary in his family. . . . The
most important day in the history of the March
of Brandenburg and the family of Zollern was
the 18th of April, 1417, when in the market-place
of Constance the Emperor Sigraund formally
invested the Burgrave with the dignity of Elec-
tor, placed in his hands the flag with the arms of
the March and received from him the oath of
allegiance. From this moment a prospect was
afforded to the territory of Brandenburg of re-
covering its former prosperity and increasing its
importance, while to the house of Zollern a career
of glory and usefulness was opened worthy of
powers which were thus called into action." — L.
von Ranke, Memoirs of the ITovse of Branden-
burg, bk. 1, ch. 2. — See, also, BTt.^'NDENBtnRG:
A. D. 1168-1417; and Hohenzollern, Rise of
THE House of.
A. D. 1467-1471. — Crusade against George
Podiebrad, king of Bohemia. See Bohemia:
A. I). 14.')8-U71.
A. D. 1467-1477. — Relations of Charles the
Bold of Burgundy to the Empire. See Bur-
gundy: A. D. 1467, and 1476-1477.
A. D. 1492-1514. — The Bundschuh insurrec-
tions of the Peasantry. — Several risings of the
German peasantry, in the later part of the 15th
and early part of the 16th century, were named
from the Bundschuh, or peasants' clog, which
the insurgents bore as their emblem or pictured
on their banners. "While the peasants in the
Rhoetian Alps were gradually throwing off the
yoke of the nobles and forming the ' Graubund '
[see Switzerland: A. D. 1396-1499], a struggle
was going on between the neighbouring peas-
antry of Kerapten (to the east of Lake Constance)
and their feudal lord, the Abbot of Kempten.
It began in 1423, and came to an open rebel-
lion in 1492. It was a rebellion against new
demands not sanctioned by ancient custom,
and though it was crushed, and ended in little
good to the peasantry (many of whom fled into
Switzerland), yet it is worthy of note because
in it for the first time appears the banner
of the Bundschuh. The next rising was in
Elsass (Alsace), in 1493, the peasants finding
allies in the burghers of the towns along the
Rhine, who had their own grievances. The
Bundschuh was again their banner, and it was
to Switzerland that their anxious eyes were
turned for help. This movement also was pre-
maturely discovered and put down. Then, in
1501, other peasants, close neighbours to those
of Kempten, caught the infection, and in 1503,
again in Elsass, but this time further north, in
the region about Speyer and the Neckar, lower
down the Rhine, nearer Franconia, the Bund-
schuh was raised again. It numlaered on its
recruit rolls many thousands of peasants from
the country round, along the Neckar and the
Rhine. The wild notion was to rise in arms, to
make themselves free, like the Swiss, by the
sword, to acknowledge no superior but the Em-
peror, and all Germany was to join the League.
They were to pay no taxes or dues, and com-
mons, forests, and rivers were to be free to all.
Here, again, they mixed up religion with their
demands, and ' Only what is just before God '
was the motto on the banner of the Bundschuh.
They, too, were betrayed, and in savage triumph
the Emperor Maximilian ordered their property
to be confiscated, their wives and children to be
banished, and themselves to be quartered alive.
. . . Few . . . really fell victims to this cruel
order of the Emperor. The ringleaders dispersed,
fleeing some into Switzerland and some into the
Black Forest. For ten years now there was
silence. The Bundschuh banner was furled, but
only for a while. In 1513 and 1513, on the east
side of the Rhine, in the Black Forest and the
neighbouring districts of Wurtemberg, the move-
ment was again on foot on a still larger scale.
It had found a leader in Joss Fritz. A soldier,
with commanding presence and great natural
eloquence, ... he bided his time. . . . Again
the League was betrayed . . . and Joss Fritz,
with the banner under his clothes, had to fly for
his life to Switzerland. . . . He returned after a
while to the Black Forest, went about his secret
errands, and again bided his time. In 1514 the
peasantry of the Duke Ulrich of Wiirtemberg
rose to resist the tyranny of their lord [in a com-
bination called ' the League of Poor Conrad '].
. . . The same year, in the valleys of the Aus-
trian Alps, in Carinthia, Styria, and Crain, simi-
lar risings of the peasantry took place, all of
them ending in the triumph of the nobles. " — F.
Seebohra. — T/ie Era of the Protestant Rexolution,
pt. 1, ch. 4. — See, also, below: A. D. 1534-1525.
A. D. 1493. — Maximilian I. becomes em-
peror.
A. D. 1493-1519. — The reign of Maximilian.
— His personal importance and his imperial
1487
GERIVIANY, 1493-1519.
Maximilian I.
GERMANY, 1493-1519.
powerlessness. — Constitutional reforms in the
Empire. — The Imperial Chamber. — The Cir-
cles. — The Aulic Council. — "Frederic [the
Third] died in 1493, after a protracted and in-
glorious reign of 53 years. ... On the death of
his father, Maximilian had been seven years king
of the Romans; and his accession to the im-
perial crown encountered no opposition. . . .
Scarcely had he ascended the throne, when
Charles VIIL, king of France, passed through
the Milanese into the south of Italy, and seized on
Naples without opposition [see Italy: A. D.
1494^1496]. Maximilian endeavoured to rouse
the German nation to a sense of its danger, but
in vain. . . . With difficulty he was able to de-
spatch 3,000 men to aid the league, which Spain,
the pope, the Milanese, and the Venetians had
formed, to expel the ambitious intruders from
Italy. To cement his alliance with Fernando the
Catholic, he married his son Philip to Juana, the
daughter of the Spaniard. The confederacy tri-
umphed ; not through the efforts of Maximilian,
but through the hatred of the Italians to the
Gallic yoke. . . . Louis XII., who succeeded to
Charles (1498), . . . forced Philip to do homage
for Flanders; surrendering, indeed, three incon-
siderable towns, that he might be at liberty to
renew the designs of his house on Lombardy and
Naples. . . . The French had little difficulty in
expelling Ludovioo Moro, the usurper of Milan,
and in retaining possession of the country during
the latter part of Maximilian's reign [see Italy ;
A. D. 1499-1500]. Louis, indeed, did homage
for the duchy to the Germanic head ; but such
homage was merely nominal: it involved no
tribute, no dependence. The occupation of this
fine province by the French made no impression
on the Germans ; they regarded it as a fief of the
house of Austria, not of the empire : but even if
it had stood in the latter relation, they would not
have moved one man, or voted one florin, to avert
its fate. That the French did not obtain similar
possession of Naples, and thereby become en-
abled to oppose Slaximiliau with greater effect,
was owing to the valour of the Spanish troops,
who retained the crown in the house of Aragon.
His disputes with the Venetians were inglorious
to his arms; they defeated his armies, and en-
croached considerably on his Italian possessions.
He was equally unsuccessful with the Swiss,
whom he vainly persuaded to aclinowledge the
supremacy of his house. . . . For many of his
failures ... he is not to be blamed. To carry
on his vast enterprises he could command only
the resources of Austria: had he been able to
wield those of the empire, his name would have
been more formidable to his enemies; and it is no
slight praise, that with means so contracted he
could preserve the Netherlands against the open
violence, no less than the subtle duplicity, of
France. But the internal transactions of Maxi-
milian's reign are those only to which the atten-
tion of the reader can be directed with pleasure.
In 1495 we witness the entire abolition of the
right of diffidation [private warfare, see Land-
priede], — a right which from time immemorial
had been the curse of the empire. . . . The pass-
ing of the decree which for ever secured the public
peace, by placing under the ban of the empire,
and fining at 2,000 marks in gold, every city,
every individual that should hereafter send or
accept a defiance, was nearly unanimous. In
regard to the long-proposed tribunal [to take
cognizance of all violations of the public tran-
quillity], which was to retain the name of the
Imperial chamber, Maximilian relaxed much
from the pretensions of his father. ... It was
solemnly decreed that the new court should con-
sist of one grand judge, and of 16 assessors, who
were presented by the states, and nominated by
the emperor. . . . Though a new tribunal was
formed, its competency, its operation, its sup-
port, its constitution, the enforcement of its de-
cisions, were left to chance ; and many successive
diets — even many generations — were passed be-
fore anything like an organised system could be
introduced into it. For the execution of its
decrees the Swabian league was soon employed ;
then another new authority, the Council of Re-
gency. . . . But these authorities were insufficient
to enforce the execution of the decrees emanat-
ing from the chamber ; and it was found neces-
sary to restore the proposition of the circles,
which had been agitated in the reign of Albert II.
. . . Originally they comprised only — 1. Ba-
varia, 2. Franconia, 3. Saxony, 4. the Rhine, 5.
Swabia, and 6. Westphalia; thus excluding the
states of Austria and the electorates. But this ex-
clusion was the voluntary act of the electors, who
were jealous of a tribunal which might encroach
on their own privileges. In 1512, however, the
opposition of most appears to have been removed ;
for four new circles were added. 7. The circle
of Austria comprised the hereditary dominions of
that house. 8. That of Burgundy contained the
states inherited from Charles the Rash in Franche-
Comte and the Netherlands. 9. That of the
Lower Rhine comprehended the three ecclesias-
tical electorates and the Palatinate. 10. That of
Upper Saxony extended over the electorate of
that name and the march of Brandenburg. . . .
Bohemia and Prussia . . . refused to be thus
partitioned. Each of these circles had its internal
organisations, the elements of which were pro-
mulgated in 1512, but which was considerably
improved by succeeding diets. Each had its he-
reditary president, or director, and its hereditary
prince convoker, both offices being frequently
vested in the same individual. . . . Each circle
had its military chief, elected by the local states,
whose duty it was to execute the decrees of the
Imperial Chamber. Generally this office was held
by the prince director. . . . The establishment
of the Imperial Chamber was . . . disagreeable
to the emperor. To rescue from its jurisdiction
such causes as he considered lay more peculiarly
within the range of his prerogative, and to en-
croach by degrees on the jurisdiction of this
odious tribunal, Maximilian, in 1501, laid the
foundation of the celebrated Aulic Council. But
the competency of this tribunal was soon ex-
tended : from political affairs, investitures, char-
ters, and the niuuerous matters which concerned
the Imj^erial chancery, it immediately passed to
judicial crimes. . . . By an imperial edict of
1518, the Aulic Council was to consist of 18 mem-
bers, all nominated by the emperor. Five only
were to be chosen from the states of the empire,
the rest from those of Austria. About half were
legists, the other half nobles, but all dependent
on their chief. . . . When he [Maximilian] la-
boured to make this council as arbitrary in the
empire as in Austria, he met with great opposi-
tion. . . . But his purpose was that of encroach-
ment no less than of defence ; and his example
was so well imitated by his successors, that in
1488
GERMANY, 1493-1519.
Beginning of the
Reformation.
GERMANY, 1517-1523.
most cases the Aulic Council was at length ac-
knowledged to have a concurrent jurisdiction
with the Imperial Chamber, in many the right of
prevention over its rival." — S. A. Dunham, Ilist.
of the Germanic Empire, bk. 3, cJi. 1 ()'. 2).— "The
received opinion which recognises in [Maximilian]
the creative founder of the later constitution of
the empire, must be abandoned. . . . He had
not the power of keeping the princes of the em-
pire together ; ... on the contrary, everything
about him split into parties. It followed of
necessity that abroad he rather lost than gained
ground. . . . The glory which surrounds the
memory of Maximilian, the high renown which
he enjoyed even among his contemporaries, were
therefore not won by the success of his enter-
prises, but by his personal qualities. Every good
gift of nature had been lavished upon him in
profusion. . . . He was a man . . . formed to
excite admiration, and to inspire enthusiastic at-
tachment; formed to be the romantic hero, the
exhaustless theme of the people. " — L. von Ranke,
Hist, of the Reformation in Oermany, v. 1, pp.
379-381.
Also in: The same, Hist, of the Latin and
Teutonic Nations from 1494 to 1514, bk. 1, ch. 3,
and bk. 2, ch. 2 and 4. — See, also, Austria: A. D.
1477-1495.
A. D. 1496-1499. — The Swabianwar. — Prac-
tical separation of the Swiss Confederacy
from the Empire. See Switzerland: A. D,
1396-1499.
A. D. 1508-1509. — The League of Cambrai
against Venice. See Venice: A. D. 1508-
1509.
A. D. 1513-1515. — The emperor in the pay
of England. — Peace with France. See France :
A. D. 1513-1515.
A. D. 1516. — Abortive invasion of Milaness
by Maximilian. See France: A. D. 1516-
1517.
A. D. 1517-1523. — Beginning of the move-
ment of Religious Reformation. — Papal Indul-
gences, and Luther's attack on them. — "The
Reformation, like all other great social convul-
sions, was long in preparation [see Papacy : 15th
-16th Centuries], It was one part of that
general progress, complex in its character, which
marked the . . . period of transition from the
Middle Ages to modern civilization. . . . But
while the Reformation was one part of a
change extending over the whole sphere of
human knowledge and activity, it had its own
specific origin and significance. These are still,
to some extent, a subject of controversy. . . .
One of its causes, as well as one of the sources
of its great power, was the increasing discontent
with the prevailing corruption and misgovern-
ment in the Church, and with papal interference
in civil affairs. . . . The misconduct of the
popes in the last half of the fifteenth century
was not more flagrant than that of their prede-
cessors in the tenth century. But the fifteenth
century was an age of light. What was done
by the pontiffs was not done in a corner, but
under the eyes of all Europe. Besides, there
was now a deep-seated craving, especially in the
Teutonic peoples, who had so long been under
the tutelage of a legal, judaizing form of Chris-
tianity, for a more spiritual type of religion.
. . . The Reformation may be viewed in two
aspects. On the one hand it is a religious revo-
lution affecting the beliefs, the rites, the ecclesi-
94
astical organization of the Church, and the form
of Christian life. On the other hand, it is a
great movement in which sovereigns and nations
are involved; the occasion of wars and treaties;
the close of an old, and the introduction of
a new, period in the history of culture and
civilization. Germany, including the Nether-
lands and Switzerland, was the stronghold of
the Reformation. It was natural that such a
movement should spring up and rise to its highest
power among a people in whom a love of inde-
pendence was mingled with a yearning for a
more spiritual form of religion than was encour-
aged by mediaeval ecclesiasticism. Hegel has
dwelt with eloquence upon the fact that while
the rest of the world was gone out to America
or to the Indies, in quest of riches and a domin-
ion that should encircle the globe, a simple monk,
turning away from empty forms and the things
of sense, -nas finding him whom the disciples
once sought in a sepulchre of stone. Unques-
tionably the hero of the Reformation was Martin
Luther. ... As an English writer has pointed
out, Luther's whole nature was identified with
his great work, and while other leaders, like
Melancthon and even Calvin, can be separated
in thought from the Reformation, 'Luther, apart
from the Reformation, would cease to be Luther.'
... In 1517 John Tetzel, a hawker of indul-
gences, the proceeds of wliich were to help pay
for the building of St. Peter's Church, appeared
in the neighborhood of Wittenberg. To per-
suade the people to buy his spiritual wares, he
told them, as Luther himself testifies, that as soon
as their money clinked in the bottom of the chest
the souls of their deceased friends forthwith went
up to heaven. Luther was so struck with the
enormity of this traffic that he determined to stop
it. He preached against it, and on October 31,
1517, he posted on the door of the Church of All
Saints, at Wittenberg, his ninety-five theses [for
the full text of these, see Papacy: A. D. 1517],
relating to the doctrine and practice of selling
indulgences. Indulgences . . . were at first
commutations of penance by the payment of
money. The right to issue them had gradually
become the exclusive prerogative of the popes.
The eternal punishment of mortal sin being re-
mitted or commuted by the absolution of the
priest, it was open to the pope or his agents, by
a grant of indulgences, to remove the temporal
or terminable penalties, which might extend into
purgatory. For the benefit of the needy he could
draw upon the treasury of merit stored up by
Christ and the saints. Although it was expressly
declared by Pope Sixtus IV., that souls are de-
livered from purgatorial fires in a way analogous
to the efficacy of prayer, and although contrition
was theoretically required of the recipient of an
indulgence, it often appeared to the people as a
simple bargain, according to which, on payment
of a stipulated sum, the individual obtained a
full discharge from the penalties of sin, or pro-
cured the release of a soul from the flames.
Luther's theses assailed the doctrines which made
this baneful traffic possible. . . . Unconsciously
to their author, they struck a blow at the au-
thority of Rome and of the priesthood. Luther
had no thought of throwing off his allegiance to
the Roman Church, Even his theses were only
propositions, propounded for academic debate,
according to the custom in mediaeval universities.
He concluded them with the solemn declaration
1489
GERMANY, 1517-1523.
Luther at
the Diet of Worms.
GERMANY, 1519.
that he affirmed nothing, but left all to the judg-
ment of the Church. . . . The theses stirred up
a commotion all over Germany. ... A contro-
versy arose between the new champion of reform
and the defenders of indulgences. It was during
this dispute that Luther began to realize that
human authority was against him and to see the
necessity of planting himself more distinctly on
the Scriptures. His clear arguments and reso-
lute attitude won the respect of the Elector of
Saxony, who, though he often sought to restrain
his vehemence, nevertheless protected him from
his enemies. This the elector was able to do be-
cause of his political importance, which became
still greater when, after the death of Maximilian,
he was made regent of Northern Germany." —
G. P. Fisher, History of the Christian Church,
■pp. 287-293. —"At first neither Luther, nor
others, saw to what the contest about the indul-
gences would lead. The Humanists believed it
to be only a scholastic disputation, and Hutten
laughed to see theologians engaged in a fight
with each other. It was not till the Leipzig dis-
putation (1519), where Luther stood forward to
defend his views against Eck, that the matter
assumed a grave aspect, took another turn, and
after the appearance of Luther's appeals ' To the
Christian Nobility of the German Nation,' 'On
the Babylonian Captivity,' and against Church
abuses, that it assumed national importance. All
the combustible materials were ready, the spark
was thrown among them, and the flames broke
out from every quarter. Hundreds of thousands
of German hearts glowed responsive to the com-
plaints which the Wittenberg monk flung against
Papal Rome, in a language whose sonorous splen-
dour and iron strength were now first heard in
all the fulness, force, and beauty of the German
idiom. That was an imperishable service ren-
dered to his country by Luther. He wrote in
German, and he wrote such German. The
papal ban hurled back against him in 1520 was
disregarded. He burnt it outside the gate of
Wittenberg by the leper hospital, in the place
where the rags and plague-stained garments of
the lepers were wont to be consumed. The no-
bility, the burghers, the peasants, all thrilled at
his call. Now the moment had come for a great
emperor, a second Charlemagne, to stand forward
and regenerate at once religion and the empire.
There was, however, at the head of the state,
only Charles V., the grandson of Maximilian, a
man weak where he ought to have been strong,
and strong whei-e he ought to have been weak, a
Spanish Burgundian prince, of Romance stock,
who despised and disliked the German tongue,
the tongue of the people whose imperial crown
he bore, a prince whose policy was to combat
France and humble it. It was convenient for
him, at the time, to have the pope on his side, so
he looked with dissatisfied eyes on the agitation
in Germany. The noblest hearts among the
princes bounded with hope that he would take
the lead in the new movement. The lesser no-
bility, the cities, the peasantry, all expected of
the emperor a reformation of the empire politi-
cally and religiously. . . . But all hopes were
dashed. Charles V. as little saw his occasion as
had Maximilian. He took up a hostile position
to the new movement at once. He was, however,
brought by the influential friends of Luther,
among whom first of all was the Elector of Sax-
ony, to hear what the reformer had to say for
himself, before he placed him under the ban of
the empire. Luther received the imperial safe-
conduct, and was summoned to the Diet of
Worms, there to d«fend himself. He went, not-
withstanding that he was warned and reminded
of the fate of Huss. ' I will go to Worms, ' said
he, ' even were as many devils set against me as
there are tiles on the roofs.' It was probably on
this journey that the thoughts entered his mind
which afterwards (1530) found their expression
in that famous chorale, ' Eine feste Burg ist unser
Gott,' which became the battle-song of Protes-
tants. Those were memorable days, the 17th
and 18th of April, 1521. in which a poor monk
stood up before the emperor and all the estates
of the empire, undazzled by their threatening
splendour, and conducted his own case. At that
moment when he closed his defence with the
stirring words, ' Let me be contradicted out of
Holy Scripture — till that is done I will not re-
cant. Here stand I. I can do no other, so help
me God, amen ! ' then he had reached the pinna-
cle of his greatness. The result is well known.
The emperor and his papal adviser remained un-
moved, and the ban was pronounced against the
heretic. Luther was carried off by his protector,
the Elector of Saxony, and concealed in the
Wartburg, where he worked at his translation
of the Bible. . . . Brandenburg, Hesse, and Sax-
ony declared in favour of reform. In 1523
Magdeburg, Wismar, Rostock, Stettin, Danzig,
Riga, expelled the monks and priests, and ap-
pointed Lutheran preachers. Nl'irnberg and Bres-
lau hailed the Reformation with delight." —
S. Baring-Gould, The Church in Oermaiiy, cJi.
18.— See Papacy: A. D. 1516-1517, to 1522-
1525.
Also in : L. von Ranke, Hist, of the Reforma-
tion in Oermany. — L. Hausser, The Period of the
Reformation. — J. H. Merle d'Aubigne, Hist, of
the Reformation. — M. J. Spaulding, Hist, of the
Protestant Reformation. — F. Seebohm, The Era of
the Protestant Revolution. — P. Bayne, Martin
Luther. — C. Beard, Martin Lutfier and tlie Ref-
ormation. — J. Kostlin, Life of Luther.
A. D. 1519. — Contest for the imperial crovyn.
— Three royal candidates in the field. — Elec-
tion of Charles V., the Austro-Spanish mon-
arch of many thrones. — In his last years, Maxi-
milian made great efforts to secure the Imperial
Crown for his grandson Charles, who had already
inherited, through his mother Joanna, of Spain,
the kingdoms of Castile, Aragon, and the Two
Sicilies, and through his father, Philip of Austria,
the duchy of Burgundy and the many lordships
of the Netherlands. " In 1518 he obtained the
consent of the majority of the electors to the Ro-
man crown being bestowed on that [jrince. The
electors of Treves and Saxony alone opposed the
project, on the ground that, as Maximilian had
never received the Imperial crown [but was
styled Emperor Elect] he was himself still King
of the Romans, and that consequently Charles
could not assume a dignity that was not vacant.
To obviate this objection, Maximilian pressed
Leo to send the golden crown to Vienna ; but this
plan was defeated by the intrigues of the French
court. Francis, who intended to become a can-
didate for the Imperial crown, intreated the Pope
not to commit himself by such an act ; and while
these negociations were pending, Maximilian died
at Wels, in Upper Austria, January 13th 1519.
. . . Three candidates for the Imperial crown
1490
GERMANY, 1519.
Charles V,
GERMANY, 1520-1531.
appeared in the field : the Kiug.s of Spain, France,
and England. Francis I. [of France] was now at
tlie height of his reputation. His enterprises had
hitherto been crowned with success, the popular
testof abilit)% and the world accordingly gave him
credit for a political wisdom which he was far
from possessing. He appears to have gained
three or four of the Electors by the lavish distri-
bution of his money, which his agent, Bonnivet,
was obliged to carry through Germany on the
backs of horses ; for the Fuggers, the rich bank-
ers of Augsburg, were in the interest of Charles,
and refused to give the French any accommoda-
tion. But the bought votes of these venal Elec-
tors could not be depended on, some of whom sold
themselves more than once to different parties.
The infamy of Albert, Elector of Mentz, in these
transactions, was particularly notorious. The
chances of Henry VIII. [of England] were
throughout but slender. Henry's hopes, like
those of Francis, were chiefly founded on the cor-
ruptibility of the Electors, and on the expectation
that both his rivals, from the very magnitude of
their power, might be deemed ineligible. Of
the three candidates the claims of Charles seemed
the best founded and the most deserving of suc-
cess. The House of Austria had already fur-
nished six emperors, of whom the last three had
reigned eighty years, as if by an hereditary suc-
cession. Charles's Austrian possessions made him
a German prince, and from their situation consti-
tuted him the natural protector of Germany
against the Turks. The pi-evious canvass of
Maximilian had been of some service to his cause,
and all these advantages he seconded, like his
competitors, by the free use of bribery. . . . Leo
X., the weight of whose authority was sought
both by Charles and Francis, though he seemed
to favour each, desired the success of neither. He
secretly advised the Electors to choose an emperor
from among their own body; and as this seemed
an easy solution of the difficulty, they unani-
mously offered the crown to Frederick the AVise,
Elector of Saxony. But Frederick magnani-
mously refused it, and succeeded in uniting the
suffrages of the Electors in favour of Charles;
principally on the ground that he was the sover-
eign best qualified to meet the great danger im-
pending from the Turk. . . . The new Emperor,
now in his 20th year, assumed the title of Charles
V. ... He was proclaimed as ' Emperor Elect, '
the title borne by his grandfather, which he sub-
sequently altered to that of ' Emperor Elect of
the Romans,' a designation adopted by his succes-
sors, with the omission of the word ' elect, ' do wn to
the dissolution of the empire. " — T. H. Dyer, Hist,
of Modern Europe, bk. 3, ch. 3 {i\ 1). — On his elec-
tion to the Imperial throne, Charles ceded to his
younger brother, Ferdinand, all the German pos-
sessions of the family. The latter, therefore, be-
came Archduke of Austria, and the German
branch of the House of Austria was continued
through him ; while Charles himself became the
founder of a new branch of the House — the
Spanish.— See Austria : A. D. 1496-1.526.
Also in: W. Robertson, Hist, of the Reign, of
Charles V., bk. 1.— J. S. Brewer, The Reign of
Henry VIII., ch. 11 {v. 1). — J. Van Praet, Essays
on the Pol. Hist, of the ISth-llth Centuries, ch. 3
{!•■ 1).
A. D. iS20-:52i.— The Capitulation of
Charles V. — His first Diet, at Worms, and its
political measures. — The election of Charles V.
"was accompanied with a new and essential
alteration in the constitution of the empire.
Hitherto a general and verbal promise to confirm
the Germanic privileges had been deemed a suf-
ficient security ; but as the enormous power and
vast possessions of the new emperor rendered
him the object of greater jealousy and alarm
than his predecessors, the electors digested into
a formal deed or capitulation all their laws, cus-
toms, and privileges, which the ambass;idors of
Charles signed before his election, and which he
himself ratified before his coronation; and this
example has been followed by his successors. It
consisted of 36 articles, partly relating to the
Germanic body in general, and partly to the elec-
tors and states in particular. Of those relating
to the Germanic body in general, the most promi-
nent were, not to confer the escheated fiefs, but
to re-unite and consolidate them, for the benefit
of the emperor and empire; not to intrust the
charges of the empire to any but Germans ; not to
grant dispensations of the common law ; to use
the German language in the proceedings of the
chancery ; and to put no one arbitrarily to the
ban, who had not been previously condemned by
the diet or imperial chamber. He was to main-
tain the Germanic body In the exercise of its
legislative powers, in its right of declaring war
and making peace, of passing laws on commerce
and coinage, of regulating the contingents, im-
posing and directing the perception of ordinary
contributions, of establishing and superintending
the superior tribunals, and of judging the per-
sonal causes of the states. Finally, he promised
not to cite the members of the Germanic body
before any tribunal except those of the empire,
and to maintain them in their legitimate priv-
ileges of territorial sovereignty. The articles
which regarded the electors were of the utmost
importance, because they confirmed the rights
which had been long contested with the em-
perors. . . . Besides these concessions, he prom-
ised not to make any attempt to render the ira-
jjerial crown hereditary in his family, and to
re-establish the council of regency, in conformity
with the advice of the electors and great princes
of the empire. On the 6th of January, 1531,
Charles assembled his first diet at Worms, where
he presided in person. At his proposition the
states passed regulations to terminate the troubles
which had already arisen during the short in-
terval of the interregnum, and to prevent the re-
vival of similar disorders. . . . The imperial
chamber was re-established in all its authority,
aud the public peace again promulgated, and en-
forced by new penalties. In order to direct the
affairs of the empire during the absence of
Charles, a council of regency was established.
. . . It was to consist of a lieutenant-general, ap-
pointed by the emperor, and 22 assessors, of
whom 18 were nominated by the states, and four
by Charles, as possessor of the circles of Bur-
gundy and Austria. ... At the same time an aid
of 30,000 foot and 4,000 horse was granted, to
accompany the emperor in his expedition to
Rome ; but the diet endeavoured to prevent him
from interfering, as Maximilian had done, in the
affairs of Italy, by stipulating that these troops
were only to be employed as an escort, aud not
for the purpose of aggression." — W. Coxe, Hist,
of the House of Austria, ch. 36 (». 1).
Also in : L. von Ranke, Hist, of the Reforma-
tion in Germany, bk. 3, ch. 4 («. 1).
]491
GERMANY. 1522-1535.
The Peasants' War,
GERMANY, 1534-1525.
A. D. 1522-1525. — Systematic organization
and adoption in northern Germany of the
Lutheran Reformation. — The Diets at Nurem-
berg. — The Catholic League of Ratisbon. See
Papacy: A. D, 1532-1525.
A. D. 1524-1525. — The Peasants' War. — "A
political ferment, very different from that pro-
duced by the Gospel, had long been troubling the
empire. The people, weighed down under civil
and ecclesiastical oppression, attached in many
places to the lands belonging to the lords, and
sold with them, threatened to rise, and furiously
burst their chains. In Holland, at the end of
the preceding century, the peasants had mustered
around standards Inscribed with the words
' bread ' and ' cheese,' to them the two necessaries
of life. In 1503 the ' Cobblers' League ' [' Bund-
schuh' — see above: A. D. 1492-1514] had burst
forth in the neighbourhood of Spires. In 1513
this was renewed in Brisgau, and encouraged by
the priests. In 1514 Wurtemburg had witnessed
'the League of poor Conrad,' the object of
which was to uphold ' the justice of God ' by re-
volt. In 1515 terrible commotions had taken
place in Carinthia and Hungary. These insur-
rections were stifled by torrents of blood, but no
relief had been given to the peoples. A political
reform was as much wanted as a religious one.
The people had a right to it, but they were not
ripe to enjoy it. Since the commencement of the
Reformation these popular agitations had been
suspended, the minds of men being absorbed
with other thoughts. . . . But everything showed
that peace would not last long. . . . 'fhe main
dykes which had hitherto kept the torrent back
were broken, and nothing could restrain its fury.
Perhaps it must be admitted that the movement
communicated to the people by the Reform gave
new force to the discontent which was fermenting
in the nation. . . . Erasmus did not liesitate to
say to Luther : ' We are now reaping the fruits
of the seed you have sown.'. . . The evil was
augmented by the pretensions of certain fanati-
cal men, who laid claim to celestial inspirations.
. . . The most distinguished of these enthusiasts
was Thomas Miinzer. . . . His first appearance
was at Zwickau. He left Wittenberg after
Luther's return [from his concealment at Wart-
burg, 1532], dissatisfied with the inferior part he
had pla3'ed, and he became pastor of the little
town of Alstadt in Thuringia. There he could
not long be at rest, and he accused the reformers
of founding a new papacy by their attachment
to the letter, and of forming churches which
were not pure and lioly. He regarded himself
as called of God to bear a remedy for so great an
evil. . . . He maintained that to obey princes,
' destitute of reason, ' was to serve God and Belial
at the same time. Then, marching at the head
of his parishioners, to a chapel which was visited
by pilgrims from all quarters, he pulled it to the
ground. After this e.\ploit he was obliged to
quit the country, wandered over Germany, and
came to Switzerland, spreading as he went,
wherever people would hear him, his plan for a
universal revolution. In every place he found
elements ready for his purpose. He threw his
powder upon the burning coals, and a violent
explosion soon followed. . . . The revolt com-
menced in those regions of the Black Forest, and
tlie sources of the Danube, which were so often
the scene of popular disturbances. On the 19th
of July, 1534, the Thurgovian peasantry rose
against the Abbot of Reichenau, who would not
grant them an evangelical preacher. Thousands
soon gathered around the little town of Tengen,
to liberate an ecclesiastic who was imprisoned
there. The revolt spread, with inconceivable
rapidity, from Suabia to the Rhine countries, to
Franconia, to Thuringia, and to Saxony. In
January, 1525, the whole of these countries were
in insurrection. Towards the end of that month
the peasants published a declaration in twelve
articles, asking the liberty to choose their own
pastors, the abolition of petty tithes, serfdom,
the duties on inheritance, and liberty to hunt,
fish, cut wood, &c., and each demand was sup-
ported by a passage of Scripture." — J. H. Merle
D'Aubigne, The Story of the Reformation, pt. 3,
ch. 8 {Hist, of the Refornuition, bk. 10, ch. 10-11).
— " Had the feudal lords granted proper and fair
reforms long ago, they would never have heard
of these twelve articles. But they had refused
reform, and they now had to meet revolution.
And they knew of but one way of meeting it,
namely, by the sword. The lords of the Swabian
League sent their army of foot and horsemen,
under their captain, George Truchsess. The
poor peasants could not hold out against trained
soldiers and cavalry. Two battles on the Dan-
ube, in which thousands of peasants were slain,
or drowned in the river, and a third equally
bloody one in Algau, near the Boden See, crushed
this rebellion in Swabia, as former rebellions had
so often been crushed before. This was early in
April 1525. But in the meantime the revolution
had spread further north. In the valley of the
Neckar a body of 6,000 peasants had come to-
gether, enraged by the news of the slaughter of
their fellow peasants in the south of Swabia."
They stormed the castle of the young Count von
Helfenstein, who had recently cut the throats of
some peasants who met him on the road, and put
the Count to death, with 60 of his companions.
"A yell of horror was raised through Germany
at the news of the peasants' revenge. No yell
had risen when the Count cut peasants' throats,
or the Swabian lords slew thousands of peasant
rebels. Europe had not yet learned to mete out
the same measure of justice to noble and common
blood. . . . Tlie revolution spread, and the reign
of terror spread with it. North and east of the
valley of the Neckar, among the little towns of
Franconia, and in the valleys of the Maine, other
bands of peasants, mustering by thousands, de-
stroyed alike cloisters and castles. Two hundred
of these lighted the night with their flames during
the few weeks of their temporary triumph. And
here another feature of the revolution became
prominent. The little towns were already . . .
passing through an internal revolution. The
artisans were rising against the wealthier burgh-
ers, overturning the town councils, and electing
committees of artisans in their place, making
sudden changes in religion, putting down the
JIass, unfrocking priests and monks, and in fact,
in the interests of what they thought to be the
gospel, turning all things upside down. ... It
was during the Franconian rebellion that the
peasants chose the robber knight Goetz von Ber-
lichingen as their leader. It did them no good.
More than a robber chief was needed to cope
with soldiers used to war. . . . While all this
was going on in the valleys of the Maine, the
revolution had crossed the Rhine into Elsass and
Lothriugen, and the Palatinate about Spires and
1492
GERMANY, 1524-1525.
League
of Smalkalde.
GERMANY, 1530-1532.
"Worms, and in the month of May had been
crushed in blood, as in Swabia and Franconia.
South and east, in Bavaria, in tlie Tyrol, and in
Carinthia also, castles and monasteries went up
in flames, and then, when the tide of victory
turned, the burning houses and farms of the
peasants lit up the night and their blood flowed
freely. Meanwhile Sliinzer, who had done so
much to stir up the peasantry in the south to
rebel, had gone north into Thuringia, and headed
a revolution in the town of Miilhausen, and be-
came a sort of Savonarola of a madder kind. . . .
But the end was coming. The princes, with
their disciplined troops, came nearer and nearer.
What could Mlinzer do with his 8,000 peasants?
He pointed to a rainbow and expected a miracle,
but no miracle came. The battle, of course, was
lost; 5,000 peasants lay dead upon the field near
the little town of Frankeuhausen, where it was
fought. Mlinzer fled and concealed himself in a
bed, but was found and taken before the princes,
thrust into a dungeon, and afterwards beheaded.
So ended the wild career of this misguided, fa-
natical, self -deceived, but yet, as we must think,
earnest and in many ways heroic spirit. . . .
The princes and nobles now everywhere pre-
vailed over tlie insurgent peasants. Luther,
writing on June 21, 1525, says: — ' It is a certain
fact, that in Franconia 11,000 peasants have been
slain. Markgraf Casimir is cruelly severe upon
his peasants, who have twice broken faith with
him. In the Duchy of Wurtemberg, 6,000 have
been killed; indifferent places in Swabia, 10,000.
It is said that in Alsace the Duke of Lorraine
has slain 20,000. Thus everywhere the wretched
peasants are cut down.' . . . Before the Peasants'
War was ended at least 100,000 perished, or
twenty times as many as were put to death in
Paris during the Reign of Terror in 1793. . . .
Luther, throughout the Peasants' AVar, sided
with tlie ruling powers. . . . The reform he
sought was by means of the civil power; and in
order to clear himself and his cause from all par-
ticipation in the wild doings of the peasantry,
he publicly exhorted the princes to crush their
rebellion." — F. Seebohm, The Era of the Protes-
tant Remhition, pt. 2, ch. 5.
Also ik : L. von Ranke, Hist, of the Mefonna-
tion in Oermany, hk. 3, ch. 6 (n. 2). — P. Bayne,
Martin Luther: His Life and Work, bk. 11 (e. 2).
—J. Kastliu, Life of Luther, pt. 4, ch. 5.— C. W.
C. Oman, Tlie Qerman Peasant War of 1525
(Eng. Hist. Rev., v. 5).
A. D. 1525-1529. — League of Torgau. — The
Diets at Spires. — Legal recognition of the Re-
formed Religion, and the withdrawal of it. —
The Protest vyhich gave rise to the name
"Protestants." See Papacy; A. D. 152.5-1529.
A. D. 1529. — Turkish invasion of Austria. —
Siege of Vienna. See Hungary: A. D. 1526-
1567.
A. D. 1530.— The Diet at Augsburg.— The
signing and reading of the Protestant Con-
fession of Faith. — The condemnatory decree.
— Breach between the Protestants and the em-
peror. See Papacy; A. D. 1.530-1.531.
A. D. 1530-1532. — The Augsburg Decree. —
Alarm of the Protestants. — Their League of
Smalkalde and alliance with the king of
France. — Pacification of Nuremberg with the
emperor. — Expulsion of the Turks from Hun-
gary.— The decree issued by the Diet at Augs-
burg was condemnatory of most of the tenets
peculiar to the protestants, " forbidding any per-
son to protect or tolerate such as taught them,
enjoining a strict observance of the established
rites, and prohibiting any farther innovation,
under severe penalties. All orders of men were
required to assist with their persons and fortunes
in carrying this decree into execution ; and such
as refused to obey it were declared incapable of
acting as judges, or of appearing as parties in
the imperial chamber, the supreme court of judi-
cature in the empire. To all which was sub-
joined a promise, that an application should be
made to the pope, requiring him to call a general
council within six months, in order to terminate
all controversies by its sovereign decisions. The
severity of this decree, which was considered as
a prelude to the most violent persecution, alarmed
the protestants, and convinced them that the em-
peror was resolved on their destruction." Under
these circumstances, the protestant princes met
at Smalkalde, December 22, 1530, and there "con-
cluded a league of mutual defence against all
aggressors, by which they formed the protestant
states of the empire into one regular body, and,
beginning already to consider themselves as such,
they resolved to apply to the kings of France
and England, and to implore them to patronise
and assist their new confederacy. An affair not
connected with religion furnished them with a
pretence for courting the aid of foreign princes. "
This was the election of the emperor's brother,
Ferdinand, to be King of the Romans, against
which they had protested vigorously. "Whea
the protestants, who were assembled a second
time at Smalkalde [February, 1531], received an
account of this transaction, and heard, at the
same time, that prosecutions were commenced in
the imperial chamber against some of their num-
ber, on account of their religious principles, they
thought it necessary, not only to renew their
former confederacy, but immediately to despatch
their ambassadors into France and England."
The king of France "listened with the utmost
eagerness to the complaints of the protestant
princes; and, without seeming to countenance
their religious opinious, determined secretly to
cherish those sparks of political discord which
might be afterwards kindled into a flame. For
this purpose he sent William de Bellay, one of
the ablest negotiators in France, into Germany,
who, visiting the courts of the malecontent
princes, and heightening their ill-humour by
various arts, concluded an alliance between them
and his master, which, though concealed at that
time, and productive of no immediate effects,
laid the foundation of a union fatal on many oc-
casions to Charles's ambitious projects. . . . The
king of England [Henry VIII.], highly incensed
against Charles, in complaisance to whom, the
pope had long retarded, and now openly opposed,
his divorce [from Catharine of Aragon], was no
less disposed than Francis to strengthen a league
which might be rendered so formidable to the
emperor. But his favourite project of the divorce
led him into such a labyrinth of schemes and ne-
gotiations, and he was, at the same time, so in-
tent on abolishing the papal jurisdiction in Eng-
land, that he had no leisure for foreign affairs.
This obliged him to rest satisfied with giving
general promises, together with a small supply in
money, to the confederates of Smalkalde. Mean-
while, many circumstances convinced Charles
that this was not a juncture " in which he could
1493
GERMANY, 1530-1532.
Preparations
for War,
GERMANY, 1533-1546.
rafford to let his zeal for the church push liim to
extremities with the protestants. ' ' Negotiations
were, accordingly, carried on by his direction
with the elector of Saxony and his associates;
after many delays . . . terms of pacification
were agreed upon at Nuremberg [July 23], and
ratified solemnly in the diet at Ratisbon [August
3]. In this treaty it was stipulated : that univer-
sal peace be established in Germany, until the
meeting of a genei'al council, the convocation of
which within six months the emperor shall en-
■deavour to procure ; that no person shall be mo-
lested on account of religion ; that a stop shall be
put to all processes begun by the imperial cham-
ber against protestants, and the sentences already
passed to their detriment shall be declared void.
On their part, the protestants engaged to assist
the emperor with all their forces in resisting the
invasion of the Turks. . . . The protestants of
•Germany, who had hitherto been viewed only as
a religious sect, came henceforth to be considered
as a political body of no small consequence. The
intelligence which Charles received of Solyraan's
having entered Hungary, at the head of 300,000
men, brought the deliberations of the diet at
Ratisbon to a period. . . . The protestants, as a
testimony of their gratitude to the emperor, ex-
•erted themselves with extraordinary zeal, and
brought into the field forces which exceeded in
number the quota imposed on them; and the
■catholics imitating their example, one of the
greatest and best-appointed armies that had ever
been levied in Germany, assembled near Vienna.
. . . It amounted in all to 90,000 disciplined foot,
;and 30,000 horse, besides a prodigious swarm of
irregulars. Of this vast army . . . the emperor
took the command in person ; and mankind
waited in suspense the issue of a decisive battle
between the two greatest monarchs in the world.
But each of them dreading the other's power and
good fortune, they both conducted their oper-
:ations with such excessive caution, that a cam-
paign for which such immense preparations had
been made ended without any memorable event.
:8olyman, finding it impossible to gain ground
\ipon an enemy always attentive and on his
guard, marched back to Constantinople towards
the end of autumn. . . . About the beginning of
this campaign, the elector of Saxony died, and
was succeeded by his son John Frederick. . . .
Immediately after the retreat of the Turks,
■Charles, impatient to revisit Spain, set out, on
his way thither, for Italy." — W. Robertson, Hist.
,of tlie Reign of Charles V., bk. 5.
Also in : L. von Ranke, Hist, of ths lieforma-
■Uon in Oermany, bk. 6, ch. 1-8 (». 3). — H. Steb-
bing. Hist, of the Reformation, ch. 12-13 (». 3).
A. D. 1532-1536.— Fanaticism of the Ana-
baptists of Miinster. — Siege and capture of
the city. See An.vbaptists of Mijnster.
A. D. 1533-1546.— Mercenary aspects of the
Reformation.— Protestant intolerance. — Union
with the Swiss Reformers. — The Catholic
Holy League. — Preparations for war. — " Dur-
ing the next few years [after the peace concluded
at Nuremberg] there was no open hostility be-
tween the two religious parties. . . . But there
was dissension enough. In the first place there
was much disputation as to the meaning of the
articles concluded at Nuremberg. The catholic
princes, under the pretext that, if no man was to
be disturbed for his faith, or for things depend-
ing on faith, he was still amenable for certain
offences against the church, which were purely
of a civil nature, were eager that the imperial
chamber should take cognisance of future cases,
at least, where protestants should seek to invade
the temporalities of the church. . . . But noth-
ing was effected ; the tribunal was too powerless
to enforce its decrees. In 153-1, the protestants,
in a public assembl}', renounced all obedience to
the chamber; yet they did not cease to appropri-
ate to themselves the property of such monas-
teries and churches as, by the conversion of
catholics to their faith — and that faith was con-
tinually progressive — lay within their jurisdic-
tion. We need scarcely observe, that the pros-
pect of spoliation was often the most powerful
inducement with the princes and nobles to change
their religion. When they, or the magistracy of
any particular city, renounced the faitli hitherto
established, the people were expected to follow
the example: the moment Lutheranism was es-
tablished in its place, the ancient faith was abol-
ished; nobody was allowed to profess it; and,
with one common accord, all who had any pros-
pect of benefiting by the change threw themselves
on the domains of the expelled clergy. That the
latter should complain before the only tribunal
where justice could be expected, was natural;
nor can we be surprised that the plunderers
should soon deny, in religious affairs, the juris-
diction of that tribunal. From the departure of
the emperor to the year 1538, some hundreds of
domains were thus seized, and some hundreds of
complaints addressed to him by parties who re-
solved to interpret the articles of Nuremberg in
their own way. The protestants declared, in a
letter to him, that their consciences would not
allow them to tolerate any papist in their states.
. . . By espousing the cause of the exiled duke
of Wittemberg, they procured a powerful ally.
. . . But a greater advantage was the union of
the sacramentarians [the Swiss reformers, who
accepted the doctrine of Zwingli respecting the
purely symbolical significance of the commemo-
ration of the Lord's Supper — see Switzerl.vnd :
A. D. 1538-1531] with the Lutherans. Of such a
result, at the diet of Augsburg, there was not the
least hope ; but Bucer, being deputed by the im-
perial cities to ascertain whether a union might
not be effected, laboured so zealously at the task
that it was effected. He consented to modify
some of his former opinions ; or at least to wrap
them in language so equivocal that they might
mean anything or nothing at the pleasure of the
holder. The Swiss, indeed, especially those of
Zurich, refused to sanction the articles on which
Luther and Bucer had agreed. Still, by the
union of all protestant Germany under the same
lianners, much was gained. ... In the mean-
time, the dissensions between the two great par-
ties augmented from day to day. To pacify
them, Charles sent fruitless embassies. Roused
by the apparent danger, in 1538, the catholic
princes formed, at Nuremberg, a counter league
to that of Smalcald [calling it the Holy League].
. . . The death of Luther's old enemy, George,
duke of Saxony [1539], transferred the dominion
of that prince's states into the hands of [his
brother Henry] a Lutheran. Henry, duke of
Brunswick, was now the only great secular prince
in the north of Germany who adhered to the
Roman catholic faith. ... A truce was con-
cluded at Frankfort, in 1539; but it could not
remove the existing animosity, which was daily
1494
GERMANY, 1533-1546.
Beginning of
War.
GERMANY, 1546-1553.
augmented. Both parties were in tlie wrong.
... At the close of 1540, Woi-ms was the scene
of a conference very different from that where, 20
years before, Luther had been proscribed. There
was an interminable theological disputation. . . .
As little good resulted, Charles, who was hasten-
ing from the Low Countries to his German do-
minions, evoked the affair before a diet at Ratis-
bon, in April, 1541. . . . The diet of Ratisbon
was well attended ; and never did prince exert
himself more zealously than Charles to make
peace between his angry subjects. But ... all
that could be obtained was, that things should
be suffered to remain in their present state until
a future diet or a general council. The reduc-
tion of Buda, however, by the Turks, rendered
king Ferdinand, his brother, and the whole of
Germany, eager for an immediate settlement of
the dispute. . . . Hence the diet of Spires in
1542. If, in regard to religion, nothing definitive
was arranged, except the selection of Trent as
the place most suitable for a general council, one
good end was secured — supplies for the war
with the Turks. The campaign, however, which
passed without an action, was inglorious to the
Germans, who appear to have been in a lamen-
table state of discipline. Nor was the public
satisfaction much increased by the disputes of
the Smalcald league with Henry of Brunswick.
The duke was angry with his subjects of Bruns-
wick and Breslau, who adhered to the protestant
league; and though he had reason enough to be
dissatisfied with both, nothing could be more
vexatious than his conduct towards them. In
revenge, the league of Smalcald sent 19,000 men
into the field, — a formidable display of protes-
tant power ! — and Henry was expelled from his
hereditary states, which were seized by the vic-
tors. He invoked the aid of the imperial cham-
ber, which cited the chiefs of the league ; but as,
in 1538, the competency of that tribunal had
been denied in religious, so now it was denied in
civil matters. . . . The following years exhibit
on both sides the same jealousy, the same du-
plicity, often the same violence where the mask
was no longer required, with as many ineffectual
attempts to procure a union between them. . . .
The progress of events continued to favour the
reformers. They had already two votes in the
electoral college, — those of Saxony and Branden-
burg ; they were now to have the preponderance ;
for the elector palatine and Herman archbishop
of Cologne abjured their religion, thus placing
at the command of the reformed party four votes
against three. But this numerical superiority
did not long remain. . . . The pope excommuni-
cated the archbishop, deposed him from his dig-
nity, and ordered the chapter to proceed to a
new election ; and when Herman refused to obey,
Charles sent troops to expel him, and to instal
the archbishop elect, Count Adolf of Nassau.
Herman retired to his patrimonial estates, where
he died in the profession of the reformed religion.
These events mortified the members of the Smal-
cald league ; but they were soon partially con-
soled by the capture of Henry duke of Bruns-
wick [i546], who had the temerity to collect
troops and invade his patrimonial dominions.
Their success gave umbrage to the emperor. . . .
He knew that the confederates had already 30,000
men under arms, and that they were actively,
however secretly, augmenting their forces. His
first care was to cause troops to be as secretly
collected in his hereditary states ; his second, to
seduce, if possible, some leaders of the protes-
tants. With Maurice duke of Saxony he was
soon successful ; and eventually with the two
margraves of Brandenburg, who agreed to make
preparations for a campaign and join him at the
proper moment. . . . His convocation of the diet
at Katisbon [1546], which after a vain parade
ended in nothing, was only to hide his real de-
signs. As he began to throw off the mask, the
reformed theologians precipitately withdrew;
and both parties took the field, but not until they
had each published a manifesto to justify this
extreme proceeding. In each there was much
truth, and more falsehood." — S. A. Dunham,
Hist, of the Germanic Empire, bk. 3, ch. 3 (?'. 3).
A. D. 1542-1544. — War with Francis I. of
France. — Battle of Cerisoles. — Treaty of
Crespy. See France: A. D. 1532-1547.
A. D. 1542-1563. — The beginning of the Ro-
man Catholic reaction. — The Council of Trent.
See Papacy: A. D. 1537-1563.
A. D. 1546-1552. — War of Charles against
the Protestants. — The treachery of Maurice of
Saxony. — The battle of Muhlberg. — The em-
peror's proposed "Interim" and its failure. —
His reverse of fortune. — Protestantism trium-
phant. — The Treaty of Passau. — "Luther's
death [which occurred in 1546] made no change
in the resolution which Charles had at last taken
to crush the Reformation in his German dominions
by force of arms ; on the contrary, he was more
than ever stimulated to carry out his purpose by
two occurrences: the adoption of the new re-
ligion by one who was not only an Elector of the
Empire, but one of the chief prelates of the^
Church, the Prince-Archbishop of Cologne. . . .
The other event that influenced him was the re-
fusal of the Protestants to accept as binding the
decrees of the Council of Trent, which was com-
posed of scarcely any members but a few Italian
and Spanish prelates, and from which they ap-
pealed to either a free general Council or a na-
tional Council of the Empire; offering, at the
same time, if Charles should prefer it, to submit
the whole question of religion to a joint Commis-
sion, composed of divines of each party. These
remonstrances, however, the Emperor treated
with contempt. He had been for some time se-
cretly raising troops in different quarters ; and,
early in 1546, he made a fresh treaty with the
Pope, by which he bound himself instantly to
commence warlike operations, and which, though
it had been negotiated as a secret treaty, Paul
instantly published, to prevent any retraction or
delay on his part. War therefore now began,
though Charles professed to enter upon it, not
for the purpose of enforcinga particular religious
belief on the recusants, but for that of re-estab-
lishing the Imijerial authority, which, as he af-
firmed, many of the confederate princes had
disowned. Such a pretext he expected to sow
disunion in the body, some members of which
were far from desirous to weaken the great con-
federacy of the Empire : and, in effect, it did pro-
duce a hesitation in their early steps that had the
most important consequences on the first cam-
paign; for, in spite of the length of time during
which he had secretly been preparing for war,
when it came they were more ready than he.
They at once took the field with an army of
90,000 men and 130 guns, while he, for the first few
weeks after the declaration of war, had hardly
1495
GERMANY, 1546-1553.
Protestantism
do wnf alien.
GERMANY, 1546-1552.
10,000 men with him in Ratisbon. . . . But the
advantage of a single over a divided command
was perhaps never more clearly e.xeraplified than
in the first operations of the two armies. He,
as the weaker party, took up a defensive posi-
tion near Ingolstadt ; but, though they advanced
within sight of bis lines, they could not agree on
the mode of attack, or even on the prudence of
attacking him at all. ... At last, the confeder-
ates actually drew off, and Charles, advancing,
made himself master of many important towns,
which their irresolution alone had enabled him to
approach. " Meanwhile the Emperor had won an
important ally. This was Duke Maurice, of the
Albertine line of the House of Saxony (see Sax-
ony: A. D. 1180-1553), to whom several oppor-
tune deaths had given the ducal seat unexpect-
edly, in 1541, and whose ambition now hungered
for the Electorate, which was held by the other
(the Ernestine) branch of the family. He con-
ceived the idea of profiting by the troubles of the
time to win possession of it. "With this view,
though he also was a Protestant, he tendered his
services to the Emperor, who, in spite of his
youth, discerned in him a promise of very su-
perior capacity, gladly accepted his aid, and
promised to reward him with the territories which
he coveted. The advantages which Protestant-
ism eventually derived from Maurice's success
has blinded some historians to the infamy of the
conduct by which he achieved it. . . . The Elec-
tor [John Frederick] was his [second] cousin ;
the Landgrave of Hesse was his father-in-law.
Pleading an unwillingness while so young (he
was barely 21) to engage in the war, he volun-
teered to undertake the protection of his cousin's
dominions during his absence in the field. His
offer was thankfully accepted; but he was no
sooner installed in his charge than he began to
negotiate with the enemy to invade the territories
which he had bound himself to protect. And on
receiving from Charles a copy of a decree, called
the Ban of the Empire, which had just been issued
against both the Elector and the Landgrave, he
at once raised a force of his own, with which he
overran one portion of [the Elector's] dominions,
while a division of the Imperial army attacked
the rest ; and he would probably have succeeded
at once in subduing the whole Electorate, had the
main body of the Protestants been able to maintain
the war on the Danube. " But Charles's successes
there brought about a suspension of hostilities
which enabled the Elector to return and "chastise
Maurice for his treachery ; to drive him not only
from the towns and districts which he had seized,
but to strip him also of the greater part of the
territory which belonged to him by inheritance. "
Charles was unable, at first, to give any assis-
tance to his ally. The Elector, however, who
was the worst of generals, so scattered his forces
that when, "on the 23d of April [1547], Charles
reached the Elbe and prepared to attack him, he
had no advantage over his assailant but that of
position. That indeed was very strong. He lay
at Muhlberg, on the right bank of the river,
which at that point is 300 yards wide and more
than four feet deep, with a stream so rapid as to
render the passage, even for horsemen, a task of
great difficulty and danger." Against the re-
monstrances of his ablest general, the Duke of
Alva, Cliarles, favored by a heavy fog, led his
army across the river and boldly attacked. The
Elector attempted to retreat, but his retreat be-
came a rout. Many fell, but many more were
taken prisoners, including the Elector and the
Landgrave of Hesse. The victory was decisive
for the time, and Charles used it without modera-
tion or generosity. He declared a forfeiture of the
whole Electorate of Saxony by John Frederick,
and conferred it upon the treacherous Maurice ;
and, ' ' though Maurice was son-in-law of the Land-
grave of Hesse, he stripped that prince of his terri-
tories, and, by a device scarcely removed from the
tricks of a kidnapper, threw him also into prison."
Charles seemed now to be completely master of
the situation in Germany, and there was little op-
position to his will in a diet which he convened
at Augsburg. — C. D. Yonge, Three Centuries of
Modern History, ch. 4. — "He opened the Diet of
Augsburg (September 1, 1547), in the hope of
finally bringing about the union so long desired
and so frequently attempted, but which he de-
spaired of effecting through a council which the
Protestants had rejected in advance. ... By
the famous 'Interim' of Augsburg — the joint
production of Julius von Pflug, Bishop of Naum-
berg; Michael Helding, coadjutor of Mentz; and
the wily and subtle John Agricola, preacher to
the Elector of Brandenburg — Protestants were
permitted to receive the Holy Eucharist under
both kinds ; the Protestant clergy already married
to retain their wives ; and a tacit approval given
to the retention of property already taken from
the Church. This instrument was, from begin-
ning to end, a masterpiece of duplicity, and as
such satisfied no party. The Catholics of Ger-
many, the Protestants, and the Court of Rome,
each took exception to it. . . . Maurice, the new
Elector of Saxony, unwilling to give the Interim
an unconditional approval, consulted with a num-
ber of Protestant theologians, headed by Mclanc-
thon, as to how far he might accept its provisions
with a safe conscience. In reply they drew up
what is known as tlie Leipsig Interim (1548), in
which they stated that questions of ritual and
ceremony, and others of minor importance, which
they designated by the generic word adiaphora,
might be wholly overlooked ; and even in points
of a strictly doctrinal character, they expressed
themselves favourable to concession and compro-
mise. . . . Such Lutheran preachers as professed
to be faithful followers of their master, made a
determined opposition to the ' Interim, 'and began
a vigorous assault upon its adiaphoristic clauses.
The Anti-adiaphorists, as they were called, were
headed by Flacius Illyricus, who being an ardent
disciple of Luther's, and possessing somewhat of
his courage and energy, repaired to Magdeburg,
whose bold citizens were as defiant of imperial
power as they were contemptuous of papal au-
thority. But in spite of this spirited opposition,
the Interim was gradually accepted by several
Protestant countries and cities — a fact which en-
couraged the emperor at the Diet of Augsburg, in
1550, to make a final effort to have the Protestants
attend the sessions of the Council of Trent, again
openedby Pope Julius III. . . . After a short de-
lay, deputies from Brandenburg, Wilrtemberg,
and Saxony began to appear at Trent; and even
the Wittenberg theologians, headed by Melanc-
thon, were already on their way to the Council,
when Maurice of Saxony, having secured all the
advantages he hoped to obtain by an alliance with
the Catholic party, and regardless of the obliga-
tions by which he was bound, proceeded to betray
both the emperor and his country. Having
1496
GERMANY. 1546-1552.
Protestantism
recovered.
GERMANY, 1553-1561.
received a coramissioii to carry into effect the
ban of the empire passed upon Magdeburg, he
was in a position to assemble a large body of
troops in Germany without exciting suspicion,
or revealing his ulterior purposes. Besides unit-
ing to himself, as confederates in his plot, John
Albert, Duke of Mecklenburg; Albert, Margrave
of Brandenburg; and William, Landgrave of
Hesse, eldest son of Philip of Hesse, he entered
into a secret treaty (Oct. 5, 1551) with Henry 11.,
King of France, who, as was pretended, coming
into Germany as the saviour of the country,
seized the cities of Metz, Toul, and Verdun.
Maurice also held out to Henry the prospect of
securing the imperial crown. Everything be-
ing iu readiness for action, Maurice advancing
through Thuriugia, seized the city of Augsburg,
and suddenly made bis appearance before Inns-
pruck, whence the emperor, who lay sick of a
severe attack of the gout, was hastily conveyed
on a litter, through the passes of the mountains,
to Villach, in Carinthia. "While Maurice was thus
making himself master of Inuspruck, the King
of the French was carrying out his part of the
programme by actively prosecuting the war in
Lorraine. Charles V. , now destitute of the ma-
terial resources necessary to carry on a success-
ful campaign against the combined armies of the
French king and the German princes, and de-
spairing of putting an end to the obstinate con-
flict by his personal endeavours, resolved to
re-establish, if possible, his waning power by
peaceful negotiations. To this end, he commis-
sioned his brother Ferdinand to conclude the
Treaty of Passau (Julj' 30, 1553), which provided
that Philip of Hesse should be set at liberty, and
gave pledges for the speedy settlement of all re-
ligious and political differences by a Diet, to be
summoned at an early day. It further provided
that neither the emperor nor the Protestant
princes should put any restraint upon freedom of
conscience, and that all questions arising in the
interval between the two parties should be re-
ferred for settlement to an Imperial Commis-
sion, composed of an equal number of Catholics
and Protestants. In consequence of the war then
being carried on by the empire against France
for the recovery of the three bishoprics of Lor-
raine of which the French had taken possession,
the Diet did not convene until February 5, 1555."
— J. Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History,
«. 3, pp. 376-379.
Also in: W. Robertson, Hist, of the Beign of
Cliarles V., hk. 8-10 (u. 3-3).— L. von Ranke,
Civil Wars and Monarchy in France, ch. 6. —
E. E. Crowe, Cardinal Grranvelle and Maurice
of Saxony (Eminent Foreign Statesmen, v. 1).
— L. Hausser, T7te Period of tJie Reformation, ch.
15-17. — G. P. Fisher, Hist, of the Reformation,
eh. 5. — F. Kohlrausch, Hist, of Germany, ch.
20.
A. D. 1547. — Pragmatic Sanction of Charles
v., changing the relations of the Netherland
provinces to the Empire. See Netherlands:
A. D. 15i7.
A. D. 1552-1561. — Battle of Sievershausen
and death of Maurice. — The Religious Peace
of Augsburg. — Abdication of Charles V. — Suc-
cession of Ferdinand I. — The halting of the
Reformation and the rally of Catholic resis-
tance. — By the treaty of Passau, Maurice of
Saxony bound himself to defend the empire
against the French and the Turks. " He accord-
ingly took the field against the latter, but with
little success, the imperial commander, Castaldo,
contravening all his efforts by plundering Hun-
gary and drawing upon himself the hatred of the
people. Charles, meanwhile, marched against
the French, and, without hesitation, again de-
posed the corporative governments reinstated by
Maurice, on his way through Augsburg, Ulni,
Esslingen, etc. Metz, valiantly defended by the
Duke de Guise, was vainly besieged for some
months, and the Emperor was at length forced to
retreat. The French were, nevertheless, driven
out of Italy. The aged emperor now sighed for
peace. Ferdinand, averse to open warfare, placed
his hopes on the imperceptible effect of a con-
sistently pursued system of suppression and
Jesuitical obscurantism. Maurice was answer-
able for the continuance of the peace, the terms
of which he had prescribed. . . . Albert the
"Wild [of Brandenburg] was the only one among
the princes who was still desirous of war. In-
different to aught else, he marched at the head of
some thousand followers through central Ger-
many, murdering and plundering as he passed
along, with tJie intent of once more laying the
Franconian and Saxon bishoprics waste in the
name of the gospel. The princes at length
formed the Heidelberg confederacy against this
monster and the emperor put him under the bann
of the empire, which Maurice undertook to exe-
cute, although he had been his old friend and
companion in arms. Albert was engaged in
plundering the archbishopric of Magdeburg,
when Maurice came up with him at Sievershaus-
en. A murderous engagement took place (A. D.
1553). Three of the princes of Brunswick were
slain. Albert was severely wounded, and Mau-
rice fell at the moment when victory declared in
his favour, in the 33d year of his age, in the
midst of his promising career. . . . Every ob-
stacle was now removed, and a peace, known as
the religious peace of Augsburg, was concluded
by the diet held in that city, A. D. 1555. This
peace was naturally a mere political agreement
provisionally entered into by the princes for
the benefit, not of religion, but of themselves.
Popular opinion was dumb, knights, burgesses,
and peasants bending in lowly submission to the
mandate of their sovereigns. By this treaty,
branded in history as the most lawless ever con-
certed in Germany, the principle 'cujus regio,
ejus religio,' the faith of the prince must be that
of the people, was laid down. By it not only all
the Reformed subjects of a Catholic prince were
exposed to the utmost cruelty and tyrannj% but
the religion of each separate country was rendered
dependent on the cajjrice of the reigning prince;
of this the Pfalz offered a sad example, the re-
ligion of the people being thus four times arbi-
trarily changed. . . . Freedom of belief, con-
fined to the immediate subjects of the empire,
for instance, to the reigning princes, the free
nobility, and the city councillors, was monopo-
lized by at most 30,000 privileged persons. . . .
The false peace concluded at Augsburg was im-
mediately followed by Charles V. 's abdication of
his numerous cro%vns [see Netherlands: A. D.
1555]. He would willingly have resigned that
of the empire to his son Philip, had not the
Spanish education of that prince, his gloomy and
bigoted character, inspired the Germans with an
aversion as unconquerable as that with which he
beheld them. Ferdinand had, moreover, gained
1497
GERMANY, 1552-1561.
Degeneracy of
the Reformation.
GERMANY, 1556-1609.
the favour of the German princes. Charles,
nevertheless, influenced by affection towards his
son, bestowed upon him one of the finest of the
German provinces, the Netherlands, besides Spain,
Milan, Naples, and the West Indies (America).
Ferdinand received the rest of the German
hereditary possessions of his house, besides Bo-
hemia and Hungary. . . . Ferdinand I., opposed
in his hereditary provinces by a predominating
Protestant party, which he was compelled to tol-
erate, was politically overbalanced by his nephew,
Philip II., in Spain and Italy, where Catholicism
flourished. The preponderance of the Spanish
over the Austrian branch of the house of Habs-
burg exercised the most pernicious influence on
the whole of Germany, by securing to the Catho-
lics a support which rendered reconciliation im-
possible. . . . The religious disputes and petty
egotism of the several estates of the empire had
utterly stifled every sentiment of patriotism, and
not a dissentient voice was raised against the
will of Charles V., which bestowed the whole of
the Netherlands, one of the finest of the prov-
inces of Germany, upon Spain, the division and
consequent weakening of the powerful house of
Habsburg being regarded by the princes with
delight. At the same time that the power of the
Protestant party was shaken by the peace of
Augsburg, Cardinal Carafifa mounted the pontif-
ical throne as Paul IV., the first pope who, fol-
lowing the plan of the Jesuits, abandoned the
system of defence for that of attack. The Ref-
ormation no sooner ceased to progress, than a
preventive movement began [see Papacy: A. D.
1537-1563]. . . . Ferdinand I. was in a difficult
position. Paul IV. refused to acknowledge him
on accoimt of the peace concluded between him
and the Protestants, whom he was unable to op-
pose, and whose tenets he refused to embrace, not-
withstanding the expressed wish of the majority
of his subjects. Like his brother, he intrigued
and diplomatized until his Jesuitical confessor,
Bobadilla, and the new pope, Pius IV., again
placed him on good terms with Rome, A. D.
1559. . . . Augustus, elector of Saxony, the
brother of Maurice, alarmed at the fresh alliance
between the emperor and pope, convoked a
meeting of the Protestant leaders at Naumberg.
His fears were, however, allayed by the peaceful
proposals of the emperor (A. D. 1561). ... A
last attempt to save the unity of the German
church, in the event of its separation from that
of Rome, was made by Ferdinand, who convoked
the spiritual electoral princes, the archbishops
and bishops, for that purpose to Vienna, but the
consideration with which he was compelled to
treat the pope rendered his efforts weak and in-
effectual. . . . The Protestants, blind to the unity
and strength resulting from the policy of the
Catholics, weakened themselves more and more
by division." — W. Menzel, Hist, of Germany
sect. 197-198 (e. 2).
A. D. 1556-1558. — Abdication of the em-
peror, Charles V., and election of his brother,
Ferdinand. See Netherlands: A. D. 15.55.
A. D. 1556-1609.— The degeneracy of the
Reformation. — Internal hostilities of Protes-
tantism. — Tolerant reigns of Ferdinand I. and
Maximilian II. — Renewed persecution under
Rudolf II. — The risings against hira. — His
cessions and abdications. — " Germany was ex-
ternally at peace. When the peace was broken
in Protestant states, the Protestants themselves.
that is, a part of their divines, were the cause of
the disturbance. These were ' frantic ' Luther-
ans. The theologian Flacius, at Jena, openly
attacked Melancthon as a ' traitor to the church,'
on account of his strivings for peace. The re-
ligious controversies in the bosom of the adher-
ents of the Augsburg Confession had been since
Luther's death inflamed to madness by a strict
Lutheran party, by slaves of the letter, who
raged not only against the Zwinglian and Cal-
vinistic reformations, but against Melancthon
and those who sympathized with him. The
theological pugilists disgraced Protestantism,
and aroused such a spirit of persecution that
Melancthon died on the 19th of April, 1560,
' weary and full of anxiety of soul about the
future of the Reformation and the German na-
tion. ' His followers, ' Lutheran ' preachers and
professors, were persecuted, banished, impris-
oned, on account of suspicion of being inclined
to the ' Reformed ' [Calvinistic] as distinguished
from ' Evangelical ' views ; prayers for the ' ex-
tirpation of heresy ' were offered in the churches
of Saxony, and a medal struck ' to commemorate
the victory of Christ over the Devil and Reason,'
that is, over Melancthon and his moderate party.
. . . Each parson and professor held himself to
be a divinely inspired watchman of Zion, who
had to watch over purity of doctrine. . . . The
universal prevalence of ' trials for witchcraft ' in
Protestant districts, with their chambers of tor-
ture and burnings at the stake, marked the new
priestcraft of Lutheran Protestantism in its de-
Ijasement into a dogmatizing church. This
quickly degenerating Protestant Church com-
prised a mass of separate churches, because the
vanity and selfishness of the court clergy at every
court, and the professors of every university,
would have a church of their own. . . . Every
misfortune to the ' Reformed ' churches caused a
malevolent joy in the Lutheran camp, and every
common measure against the common enemy
was rejected by the Lutheran clergy from hatred
to the ' Reformed. ' . . . The emperor Ferdinand
I. had long been convinced that some change was
required in the Church of Rome. As he wrote
to his ambassador in Trent, ' If a reform of the
Church did not proceed from the Church herself,
he would undertake the charge of it in Germany.'
He never ceased to ofi'er his mediation between
the two religious parties. He thought, and
thought justly, that a compromise was possible
in Germany. . . . The change which gradually
took place in the head and heart of Ferdinand
had not extended to those who sat in St. Peter's
chair. Ferdinand I., to improve the moral state
of the old Church, insisted most strongly on the
abolition of the celibacy of the clergy ; this the
Pope declared the most indispensable prop of
the Papacy. As thus his proposals came to
naught, he attempted to introduce the proposed
reformation into his hereditary domains; but
just as he was beginning to be the Reformer of
these provinces, death removed him from the
world, on the 35th of July, 1564. . . . His oldest
son and successor, JIaximilian II. , . . . was out
and out German. Growing up in the great
movement of the time, the Emperor Maximilian
II. was warmly devoted to the new ideas. He
hated the Jesuits and the Papacy. ... He re-
mained in the middle between Protestants and
Catholics, but really above both. ... He fa-
vored the Reformation in his Austrian dominions;
1498
GERMANY, 1536-1609.
The Union
and the League,
GERMANY, 1608-1618.
at the very time when Philip II. of Spain, the
son of Charles V., had commenced the bloodiest
persecution against the Reformed Church in the
Netherlands ... ; at the very time when the
French court, ruled and led by Jesuits, put into
execution the long-prepared conspiracy of St.
Bartholomew. . . . He never ceased to call the
kings of France and Spain to gentleness and
toleration. . . . ' I have no power, ' said the em-
peror, 'over consciences, and may constrain no
nian's faith.' The princes unanimously elected
the son of Maximilian as King of the Romans,
and Max received another gratification: he was
elected king by the gallant nation of the Poles.
Thus the house of Austria was again powerfully
strengthened. Hungary, Poland, Bohemia, and
Germany, united under one ruler, formed a power
which could meet Turkey and Russia. The
Turks and the Russians were pressing forward.
The Turkish wars, more than anything else,
prevented Max from carrying out his long-cher-
ished plan and giving a constitution to the em-
pire and church of the Germans. He who tow-
ered high above the Papal party and the miserable
controversies of Protestant divines, and whose
clear mind saw what the times required, would
have had every qualification for such a task.
But in the midst of his great projects, Maximilian
11. died, in his 49th year, on the 13th of October,
1576; as emperor, honest, mild and wise, and
elevated above all religious controversies to a
degree that no prince has ever reached. He had
always been a rock of offence to the Catholic
party. . . . But Rudolf [son of Maximilian II.],
when he became emperor [1576], surrounded by
secret Jesuits who had been his teachers and ad-
visers, became the humblest slave of the order
and let it do what it would. Rudolf had been
sent by his father for the interests of his own
house to the Spanish court; a terrible punish-
ment now followed this self-seeking. Rudolf
confirmed liberty of conscience only to the nobles,
not to the citizens or peasants. He forbade the
two latter classes to visit the Evangelical churches,
he closed their schools, ordered them to frequent
Catholic churches, threatened disobedience with
banishment, and even in the case of nobles he
dismissed from his court charges all who were
not strict papists. The people of Vienna and
Austria liated him for these orders. . . . With-
out any judicial investigation he threatened free
cities with ' execution.' Aix la Chapelle expelled
his troops. Gebhard, the elector of Cologne,
married a Countess von Mansfeld and went over
to Protestantism. . . . The Protestants supported
him badly ; Lutherans and Calvinists were at
bitter feud with each other [see Papacy : A. D.
1570-1.597]. ... It was a croaking of ravens,
and a great field of the dead was not far off.
. . . The Emperor Rudolf, ... on a return
journey from Rome, vowed to Our Lady of
Loretto, 'his Generalissima,' to extirpate heretics
at the risk of his life. In his hereditary estates
he ordered all who were not papists to leave the
territory. Soon afterwards lie pulled down the
Evangelical churches, and dispersed the citizens
by arms. He intended soon to begin the same
proceedings in Hungary and Bohemia; but in
Hungary the nation rose in defence of its liberty
and faith. The receipt of the intelligence that
the Hungarian malcontents were progressing
victoriously produced — what there had been
symptoms of before — insanity. Tlie members
of the house of Austria assembled, and declared
' The Emperor Rudolf can be no longer head of
the house, because unfortunately it is too plain
that his Roman Imperial Majesty . . . was not
competent or fit to govern the kingdoms.' The
Archduke Matthias [eldest brother of Rudolf]
was elected head of the Austrian house [1606].
He collected an army of 20,000 men, and made
known that he would depose the emperor from
the government of his hereditary domains. Ru-
dolf's Jesuitical flatterers had named him the ' Bo-
hemian Solomon.' He now, in terror, without
drawing sword, ceded Hungary and Austria to
Matthias, and gave him also the government of
Moravia. Matthias guaranteed religious liberty
to the Austrians. Rudolf did the same to the
Bohemians and Silesians by the ' Letters of Ma-
jesty.' Rudolf, to escape deposition by Mat-
thias, abdicated the throne of Bohemia." — W.
Zimmerman, Popular Hist, of Oermany, bk. 5, ch.
2 (i\ 4).
Also in: F. Kohlrausch, Hist, of Oermany,
eh. 21.
A. D. 1608-1618. — The Evangelical Union
and the Catholic League. — The Jiilich-Cleve
contest. — Troubles in Bohemia. — The begin-
ning of the Thirty Years War. — "Many Prot-
estants were alarmed by the attempts Rudolf
had made to put them down, and especially by
his allowing the Duke of Bavaria to seize the-
free city of DonauwOrth, formerly a Bavarian
town, and make it Catholic. In 1608 a number
of Protestants joined together and formed, for
ten years, a league called The Union. Its forma-
tion was due chiefly to the exertions of Prince
Christian of Anhalt, who had busily intrigued
with Henry IV. of France ; but its head was the
Elector Palatine. As the latter belonged to the
Reformed Church, the Lutherans for the most
part treated the Union coldly ; and the Elector of
Saxony would have nothing to do with it. It
soon had an opportunity of acting. Duke Wil-
liam of Julich, who held Jillich, Cleve, and other
lands, died in 1609. John Sigmund, Elector of
Brandenburg, and the Palsgrave of Neuberg,
both members of the Union, claimed to be his
heirs, and took possession of his lands. The
Emperor Rudolf sent his brother, the Archduke
Leopold, Bishop of Passau, to drive out these
princes. The LTnion thereupon formed an alli-
ance with Henry IV. of France [see France:
A. D. 1599-1610], and, coming to the aid of its
members, scattered the forces of the Archduke
in 1610. The Catholics now took fright, and
hastened to form a League which should hold
the Union in check. It was formed for nine
years, and the supreme command was given to-
Maximilian, Duke of Bavaria. The death of
Henry IV. took away from the Union its chief
source of strength, so that it shrank from a gen-
eral war. The two princes, however, who had
given rise to the quarrel, kept for a time the
Jiilich-Cleve territory. In 1611 [1618] the power
of the Elector of Brandenburg was further in-
creased by his succeeding to the Duchy of Prus-
sia. From this time East Prussia was always
joined to Brandenburg. It was now, therefore,
that the house of Brandenburg laid the founda-
tions of its future greatness [see Prussia].
Matthias, in order to pacify the Austrian
States, granted them full religious liberty. In
1609 the Bohemian States also obtained from
Rudolf a Royal Charter, called ' The Letter of
1499
GERMANY, 1608-1618.
Beginning of the
Thirty Years War.
GERMANY, 1618-1620.
Majesty,' conceding to nobility, knights and
towns perfect freedom in religious matters, and
the right to build Protestant churches and schools
on their own and on the royal lauds. Bohemia
showed no gratitude for this favour. Suspecting
his designs, the Bohemians even shut Rudolf up
in his castle at Prague in 1611, and asked Mat-
thias to come to their aid. He did so, and seized
the supreme power. Next j'ear Rudolf died.
Matthias was crowned at Frankfurt with great
pomp, but he was no better fitted for the throne
than his brother. He was compelled to yield
much to the Protestants, yet favoured tlie Jesuits
in their continued efforts to convert Germany.
His government was so feeble that his brothers
at length made him accept Ferdinand, Duke of
Styria, as his coadjutor. In 1617 Ferdinand was
elected as Rudolf 's successor to the crowns of
Bohemia and Hungary, and from this time all
real power in the Habsburg possessions was
wielded by him. Ferdinand was a young man.
but had already given proof of great energy of
character. . . . The Protestants looked forward
with dread to his reign if he should receive the
Imperial crown. Styria had become almost
wholl}' Lutheran. When Ferdinand succeeded
his father, he had driven out the Protestant
families, and made the land altogether Catholic.
No Catholic i^riuce had ever shown himself more
reckless as to the means by which he served his
church. The Protestants, therefore, had good
reason to fear that if he became Emperor he
would renew the policy of Charles V., and try
to bring back the old state of things, in which
there was but one Church as there was but one
Empire. Events proved that these fears were
well founded. The last da3's of Matthias were
verj' troubled. Two Protestant churches were
built in Bohemia, one in the territory of the
Archbishop of Prague, the other in that of the
Abbot of Braunau. These princes, with per-
mission of the Emperor, pulled down one of the
churches and shut up the other. The Protestants
complained ; but their appeal was met by the re-
ply that the Letter of Majesty did not permit
them to build churches on the lands of ecclesias-
tics. This answer excited great indignation in
Bohemia ; and a rumour was got up that it had not
come from the Emperor, but had been written in
Prague. On May 23, 1618, a number of Protes-
tants, headed by Count Thurn, marched to the
Council Hall of the Royal Castle, and demanded
to be told the real facts. When the councillors
hesitated, two of them, with the private secre-
tary, were seized and thrown out of the window
[see Bohemia: A. D. 1611-1618]. The Protes-
tants then took possession of the Royal Castle,
drove the Jesuits out of Bohemia, and appointed
a council of thirty nobles to carry on the govern-
ment. " These events formed the beginning of
the "Thirty Years War."— J. Sime, Hist, of
Oermany. ch. 14.— "The Thirty Years' War was
the last struggle which marked the progress of
the Reformation. This war, whose direction and
object were equally undetermined, may be divi-
ded into four distinct portions, in which the
Elector Palatine, Denmark, Sweden, and France
played in succession the principal part. It be-
came more and more complicated, until it spread
over the whole of Europe. It was prolonged in-
definitely by various causes. I. The intimate
union between the two branches of the house of
Austria and of the Catholic party — their oppo-
nents, on the other hand, were not homogeneous.
II. The inaction of England, the tardy interven-
tion of France, the poverty of Denmark and
Sweden, &c. The armies which took part in
the Thirty Years' War were no longer feudal
militias, they were permanent armies. . . . They
lived at the expense of the countries which they
laid waste." — J. Michelet, Summary of Modern
Hint., ch. 12.
Also in : A. Gindely, Hist, of the Thirty Years'
War. ch. 1-3 {v. 1).— T. Carlyle, Hist, of Fred-
erick the Great, bk. 3, eh. 14 (r. 1).
A. D. i6i2.— Election of the Emperor Mat-
thias.
A. D. 1615. — The first newspaper. See
Printing and Press: A. D. 1612-1650.
A. D. 1618-1620.— The Thirty Years War:
Hostilities in Bohemia precipitated by Ferdi-
nand. — His election to the imperial throne and
his deposition in Bohemia. — Acceptance of
the Bohemian crown by Frederick, the Pala-
tine Elector. — His unsupported situation. —
The Treaty of Ulm. — " The emperor was not a
little disconcerted when he received the news of
what was passing [in Bohemia]. For whence
could he receive the aid necessary to put down
these revolutionary acts and restore order in Bo-
hemia ? Discontent, indeed, was scarcely less
formidably expressed even in his Austrian terri-
tories, whilst in Hungary its demonstration was
equally as serious. Conciliation appeared to be
the only means of preserving to the house of
Austria that important countrj-, and even the
confessor and usual counsellor of the emperor.
Cardinal Klesel, the most zealous opponent of
the Protestants, advised that course. But such
considerations were most strenuously opposed
by young Ferdinand. .. . At his instigation, and
that of tlie other archdukes, backed by the pope,
the pacific Cardinal Klesel was unexpectedly
arrested, and charged with a variety of crimes.
The intention was to remove him from the pres-
ence of the old and weak emperor, who was now
without support, and obliged to resign all to the
archdukes. From this moment the impotency
of the emperor was complete, and all hopes of
an amicable pacification of Bohemia lost. The
Bohemians, likewise, took to arms, and possessed
themselves of every city in their country as far as
Budweis and Pilsen, which were still occupied
by the imperial troops. They obtained assistance,
quite unlooked for, in the person of one who may
be regarded as one of the most remarkable heroes
of that day. . . . Count Ernest of Mansfield, a
warrior from his youth, was of a bold and enter-
prising spirit ; he had already encountered many
dangers, and had just been raising some troops
for the Duke of Savoy against the Spaniards.
The duke, who now no longer required them,
gave him permission to serve in the cause of the
Evangelical L'nion in Germany; and by that
body he was despatched with 3,000 men to
Bohemia, as having apparently received his ap-
pointment from that countrj-. He appeared
there quite unexpectedly, and immediately took
from the imperial army the important city of
Pilsen [November 21, 1618]. . . . The Emperor
Matthias died on the 10th of March, 1619 . . .
and the Boheniians, who acknowledged his sov-
ereignty while living, now resolved to renounce
his successor Ferdinand, whose hostile intentions
were already too clearly expressed. Ferdinand
attained the throne under circumstances the most
1500
GERMANY, 1618-1630.
Tlie revolt in
Bohemia.
GERMANY, 1620.
perplexing. Bohemia in arras, and threatening
Vienna itself Tvith invasion ; Silesia and Moravia
in alliance with them ; Austria mucli disposed to
unite with them; Hungary by no means firmly
attached, and externally menaced by the Turks;
besides which, encountering in every direction
the hatred of the Protestants, against whom his
zeal was undisguised. . . . Count Thuru ad-
vanced upon Vienna with a Bohemian army. . . .
He came before Vienna, and his men fired, even
upon the imperial castle itself, where Ferdinand,
surrounded by open and secret foes, had taken
up his quarters. He dared not leave his capital,
for by so doing Austria, and with it the preser-
vation of the empire itself, must have been sacri-
ficed. But his enemies looked upon him as lost ;
and they already spoke of confining him in a
convent, and educating his children in the Prot-
estant faith. . . . Count Thurn was obliged soon
to return to Bohemia, as Prague was menaced
by the armies of Austria, and Ferdinand availed
himself of this moment in order to undertake
another hazardous and daring project. . . . He
. . . resolved to proceed to Frankfort to attend
the election of emperor. The spiritual electors
had been gained over ; Saxony also adhered closely
to the house of Austria; Brandenburg was not
unfriendly ; hence the opposition of the palatinate
alone against him could accomplish nothing;
accordingly Ferdinand was unanimously chosen
emperor on the 28th of August, 1619." Just
two days previously, on the 26th of August, the
Bohemians, at a general assembly of the states,
had formally deposed Ferdinand from the king-
ship of their nation, and proceeded to elect an-
other king in his place. "The Catholics pro-
posed the Duke of Savoy and Maximilian of
Bavaria, whilst, in the Protestant interest, the
Elector John George of Saxony, and Frederick
v., of the palatinate, were put forward. The
latter obtained the election, being a son-in-law
of King James I. of England, from whom they
expected assistance, and who personally was re-
garded as resolute, magnanimous, and generous.
The incorporated provinces of Moravia, Silesia
and Lusatia supported the election, and even the
Catholic states of Bohemia pledged their fidelity
and obedience. Frederick was warned against
accepting so dangerous a crown by Saxony, Ba-
varia, and even by his father-in-law; but his
chaplain, Scultetus, and his own consort, Eliza-
beth, who as the daughter of a king aspired to a
royal crown, persuaded him with all their influ-
ence to accept it. Frederick was accordingly
ruled by them, received the regal dignity in Bo-
hemia, and was crowned at Prague with great
pomp on the 25th of October, 1619. . . . Ferdi-
nand in returning from Frankfort passed on to
Munich, and there concluded with the Duke of
Bavaria that important treaty which secured to
Mm the possession of Bohemia. These two
princes had been companions in youth, and the
Evangelical Union had by several incautious pro-
ceedings irritated the duke. Maximilian under-
took the chief command in the cause of the
Catholic party, and stipulated with the house of
Austria that he should be indemnified for every
outlay and loss incurred, to the extent even, if
necessary, of the surrender of the territories of
Austria itself into his hands. With Spain, also,
the emperor succeeded in forming an alliance,
and the Spanish general, Spinola, received orders
to invade the countries of the palatinate from
the Netherlands. Subsequently the Elector of
Mentz arranged a convention at Miilhausen with
the Elector John George of Saxony, the Elector
of Cologne, and the Landgrave Lewis of Darm-
stadt, wherein it was determined to render all
possible assistance to the emperor for the main-
tenance of his kingdom and the imperial dignity.
Frederick, the new Bohemian king, was now
left with no other auxiliary but the Evangelical
Union; for the Transylvanian prince, Bethlen
Gabor, was, notwithstanding all his promises, a
very dubious and uncertain allj'.whilst the troops
he sent into Moravia and Bohemia were not un-
like a horde of savage banditti. Meanwhile the
union commenced its preparations for war, as
well as the league. The whole of Germany re-
sembled a grand depot for recruiting. Every
eye was directed to the Swabian district, where
the two armies were to meet ; there, however, at
Ulm, on the 3rd of July, 1620, they unexpectedly
entered into a compact, in which the forces of
the union engaged to lay down their arms, and
both parties pledged each other to preserve
peace and tranquillity. The unionists felt them-
selves too weak to maintain the contest, since
Saxony was now likewise against them, and
Spinola threatened them from the Netherlands.
It was, however, a great advantage for the em-
peror, that Bohemia was excluded from this
treaty, for now the forces of the league were at
liberty to aid him in subjugating his royal ad-
versary. Maximilian of Bavaria, therefore, im-
mediately took his departure, and on his way
reduced the states of Upper Austria to the obedi-
ence due to Ferdinand, joined the imperial army,
and made a spirited attack upon Bohemia. On
the other side, the Elector of Saxony took pos-
session of Lusatia in the name of the emperor. " —
F. Kohlrausch, Hist, of Germany, ch. 22.
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, Eist. of England,
1603-1642, ch. 29-32 (». 3).— W. Coxe, Hist, of the
House of Austria, ch. 46^8 {v. 2).
A. D. 1618-1700.— The Rise of Prussia. See
Puussi.\ : A. D. 1618-1700.
A. D. 1620.— The Thirty Years War: Dis-
appointment of the Bohemians in their elected
king. — Frederick's offensive Calvinism. — De-
feat of his army before Prague. — Loss of
Bohemian liberties. — Prostration of Protes-
tantism. — "The defection of the Union acceler-
ated the downfall of Frederick ; but its cordial
support could scarcely have hindered it. For the
Bohemians had been disappointed in their king,
disappointed in the strength they had expected
from him through his connexions, equally dis-
appointed in the man, and in the hopes of pro-
tection and sympathy which they had expected
from him in the exercise of their religion. Within
a month of his coronation the metropolitan church
was spoiled of its images, the crucifix cut in
pieces, the statues of the saints cast out, broken,
and burnt, the ornaments used in divine service,
and venerable in the eyes of Catholics and Lu-
therans alike, scattered here and there, and turned
upside down with contempt and execration.
These proceedings, whicli were presumed, not
without reason, to have the king's authority —
for during their enactment the court chaplain
addressed the people in praise of this purga-
tion of the temple — called forth loud com-
plaints and increased the disaffection which, more
than any external force brought against Fred-
erick, produced his ruin. Early in November
1501
GERMANY, 1620.
Fall of the
Elector Palatine.
GERMANY, 1621-1633.
Maximilian appeared before Prague, and found
the Bohemians, under Christian van Anhalt, sliil-
fully and strongly posted on the Weissenberg
[White Mountain] to offer battle. The cautious
Bucquoi would have declined the offer, and at-
tacked the city from another point; but an en-
thusiastic friar who broke in upon the confer-
ence of the leaders, and, exliibiting a mutilated
image of the Virgin, reproached tliem with their
liesitation, put to flight all timid counsels. The
battle began at twelve o'clock. It was a Sunday,
the octave of the festival of All Saints [Novem-
bers, 1620]. . . . In the Catholic army Bucquoi
was at the head of the Imperial division. Tilly
commanded in chief, and led the front to the
battle. He was received with a heavy fire; and
for half an hour the victory trembled in the bal-
ance: then the Hungarians, who had been de-
feated by the Croats the day before, fled, and
all the efforts of the Duke of Saxe Weimar to
rally them proved fruitless. Soon the whole Bo-
hemian army, Germans, English, horse and foot,
fled in disorder. One gallant little band of
Moravians only, under the Count of Thurn and
the young Count of Sehlick, maintained their
position, and, with the exception of their leaders,
fell almost to a man. The battle lasted only an
hour; but the victory was not the less complete.
A hundred banners, ten guns, and a rich spoil
fell into the hands of the victors. Four thou-
sand of the Bohemian army, but scarcely as
many hundreds of their opponents (if we may
believe their account), lay dead upon the field.
. . . Frederick had returned from the army the
day before, with the intelligence that the Ba-
varians were only eight (English) miles distant ;
but relying on the 28,000 men which he liad to
cover his capital, he felt that night no uneasi-
ness. . . . He had invited tlie English ambas-
sadors to dine; and he remained to entertain
them. After dinner he mounted his horse to ride
to the Star Park ; but before he could get out of
the city gate, he was met with the news of the
total overthrow of his army. His negotiations
with Maximilian failing, or receiving no answer,
the next morning he prepared for flight. . . .
Accompanied by his queen. Van Anhalt, the
Prince of Hohenlohe, and the Count of Thurn,
he made a precipitate retreat from Prague, leav-
ing behind him the insignia of that monarchy
which he had not the wisdom to firmly establish,
nor resolution to defend to the last. It must be
confessed, however, that his position, after the
defeat at Prague, was not altogether so promis-
ing, and consequently his abandonment of his
capital not altogether so pusillanimous, as some
have represented." — B. Chapman, Hid of Ous-
tavus Adolphiis. ch. 5. — "Frederick fled for his
life through North Germany, till he found a
refuge at the Hague. The reign of the Bohemian
aristocracy was at an end. . . . The chiefs per-
ished on the scaffold. Their lands were confis-
cated, and a new German and Catholic nobility
arose. . . . The Royal Charter was declared to
have been forfeited by rebellion, and the Protes-
tant churches in the towns and on the royal
estates had nothing to depend on but the will of
the conqueror. The ministers of one great body
— the Bohemian Brethren — were expelled at
once. The Lutherans were spared for a time." —
S. R. Gardiner, The Thirty Tears' War, ch. 3, sect. 1.
Also in : C. A. Peschek, Reformation and Anti-
Reformation in Bofiemia, v. 1, ch. 9. — See, also,
Bohemia; A. D. 1621-1648; and Hungary: A.D.
1606-1660.
A. D. 1621-1623.— The Thirty Years War:
The Elector Palatine placed under the ban. —
Dissolution of the Evangelical Union. — In-
vasion and conquest of the Palatinate. — Trans-
fer of the electoral dignity to the Duke of
Bavaria. — "Ferdinand, though firm, patient, and
resigned in adversity, was stern, vengeful, and
overbearing in prosperity. He was urged by
many motives of resentment, policy, and zeal to
complete the ruin of the elector Palatine, and he
did not possess sufficient magnanimity to resist
the temptation. Having squandered away the
confiscated property among his Jesuits and
favourites, he had still many allies and adherents
whose fidelity he was desirous to reward ; he was
anxious to recover Upper Au.stria, which he had
mortgaged to the duke of Bavaria, as a pledge
for the expenses of the war ; he wished to regain
possession of Lusatia; and he was bound in
honour to satisfy the elector of Saxony for his
opportune assistance. . . . These motives over-
bearing all considerations of justice and pru-
dence, Ferdinand published the ban of the em-
pire [January 22, 1621], of his own authority,
against the elector Palatine and his adherents the
prince of Anhalt, the count of Hohenlohe, and
the duke of Jaegendorf. The execution of this
informal sentence he intrusted to the archduke
Albert, as possessor of the circle of Burgundy,
and to the duke of Bavaria, commanding the
former to occupy the Lower, and the latter the
Upper Palatinate. This vigorous act was in-
stantly followed by the most decisive effects; for
the Protestants were terrified by the prospect of
sharing the fate of the unfortunate elector. The
members of the union now felt the fatal conse-
quences of their own indecision and want of fore-
sight. . . . Threatened at once by Spinola [com-
manding the Spanish auxiliaries from the Nether-
lands] and the duke of Bavaria, and confounded
bj' the growing power of the emperor, they vied
in abandoning a confederacy which exposed them
to his vengeance. On the 12th of April, 1621,
they concluded at Mentz a treaty of neutrality,
by which they promised not to interfere in the
affairs of the Palatinate, agreed to disband their
troops within a month, and to enter into no new
confederacy to the disadvantage of the emperor.
This dishonourable treaty was followed by the
dissolution of the union, which, on its expiration,
was not renewed. During these events, Spinola,
having completed the reduction of the Lower
Palatinate, was occupied in the siege of Franken-
dahl, which was on the point of surrendering,
and its capture must have been followed by the
submission of Heidelberg and Manheim. The
duke of Bavaria had been still more successful
in the Upper Palatinate, and had rapidly subju-
gated the whole province, together with the dis-
trict of Cham. The elector Palatine, deserted
by the Protestant union, and almost abttndoned
by his relatives, the kings of England and Den-
mark, owed the first revival of his hopes of res-
toration to Mansfeld, an illegitimate adventurer,
with no other resources than plunder and devas-
tation. Christian of Brunswick, administrator of
Halberstadt, distinguished indeed by illustrious
birth, but equally an adventurer, and equally
destitute of territory or resources, espoused his
cause, as well from ties of affinity [he was the
cousin of Elizabeth, the electress Palatine, or
1502
GERMANY, 1621-1633.
Cov'^nest of the
Palatinate,
GERMANY, 1631-1623.
queen of Bohemia, as she preferred to be called]
as from a chivalrous attachment to his beautiful
consort; and George Frederic, margrave of Ba-
den, even abdicated his dignity to devote him-
self to his support." Mansfeld, who had held
his ground iu Bohemia for nearly a year after
the battle of the White Mountain, now became
hard pressed there by Tilly, and suddenly es-
caped by forced marches (October, 1621,) into the
Lower Palatinate. ' ' Here he found a more fa-
vourable field of action; for Spiuola being re-
called with the greater part of the Spanish forces,
had left the remainder to Gonzales de Cordova,
who, after reducing several minor fortresses, was
pressing the siege of Frankendahl. The name
of the brave adventurer drew to his standard
multitudes of the troops, who had been disbanded
by the Protestant union, and he was joined by a
party of English, who had been sent for the de-
fence of the Palatinate. Finding himself at the
head of 20,000 men, he cleared the country in his
passage, relieved Frankendahl. and provided for
the safety of Heidelberg and Mauheim. Unable,
however, to subsist in a district so recently the
seat of war, he turned into Alsace, where he in-
creased his forces ; from thence he Invaded the
neighbouring bishoprics of Spire and Strasburgh,
levying heavy contributions, and giving up the
rich domains of those sees to the devastations of
his troops. Encouraged by this gleam of hope,
the elector Palatine quitted his asylum in Hol-
land, passed in disguise through Loraine and
Alsace, joined Mansfeld, and gave his name and
countenance to this predatory army." Mans-
feld, recrossing the Rhine, effected a junction
with the margrave of Baden; and Christian of
Brunswick, after pillaging the rich sees of Lower
Saxony, was on his way with a considerable
force to unite with both. "At tlie same time
the duke of Wirtemberg, the landgrave of Hesse,
and other Protestant princes, began to arm, and
hopes were even entertained of the revival of the
Protestant union. Tilly, who had followed Mans-
feld from Bohemia, had in vain endeavoured to
prevent his junction with the margrave of Baden.
Defeated at Mingelsheim by Mansfeld, on the
29th of April, 1622, he had been reduced to the
defensive, and iu this situation saw a powerful
combination rising on every side against the
house of Austria. He waited therefore for an
opportunity of attacking those enemies singly,
whom he could not resist when united, and that
opportunity was presented by the separation of
the margrave of Baden from Mansfeld, and his
attempt to penetrate into Bavaria. Tilly sud-
denly drew together the Spanish troops, and with
this accession of force defeated, on the 6th of
May, the margrave at Wimpfen, with the loss of
half his army, and took his whole train of artil-
lery and military chest. Leaving Mansfeld em-
ployed in the siege of Ladenburgh, he next di-
rected his attention to Christian of Brunswick,
routed him on the 20th of June, at Hoechst
[Hochst], as he was crossing the Main, pursued
him till his junction with Mansfeld, and drove
their united forces beyond the Rhine, again to
seek a refuge and subsistence in Alsace. These
successes revived the cause of Ferdinand; the
margrave of Baden retired from the contest ; the
duke of Wirtemberg and the other Protestant
princes suspended their armaments ; and although
Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick laid siege
to Saverne, and evinced a resolution to maintain
the contest to the last extremity, yet the elector
Palatine again gave way to that weakness which
had already lost him a crown." He was per-
suaded by his witless father-in-law, James I. of
England, to trust his cause to negotiations in
which the latter was being duped by the em-
peror. He consented, accordingly, "to disavow
his intrepid defenders, to dismiss them from his
service, to retire again into Holland, and wait
the mercy of the emperor. By this disavowal,
JIansfeld and Christian were left without a name
to countenance their operations; and after vari-
ous negotiations, feigned or real, for entering
into the service of the emperor, Spain, or France,
they accepted the overtures of the Prince of
Orange and forced their way through the Spanish
array which attempted to oppose their passage,
to join at Breda the troops of the United Prov-
inces. The places in Alsace and the bishopric of
Spire which had been occupied by the enemy
were recovered by the archduke Leopold; and
Tilly, having completed the conquest of the
Palatinate by the capture of Heidelberg and
Manheim, directed his attacks against the forces
which Mansfeld and Christian of Brunswick had
again assembled. After a short continuance in
Holland, Mansfeld, in November, had led his
predatory army into the rich province of East
Friesland, conquered the principal fortresses,
and extorted enormous contributions from the
duke, who was in alliance with Spain. On the
other hand. Christian, passing into Lower Sax-
ony, persuaded the states of the circle to collect
an army of observation amounting to 12,000 men,
and intrust him with the command ; and he soon
increased this army to almost double that num-
ber, by the usual incitements of pillage and
plunder. These levies attracting the attention
of the emperor, his threats, together with the
advance of Tilly, compelled the Saxon states to
dismiss Christian and his army. Tlius left a
second time without authority, he pushed towards
Westphalia, with the hope of joining Mansfeld
and renewing hostilities in the Palatinate; his
design was however anticipated by Tilly, who
overtook him at Loen [or Stadtlohn], in the dis-
trict of Munster, and defeated him with the loss
of 6,000 killed and 4,000 prisoners, in August,
1623. The victorious general then turned towards
East Friesland ; but Mansfeld, who had hitherto
maintained himself in that country, avoided an
unequal contest by disbanding his troops, and
withdrawing into Holland, in January, 1624
. . . Having despoiled the elector Palatine of
all his dominions, and delivered himself from his
enemies in Germany, Ferdinand had proceeded
to carry his plans into execution, by transferring
the electoral dignity to the duke of Bavaria, and
dividing the conquered territories among his ad-
herents. ... He gained the elector of Saxony,
by promising him the revenues and perhaps the
cession of Lusatia; and the landgrave of Hesse
Darmstadt, by offering to favour his pretensions
to the succession of Marburgh, which he was
contesting with the landgrave of Hesse Cassel.
. . . Having thus gained those whose opposition
was most likely to frustrate his design, he paid
little regard to the feeble threats of James, and
to the remonstrances of the king of Denmark.
... He summoned, on the 25th of February,
1623, a meeting of the electors and princes who
were most devoted to his cause at Ratisbon, and,
in concurrence with the majority of this irregular
1503
GERMANY, 1631-1623.
Wall€7i$tein.
GERMANY, 1634-1626.
assembly, transferred the Palatine electorate,
with all its honours, privileges, and offices, to
Maximilian, duke of Bavaria. To keep up, how-
ever, the hopes of the elector Palatine and his
adherents, and not to drive his family and connec-
tions to desperation, the whole extent of the plan
was not developed ; the partition of his territories
was deferred, the transfer of the electorate was
made only for the life of Maximilian, and the
rights of the sons and collateral heirs of the un-
fortunate elector were expressly reserved. " — W.
Coxe, Hist, of the House of Austria, ch. 49 (v. 2).
Also m : A. Gindely, Hist, of the Thirty Tears'
War. V. 1, ch. 7.— F. Schiller, Hist, of the Thirty
Tears' War. bk. 3.— C. R. Markham, The Fight-
ing Veres, pt. 2, ch. 3.
A. D. 1624-1626. — The Thirty Years War:
Alliance of England, Holland, and Denmark
to support the Protestant cause. — Creation of
the imperial army of Wallenstein, and its first
campaigns. — " Had the Emperor been as wise as
he was resolute, it is probable that, victorious in
every direction, he might have been able to con-
clude a permanent peace with the Protestant
Party. But the bigotry which was a very part
of his nature was spurred on by his easy triumphs
to refuse to sheathe the sword until heresy had
been rooted out from the land. In vain did the
Protestant princes, who had maintained a selfish
and foolish neutrality, remonstrate against the
continuance of hostilities after the avowed ob-
ject for which those hostilities were undertaken
had been gained. In the opinion of Ferdinand
II. the real object still remained to be accom-
plished. Under these critical circumstances the
emigrants, now grown numerous [see Bohemia:
A. 6. 1621-1648], and the awakened Protestant
princes, earnestly besought the aid of a foreign
power. It was their representations which at
length induced three nations of the reformed
faith — England, Holland, and Denmark — to
ally themselves to assist their oppressed brethren
[see, also, France: A. D. 1624-1626]. England
agreed to send subsidies, Holland to supply
troops. The command of the delivering army
was confided to Christian IV. , King of Denmark
(162.5). He was to be supported in Germany by
the partisan Mansfeldt, by Prince Christian of
Brunswick, and by the Protestants of Lower
Saxony, who had armed themselves to resist the
exactions of the Emperor. Ferdinand II., after
vainly endeavouring to ward off hostilities by
negotiations, despatched Tilly to the Weser to
meet the enemy. Tilly followed the course of
that river as far as Minden, causing to be occu-
pied, as he marched, the places which com-
manded its passage. Pursuing his course north-
wards, he crossed the river at Neuburg (midway
between Minden and Bremen), and occupied the
principality of Kalenberg. The King of Den-
mark was near at hand, in the Duchy of Bruns-
wick, anxious, for the moment, to avoid a battle.
Tilly, superior to him in numbers, was as anxious
to fight one. As though the position of the
King of Denmark were not already sufficiently
embarrassing, the Emperor proceeded at this
period to make it almost unendurable by launch-
ing upon him likewise an imperial army. . . .
TJp to the period of the complete overthrow and
expulsion from the Palatinate of Frederic V.,
ex-King of Bohemia, Ferdinand had been in-
debted for all his successes to Maximilian of Ba-
varia. It was Maximilian who, as head of the
Holy League, had reconquered Bohemia for the
Emperor: it was Maximilian's general, Tilly,
who had driven the Protestant armies from the
Palatinate ; and it was the same general wlio was
now opposing the Protestants of'the north in the
lands watered by the Weser. ilaximilian had
been rewarded by the cession to him of the Pala-
tinate, but it was not advisable that so near a
neighbour of Austria should be made too strong.
It was this feeling, this jealou.sy of Maximilian,
which now prompted Ferdinand to raise, for the
first time in this war, an imperial army, and to
send it to the north. This army was raised by
and at the expense of Albert Wenzel Eusebius of
Waldstein, known in history as Wallenstein. A
Czech by nationality, born in 1.583 of noble pa-
rents, who belonged to one of the most advanced
sects of the reformers but who died whilst their
son was yet young, Wallenstein had, when yet
a child, been committed to the care of his uncle,
Albert Slavata, an adherent of the Jesuits, and
by him educated at Olmlitz in the strictest Catho-
lic faith." By marrying, first, a rich widow,
who soon died, and then an heiress, daughter of
Count Harrach, and by purchasing with the for-
tune thus acquired many confiscated estates, he
had become possessed of enormous wealth. He
had already won distinction as a soldier. "For
his faithful services, Ferdinand in 1633 nomi-
nated Wallenstein to be Prince, a title changed,
the year following, into that of Duke of Fried-
land. At this time the yearly income he de-
rived from his various estates, all economically
managed, was calculated to be 30,000,000 florins
— little short of £2,500,000." Wallenstein now,
in 1625, "divining his master's wishes, and ani-
mated by the ambition born of natural ability,
offered to raise and maintain, at his own cost, an
army of 50,000 men, and to lead it against the
enemy. Ferdinand eagerly accepted the offer.
Named Generalissimo and. Field Marshal in July
of the same year, Wallenstein inarched at the
head of 30,000 men, a number which increased
almost daily, first to the Weser, thence, after
noticing the positions of Tilly and of King Chris-
tian, to the banks of the Elbe, where he wintered.
. . . In the spring . . . Mansfeldt, with the view
to prevent a junction between Till}- and Wallen-
stein, marched against the latter, and. though
his troops were fewer in number, took up a
position at Dessau in full view of the imperial
camp, and there intrenched himself. Here Wal-
lenstein attacked (35 April 1636) and completely
defeated him. Not discouraged by this over-
throw, and still bearing in mind the main object
of the campaign, Mansfeldt fell back into Bran-
denburg, recruited there his army, called to him-
self the Duke of Saxc-Weimar and tlien sud-
denly dashed, by forced marches, towards Silesia
and iloravia, with the intention of reaching Hun-
gary, where Bethlen Gabor had promised to meet
him." Wallenstein followed and "pressed him
so hard that, though Mansfeldt did effect a junc-
tion with Bethlen Gabor, it was with but the
skeleton of his arm}'. Despairing of success
against numbers vastly superior, Bethlen Gabor
withdrew from his new colleague, and Mans-
feldt, reduced to despair, disbanded his remain-
ing soldiers, and sold his camp-equipage to supply
himself with the means of flight (September) [see
Hungary: A. D. 1606-1660]. He died soon
after (30th November). . . . Wallenstein then
retraced his steps to the north. Meanwhile Tilly,
1504
GERMANY, 1624-1636.
Wallenstein.
GERMANY, 1627-1639.
left to deal with Christian IV., had followed
that prince into Lower Saxony, had caught, at-
tacked and completely defeated him at Lutter
(am Barenberge), the 37th July 1626. This vic-
tory gave him complete possession of that dis-
affected province, and, despite a vigorous attempt
made by the Margrave George Frederic of Baden
to wrest it from liim, he held it till the return of
Wallenstein from the pursuit of Mansfeldt. As
two stars of so great a magnitude could not
shine in the same hemisphere, it was then de-
cided that Tilly should carry the war into Hol-
land whilst to AVallenstein should be left the
honour of dealing with the King of Denmark
and the Protestant princes of the north.' —G. B.
Malleson, T/ie BaUle-fiehls of Oermamj, cIi. 1.
Also IN: W. Zimmermann, Popular Hist, of
Germany, bk. 5, ch. 2 (e. 4).
A. D. 1627-1629.— The Thirty Years War:
Wallenstein's campaign against the Danes.—
His power and his oppression in Germany.—
The country devoured hy his array.—Unsuc-
cessful siege of Stralsund.— First succor from
the king of Svyeden.- The Peace of Lubeck.
— The Edict of Restitution.— " Wallenstein
opened the campaign of 1627 at the head of a
refreshed and well-equipped army of 40,000 men
His first effort was directed against Silesia ; and
the Danish troops, few in number, and ill com-
manded, gave way at his approacli. To prevent
the fusitives from infringing on the neutrality
of Bralidenburg, lie occupied the whole elector-
ate. Mecklenburg and Pomerania soon shared
the same fate. Remonstrances and assurances
of perfect neutrality were treated with absolute
scorn; and Wallenstein declared, in his usual
haughty style, that ' the time had arrived for dis-
pensing altogether with electors ; and that Ger-
many ought to be governed like France and
Spain, by a single and absolute sovereign.' In
his rapid marcluowards the frontiers of Holstein,
he acted fully up to the principle he had laid
down, and naturally exercised despotic power
as the representative of the absolute monarch of
whom he spoke. . . . He . . . followed upthe
Danes, defeated their armies in a series of actions
near Heiligenhausen, overran the whole peninsula
of .Jutland before the end of the campaign, and
forced the unhappy king to seek shelter, with
the wrecks of his army, in the islands beyond the
Belt . . Brilliant as the campaign of 1627
proved in its general result, few very striking
feats of arms were performed during its progress.
Now it was that the princes and states of
Lower Germany began to feel the consequences
of their pusillanimous conduct; and the very
provinces which had just before refused to raise
troops for their own protection, were obliged to
submit, without a murmur, to every species of
insult and exaction. Wallenstein's army, aug-
mented to 100,000 men, occupied the whole coun-
try and the lordly leader following, on a far
greater scale, the principle on which Mansfeld
had acted, made the war maintain the war, and
trampled alike on the rights of sovereigns and of
subjects. And terrible was the penalty now
paid for the short-sighted policy which avarice
and cowardice had suggested, and which cunning
had vainly tried to disguise beneath affected
philanthropy, and a generous love of peace.
Provided with imperial authority, and at the
head of a force that could no longer be resisted,
Wallenstein made the empire serve as a vast
95 1505
storehouse, and wealthy treasury for the benefit
of the imperial army. He forbade eveu sover-
eigns and electors to raise supplies in their own
countries, and was justly termed 'the princes
scourge, and soldiers' idol.' The system of living
by contriburions had completely demoralised the
troops. Honour and discipline were entirely
gone ; and it was only beneath the eye of the
stern and unrelenring commander, that anything
like order continued to be observed. Dissipation
and profligacy reigned in all ranks; bands of
dissolute persons accompanied every regiment,
and helped to extinguish the last sparks of
morality in the breast of the soldier. The gen-
erals levied arbitrary taxes; the inferior officers
followed the example of their superiors; and the
privates, soon ceasing to obey those whom they
ceased to respect, plundered in every direction ;
while blows, insults, or death awaited all who
dared to resist. . . . The sums extorted, in this
manner, prove that Germany must have been a
wealthy country in the 17th century; for the
money pressed out of some districts, by the im-
perial troops, far exceeds anything which the
same quarters could now be made to furnish.
Complaints against the author of such evils
were of course, not wanting ; but the man com-
plained of had rendered the Emperor all-power-
ful in Germany : from the Adriatic to tlie Baltic.
Ferdinand reigned absolute, as no monarch had
reigned since the days of the Othos. This su-
premacy was due to Wallenstein alone; and
what could the voice of the humble and oppressed
effect against such an offender ? Or when did
the voice of suffering nations, arrest the progress
of power and ambition ? During the winter that
followed on the campaign of 1627, Wallenstein
repaired to Prague, to claim [and to receive]
from the Emperor, who was residing in the
Bohemian capital, additional rewards for the im-
portant services so lately rendered. The boon
solicited was nothing less than the Duchy of
Mecklenburg, which was to be taken from its
legitimate princes, on the ground of their haying
joined the King of Denmark, and bestowed on
the successful general. . . . Hitherto the ocean
had alone arrested the progress of Wallenstein:
a fleet was now to be formed, which should en-
able him to give laws beyond the Belts, and per-
haps beyond the Baltic also. Every seaport in
Mecklenburg and Pomerania is ordered to be
taken possession of and fortified. . . . Tlie siege
of Stralsund, which was resolved upon early in
1628 constitutes one of the most memorable
operations of the war. Not merely because it
furnishes an additional proof of what may be
effected by skill, courage and resolution, against
vastly superior forces, but because its result m-
fluenced in an eminent degree, some of the most
important events that followed. When Wallen-
stein ordered the seaports along the coast of
Pomerania to be occupied, Stralsund, claiming
its privilege as an imperial and Hanseatic free
town, refused to admit his troops. . . . After a
good deal of negotiation, which only cost the
people of Stralsund some large sums of money,
paid away in presents to the imperial oflicers,
Arnheim invested the place on the 7th of May
with 8,000 men. . . . The town . . . , unable to
obtain assistance from the Duke of Pomerania,
the lord superior of the province, who, how-
ever willing, had no means of furnishing relief,
placed itself under the protection of Sweden : and
GERMANY, 162T-1639.
Dismissal
of Wallensiein,
GERMANY, 1630.
Gustavus Adolplnis. fully sensible of the impor-
tance of the place, immediately dispatched the
celebrated David Leslie, at the liead of 600 men, to
aid in its defence. Count Brahe, with 1,000
more, soon followed; so that when Wallenstein
reached the army on the 2Tth of June, he found
himself opposed by a garrison of experienced
soldiers, who had already retaken all the out-
works which Arnheim had captured in the first
instance. . . . Rain began to fall in such tor-
rents that the trenches were entirely filled, and
the flat moor ground, on which the army was
encamped, became completely inundated and
untenable. The proud spirit of Friedland, un-
used to yield, still persevered; but sickness
attacked the troops, and the Danes having landed
at Jasmund, he was obliged to march against
them with the best part of his forces ; and in fact
to raise the siege. . . . The Danes having
effected their object, in causing the siege of Stral-
sund to be raised, withdrew their troops from
Jasmund, and landed them again at Wolgast.
Here, however, Wallenstein surprised, and de-
feated them with great loss. . . . There being
on all sides a willingness to liring the war to an
end, peace was . . . concluded at Lubeck in
January 1629. By this treaty the Danes re-
covered, without reserve or indemnity, all their
former possessions; only pledging themselves
not again to interfere in the affairs of the Empire.
. . . The peace of Lubeck left Wallenstein abso-
lute master in Germany, and without an equal
in greatness: his spirit seemed to hover like a
storm-charged cloud over the land, crushing to
the earth every hope of liberty and successful
resistance. JIansfeld and Christian of Brunswick
had disappeared from the scene; Frederick V.
had retired into obscurity. Tilly and Pappen-
heim, his former rivals, now condescended to
receive favours, and to solicit pensions and re-
wards through the medium of his intercession.
Even Maximilian of Bavaria was second in
greatness to the all-dreaded Duke of Friedland:
Europe held no uncrowned head that was his
equal in fame, and no crowned head that sur-
passed him in power. . . . Ferdinand, elated
with success, had neglected the opportunity,
again afforded him by the peace of Lubeck, for
restoring tranquillity to the empire. . . . Instead
of a general peace, Ferdinand signed the fatal
Edict of Restitution, by which the Protestants
were called upon to restore all the Catholic
Church property they had sequestrated since the
religious pacification of 1555 : such sequestration
being, according to the Emperor's interpretation,
contrary to the spirit of the treaty of Passau.
The right of long-established possession was here
entirely overlooked ; and Ferdinand forgot, in
his zeal for the church, that he was actually set-
ting himself up as a .iudge, in a case in which he
was a party also. It was farther added, that,
according to the same treaty, freedom of depar-
ture from Catholic countries, was the only privi-
lege which Protestants had a right to claim from
Catholic princes. This decree came like a thunder-
burst over Protestant Germany. Two archbishop-
ricks, 13 bishopricks, and a countless number of
convents and clerical domains, which the Prot-
estants had confiscated, and applied to their own
purposes, were now to be surrendered. Imperial
commissioners were appointed to carry the man-
date into eflEect, and, to secure immediate obedi-
ence, troops were placed at the disposal of the new
officials. Wherever these functionaries appeared,
the Protestant service was instantly suspended;
the churches deprived of their bells ; altars and
pulpits pulled down; all Protestant books,
bibles and catechisms were seized ; and gibbets
were erected to terrify those who might be dis-
posed to resist. All Protestants who refused to
change their religion were expelled from Augs-
burg : sununary proceedings of the same kind
were resorted to in other places. Armed with ab-
solute power, the commissioners soon proceeded
from reclaiming the property of the church to
seize that of individuals. The estates of all per-
sons who had served under Mansfeld, Baden,
Christian of Brunswick; of all who had aided
Frederick V., or rendered themselves obnoxious
to the Emperor, were seized and confiscated.
. . . The Duke of Friedland, who now ruled
with dictatorial sway over Germany, had been
ordered to carry the Edict of Restitution into
effect, in all the countries occupied by his troops.
The task, if we believe historians, was executed
with unbending rigour." — J. Mitchell, Life of
Wallenstein, eh. 3-3.
Also in : L. Hausser, The Period of the Refor-
mation.. 1517 to 1648, ch. 33.
A. D. 1627-1631. — War of the Emperor and
Spain with France, over the succession to the
duchy of Mantua. See Italy: A. D. 1637-
1631.
A. D. 1630.— The Thirty Years War : Uni-
versal hostility to Wallenstein. — His dismis-
sal by the Emperor. — The rising of a new
champion of Protestantism in Sweden. — ■Wal-
lenstein had ever shown great toleration in his
own domains; but it is not to be denied that . . .
he aided to carry out the edict [of Restitution]
in the most barbarous and relentless manner. It
would be as tedious as painful to dwell upon all
the cruelties which were committed, and the op-
pression that was exercised, by the imperial com-
missioners ; but a spirit of resistance was aroused
in the hearts of the German people, which only
waited for opportunity to display itself. Nor
was it alone against the emperor that wrath and
indignation was excited. Wallenstein drew down
upon his head even more dangerous enmity than
that which sprung up against Ferdinand. He
ruled in Germany with almost despotic sway;
for the emperor himself seemed at this time little
more than a tool in his hands. His manners
were unpopular, stern, reserved, and gloomy.
. . . Princes were kept waiting in his ante-cham-
ber ; and all petitions and remonstrances against
his stern decrees were treated with the mortifying
scorn which adds insult to injury. The mag-
nificence of his train, the splendor of his house-
hold, the luxury and profusion that spread every
where around him, afforded coutinudl sources of
envy and jealous hate to the ancient nobility of
the empire. The Protestants throughout the
land were his avowed and implacable enemies;
and the Roman Catholic princes viewed him with
fear and suspicion. JIaximiliau of Bavaria,
whose star had waned under the growing luster
of Wallensteiu's renown, who had lost that au-
thority in the empire which he knew to be due
to his services and his genius, solely by the rise
and influence of Wallenstein, and whose am-
bitious designs of ruling Germany through an
emperor dependent upon him for power, had
been frustrated entirely by the genius which
placed the imperial throne upon a firm and
1506
GERMANY, 1630.
77te coming of
Gustavus Adolphus.
GERMANY, 1630-1631.
independent basis, took no pains to conceal his
hostility to the Duke of Friedland. . . . Though
the soldiery still generally loved him, their offi-
cers hated the hand that put a limit to the op-
pression by which they throve, and would fain
have resisted its power. . . . While these feel-
lugs were gathering strength in Germany ; while
Wallenstein, with no friends, though man)' sup-
porters, saw himself an object of jealousy or
hatred to the leaders of every party throughout
the empire ; and while the suppressed but cher-
ished indignation of all Protestant Germany was
preparing for the emperor a dreadfid day of
reckoning, events were taking place in other
countries which hurried on rapidly the dangers
that Wallenstein had foreseen. In France, a
weak king, and a powerful, politic, and relent-
less minister, appeared in undissembled hostility
to the house of Austria ; and the famous Cardi-
nal de Richelieu busied himself, successfully, to
raise up enemies to the German branch of that
family. ... In Poland, Sigismund, after vainly
contending with Gustavus Adolphus, and re-
ceiving an inefficient aid from Germany, was
anxious to conclude the disastrous war with
Sweden. Richelieu interfered; Oxenstiern ne-
gotiated on the part of Gustavus; and a truce
of six years was concluded in August, 1629, by
which the veteran and victorious Swedish troops
were set free to act in any other direction. A
great jsart of Livonia was virtually ceded to Gus-
tavus, together with the towns and territories of
Memel, Braunsberg and Elbingen, and the strong
fortress of Pillau. At the same time, Richelieu
impressed upon the mind of Gustavus the honor,
the advantage, and the necessit}' of reducing the
immense power of the emperor, and delivering the
Protestant states of Germany from the oppression
under which they groaned. . . . Confident in
his own powers of mind and warlike skill, sup-
ported b)' the love and admiration of his people,
relying on the valor and discipline of his troops,
and foreseeing all the mighty combinations which
were certain to take place in his favor, Gustavus
hesitated but little. He consulted with his min-
isters, indeed heard and answered every objec-
tion that could be raised; and then applied to
the Senate at Stockholm to insure that his plans
were approved, and that his efforts would be
seconded by his people. His enterprise met with
the most enthu.siastic approbation; and then suc-
ceeded all the bustle of active preparation. . . .
While this storm was gathering in the North,
while the towns of Sweden were bristling with
arms, and her ports filled with ships, Ferdinand
was driven or [jersuaded to an act the most fatal
to himself, and the most favorable to the King of
Sweden. A Diet was summoned to meet at
Ratisbon early in the year 1680 ; and the chief
object of the emperor in taking a step so danger-
ous to the power he had really acquired, and to
the projects so boldly put forth in his name,
seems to have been to cause his son to be elected
King of the Romans. . . . The name of the
archduke. King of Hungary, is proposed to the
Diet for election as King of the Romans, and a
scene of indescribable confusion and murmuring
takes place. A voice demands that, before any
such election is considered, the complaints of the
people of Germany against the imperial armies
shall be heard ; and then a perfect storm of accu-
sations pours down. Every sort of tyranny and
oppression, every sort of cruelty and exaction.
every sort of licentiousness and vice is attributed
to the emperor's troops ; but the hatred and the
charges all concentrate themselves upon the head
of the great commander of the imperial forces;
and there is a shout for his instant dismissal. . . .
Ferdinand hesitated, and affected much surprise
at the charges brought against his general and
his armies. He yielded in the end, however;
and it is said, upon very good authority, that his
ruinous decision was brought about by the arts
of the same skillful politician who had conjured
up the storm which now menaced the empire
from the nortli. Richelieu had sent an embassa-
dor to Ratisbon. ... In the train of the embas-
sador came the well-known intriguing friar.
Father Joseph, the most unscrupulous and cun-
ning of the cardinal's emissaries; and he, we are
assured, found means to persuade the emperor
that, by yielding to the demand of the electors
and removing AVallcnstein for a time, he might
obtain the election of the King of Hungary, and
then reinstate the Duke of Friedland in his com-
mand as soon as ])opular anger had subsided.
However that might be, Ferdinand, as I have
said, yielded, openly expressing his regret at
the step he was about to take, and the appre-
hensions which he entertained for the conse-
quences. Count Questenberg and another noble-
man, who had been long on intimate terms with
Wallenstein, were sent to the camp to notify to
him his removal from command, and to soften
the disgrace by assuring him of the emperor's
gratitude and affection. " — G. P. R. James, Dark
Scenes of History : Wallenstein, ch. 3-4.
Also in: S. R. Gardiner, The Thirty Tears'
War, ch. 7, sect. 3. — A. Gindely, Hist, of the
Thirty Tears' War, v. 3, ch. 1.
A. D. 1630-1631. — The Thirty Years War:
The Coming of Gustavus Adolphus. — His oc-
cupation of Pomerania and Brandenburg. —
The horrible fate of Magdeburg at the hands
of Tilly's ruffians. — "On June 24, 1630, one
hundred years, to a day, after the Augsburg
Confession was promulgated, Gustavus Adol-
phus landed on the coast of Pomerania, near the
mouth of the river Peeue, with 13,000 men, vet-
eran troops, whose rigid discipline was sustained
by their piety, and who were simple-minded,
noble, and glowing with the spirit of the battle.
He had reasons enough for declaring war against
Ferdinand, even if 10,000 of Walleustein's troops
had not been sent to aid Sigismund against him.
But the controlling motive, in his own mind, was
to succor the imperiled cause of religious freedom
in Germany. Coming as the protector of the
evangelic Church, he expected to be joined by
the Protestant princes. But he was disappointed.
Only the trampled and tortured people of North
Germany, who in their despair were ready for
revolts and conspiracies of their own, welcomed
him as their deliverer from the bandits of Wal-
lenstein and the League. Gustavus Adolphus ap-
peared before Stettin, and by threats compelled
the old duke, Bogislaw XIV., to open to him his
capital city. He then took measures to secure
possession of Pomerania. His army grew rapidly,
while that of the emperor was widely dispersed,
so that he now advanced into Brandenburg.
George William, the elector, was a weak prince,
though a Protestant, and a brother of the Queen
of Sweden ; he was guided by his Catholic chan-
cellor, Schwarzenberg, and had painfully striven
to keep neutral throughout the war, neither side.
1507
GERMANY, 1630-1631.
Tilly's Capture of
Madgeburg.
GERMANY, 1631.
however, respecting his neutrality. In dread of
the plans of Gustavus Adolphus concerning
Poraerania and Prussia, he held aloof from him.
Meanwhile Tilly, general-in-chief of the troops
of the emperor and the League, drew near, but
suddenly turned aside to New Brandenburg, in
the Mecklenburg territory, now occupied by the
Swedes, captured it after three assaults, and put
the garrison to the sword (1631). He then laid
siege to Magdeburg. Gustavus Adolphus took
Frankfort-on-the-Oder, where there was an im-
perial garrison, and treated it, in retaliation, with
the same severity. Tlience, in the spring of
1631, he set out for Berlin. ... In Potsdam he
heard of the fall of Magdeburg. He then marched
with flying banners into Berlin, and compelled
the elector to become his ally. Magdeburg was
the strong refuge of Protestantism, and the most
important trading centre in North Germany. It
had resisted the Augsburg Interim of 1548, and
now resisted the Edict of Restitution, rejected
the newly appointed prince bishop, Leopold
AVilliam, son of the emperor himself, and refused
to receive the emperor's garrison. The city was
therefore banned by the emperor, and was be-
sieged for many weeks by Pappenheim, a gen-
eral of the League, who was then reinforced by
Tilly himself with his army. Gustavus Adol-
phus was unable to make an advance, in view of
the equivocal attitude of the two great Protes-
tant electors, without exposing his rear to garri-
soned fortresses. From Brandenburg as well as
Saxony he asked in vain for help to save the
Protestant city. Thus Magdeburg fell, Ma_v 10,
1631. The citizens were deceived by a pretended
withdrawal of the enemy. But suddenly, at
early dawn, the badly guarded fortifications were
stormed." — C. T. Lewis, Hist, of Germany, ch.
18, sect. 3-4. — Two gates of the city having been
opened by the storming party, "Tilly marched
in with part of his infantry. Immediately occu-
pying the principal streets, he drove the citizens
with pointed cannon into their dwellings, there
to await their destiny. They were not long held
in suspense ; a word from Tilly decided the fate
of Magdeburg. Even a more humane general
•would in vain have recommended mercy to such
soldiers; but Tilly never made the attempt. Left
by their general's silence masters of the lives of
all the citizens, the soldiery broke into the houses
to satiate their most brutal appetites. The
prayers of innocence excited some compassion in
the hearts of the Germans, but none in tlie rude
breasts of Pappenheim's Walloons. Scarcely
had the savage cruelty commenced, when the
other gates were thrown open, and the cavalry,
with the fearful hordes of the Croats, poured in
upon the devoted inhabitants. Here commenced
a scene of horrors for which history has no
language — poetry no pencil. Neither innocent
childhood, nor helpless old age; neither youth,
sex, rank, nor beauty, could disarm the fury of
the conquerors. AVives were abused in the arms
of their husbands, daughters at the feet of their
parents; and the defenceless sex exposed to the
double sacrifice of virtue and life. No situation,
however obscure, or however sacred, escaped the
rapacity of the enemy. In a single church fifty-
three women were found beheaded. The Croats
amused themselves with throwing children into
the flames; Pappenheim's Walloons with stab-
bing infants at the mother's breast. Some ofli-
cers of the League, horror-struck at this dreadful
scene, ventured to remind Tilly that he had it in
his power to stop the carnage. ' Return in an
hour,' was his answer; ' I will see what I can do;
the soldier must have some reward for his dan-
ger and toils.' These horrors lasted with un-
abated fury, till at last the smoke and flames
proved a check to the plunderers. To augment
the confusion and to divert the resistance of the
inhabitants, the Imperialists had, in the com-
mencement of the assault, fired the town in sev-
eral places. The wind rising rapidlj', spread the
flames, till the blaze became universal. Fearful,
indeed, was the tumult amid clouds of smoke,
heaps of dead bodies, the clash of swords, the
crash of falling ruins, and streams of blood. The
atmosphere glowed; and the intolerable heat
forced at last even the murderers to take refuge
in their camp. In less than twelve hours, this
strong, populous, and flourishing city, one of the
finest in Germany, was reduced to ashes, with
the exception of two churches and a few houses.
. . . The avarice of the officers had saved 400 of
the richest citizens, in the hope of extorting from
them an exorbitant ransom. But this humanity
was confined to the officers of the League, whom
the ruthless barbarity of the Imperialists caused
to be regarded as guardian angels. Scarcely had
the fury of the flames abated, when the Im-
perialists returned to renew the pillage amid the
ruins and ashes of the town. Many were suffo-
cated by the smoke ; many found rich booty in
the cellars, ^^■here the citizens had concealed their
more valuable effects. On the 13tli of May,
Tilly himself appeared in the town, after the
streets had been cleared of ashes and dead bodies.
Horrible and revolting to humanity was the
scene that presented itself. The living crawling
from under the dead, children wandering about
with heart-rending cries, calling for their parents ;
and infants still sucking the breasts of their life-
less mothers. Jlore than 6,000 bodies were
thrown into the Elbe to clear the streets; a much
greater number had been consumed by the flames.
The whole number of the slain was reckoned at
not less than 30,000. The entrance of the gen-
eral, which took place on the 14th, put a stop to
the plunder, and saved the few who had hitherto
contrived to escape. About a thousand people
were taken out of the cathedral, wliere they had
remained three daj'S and two nights, without
food, and in momentary fear of death." — F.
Schiller, Hist, of the Thirty Tears' War. bk. 3.
Also in : Sir E. Cust, Li^vs of the Warriors of
the Thirty Tears' War. pt. 1.
A. D. 1631 (January). — The Thirty Years
■War : The Treaty of Barvyalde between Gus-
tavus Adolphus and the king of France. — ' ' On
the 13th of January, 1631, the Treaty of Bar-
walde was concluded between France and
Sweden. Hard cash had been the principal sub-
ject of the negotiation, and Louis XIII. had
agreed to pay Gustavus a lump sum of $120,000
in consideration of his recent expenditure, — a
further sum of S400,000 a year for six years to
come. Until that time, or until a general peace,
if such should supervene earlier, Sweden was to
keep in the field an army of 30,000 foot and 6,000
horse. The object of the alliance was declared
to be ' the protection of their common friends,
the security of the Baltic, the freedom of com-
merce, the restitution of the oppressed members
of the Empire, the destruction of the newly erected
fortresses in the Baltic, the North Sea, and in the
1508
GERMANY, 1631.
Victories of
Gustaims Adolphus.
GERMANY, 1631.
Grisons territory, so that all should be left in the
state in wliicli it was before the German war liad
begun. ' Sweden was not to ' violate the Imperial
constitution ' where she conquered ; she was to
leave the Catholic religion undisturbed in all dis-
tricts where she found it existing. She was to
observe towards Bavaria and the League — the
spoilt darlings of Richelieu's anti-Austrian policy
— friendship or neutrality, so far as they would
observe it towards her. If, at the end of six
years, the objects were not accomplished, the
treaty was to be renewed."— ^C. R. L. Fletcher,
Ousiavus Adolphus and tfie Struggle of Protestant-
ism for Existence, ch, 9.
A. D. 1631. — The Thirty Years War: The
elector of Brandenburg brought to terms by the
king of Sweden. — The elector of Saxony fright-
ened into line. — Defeat of Tilly at Leipsig
(Breitenfeld). — Effects of the great victory. —
"Loud were the cries against Gustavus for not
having relieved Magdeburg. To answer them he
felt liimself bound to publish a careful apology.
In this document he declared, among other
things, that if he could have obtained from the
Elector of Brandenburg the passage of Kiistrin
he might not only have raised the siege of Mag-
deburg but have destroyed the whole of the Im-
perial array. The passage, however, had been
denied him; and though the preservation of
Magdeburg so much concerned the Elector of
Saxony, he could obtain from him a passage
toward it neither by Wittemberg, nor the Bridge
of Dessau, nor such assistance in provision and
shipping as was necessary for the success of the
enterprise. . . . Something more than mere per-
suasion had induced the Elector of Brandenburg,
after the capture of Francfort, to grant Gustavus
possession of Spandau for a mouth. The month
expired on the 8th of June ; and the elector de-
manded back his stronghold. The king, fettered
by liis promise, surrendered it ; but the next day,
having marched to Berlin and pointed his guns
against the palace, the ladies came forth as medi-
ators, and the elector consented both to surrender
Spandau again and to pay, for the maintenance
of tlie Swedish troops, a monthly subsidy of
30,000 rix-dollars. At the end of May Tilly re-
moved from Magdeburg and the Elbe to Ascher-
lebea This enabled the king to take Werben, on
the confluence of the Elbe anil Havel, where, after
the reduction of Tangermllnde and Havelberg,
he established his celebrated camp. " In the latter
part of July, Tilly made two attacks on the king's
camp at AVerben, and was repulsed on both occa-
sions with heavy loss. "In the middle of August,
Gustavus broke up his camp. His force at that
time, according to the muster-rolls, amounted to
13,000 foot, and 8,850 cavalry. He drew towards
Leipsig, then threatened by Tilly, who, having
been joined at Eisleben by 15,000 men under
Fiirstenburg, now possessed an ami}' 40,000
strong to enforce the emperor's ban against the
Leipsig decrees [or resolutions of a congress of
Protestant princes which had assembled at Leip-
sig in February, 1631, moved to some organized
common action by the Edict of Restitution]
within the limits of the electorate. The Elector
of Saxony was almost frightened out of his wits
by the impending danger. . . . His grief and
rage at the fall of Magdeburg had been so great
that, for two days after receiving the news, he
would admit no one into his presence. But that
dire event only added to his perplexity ; he
could resolve neither upon submission, nor upoD
vengeance. In May, indeed, terrified by the
threats of Ferdinand, he discontinued his levies,
and disbanded a part of his troops already en-
listed: but in June he sent Arnim to Gustavus
with such overtures that the king drank his
health, and seemed to have grown sanguine in
the hope of his alliance. In July, his courage
still rising, he permitted Gustavus to recruit in
his dominions. In August, his courage falling
again at the approach of Fiirstenburg, he gave
liim and his troops a free passage through Thu-
ringia. " But now, later in the same month, he
sent word to Gustavus Adolphus " that not only
Wittemberg but the whole electorate was open to
him : that not only his son, but himself, would
serve imder the king ; that he would advance one
month's payment for the Swedish troops imme-
diately, and give security for two monthly pay-
ments more. . . . Gustavus rejoiced to find the
Duke of Saxony in this temper, and, in pursuance
of a league now entered into with him, and the
Elector of Brandenburg, crossed the Elbe at Wit-
temberg on the 4tk of Septemlter. The Saxons,
from 16,000 to 20,000 strong, moving simultane-
ously from Torgau, the confederated armies met
at Dtiben on the JIulda, three leagues from Leip-
sig. At a conference held there, it was debated
whether it would be better to protract the war or
to hazard a battle. The king took the former
side, but yielded to the strong representations of
the Duke of Saxony. ... On the 6tli of Septem-
ber the allies came within six or eight miles of
the enemy, where they halted for the night. . . .
Breitenfeld, the place at which Tilly, urged by
the Importunity of Pappenheim, had chosen to
offer battle, was an extensive plain, in part re-
cently ploughed, about a mile from Leipsig and
near the cemetery of that city. Leipsig had sur-
rendered to Tilly two days before. The Imperial
army, estimated at 44,000 men, occupied a rising-
ground on the plain. . . . The army was drawn
up in one line of great depth, having the infantry
in the centre, the cavalry on the wings, accord-
ing to the Spanish order of battle. The king
subdivided his armj-, about 20,000 strong, into
centre and wings, each of which consisted of two
lines and a reserve. ... To this disposition is
attributed, in a great degree, the success of the
day. . . . The tiles being so comparatively shal-
low, artillery made less havoc among them.
Then, again, the division of the army into small
maniples, with considerable intervals between
each, gave space for evolutions, and the power
of throwing the troops with rapidity wherever
their services or support might be foimd re-
quisite. . . . The battle began at 13 o'clock. " It
only ended with the setting of the sun ; but long
before that time the great army of Tilly was sub-
stantially destroyed. It had scattered the Saxons
easily enough, and sent them flying, with their
woi'thless elector; but Gustavus and his disci-
plined, brave, powerfully handled Swedes had
broken and ruined the stout but clumsy imperial
lines. " It is scarcely possible to exaggerate the
importance of this success. On the event of that
day, as Gustavus himself said, the whole (Protes-
tant) cause, ' summa rei,' depended. The success
was great in itself. The numbers engaged on
either side had been nearly equal. Not so their
loss. The Imperial loss in killed and wounded,
according to Swedish computation, was from
8,000 to 10,000; according to the enemy's owd
1509
GERMANY, 1631.
JVallenstein^s
Recall.
GERMANY, 1631-1632.
account, between 6,000 and 7,000; while all seem
to agree that the loss on the side of the allies was
only 3,700, of which 3,000 were Saxon. 700
Swedes. Besides, Gustavus won the whole of
the enemy's artillery, and more than 100 stan-
dards. Then the army of Tilly being annihilated
left him free to choose his ne.\t point of attack,
almost his next victory." — B. Chapman, Hist, of
Griistainis Achlphus, ch. 8.— " The battle of
Breitenfeld was an epoch in war, and it was an
epoch in history. It was an epoch in war, be-
cause first in it was displayed on a great scale
the superiority of mobility over weight. It was
an epoch in history, because it broke the force
upon which the revived Catholicism had relied
for the extension of its empire over Europe. . . .
' Germany might tear herself and be torn to
pieces for yet another half-generation, but the
actual result of the Thirty-Years' War was as
good as achieved.'" — C. R. L. Fletcher, Q-usta-
vus Adolphus and the Struggle of Protestantism
for Existence, ch. 11.
Also in: G. B. Malleson, The Battle-fields of
Oermany, ch. 1.
A. D. 1631-1632.— The Thirty 'Y^ears 'War :
Movements and plans of the Swedish king in
southern Germany. — Temporary recovery of
the Palatinate. — Occupation of Bavaria. — The
Saxons in Bohemia. — Battle of the Lech. —
Death of Tilly. — Wallenstein's recall. — Siege
and relief of Nuremberg. — Battle of Liitzen,
and death of Gustavus Adolphus. — "This battle,
sometimes called Breitenwald [Breitenfeld], some-
times the First Battle of Leipsic, . . . was the
first victory on the Protestant side that had been
achieved. It was Tilly's first defeat after thirty
battles. It tilled with joy those who had hitherto
been depressed and hopeless. Cities which had
dreaded to declare themselves for fear of the fate
of Magdeburg began to lift up their heads, and
vacillating princes to think that they could safely
take the part which they preferred. Gustavus
knew, however, that he must let the Germans do
as much as possible for themselves, or he should
arouse their national jealousy of him as a foreign
conqueror. So he sent the Elector of Saxony to
awaken the old spirit in Bohemia. As for him-
self, his great counsellor, Oxenstierna, wanted
him to march straight on Vienna, but this was
not his object. He wanted primarily to deliver
the northern states, and to encourage the mer-
chant cities, Ulm, Augsburg, Nuremberg, which
had all along been Protestant, and to dehver the
Palatinate from its oppressors. And, out of mor-
tification, a strange ally offered himself, namely,
Wallenstein, wlio wanted revenge on the Catho-
lic League which had insisted on his dismissal,
and the Emperor who had yielded to them. . . .
He said that if Gustavus would trust him, he
would soon get his old army together again, and
chase Ferdinand and the Jesuits beyond the Alps.
But Gustavus did not trust him, though he sat
quiet at Prague while the Saxons were in pos-
session of the city, plundering everywhere, and
the Elector sending off to Dresden fifty waggon-
loads filled with the treasures of the Eniperor
Rudolf's museum. . . . Many exiles returned,
and there was a general resumption of the Huss-
ite form of worship. Gustavus had marched to
Erfurt, and then turned towards the Maine,
where there was a long row of those prince bish-
oprics established on the frontier by the policy
of Charlemagne — Wurtzburg. Bamberg, Fulda,
Koln, Triers, Mentz, Wurms, Spiers. These had
never been secularised and were popularly called
the Priests' Lane. They had given all their forces
to the Catholic League, and Gustavus meant to
repay himself upon them. He permitted no
cruelties, no persecutions; but he levied heavy
contributions, and his troops made merry with the
good Rhenish wine when he kept his Christmas
at Mentz. He invited the dispossessed Elector
Palatine to join him, and Frederick started for
the camp, after the christening of his thirteenth
child. . . . The suite was numerous enough to
fill forty coaches, escorted by seventy horse —
pretty well for an exiled prince dependent on
the bounty of Holland and England. . . . There
was the utmost enthusiasm for the Swede in
England, and the j\larquess of Hamilton obtained
permission to raise a body of volunteers to join
the Swedish standards, and in the August of 1631
brought 6.000 English and Scots in four small
regiments ; but they proved of little use . . . many
dying. ... So far as the King's plans can be
understood, he meant to have formed a number
of Protestant principalities, and united them in
what he called 'Corpus Evangelicorum' around
the Baltic and the Elbe, as a balance to the Aus-
trian Roman Catholic power in southern Ger-
many. Frederick wanted to raise an army of his
own people and take the command, but to this
Gustavus would not consent, having probably
no great confidence in his capacity. All the
Palatinate was free from the enemy except the
three fortresses of Heidelberg, Frankenthal, and
Kreuznach, and the last of these was immediately
besieged. ... In the midst of the exultation
Frederick was grieved to learn that his beautiful
home at Heidelberg had been ravaged by fire,
probably by the Spanish garrison in expectation
of having to abandon it. But as Tilly was col-
lecting his forces again, Gustavus would not
wait to master that place or Frankenthal, and
recrossed the Rhine. Sir Harry Vane had been
sent as ambassador from Charles I. to arrange
for the restoration of the Palatinate, the King
offering £10,000 a month for the expense of the
war, and proposing that if, as was only too prob-
able, he should be prevented from performing
this promise, some of the fortresses should be
left as guarantees in the hands of the Swedes.
Frederick took great and petulant offence at this
stipulation, and complained, with tears in his
eyes, to Vane and the Marquess of Hamilton.
... He persuaded them to suppress this article,
though they warned him that if the treaty failed
it would be by his own fault. It did in fact fail,
for, as usual, the English money was not forth-
coming, and even if it had been, Gustavus de-
clared that he would be no man's servant for a
few thousand pounds. Frederick also refused
the King's own stipulation, that Lutherans should
enjoy equal rights with Calvinists. ^Moreover,
the Swedish success had been considerably more
than was desired by his French allies. . . . Louis
XIII. was distressed, but Richelieu silenced him,
onl}- attempting to make a treaty with the
Swedes by which the Elector of Bavaria and the
Catholic League should be neutral on condition
of the restoration of the bishops. To this, how-
ever. Gustavus could not fully consent, and im-
posed conditions which the Catholics could not
accept. Tilly was collecting his forces and threat-
ening Nuremberg, but the Swedes advanced,
and he was forced to retreat, so that ii was as a
1510
GERMANY, 1631-1633.
Death of
Gustavus Adolphus,
GERMANY, 1633-1634.
deliverer that, oa the 81st March [1632], Gustavus
was received in beautiful old Nuremberg with a
rapture of welcome. . . . Tilly had taken post
on the Lech, and Maximilian was collecting an
army in Bavaria. The oljject of Gustavus was
now to beat one or other of them before they
could join togetlier: so he marched forward,
took Donauwerth, and tried to take Ingoldstadt,
but found it would occupy too much time, and,
though all the generals were of a contrary opin-
ion, resolved to attack Tilly and force the pas-
sage of the Lech. The Imperialists had fortitied
it to the utmost, but in their very teeth the
Swedes succeeded in taking advantage of a bend
in the river to play on tliem with their formid-
able artillery, construct a pontoon bridge, and,
after a desperate struggle, effect a passage. Tilly
was struck by a cannon-shot in the knee," and
died soon afterwards. "On went Gustavus to
Augsburg . . . where the Emperor had expelled
the Lutheran pastors and cleared the municipal
■council of Protestant burgomasters. In restor-
ing the former state of things, Gustavus took a
fresh step, making the magistrates not only
swear fidelity to him as an ally till the end of
the war, but as a sovereign. This made the Ger-
mans begin to wonder what were his ulterior
views. Then he marched on upon Bavaria, in-
tending to bridge the Danube and take Ratisbon,
but two strong forts prevented this. . . . He,
however, made his waj' into the country between
the Inn and the Lech, ilaximilian retreating be-
fore him. ... At Munich the inhabitants brought
him their keys. As they knelt he said, ' Rise,
worsliip God, not man.'. . . To compensate the
soldiers for not plumlering the city, the King
gave them each a crown on the day of their en-
trance. . . . Catholic Germany was in despair.
There was only one general in whom there was
any hope, and that was the discarded Wallen-
stein. ... He made himself be courted. He
would not come to Vienna, only to Znaim in
Moravia, where he made his terms like an inde-
pendent prince. ... At last he undertook to
collect an army, but refused to take the com-
mand for more than three months. His name
was enough to bring his Friedlanders flocking to
his standard. Not only Catholics, but Protestants
came, viewing Gustavus as a foreign invader.
. . . Wallenstein received subsidies not only from
the Emperor, but from the Pope and the King of
Spain, towards levj'ing and equipping them, and
by the end of the three months he had the full
40,000 all in full order for the march. Then he
resigned the command. . . . He affected to be
bent only on going back to his tower and his
stars at Prague [the study of astrology being his
favorite occupation], and to yield slowly to the
proposals made him. He was to be Generalis-
simo, neither Emperor nor Archduke was ever to
enter his camp ; he was to name all his officers,
and have absolute control. . . . Moreover, he
might levy contributions as he chose, and dis-
pose as he pleased of lands and property taken
from the enemy ; Mecklenburg was to be secured
to him, together with further rewards yet un-
specified : and when Bohemia was freed from the
enemy, the Emperor was to live there, no doubt
under his control. . . . There was no help for it,
and Wallenstein thus became the chief power in
the Empire, in fact a dictator. The power was
conferred on him in April. The first thing he
did was to turn the Saxons out of Bohemia,
which was an easy matter." At Egra, Wallen-
stein was joined by the Elector of Bavaria, which
raised the Catholic force to 60,000. "The whole
army marched upon Nuremberg, and Gustavus,
withonl)- 30,000 men, da.shed back to its defence.
Wallenstein had intrenciied himself on an emi-
nence called Flirth. " As Nuremberg was terribly
distressed, his own army suffering, and being in-
fected with the lawless habits of German warfare,
Gustavus found it necessar}- to attempt (August
34) the storming of the Imperialists' camp. He
was repulsed, after losing 3,000 of his Swedes
and thrice as many Germans. He then returned
to Bavaria, while Wallenstein, abandoning his
hope of taking Nuremberg, moved into Saxony
and began ravaging the country. The Swedish
king followed him so quickly tliat he had no
time to establish the fortified camp he had in-
tended, but was forced to take up an intrenched
position at Llitzen. There he was attacked on
the 6th of November. 1633, and defeated in a
desperate battle, which became one of the mem-
orable conflicts in history because it brought to
an end the great and splendid career of Gustavus
Adolphus, the Swede. The king fell as he was
leading a charge, and the fierce fight went on
over his body until the enemy had been driven
from the field. — C. M. Yonge, Cameos from Eng-
lish History, Qth series, c. 19.
Also in : G. B. Malleson, Battle-fiekls of Oer-
many, ch. 8-3. — R. C. Trench, Gnstavus AdolpJms
in Oermany. — .1. L. Stevens, Hist, of Gustavus
Adolphus, ch. 1.0-18.
A. D. 1631-1641.— The Thirty Years War:
The war in Lorraine. — Possession of the
duchy taken by the French. See LoRK.\rNE:
A. D. 1634-1063.
A. D. 1632-1634. — The Thirty Years War:
Retirement of Wallenstein to Bohemia. — Ox-
enstiern in the leadership of the Protestant
cause. — Union of Heilbronn. — Inaction and
suspicious conduct of Wallenstein. — The Ban
pronounced against him. — His assassination.
— " The account of the battle [of Liitzen] trans-
mitted by Wallenstein to the Imperial Court, led
Ferdinand to think that lie had gained the day.
. . . But . . . the reputed conqueror was glad
to shelter himself behind the mountains of the
Bohemian frontier. After the battle, Wallenstein
found it necessary to evacuate Saxony in all
haste; and, leaving garrisons at Leipsic, Plauen,
Zwickau, Chenmitz, Freiberg, Meissen, and
Frauenstein, he reached Bohemia without further
loss, and put his army into winter-quarters.
After his arrival at Prague, he caused many of
his officers to be executed for their conduct at
Liitzen, among whom were several who belonged
to families of distinction, nor would he allow
them to plead the Emperor's pardon. A few he
rewarded. The harshness of his proceedings in-
creased the hatred already felt for him by many
of his officers, and esiiecially the Italian portion
of them. . . . Axel Oxenstiern, the Swedish
Chancellor, succeeded, on the death of Gustavus
Adolphus, to the supreme direction of the affairs
of Sweden in Germany, and was invested by
the Council at Stockholm with full powers both
to direct the army and to negotiate with the
German courts. Duke Bernhard of Saxe-Wei-
mar retained the military command of the Swed-
ish-German army, divisions of which were can-
toned from the Baltic to the Danube. After
driving the Imperialists from Saxony, Bernhard
1511
GERMANY, 1633-1634.
Assassinatioti of
Wallenstein.
GERMANY, 1634-1639.
had hastened into Franconia, the bishoprics of
which, according to a promise of Gustavus, were
to be erected in his favour into a ducliy; but,
after taking Bamberg, his assistance was invoked
by General Horn, on tlie Upper Danube. One of
the first cares of Oxenstiern was to consolidate
the German alliance; and, in March 1633, he
summoned a meeting at Heilbronn of the States
of the four Circles of the Upper and Lower Rhine,
Franconia, and Suabia, as well as deputies from
Nuremberg, Strasburg, Frankfort, Ulm, Augs-
burg, and other cities of the empire. The as-
sembly was also attended by ambassadors from
France, England, and Holland : and on April 9th
was effected the Union of Heilbronn. Branden-
burg aijd Saxony stood aloof; nor was France,
though she renewed the alliance with Sweden,
included in the Union. The French minister at
Heilbronn assisted, however, in the formation of
the Union, although he endeavoured to limit the
power of Oxenstiern, to whom the conduct of
the war was intrusted. At the same time, the
Swedes also concluded a treaty with the Palati-
nate, now governed, or rather claimed to be gov-
erned, by Louis Philip, brother of the Elector
Frederick V., as guardian and regent for the
iatter's youthful sou Charles Louis. The unfor-
tunate Frederick had expired at Mentz in his
37th year, not many days after the death of Gus-
tavus Adolphus. . . . Swedish garrisons were to
be maintained in Frankenthal, Bacharach, Kaub,
and other places; Mannheim was to be at the dis-
posal of the Swedes so long as the war should
last. . . . After the junction of Duke Bernhard
with Horn, the Swedish army, — for so we shall
continue to call it, though composed in great
part of Germans, — endeavoured to penetrate into
Bavaria; but the Imperial General Altringer,
aided by John von Werth, a commander of dis-
tinction, succeeded in covering Munich, and en-
abled Maximilian to return to his capital. The
Swedish generals were also embarrassed by a
mutinj' of their mercenaries, as well as by their
own misunderstandings and quarrels; and all
that Duke Bernhard was able to accomplish in
the campaign of 1633, besides some forays into
Bavaria, was the capture of Ratisbon in Novem-
ber. " — T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk.
4, cJt. 6 (f, 2). — Wallenstein, meantime, had been
doing little. "After a long period of inaction
in Bohemia, he marched during the summer of
1633, with imperial pomp and splendor, into Sile-
sia. There he found a mixed army of Swedes,
Saxons, and Brandenburgers, with Matthias
Thurn, who began the war, among them. Wal-
lenstein finally shut in this array [at Steinau] so
that he might have captured it ; but he let it go,
and went back to Bohemia, where he began to
negotiate with Saxony for peace. Meanwhile
the alliance formed at Heilbronn had brought
Maximilian of Bavaria into great distress. Re-
gensburg [Ratisbon], hitherto occupied by him,
and regarded as an outwork of Bavaria and Aus-
tria, had been taken by Bernard of Weimar.
But AVallensteiu, whom "the emperor sent to the
rescue, only went into the Upper Palatinate, and
then returned to Bohemia. He seemed to look
upon that country as a strong and commanding
position from which he could dictate peace. He
carried on secret negotiations with France,
Sweden, and all the emperor's enemies. He had,
indeed, the power to do this under his commis-
sion ; but his attitude toward his master became
constantly more equivocal. The emperor was
anxious to be rid of him without making him an
enemy, and wished to give to his own son, the
young King of Hungary, the command in cliief.
But the danger of losing his place drove Wal-
lenstein to bolder schemes. At his camp at Pil-
sen, all his principal officers were induced by him
to unite in a written request that ho should in no-
case desert them — a step which seemed much
like a conspiracy. But some of the generals, as
Gallas, Aldringer, and Piccolomini, soon aban-
doned Wallenstein, and gave warning to the em-
peror. He secretly signed a jiatent deposing
Wallenstein, and placed it in the hands of Picco-
lomini and Gallas, January 24, 1634, but acted
with the profoundest dissimulation imtil he had
made sure of most of the commanders who-
served under him. Then, suddenly, on February
18, AValleustein, liis brother-in-law Tertzski,
How, Neumann, and Kinsky were put under the
ban, and the general's possessions were confis-
cated. Now, .at length, Wallenstein openly re-
volted, and began to treat with the Swedes for
desertion to them; but they did not fully trust
him. Attended only liy tive Sclavonic regiments,
who remained faithful to him, he went to Eger,
where he was to meet troojis of Beruai-d of Wei-
mar; but before he covdd join them, he and the
friends named above were assassinated, February
25, by traitors who had remained in his intimate
companionship, and whom he trusted, under the
command of Colonel Butler, an Irishman, em-
ployed by Piccolomini." — C. T. Lewis, Hist, of
Oermany, ch. 18, seet. 10.
Also in : F. Schiller, Hist, of the Thirty Years'
War, bk. 4.— J. Mitchell, Life of Wallenstein, eh.
8-10. — Sir E. Cust, Lives of the Warriors of the
Thirty Tears War, pt. 1.
A. D. 1634-1639. — The Thirty Years War:
Successes of the Imperialists. — Their victory
at Nordlingen. — Richelieu and France become
active in the war. — Duke Bernhard's conquest
of Alsace. — Richelieu's appropriation of the
conquest for France. — " Want of union among
the Protestants prevented them from deriving all
the benefit which they had at first anticipated
from Wallenstein's death. The King of Hun-
gary assumed the command of the army, and by
the aid of money, which was plentifvdly distrib-
uted, the soldiers were, without difficulty, kept
in obedience ; not the slightest attempt was any
where made to resist the Emperor's orders. On
the other hand, Bernhard of Weimar and Field-
Marshal Horn were masters of Bavaria. In July
1634, they gained a complete victory at Land-
shut, over General Altringer, who was slain in
the action. . . . The Swedes, who had so long
been victorious, were, in their turn, destined to
taste the bitterness of defeat. 15,000 Spaniards,
under the Cardinal Infant, son of Philip III.,
entered Germany [see Netherlands: A.D. 1631-
1633, and 1635-1638], and in conjunction with
the imperial army, under the King of Hungary,
laid siege to N5rdlingen. Field-JIarshal Horn,
and Bernhard of Weimar, hurried to the relief of
the place. Owing to the superiority of the
enemy, who was besides strongly intrenched, the
Swedish commanders had no intention to hazard
a battle, before the arrival of the Rhin-graff
Count Otho, with another division of the army,
which was already close at hand; but the im-
petuosity of the Duke of Weimar lost every
thing. Horn had succeeded in carrying a hill.
1512
GERMANY, 1634-1639.
RicheliexCs
Intrigues,
GERMANY, 1634-1639.
called the Amsberg, a strong point, which placed
him in communication with the town, and almost
secured the victory. Beruhard. thiuldug tliat so
favourable au opening should not be neglected,
hurried on to the attack of another post. It was
taken and retakeu; both armies were gradually,
and without method, drawn into the combat,
which, after eiglit hours' duration, ended in the
complete defeat of the Swedes. Horn was made
prisoner; and Berahard escaped on a borrowed
horse. . . . The defeat of Nordlingen almost
ruined tlie Swedish cause in Germany ; the spell
of invincibility was gone, and the effects of the
panic far surpassed those which the sword had
produced. Strong fortresses were abandoned
before the enemy came in sight ; provinces were
evacuated, and armies, that had been deemed
almost inconquerable. deserted their chiefs, and
broke into bands of lawless robbers, who pillaged
their way in every direction. Bavaria, Suabia
and Franconia were lost ; and it was only behind
the Rhine that the scattered fugitives could again
be brought into something like order. . . . The
Emperor refused to grant the Swedes any other
terms of peace than permission to retire from the
empire. The Elector of Saxony, forgetful of
■what was due to his religion, and forgetful of all
that Sweden had done for his country, concluded,
at Prague, a separate peace with the Emperor;
and soon afterwards joined the Imperialists
against his former allies. The fortunes of the
Protestants would have sunk beneath this addi-
tional blow, had not France come to their aid.
Richelieu had before only nourished the war by
means of subsidies, and had, at one time, become
nearly as jealous of the Swedes as of the Aus-
trians; but no sooner was their power broken,
than the crafty priest took an active share in the
contest." — .1. Mitchell, Life of Wallenstein, ch. 10.
— "Richelieu entered resolutely into the contest,
and in 163.5 displayed enormous diplomatic ac-
tivity. He wished not only to reduce Austria,
but, at the same time, Spain. Spanish soldiers,
Spanish treasure, and Spanish generals made in
great part the strength of the imperial armies,
and Spain besides never ceased to ferment internal
troubles in France. Richelieu signed the treaty
of Compiegne with the Swedes against Ferdinand
II. By its conditions he granted them consider-
able subsidies in order that they should continue
the war in Germany. He made the treaty of St.
Germain en Laye with Bernard of Saxe Weimar,
to whom he promised an annual allowance of
money as well as Alsace, provided that he should
remain in arms to wrest Franche-Comte from
Philip IV. He made the treaty of Paris with
the Dutch, who were to help the King of France
to conquer Flanders, which was to be divided
between France and the United Provinces. He
made the treaty of Rivoli with the dukes of
Savoy, of Parma, and of Mantua, who were to
undertake in concert with France the invasion of
the territories of Milan and to receive a portion
of the spoils of Spain. At the same time he de-
clared war against the Spanish Government,
•which had arrested and imprisoned the Elector
of Treves, the ally of France, and refused to
surrender him when demanded. Hostilities im-
mediately began on five different theatres of war
— in the Low Countries, on the Rhine, in East-
ern Germany, in Italy, and in Spain. The army
of the Rhine, commanded by Cardinal de la
Valette, was to operate in conjunction with the
corps of Bernard of Sase "Weimar against the
Imperialists, commanded by Count Gallas. To
this army Turenne was attached. It consisted
of 20,000 infantry, 5,000 cav.alry, and 14 guns.
This was the army upon which Richelieu mainly
relied. . . . Valette was to annoy the enemy
without exposing him.self, and was not to ap-
proach the Rhine; but induced by Bernard, who
had a dashing spirit and wished to reconquer all
he had lost, encouraged by the terror of the Im-
perialists who raised the siege of Mayence, lie
determined to pass the river. He was not long
in repenting of that stej). He established his
troops round Mayence and revictualled this place,
which was occupied by a Swedish garrison,
throwing in all the supplies of which the town
had need. The Imperialists, who had calculated
on this imprudence, immediately took to cutting
off his supplies, so that soon everything was
wanting in the French camp. . . . The scourge of
famine threatened the French : it was necessary to
retreat, to recross the Rhine, to pass the Sarre,
and seek a refuge at Metz. Few retreats have
been so difficult and so sad. The army was in
such a pitiable condition that round Mayence the
men had to be fed with roots and green grapes,
and the horses with branches of trees. . . . The
sick and the weary were abandoned, the guns
were buried, villages were burnt to stay the
pursuit of the enemy, and to prevent the wretched
soldiers who would fall out of the ranks from
taking refuge in them." — H. M. Hozier, Turenne,
ch. 3. — "Meanwhile, Saxony had concluded with
the Emperor at Pirna, at the close of 1634, a con-
vention which ripened into a treaty of alliance,
to which almost all the princes of Northern Ger-
many subscribed, at Prague, in the month of
May following. The Electors of Saxony and
Brandenburg were thus changed into enemies of
Sweden. The Swedish General, Banner [or
Baner], who, at the period of the battle of NOrd-
lingen, had been encamped side by side with the
Saxon arm}' on the White Hill near Prague, had,
on the first indication of wavering on the part of
its Elector, managed skilfully to withdraw his
troops from the dangerous proximity. On the
22nd October 1635, he defeated the Saxon army,
at DOmitz on the Elbe, then invaded Branden-
burg, took Havelberg, and even threatened Ber-
lin. Compelled by the approach of a Saxon and
Imperialist array to quit his prey, he turned
and beat the combined army at W'ittstock (24th
September 1636). After that battle, he drew the
reinforced Imperialists, commanded by Gallas,
after him into Pomerania ; there he caused them
great losses by cutting off their supplies, then
forced them back into Saxony, and, following
them up closely, attacked and beat them badly
at Chemnitz (4th April, 1639)." In the south,
Duke Bernhard had gained meantime some solid
successes. After his retreat from Mayence, in
1635, he had concluded his secret treaty with
Richelieu, placing himself wholly at the service
of France, and I'eceiving the promise of 4,000,000
francs yearly, for the support of his army, and
the ultimate sovereignty of Alsace for himself.
"Having concerted measures with La Valette
[1636], . . . he invaded Lorraine, drove the enemy
thence, taking Saarburg and Pfalzburg, and
then, entering Alsace, took Saverne. His career
of conquest in Alsace was checked by the in-
vasion of Burgundy by Gallas, with an army of
40,000 men. Duke Bernhard marched with all
1513
GERMANY, 1634-1639.
Duke Bernhard.
GERMANY, 1640-1645.
haste to Dijon, and forced Gallas to fall back,
with great loss, beyond the Saone (November
1636). Pursuing his advantages, early the fol-
lowing year he forced the passage of the Saone
at Gray, despite the vivid resistance of Prince
Charles of Lorraine (June 1637), and pursued
that commander as far as Besan9on. Reinforced
during the autumn, he marched towards the
Upper Rhine, and, undertaking a winter cam-
paign, captured Lauilenburg, after a skirmish
with John of Werth ; then Silckingen and Wald-
shut. and laid siege to Rheinfelden. The Im-
perialist army, led by John of Werth, succeeded,
indeed, after a very hot encounter, in relieving
that place ; but three days later Duke Bernhard
attacked and completely defeated it (21st Feb-
ruary 1638), taking prisoners not only John of
Werth himself, but the generals, Savelli, Enke-
fort, and Sperreuter. The consequences of this
victory were the fall of Rheinfelden, Rotteln,
Neuenberg, and Freiburg. Duke Bernhard then
laid siege to Breisach (July 1638). . . . The Im-
perial general, GOtz, advanced at the head of a
force considerably outnumbering that of Duke
Bernhard. Le.aving a portion of his army before
the place, Duke Bernhard then drew to himself
Turenne, who was l}'ing in the vicinity with
3,000 men, fell upon the Imperialists at Witten-
weiher (30th July), completely defeated them,
and captured their whole convoy. Another Im-
perialist army, led by the Duke of Lorraine in
person, shared a similar fate at Thann, in the
Sundgau, on the 4th October following. Gotz,
who was hastening with a strengthened army to
support the Duke of Lorraine, attacked Duke
Bernhard ten days later, but was repulsed witli
great loss. Breisach capitulated on the 7th De-
cember. Duke Bernhard took possession of it in
his own name, and foiled all the efforts of Riche-
lieu to secure it for France, by garrisoning it
with German soldiers. To compensate the French
Cardinal Minister for Breisach, Duke Bernhard
undertook a winter campaign to drive the Im-
perialists from Franche-Comte. Entering that
province at the end of December, he speedily
made himself master of its richest part. He then
returned to Alsace with the resolution to cross
the Rhine and carry the war once again into
Bavaria," and then, in junction with Banner, to
Vienna. " He had made all the necessary prep-
arations for this enterprise, had actually sent his
army across the Rhine, when he died very sud-
denly, not without suspicion of poison, at Neu-
berg am Rhein (8th July, 1639). The lands he
had conquered he bequeathed to his brother.
. . . But Richelieu paid no attention to the
wishes of the dead general. Before any of the
family could interfere, he had secured all the
fortresses in Alsace, even Breisach, which was
its key, for France." — G. B. Malleson, The Battle-
fields of Oermany, ch. 5. — "During [1639] Picco-
lomini, at the head of the Imperialist and Spanish
troops, gave battle to the French at Diedenhofen.
The battle took place on the 7th of June, and the
French were beaten and suffered great losses." —
A. Gindely, Hist, of the Thirty Years' Wai; ch. 8.
Also in": Sir E. Cust, Lives of the Warriors of
the Thirty Years' War, pt. 3.— S. R. Gardiner,
Tlie Thirty Years' War, ch. 9, sect. 5,
A. D. 1635-1638.— The Thirty Years War :
Campaigns in the Netherlands. — The Dutch
and French against the Spaniards. See Neth-
eblandb: a. D. 1635-1638.
A. D. 1636-1637.— Diet at Ratisbon.— At-
tempted negotiations of peace. — Death of the
Emperor Ferdinand II. — "An electoral diet
was assembled at Ratisbon, by the emperor in
person, on the 15th of September, 1636, for the
ostensible purpose of restoring peace, for which
some vague negotiations had been opened under
the mediation of the pope and the king of Den-
mark, and congresses appointed at Hamburgh
and Cologne ; but with the real view of procur-
ing the election of his son Ferdinand as king of
the Romans. . . . Ferdinand was elected with
'■- 'y the fruitless protest of the Palatine family,
and the dissenting voice of the elector of Treves.
. . . The emperor did not long survive this
happy event. He died on the 15th of February,
1637. . . . Ferdinand . . . seems to have been
the first who formally established the right of
primogeniture in all his hereditary territories. By
his testament, dated May 10th, 1621, he ordered
that all his Austrian dominions should devolve on
his eldest male descendant, and fixed the majority
at 18 years." — W. Coxe, Hist, of the House of
Austria, ch. 56 (v. 2).
A. D. 1637. — Election of the Emperor Fer-
dinand III.
A. D. 1640-1645.— The Thirty Years War :
Campaigns of Saner and Torstenson. — The
second Breitenfeld. — Jankowitz. — Mergent-
heim. — Allerheim. — War in Denmark. —
Swedish army in Austria. — Saxony forced to
neutrality. — "The war still went on for eight
years, but the only influence that it exerted upon
the subsequent Peace was that it overcame the
last doubts of the Imperial court as to the indis-
pensable principles of the Peace. . . . The first
event of importance on the theatre of war after
Bernhard's death was Bauer's attempt to join the
army of Weimar in central Germany. Not in a
condition to pass the winter in Bohemia, and
threatened in Saxony and Silesia, he . . . com-
menced [March, 1640] a retreat amidst fearful
devastations, crossed the Elbe at Leitmeritz, and
arrived April 3rd at Zwickau. He succeeded in
joining with the mercenaries of Weimar and the
troops of Lllneburg and Hesse at Saalfeld ; " but
no joint action was found possible. " Until De-
cember, the war on both sides consisted of
marches hither and thither, accompanied with
horrible devastation; but nothing decisive oc-
curred. In September the Diet met at Ratisbon.
While wearisome attempts were being made to
bend the obstinacy of Austria, Baner resolved to
compel her to yield by a bold stroke, to invade
the Upper Palatinate, to surprise Ratisbon, and
to put an end to the Diet and Emperor together.
. . . NotwithoutdiflicultyGuebriant [command-
ing the French in Alsace] was induced to follow,
and to join Baner at Erfurt. . . . But the sur-
prise of Ratisbon was a failure. . . . The armies
now separated again. Baner exhausted his pow-
ers of persuasion in vain to induce Guebriant to
go with him. The French went westward. Hard
pressed himself, Baner proceeded by forced
marches towards Bohemia, and by the end of
March reached Zwickau, where he met Guebri-
ant again, and they had a sharp conflict with the
Imperialists on the Saal. There Baner died, on
the 31st of May, 1641, leaving his army in a most
critical condition. The warfare of the Swedish-
French arms was come to a standstill. Both
armies were near dissolution, when, in November,
Torstenson, the last of the Gustavus Adolphus
1514
GERMANY, 1640-1645.
Campaigns
of the Swedes.
GERMANY, 1643-1644.
school of generals, and the one who most nearly
equalled the master, appeared with the Swedish
army, and by a few vigorous strokes, which fol-
lowed each other with unexampled rapidity, re-
stored the supremacy of its arms. . . . After
three months of rest, which he mainly devoted to
the reorganization and payment of his array, by
the middle of January [1642] he had advanced
towards the Elbe and the Altmark ; and as the
Imperial forces were weakened by sending troops
to the Rhine, he formed the great project of pro-
ceeding through Silesia to the Austrian hereditary
dominions. On April 3rd he crossed the Elbe at
Werben, between the Imperial troops, increased
his army to 20,000 men, stormed Glogau on May
4th, stood before Schweidnitz on the 30th, and de-
feated Francis Albert of Lauenburg ; Schweidnitz,
Neisse, and Oppeln fell into his hands. Mean-
while Guebriant, after subduing the defiant and
mutinous spirit of his troops by means of money
and promises, had, on January 17th, defeated the
Imperialists near Kempen, not far from Crefeld
[at Hulst], for which he was honoured with the
dignity of marshal. But this was a short-lived
gleam of light, and was soon followed by dark
days, occasioned by want of money and discon-
tent in the camp. ... He had turned eastward
from the Rhine to seek quarters for his murmur-
ing troops in nether Germany, when Torstenson
effected a decision in Saxony. After relieving
Glogau, and having in vain tried to enter Bohe-
mia, he had joined the detachments of Konigs-
mark and Wrangel, and on October 30th he ap-
peared before Leipzig. On November 2nd there
was a battle near Breitenfeld, which ended in a
disastrous defeat of the Imperialists and Leipzig
surrendered to Torstenson three weeks after-
wards. In spite of all the advantages which
Torstenson gained for himself, it never came to
a united action with the French; and tlie first
victory won by the French in the Netherlands, in
May, i643, did not alter this state of things. Tor-
stenson . . . was suddenly called to a remote
scene of war in the north. King Christian IV. of
Denmark had been persuaded, by means of the
old Danish jealousy of Sweden, to take up arms
for the Emperor. He declared war just as Tor-
stenson was proceeding to Austria. Vienna was
now saved ; but so much the worse for Denmark.
In forced marches, which were justly admired,
Torstenson set out from Silesia towards Den-
mark at the end of October, conducted a masterly
campaign against tlie Danes, beat them wherever
he met with them, conquered Holstein and Schles-
wig, pushed on to Jutland, then, while Wrangel
and Horn carried on the war (till the peace of
BrOmsebro, August, 1645), he returned and again
took up the war against the Imperialists, every-
where an unvanquished general. The Imperial-
ists under the incompetent Gallas intended to
give Denmark breathing-time by creating a diver-
sion ; but it did not save Denmark, and brought
another defeat upon themselves. Gallas did not
bring back more than 2,000 men from Magdeburg
to Bohemia, and they were in a very disorganized
state. He was pursued by Torstenson, while
Ragoczy threatened Hungary. The Emperor
hastily collected what forces he could command,
and resolved to give battle. Torstenson had ad-
vanced as far as Glattau in February, and on
March 6th, 1645, a battle was fought near Janko-
witz, three miles from Tabor. It was the most
brilliant victory ever gained by the Swedes. The
Imperial army was cut to pieces ; several of its
leaders imprisoned or killed. In a few weeks
Torstenson conquered Moravia and Austria as
far as the Danube. Not far from the capital it-
self he took possession of the Wolfsbrilcke. As
in 1618, Vienna was in great danger." But the
ill-success of the French " alwaj's counterbalanced
the Swedes' advantages. Either they were beaten
just as the Swedes were victorious, or could not
turn a victory to account. So it was during this
year [1645]. The west frontier of the empire
was guarded on the imperial side by Jlercy, to-
gether with John of Werth, after he was liberated
from prison. On 26th March, Turenne crossed
the Rhine, and advanced towards Frauconia.
There he encamped near Mergentheim and Rosen-
berg. On 5th May, a battle near Mergentheim
ended with the entire defeat of the French, and
Turenne escaped with the greatest difficulty by
way of Hammelburg, towards Fulda. The vic-
tors pushed on to the Rhine. To avenge this
defeat, Enghien was sent from Paris, and, at the
beginning of July, arrived at Spires, with 12,000
men. His forces, together with KOnlgsmark's,
the remnant of Turenne's and the Hessians,
amounted to 30,000 men. At first Mercy dexter-
ously avoided a battle under unfavourable cir-
cumstances, but on August 3d the contest was
inevitable. A bloody battle was fought between
Nordlingen and DonauwOrth, near AUerheim
[called the battle of N5rdlingen, by the French],
which was long doubtful, but, after tremendous
losses, resulted in the victory of the French.
Mercy's fall, Werth's imprudent advance, and a
linal brave assault of the Hessians, decided the
day. But the victors were so weakened that they
could not fully take advantage of it. Conde was
ill ; and in the autumn Turenne was compelled,
not without perceptible damage to the cause, to
retreat with his army to the Neckar and the
Rhine. Neither had Torstenson been able to
maintain his position in Austria. He had been
obliged to raise the siege of Brunn, and learnt at
the same time that Ragoczy had just made peace
with the Emperor. Obliged to retire to Bohemia,
he found his forces considerably diminished.
Meanwhile, KOnigsmark had won an important
advantage. While Torstenson was in Austria he
gained a firm footing in Sa.xony. Then came the
news of AUerheim, and of the peace of BrOmse-
bro. Except Dresden and Konigstein, all the im-
portant points were in the hands of the Swedes;
so, on the 6th of September [1645], the Elector
John George concluded a treaty of neutrality for
six months. Besides money and supplies, the
Swedes received Leipzig, Torgau, and the right
of passage through the country. Meanwhile,
Torstenson had retreated into the north-east of
Bohemia, and severe physical sufferings com-
pelled him to give up the command. He was
succeeded by Charles Gustavus Wrangel." — L.
Hausser, The Period of the Beformation, 1517 to
1648, ch. 39.
Also in; W. Coxe, Hist, of ths Home of Aus-
tria, ch. 58 (p. 2).
A. D. 1642-1643.— The Thirty Years War:
Condi's victory at Rocroi and campaign on the
Moselle. See France; A. D. 1642-1643, and
1643.
A. D. 1643-1644.— The Thirty Years War:
Campaigns of Turenne and Cond^ against
Merci, on the Upper Rhine. — Diitlingen. —
Freiburg. — Philipsburg. — "After the death of
1515
GERMANY, 1643-1644.
Tiirenne and
Conde.
GERMANY, 1646-1648.
Bernard of Saxe "Weimar, Marshal Guebriant had
been phiced in command of the troops of Wei-
mar. He had besieged and taken Rottweil in
Suabia, but had there been liillcd. Rantzau, who
succeeded him in command of the Weimar army,
marched (34-25 Nov., 1643) upon Diitliugen [or
Tuttlingen], on the Upper Rhine, was there
beaten by Mercy and made prisoner, with tlie
loss of many officers and 7.000 soldiers. This
was a great triumpli for the Bavarians ; a terrible
disaster for France. The whole of the German
infantr}' in the French service was dispersed or
taken, the cavalry retreated as they best could
upon the Rhine. . . . Circumstances required
active measures. Plenipotentiaries had just as-
sembled at Jliinster to begin the negotiations
which ended with the peace of Westphalia. It
was desired that the French Government should
support the French diplomatist by quick suc-
cesses Tureune was sent to the Rhine with
reinforcements. . . . He re-established discipline,
and breathed into [the army] a new spirit. . . .
At the same time, by negotiations, the prisoners
who had been taken at Dtltlingen were restored
to France, the gaps in the ranks were filled up,
and in the spring of 1644 Turenne found himself
at the head of 9,000 men, of whom 5,000 were
cavalry, and was in a position to take the field."
He " pushed through the Black Forest, and near
the source of the Danube gained a success over
a Bavarian detachment. For some reason which
is not clear he threw a garrison into Freiburg,
and retired across the Rhine. Had he remained
near the town he would have prevented Mercy
from investing it. So soon as Turenne was over
the river, Mercy besieged Freiburg, and although
Turenne advanced to relieve the place, a stupid
error of some of his infantry made him fail, and
Freiburg capitulated to Mercy. " — H. M. Hozier,
Turenne, ch. 3 and 5. — " Affairs being in so bad
a state about the Black Forest, the Great Conde,
at that time Due d'Enghien, was brought up,
with 10,000 men; thus raising the French to a
number above the enemy's. He came crowned
with the immortal laurels of Rocroi ; and in vir-
tue of his birth, as a prince of the blood-royal,
took precedence of the highest officers in the ser-
vice. Merci, a capable and daring general, aware
of his inferiorit}', now posted himself a short
distance from Freyburg, in a position almost in-
accessible. He garnished it with felled trees and
intrenchments, mountains, woods, and marshes,
which of themselves defied attack." Turenne
advocated a flank movement, instead of a direct
assault upon Jlerci's position ; but Conde, reck-
less of his soldiers' lives, persisted in leading
them against the enemy's works. "A terrible
action ensued (August 3, 1644). Turenne made
a long detour through a defile ; Conde, awaiting
his arrival on the ground, postponed the assault
till three hours before sunset, and then ascended
the steep. Merci had the worse, and retreated
to a fresh position on the Black Jlountain, where
he successfully repulsed for one day Conde's col-
umns (August 5). In this action Gaspard Merci
was killed. Conde now adopted the flank move-
ment, which, originally recommended by Tu-
renne, would have saved much bloodshed; and
Merci, hard pressed, escaped by a rapid retreat,
leaving behind him his artillery and baggage
(Aug. 9). These are the ' three days of Frey-
burg.' To retake the captured Freyburg after
their victory . . . was the natural suggestion
first heard." But Turenne persuaded Conde that
the reduction of Philipsburg was more impor-
tant. ' ' Philipsburg was taken after a short siege ;
and its fall was accompanied b_v the submission
of the adjacent towns of Germersheim, Speier,
Worms, Mentz, Oppenheim and Landau. Conde
at this conjuncture left the Upper Rhine, and
took away his regiments with him." — T. O.
Cockayne, Life of Turenne, pp. 30-22.
Also in: G. B. Malleson, The Battle-fields of
Germany, ch. 6.
A. 0.1646-1648.— The Thirty 'V^ears War:
Its final campaiens. — The sufferings of Ba-
varia. — Truce and peace negotiations initiated
by the Elector Maximilian. — The ending of
the war at Prague.— -" The retreat of the French
[after the battle of Allerheim] enabled the en-
emy to turn his whole force upon the Swedes
in Bohemia. Gustavus Wrangel, no unworthy
successor of Banner and Torstensohn, had, in
1646, been appointed Commander-in-chief of the
Swedish army. . . . The Archduke, after rein-
forcing his army . . . moved against Wrangel,
in the hope of being able to overwhelm him by
his superior force before Koenigsmark could
join him, or the French effect a diversion in his
favour. Wrangel, however, did not await him."
He moved through Upper Saxony and Hesse, to
Weimar, where he was joined by the flying corps
of Koenigsmark. Finally, after much delay, he
was joined likewise by Turenne and the French.
"The junction took place at Giessen, and they
now felt themselves strong enough to meet the
enemy. The latter had followed the Swedes
into Hesse, in order to intercept their commis-
sariat, and to prevent their union with Turenne.
In both designs they had been unsuccessful ; and
the Imperialists now saw themselves cut off from
the Maine, and exposed to great scarcity and
want from the loss of their magazines. Wrangel
took advantage of their weakness to execute a
plan by which he hoped to give a new turn to
the war. . . . He determined to follow the course
of the Danube, and to break into the Austrian
territories through the midst of Bavaria. . . .
He moved hastily, . . . defeated a Bavarian
corps near Donauwerth, and passed that river, as
well as the Lech, unopposed. But by wasting
his time in the unsuccessful siege of Augsburg,
he gave opportunity to the Imperialists, not only
to relieve that city, but also to repulse him as
far as Lauingen. No sooner, however, had they
turned towards Suabia, with a view to remove
the war from Bavaria, than, seizing the oppor-
tunity, he repassed the Lech, and guarded the
passage of it against the Imperialists themselves.
Bavaria now lay open and defenceless before
him ; the French and Swedes quickly overran it ;
and the soldiery indemnified themselves for all
dangers by frightful outrages, robberies, and ex-
tortions. The arrival of the Imperial troops, who
at last succeeded in passing the Lech at Thier-
haupten, only increased the misery of this coun-
try, which friend and foe indiscriminately plun-
dered. And now, for the first time during the
whole course of this war, the courage of Maxi-
milian, which for eight-and-twenty years had
stood unshaken amidst fearful dangers, began to
waver. Ferdinand II., his school-companion at
Ingolstadt, and the friend of his youth, was no
more; and, with the death of his friend and
benefactor, the strong tie was dissolved which
had linked the Elector to the House of Austria.
1516
GERMANY, 1646-1648.
End of the
Thirty Years War.
GERMANY.
. . . Accordingly, the motives whicli tlie artifices
of France now put in operation, in order to detacli
him from the Austrian alliance, and to induce
him to lay down his arms, were drawn entirely
from political considerations. . . . The Elector
of Bavaria was unfortunately led to believe that
the Spaniards alone were disinclined to peace,
and that nothing but Spanish influence had in-
duced the Emperor so long to resist a cessation
of hostilities. Maximilian detested the Spaniards,
and could never forgive their having opposed
his application for the Palatine Electorate. . . .
All doubts disappeared ; and, convinced of the
necessity of this step, he thought he should suf-
ficiently discharge his obligations to the Emperor
if he invited him also to share in the benefit of
the truce. The deputies of the three crowns, and
of Bavaria, met at Ulm, to adjust the conditions.
But it was soon evident, from the instructions of
the Austrian ambassador, that it was not the in-
tention of the Emperor to second the conclusion
of a truce, but if possible to prevent it. . . .
The good intentions of the Elector of Bavaria, to
include the Emperor iu the benefit of the truce,
having been thus rendered unavailing, he felt
himself justified in providing for his own safety.
. . . He agreed to the Swedes extending their
quarters in Suabia and Franconia, and to his
own being restricted to Bavaria and the Palati-
nate. The conquests which he had made in
Suabia were ceded to the allies, who, on their
part, restored to him what they had taken from
Bavaria. Cologne and Hesse Cassel were also
included in the truce. After the conclusion of
this treaty, upon the 14th March, 1647, the
French and Swedes left Bavaria. . . . Turenne,
according to agreement, marched into Wurtem-
burg, where he forced the Landgrave of Darm-
stadt and the Elector of Mentz to imitate the
example of Bavaria, and to embrace the neutral-
ity. And now, at last, France seemed to have
attained the great object of its policy, that of
depriving the Emperor of the support of the
League, and of his Protestant allies. . . . But
. . . after a brief crisis, the fallen power of Aus-
tria rose again to a formidable strength. The
jealousy which France entertained of Sweden,
prevented it from permitting the total ruin of
the Emperor, or allowing the Swedes to obtain
such a preponderance in Germany, which might
have been destructive to France herself. Accord-
ingly, the French minister declined to take ad-
vantage of the distresses of Austria; and the
army of Turenne, separating from that of Wrang-
el, retired to the frontiers of the Netherlands.
Wrangel, indeed, after moving from Suabia into
Franconia, taking Schweinfurt, . . . attempted
to make his way into Bohemia, and laid siege to
Egra, the key of that kingdom. To relieve this
fortress, the Emperor put his last army in mo-
tion, and placed himself at its head. But . . .
on his arrival Egra was already taken. " Mean-
time the Emperor had engaged in intrigues with
the Bavarian oflicers and had nearlj' seduced the
whole army of the Elector. The latter discovered
this conspiracy in tinae to thwart it ; but he now
suddenly, on his own behalf, struck hands with
the Emperor again, and threw over his late agree-
ments with the Swedes and French. "He had not
derived from the truce the advantages he expected.
Far from tending to accelerate a general peace, it
had a pernicious influence upon the negociations
atMunster and Osnaburg, and had made the allies
bolder in their demands." Maximilian, therefore,
renounced the truce and began hostilities anew.
"This resolution, and the assistance which he
immediately despatched to the Emperor in Bo-
hemia, threatened materially to injure the Swedes,
and "Wrangel was compelled in haste to evacuate
that kingdom. He retired through Thuringia
into Westphalia and Lunenburg, in the hope of
forming a junction with the French army under
Turenne, while the Imperial and Bavarian army
followed him to the Weser, under Melander and
Gronsfeld. His ruin was inevitable if the enemj'
should overtake him before his junction with
Turenne ; but the same consideration which had
just saved the Emperor now proved the salvation
of the Swedes. . . . The Elector of Bavaria could
not allow the Emperor to obtain so decisive a
preponderance as, by the sudden alteration of
afliairs, might delay the chances of a general
peace. . . . Now that the power of the Emperor
threatened once more to attain a dangerous su-
periority, Maximilian at once ceased to pursue
the Swedes. . . . Jlelander, prevented by the Ba-
varians from further pursuing Wrangel, crossed
by Jena and Erfurt into Hesse. ... In this ex-
hausted country, his army was oppressed by
want, while Wrangel was recruiting his strength,
and remounting his cavalry in Lunenburg. Too
weak to maintain his wretched quarters against
the Swedish general, when he opened the cam-
paign in the winter of 1648, and marched against
Hesse, he was obliged to retire with disgrace,
and take refuge on the banks of the Danube.
. . . Turenne received permission to join the
Swedes ; and the last campaign of this eventful
war was now opened by the united armies.
Driving Melander before them along the Danube,
they threw supplies into Egra, which was be-
sieged by the Imperialists, and defeated the Im-
perial and Bavarian armies on the Danube, which
ventured to oppose them at Susmarshausen,
where Melander was mortally wounded. " They
then forced a passage of the Lech, at the point
where Gustavus Adolphus formerly overcame
Tilly, and ravaged Bavaria once more; while
nothing but a prolonged rain-storm, which flooded
the Inn, saved Austria from a similar devasta-
tion. Koenigsmark, with his flying corps, en-
tered Bohemia, penetrated to Prague and sur-
prised and captured the lesser side of the city
(the Kleinsite), thus acquiring the reputation of
"closing the Thirty Years' W\ir by the last bril-
liant achievement. This decisive stroke, which
vanquished the Emperor's irresolution, cost the
Swedes only the loss of a single man. But the
old town, the larger half of Prague, which is
divided into two parts by the Moldau, by its
vigorous resistance wearied out the efforts of the
Palatine, Charles Gustavus, the successor of
Christina on the throne, who had arrived from
Sweden with fresh troops. . . . The approach of
winter at last drove the besiegers into their quar-
ters, and in the meantime the intelligence arrived
that a peace had been signed at Munster, on the
24th October," — the "solemn and ever memor-
able and sacred treaty which is known by the
name of the Peace of Westphalia." — F. Schiller,
Hist, of the Thirty Years' War, bk. 5.
Also in : G. B. Malleson, The Battle-fields of
Germany, ch. 7.
The Thirty 'Y'ears War: Its horrors.— Its
destructiveness. — The state of the country at
its close. — "The materials of wlxich the armies
1517
GERMANY.
Horrors of the
Thirty Years War.
GERMANY, 1648.
■were composed passed inevitably from bad to
worse. This, which had been a civil war at the
first, did not continue such for long ; or rather it
united presently all the dreadfulness of a civil
war and a foreign. It was not long before the
hosts which trampled the German soil had in
large part ceased to be German ; every region of
Europe sending of its children, and, as it would
seem, of those whom it must have been gladdest
to be rid of, to swell the ranks of the destroyers.
. . . From all quarters they came trooping, not
singly, but in whole battalions. . . . All armies
draw after them a train of camp-followers ; they
are a plague which in the very nature of things
is inevitable. But never perhaps did this evil
rise to so enormous a height as now. Toward
the close of this War an Imperial army of 40,000
men was found to be attended by the ugly ac-
companiment of 140,000 of these. The conflict
had in fact by this time lasted so long that the
soldiery had become as a distinct nation, camping
in the midst of another. ... It is a thought to
make one shudder, the passage of one of these
armies with its foul retinue through some fair
and smiling and well-ordered region — what it
found and what it must have left it, and what
its doings there will have been. . . . When all
in their immediate neighbourhood was wasted,
armed bands variously disguised, as merchants,
as gipsies, as travellers, or sometimes as women,
would penetrate far into the land. . . . Nor was
the condition of the larger towns much better.
... It did not need actual siege or capture to
make them acquainted with the miseries of the
time. With no draught-cattle to bring firewood
in, there was no help for it but that abandoned
houses, by degrees whole streets, and sometimes
the greater part of a town, should be pulled
down to prevent those of its inhabitants who re-
mained from perishing by cold, the city thus liv-
ing upon and gradually consuming itself. . . .
Under conditions like these, it is not wonderful
that the fields were left nearly or altogether uu-
tilled ; for who would sow what he could never
hope to reap ? . . . What wonder that famine,
thus invited, should before long have arrived ?
. . . Persons were found dead in the fields with
grass in their mouths : while the tanners' and
knackers' yards were beset for the putrid car-
casses of beasts ; the multitudes, fierce with
hunger, hardly enduring to wait till the skin had
been stript away. The bodies of malefactors,
broken on the wheel, were secretly removed to
serve for food ; or men climbed up the gibbets,
and tore down the bodies which were suspended
there, and devoured them. This, indeed, was a
supply which was not likely to fail. . . . Pris-
oners in Alsace were killed that they might be
eaten. Children were enticed from home. . . .
Putting all together, it is not too much to .say
that the crowning hoiTors of Samaria, of Jeru-
salem, of Saguntum, found their parallels, and
often worse than their parallels, in Christian Ger-
many only two centuries ago. I had thought at
one time that there were isolated examples of
these horrors, one here, one there, just enough
to warrant the assertion that such things were
done ; but my conviction now is that they were
very frequent indeed, and in almost every part
of the land. . . . Districts which had for centu-
ries been in the occupation of civilized men
were repossessed by forests. ... Of the popula-
tion it was found that three-fourths, in some
parts a far larger proportion, had perished ; or,
not having perished, were not less effectually
lost to their native land, having fled to Switzer-
land, to Holland, and to other countries, never
to return from them again. Thus in one group
of twenty villages which had not exceptionally
suffered, 8.5 per cent. , or more than four-fifths of
the inhabitants, had disappeared. ... Of the
houses, three-fourths were destroyed. . . . Care-
ful German writers assure us that there are dis-
tricts which at this present day [1873] have just
attained the population, the agricultural wealth,
the productive powers which they had when the
War commenced. " — R. C. Trench, Onstavua
Adolphtis in Oermany, and ritheV Lect's on the
Tliirty Years' Wa7\ led. 'Hand 5. — "There is no
other example of a destruction of civilization such
as the Thirty Years War in Germany produced.
There is no other case where a whole people
in all parts of the land was uniformly exposed
to such severe losses, so that in numbers it was
reduced to one half ; where, from riches, luxury,
and abundance such as had undoubtedly pre-
vailed at the beginning of the century men had
come to poverty and to the want of even the
necessaries of life. . . . Beggary had long ceased
to be a cause for shame ; the war, which had
brought down to it in a short time even those
who had been formerly the richest, catised even
the most dishonorable trade to be held in honor.
Whoever by daily labor could earn his daily
bread might think himself fortunate. In the
place of the horses which war had carried away,
human beings took to dragging carts in the street.
. . . With the ruin of the trade and of the art
industry of Germany, which in the 16th century
would for so many objects have probably needed
to fear no rivalry and which was only surpassed
by that of Italy, went hand in hand the rise and
increase of French industry. . . . Thus did the
industrial triumph of France supplement its
political supremacy ; thus did Germany's mis-
fortune become the cause of enriching her west-
ern neighbor." — H. von Zwiedineck-Sildenhorst,
Deutsche Geschichte, 1648-1740 {trans, from the
German), V. t, pp. 45-49. — See, also, Bohemia:
A. D. 1621-1648.
A. D. 1648.— The Peace of Westphalia.—
Cession of Alsace to France. — Separation of
Switzerland from the Empire. — Loosening of
the constitutional bonds of the Empire. ' ' The
opening of the peace negotiations between the
Emperor and his enemies was . . . fixed for the
2.5th of March, 1642, and the cities of Mlinster and
Osnabriick as the places of the sitting; but
neither in this year nor in the next did it fake
place. It was not until the year 1644 that in the
former of these cities" were assembled the fol-
lowing: The Papal Nuncio and the envoy of the
Republic of Venice, acting as mediators, two
imperial ambassadors, two representatives of
France, three of Spain, and the Catholic Electors ;
later came also the Catholic Princes. To Osna-
briick, Sweden sent two ambassadors and France
three, while the Electors, the German Princes
and the imperial cities were represented. Ques-
tions of etiquette, which demanded prior settle-
ment, occupied months, and serious matters when
reached were dealt with slowly and jealously,
with many interruptions. It was not until tlie
24th of October, 1648, that the articles of peace
forming the two treaties of Miinster and Osna-
briick, and known together as the Peace of
1518
c
L
^'
J
GERMANY, 1648.
Peace
of Westphalia.
GERMANY, 1648.
Westph.alia, were signed by all the negotiators at
Milnster. The more important of the provisions
of the two instruments were the following : "To
France was secured the perpetual possession of
the Bishoprics of Metz, Toul, and Verdun, as also
Moyenvic and Pignerol. with the right to keep a
garrison in Philipsburg, and finally Breisach,
Alsace, with its ten imperial cities, and the
Sundgau. The Emperor bound himself to gain
the assent of the Archduke Ferdinand, of Tyrol
and Spain, to this last-named cession. France
made good to the Archduke this loss by the pay-
ment of 3,000,000 francs. Although it was not
expressly provided that the connection with the
Empire of the German provinces ceded to France
should be dissolved, yet the separation became,
as a matter of fact, a complete one. The Em-
peror did not summon the Kings of France to
the Diets of the Empire, and the latter made no
demand for such summons. ... In relation to
Italy, the French treaty provided that the peace
concluded in 1631 [see Italy: A. D. 1637-1631]
should remain in force, except the part relat-
ing to Pignerol. ['Pinerolo was definitely put
under the French overlordship.' — G. W. Kitchin,
Hist, of Prance, v. 3, p. 98]. Switzerland was
made independent of the German Empire; but
the Circle of Burgundy [the Spanish Netherlands
and Franche-Comte] was still to form a part of
the Empire, and after the close of the war be-
tween France and Spain, in which the Emperor
and the Empire were to take no part, was to be
included in the peace. No aid was to be ren-
dered to the Duke of Lorraine againist France,
although the Emperor and the Empire were left
free to mediate for him a peace. Sweden re-
ceived Hither Pomerania, including the Island of
Rllgen, from Further Pomerania the Island of
Wollin and several cities, with their surround-
ings, among which were Stettin, as also the ex-
pectancy of Further Pomerania in case of the
extinction of the house of Brandenburg. Fur-
thermore, it received the city of Wismar, in
Mecklenburg, and the Bishoprics of Bremen
[secularized and made a Grand Duchy] and Vcr-
den, with reservation of the rights and immuni-
ties of the city of Bremen. Sweden was to hold
all the ceded territory as feudal tenures of the
Empire, and be represented for them in the Im-
perial Diet. . . . Brandenburg received for its
loss of Pomerania the Bishoprics of Halberstadt,
Minden, and Caniin, and the expectancy of that
of Magdeburg as soon as this should become
vacant by the death of its Administrator, the
Saxon Prince, although the four bailiwicks sep-
arated from it were to remain with Saxony as
provided in the Peace of Prague. . . . The house
of Brunswick-Liineberg was to renounce its right
to the coadjutorship of Magdeburg, Bremen,
Halberstadt, and Ratzeburg, and, in return for
this renunciation, was to alternate with a Catho-
lic prelate in the possession of the Bishopric of
OsnabrUck. ... To Duke Maximilian of Ba-
varia was conveyed the Electorate, together with
the Upper Palatinate, to be hereditary in his
family of the line of William, for which he, ou
the other hand, was to surrender to the Emperor
the account of the 13,000,000 florins which he
bad made for the execution of the sentence
against the Palsgrave Frederic. To the Pals-
grave, Charles Lewis, son of the proscribed
Elector [Frederic, who had died in 1633], was
given back the Lower Palatinate, while a new
Electorate, the eighth, was created for him. . . .
There were numerous provisions relating to the
restoration of the Dukes of Wurtemberg, the
Margraves of Baden, and the Counts of Nassau
and those of Hanau to several parts of the terri-
tories which either belonged to them or were
contested. A general amnesty was indeed pro-
vided, and every one was to be restored to the
possession of the lands which he had held before
the war. This general article was, however,
limited by various special provisions, as that in
relation to the Palsgrave, and was not to be ap-
plied to Austria at all. . . . Specially important
are the sections which relate to the settlement of
religious grievances. The treaty of Passau and
the Augsburg religious peace were confirmed;
the 1st of January, 1634, was fixed as the time
which was to govern mutual reclamations be-
tween the Catholics and Protestants ; both parties
were secured the right to all ecclesiastical foun-
dations, whether in mediate or immediate con-
nection with the Empire, which they severally
held in possession on the first day of January,
1634; if any such had been taken from them after
this date, restoration was to be made, unless
otherwise specially provided. The Ecclesiastical
Reservation was acknowledged by the Protes-
tants, and Protestant holders of ecclesiastical
property were freely admitted to the Imperial
Diets. The right of reformation was conceded
to the Estates, and permission to emigrate to the
subjects; while it was at the same time provided
that, if in 1634 Protestant subjects of Catholic
Princes, or the reverse, enjoyed freedom of re-
ligion, this right should not in the future be di-
minished. It was specially granted for Silesia
that all the concessions which had been made
before the war to the Dukes of Liegnitz, Miin-
sterburg, and Oels, and to the city of Breslau,
relating to the free exercise of the Augsburg
Confession, should remain in force. . . . Finally,
the Reformed— that is, the adherents of Calvin-
ism — were placed upon the same ground with
those of the Augsburg Confession; and it was
provided that if a Lutheran Estate of the Em-
pire should become a Calvinist, or the reverse,
his subjects should not be forced to change with
their Prince." — A. Gindely, Hist, of the Thirty
Tears' War, v. 3, ch. 10. — "The emperor, in his
own name, and in behalf of his family and the
empire, ceded the full sovereignty of Upper and
Lower Alsace, with the prefecture of Haguenau,
or the ten towns [Haguenau, Schelestadt, Weis-
semburgh, Colmar, Landau, Oberenheim, Ros-
heim, Munster in the Val de St. Gregoire, Kaiser-
berg, and Turingheim], and their dependencies.
But by one of those contradictions which are
common in treaties, when both parties wish to
preserve their respective claims, another article
was introduced, binding the king of France to
leave the ecclesiastics and immediate nobility of
those provinces in the immediacy which they had
hitherto possessed with regard to the Roman em-
pire, and not to pretend to any sovereignty over
them, but to remain content with such rights as
belonged to the house of Austria. Yet this was
again contradicted by a declaration, that this ex-
ception should not derogate from the supreme
sovereignty before yielded to the king of France. "
— W. Coxe, Hist, of tlie House of Austria, ch. 59
{v. 3). — "Respecting the rights of sovereignty
due to the princes and the relations of the states
of the empire with the emperor, the Peace of
1519
GERMANY, 16-18.
Effects
on the Empire.
GERMANY, 1648-1705.
Westphalia contained such regulations as must
in the course of time produce a still greater re-
laxation of those ties, already partially loosened,
■which held together the empire in one entirety.
... At the Peace of Westphalia the indepen-
dence of the princes was made completely legal.
They received the entire right of sovereignty
over their territory, together with the power of
making war, concluding peace, and forming alli-
ances among themselves, as well as with foreign
powers, provided such alliances were not to the
injury of the empire. But what a feeble ob-
stacle must this clause have presented ? For
henceforward, if a prince of the empire, having
formed an alliance with a foreign power, became
hostile to the emperor, he could immediately
avail himself of the pretext that it was for the
benefit of the empire, the maintenance of his
rights, and the liberty of Germany. And in
order that the said pretext might, with some ap-
pearance of right, be made available on every
occasion, foreigners established themselves as the
guardians of the empire ; and accordingly France
and Sweden took upon themselves the responsi-
bility of legislating as guarantees, not only for
the Germanic constitution, but for everything
else that was concluded in the Peace of West-
phalia at Minister and Osnaburg. Added to this,
in reference to the imperial cities, whose rights
had hitherto never been definitively fixed, it was
now declared that they should always be in-
cluded under the head of the other states, and
that they should command a decisive voice In the
diets; thenceforth, therefore, their votes and
those of the other states — the electoral and other
princes — should be of equal validity. " — F. Kohl-
rausch. Hist, of Germany, ch. 26. — Peace between
Spain and the United Provinces was embodied in
a separate treaty, but negotiated at Milnster,
and co.ncluded and signed a few months earlier
in the same year. The war between Spain and
France went on. See Netherlands: A. D. 1646
-1648.
A. D. 1648.— Effects of the Peace of West-
phalia on the Empire. — It becomes a loose
confederacy and purely German. — "Itmay. . .
be said of this famous peace, as of the other so-
called 'fundamental law of the Empire,' the
Golden Bull, that it did no more than legalize a
condition of things already in existence, but
which by being legalized acquired new impor-
tance. . . . While the political situation, to use
a current phrase, had changed within the last
two hundred years, the eyes with which men
regarded it had changed still more. Never by
their fiercest enemies in earlier times, not once
by the Popes or Lombard republicans in the heat
of their strife with the Franconian and Swabian
Ciesars, had the Emperors been reproached as
mere German kings, or their claim to be the law-
ful heiis of Rome denied. The Protestant jurists
of the 16th or ratlier of the 17th century were the
first persons who ventured to scoff at the pretend-
ed lordship of the world, and declare their Em-
pire to be nothing more than a German monarchy,
in dealing with which no superstitious reverence
need prevent its subjects from making the best
terms they could for tliemselves, and controlling a
sovereign whose religious predilections made him
the friend of their enemies. ... It was by these
views . . . that the states, or rather France and
Sweden acting on their behalf, were guided in the
negotiations of Osnabrilcli and Mttnster. By ex-
torting a full recognition of the sovereignty of all
the princes, Catholics and Protestants alike, in
their respective territories, they bound the Em-
peror from any direct interference with the admin-
istration, either in particular districts or through-
out the Empire. All affairs of public importance,
including the rights of making war or peace, of
levying contributions, raising troops, building
fortresses, passing or interpreting laws, were
henceforth to be left entirely in the hands of the
Diet. . . . Both Lutherans and Calvinists were
declared free from all jurisdiction of the Pope or
any Catholic prelate. Thus the last link which
bound Germany to Rome was snapped, the last
of the principles by virtue of which the Empire
had existed was abandoned. For the Empire
now contained and recognized as its members
persons who formed a visible body at open war
with the Holy Roman Church ; and its constitu-
tion admitted schismatics to a full share in all
those civil rights which, according to the doc-
trines of the early Middle Age, could be enjoyed
by no one who was out of the communion of the
Catholic Church. The Peace of Westphalia was
tlierefore an abrogation of the sovereignty of
Rome, and of the theory of Church and State
with which the name of Rome was associated.
And in this light was it regarded by Pope Inno-
cent X., who commanded his legate to protest
against it, and subsequently declared it void by
the bull ' Zelo domus Dei. ' . . . The Peace of
Westphalia is an era in imperial history not less
clearly marked than the coronation of Otto the
Great, or the death of Frederick II. As from
the days of Maximilian it had borne a mi.xed or
transitional character, well expressed by tlie name
Romano-Germanic, so henceforth it is in every-
thing but title purely and solely a German Em-
pire. Properly, indeed, it was no longer an
empire at all, but a Confederation, and that of
the loosest sort. For it had no common treasury,
no eflicient common tribunals, no means of co-
ercing a refractory member; its states were of
different religions, were governed according to
different forms, were administered judicially
and financially without any regard to each other.
. . . There were 300 petty principalities between
the Alps and the Baltic, each with its own laws,
its own courts, ... its little armies, its separate
coinage, its tolls and custom-houses on the fron-
tier, its crowd of meddlesome and pedantic
officials. . . . This vicious system, which para-
lyzed the trade, the literature, and the political
thought of Germany, had been forming itself for
some time, but did not become fully established
until the Peace of Westphalia, by emancipating
the princes from imperial control, had made them
despots in their own territories. " — J. Bryce, The
Holy Soman Empire, ch. 19.
A. D. 1648-1705.— After the Peace of West-
phalia. — French influence in the Empire. —
Creation of the Ninth Elector. — After the
Peace of Westphalia, the remainder of the reign
of Ferdinand III. "passed in tranquillity. . . .
He caused his son to be elected king of the Ro-
mans, under the title of Ferdinand IV. ; but the
young prince, already king of Bohemia and
Hungary, preceded him to the tomb, and left the
question of the succession to be decided by a
diet. Ferdinand III. died in 1657. . . . The" in-
terregnum, and, indeed, the century which fol-
lowed the death of Ferdinand, showed the alarm-
ing preponderance of the influence gained by
1520
GERMANY, 1648-1705.
Austria, Germany,
arul France*
GERMANY, 1648-1715.
France in the affairs of the empire, and the con-
sequent criminality of the princes who had first
invoked the assistance of that power. Her re-
cent victories, her character as joint guarantee
of the treat}' of Westphalia, and the contiguity
of her possessions to the states of the empire, en-
couraged her ministers to demand the imperial
crown for the youthful Louis XIV. Still more
extraordinary is the fact that four of the electors
were gained, by that monarch's gold, to espouse
his views. . . . Fortunately for Germany and for
Europe, the electors of Treves, Brandenburg,
and Saxony were too patriotic to sanction this
infatuated proposal ; they threatened to elect a
native prince of their own authority, — a menace
which caused the rest to co-operate with them ;
so that, after some fruitless negotiations, Leo-
pold, son of the late emperor, king of Bohemia
and of Hungary, was raised to the vacant dig-
nity. His reign was one of great humiliation to
his house and to the empire. Without talents
for government, without generosity, feeble, big-
oted, and pusillanimous, he was little qualified to
augmenttheglory of the country. . . .Through-
out his long reign [16.57-1705], he had the morti-
fication to witness, on the part of Louis XIV. , a
series of the most unprovoked, wanton, and un-
principled usurpations ever recorded in history.
. . . Internally, the reign of Leopold affords
some interesting particulars. . . . Not the least
is the establishment of a ninth electoral dignity
in favour of Ernest Augustus, Duke of Bruns-
wick Lunenburg, who then became (1692) the
first elector of Hanover. This was the act of
Leopold, in return for important aid in money
and troops from two princes of that house ; but
it could not be effected without the concurrence
of the electoral body, who long resisted it. . . .
The establishment of a permanent diet, attended,
not by the electors in person, but by their rep-
resentatives, is one of the most striking peculiari-
ties of Leopold's reign." — S. A. Dunham, Hist,
of the Oermanic Empire, bk. 3, ch. 3 {v. 3). — See
Diet, The Gei:m.\nic.
A. D. 1648-1715. — Relations of Austria,
Germany and France after the Thirty Years
War. — " The whole shamefulness of this disin-
tegration of Germany, showed itself in the de-
fenceless state of the empire. . . . Right under
the greedy hands of France lay the weakest, the
most unguarded members of the empire. All
along that priest-avenue the Rhine, from ]Miin-
ster and Osnabriick up to Constance, stretclied a
confused mass of tiny states, incapable of in any
way seriously arming themselves, compelled to
betray their country through the feeling of their
own utter weakness. Almost all the Rhenish
courts held pensions from Versailles. . . . Fully
oue-third of Germany served in the wars of the
empire as a dead burden. . . . The weakness of
Germany was to blame for the new growth of
power in Austria and France ; . . . the for-
eigners laughed at the ' querelles allemandes '
and the ' mis^re allemande ' ; the Frenchman
Bonhours mockingly asked the question if it was
possible that a German could have intellect.
... As the born antagonist of the old order of
things in Europe, the basis of which was Ge:-
many's weakness, Prussia stood in a world of
enemies whose mutual jealousies formed her only
safeguard. She was without any natural ally,
for the German nation had not yet come to \mder-
stand this budding power. . . . Just as the House
^^ 1521
of Savoy was able to tread its way through the
superiority of the Hapsburghs on the one hand
and of the" Bourbons on the other, so did Prussia,
although immeasurably harder pressed, have to
find a path for herself between Austria and
France, between Sweden and Poland, between
the maritime powers and the inert mass of the
German empire. She had to use every means of
remorseless egoism, always ready to change front,
always with two strings to her bow. The elec-
torate of Brandenburg felt to the very marrow
of its being how deeply foreign ideas had eaten
into Germany. All the disorganized forces . . .
which opposed the strong lead of the new mon-
archy placed their faith in foreign help. Dutch
garrisons were stationed on the Lower Rhine and
favored the struggle of the Cleve estates against
their German lords. The diets of Magdeburg
and of the electoral Mark counted on Austria.
. . . Frederick William breaks down the barriers
of the Netherlanders in the German Northwest ;
he drives their troops from Cleve and from East
Friesland. . . . Then he calls out to the deaf
nation his warning words, ' Remember that you
are Germans,' and seeks to drive the Swedes
from the soil of the empire. Twice did the ill-
will of France and Austria succeed in robbing
the Brandenburg prince of the reward of his
victories, of the rule in Pomerania ; the fame of
the day at Fehrbellin [see Brandenburg : A. D.
1640-1688] they could not take from him. . . .
When the republic of the Netherlands threatened
to fall before the attack of Louis XIV., Branden-
burg caught the raised arm of the conqueror [see
Netherlands : A. D. 1674-1678]. Frederick
William carried on the only serious war that the
empire ventured on for the recovery of Alsace
[see Austria; A. D. 1672-1714]. . . . With the
rise of Prussia began the long bloody work of
freeing Germany from foreign rule. ... In this
one state there awoke again, still half uncon-
scious as if drunken with long sleep, the old
hearty pride in the fatherland. . . . 'The House
of Hapsburgh recognized earlier than the Ho-
henzollerns did themselves how hostile this
modern North German state was to the old con-
stitution of the Holy Empire. In Silesia, in
Pomerania, in the Jiilich-Cleve war of succession
— everywhere Austria stood and looked with
distrust on its dangerous rival. . . . Equally
dangerous to Hapsburgh and to the German em-
pire were the French and the Turks ; how natu-
ral was it for Hapsburgh to seek support from
Germany, to involve the empire in its wars, to
use it as a bulwark towards the west or for di-
versions against France in case the Turks
threatened the walls of Vienna. . . . Only it
cannot be denied that in this common action the
Austrian policy, under a more centralized guid-
ance and backed by a firmer tradition, looked
out for its own advantage better than did the
German empire — loose, heavy, aud without con-
sistent leadership. When the might of Louis
XIV. began to oppress Germany the policy of the
Hapsburghs was to remain for a long time luke-
warm and inactive. This policy led Austria in-
deed even to make a league with France and.
when she did at last decide to help the great
elector of Brandenburg against the enemy of the
empire, this happened so charily and equivocally
as to give rise to the doubt whether the Austrian
army^as not placed there to keep watch over
the Brandenburg forces or even to positively
GERMANY, 1648-1715. Austria and the Empire. GERMANY, 1648-1780.
hinder their advance. An Austrian writer him-
self assures us that Montecuculi was in secret
commanded only to make a show of using his
weapons against the French. For a long time
Austria stood by inactive while the Reannexa-
tions [see Fkakce : A. D. 1679-1681] were going
on. . . . The whole war as conducted by Austria
on the Rhine and in the West [see Austria : A.
D. 1672-1714] was languid and sleepy ; the empire
and individual warlike princes were left to pro-
tect themselves. What an entirely different dis-
play of power did Austria make when it was a
question of fighting for its own dynastic inter-
ests!" — H. von Treitschke, Deutxr/ie Oeschichte
im 19<e« Jahrhimdert (trans, from the German),
V. 1, pp. 21-33. — "As in the wars so in the diplo-
matic negotiations the separation of the Austrian
dynastic interests from the advantage and needs
of the German empire often enough came to light.
It is only necessary to revert to the attitude
which the emperor's diplomacy took at Nimeguen
and Ryswick [see Nimeguen ; and France :
A. D. 1697]. . . . When in the conferences at
Gertruidenburg (1710) Louis XIV. was reduced
to being willing not only to give up the ' Re-
annexations' and Strassburg but even to restore
Alsace and the fortress of Valenciennes, it was
also not the interests of the empire but solely
those of the House of Hapsburgh which led to
the rejection of these offers and to the con-
tinuance of a war by which, as it turned out
eventually, not one of these demands was
gained." — L. Ilausser, Deutsche Oeschichte (trans,
from the Oerman), ». \, p. 23. — " Louis XIV. re-
garded himself not exactly as enemy of the Ger-
man empire and of the imperial power of the
House of Hapsburgh, but rather as a pretendant
to the throne. As he explains it in the political
directions meant for his son, the empire of the
West, the heritage of Charles the Great, belongs
not of right to the Germans but to the kings who
are crowned at Rheims." — Deutsche Geschichtc
(1648-1740) (translated from the Oerman), v. 1.
p. 509.
A. D. 1648-1780. — The Austrian incubus. —
" Before the Thhty Years' War the territories of
the German Hapsburghs were not very consider-
able. The greatest part of Hungary was in the
hands of the Turks ; the Tyrol belonged to a
collateral line, and, in the other provinces, the
independence of the Nobilitjf was much stronger
than the sovereignty of the Archdukes. The
Nobles were all zealous protestants, so that a
monarchical power could only be created after a
victory of the Catholic faith. For the first time
since 1631, the crown was seen in these regions
to assume a really dominant position. Efforts in
this direction had been zealously carried on since
1648 ; the Tyrolese Estates now lost their most
important privileges : and, above all, the Em-
peror succeeded, by the help of Polish and Ger-
man troops, in driving out the Turks from Hun-
gary, and at the same time crushing the national
freedom of the Magyars with frightful blood-
shed. By these victories the Monarchy gained,
in the first place, a largo increase of territory —
which placed it nearly on a level with France.
In the second place it acquired at home the
power of raising as many taxes and soldiers as
were necessary to increase the army to the extent
of its wishes ; and of distributing its officials and
troops — without distinction of nation — as im-
perial servants, throughout its dominions. And
thus it secured submission at home and dispos-
able strength for its operations abroad. Here it
stopped short. As it had no national, and, con-
sequently, no warm and natural relation to any
of its provinces — which were merely used as
passive tools to promote the lofty aims of the
Hapsburgh family — the Government had no in-
tention of using its power at home for the further-
ance of the public good, or the building up of a
generally useful Administration. The Nobility
had no longer the strength to resist the demands
of the Crown for men and money, but it still re-
tained exemption from taxes, the jurisdiction
and police among its own peasants, and a multi-
tude of feudal rights, which, often enough, de-
graded the peasant to the condition of a serf, and
everywhere bound down agriculture in the most
galling bonds. Of manufactures there nere little
or none ; trade was carried on on the system of
guilds. The State officials exercised Wt little
influence over the internal affairs of the Com-
munes, or Provinces ; and the privileged orders
had full liberty to prosecute their own interests
among their inferiors with inconsiderate selfish-
ness. In this aristocracy, the Church, from its
wealth and its close internal unity, assumed the
first place ; and its superior importance was still
farther enhanced by the fact of its being the
chief bond of unity between the otherwise so
loosely compacted portions of the Empire. . . .
The Church attached the Nobility to the Govern-
ment ; for we must not forget that a very con-
siderable portion of the estates of the Nobles had
passed into the hands of new possessors who had
received them as a reward for being good catho-
lics. The Church, too, taught all the youth of
the Empire — in all its different languages —
obedience to the House of Hapsburgh, and re-
ceived from the Crown, in return, exclusive con-
trol of the national education. It formed, in
spite of the resistance of nationalities, a sort of
public opinion in favour of the unity of the Em-
pire ; and the Crown, in return, excluded all non-
catholic opinions from the schools, from literature
and religion. Austria, therefore, continued to be
catholic, even after 1648 ; and by this we mean,
not only that its Princes were personally devout
— or that the Catholic clergy were supported in
the performance of their spiritual functions — or
that the institutions of the Church were liberally
supported — but also that the State directed its
policy according to ecclesiastical views, made use
of the Church for political purpo.ses, and crushed
every movement hostile to it in all other spheres
of the national life. In Austria, therefore, it was
not merely a question of theological differences,
but of the deepest and most comprehensive points
of distinction between the media?val and the
modern world. Austria was still, in its whole
nature, a Mediaeval State or Confederacy of
States. The consequences of this condition were
most strikingly seen in its relation to Germany.
In the first place, there was a complete separa-
tion, in regard to all mental and spiritual matters,
between the great body of the Empire, and its
powerful Eastern member. This was the period
in which Germany was awaking to a new intel-
lectual life in modern Europe, and laying the
foundation of its modern science in every branch
— in History and Statistics, Chemistry and Geol-
ogy, Jurisprudence and Philosophy — and assum-
ing by its Literature, an equal rank with other
nations in national refinement and civilization.
1522
GERMANY, 1648-1780,
Wars
with Louis XIV.
GERMANY, 1686.
By the works of genius which this period pro-
duced Austria remained entirely uninfluenced;
and it has been said, that Werther had only been
made known to the Viennese in the form of fire-
works in the Prater. The literary policy allowed
no seed of modern culture to enter the Empire;
and the Jesuit schools hiid rendered the soil unfit
for its reception. All the progress of German
civilization, at this period, was based on the prin-
ciple of the indeiiendence of the mind in art and
science. The education of the Jesuits, on the
contrary, though unsurpassed where the object
is to prepare men for a special purpose, com-
mences by disowning individual peculiarities, and
the right of a man to choose his own career.
There was, at this time, no other characteristic of
an Austrian than an entire estrangement from
the progressof the German mind. . . . The prog-
ress of the people in science and art, in politics
and military strength, was only seen in the larger
secular territories, wliich, after 1648, enjoyed
their own sovereignty ; and even these were
checked in their movements at every step by the
remnants of the Imperial Constitution. The
Members of the Empire alone, in whom the de-
caying remains of Mediaeval existence still lin-
gered on — the Ecclesiastical Princes — the small
Counts — the Imperial Knights and the Imperial
Towns, — clung to the Emperor and the Imperial
Diet. In these, partly from their small extent of
territory, partly from the inefficiency of their in-
stitutions, neither active industry, nor public
spirit, nor national pride, were to be found. In
all which tended to elevate the nation, and raise
its hopes for the future, they took, at this period,
as little part as Austria herself. . . . The Im-
perial constitution, therefore, was inwardly de-
cayed, and stood in no relation to the internal
growth of the nation. . . . There was the same
divergence between Austria and Germany with
respect to their foreign interests, as we have ob-
served in their internal relations. After the
Turks liad been driven from Hungary, and the
Swedes from the half of Pomerania, Germany
had only two neighbours whom it was a matter
of vital importance to watch, — the Poles and tlie
French. In the South, on the contrary, it had no
interests in opposition to Italy, except the pro-
tection of its frontier by the possession or the
neutrality of the Alpine passes. And yet it was
just towards Italy that the eyes of the House of
Hapsburg had been uninterruptedly directed for
centuries jiast. The favourite traditions of the
family, and their political and ecclesiastical in-
terest in securing the support of the Pope, and
thereby that of the Clergy, constantly impelled
them to consolidate and extend their dominion in
that country. All other considerations yielded
to this ; and this is intelligible enough from an
Austrian point of view ; but it was not on that
account less injurious to the German Empire.
How strikingly was this opposition of interests
displayed at the end of the glorious war of the
Spanish succession, when the Emperor rejected
a peace which would have restored Strasburg
and Alsace to the Empire, because only Naples,
and not Sicily also, was offered to Austria ! How
sharply defined do the same relations present
themselves to our view, in tlie last years of the
Hapsburg dynasty, at the peace of Vienna in
1738! — on which occasion the Emperor — in or-
der at least to gain Tuscany, as a compensation
for the loss of Naples, — gave up Lorraine to the
French, without even consulting the Empire,
which he had dragged into the war. Austria
thus maintained a predominant influence in Italy ;
but the Empire, during the whole century after
the Peace of Westphalia, did not obtain a single
noteworthy advantage over France. How much
more was this the case with respect to Poland,
which during the whole period of the religious
wars had been tlie most zealous ally of Spain and
the Hapsburgs, and which subsequently seemed
to threaten no danger to Austrian interests." —
H. Von Sybel, History of the French Revolution,
bk. 2, ch. 1 (p. 1).
A. D. 1658 — Election of the Emperor, Leo-
pold I.
A. D. 1660-1664. — Renewed war with the
Turks. — Victory of St. Gothard. — Transyl-
vania liberated. — A twenty years truce. See
Hungary: A. I). 1660-1 GC4.
A. D. 1672-1679. — The war of the Coalition
against Louis XIV. See Netherlands (Hol-
land): A. D. 1673-1674, and 1G74-1678; also
NiMEGHEN, Peace op.
A. D. 1675-1678. — War with Sweden.—
Battle of Fehrbellin. See Brandenburg ; A. D.
1640-1688 ; and Scandinavian States(Sweden) :
A. D. 1644-1697.
A. D. 1679-1681.— The final absorption of
Alsace and Les Trois-Evech^s by France,
wth boundaries widened. — Bold encroach-
ments of the French Chambers of Reannexa-
tion. — The seizure of Strasburg. See Prance :
A. D. 1679-1681.
A. D. 1686. — The League of Augsburg
against Louis XIV. — "The Duke of Orleans,
the French King's brother, had married the sister
of the Elector Palatine, the last of the House of
Simmern, who died in Jlay 1685, when his next
relative, the Count Palatine Philip William,
Duke of Neuberg, took possession of the Elec-
torate. The Duchess of Orleans had by her mar-
riage contract renounced all her feudal rights to
the Palatinate, but not her claims to the allodial
property and the moveables of her family."
These latter claims, taken in hand by Louis Xi V.
on behalf of his sister-in-law, were made so for-
midable that the new Elector appealed to the
Empire for protection, "and thus redoubled the
uneasiness felt in Germany, and indeed through-
out the greater part of Europe, respecting the
schemes of Louis. The Prince of Orange availed
hiuLself of these suspicions to forward his plans
against Louis. He artfully inflamed the general
alarm, and at length succeeded in inducing the
Emperor Leopold, the Kings of Spain and
Sweden, as princes of the Empire, the Electors
of Saxony and Bavaria, the circles of Suabia,
Franconia, Upper Saxony, and Bavaria, to enter
into the celebrated League of Augsburg (July
9th 1686). The object of this league was to
maintain the Treaties of Mlinster and Nimeguen
and the Truce of Ratisbon. If any of the mem-
bers of it was attacked he was to be assisted by
the whole confederacy ; 60,000 men were to be
raised, who were to be frequently drilled, and to
form a camp during some weeks of every year,
and a common fund for their support was to be
established at Frankfort. The League was to
be in force only for three years, but might be
prolonged at the expiration of that term should
the public safety require it. The Elector Pala-
tine, who was in fact the party most directly inter-
ested, acceded to the League early in September,
1523
GERMANY, 1686.
The first
Kings of Pr^issia.
GERMANY, 1700-1740.
as well as the Duke of Holstein Gottorp." —
T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 5, ch. 5
({,. 3), — "To Matlame's great anger Prance set up
a claim to the Palatinate on her behalf, Louvois
persuading the King and the royal family that
with a few vigorous measures the Palatinate
would he abandoned by the Neubourgs and an-
nexed to France as part of Madame's dowry.
This led to the devastation of the states, to which
Madame [Charlotte Elizabeth, the Duchess of
Orleans] so often and so bitterly alludes during
the next ten years. Obliged by Louis XIV. 's
policy to represent herself as desirous to recover
her rights over her father's and brother's succes-
sion, in many documents which she was never
even shown, Madame protested in all her private
letters against Prance's action in the matter, and
made every one at court thoroughly aware of her
grief and disapproval of what the king was
doing on her behalf." — Life and Letters of Char-
lotte Elizabeth, Princess Palatine, ch. 2.
A. D. 1689-1696. — The War of the League
of Augsburg, or Grand Alliance, against Louis
XIV. See Prance: A. D. 1689-1G90 to 169.'5-
1696.
A. D. 1690. — The second Devastation of the
Palatinate. See Prance: A. D. 1689-1690.
A. D. 1700. — Interest in the question of the
Spanish Succession. See Spain: A. D. 1698-
1700,
A. D. 1700. — Prussia raised to the dignity
of a kingdom. See Prussia: A. D. 1700,
A. D. 1700-1740. — The first king of Prussia
and his shabby court. — The second king, his
Brobdingnagian army and his extraordinary
character. — The up-bringing of Frederick the
Great. — The "Great Elector" of Brandenburg
"left to his son Frederic a principality as con-
siderable as any which was not called a kingdom
[see Brandenburg : A. D. 1640-1688]. Frederic
aspired to the style of royalty. Ostentatious and
profuse, negligent of his true interests and of
his high duties, insatiably eager for frivolous dis-
tinctions, he added nothing to the real weight of
the state which lie governed : perhaps he trans-
mitted his inheritance to his children impaired
rather than augmented in value ; but he succeeded
in gaining the great object of his life, the title of
King. In the year 1700 he assumed this new dig-
nity. He had on that occasion to undergo all
the mortifications which fall to the lot of ambi-
tious upstarts. Compared with the other crowned
heads of Europe, he made a figure resembling
that which a Nabob or a Commissary, who had
bought a title, would make in the ccfrnpany of
Peers whose ancestors liad been attainted for
treason against the Plantagenets. The envy of
the class which Frederic quitted, and the civil
scorn of the class into which he intruded himself,
were marked in very significant ways. . . . Fred-
eric was succeeded by his son, Frederic William,
a prince who must be allowed to have possessed
some talents for administration, but whose char-
acter was disfigured by odious vices, and whose
eccentricities were such as had never before been
seen out of a madhouse. He was exact and dili-
gent in the transacting of business ; and he was
the first who formed the design of obtaining for
Prussia a place among the European powers,
altogether out of proportion to her extent and
population, by means of a strong military organi-
zation. Strict economy enabled him to keep up
a peace establishment of 60,000 troops. These
troops were disciplined in such a manner, that,
placed beside them, the household regiments of
Versailles and St. James's would have appeared
an awkward squad. The master of such a force
could not but be regarded by all his neighbours
as a formidable enemy and a valuable ally. But
the mind of Frederic William was so ill regulated,
that all his inclinations became passions, and all
his passions partook of the character of moial and
intellectual disease. His parsimony degenerated
into sordid avarice. His taste for military pomp
and order became a mania, like that of a Dutch
burgomaster for tulips, or that of a member of
the Roxburghe Club for Caxtons. While the en-
voys of the Court of Berlin were in a state of such
squalid poverty as moved the laughter of foreign
capitals; while the food placed before the
princes and princesses of the blood-royal of Prus-
sia was too scanty to appease hunger, and so bad
that even hunger loathed it, no price was thought
too extravagant for tall recruits. The ambition
of the king was to form a brigade of giants, and
every country was ransacked by his agents for
men above the ordinary stature. . . . Though his
dominant passion was the love of military dis-
play, he was yet one of the most pacific of princes.
We are afraid that his aversion to war was not the
effect of humanity, but was merely one of his
thousand whims. His feeling about his troops
seems to have resembled a miser's feeling about
his money. He loved to collect them, to count
them, to see them increase ; but he could not find
it in his heart to break in upon the precious
hoard. He looked forward to some future time
when his Patagonian battalions were to drive
hostile infantry before tkem like sheep : but this
future time was always receding ; and it is prob-
able that, if his life had been ]5rolonged 30 years,
his superb army would never have seen any
harder service than a sham fight in the fields near
Berlin. But the great military means which he
had collected were destined to be employed by a
spirit far more daring and inventive than his own.
Frederic, surnamed the Great, son of Frederic
William, was born in January 1712. It may safely
be pronounced that he had received from nature
a strong and sharp understanding, and a rare
firmness of temper and intensity of will. As to
the other parts of his character, it is difficult to
say whether they are to be ascribed to nature, or
to the strange training which he underwent. The
history of his boyhood is painfully interesting.
Oliver Twist in the parish work-house, Smike at
Dotheboys Hall, were petted children when com-
pared with this wretched heir-apparent of a
crown. The nature of Frederic William was
hard and bad, and the habit of exercising arbi-
trary power had made him frightfully savage.
His rage constantly vented itself to right and
left in curses and blows. When his Majesty took
a walk, every human being fled before him, as
if a tiger had broken loose from a menagerie.
. . . But it was in his own house that he was
most unreasonable and ferocious. His palace
was hell, and he the most execrable of fiends.
. . . Early in the year 1740, Frederic William
met death with a firmness and dignity worthy
of a better and wiser man; and Frederic, who
had just completed his 38th year, became king
of Prussia. " — Lord JIacaulay, Frederic the Great
(Essays). — "Frederick William I. became . . .
the founder of the first modern State in Germany.
His was a nature in which the repulsive and the
1524
GERMANY, 1700-1740.
War of the
Spanish Succtssion.
GERMANY, 1703.
I
imposing, the uncouth and the admirable, were
closely united In his manners a rough and un-
refined peasant, in his family a tyrant, in his
government a despot, choleric almost to madness,
his reign would have been a curse to the country,
had he not united with his unlimited power a
rare executive ability and an incorruptible fidelity
to duty; and from first to last he consecrated all
his powers to the common weal. By him effec-
tive limitations were put upon the independent
action of the provinces, and upon the overgrown
privileges of the estates. He did not do away
with the guilds of the different orders, but placed
them under the strict control of a strongly cen-
tralized superintendence, and compelled their
members to make every necessary sacrifice for
the sake of assisting him in his efforts for the
prosperity and power of Prussia. It is astonish-
ing to see with what practical judgment he recog-
nized a needed measure both in general and in
detail ; how he trained a body of officials, suited
in all grades to the requirements of their position ;
how he disciplined them in activity, prudence,
and rectitude, by strict inspection, by encourag-
ing instruction, and by brutal punishments; how
he enforced order and economy in the public
finances ; how he improved the administration of
his own domains, so that it became a fruitful ex-
ample to all proprietors ; and how, full of the de-
sire to make the peasants free owners of the soil,
although he did not yet venture on such a radical
measure, he nevertheless constantly protected the
poor against the arbitrariness and oppression of
the higher classes. . . . There was no depart-
ment of life to which he did not give encourage-
ment and assistance ; it is also true that there was
none which he did not render subservient to his
own will, and the products of which he did not
make conducive to the one great end.— the inde-
pendence and aggrandizement of the State. So
that he who was the ruler of, at most, three million
people, created, without exhausting the country,
a standing army of eighty thousand men : a re-
markably skilful and ready army, which lie dis-
ciplined with barbarous severity on the slightest
occasion, at the same time that he looked out for
the welfare of every soldier even in the smallest
detail, according to his saying, that 'a king's
warrior must live better than a gentleman's ser-
vant. ' What he had in his mind, almost a hun-
dred years before Scharnhorst, was the universal
obligation of military service ; but it fared with
him in regard to this as in regard to the freedom
of the peasants: strong as he was, he could not
turn the world he lived in upside down ; he con-
tented himself with bequeathing his best ideas to
a more propitious future. The foundations of
the government rested upon the estates in spite
of all monarchical reforms. Thus, beside the
federative Empire of the Hapsburgs, arose the
small, compact Prussian State, which, by reason
of the concentration of its forces, was a match
for its five-times-larger rival." — H. Von Sybel,
77(6 Founding of the German Empire by William
I., bk. 1, ch. 2 (». 1).
Also ik: T. Carlyle, Eist. of Frederick 11. ,
called tilt, Great, bk. 3, c/i. 19, bk. 5-10 (v. 1-2).
A. D. 1702.— The War of the Spanish Suc-
cession : Siege of Landau. — Battle of Fried-
lingen. — On the part of the Imperialists, the
"War of the Spanish Succession was opened on
the Rhine frontier in June 1702, by a movement
of the army commanded by the Margrave Louis
of Baden, which " came over the Rhine and laid
siege to the important fortress of Landau, — the
butwark of Alsace as it was then regarded. The
Margrave was subsequently joined by the Em-
peror's eldest son, the young King of the Romans,
who desired to share in the glory, though not
in the toils of the expected conquest. . . . The
Marechal de Catinat, one of the soldiers of whom
France has most reason to be proud, — the virtu-
ous Catinat as Rousseau terms him — held com-)
mand at this period in Alsace. So inferior were
his numbers that he could make no attempt toj
relieve Landau. But after its reduction an op- ^
portunity appeared in which by detaching ai
portion of his army he might retrieve the for-
tunes of France in another quarter. The Elector
of Bavaria, after much irresolution, had openly
espoused the cause of Louis. He seized upon
the city of Ulm and issued a proclamation in
favor of his new ally. To support his move-
ments an enterprising and ambitious ofticer. the
Marquis de Villars, was sent across the Rhine
with part of the army of Alsace. The declara-
tion of the Elector of Bavaria and the advance of
Villars into Germany disquieted in no slight de-
gree the Prince Louis of Baden. Leaving a
sufficient garrison in Landau, he also passed the
Rhine. The two armies met at Friedlingen on
the 14th of October. Louis of Baden, a ponder-
ous tactician bred in the wars against the Turks,
might out-manceuvre some Grand Vizier, but
was no match for the quick-witted Frenchman.
He was signally defeated with the loss of 3,000
men ; soon after which, the season being now far
advanced, Villars led back his army to winter
quarters in France. His victory of Friedlingen
gained for him at Versailles the rank of Marechal
tie France." — Earl Stanhope (Lord Mahon), Hist.
of Eny.: Ileign of Queen Anne, ch. 2.
Also in: W. Coxe, Hist, of the House of
Austria, ch. 68 (». 2). — See, also, Netherlands:
A. D. 1702-1704, and Sp.\in: A. D. 1702.
A. D. 1703. — The "War of the Spanish Suc-
cession : Campaigns on the Upper Rhine and
in Bavaria. — "Early in June [A. D. 1703],
Marshal Tallard assumed the command of the
French forces in Alsace, . . . took Prissac on
the 7th of September, and invested Landau on
the 16th of October. The allies, under the
Prince of Hesse, attempted to raise the siege,
but were defeated with considerable loss ; and,
soon after, Landau surrendered, thus terminating
with disaster the campaign on the Upper Rhine.
Still more considerable were the losses sustained
in Bavaria. Marshal Villars commanded there,
and, at the head of the French and Bavarians,
defeated General Stirum, who headed the Im-
perialists, on the 20th of September. In De-
cember, Marshal Marsin, who had succeeded
Villars in the command, made himself master of
the important city of Augsburg, and in January,
1704, the Bavarians got possession of Passau.
j\Ieanwhile, a formidable insurrection had broken
out in Hungary, which so distracted the cabinet
of Vienna that the capital seemed to be threatened
by the combined forces of the French and Bava-
rians after the fall of Passau. . . . Instead of
confining the war to one of posts and sieges in
Flanders and Italy, it was resolved [by the
French] to throw the bulk of their forces at once
into Bavaria, and operate against Austria from
the heart of Germany, by pouring down the val-
ley of the Danube. The advanced post held
1525
GERMANY, 1703.
War of the
Spayiish Succession.
GERMANY, 1704.
there bj' the Elector of Bavaria in front, forming
a salient angle, penetrating, as it were, into the
Imperial dominions, the menacing aspect of the
Hungarian insurrection in the rear, promised the
most successful issue to this decisive operation.
For this purpose, Marshal Tallard, with the
French army on the Upper Rhine, received orders
to cross theBlack Forest and advance into Swa-
l)ia, and unite with the Elector of Bavaria, which
he accordingly did at Donawerth, in the begin-
ning of July. Marshal Villeroy, with forty bat-
talions and thirty-nine squadrons, was to break
•off from the army in Flanders and support the
advance by a movement on the Moselle, so as to
be in a condition to join the main army on the
Danube, of which it would form, as it were, the
left wing ; while Vendome, with the army of
Italy, was to penetrate into the Tyrol, and ad-
vance by Innspruck on Salzburg. The united
armies, which it was calculated, after deducting
all the losses of the campaign, would muster
80,000 combatants, was then to move direct by
Lintz and the valley of the Danube on Vienna,
while a large detachment penetrated into Hun-
gary to lend a hand to the already formidable
insurrection in that kingdom. The plan was
grandly conceived. . . . 5larlborough, by means
of the secret information which he obtained from
the French head-quarters, had got full intelli-
gence of it, and its dangers to the allies, if it
succeeded, struck him as much as the chances of
great advantage to them if ably thwarted. His
line was instantly taken." — A. Alison, Military
Life of Marlborouyh. ch. 3, sect. 30-33. — The
measures taken by Marlborough to defeat the
plans of the French in this campaign are briefly
stated in the account of his first campaigns in
the Netherlands. See Netherlands: A. D.
1702-1704.
Also in ; H. Martin, Hist, of France : Aye of
Louis XIV. (tr. by M. L. Booth), v. 2, ch. 5.— W.
Coxe, Hist, of the House of Austria, ch. 09 (e. 2).
A. D. 1704.— Tke War of the Spanish Suc-
cession : Marlborough and Prince Eugene on
the Danube. — The Battle of Blenheim. — "Marl-
borough, with his motley army of English, Dutch,
Danes and Germans, concealing his main pur-
pose, was marching south along the Rhine, with
a design to strike his critical blow, by attacking
the French armies that were forming for the cam-
paign of the Danube, and thus protect the Em-
peror and Vienna, and punish the Elector of Ba-
varia, whose territories would be then exposed.
On the route, Marlborough was joined by Prince
Eugene and the Margrave of Baden; but as a
new French force was approaching. Prince Eugene
was sent to keep it in check. Marlborough and
the Prince of Baden, with united forces of about
€0,000 men, then advanced, in rapid marches,
and took, by gallant assault, the fortifications of
the Schellenberg in Bavaria, and the old town of
Donauworth, a critical and commanding position
on the Danube. The allies were now masters of
the main passages of the Danube — and had a
strong place as a basis of action. The allied
leaders thereupon sent troops into the heart of
Bavaria, and devastated the countrj' even to the
vicinity of Munich — burning and destroying as
they marched, and taking several minor for-
tresses. Marlborough's forces and those of Prince
Eugene were distant from each other some forty
miles, when came the news of the inarch of a
French army of 35,000 men under Tallard, to
form a junction with the others, to succor the
Elector, and take revenge for the defeat of the
Schellenberg. Two French Marshals, Tallard
and Marsin, were now in command ; their design
was to attack Marlborough and Eugene's armies
in detail. By rapid marches, Marlborough crossed
the Danube and joined Prince Eugene near Don-
auworth, and thereupon occurred one of the most
important and decisive contests of modern times,
fought between the old town of Hochstadt and
the village of Blenheim, about fifteen miles south
of Donauworth. The skilful tactics of the allied
generals precipitated the battle. The allied
French and Bavarians numbered 60,000 [56,000;
Malleson] men — the English, Dutch and Ger-
mans and other allies, about 53,000 [53,000; Mal-
leson]. The allies were allowed to cross an in-
tervening brook without opposition, and form
their lines. A great charge, in ful! force, of the
allies was then made; they broke the enemy's
extended line ; and an ensuing charge of cavalry
scattered his forces right and left, and drove
many into the Danube. More than 14,000 French
and Bavarians, who had not struck a blow, ex-
cept to defend their position, entrenched and
shut up in the village of Blenheim, waiting for
orders to move, were then surrounded by the
victorious allies, and compelled to surrender as
prisoners of war. The scattered remnants of the
French and Bavarian army either disbanded, or
were driven over the Rhine. The garrison at Ulm
capitulated, and the Elector fled into France." —
J. W. Gerard, The Peace of Utrecht, ch. 16.—
"The armies of Marchin and of Max Emanuel
[of Bavaria] had been defeated ; that of Tallard
had been annihilated. Whilst the loss of the
victors in killed and wounded reached 12,000
men, that of the French and Bavarians exceeded
14,000. In addition, the latter lost 13,000 men
taken prisoners, 47 pieces of cannon, 25 stan-
dards, and 90 colours. Such was the battle of
Blenheim. It was one of the decisive battles of
history, and it changed the character of the war.
Up to that moment, the action of France against
Germany had been aggressive ; thenceforward it
became purely defensive. Blenheim, in fact,
dashed to the ground the hopes of Louis XIV.
and Max Emanuel of Bavaria. It saved the
house of Habsburg in Germany, and helped it
greatly in Hungary. It showed likewise that it
was possible to inflict a crushing defeat on the
armies of Louis XIV." — Col. G. B. Malleson,
Prince Eugene of Samy, ch. 6. — "Marlborough
[after the battle], having detached part of his
force to besiege Ulm, drew near with the bulk of
his array to the Rhine, which he passed near
Philipsburg on the 6th of September, and soon
after commenced the siege of Landau, on the
French side; Prince Louis, with 30,000 men,
forming the besieging force, and Eugene and
Marlborough, with 30,000, the covering army.
Villeroi, with the French army, abandoned an
intrenched camp which he had constructed to
cover the town. Marlborough followed, and
made every effort to bring the French marshal
to battle, but in vain. . . . Ulm surrendered on
the 16th of September, . . . which gave the
allies a solid foundation on the Danube, and ef-
fectually crushed the power of the Elector of
Bavaria, who, isolated now in the midst of his
enemies, had no alternative but to abandon his
dominions and seek refuge in Brussels, where
he arrived in the end of September. . . . The
1526
GERMANY, 1704.
War of the
Spanish Succession.
GERMANY, 1711.
Electress of Bavaria, who had been left regent of
that state in the absence of the Elector in Flan-
ders, had now no resource left but submission ;
and a treaty was accordingly concluded in the be-
ginning of November, by which she agreed to dis-
band all her troops. Trgves and Traerbach were
taken in the end of December; the Hungarian
insurrection was suppressed ; Landau capitulated
in the beginning of the same month ; a diversion
which the enemy attempted toward Tr§ves was
defeated by Marlborough's activity and vigi-
lance, and that city put in a sufficient posture of
".defense ; and, the campaign being now finished,
'that accomplished commander returned to the
Hague and London." — A. Alison, Military Life
of Marlborough, ch. 2.
Also in : G. B. Malleson, Battle-fields of Oer-
many, ch. 10. — W. Coxe, Memoirs of Marlborough,
ch. 23-26 (b. 1).— J. H. Burton, Hist, of the Reign
of Queen Anne, ch. 6 (o. 1). — H. Martin, Hist, of
France: Age of Louis XIV., v. 2, ch. 5.
A. D. 1705. — The Election of the Emperor
Joseph I.
A. D. 1705.— The War of the Spanish Suc-
cession : The dissolution of Bavaria. — "The
campaign of 1705 was destitute of any important
events on the side of Germany. ... In Bavaria,
the peasants, irritated by the oppressions of the
Austrian government, rose in a body in the
autumn, and, could they have been supported by
France, would have placed the Emperor in great
danger; but without that aid the insurrection
only proved fatal to themselves. The insurgents
were beaten in detail, and the Emperor now re-
solved on the complete dissolution of Bavaria as
a state. The four elder sons of Maximilian were
carried to Klagenfurt in Carinthia, to be there
educated under the strictest inspection as Counts
of Wittelsbach, while the younger sons were con-
signed to the care of a court lady at Munich, and
the daughters sent to a convent. The Electress,
who had been on a visit to Venice, was not per-
mitted to return to her dominions, and the Elector
Maximilian, as well as the Elector of Cologne,
was, by a decree of the Electoral College, placed
under the ban of the Empire. The Upper Palati-
nate was restored to the Elector Palatine. . . .
The remaining Bavarian territories were con-
fiscated, and divided among various princes." —
T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 5, ch. 6
(v. 3). — AV. Coxe, Hist, of the House of Austria,
ch. 73 (». 3).— The campaign of 1705 in the Neth-
erlands was unimportant; but in Spain it had
brilliant results. See Sp.^in: A. D. 1705; and
Neth:erl.\nds : A. D. 1705.
A. D. 1706-1711. — The War of the Spanish
Succession : Successes of the French. — During
1706, little was attempted on either side by the
forces which watched each other along the Rhine.
In 1707 Villars, the French commander, obtained
liberty to act. "The Emperor, greatly preoccu-
pied with Hungary, had furnished but indiffer-
ent resources to the new general of the army of
the Rhine, Brandenburg-Baireuth ; the German
army was ill paid and in bad condition in its im-
mense lines on the right bank, which extended
along the Rhine from Philippsburg as far as Stol-
hofeu, then, in a square, from Stolhofen to the
Black Mountains by Buhl. May 23, the lines
were attacked simultaneously at four points.
. . . The success was complete ; the enemy tied
into the mountains, abandoning artillery, bag-
gage, and munitions, and did not stop till beyond
the Neckar. The lines were razed ; Swabia and
a part of Franconia were put under contribution.
Villars marched on Stuttgart, crossed the Neckar.
and subjected the whole country to ransom as
far as the Danube. The enemies in vain rallied
and reinforced themselves with tardy contingents
of the Empire; they could not prevent Villars
from laying under contribution the Lower Neckar,
then the covintry between the Danube and Lake
Constance, and from maintaining himself beyond
the Rhine till he went into winter-quarters.
French parties scoured the country as conquerors
as far as the fatal field of Ilochstadt." At the
beginning of the campaign of 1708, it was the
plan of the allies to make their chief attack on
France "by the way of the Rhine and the
Moselle, with two armies of 60,000 men each,
under the command of the Elector of Hanover
and Eugene, whilst Marlborough occupied the
great French army in Flanders." But this plan
was changed. "Eugene left the Elector of
Hanover in the north of Swabia, behind the lines
of Etlingen, which the allies had raised during the
winter to replace the lines of Bilhl at Stolhofen,
and, with 24,000 soldiers collected on the Moselle,
he marched by the way of Coblentz towards Bel-
gium (June 30). The French forces of the Rhine
and the Moselle followed this movement." The
campaign then ensuing in the Netherlands was
that which was signalized by Marlborough and
Eugene's victory at Oudenarde and the siege of
Lille. In 1709, "the attention of Europe, as in
1708, was chiefly directed to Flanders; but it
was not only on that side that France was men-
aced. France was to be encroached upon at
once on the north and the east. Whilst the great
allied army penetrated into Artois, the army of
the Rhine and the army of the Alps were to
penetrate, the latter into Bresse by the way of
Savoy, the former Into Franche-Corate by the
way of Alsace, and to combine their operations.
. . . The Germans had not taken the offensive in
Alsace till in the month of August. Marshal
Harcourt, with over 20,000 men, had covered
himself with the lines of the Lauter ; the Elector of
Hanover, who had crossed the Rhine at Philipps-
burg with superior forces, did not attack Har-
court, and strove to amuse him whilst 8,000 or
9,000 Germans, left in Swabia with General
Merci, moved rapidly on Neuberg . . . and es-
tablished there a t§te-du-pont in order to enter
Upper Alsace." By swiftly sending a sufficient
force to attack and defeat Merci at Neuberg,
Aug. 36, Harcourt completely frustrated these
plans. "The Elector of Hanover recrossed the
river and retired behind the lines of Etlingen."
During the two following years the French and
German forces on the side of the Rhine did little
more than observe one another. — H. Martin, Hist,
of France: Age of Louis XIV., v. 2, ch. 5-6. —
Meantime, Ramillies, Oudenarde and Malplaquet
had been fought in the Netherlands; Prince
Eugene had won his victory at Turin, and the
contest had been practically decided in Spain, at
Almanza. See Netherlands: A. D. 1706-1707,
1708-1709, 1710-1712; Italy: A. D. 1701-1718;
Spain; A. D. 1706, 1707, and 1707-1710; and
England; A. D. 1710-1712.
Also in: W. Coxe, Hist, of the House of
Austria, ch. 75-79 (ti. 3). — F. P. Guizot, Popular
Hist, of France, ch. 45 (». 5).
A. D. 1711. — Election of the Emperor
Charles VI.
1527
GERMANY, 1711.
Frederick the Great.
GERMANY, 1748.
A. D. 171 1. —The War of the Spanish Suc-
cession : Change in the circumstances of the
war. See Ai;stri.\: A. D. 1711.
A. D. 1713-1719. — The Emperor's continued
differences with the King of Spain.— The
Triple Alliance.— The Quadruple Alliance.
See Spain; A. D. 1713-1725.
A. D. 1714. — Ending of the War of the
Spanish Succession : The Peace of Utrecht
and the Treaty of Rastadt. See Utrecht:
A. D. 1712-1714.
A. D. 1732-1733. — Interference in the elec-
tion of the King of Poland. See Poland:
A. D. 1732-1733.
A. D. 1733-1735.— The War of the Polish
Succession. — Cession of Lorraine to France.
See France: A. D. 1733-173.5.
A. D. 1740. — The question of the Austrian
Succession. — The Pragmatic Sanction. See
Austria: A, D. 1718-1738, and 1740.
A. D. 1740-1756. — Early years of the reign
of Frederick the Great in Prussia. — The War
of the Austrian Succession.— When Frederick
II. , known as Frederick the Great, succeeded his
father, in 1740, "nobody had the least suspicion
that a tyrant of extraordinary military and po-
litical talents, of industry more extraordinary
still, -without fear, without faith, and without
mercy, had ascended the throne." — Lord Macau-
lay, Frederic Vie Great (Essays).— The reign of
Frederick II. " was expected to be an effeminate
one ; but when at the age of twenty -nine he be-
came king, he forgot his pleasures, thought of
nothing but glory, and no longer employed him-
self but in attention to his finances, his arm}', his
policy, and his laws. His provinces were scat-
tered, his resources weak, his power precarious ;
his army of seventy thousand soldiers was more
remarkable for handsomeness of the men, and
the elegance of their appearance, than for their
discipline. He augmented it, instructed it, exer-
cised it, and fortune began to open the tield of
glory to him at the moment he was fully pre-
pared to enjoy her favours. Charles XII. was
dead, and his station filled by a king without
authority. Russia, deprived of Peter the Great,
who had only rough-hewn her civilization, lan-
guished under the feeble government of the Em-
press Anne, and of a cruel and ignorant minister.
Augustus III. King of Poland and Elector of
Saxony, a Prince devoid of character, could not
inspire him with any dread. Louis XV., a weak
and peaceable king, was governed by Cardinal
Fleuri, who loved peace, but always by his weak-
ness suffered himself to be drawn into war. He
presented to Frederic rather a support than an
obstacle. The court of France had espoused the
cause of Charles VII. against Francis I. Maria
Theresa, wife of Francis, and Queen of Hungary,
saw herself threatened by England, Holland, and
France ; and whilst she had but little reason to
hope the preservation of her hereditary dominions,
that arrogant princess wished to place her hus-
band on the Imperial Throne. This quarrel
kindled the flames of war in Europe ; the genius
of Frederic saw by a single glance that the mo-
ment was arrived for elevating Prussia to the
second order of powers; he made an offer to
Maria Theresa to defend her, if she would cede
Silesia to him, and threatened her with war in case
of refusal. The Empress, whose firmness noth-
ing could shake, impoliticly refused that prop-
osition ; war was declared, and Frederic entered
Silesia at the head of eighty thousand men.
This first war lasted eighteen months [see Aus-
tria: A. D. 1740 to 1741]. Frederic, by gaining
five battles, shewed that Europe would recognize
one great man more in her bloody annals. He
had begun the war from ambition, and contrary
to strict justice ; he concluded it with ability, but
by the abandonment of France his ally, without
giving her information of it, and he thus put in
practice, when he was seated on the throne, the
principles of Machiavel, whom he had refuted
before he ascended it. Men judge according to
the event. The hero was absolved by victory
from the wrongs with which justice reproached
him ; and this brilliant example serves to confirm
men in that error, too generally and too lightly
adopted, that ability in politics is incompatible
with the strict rule of morality. Four years
after, in [1744], Frederic again took up arms [see
Austria: A. D. 1743-1744 to 1744-1745]. He
invaded Bohemia, Upper Silesia, and Moravia.
Vienna thought him at her gates; but the defec-
tion of the Bavarians, the retreat of the French,
and the return of Prince Charles into Bohemia,
rapidly changed the face of affairs. The position
of Frederic became as dangerous as it had been
menacing ; he was on the point of being lost, and
he saw himself compelled to retire with as much
precipitation, as he had advanced with boldness.
The gaining the battle of Hohen-Friedberg saved
him. That retreat and that victory fixed the
seal to his reputation. It was after this action
that he wrote to Louis XV. 'I have just dis-
charged in Silesia the bill of exchange which
your majesty drew on me at Pontenoy. ' A letter
so much the more modest, as Frederic had con-
quered, and Louis had only been witness to a vic-
tory. He displayed the same genius and the
same activity in the campaign of 1745, and once
more abandoned France in making his separate
peace at Dresden. By this treaty Francis was
peaceably assured of the empire, and the cession
of Silesia was confirmed to Frederic. France dur-
ing this war committed some wrongs, which
might palliate the abandonment of Prussia. The
French did not keep Prince Charles within
bounds, they made no diversion into Germany,
and fought no where but in Flanders. ... In
1756, Europe was again in a flame. France and
England declared war against each other, and
both sought alliances; Frederic ranged himself
on the side of England, and by that became
the object of the unreflecting vengeance of the
French, and of the alliance of that power with
Austria ; Austria also formed an alliance with the
Court of Petersburg by means of a Saxon secre-
tary ; Frederic discovered the project of the
Courts of Petersburg, Dresden, and Vienna, to
invade tlie Prussian dominions. He was before-
hand with them, and began the war by some
conquests. " — L. P. Segur, the elder. Hist, of the
Principal Erents of the Reign of Frederic William,
II. , King of Prussia, «. 1 , iip. 2-6.
A. D. 1742. — The Elector of Bavaria crowned
Emperor (Charles VIL). See Austria: A. D.
1741 (October).
A. D. 1745.— The consort of Maria Theresa
elected Emperor (Francis I.). — Rise of the im-
perial house of Hapsburg-Lorraine. See Aus-
tria: A. D. 1745 (Sept. — Oct.); also, 1744-1745.
A. D. 1748.— End and results of the War of
the Austrian Succession. See Aix-la-Cha-
pellk The Congress.
1528
GERMANY, 1755-1756.
Causes of the
Seven Years War.
GERMANY, 1756.
A. D. 1755-1756. — The Seven Years War:
Its causes and provocations. — "The great na-
tional quarrel between England and tlio powers
whicli restrained her free movements on the sea
and lier extension of colonies, had never ceased.
England would have the freedom of the sea ; and
on land slie pushed population and ploughs wliere
France paraded soldiers. In such a struggle war
must come, but, by laws invariable as the laws
of nature, the population will win in the end.
After much bickering, blows began in 1754, and
at the beginning of 1755 England despatched the
ill-fated Braddock with a small force, which was
destroyed in July. ... As yet, however, the
quarrel was only colonial. England embittered
it by seizing French ships without any declara-
tion of war. But why did Frederick [of Prussia]
strike in, if indeed he desired peace ? In truth
there was no choice for him. As early as 1753-
53 his secret agents had discovered that Austria,
Russia and Sa.xony were hatching a plot for the
destruction of Prussia, and such a partition as
afterwards befell unhappy Poland. In 1753 a
Saxon oiHcial, Mentzel byname, began to supply
the Prussian agents with copies of secret docu-
ments from the archives at Dresden, which
proved that, during the whole of the peace, ne-
gotiations had been proceeding for a simulta-
neous attack on Fredericlv, though the astute
Briihl [Saxon minister], mindful of former de-
feats, objected to playing the part of jackal to
the neighbouring lions. In short, by the end of
1755 the king knew that preparations were al-
ready on foot in Austria and Russia, and that
he would probably be attacked next year cer-
tainly, or, at latest, the year after. A great war
was coming between England and France, in
which the continental power would attack Han-
over, and tread closelj' on the skirts of Prussia.
The situation was dangerous, and became terri-
bly menacing when England bargained with
Russia to subsidise a Muscovite army of 55,000
men for defence of Hanover. Ru.ssia consented
with alacrity. IMoney was all that the czarina
needed for her preparations against Frederick,
and in the autumn of 17.55 she assembled, not
55,000, but 70,000 men on the Prussian frontier,
nominally for the use of England. But through-
out the winter all the talk at St. Petersburg was
of Frederick's destruction in the coming spring.
It was time for him to stir. His first move was
one of policy. He offered England a ' neutrality
convention ' by which the two powers jointly
should guarantee the German Reich against all
foreign intervention during the coming war. On
the 16th of January, 17.56, the convention was
signed in London, and the Russian agreement
thrown over, as it could well be, since it had not
been ratified. Europe was now ranking herself
for the struggle. In preceding years, the Aus-
trian diplomatist, Kaunitz, had so managed the
French court, especially through the medium of
Madame de Pompadour, that Louis XV. was
now on the side of Maria Theresa, who had
bowed her neck so far as to write to the French
king's mistress as ' Ma Cousine.' while Frederick
forgot policy, and spoke of the Pompadour in
slighting terms. ' Je ne la connais pas,' said he
once, and was never forgiven. . . . The agree-
ment with Russia to partition Prussia had already
been made, and Frederick's sharp tongue had
betrayed him into calling the czarina that ' In-
fame catin du nord. ' Saxony waited for the ap-
pearance of her stronger neighbours in order to
join them. England alone was Frederick's ally."
— Col. C. B. Brackenbury, Frederick the Great,
ch. 9. — "The secret sources of the Third Silesiau
War, since called ' Seven- Years War,' go back
to 1745 ; nay, we may sa)', to the First Invasion
of Silesia in 1740. For it was in Maria Theresa's
incurable sorrow at lo.ss of Silesia, and her in-
extinguishable hope to reconquer it, that this and
all Friedrich's other Wars had their origin. . . .
Traitor Menzel the Saxon Kanzellist . . . has
been busy for Prussia ever since ' the end of
1752.' Got admittance to the Presses; sent his
first Excerpt ' about the time of Easter-Fair
1753,' — time of Voltaire's taking wing. And
has been at work ever since. Copying Des-
patches from the most secret Saxon Repositories ;
ready always on Excellency Maltzahn's indicat-
ing the Piece wanted [Maltzahn being the Prus-
sian Minister at Dresden]. . . . Menzel . . .
lasted in free activity till 1757; and was then
put under lock and key. Was not hanged ; sat
prisoner for twenty-seven years after ; over-grown
with hair, legs and arms chained together, heavy
iron-bar uniting both ankles; diet bread-and-
water ; — for the rest, healthy ; and died, not
very miserable it is said, in 1784." — T. Carlyle,
Hist, of Fi-iedrich II. of Prussia, bk. 17, ch. 1 (v. 7).
Also in : Due de Broglie, The King's Secret,
ch. 1-3 (v. 1).— Frederick II., Hist, of the Seven
Tears War {Posthumous Works, v. 2), ch. 3. — H.
Tuttle, Hist, of Prussia, 1745-1756 (». 3), ch. 6-
9. — F. Von Raumer, Contributions to Modern
Hist.: Fi-ederick 11. and his Times, ch. 24-28.^
See, also, England: A. D. 1754-1755; and Ars-
TRr.\: A. D. 175.5-1763.
A. D. 1756. — The Seven Years War : Fred-
erick strikes the first blow. — Saxony subdued.
— "Finding that the storm was wholly inevita-
ble, and must burst on him next year, ho
[Frederick], with bold sagacity, determined to
forestall it. First, then, in August, 17.56, his
ambassador at Vienna had orders to demand of
the Empress Queen a statement of her intentions,
to announce war as the alternative, and to de-
clare that he would accept no answer ' in the
style of an oracle.' The answer, as he expected,
was evasive. Without further delay an army
of 60,000 Prussians, headed by Frederick in per-
son, poured into Saxony. The Queen of Poland
was taken in Dresden; the King of Poland [Au-
gustus III. Elector of Saxonj', and, by election.
King of Poland] and his troops were blockaded
in Pirna. Thus did Frederick commence that
mighty struggle which is known to Germans by
the name of the Seven Years' War. The first
object of the Prussian monarch at Dresden was
to obtain possession of the original documents
of the coalition against him, whose existence
he knew by means of the traitor Menzel. The
Queen of Poland, no less aware than Fred-
erick of the importance of these papers, had car-
ried them to her own bed-chamber. She sat
down on the trunk which contained the most ma-
terial ones, and declared to the Prussian officer
sent to seize them that nothing but force should
move her from the spot. [The official account
of this occurrence which Carlyle produces repre-
sents the Queen as ' standing before the door '
of the ' archive apartment ' in which the com-
promising documents were locked up, she hav-
ing previously sealed the door.] This officer
was of Scottish blood. General Keith, the Earl
1529
GERMANY, 1756.
Seven Years War.
GERMANY, 1757.
Marischal's brother. ' All Europe, ' said the
Queen, ' would exclaim against this outrage ; and
then, sir, you will be the victim ; depend upon it,
your King is a man to sacrifice you to his own
honour ! ' Keith, who knew Frederick's character,
was startled, and sent for further orders ; but on
receiving a reiteration of the first he did his duty.
The papers were then made public, appended to
a manifesto in vindication of Frederick's con-
duct; and they convinced the world that, al-
though the apparent aggressor in his invasion
of Saxony, he had only acted on the principles
of self-defence. Meanwhile, the Prussian array
closely blockaded the Saxon in Pirna, but the Aus-
trian, under Marshal Brown, an officer of British
extraction, was advancing to its relief through the
mountain passes of Bohemia. Frederick left a
sufficient force to maintain the blockade, marched
against Brown with the remainder, and gave him
battle at Lowositz [or Lobositz] on the 1st of
October. It proved a hard-fought day ; the King
no longer found, as he says in one of his letters,
the old Austrians he remembered; and his loss
in killed and wounded was greater than theirs
[3,308 against 3,984]; but victory declared on
his side. Then retracing liis steps towards Pirna
he compelled, by the pressure of famine, the
whole Saxon army, 17,000 strong, to an un-
conditional surrender. The officers were sent
home on parole, but the soldiers were induced,
partly by force and partly by persuasion, to en-
list in the Prussian ranks, and swear fidelity to
Frederick. Their former sovereign. King Au-
gustus, remained securely perched on his castle-
rock of KOnigstein, but, becoming weary of
confinement, solicited, and was most readily
granted, passports to Warsaw. During the whole
winter Frederick fixed his head-quarters at Dres-
den, treating Saxony in all respects as a con-
quered province, or as one of his own. Troops
and taxes were levied throughout that rich and
populous land with unsparing rigour, and were
directed against the very cause which the sover-
eign of that land had embraced. " — Lord Mahon
(Earl Stanhope), Hist, of Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 33
(V. 4).
Also in: T. Carlyle, Hut. of Priedrich II. , bk.
17, ch. 4-8 (». 7).— Lord Dover, Life of Frederick
II, V. 3, ch. 1.
A. D. 1756-1757.— The Seven Years War:
Frederick under the Ban of the Empire. — The
coalition against Frederick. — " All through the
winter Austria strained every nerve to consoli-
date her alliances, and she did not scruple to use
her position at the head of the Empire, in order
to drag that body into the quarrel that had arisen
between two of its members. On his own respon-
sibility, without consulting the electors, princes,
and cities, the Emperor passed sentence on Fred-
erick, and condemned him, unheard, as a dis-
turber of the peace. Many of the great cities
altogether refused to publish the Emperor's de-
cree, and even among the states generally sub-
servient to Austria there were some that were
alarmed at so flagrant a disregard of law and
precedent. It may have seemed a sign of what
was to be expected should Prussia be annihilated,
and no state remain in Germany that dared to
lift up its voice against Austria. Nevertheless,
in spite of this feeling, and in spite of the oppo-
sition of nearly all the Protestant states, Austria
succeeded in inducing the Empire to espouse her
cause. In all three colleges of electors, princes.
and cities she obtained a majority, and at a diet,
held on Jan. 17, 1757, it was resolved that an
army of the Empire should be set on foot for the
purpose of making war on Prussia. Some months
later Frederick was put to the ban of the Empire.
But the use of this antiquated weapon served
rather to throw ridicule on those who emploj'ed
it than to injure him against whom it was
launched. ... It has been calculated that the
population of the States arrayed against Fred-
erick the Great amounted to 90,000,000, and that
they put 430,000 men into the field in the year
1757. The population of Prussia was 4,500,000,
her army 200, 000 strong ; but, after deducting the
garrisons of the fortresses, there remained little
over 150,000 men available for service in the
field. The odds against Frederick were great,
but they were not absolutely overwhelming.
His territories were scattered and difficult of de-
fence, the extremities hardly defensible at all;
but he occupied a central position from which he
might, by rapidity of movement, be able to take
his assailants in detail, unless tlieir plans were
distinguished by a harmony unusual in the efforts
of a coalition." — P. W. Longman, Frederick the
Oreat and the Seven Tears' War, ch. 8, sect. 3.
A. D. 1756-1758.— War of Prussia with Swe-
den in Pomerania. See Scandinavian States
(Sweden): A. D. 1720-1793.
A. D. i7S7(April— June).— The Seven Years
War: Frederick's invasion of Bohemia. —
Victory at Prague and defeat at Kolin. — "At
the commencement of 1757, the grand confed-
eracy against the king of Prussia was consoli-
dated by the efforts and intrigues of the court of
Vienna. The French had drawn together 80,000
men on the Rhine, under the command of mar-
shal d' Etrees ; the army of execution was assem-
bling in the empire ; the Swedes were preparing
to penetrate into Pomerania, and 60,000 Russians
were stationed on the frontiers of Livonia, wait-
ing the season of action to burst into the king-
dom of Prussia. AVith this favourable aspect of
affairs, the empress prepared for the campaign
by augmenting her forces in Hungary and Bo-
hemia to 150,000 men; the main army, stationed
in the vicinity of Prague, was commanded by
Prince Charles, who was assisted by the skill of
marshal Brown, and the other corps intrusted
to count Daun. Frederic possessed too much
foresight and vigilance to remain inactive while
his enemies were collecting their forces ; he there-
fore resolved to carry the war into the heart of the
Austrian territories, and by a decisive stroke to
shake the basis of the confederacy. He covered
this plan with consummate address ; he affected
great trepidation and uncertainty, and, to de-
ceive the Austrians into a belief that he only in-
tended to maintain himself in Saxony, put Dres-
den in a state of defence, broke down the bridges,
and marked out various camps in the vicinity.
In the midst of this apparent alarm three Prus-
sian columns burst into Bohemia, in April, and
rapidly advanced towards Prague. . . . The
Austrians, pressed on all sides, retreated with
precipitation under the walls of Prague, on the
southern side of the Moldau, while the Prussians
advancing towards the capital formed two bodies;
one under Schwerin remaining at Jung Bunzlau,
and the other, headed by the king, occupying
the heights between the Moldau and the Weisse-
berg. Expecting to be joined by marshal Daun,
who was hastening from Moravia, the Austrians
1530
GERMANY, 1757.
Seven Years War.
GERMANY, 1757.
remained on the defensive; but prince Charles
took so strong a position as seemed to defy all
apprehensions of an attack. . . . These obstacles,
however, were insufficient to arrest the daring
spirit of Frederic, who resolved to attack the
Austrians before the arrival of Daun. Leaving
a corps under prince Maurice above Prague, he
crossed the Moldau near Rostock and Podabe on
the 5th of May, with 16,000 men, and on the fol-
lowing morning at break of day was joined by
the corps under marshal Schwerin. . . . Victory
declared on the side of the Prussians, but was
purchased by the loss of their best troops, not
less than 18,000, even by the avowal of the king,
being killed, with many of his bravest officers,
and Schwerin, the father of the Prussian dis-
cipline, and the guide of Frederic in the career
of victory. Of the Austrians 8,000 were killed
and wounded, 9,000 made prisoners, and 38,000
shut up within the walls of Prague. ... A
column of 16,000 Au.strians made good their re-
treat along the Moldau to join the army of mar-
shal Daun. Prague was Instantly blockaded by
the victorious army, and not less than 100,000
souls were confined within the walls, almost
without the means of subsistence. They were
soon reduced to the greatest extremities. ... In
this disastrous moment the house of Austria was
preserved from impending destruction by the
skill and caution of a general, who now, for the
first time, appeared at the head of an army.
This general was Leopold count Daun, a native
of Bohemia. . . . ■ Daun had marched through
Moravia towards Prague, to effect a junction
with prince Charles. On arriving at Boehmisch-
grod, within a few miles of Prague, he was ap-
prised of the recent defeat, and halted a fqw
days to collect the fugitives, till his corps swelled
so considerably that Frederic detached against
him the prince of Bevern with 20,000 men."
Daun declined battle and retreated, until he had
collected an array of 60,000 men and restored
their courage. He then advanced, forcing back
the prince of Bevern, and when Frederick, join-
ing the latter with reinforcements, attacked him
at Kolin, ou the 18th of June, he inflicted on the
Prussian king a disastrous defeat — the first
which Frederick had known. The Prussian
troops, " for the first time defeated, gave way to
despondency, and in their retreat exclaimed,
'This is ourPultawa. ' Daun purchased the vic-
tory with the loss of 9,000 men; but on the side
of the Prussians not less than 14,000 were killed,
wounded, and taken prisoners, and 43 pieces of
artillery, with 23 standards, fell into the hands
of the Austrians. Maria Theresa . . . conveyed
in person the news of this important victory to
the countess Daun, and instituted the military
order of merit, or the Order of Maria Theresa,
with which she decorated the commander and
officers who had most signalised themselves, and
dated its commencement from the sera of that
glorious victory. To give repose to the troops,
and to replace the magazines which had been de-
stroyed by the Prussians, Daun remained several
days on the field of battle ; and as he advanced
to Prague found that the Prussians had raised
the siege on the 30th of June, and were retreating
with precipitation towards Saxony and Lusatia."
— W. Coxa, Hist, of the Sovse of AmtHa, ch. 113
(V. 3).
Also in: Col. C. B. Brackenbury, Frederick
the Great, ch. 11-13.— F. Kugler, Pict. Hist, of
Germany during the Beign of Frederick the Great,
ch. 35.
A. D. 1757 (July— December).— The Seven
Years War : Darkening and brightening of
Frederick's career. — Closter-Seven. — Ross-
bach. — Leuthen. — The enemies of the King of
Prussia "were now closing upon him from every
side. The provinces beyond the Vistula became
the prey of Russian hordes, to which only one
division of Prussians under Marshal Lehwald
was opposed. In the result, however, their own
devastations, and the consequent want of sup-
plies, proved a check to their further progress
during this campaign. In Westphalia above
80,000 effective French soldiers were advancing,
commanded by the Jlareschal d'Estrees, a grand-
sou of the famous minister Louvois. The Duke
of Cumberland, who had imdertaken to defend
his father's electorate against them, was at the
head of a motley army of scarce 50,000 men.
. . . His military talents were not such as to
supply his want of numbers or of combination ;
he allowed the French to pass the deep and rapid
Weser unopposed ; he gave them no disturbance
when laying waste great part of the Electorate ;
he only fell back from position to position until
at length the enemy came up with him at the
village of Hastenback near Hameln. There, on
the 36th of July, an action was fought, and the
Duke was worsted with the loss of several hun-
dred men. The only resource of His Royal High-
ness was a retreat across the wide Luneberg
moors, to cover the town of Stade towards the
mouth of the Elbe, where the archives and other
valuable effects from Hanover had been already
deposited for safety." Intrigue at Versailles
having recalled D'Estrees and sent the Duke de
Richelieu into his place, the latter pressed the
Duke of Cumberland so closely, hemming him
in and cutting off his communications, that he
was soon glad to make terms. On the 8th of
September the English Duke signed, at Closter-
Seven, a convention under which the auxiliary
troops in his army were sent home, the Hanove-
rians dispersed, and only a garrison left at Stade.
"After the battle of Kolin and the Convention
of Closter-Seven, the position of Frederick, —
hemmed in on almost every side by victorious
enemies, — was not only most dangerous but well-
nigh desperate. To his own eyes it seemed so.
He resolved in his thoughts, and discussed with
his friends, the voluntary death of Otho as a
worthy example to follow. Fully resolved never
to fall alive into the hands of his enemies, nor
yet to survive any decisive overthrow, he carried
about his person a sure poison in a small glass
phial. Yet ... he could still, with indomitable
skill and energy, make every preparation for en-
countering the Prince de Soubise. He marched
against the French commander at the head of
only 22,000 men ; but these were veterans, trained
in the strictest discipline, and full of confidence
in their chief. Soubise, on the other hand, owed
his appointment in part to his illustrious lineage,
as head of the House of Rohan, and still more to
Court-favour, as the minion of iladame de Pom-
padour, but in no degree to his own experience or
abilities. He had under his orders nearly 40,000
of his countrymen, and nearly 30,000 troops of the
Empire ; for the Germanic diet also had been in-
duced to join the league against Frederick. On
the 5th of November the two armies came to a
battle at Rosbach [or Rossbach], close to the
1531
GERMANY, 1757.
Seven Years War.
GERMANY, 1758.
plain of Ltitzen, where in the preceding century
Gustavus Adolphus conquered and fell. By the
skilful manoeuvres of Frederick the French were
brought to believe that the Prussians intended
nothing but retreat, and they advanced in high
spirits as if only to pursue the fugitives. Of a
sudden they found themselves attacked witli all
the compactness of discipline, and all the cour-
age of despair. The troops of the Empire, a
motley crew, fled at the first fire. ... So rapid
was the victory that the right wing of the Prus-
sians, under Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick,
was never engaged at all. Great numbers of the
French were cut down in their flight by the
Prussian cavalry, not a few perished in the waters
of the Saale, and full 7,000 were made pris-
oners, with a large amount of baggage, artillery
and standards. . . . The battle of Rosbach was
not more remarkable for its military results than
for its moral influence. It was hailed through-
out Germany as a triumph of the Teutonic over
the Gallic race. ... So precarious was now
Frederick's position that the battle of Rosbach.
as he said himself, gained hira nothing but leisure
to fight another battle elsewhere. During his
absence on the Saale, the Austrian armies had
poured over the mountains into Silesia ; they had
defeated the Prussians under the Duke of Bevern ;
they had taken the main fortress, Schweidnitz,
and the capital, Breslau ; nearly the whole prov-
ince was already theirs. A flying detachment of
4,000 cavalry, under General Haddick, had even
pushed into Brandenburg, and levied a contribu-
tion from the city of Berlin [entering one of the
suburbs of the Prussian capital and holding it
for twelve hours]. The advancing season seemed
to require winter quarters, but Frederick never
dreamed of rest until Silesia was recovered. He
hastened by forced marches from the Saale to
the Oder, gathering reinforcements while he went
along. As he drew near Breslau, the Imperial
commander, Prince Charles of Lorraine, flushed
with recent victory and confident in superior
numbers, disregarded the prudent advice of Mar-
shal Daun, and descended from an almost inac-
cessible position to give the King of Prussia
battle on the open plain. . . . On the 5th of De-
cember, one month from the battle of Rosbach,
the two armies met at Leuthen, a small vil-
lage near Breslau, Frederick with 40,000, Prince
Charles of Lorraine with between 60,000 and
70,000 men. For several hours did the conflict
rage doubtfully and fiercely. It was decided
mainly by the skill and the spirit of the Prussian
monarch. 'The battle of Leuthen.' says Napo-
leon, ' was a master-piece. Did it even stand
alone it would of itself entitle Frederick to im-
mortal fame.' In killed, wounded and taken, the
Austrians lost no less than 27,000 men; above 50
standards, above 100 cannon, above 4,000 wag-
gons, became the spoil of the victors; Breslau
was taken, Schweidnitz blockaded, Silesia re-
covered ; the remnant of the Imperial forces fled
back across the mountains ; and Frederick, after
one of the longest and most glorious campaigns
that History records, at length allowed himself
and his soldiers some repose." — Lord Mahon
(Earl Stanhope), Hist, of Eng., 1713-1783, ch. 34
(V. 4).
Also in: T. Carlyle, Hist, of FriedricJi IT.,
bk. 18, ch. 5-10.— Lord Dover, Life of Frederick
II., V. 2, ch. 3-4.— Sir E. Oust, Annals of the Wars
<ff the \Sth Century, v. 2, pp. 217-240.
A. D. 1758.- The Seven 'Years War : Cam-
paign in Hanover. — Siege of Olmiitz. — Rus-
sian defeat at Zorndorf. — Prussian defeat at
Hochkirch. — "Before the end of 1757, England
began to take a more active part on the Conti-
nent. Lord Chatham brought about the rejection
of the Convention of Closter-Zeven by Parlia-
ment, and the recall of Cumberland by the king.
The erticient Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick was
proposed by Frederick and made commander of
the English and Hanoverian forces. He opened
the campaign of 1758 in the winter. The French,
under Clermont, being without discipline or con-
trol, he drove them in headlong flight out of
their winter-quarters in Hanover and Westphalia,
to the Rhine and across it ; and on June 23 de-
feated them at the battle of Crefeld. A French
army under Soubise afterward crossed the Rhine
higher up, and Ferdinand retreated, but suc-
ceeded in protecting the west as far as the Weser
against General Contades. Frederick first retook
Schweidnitz, April 16. He then, in order to pre-
vent the junction of the Russians and Austrians,
ventured to attack Austria, and invaded Mora-
via. His brother. Prince Henry, had but a small
force in Saxony, and Frederick thought that he
could best cover that country by an attack on
Austria. But the siege of Olmiitz detained him
from Alay until July, and his prospects grew more
doubtful. The Austrians captured a convoy of
300 wagons of military stores, which Ziethen
was to have escorted to him. [Instead of 300,
the convoy comprised 3,000 to 4,000 wagons, of
which only 200 reached the Prussian camp, and
its destruction by General Loudon completely
frustrated Frederick's plan of campaign.] Fred-
erick raised the siege, and, by an admirable re-
treat, brought his army through Bohemia by way
of Koniggratz to Landshut. Here he received
bad news. The Russians, under Fermor, were
again in Prussia, occupying the eastern province,
but treating it mildly as a conquered country,
where the empress already received the homage
of the people. They then advanced, with fright-
ful ravages, through Pomerania and Neumark to
the Oder, and were now near Kilstrin, which they
laid in ashes. Frederick made haste to meet
them. He was so indignant at the desolation of
the country and the suffering of his people that
he forbade quarter to be given. The report of
this fact also embittered the Russians. At Zorn-
dorf, Frederick met the enemy, 50,000 strong,
August 25, 1758. They were drawn up in a
great square or phalan.x, in the ancient, half-bar-
barous manner. A frightfully bloody fight fol-
lowed, since the Russians would not yield, and
were cut down in heaps. Seidlitz, the victor of
Rossbach, by a timely charge of his cavalry, cap-
tured the Russian artillery, and crushed their
right wing. On the second day the Russians
were driven back, but not without inflicting
heavy loss on the Prussians, who, though they
suffered much less than their enemies, left more
than one third of their force on the field. The
Russians were compelled to withdraw from Prus-
sia. Frederick then hastened to Sa.xony. where
his brother Henry was sorely pressed by Daun
and the imperial army. He could not even wait
to relieve Silesia, where Neisse, his principal for-
tress, was threatened. Daun, hearing of his ap-
proach, took up a position in his way, between
Bautzen and GOrlitz. But Frederick, whose
contempt for this prudent and slow general was
1532
GERMANY, 1758.
Seven Years War.
GERMANY, 1759.
excessive, occupied a camp in a weak and exposed
position, at Hoclikircli, under Daun's very eyes,
against the protest of his own generals. He re-
mained there tliree days unmolested ; but on Oc-
tober 14, the day fixed for advancing, the Aus-
trians attaclied him with twice his numbers. A
desperate fight toolv place in the burning village ;
the Prussians were driven out, and lost many
guns. Fredericlc himself was in imminent dan-
ger, and his friends Keith and Duke Francis of
Brunswick fell at his side. Yet the army did
not lose its spirit or its discipline. AVithin eleven
days Frederick, who had been joined by his
brother Henry, was in Silesia, and relieved Neisse
and Kosel. Thus the campaign of 1758 ended
favorably to Frederick. The pope sent Daun a
consecrated hat and sword, as a testimonial for
his victory at Hochkirch. " — C. T. Lewis, Hist, of
Oernuiny, bk. 5, ch. 23, sect. 7-9.
Also in: G. B. Malleson, Military Life of
Loudon, ch. 7-8. — F. Kugler, Pict. Hist, of Oer-
inany during the Beign of Frederick the Great, ch.
29-31— Frederick II., Hist, of the Seven Tears
War (Posthumous Works, r. 2), ch. 8.
A. D. 1759 (April — August). — The Seven
Years War : Prince Ferdinand's Hanoverian
campaign. — Defeat at Bergen and victory at
Minden. —In the Hanoverian field of war, wliere
Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick held command,
the campaign of 1759 was important, and pros-
perous In the end for the allies of Prussia. "Be-
sides the Hanoverians and Hessians in British
pay, he [Prince Ferdinand] had under his direc-
tion 10,000 or 13,000 British soldiers, amongst
whom, since the death of the Duke of Marl-
borough, Lord George Sackville was the senior
officer. The French, on their part, were making
great exertions, under the new administration of
the Duke de Ctioiseul ; large reinforcements were
sent into Germany, and early in the year they
surprised by stratagem the free city of Frankfort
and made it the place of arms for their southern
army. No object could be of greater moment to
Ferdinand than to dislodge them from this im-
portant post." Marching quickly, with 30,000
of his arm}', he attacked the French, under the
Duke de Broglie. at Bergen, on the Nidda, in
front of Frankfort, April 13, and was repulsed,
after heavy fighting, with a loss of 2,000 men.
"This reverse would, it was supposed, reduce
Prince Ferdinand to tlie defensive during the re-
mainder of the campaign. Both De Broglie and
Contades eagerly pushed forward, tlieir oppo-
nents giving way before them. Combining their
forces, they reduced Cassel, Munster, and Min-
den, and they felt assured that the whole Elec-
torate must soon again be theirs. Already had
the archives and the most valuable property been
scut off from Hanover to Stade. Already did
a new Hastenbeck — a new Closter-Seven — rise
in view. But it was under such difficulties that
the genius of Ferdinand shone forth. AVith a far
Inferior army (for th\is much is acknowledged,
although I do not find the French numbers
clearly or precisely stated), he still maintained
his ground on the left of the Weser, and sup-
plied every defect by his superiority of tactics.
He left a detachment of 5,000 men exposed, and
seemingly unguarded, as a bait to lure De Con-
tades from his strong position at Minden. The
French Mareschal was deceived by the feint, and
directed the Duke De Broglie to march forward
and profit by the blunder, as he deemed it to be.
On the 1st of August, accordingly, De Broglie
advanced into the plain, his force divided in
eight columns. " Instead of the small corps ex-
pected, he found the wliole army of the allies in
front of him. ,De Contades hurried to his assis-
tance, and the French, forced to accept battle in
an unfavorable position, were overcome. At the
decisive moment of their retreat, "the Prince
sent his orders to Lord George Sackville, who
commanded the whole English and some German
cavalry on the right wing of the Allies, and who
had hitherto been kept back as a reserve. The
orders were to charge and overwhelm the French
in their retreat, before they could reach any
clear ground to rally. Had these orders been
duly fidfilled, it is acknowledged by French
writers that their army must have been utterly
destroyed ; but Lord George either could not or
would" not understand what was enjoined on him.
. . . Under such circumstances the victory of Min-
den would not have been signal or complete but
for a previous and most high-spirited precaution
of Prince Ferdinand. He had sent round to the
rear of the French a body of 10,000 men, upder
his nephew — and also the King of Prussia's —
the Hereditary Prince of Brunswick, . . . Thus
Ferdinand became master of the passes, and the
French were constrained to continue their retreat
in disorder. Upon the whole, their loss was
8,000 men killed, wounded, or taken, 30 pieces
of artillery, and 17 standards. . . . Great was
the rejoicing in England at the victory of Min-
den " ; but loud the outcry against Lord George
Sackville, who was recalled and dismissed from
all his employments. — Lord Mahon (Earl Stan-
hope), Hist. ofEng., 1713-1783, ch. 36 (o. 4).
Also in: Sir E. Cust, Annals of the Wars of
the ISth Century, v. 2, pp. 327-333,
A. D. 1759 (July — November). — The Seven
Years War : Disasters of Frederick. — Kun-
ersdorf. — Dresden. — Maxen. — "Tliree years of
the war were gone and the ardour of Frederick's
enemies showed no signs of abating. The war
was unpopular in the Russian army, but the
Czarina thought no sacrifice too great for the
gratification of her hatred. France was sick of
it too, and tottering on the verge of national
bankruptcy, but Louis was kept true to his en-
gagements by domestic influences and by the tm-
bendiug determination of Maria Theresa never to
lay down arms until Prussia was thoroughly
humbled. . . . Already Frederick was at his
wits' end for men and mone}'. Of the splendid
infantry which had stormed the heights at Prague,
and stemmed the rout of Kollin, very little now
remained. . . . Moreover, Austria, relying on
her vastly larger population, had ceased to ex-
change prisoners, and after the end of 1759 Rus-
sia followed her example. . . . Frederick's pecu-
niary difficulties were even greater still. But for
the English subsidy he could hardly have sub-
sisted at all. . . . The summer was half gone
before there was any serious flgliting, Frederick
had got together 125,000 men of some sort, be-
sides garrison troops, but he no longer felt strong
enough to take the initiative, and the Austrians
were equally indisposed to attack without the
co-operation of their allies. Towards the middle
of July the Russians, tinder Count Soltikoff, is-
sued from Posen, advanced to the Oder, and,
after defeating a weak Prussian corps near Kay,
took possession of Frankfort. It now became
necessary for the king to march in person against
1533
GERMANY, 1759.
Seven Years TVctr.
GERMANY, 1760.
them, the more especially as Laudon [or Loudon]
with 18,000 Austiians was on his way to join
Soltikotf. Before he could reach Frankfort,
Laudon, eluding with much dexterity the vigi-
lance of his enemies, effected his junction, and
Frederick, with 48,000 men. found himself con-
fronted by an anny 78,000 strong. The Rus-
sians were encamped on the heights of Kuners-
dorf, east of Frankfort." Frederick attacked
them, Aug. 12, with brilliant success at first,
routing their left wing and taking 70 guns, with
several thousand prisoners. "The Prussian gen-
erals then besought the king to rest content with
the advantage he had gained. The day was in-
tensely hot; his soldiers had been on foot for
twelve hours, and were suffering severely from
thirst and exhaustion ; moreover, if the Russians
were let alone, they would probably go off
quietly in the night, as they had done after Zorn-
dorf. Unhappily Frederick refused to take coun-
sel. He wanted to destroy the Russian army,
not merely to defeat it ; he had seized the Frank-
fort bridge and cut off its retreat." He persisted
in his attack and was beaten off. "The Prus-
sians were in full retreat when Laudon swept
down upon them with eighteen fresh squadrons.
The retreat became a rout more disorderly than
in any battle of the war except Rossbach. The
king, stupefied with his disaster, could hardly be
induced to quit the field, and was heard to mut-
ter, ' Is there then no cursed bullet that can reach
me?' The defeat was overwhelming. Had it
been properly followed up, it must have put an
end to the war, and Kunersdorf would have
ranked among the decisive battles of the world.
Berlin lay open to the enemy; the royal family
fled to JIagdeburg. For the first (and last) time
in his life Frederick gave way utterly to despair.
'I have no resources left,' he wrote to the min-
ister Finckenstein the evening after the battle,
' and to tell the truth I hold all for lost. I shall
not survive the ruin of ray country. Farewell
forever.' The same night he resigned the com-
mand of the army to General Finck. Eighteen
thousand, five hundred of his soldiers were killed,
wounded, or prisoners, and the rest were so scat-
tered that no more than 3,000 remained under his
command. All the artillery was lost, and most of
his best generals were killed or wounded. . . .
By degrees, however, the prospect brightened.
The fugitives kept coming in, and the enemy
neglected to give the finishing stroke. Frederick
shook off his despair, and resumed the command
of his army. Artillery was ordered up from
Berlin, and the troops serving against the Swedes
were recalled from Pomerania. Within a week
of Kunersdorf he was at the head of 33,000 men,
and in a position to send relief to Dresden, which
was besieged by an Austrian and Imperialist
army. The relief, as it happened, arrived just
too late." Dresden was surrendered by its com-
mandant, Schmettau, on the 4th of Sept., to the
great wrath of Frederick. By a wonderful
march of fifty-eight miles in fifty hours. Prince
Henry, the brother of Frederick, prevented the
Austrians from gaining the whole electorate of
Saxony. The Russians and the Austrians quar-
relled, the former complaining that they were
left to do all the fighting, and presently they with-
drew into Poland. "With the departure of the
Russians, the campaign would probably have
jnded, had not Frederick's desire to close it with
a victory led him into a fresh disaster, hardly
less serious and far more disgraceful than that of
Kunersdorf. . . . With the view of hastening
the retreat of the Austrians, and of driving them,
if possible, into the ditficult Pirna country, he
ordered General Finck to take post with his corps
at Maxen, to bar their direct line of communica-
tions with Bohemia." As the result, Finck, with
his whole corps, of 12,000, were overwhelmed
and taken prisoners. ' ' "The capitulation of Maxen
was no less destructive of Frederick's plans than
galling to his pride. The Austrians now retained
Dresden, a place of great strategical impor-
tance, though the king, in the hope of dislodg-
ing them, exposed the wrecks of his army to
the ruinous hardships of a winter campaign, in
weather of unusual severity, and borrowed
12,000 men of Ferdinand of Brunswick to cover
his flank while so engaged. The new year had
commenced before he allowed his harassed troops
to go into winter-quarters." — F. W. Longman,
Frederick the Great and the Seven Tears War,
ch. 10, sect. 2.
Also in: T. Carlyle, Hist, of Friedrich II.,
bk. 19, ch. 4-7.— Frederick II., Hist, of the Seven
Tears War (Posth unions Works, v. 3), <■/;. 10.
A. D. 1760.— The Seven Years War: Sax-
ony reconquered by Frederick. — Dresden bom-
barded. — Battles of Liegnitz, Torgau and
Warburg. — "The campaign of 1759 had extend-
ed far into the winter, and Frederick conceived
the bold idea of renewing it while the vigilance
of his enemies was relaxed in winter quarters,
and of making another effort to drive the Aus-
trians from Saxony. His head-quarters were at
Freyberg. Having received reinforcements from
Prince Ferdinand, and been joined by 12.000
men under the hereditary prince, he left the
latter to keep guard behind the Mulde, and in
January 1760, at a time when the snow lay deep
upon the ground, he made a fierce spring" upon
the Austrians, who were posted at Dippoldis-
walde; but General Maguire, who commanded
there, baffled him by the vigilance and skill with
which he guarded every pass, and compelled
him to retrace his steps to Freyberg. When the
winter had passed and the regular campaign had
opened, Laudohn [Loudon], one of the most
active of the Austrian generals — the same who
had borne a great part in the victories of Hoch-
kirchen and Kunersdorf — entered Silesia, sur-
prised with a greatly superior force the Prussian
General Fouque, compelled him, with some thou-
sands of soldiers, to surrender [at Landshut, June
22], and a few days later reduced the important
fortress of Glatz [July 26]. Frederick, at the
first news of the danger of Fouque, marched
rapidly towards Silesia, Daun slowly following,
while an Austrian corps, under General Lacy,
Impeded his march by incessant skirmishes. On
learning the surrender of Fouque, Frederick at
once turned and hastened towards Dresden. It
was July, and the heat was so intense that on a
single day more than a hundred of his soldiers
dropped dead upon the march. He hoped to
gain some days upon Daun, who was still pur-
suing, and to become master of Dresden before
succours arrived. As he expected, he soon out-
stripped the Austrian general, and the materials
for the siege were collected with astonishing
rapidity, but General Maguire, who commanded
at Dresden, defended it with complete success
till the approach of the Austrian army obliged
Frederick to retire. Baffled in his design, he
1534
GERMANY, 1760.
Seven Years War.
GERMANY, 1761-1763.
took a characteristic vengeance by bombarding
that beautiful city with red-hot balls, slaughter-
ing multitudes of its peaceable inhabitants, and
reducing whole quarters to ashes; and he then
darted again upon Silesia, still followed by the
Austrian general. Laudohn had just met with
his lirst reverse, having failed in the siege of
Breslau [an attempted surprise and a brief bom-
bardment] ; on August 15, when Dauu was still
far off, Frederick fell upon him and beat him
in the battle of Liegnitz. [The statement that
' Daun was still far off ' appears to be erroneous.
Loudon and Daun had formed a junction four
days before, and had planned a concerted attack
on Frederick's camp ; Loudon was struck and
defeated while maliing the movement agreed
upon, and Daun was only a few miles away at
the time.] Soon after, however, this success
was counterbalanced by Lacy and Totleben, who,
at the head of some Austrians and Russians, had
marched upon Berlin, which, after a brave re-
sistance, was once more captured and ruthlessly
plundered; but on the approach of Frederick
the enemy speedily retreated. Frederick then
turned again towards Saxony, which was again
occupied by Daun, and on November 3 he at-
tacked his old enemy in his strong entrenchments
at Torgau. Daun, in addition to the advantage
of position, had the advantage of great numeri-
cal superiority, for his army was reckoned at
65,000, while that of Frederick was not more
than 44,000. But the generalship of Frederick
gained the victory. General Ziethen succeeded
in attacking the Austrians in the rear, gaining
the lieight, and throwing them into confusion.
Daun was wounded and disabled, and General
O'Donnell, who was next in command, was un-
able to restore the Austrian line. The day was
conspicuous for its carnage, even among the
bloody battles of the Seven Years' War: 30,000
Austrians were killed, wounded, or prisoners,
while 14,000 Prussians were left on the field.
The battle closed the campaign for the year,
leaving all Saxony in the possession of the Prus-
sians, with the exception of Dresden, which was
still held by Maguire. The English and German
army, under Prince Ferdinand, succeeded in the
meantime in keeping at bay a very superior
French army, under Marshal Broglio ; and sev-
eral slight skirmishes took place, with various
results. The battle of "Warburg, which was the
most important, was won chiefly by the British
cavalry, but Prince Ferdinand failed in his at-
tempts to take Wesel and Gottingen ; and at the
close of the year the French took up their quar-
ters at Cassel." — W. E. H. Lecky, Bist. of Eng.,
18th Century, ch. 8 (c. 2).
Also in : W. Coxe, Hist, of the House of Aus-
tria, ch. 115 {v. 3). — G. B. Malleson, Military
Life of Loudon, ch. 10.— T. Carlyle, Hist, of
Pi-iedrich IL, hk. 30, ch. 1-6.
A. D. 1761-1762. — The Seven 'Years 'War:
The closing campaigns. — "All Frederick's ex-
ertions produced him only 96,000 men for defence
of Silesia and Saxony this year [1761]. Prince
Henry had to face Daun in Saxony; the king
himself stood in Silesia against Loudon and the
Russians under Butterlin. Loudon opened the
campaign by advancing against Goltz, near
Schweidnitz, in April. Goltz had only 12,000 to
his adversary's 30,000, but posted himself so
well that Loudon could not attack him. Rein-
forcements came gradually to Loudon, raising his
army to 73,000, but orders from Vienna obliged
him to remain inactive till he could be joined
near Neisse by the Russians with 60,000. Goltz,
manceuvring against the Russians, was taken
prisoner. The king himself delayed the junction
of his enemies for some time, but could not now
offer battle. The j unction took place the 18th
of August. He then struck at Loudon's commu-
nications, but the thrust was well parried, and
on the 20th of August, Frederick, for the first
time, was reduced to an attitude of pure defence.
He formed an intrenched camp at Bunzelwitz,
and lay there, blocking the w^y to Schweidnitz.
Loudon's intreaties could not persuade the Rus-
sians to join him in full force to attack the posi-
tion, and on the 9th of September Butterlin's
arm}' fell back across the Oder, leaving 30,000
of his men to act under Loudon. Frederick re-
mained a fortnight longer in the camp of Bunzel-
witz, but was then forced to go, as his army was
eating up the magazines of Schweidnitz. Again
he moved against Loudon's magazines, but the
Austrian general boldly marched for Schweid-
nitz, and captured the place by assault on the
night of the 30th September- 1st October. No
tight took place between Loudon and the king.
They both went into winter quarters in Decem-
ber — Prussians at Strehlen, Austrians at Kun-
zendorf, and Russians about Glatz. ... In the
western theatre Ferdinand defeated Broglio and
Soubise at Vellinghausen [or Wellinghausen, or
Kirch-Denkern, as the battle, fought July 15, is
dift'erently called], the English contingent again
behaving gloriously. . . . Prince Henry and
Daun manoeuvred skilfully throughout the cam-
paign, but never came to serious blows. Fred-
erick is described as being very gloomy in mind
this winter. The end of the year left him with
but 60,000 men in Saxony, Silesia, and the north.
Eugene of Wurtemburg had 5,000 to hold back
the Swedes, Prince Henry 35,000 in Saxony, the
king himself 30,000. But the agony of France
was increasing ; Maria Theresa had to discharge
20,000 men from want of money, and Frederick's
bitter enemy, ' cette infame Catin du Nord ' [the
czarina Elizabeth], was failing fast in health. A
worse blow to the king than the loss of a battle
had been the fall of Pitt, in October, and with,
him all hope of English subsidies. Still, the
enemies of Prussia were almost exhausted. One
more year of brave and stubborn resistance, and
Prussia must be left in peace. By extraordinary
exertions, and a power of administrative organi-
sation which was one of his greatest qualities,
Frederick not only kept up his 60, 000, but doubled
their number. In the spring he had 70,000 for
his Silesian army, 40,000 for Prince Henry in
Saxony, and 10,000 for the Swedes or other pur-
poses. Best news of all, the czarina died on the
5th of January, 1762, and Peter, who succeeded
her — only for a short time, poor boy — was an
ardent admirer of the great king. Frederick at
once released and sent home his Russian pris-
oners, an act which brought back his Prussians
from Russia. On the 33rd February Peter de-
clared his intention to be at peace and amity with
Frederick, concluded peace on the 5th of May,
and a treaty of alliance a month later. The
Swedes, following suit, declared peace on the
22nd of May, and Frederick could now give his
sole attention to the Austrians." For a few
weeks, only, the Prussian king had a Russian
contingent of 20,000 in alliance with him, but
1535
GERMANY, 1761-1762. Peace and Progress. GERMANY, 1763-1790.
could make no use of it. It was recalled iu July,
by the revolutiou at St. Petersburg, which de-
posed the young czar, Peter, in favour of his
ambitious consort, Catherine. Frederick suc-
ceeded in concealing the fact long enough to
frighten Daun by a show of preparations for at-
tacking him, with the Russian troops included
in his army, and the Austrian general retired
to Glatz and Bohemia. Frederick then took
Schweidnitz, and marched on Dresden. " Daun
followed heavil)'. Like a prize-fighter knocked
out of time, he had no more fight in him. Prince
Henry had two affairs with the Reich's army
and its Austrian contingent. Forced to retire
from Freyburg on the 15th, he afterwards at-
tacked them on the 29th of October and defeated
them by a turning movement. They had 40,000,
he 30, 000. The Austrian contingent suffered most.
In the western theatre Ferdinand held his own
and had his usual successes. His part in the war
was to defend only, and he never failed to show
high qualities as a general. Thus, nowhere had
Frederick's enemies succeeded in crushing his
defences. For seven years the little kingdom of
Prussia had held her ground against the three
great military powers, France, Austria, and Rus-
sia. All were now equally exhausted. The con-
stancy, courage, and ability of Frederick were
rewarded at last ; on the 15th of February, 1763,
the treaty of Hubertsburg was signed, by which
Austria once more agreed to the cession of Silesia.
Prussia was now a Great Power like the rest, her
greatness resting on no shams, as she had proved. "
— Col. C. B. Brackenbury, Fredenck tlie Great,
eh. 18.
Also in: Sir E. Cust, Annals of the Wars of
the 18th Century, ii. 3, pp. 57-87.— Frederick II.,
Hist, of the Seven Years War (Posthumous Works,
V. 3), ch. 14-16.
A. D. 1763. — The end, results and costs of
the Seven Years War. — The Peace of Huberts-
burg and Peace of Paris. See Seven Years
War.
A. D. 1763-1790. — A period of peace and
progress. — Intellectual cultivation. — Acces-
sion of the Emperor Joseph II. — His character
and his reforms. — Accession of Leopold II. —
"The peace of nearly thirty years which fol-
lowed the Seven- Years' War in Germany was a
time of rich mental activity and growth. Court
life itself, if its vanities were not abolished, still
acquired a more enlightened and humane tone.
The fierce passions of the princes no longer ex-
clusively controlled it : there was something of
regard for education, for art and science, and for
the public welfare. This is particularly true of
courts which were intimately connected with
Prussia; as that of Brunswick, where Duke
Charles, Frederick II. 's brother-in-law, though
personally an extravagant prince, founded an
institution of learning which brought together
many of the best intellects of Germany (1740 to
1760), or that of Anhalt- Dessau, where the famous
' Philanthropinum ' was established. Several
princes imitated Frederick's military administra-
tion, and that sometimes on a scale so small as to
be ludicrous. Prince William of Lippe-Schaum-
burg founded in his little territory a fortress
and a school of war. But this school educated
Scharnhorst, and the prince himself won fame in
distant lands. He invited Herder to his little
court at Bilckeburg. Weimar, too, imitated
Frederick's example, where the Duchess Amalie,
daughter of Charles of Brunswick, and her iutel
lectual son, Charles Augustus, made their little
cities Weimar and Jena places of gathering tor
the greatest men of genius of the time. Anioug
the petty Thuringiau princes of this period, there
were others of noble character. In 1764 the
Saxon throne was ascended by Frederick Augus-
tus, grandson of Augustus III., but, being a
minor, he could not be elected king of Poland.
This put an end to the union of the two titles,
which had been the cause of immeasurable evil
to Saxony and to Germany. When the young
elector attained his majorits', the government of
Saxony was greatly improved, and a period of
prosperity followed. Duke Charles Eugene of
Wirtemberg (1737-1793), during his early j'ears,
rivaled Louis XV. in extravagance and immoral-
ity, but in after-days was greatly changed. He
founded the Charles School, at which Schiller
was educated. Baden enjoyed a high degree of
prosperity under Charles Frederick (1746-1811).
Even the spiritual lords, on the whole, threw
their influence in favor of enlightenment and
progress. . . . The prelates of Cologne, Treves,
Mayence, and Salzburg, strange to say, agreed at
Ems in 1786 to renounce the supremacy of Rome,
and to found an independent German Catholic
Church ; but the plan was broken down by the
resistance of the inferior clergy and of the Em-
peror Joseph II. Some of the German states
were slow to take part in the general progress.
Bavaria was constantly retarded bj^ the influence
of the Jesuits. . . . The Palatinate, too, was
under luxurious and idle rulers, mostly in the
pay of France. In some territories the boundless
extravagance of the princes was a terrible burden
upon their subjects. . . . Men who professed
enlightenment and humanity were often shame-
fully tyrannical. The courts of Cassel and Wir-
temberg sold their people by regiments to Eng-
land, to fight against the independence of the
North American Colonies [see United States op
Am. ; A. D. 1776 (January — June) ]. . . . Aus-
tria shared in the general intellectual awakening
of Germany. Maria Tlieresa was a firm, strong
character, with a clear mind and sincere desire
for the people's welfare. She found Austria in
decay, and was able to introduce many reforms.
She alleviated the condition of the peasants, who
were still mostly serfs. The nobles had before
lived mainly for show, but she provided institu-
tions for their education. ... It was a condition
of the Peace of Hubertsburg that Frederick II.
should give his electoral vote for the eldest son
of Francis I. None of the other electors objected
to the choice, and on March 27, 1764, they per-
formed the ceremony of choosing Joseph ' King
of the Romans,' but without power to interfere
with the government during his father's life.
Francis I. died August 18, 1765, and his sou
Joseph II. (1765-1790) was then crowned em-
peror iu the traditional fashion. He was also
associated with his mother in the government of
Austria ; but she retained the roj'al power mainly
in her own hands, assigning to her son the execu-
tive control of military affairs. Joseph II. was
an Impetuous and intellectual character, all aglow
with the new ideas of enlightenment and prog-
ress, and was perhaps more deeply impressed
by the example of Frederick II. than any other
prince of the age. ... At the same time, Joseph
II. was eager to aggrandize Austria, and at least
to obtain an equivalent for Silesia. For a long
1536
GERMANY, 1763-1790.
Joseph II.
GERMANY, 1791-1793.
time Austria had been longing to acquire Ba-
varia and there now seemed to be some reason
to hope for success. The ancient line of electors
of the house of Wittelsbach died out m 1777 with
Maximilian Joseph (December 30). The next heir
was the Elector Pnlatiue, Charles Theodore, also
Duke of Julich and Berg, who was not eager to ob-
tain Bavaria, since, by the Peace of Westphalia,
he must then forfeit the electorate of the Palati-
nate Under these circumstances Joseph IL
made 'an unfounded claim to Lower Bavaria,
under a pretended grant of the Emperor Sigis-
mund in 1436. A secret treaty was made by him
with Charles Theodore, by whicli he was to pay
that prince a large sum of money for Lower Ba-
varia ; and soon after Maximilian Joseph s death,
Joseph IL occupied the land with troops. Fred-
erick II who was ever jealous of the growth ot
Austria resolved to prevent this acquisition [see
Bavaria: A. D. 1777-1779]. . Thus the war
of the Bavarian Succession broke out (1/ .8-^9).
By the death of Maria Theresa, November
29 1780 her son Joseph II. became sole monarch
of' Austria. . . . Joseph II. was a man of large
mind and noble aims. Like Frederick, he was
unwearying in labor, accessible to every one, and
eager to assume his share of work or responsi-
bility The books and the people's memory are
full of anecdotes of him, though he was far from
popular during his life. But he lacked the strong
practical sense and calculating foresight ot tlie
veteran Prussian king. In his zeal for reforms
he hastened to heap one upon another in con-
fusion Torture was abolished, and for a time
even the death penalty. Rigid equality before
the law was introduced, and slavery done away
fsee Slavery, Mediaeval : Germany]. His re-
forms in the Cliurch were still more sweeping
He closed more than half of the monasteries, and
devoted their estates to public instruction; he
introduced German hymns of praise and the Ger-
man Bible. By his Edict of Toleration, June i2,
1781 he secured to all Protestants throughout
the Austrian states their civil rights and freedom
of worship ' in houses of prayer without bells or
towers.'. . . He zealously followed up Maria
Theresa's policy of consolidating Austria into one
state- and it was this course which made him
enemies He offended the powerful nobility of
Hungary by abolishing serfdom (November 1,
1781) and the whole people by the measures he
took to promote the use of the German language.
In the Netheriands, he alienated from him the
powerful clergy by his innovations; and they
stirred up against him the people, already ag-
grieved by tlie loss of some of tlieir ancient lib-
erties A revolution broke out among them m
1788 and was threatening to extend to Hungary
and Bohemia, when the emperor suddenly died,
still in the full vigor of manhood, at the age of
forty-nine, February 20, 1790. . . . After his
death the progress of reform was checked m
Austria; but he had awakened new and strong
forces there, and a complete return to the ancient
system was impossible. . . . Leopold IL (1 '90-
1792) who succeeded his brother Joseph 11., both
in Austria and as emperor, was a self-indulgent
but prudent ruler."— C. T. Lewis, Hist, of Oei--
many, hk. 5, ch. 34, sect. 8-18.
A. D. I7'72-I773.— The first Partition of Po-
land. See Poland; A. D. 1763-1773.
A. D. 1787.— Prussian intervention in Hol-
land — Restoration of the expelled stadtholder.
97 1537
A. D. 1746-
See Netherlands (Holland):
1787. , ^ ^ r^-
A D 1791.— The forming of the Coalitjon
against French democracy. See France: A. D.
1790-1791 ; and 1791 (July— September).
A D 1791-1792.— The question of war V7ith
France, and the question of the Partition of
Poland.— Motives and action of Prussia and
Austria —" After the acceptance of the Consti-
tution bv Louis XVI. [September — see France:
A. D. 1791 (July— September)], the Emperor
indulged for a time a confident hope, that the
French question was solved, and tliat he was
relieved from all fear of trouble from that quarter.
He had cares enough upon him to make him
heartily congratulate himself on this result. . . .
In foreign affairs, the Polish question — the ne.xt
in importance to the French — was still unsettled,
and daily presented fresh difficulties. . . . The
fact that Russia began to show the greatest fa-
vour to the Emigres, and to preach at Berlin and
Vienna a crusade against the wicked Jacobins,
only served to confirm the Emperor in his peace-
ful sentiments. He rightly concluded tliat Cath-
arine wished to entangle the German Powers m a
struggle with France, that she might have her
own way in Poland ; and he was not at all in-
clined to" be the dupe of so shallow an artifice.
At the same time he set about bringing his
alliance with Prussia to a definite conclusion, m
order to secure to himself a firm support for
every emergency. On the 17th of November —
a week after the enactment of the first edict
against the Emigres — Prince Reuss madeacom-
niunication on this subject to the Prussian Min-
istry, and on this occasion declared himself em-
powered to commence at any moment the formal
draft of an alliance. ... 'We are now con-
vinced ' wrote the Ministers to their ambassador
at Vienna ' that Austria will undertake nothing
against France.' This persuasion was soon after-
wards fully confirmed by Kaunitz, who descanted
in the severest terms on the intrigues of the Emi-
gres on the Rhine, which it was not in the interest
of any Power to support. It was ridiculous, he
said in the French Princes, and in Russia and
Spain to declare the acceptance of the constitu-
tion by the King compulsory, and therefore void ;
and still more so to dispute the right of Louis
XVI to alter the constitution at all. He said
that they would vainly endeavour to goad Aus-
tria into a war, which could only have the very
worst consequences for Louis and the present
predominance of the moderate party in France.
Here again, we see that without the machi-
nations of 'the Girondists, the revolutionary war
would never have been commenced. It is true,
indeed that at this time a very perceptible change
took place in the opinions of the second German
potentate — the King of Prussia. Immediately
after the Congress ot Pilluitz, great numbers of
French Emigres, who had been driven from
Vienna by the coldness of Leopold, had betaken
themselves to Beriin. At the Prussian Court they
met with a hospitable reception, and aroused in
the King by their graphic descriptions, a warm
interest for the victims of the Revolution. . . .
He loaded the Emigres with marks of favour of
every kind and thereby excited in them the most
exaggerated hopes. Yet the King was far from
intending to risk any important interest of the
State for the sake of his proteges; he had no idea
of pursuing an aggressive policy towards France ;
GERMANY, 1791-1792.
The question of
War with Prance.
GERMANY, 1791-1792.
and the only point in which he differed from
Leopold was in the feeling with which he regard-
ed the developement of the warlike tendencies
of the French. His Ministers, moreover, were,
without exception, possessed by the same idea as
Prince Kaunitz ; that a French war would be a
misfortune to all Europe." As the year 1791
drew towards its close, " unfavourable news ar-
rived from Paris. The attempts of the Feuillants
had failed ; Lafayette had separated himself from
them and from the Court ; and the zeal and con-
fidence of victory among the Democrats were
greater than ever. The Emigres in Berlin were
jubilant; they had always declared that no Im-
pression was to be made upon the Jacobins
except by the edge of the sword, and that all
hopes founded on the stability of a moderate
middle party were futile. The King of Prussia
agreed with them, and determined to begin the
unavoidable struggle as quickly as possible. He
told his Ministers that war was certain, and that
Bischoffswerder ought to go once more to the
Emperor. . . . Bischoffswerder, having received
instructions from the King himself, left Berlin,
and arrived in Vienna, after a speedy journey,
on the 28th of February. But he was not des-
tined again to discuss the fate of Europe with
his Imperial patron; for on the 29th the small-
pox showed itself, of which Leopold died after
three days sickness. The greatest consternation
and confusion reigned in Vienna. . . . No one
knew to whom the young King Francis — he was
as yet only king of Hungary and Bohemia —
would give his confidence, or what course he
would take; nay, his weakly and nervous con-
stitution rendered it doubtful whether he could
bear — even for a short period — the burdens of
his office. For the present he confirmed the
Ministers in their places, and expressed to them
his wish to adhere to the political system of his
father. . . . He . . . ordered one of his most ex-
perienced Generals, Prince Hohenlohe-Kirchberg,
to be summoned to Vienna, that he might take
council with Bischoffswerder respecting the war-
like measures to be adopted by both Powers, in
case of a French attack. At the same time,
however, the Polish question was, if possible, to
be brought to a decision, and Leopold's plan in
all its details was to be categorically recom-
mended for adoption, both in Berlin and Peters-
burg. . . . The Austrian Minister, Spielmann,
had prepared the memorial on Poland, which
Prince Reuss presented at Berlin, on the 10th of
March. It represented that Austria and Prussia
had the same interest in stopping a source of
eternal embarrassment and discussion, by
strengthening the cause of peace and order in
Poland. That herein lay an especially powerful
motive to make the crown of that countrj' he-
reditary; that for both Powers the Elector of
Saxony would be the most acceptable wearer of
that crown. . . . The important point, the me-
morial went on to say, was this, that Poland
should no longer be dependent on the predomi-
nant influence of any one neighbouring Power.
. . . When the King had read this memorial, in
which the Saxon-Polish union was brought for-
ward, not as an idea of the feeble Elector, but as
a proposal of powerful Austria, he cried out,
' We must never give our consent to this. ' He
agreed with his Ministers in the conclusion that
nothing would be more dangerous to Prussia,
than the formation of such a Power as would re-
sult from the proposed lasting union of Poland
and Saxony — a Power, which, in alliance with
Austria, could immediately overrun Silesia, and
in alliance with Russia, might be fatal to East
Prussia. ... In the midst of this angry and
anxious excitement, which for a moment alienated
his heart from Austria, the King received a fresh
and no less important despatch from Petersburg.
Count Golz announced the first direct communi-
cation of Russia respecting Poland. ' Should
Poland ' [wrote the Russian Vice Chancellor] ' be
firmly and lastingly united to Saxony, a Power
of the first rank will arise, and one which will be
able to exercise the most sensible pressure upon
each of its neighbours. We are greatly con-
cerned in this, in consequence of the extension
of our Polish frontier ; and Prussia is no less so,
from the inevitable increase whicli would ensue
of Saxon infiuence in the German Empire. We
therefore suggest, that Prussia, Austria, and
Russia, should come to an intimate understand-
ing with one another on this most important sub-
ject. ' . . . This communication sounded differ-
ently in the ears of the King from that which he
had received from Austria. The fears which
agitated his own mind and those of the Russian
chancellor were Identical. While Austria called
upon him to commit a political suicide, Russia
offered her aid in averting the most harassing
danger, and even opened a prospect of a consider-
able territorial increase. The King had no doubt
to which of the two Powers he ought to incline.
He would have come to terms with Russia on
the spot, had not an insurmountable obstacle ex-
isted in the new path which was opened to the
aggrandizement of Prussia, — viz., the Polish
treaty of 1790; in which Prussia had expressly
bound herself to protect the independence and
Integrity of Poland. ... He decided that there
was no middle course between the Russian and
Austrian plans. On the one side was his Polish
treaty of 1790, the immediate consequence of
which would be a new breach, and perhaps a
war, with Russia, and the final result such a
strengthening of Poland, as would throw back
the Prussian State into that subordinate posi-
tion, both in Germany and Europe, which it had
occupied in the seventeenth century. On the
other side there was, indeed, a manifest breach
of faith, but also the salvation of Prussia from
a perilous dilemma, and perhaps the extension
of her boundaries by a goodly Polish Province.
If he wavered at all in this conflict of feeling,
the Parisian complications soon put an end to
his doubts. In quick succession came the an-
nouncements that Delessart's peaceful Ministry
had fallen; that King Louis had suffered the
deepest humiliation; and that the helm of the
State had passed into the hands of the Girondist
war party. A declaration of war on the part of
France against Francis II. might be daily ex-
pected, and the Russian-Polish contest would
then only form the less important moiety of the
European catastrophe. Austria would now be
occupied for a long time in the AVest; there
could be no more question of the formation of a
Polish-Saxon State ; and Austria could no longer
be reckoned upon to protect the constitution of
1791, or even to repel a Russian invasion of
Poland. Prussia was bound to aid the Austrians
against France, and for man}- months the King had
cherished no more ardent wish than to fulfil this
obligation with all his power. Simultaneously
1538
GERMANY, 1791-1793.
Peace
of LuneviUe.
GERMANY, 1801-1803.
to oppose the Empress Catharine, was out
of the question. . . . The King wrote on the
12th of March to his Ministers as follows : . . .
' Russia is not far removed from thoughts of a
new partition; and this would indeed be the
most effectual means of limiting the power of a
Polish King, whether hereditary or elective. I
doubt, however, whether in this case a suitable
compensation could be found for Asutria; and
whether, after such a curtailment of the power
of Poland, the Elector of Saxony would accept
the crown. Yet if Austria could be compensated,
the Russian plan would be the most advanta-
geous for Prussia, — always provided that Prussia
received the whole left bank of the Vistula, by
the acquisition of which that distant frontier —
so hard to be defended — would be well rounded
off. This is my judgment respecting Polish
affairs.' This was Poland's sentence of death.
It was not, as we have seen, the result of a long-
existing greed, but a suddenly seized expedient,
which seemed to be accompanied with the least
evil, in the midst of an unexampled European
crisis. ... On the 20th of April the French
National Assembly proclaimed war against the
King of Hungary and Bohemia. A fortnight
later the Prince of Hohenlohe-Kirchberg ap-
peared in Berlin to settle some common plan for
the campaign; and at the same time Kaunitz di-
rected Prince Reuss to enter into negociations on
the political question of expenditure and com-
pensation. Count Schulenburg . . . immediate-
ly sent a reply to the Prince, to the effect that
Prussia — as it had uniformly declared since the
previous summer — could only engage in the war
on condition of receiving an adequate compensa-
tion. . . . Both statesmen well knew with what
secret mistrust each of these Powers contem-
plated the aggrandizement of the other; their
deliberations were therefore conducted with slow
and anxious caution, and months passed by be-
fore their respective demands were reduced to
any definite shape." — H. von Sybel, History of
the French Revolution, bk. 4, ch. 1 (». 3).
A. D. 1792. — Accession of the Emperor
Francis II.
A. D. 1792-1793. — 'War with Revolutionary
France. — The Coalition. See France: A. D.
1791-1793; 1793 (April— Joly), and (Septem-
ber — December) ; 1793-1793 (December — Feb-
ruary); 1793 (February — April), (Mabch —
September), and (July — December).
A. D. 1792-1796.— The second and third Par-
titions of Poland. See Poland: A. D. 1791-
1793; and 1793-1 796.
A. D. 1794. — Withdrawal of Prussia from
the Coalition. — French conquest of the Aus-
trian Netherlands and successes on the Rhine.
See France: A. D. 1794 (March — .July).
A. D. 1795. — Treaty of Basle between Prus-
sia and France. — Crumbling of the Coalition.
See France: A. D. 1794-1795 (October — May).
A. D. 1796-1797. — Expulsion of Austria from
Italy. — Bonaparte's first campaigns. — Ad-
vance of Moreau and Jourdan beyond the
Rhine. — Their retreat. — Peace preliminaries of
Leoben. See France: A. D. 1790 (April — Oc-
tober); and 1796-1797 (October — April).
A. D. 1797 (October). — The Treaty of Campo
Forraio between Austria and France. — Aus-
trian cession of the Netherlands and Lombardy
and acquisition of Venice. See France: A. D.
1797 (May— October).
A. D. 1798. — The second Coalition against
Revolutionary France. — Prussia and the Em-
pire withheld from it. See Fr.«<ce: A. D.
1798-1799 (August— April).
A. D. 1799. — The Congress at Rastadt. —
Murder of French envoys. See France: A. D.
1799 (April — September).
A. D. 1800 (May — December). — The disas-
trous campaigns of Marengo and Hohenlinden.
See France: A. D. 1800-1801 (May— Febru-
ary').
A. D. 1801-1803.— The Peace of Luneville.
— Territorial cessions and changes. — The set-
tlement of indemnities in the Empire. — Con-
fiscation and secularization of the ecclesiasti-
cal principalities. — Absorption of Free Cities.
— Re-constitution of the Electoral College. —
" By the treaty of Luneville, which the Emperor
Francis was obliged to subscribe, ' not only as
Emperor of Austria, but in the name of the Ger-
man empire,' Belgium and all the left bank of
the Rhine were again formally ceded to France ;
Lombardy was erected into an independent state,
and the Adige declared the boundary betwixt it
and the dominions of Austria ; Venice, with all
its territorial possessions as far as the Adige, was
guaranteed to Austria; the Duke of Modena re-
ceived the Brisgau in exchange for his duchy,
which was annexed to the Cisalpine republic ; the
Grand Duke of Tuscany, the Emperor's brother,
gave up his dominions to the infant Duke of
Parma, a branch of the Spanish family [who was
thereupon raised to royal rank by the fiat of
Bonaparte, who transformed the grand-duchy of
Tuscany into the kingdom of Etruria], on the
promise of an indemnity in Germany; France
abandoned Kehl, Cassel, and Ehrenbreitstein, on
condition that these forts should remain in the
situation in which they were when given up ; the
princes dispossessed by the cession of the left
ijank of the Rhine were promised an indemnity
in the bosom of the Empire ; the independence of
the Batavian, Helvetic, Cisalpine and Ligurian
republics was guaranteed, and their inhabitants
declared ' to have the power of choosing what-
ever form of government they preferred.' These
conditions did not differ materially from those
contained in the treaty of Campo Formio, or from
those offered by Napoleon previous to the re-
newal of the war. . . . The article which com-
pelled the Emperor to subscribe this treaty as
head of the empire, as well as Emperor of Aus-
tria, gave rise in the sequel ... to the most
painful internal divisions in Germany. By a fun-
damental law of the empire, the Emperor could
not bind the electors and states of which he was
the head, without either their concurrence or ex-
press powers to that effect previously conferred.
. . . The emperor hesitated long before he sub-
scribed such a condition, which left the seeds of
interminable discord in the Germanic body ; but
the conqueror was inexorable, and no means of
evasion could be found. He vindicated himself
to the electors in a dignified letter, dated 8th Feb-
ruary 1801, the day before that when the treaty
was signed. . . . The electors and princes of the
empire felt the force of this touching appeal;
they commiserated the situation of the first mon-
arch in Christendom, compelled to throw him-
self on his subjects for forgiveness of a step
which he could not avoid ; and one of the first
steps of the Diet of the empire, assembled after
the treaty of Luneville was signed, was to give
1539
GERMANY, 1801-1803.
Beconstniciion of
Germany.
GERMANY, 1805-1806.
it their solemn ratification, grounded on the ex-
traordinary situation in whicli the Emperor was
then placed. But the question of indemnities to
the dispossessed princes was long and warmly
agitated. It continued for above two years to
distract the Germanic body ; the intervention both
of France and Russia was required to prevent the
sword being drawn in these internal disputes;
and by the magnitude of the changes which were
ultimately made, and the habit of looking to
foreign protection which was acquired, tlie foun-
dation was laid of that league to support sepa-
rate interests which afterwards, under the name
of the Confederation of the Rhine, so well served
the purposes of French ambition, and broke up the
venerable fabric of the German empire." — Sir A.
Alison, Mist, of Europe, 1789-1815, ch. 33 (». 7).—
"Germany lost by this treaty about 24,000 square
miles of its best territory and 3,500,000 of its
people ; while the princes were indemnified by the
plunder of their peers. But the hardest task, the
satisfactory distribution of this plunder, remained.
While the Diet at Regensburg, after much com-
plaint and management, assigned the arrange-
ment of these affairs to a committee, the princely
bargainers were in Paris, employing the most dis-
graceful means to obtain the favor of Talleyrand
and other influential diplomatists. On the 25th
of February, 1803, the final decision of the dele-
gation or committee of the empire was adopted
by the Diet, and promulgated with the approval
of the emperor, Francis II., and of Prussia and
Bavaria. It confiscated all the spiritual princi-
palities in Germany, except that the Elector of
Mayence, Charles Theodore of Dalberg, received
Regensburg, Aschaifenburg, and Wetzlar, as an
indemnity, and retained a seat and a voice in the
imperial Diet. Of the 48 free cities of the em-
pire, six only remained — Hamburg, Bremen, Lu-
beck, Frankfort, Nuremburg, and Augsburg.
Austria obtained the bishoprics of Trent and
Brixen; Prussia, as a compensation for the loss
of 1,018 square miles with 123,000 inhabitants
west of the Rhine, received 4,875 square miles,
with 580,000 inhabitants, including the endow-
ments of the religious houses of Hildesheim and
Paderborn, and most of Miinster; also Erfurt and
Eichsfeld, and the free cities of Nordhausen,
Millhausen, and Goslar ; Hanover obtained Osna-
bruck ; to Bavaria, in exchange for the Palatinate,
were assigned "Wl'irzburg, Bamberg, Freisingen,
Augsburg, and'Passau, besides a number of cities
of the empire, in all about 6,150 square miles,
to compensate for 4,240, vastly increasing its po-
litical importance. Wirtemberg, too, was riclily
compensated for the loss of the MOmpelgard by
the confiscation of monastery endowments and
free cities in Suabia. But Baden made the best
bargain of all, receiving about 1,270 square miles
of land, formerly belonging to bishops or lo the
Palatinate, in exchange for 170. After this ac-
quisition, Baden extended, though in patches,
from the Neckar to the Swiss border. By build-
ing up these three South German states, Napoleon
sought to erect a barrier for himself against Aus-
tria and Prussia. With the same design, Hesse-
Darmstadt and Nassau were much enlarged.
There were multitudes of smaller changes, under
the name of ' compensations and indemnities. '
Four new lay electorates were establislied in the
place of the three secularized prelacies, and were
given to Baden, Wirtemberg, Hesse-Cassel, and
Salzburg. But they never had occasion to tak«
part in the election of an emperor. " — C. T. Lewis,
Hist, of Oermany, ch. 25, sect. 26-37.
Alsoik: a. Thiers, Hist, of the Consulate and
the Empire, bk. 7 and 15 (v. 1).— J. R. Seeley, Life
and Times of Stein, pt. 1. ch. 4 {n. 1).
A. D. 1803. — Bonaparte's seizure of Han-
over in his V7ar with England. See France:
A. D. 1802-1803.
A. D. 1805 (January — April). — The third
Coalition against France. — Prussian Neutral-
ity. See FR.A.NCE: A. D. 1805 (January—
Aprii,).
A. D. i8o5(September— December).— Napo-
leon's overwhelming campaign. — The catas-
trophes at Ulm and Austerlitz. See Fr.\nce:
A. D. 1805 (JIarch— December).
A. D. 1805-1806.— The Peace of Presburg.—
Territorial losses of Austria. — Aggrandize-
ment of Bavaria and Wiirtemberg, which be-
come Icingdoms, and Baden a grand duchy.^
The Confederation of the Rhine. — End of the
Holy Roman Empire. — 'On the 6th of Decem-
ber, hostilities ceased, and the Russians retired
by way of Galicia. but in accordance with the
terms of the armistice, the French troops con-
tinued to occupy all the lands they had invaded,
Austria, Tyrol, Venetia, Carniola, Carinthia, and
Styria; within Bohemia they were to have the
circle of Tabor, together witjfi Brno and Znoymo
in Moravia and Pozsony (Pressburg) in Hungary.
The Morava (March) and the Hungarian frontier
formed the line of demarcation between the two
armies. A definitive peace was signed at Press-
burg on the 26th of December, 1805. Austria
recognized the conquests of Prance in Holland
and Switzerland and the annexation of Genoa,
and ceded to the kingdom of Italy Friuli, Istria,
Dalmatia with its islands, and the Bocche di
Cattaro. A little later, by the explanatory Act
of Fontainebleau, she lost the last of her posses-
sions to the west of the Isonzo, when she ex-
changed those portions of the counties of Gorico
and Gradisca which are situated on the right
bank of that river for the county of Montefalcone
in Istria. The new kingdoms of Bavaria and
Wiirtemberg [brought into existence by this
treaty, through tlie recognition of them by the
Emperor Francis] were aggrandized at the ex-
pense of Austria. Bavaria obtained Vorarlberg,
the county of Hohenembs, the town of Lindau,
and the whole of Tyrol, with Brixen and Trent.
Austrian Suabia was given to Wiirtemberg, while
Breisgau and the Ortenau were bestowed on the
new grand-duke of Baden. One compensation
alone, the duchy of Salzburg, fell to Austria for
all her sacrifices, and this has remained in her
possession ever since. The old bishopric of Wlirz-
burg was created an electorate and granted to
Ferdinand III. of Tuscany and Salzburg. Alto-
gether the monarchy lost about 25,400 square
miles and nearly 3,000,000 of inhabitants. She
lost Tyrol with its brave and loyal inhabitants
and the VOrlande which had assured Austrian in-
fluence in Germany ; every possession on the
Rhine, in the Black Forest, and on the Lower
Danube; she no longer touched either Switzer-
land or Italy, and she ceased to be a maritime
power. Besides all this, she had to i>ay forty
millions for the expenses of the war, while she
was exhausted by contributions and requisitions.
Vienna had suffered much, and the French army
had carried off the 2,000 cannons and the 100,000
guns which had been contained in her arsenals.
1540
GERMANY, 1805-1806.
End of the Holy
Roman Empire,
GERMANY, 1806.
On the 16th of January, 1806, the emperor Fran-
cis returned to his capital. He was enthusiasti-
cally received, and the Viennese returned to Uie
luxurious and easy way of life which has always
characterized them. . . . Austria seemed no longer
to have any part to play in German politics.
Bavaria, Wilrtembergaud Baden had been formed
into a separate league — the Confederation of the
Rhine — under French protection. On the 1st of
August, 1806, these states announced to the
Reichstag at Ratisbon that they looked upon the
empire as at an end, and on the 6th, Francis II.
formally resigned the empire altogether, and re-
leased all the imperial officials from their engage-
ments to him. Thus the sceptre of Charlemagne
fell from the hands of the dynasty which had
held it without interruption from 1438." — L.
Leger, Hist, of Austm-IIiingitry, ch. 25. — "Every
bond of union was dissolved with the diet of the
empire and with the imperial chamber. The
barons and counts of the empire and the petty
princes were mediatised ; the princes of Hohen-
lohe, Oettingen, Schwarzenberg, Thurn, and Taxis,
the Truchsess von Waldburg, Fiirstenberg, Fug-
ger, Leiniugen, Lowenstein, Solms, Hesse-Hom-
burg, Wied-Runkel, and Orange-Fulda, became
subject to the neighbouring Rhenish confeder-
ated princes. Of the remaining six imperial free
cities, Augsburg and Nuremberg fell to Bavaria;
Frankfurt, under the title of grand-duchy, to the
ancient elector of Mayence, who was again trans-
ferred thither from Ratisbon. The ancient Hanse-
towns, Hamburg, Ltlbeck, and Bremen, alone
retained their freedom." — "W. Menzel, Hist, of
German!/, ch. 253 {v. 3). — "A swift succession of
triumphs had left only one thing still preventing
the full recognition of the Corsican warrior as
sovereign of Western Europe, and that one was
the existence of the old Romano-Germanic Em-
pire. Napoleon had not long assumed his new
title when he began to mark a distinction between
'la France' and 'I'Empire Fran9aise. ' France
had, since A. D. 1792, advanced to the Rhine,
and, by the annexation of Piedmont, had over-
stepped the Alps ; the French Empire included,
besides the kingdom of Italy, a mass of depen-
dent states, Naples, Holland, Switzerland, and
many German principalities, the allies of France
in the same sense in which the ' socii populi Ro-
mani' were allies of Rome. When the last of
Pitt's coalitions had been destroyed at Austerlitz,
and Austria had made her submission by the
peace of Presburg, the conqueror felt that his
hour was come. He had now overcome two
Emperors, those of Austria and Russia, claiming
to represent the old and new Rome respectively,
and had in eighteen months created more kings
than the occupants of the Germanic throne in as
many centuries. It was time, he thought, to
sweep away obsolete pretensions, and claim the
sole inheritance of that Western Empire, of which
the titles and ceremonies of his court presented a
grotesque imitation. The task was an easy one
after what had been already accomplished. Pre-
vious wars and treaties had so redistributed the
territories and changed the constitution of the
Germanic Empire that it could hardly be said to
exist in anything but name. . . . The Emperor
Francis, partly foreboding the events that were
at hand, partly in order to meet Napoleon's as-
sumption of the imperial name by depriving that
name of its peculiar meaning, began in A. D.
1805 to style himself 'Hereditary Emperor of
Austria,' while retaining at the .same time his
former title. The next act of the drama was one
in which we may more readily pardon the am-
bition of a foreign conqueror than the traitorous
selfishness of the German princes, who broke
every tie of ancient friendship and duty to grovel
at his throne. By the Act of the Confedera-
tion of the Rhine, signed at Paris, July 13th,
1806, Bavaria, Wiirtemberg, Baden, and several
other states, sixteen in all, withdrew from the
body and repudiated the laws of the Empire,
while on August 1st the French envoy at Re-
gensburg announced to the Diet that his master,
who had consented to become Protector of the
Confederate princes, no longer recognized the
existence of the Empire. Francis II. resolved at
once to anticipate this new Odoacer, and by a
declaration, dated August 6th, 1806, resigned the
imperial dignit}'. His deed states that finding
it impossible, in the altered state of things, to
fulfil the obligations imposed by his capitula-
tion, he considers as dissolved the bonds which
attached him to the Germanic body, releases
from their allegiance the states who formed it,
and retires to the government of his hereditary
dominions under the title of ' Emperor of Aus-
tria. ' Throughout, the term 'German Empire'
(Deutsches Reich) is employed. But it was the
crown of Augustus, of Constantine, of Charles, of
Maximilian, that Francis of Hapsburg laid down,
and a new era in the world's history was marked
by the fall of its most venerable institution.
One thousand and six years after Leo the Pope
had crowned the Prankish king, eighteen hun-
dred and fifty-eight years after Cfesar had con-
quered at Pharsalia, the Holy Roman Empire
came to its end." — J. Bryce, T!ie Holy Roman
Empire, ch. 20.
A. D. l8o6 (January— August).— The Con-
federation of the Rhine. — Cession of Hanover
to Prussia. — Double dealing and weakness of
the latter. — Her submission to Napoleon's in-
sults and wrongs. — Final goading of the na-
tion to war. — " The object at which all French
politicians had aimed since the outbreak of the
Revolutionary War, the, exclusion of both Aus-
tria and Prussia from influence in Western Ger-
many, was now completely attained. The tri-
umph of Prcuch statesmanship, the consumma-
tion of two centuries of German discord, was
seen in the Act of Federation subscribed by the
Western Gorman Sovereigns in the summer of
1806. By this Act the Kings of Bavaria and
Wi'irtemberg, the Elector of Baden, and 13 minor
princes, united themselves, in the League known
as the Rhenish Confederacy, under the protection
of the French Emperor, and undertook to fur-
nish contingents, amounting to 63,000 men, in all
wars in which the French Empire should engage.
Their connection with the ancient Germanic
Body was completely severed ; the very town in
which the Diet of the Empire had held its meet-
ings was annexed by one of the members of the
Confederacy. The Confederacy itself, with a
population of 8,000,000, became for all purposes
of war and foreign policy a part of France. Its
armies were organised by French officers; its
frontiers were fortified by French engineers ; its
treaties were made for it at Paris. In the domes-
tic changes which took place within these States
the work of consolidation begun in 1801 was car-
ried forward with increased vigour. Scores of
tiny principalities which had escaped dissolution
3541
GERMANY, 1806.
Napoleon's
insolence.
GERMANY, 1806.
in the earlier movement were now absorbed by
their stronger neighbours. . . . With the estab-
lishment of the Rlienish Confederacy and tlie
conquest of Naples, Napoleon's empire reached,
but did not overpass, the limits within which the
sovereignty of France might probably have been
long maintained. ... If we may judge from
the feeling with which Napoleon was regarded
in Germany down to the middle of the year 1806,
and in Italy down to a much later date, the Em-
pire then founded might have been permanently
upheld, if Napoleon had abstained from attack-
ing other States." During the winter of 1806,
Count Haugwitz, the Prussian minister, had vis-
ited Paris "for the purpose of obtaining some
modification in the treaty which he had signed
[at the palace of SchOnbrunn, near Vienna] on be-
half of Prussia after the battle of Austerlitz.
The principal feature in that treaty had been the
grant of Hanover to Prussia by the French Em-
peror in return for its alliance. This was the
point which above all others excited King Fred-
erick "William's fears and scruples. He desired
to acquire Hanover, but he also desired to derive
his title rather from its English owner [King
George III., who was also Elector of Hanover]
than from its French invader. It was the object
of Haugwitz' visit to Paris to obtain an altera-
tion in the terms of the treaty which should
make the Prussian occupation of Hanover ap-
pear to be merely provisional, and reserve to the
King of England at least a nominal voice in its
ultimate transfer. In full confidence that Napo-
leon would agree to such a change, the King of
Prussia, on taking possession of Hanover in Jan-
uary, 1806, concealed the fact of its cession to
himself by Napoleon, and published an untruth-
ful proclamation. . . . The bitter truth that the
treaty between France and Prussia contained no
single word reserving the rights of the Elector,
and that the very idea of qualifying the abso-
lute cession of Hanover was an afterthought,
lay hidden in the conscience of the Prussian
Government. Never had a Government more
completely placed itself at the mercy of a pitiless
enemy. Count Haugwitz, on reaching Paris,
was received by Napoleon with a storm of indig-
nation and contempt. Napoleon declared that
the ill-faith of Prussia had made an end even of
that miserable pact which had been extorted
after Austerlitz, and insisted that Prussia should
openly defy Great Britain by closing the ports of
Northern Germany to British vessels, and by de-
claring itself endowed by Napoleon with Han-
over in virtue of Napoleon's own right of con-
quest. Haugwitz signed a second and more
humiliating treaty [February 15] embodying
these conditions ; and the Prussian Government,
now brought into the depths of contempt, but
unready for immediate war, executed the orders
of its master. ... A decree was published ex-
cluding the ships of England from the ports of
Prussia and from those of Hanover itself (March
28, 1806). It was promptly followed by the seiz-
ure of 400 Prussian vessels in British harbours,
and by the total extinction of Prussian maritime
commerce by British privateers. Scarcely was
Prussia committed to this ruinous conflict with
Great Britain when Napoleon opened negotia-
tions for peace with Mr. Fox's Government. The
first condition required by Great Britain was the
restitution of Hanover to King George III. It
was unhesitatingly granted by Napoleon. Thus
was Prussia to be mocked of its prey, after it had
been robbed of all its honour. . . . There was
scarcely a courtier in Berlin who did not feel that
the yoke of the French had become past endur-
ance ; even Haugwitz himself now considered
war as a question of time. The patriotic party
in the capital and the younger officers of the
army bitterly denounced the dishonoured Gov-
ernment, and urged the King to strike for the
credit of his country. . . . Brunswick was sum-
moned to the King's council to form plans of a
campaign; and appeals for help were sent to
Vienna, to St. Petersburg, and even to the hostile
Court of London. The condition of Prussia at
this critical moment was one which filled with
the deepest alarm those few patriotic statesmen
who were not blinded by national vanity or by a
slavery to routine. . . . Early in the year 1806 a
paper was drawn up by Stein, exposing, in lan-
guage seldom used by a statesman, the character
of the men by whom Frederick William was sur-
rounded, and declaring that nothing but a speedy
change of system could save the Prussian State
from utter downfall and ruin. Two measures of
immediate necessity were specified by Stein, the
establishment of a responsible council of Minis-
ters, and the removal of Haugwitz and all his
friends from power. . . . The army of Prussia
. . . was nothing but the army of Frederick the
Great grown twenty years older. . . . All South-
ern Germany was still in Napoleon's hands. The
appearance of a Russian force in Dalmatia, after
tliat country had been ceded by Austria to the
French Emperor, had given Napoleon an excuse
for maintaining his troops in their positions be-
yond the Rhine. As the probability of a war
with Prussia became greater and greater, Napo-
leon tightened his grasp upon the Confederate
States. Publications originating among the pa-
triotic circles of Austria were beginning to ap-
peal to the German people to unite against a
foreign oppressor. An anonymous pamphlet,
entitled ' Germany in its Deep Humiliation,' was
sold by various booksellers in Bavaria, among
others by Palm, a citizen of Nuremberg. There
is no evidence that Palm was even acquainted
with the contents of the pamphlet; but . . . Na-
poleon . . . required a victim to terrify those
who, among the German people, might be in-
clined to listen to the call of patriotism. Palm
was not too obscure for the new Charlemagne.
The innocent and unoffending man, innocent
even of the honourable crime of attempting to
save his country, was dragged before a tribunal
of French soldiers, and executed within twenty-
four hours of his trial, in pursuance of the im-
perative orders of Napoleon (August 26). . . .
Several years later, . . . the story of Palm's
death was one of those that kindled the bitterest
sense of wrong ; at the time, it exercised no in-
fluence upon the course of political events.
Prussia had already resolved upon war." — C. A.
Fyffe, Hist, of Modern Eiirope, v. 1, ch. 6-7.
Also in : Sir W. Scott, Life of Kapoleon, ch.
51-52. — J. R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, pt.
2, ch. 4-5 (v. 1). — P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon,
V. 2, ch. 15.
A. D. i8o6 (October). — Napoleon's sudden
invasion of Prussia. — The decisive battle of
Jena. — Prostration of the Prussian Kingdom.
— "The Emperor of Russia . . . visited Berlin,
when the feelings of Prussia, and indeed of all
the neighbouring states, were in this fever of
1542
GERMANY, 1806.
Jena and
its consequences.
GERMANY, 180e.
excitement. He again urged Fredericlf William
to take up arms in the common cause, and offered
to back him with all the forces of his own great
empire. The Bnglisli government, taking ad-
vantage of the same crisis, sent Lord Morpeth to
Berlin, with offers of pecuniary supplies — about
the acceptance of which, however, the anxiety
of Prussia on the subject of Hanover created
some difficulty. Lastly, Buonaparte, well in-
formed of what was passing in Berlin, and de-
sirous, since war must be, to hurry Frederick
into the field ere the armies of the Czar could be
joined with his, now poured out in the ' Moni-
teur' such abuse on the persons and characters
of the Queen, Prince Louis, and every illustrious
patriot throughout Prussia, that the general
wrath could no longer be held in check. War-
like preparations of every kind filled the king-
dom during August and September. On the 1st
of October the Prussian minister at Paris pre-
sented a note to Talleyrand, demanding, among
other things, that the formation of a confederacy
in the nortli of Germany should no longer be
thwarted by French interference, and that the
French troops within tlie territories of the Rhen-
ish League should recross the Rhine into France,
by the 8th of the same month of October. But
Napoleon was already in person on the German
side of the Rhine; and his answer to the Prus-
sian note was a general order to liis own troops,
in which he called on them to observe in what
manner a German sovereign still dared to insult
the soldiers of Austerlitz. The conduct of Prus-
sia, in thus rushing into hostilities without wait-
ing for the advance of the Russians, was as rash
as her holding back from Austria during the
campaign of Austerlitz had been cowardly. As
if determined to profit by no lesson, the Prussian
council also directed their army to advance to-
wards the French, instead of lying on their own
frontier — a repetition of the great leading blun-
der of the Austrians in the preceding year. The
Prussian army accordingly invaded the Saxon
provinces, and the Elector . . . was compelled
to accept the alliance which the cabinet of Ber-
lin urged on him, and to join his troops with
those of the power by which he had been thus
insulted and wronged. No sooner did Napoleon
know that the Prussians had advanced into the
heart of Saxony, than he formed the plan of his
campaign ; and the}', persisting in their advance,
and taking up their position finally on the Saale,
afforded him, as if studiously, the means of re-
peating, at their expense, the very manoeuvres
which had ruined the Austrians in the preceding
campaign." The flank of the Prussian position
was turned, — the bridge across the Saale, at Saal-
field, having been secured, after a hot engage-
ment with the corps of Prince Louis of Prussia
who fell in the fight, — " the French army passed
entirely round them ; Napoleon seized Naum-
burg and blew up the magazines there, — an-
nouncing, for the first time, by this explosion, to
the King of Prussia and his generalissimo the
Duke of Brunswick, that he was in their rear.
From this moment the Prussians were isolated,
and cut off from all their resources, as completely
as the army of Mack was at Ulm, when the
French had passed the Danube and overrun
Suabia. The Duke of Brunswick hastily en-
deavoured to concentrate his forces for the pur-
pose of cutting his way back again to the frontier
which he had so rashly abandoned. Napoleon,
meantime, had posted his divisions so as to watch
the chief passages of the Saale, and expected, in
confidence, the assault of his outwitted opponent.
It was now that he found leisure to answer the
manifesto of Frederick William. . . . His letter,
dated at Gera, is written in the most elaborate
style of insult. . . . The Prussian King under-
stood well, on learning the fall of Naumburg.
the imminent danger of his position; and his
army was forthwith set in motion, in two great
masses; the former, where he was in person pres-
ent, advancing towards Naumburg; the latter
attempting, in like manner, to force their pas-
sage through the French line in the neighbour-
hood of Jena. The King's march was arrested
at Auerstadt by Davoust, who, after a severely
contested action, at length repelled the assailant.
Napoleon himself, meanwhile, was engaged with
the other great body of the Prussians. Arriving
on the evening of the 13th October at Jena, he
perceived that the enemy were ready to attempt
the advance next morning, while his own heavy
train was still six-and-thirty hours' march in his
rear. Not discouraged with this adverse circum-
stance, the Emperor laboured all night in directing
and encouraging his soldiery to cut a road through
the rocks, and draw up by that means such light
guns as he had at command to a position on a
lofty plateau in front of Jena, where no man
could have expected beforehand that any artil-
lery whatever should be planted. . . . Lannes
commanded the centre, Augereau the right, Soult
the left, and Murat the reserve and cavalry.
Soult had to sustain the first assault of the Prus-
sians, which was violent — and sudden; for the
mist lay so thick on the field that the armies
were within half-gunshot of each other ere the
sun and wind rose and discovered them, and on
that instant Mollendorf charged. The battle was
contested well for some time on this point ; but
at length Ney appeared in the rear of the Em-
peror with a fresh division; and then the French
centre advanced to a general charge, before
which the Prussians were forced to retire. They
moved for some space in good order; but Murat
now poured his masses of cavalry on them,
storm after storm, with such rapidity and vehe-
mence that their rout became inevitable. It
ended in the complete breaking up of the army
— horse and foot all flying together, in the con-
fusion of panic, upon the road to Weimar. At
that point the fugitives met and mingled with
their brethren flying, as confusedly as themselves,
from Auerstadt. In the course of this disastrous
day 20,000 Prussians were killed or taken, 300
guns, 20 generals, and 60 standards. The Com-
mander-in-Chief, the Duke of Brunswick, being
wounded in the face with a grape-shot, was
carried early off the field, never to recover. . . .
The various routed divisions roamed about the
country, seeking separately the means of escape :
they were in consequence destined to fall an
easy prej'. . . . The Prince of Hohenlohe at
length drew together not less than 50,000 of
these wandering soldiers," and retreated towards
the Oder; but was forced, in the end, to lay
down his arms at Prentzlow. "His rear, con-
sisting of about 10,000, under the command of
the celebrated General Blucher, was so far be-
hind as to render it possible for them to attempt
escape. Their heroic leader traversed the coun-
try with them for some time unbroken, and
sustained a variety of assaults, from far superior
1543
GERMANY, 1806.
NapoleorVs oppression
of Prussia,
GERMANY, 1806.
numbers, with the most obstinate resolution.
By degrees, however, the French, under Soult,
hemmed him in on one side, Murat on the otlier,
and Bernadotte appeared close behind him. He
was thus forced to throw himself into Lubeck,
where a severe action was fought in the streets
of the town, on the 6th of November. The Prus-
sian, in this battle, lost 4,000 prisoners, besides
the slain and wounded : he retreated to Schwerta,
and there, it being impossible for him to go far-
ther without violating the neutrality of Denmark,
on the morning of the 7th, Blucher at length
laid down his arms. . . . The strong fortresses
of the Prussian monarchy made as ineffectual
resistance as the armies in the field. . . . Buona-
parte, in person, entered Berlin on the 85th of
October; and before the end of November, ex-
cept Konigsberg — where the King himself had
found refuge, and gathered roimd him a few
thousand troops . . . — and a few less impor-
tant fortresses, the whole of the German posses-
sions of the house of Brandenburg were in the
hands of the conqueror. Louis Buonaparte, King
of Holland, meanwhile had advanced into West-
phalia and occupied that territory also, with
great part of Hanover, East Friesland, Embden,
and the dominions of Hesse-Cassel. " — J. G. Lock-
hart, Life of Napoleon, ch. 20.
Also in: C. Adams, Great Campaigns in
Europe from 1796 to 1870, ch. 4. — Baron Jomini,
Life of Napoleon, ch. 9 (y. 3). — Memoirs of Napo-
leon dictated at St. Helena, v. 6, pp. 60-72. — Sir
A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, 1789-1815, ch. 43 (v.
10). — Duke of Rovigo, Memoirs, v. 1, pt. 2, ch.
21-23.
A. D. i8o6 (October — December). — Napo-
leon's ungenerous use of his victory. — His in-
sults to the Queen of Prussia. — The kingdom
governed as conquered territory. — The French
advance into Poland, to meet the Russians. —
Saxony made a kingdom. — "Napoleon made a
severe and ungenerous use of his victory. Tlie
old Duke of Brunswick, respectable from his age,
his achievements under the Great Frederick, and
the honourable wounds he had recently received
on the field of battle, and who had written a
letter to Napoleon, after the battle of Jena,
recommending his subjects to his generosity,
was in an especial manner the object of invec-
tive. His states were overrun, and the official
bulletins disgraced by a puerile tirade against a
general who liad done nothing but discharge his
duty to his sovereign. For this he was punished
by the total confiscation of his dominions. So
virulent was the language employed, and such
the apprelicnsions in consequence inspired, that
the wounded general was compelled, with great
personal suffering, to take refuge in Altona,
where he soon after died. The Queen, whose
spirit in prosperous and constancy in adverse for-
tune had justly endeared her to her subjects,
and rendered her the admiration of all Europe,
was pursued in successive bulletins with un-
manly sarcasms; and a heroic princess, whose
only fault, if fault it was, had been an excess of
patriotic ardour, was compared to Helen, whose
faithless vices had involved her country in the
calamities consequent on the siege of Troy. The
whole dominions of the Elector of Hesse Cassel
were ne.\t seized ; and that prince, who had not
even combated at Jena, but merely permitted,
when he could not prevent, the entry of the
Prussians into his dominions, was dethroned and
deprived of all his possessions. . . . The Prince
of Orange, brother-in-law to the King of Prussia,
. . . shared the same fate : while to the nobles
of Berlin he used publicly the cruel expression,
more withering to his own reputation tlian theirs,
— 'I will render that noblesse so poor that they
shall be obliged to beg their bread.' . . . Mean-
while the French armies, without any further re-
sistance, took possession of tlie wliole country
between the Rhine and the Oder ; and in the rear
of the victorious bands appeared, in severity un-
precedented even in the revolutionary armies,
the dismal scourge of contributions. Resolved
to maintain tlie war exclusively on the provinces
which were to be its theatre. Napoleon had taken
only 24,000 francs in specie across the Rliine in
the military clicst of the army. It soon appeared
from whom the deficiency was to be supplied.
On the day after the battle of Jena appeared a
proclamation, directing the levy of an extraor-
dinary war contribution of 1.59,000,000 francs
(£6,300,000) on the countries at war witli France,
of which 100,000,000 was to be borne by the
Prussian states to the west of the Vistula,
25,000,000 by the Elector of Saxony [who had
already detaclicd himself from his alliance with
Prussia], and the remainder by the lesser states
in tlie Prussian confederacy. This enormous
burden . . . was levied with unrelenting sever-
ity. . . . Nor was this all. The whole civil au-
thorities who remained in the abandoned prov-
inces were compelled to take an oath of fidelity
to the French Emperor, — an unprecedented step,
which clearly indicated the intention of annex-
ing the Prussian dominions to the great nation.
. . . Early in* November tliere appeared an elab-
orate ordinance, which provided for the complete
civil organisation and military occupation of the
whole country from tlie Rhine to the Vistula.
By this decree the conquered states were divided
into four departments ; those of Berlin, of Mag-
deburg, of Stettin, and of Custrin ; the military
and civil government of the wliole conquered
territory was intrusted to a governor-general at
Berlin, having under him eight commanders of
provinces into which it was divided. . . . The
same system of government was extended to the
duchy of Brunswick, the states of Hesse and
Hanover, the duchy of Mecklenburg, and the
Hanse towns, including Hamburg, whicli was
speedily oppressed by grievous contributions.
. . . The Emperor openly announcecl liis deter-
mination to retain possession of all these states
till England consented to his demands on the
subject of the liberty of the seas. . . . Mean-
while the negotiations for the conclusion of a
separate peace between France and Prussia were
resumed. . . . The severity of the terms de-
manded, as well as . . . express assurances that
no concessions, how great soever, could lead to a
separate accommodation, as Napoleon was re-
solved to retain all his conquests until a general
peace, led, as might have been expected, to the
rupture of the negotiations. Desperate as the
fortunes of Prussia were, . . . the King . . .
declared his resolution to stand or fall with the
Emperor of Russia [wlio was vigorously pre-
paring to fulfil his promise of help to the stricken
nation]. This refusal was anticipated by Napo-
leon. It readied him at Posen, whither he had
advanced on his road to the Vistula ; and notliing
remained but to enter vigorously on the prose-
cution of the war in Poland. To this period of
1544
GERMANY, 1806.
Napoleon and
Russia.
GERMANY, 1806-1807.
the war belongs the famous Berlin decree [see
France- A. D. 1806-1810] of the 21st Novem-
ber against the commerce of Great Britain. . .
Napoleon .--. . at Posen, in Prussian Poland,
gave audience to the deputies of that unhappy
kinffdom, who came to implore his support to
the remains of its once mighty domimon_. His
words were calculated to excite hopes which his
subsequent conduct never realised. . . . While
the main bodv of the French army was advanc-
ino- by rapid 'strides from the Oder to the Vis-
tula Napoleon, ever anxious to secure his com-
munications, and clear his rear of hostile bodies
caused two different armies to advance to support
the flanksof the invading force. . . . The whole
of the north of Germany was overrun by French
troops, while 100,000 were assembling to meet
the formidable legions of Russia in the heart ot
Poland Vast as the forces of Napoleon were,
such prodigious eflforts, over so great an extent
of surface, rendered fresh supplies indispensable.
The senate at Paris was ready to furnish them ;
and on the requisition of the Emperor 80,000
were voted from the youth who were to arrive
at the military age in 1807. . . . A treaty offen-
sive and defensive, between Saxony and France,
was the natural result of these successes. Ihis
convention, arranged by Talleyrand was signed
at Posen on the 12th December. It stipulated
that the Elector of Saxony should be elevated to
the dignity of king; he was admitted into the
Confederation of the Rhine, and his contingent
fixed at 20,000 men. By a separate article, it
was provided that the passage of foreign troops
across the kingdom of Saxony should take place
without the consent of the sovereign ; a provision
which sufficiently pointed it out as a inihtary
outpost of the great nation — while, by a subsid-
iary treaty, signed at Posen three days after _
wards the whole minor princes of the House of
Saxonv were also admitted into the Confederacy.
—Sir A Alison, Hist, of Earape, 1789-1815, ch.
43, sect. 87-99 (». 10). . ,r 7 o
Also in: P. Lanfrey, Hist of Napoleon, ■». 3,
cji 16 —Mrs S. Austin, Germany from 1760 to
1814 p 394, and after.— E. H. Hudson, Life
and 'Times of Louisa, Queen of Prussia, v. 3, ch.
A D. 1806-1807.— Opening of Napoleons
campaign against the Russians.— The de ud-
ing of the Poles.— Indecisive battle of Eylau.
—The campaign against the Russians "opened
early in the winter. The 1st of November, the
Russians and French inarched towards the Vis-
tula the former from the Memel, the latter from
the Oder Fifty thousand Russians pressed for-
ward under General Benningsen; a second and
equal army followed at a distance with a reserve
force Some of the Russian forces on the Turk-
ish frontier were recalled, but were still remote.
The first two Russian armies, with the remaining
Prussians, numbered about 120,000. England
made many promises and kept few of them
thinking more of conquering Spanish and Dutch
colonies than of helping her allies. Her aid
was limited to a small reinforcement of the
Swedes guarding Swedish Pomerania, the only
portion of Northern Germany not yet in French
power. Gustavus II., the young King of Swe-
den weak and impulsive, rushed headlong, with-
out' a motive, into the . . . alliance [against
Napoleon], destined to be so fatal to Sweden.
Eighty thousand men under Murat crossed
the Oder and entered Prussian Poland, and an
equal number stood ready to sustain them.
November 9, Davoufs division entered Posen
the principal town of the Polish provinces still
preserving the national sentiment, and whose
people detested Prussian rule and resented the
treachery with which Prussia dismembered Po-
land after swearing alliance with her. All along
the road, the peasants hastened to meet the
French; and at Posen, Davout was hailed with
an enthusiasm which moved even him, cold and
severe as he was, and he urged Napo eon to ]us-
tify the hopes of Poland, who looked to 1"'" aj
her savior. The Russian vanguard reached
Warsaw before the French, but made no effort to
remain there, and recrossed the Vistula. Novem-
ber 28 Davout and Murat entered the town, and
public delight knew no bounds. It would be a
mere illusion to fancy that sentiments of right
and iustice had any share in Napoleon s resolve,
and that he was stirred by a desire to repair
great wrongs. His only question was whether
the resurrection of Poland would increase his
greatness or not; and if he told the Sultan that
he meant to restore Poland, it was because he
thought Turkey would assist him the more will-
ingly against Russia. He also offered part ot
Silesia to Austria, if she would aid him in the
restoration of Poland by the cession of her Polish
provinces; but it was not a sufficient offer, and
therefore not serious. The truth was that he
wanted promises from the Poles before he made
any to them. . . . Thousands of Poles enlisted
under the French flag and joined the Pohsh
legions left from the Italian war. Napoleon es-
tablished a provisional government of well-known
Poles in Warsaw, and required nothing but vol-
unteers of the country. He had seized without
a blow that line of the Vistula which the Prus-
sian king would not barter for a truce, and might
have gone into winter-quarters there; but tne
Russians were close at hand on the opposite
shore iu two great divisions 100,000 strong, in a
wooded and marshy country forming a sort ot
triangle, whose point touches the union ot the
Narew and Ukra rivers with the Vistula, a few
leagues below Warsaw. The Russians communi-
cated with the sea by a Prussian corps stationed
between them and Dantzic. Napoleon would not
permit them to hold this post, and resolved to
strike a blow, before going into winter-quarters
which should cut them off from the sea and
drive them back towards the Memel and Lithu-
ania. He crossed the Vistula, December 23 and
attacked the Russians between the Narew and the
Ukra A series of bloody battles followed [the
most important being at Pultusk and Golymin
Dec 36] in the dense forests and deep bogs ot
the thawing land. Napoleon said that he had
discovered a fifth element in Poland,— mud.
Men and horses stuck in the swamp and the can-
nons could not be extricated. Luckily the Rus-
sians were in the incompetent hands of General
Kamenski, and both parties fought m the dark,
the labyrinth of swamps and woods preventing
either army from guessing the other's movements.
The Russians were finally driven, with great loss,
beyond the Narew towards the forests of Bel-
ostok, and a Prussian corps striving to assist
them was driven back to the sea. . . . The grand
army did not long enjoy the rest it so much
needed ■ for the Russians, whose losses were more
than made up by the arrival of their reserves.
1545
GERMANY, 1806-1807.
Eylav
and Friedland.
GERMANY, 1807.
suddenly resumed the offensive. General Ben-
ningsen, who gave a fearful proof of his sinister
energy by the murder of Paul I. , had been put in
command in Kamenski's place. Marching round
the forests and traversing the line of lakes which
divide the basin of the Narew from those water-
courses flowing directly to the sea, he reached
the maritime part of old Prussia, intending to
cross the Vistula and drive the French from their
position in Poland. He had hoped to surprise
the French left wing, lying between the Passarge
and Lower Vistula, but arrived too late. Ney
and Bernadotte rapidly concentrated their forces
and fought with a bravery wliich arrested the
Russians (January 25 and "27). Napoleon came
to the rescue, and having once driven the enemy
into the woods and marshes of the interior, now
strove to turn those who meant to turn him, by
an inverse action forcing them to the sea-coast.
. . . Benningsen then halted beyond Eylau, and
massed his forces to receive battle next day [Feb-
ruary 8]. He had about 70,000 men, tw'ice the
artillery of Napoleon (400 guns against 200), and
hoped to be joined betimes by a Prussian corps.
Napoleon could only dispose of 60,000 out of his
300,000 men, — Ney being some leagues away
and Bernadotte out of reach. . . . The battle-
field was a fearful sight next day. Twelve thou-
sand Russians and 10,000 French lay dying and
dead on the vast fields of snow reddened with
blood. The Russians, besides, carried off 15,000
wounded. ' What an ineffectual massacre !' cried
Ney, as he traversed the scene of carnage. This
was too true ; for although Napoleon drove the
Russians to the sea, it was not in the way he
desired. Benningsen succeeded in reaching Kon-
igsberg, where he could rest and reinforce his
army, and Napoleon was not strong enough to
drive him from this last shelter." — H. Martin,
Popular Hist, of Fi-an.ce from 1789, e. 2, ch. 11.
Also in: Baron Jomini, Life of Napoleon, ch,
10 (v. 2). — C. Joyneville, Life and Times of Alex-
ander /., V. 1, eh. 8. — J. C. Ropes, The First Na-
poleon, lect. 3. — Baron de Marbot, Memoirs, v. 1,
ch. 39-30,
A. D. 1806-1810. — Commercial blockade by
the English Orders in Council and Napoleon's
Decrees. See France: A. D. 1806-1810.
A. D. 1807 (February — June). — Closer alli-
ance of Prussia and Russia. — Treaty of Bar-
tenstein. — Napoleon's victory at Friedland. —
End of the campaign. — The effect produced in
Europe by the doubtful battle of Eylau " was
unlucky for France; iu Paris the Funds fell.
Bennigsen boldly ordered the Te Deum to be
sung. In order to confirm his victory, re-organise
his army, reassure France, re-establish the opin-
ion of Europe, encourage the Polish insurrection,
and to curb the ill-will of Germany and Austria,
Napoleon remained a week at Eylau, He ne-
gotiated: on one side he caused Talleyrand to
write to Zastrow, the Prussian foreign minister,
to propose peace and his alliance ; he sent Ber-
trand to Memel to offer to re-establish the King
of Prussia, on the condition of no foreign inter-
vention. He also tried to negotiate with Ben-
nigsen ; to which the latter made answer, ' that
his master had charged him to tight, and not ne-
gotiate.' After some hesitation, Prussia ended
by joining her fortunes to those of Russia. By
the convention of Bartenstein (25th April, 1807)
the two sovereigns came to terms on the follow-
ing points: — 1. The re-establishment of Prussia
within the limits of 1805. 2. The dissolution of
the Confederation of the Rhine. 3. The restitu-
tion to Austria of the Tyrol and Venice. 4. The
accession of England to the coalition, and the
aggrandisement of Hanover. 5, The co-opera-
tion of Sweden. 6, The restoration of the house
of Orange, and indemnities to the kings of Naples
and Sardinia. This document is important; it
nearly reproduces the conditions offered to Na-
poleon at the Congress of Prague, in 1813. Rus-
sia and Prussia proposed then to make a more
pressing appeal to Austria, Sweden, and Eng-
land; but the Emperor Francis was naturally
undecided, and the Archduke Charles, alleging
the state of the finances and the army, strongly
advised him against any new intervention. Swe-
den was too weak ; and notwithstanding his fury
against Napoleon, Gustavus IU. had just been
forced to treat with Mortier. The English min-
ister showed a remarkable inability to conceive
the situation ; he refused to guarantee the new
Russian loan of a hundred and fifty millions, and
would lend himself to no maritime diversion.
Napoleon showed the greatest diplomatic activ-
ity. The Sultan Selim HI. declared war against
Russia ; General Sebastiani, the envoy at Con-
stantinople, put the Bosphorus in a state of de-
fence, and repulsed the English fleet [see Turks:
A. D. 1806-1807] ; General Gardane left for Ispa-
han, with a mission to cause a Persian outbreak
iu the Caucasus. Dautzig had capitulated [May
24, after a long siege], and Lefibvre's 40,000
men were therefore ready for service. Massena
took 36,000 of them into Italy. In the spring,
Bennigsen, who had been reinforced by 10,000
regular troops, 6,000 Cossacks, and the Imperial
Guard, being now at the head of 100,000 men,
took the offensive ; Gortchakof commanding the
right and Bagration the left. He tried, as in the
preceding year, to seize Ney's division; but the
latter fought, as he retired, two bloody fights,
at Gutstadt and Ankendorff. Bennigsen, again
in danger of being surrounded, retired on Heils-
berg. He defended himself bravely (June 10);
but the French, extending their line on his right,
marched on Eylau, so as to cut him off from
Konigsberg. The Russian generalissimo re-
treated ; but being pressed, he had to draw up at
Friedland, on the Alle. The position he had
taken up was most dangerous. AH his army was
enclosed in an angle of the Alle, with the steep bed
of the river at their backs, which in case of mis-
fortune left them only one means of retreat, over
the three bridges of Friedland. . . . ' AVhcre are
the Russians concealed?' asked Napoleon when
he came up. When he had noted their situation,
he exclaimed, ' It is not every day that one sur-
prises the enemy in such a fault.' He put Lannes
and Victor in reserve, ordered Mortier to oppose
Gortchakof on the left and to remain still, as the
movement which ' would be made by the right
would pivot on the left. ' As to Ney, he was to
cope on the right with Bagration, who was shut
in by the angle of the river ; he was to meet them
'with his head down,' without taking any care
of his own safety. Ney led the charge with irre-
sistible fury ; the Russians were riddled by his
artillery at 150 paces: he successively crushed the
chasseurs of the Russian Guard, the Ismal'lovski,
and the Horse Guards, burnt Friedland by shells,
and cannonaded the bridges which were the
only means of retreat. . . . The Russian left wing
was almost thrown into the river; Bagration,
1546
GERMANY, 1807.
D eatii of
Tilsit.
GERMANY, 1807.
■with the Semenovski and other troops, was hardly
able to cover the defeat. On the Russian right,
Gortchakof, who had advanced to attack the
^movable Mortier, had only time o ford t^he
Alle Count Lambert retired with 29 guns by
the left bank; the rest fled by the right bank,
closely pursued by the cavalry. Meanwhile
Murat Davoust, and Soult, who had taken no
part to the battle, arrived before K6nigsberg
Lestocq, with 2.5,000 men tried to defend it but
on learning the disaster of Fnedland he hastily
evacuated it. Only one fortress now remained
to Frederick William - the little town ot :\Iemc
The Russians had lost at Fnedland from 15 000
to 20 000 men, besides 80 guns (June U, 1800-
Alexander had no longer an army. Only one
man, Barclay de Tolly, proposed to contmue the
war • but in order to do this it would be necessary
to re-enter Russia, to penetrate into the very
heart of the empire, to burn everything on the
way, and only present a desert to the enemy.
Alexander hoped to get off more cheaply. He
wrote a severe letter to Bennigsen, and gave him
powers to treat."— A. Rambaud, Hist, oj Rimui,
v. 2, ch. 12. . ,, . o /
Also in : Duke de Rovigo, Memoirs, v. 3, pt.
1, ch. 4-6. _. -,. 1 r-T-i
A D. 1807 {June—July).-The Treaty of Til-
sit —Its known and its unknown agreements.
—•"'Alexander I. now determined to negotiate 111
person with the rival emperor, and on the 2oth
ot June the two sovereigns met at Tilsit, on a
raft which was moored in the middle ot the JNie-
men The details of the conference are a secret,
as Napoleons subsequent account of it is un-
trustworthy, and no witnesses were present. All
that is certain is that Alexander I whose char-
acter was a curious mixture of nobility and weak-
ness was completely won over by his conqueror.
Napoleon . . . instead of attempting to
impose extreme terms upon a country which it
was impossible to conquer, . . . offered te. share
with Russia the supremacy in Europe which had
been won by French arms. The only conditions
were the abandonment of the cause of the old
monarchies, which seemed hopeless, and an al-
liance with France against England.^ Alexander
had several grievances against the English gov-
ernment, especially the lukewarm support that
had been given in recent operations, and macle
no objection to resume the policy of his prede-
cessors in this respect. Two interviews sufficed
to arrange the basis of an agreement. Both
sovereigns abandoned their aUies without scruple.
Alexander gave up Prussia and Sweden, while
Napoleon deserted the cause of the Poles, who
had trusted to his zeal for their independence and
of the Turks, whom his envoy had recently in-
duced to make war upon Russia. The Treaty of
Tilsit was speedily drawn up; on the -Ui of July
peace was signed between France and Russia, on
the 9th between France and Prussia. Frederick
William III. had to resign the whole of his king-
dom west of the Elbe, together with a 1 the ac-
quisitions which Prussia had made m the second
and third partitions of Poland, The provinces
that were left, amounting to barely half of what
he had inherited, were burthened with the pay-
ment of an enormous sum as compensation to
France The district west of the Elbe was united
with Hesse-Cassel, Brunswick, and ultimately
with Hanover, to form the kmgdom of West-
phalia which was given to Napoleon s youngest
1547
brother, Jerome. Of Polish Prussia, one prov-
ince, Bialy stock, was added to Russia, and the
rest was made into the grand duchy of Warsaw,
and transferred to Saxony. Danzig, with the
surrounding territory, was declared a free state
under Prussian and Saxon protection, but it was
really subject to France, and remained a centre
of French power on the Baltic. All trade be-
tween Prussia and England was cut off. Alex-
ander I., on his side, recognised all Napoleons
new creations in Europe — the Confederation of
the Rhine, the kingdoms of Italy, Naples, Hol-
land and AVestphalia, and undertook to mediate
between France and England. But the really
important agreement between France and Russia
was to be found, not in the formal treaties, but
in the secret conventions which were arranged
by the two emperors. The exact text of these
has never been made public, and it is probable
that some of the terms rested upon verbal rather
than on written understandings, buJt the general
drift of them is unquestionable. The bribe ot-
tered to Alexander was the aggrandisement ot
Russia in the East. To make him an accom-
plice in the acts of Napoleon, he was to be al-
lowed to annex Finland from Sweden and Mol-
davia and Wallachia from Turkey. With regard
to Enffland, Russia undertook to adopt Napo-
leon's blockade-system, and to obtain the adhesion
of those states which still remained open to Eng-
lish trade — Sweden, Denmark, and Portugal. —
R. Lodge, Hist, of Modem Europe, eh. 2i sect, ip
_" 'I thought,' said Napoleon at St. Helena, it
would benefit the worid to drive these brutes
the Turks, out of Europe. But when I reflected
what power it would give to Russia, from the
number of Greeks in the Turkish dominions who
maybe considered Russians, I refused to consent
to It especially as Alexander wanted Constanti-
nople which would have destroyed the equilib-
rium of power in Europe. France would gam
EevDt Syria, and the islands; but those were
nothin'g to what Russia would have obtained
This coincides with Savary's [Duke de Rovigo sj
statement, that Alexander told him Napoleon
said he was under no engagements to the new
Sultan and that changes in the worid inevitably
changed the relations of states to one another;
and again, Alexander said that, in their conver-
sations at Tilsit, Napoleon often told him he did
not require the evacuation of Moldavia and Wal-
lachiaT he would place things in a train to dis-
pense with it, and it was not possible to sufler
loneer the presence of the Turks in Europe. He
eve^left me,' said Alexander, 'to entertain the
proiect of driving them back into Asia._ it 13
only since that he has returned to the idea of
leaving Constantinople to them, and some sur-
rounding provinces.' One day, when Napoleon
was talking to Alexander, he asked his secretary,
M Meneval, for the map of Turkey, opened it
then renewed the conversation ; and placing his
finsrer on Constantinople said several times to the
secl'etary, though not loud enough to be heard
by Alexander, "' Constantinople, Constantinople,
never. It is the capital of the world.' . . . It is
very evident in their conversations that Napoleon
agred to his [Alexander's] possessing himself of
the Turkish Empire up to the Balkan, if not be-
yond; though Bignon denies that any plan lor
the actual partition of Turkey was embodied in
the treaty of Tilsit. Hardenberg, not always
well informed, asserts that it was. Savary says
GERMANY, 1807.
Tlie Pntssian
collapse and recovery.
GERMANY, 1807-1808.
he could not believe that Napoleon would have
abandoned the Turks without a compensation in
some other quarter; and he felt certain Alexan-
der had agreed in return to Napoleon's project
for the conquest of Spain, ' which the Emperor
had very much at heart.'" — C. Joyneville, Life
and Times of Alexander I., i>. 1, cli. 8.
Also IN: Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, VIBQ-
1815, eh. 46 (v. 10).— Count Miot de Melito, Mem-
oirs, cJi. 34. — P. Lanfrey, Hist, of Napoleon, ch. 3-
4. — Prince de Talleyrand, Memoirs, pt. 3 {v. 1). —
A. Thiers, Hist, of the Consulate and the Empire,
bk. 27 (i\ 2).
A. D. 1807 (July). — The collapse of Prussia
and its Causes. — "For the live years that fol-
lowed, Prussia is to be conceived, iu addition to
all her other humiliations, as in the hands of a
remorseless creditor whose claims are decided by
himself without appeal, and who wants more
than all he can get. She is to be thought of as
supporting for more than a year after the con-
clusion of the Treaty a French army of more
than 150,000 men, then as supporting a French
garrison in three principal fortresses, and finally,
just before the period ends, as having to support
the huge Russian expedition in its passage
through the country. ... It was not in fact
from the Treaty of Tilsit, but from the system-
atic breach of it, that the sufferings of Prussia
between 1807 and 1813 arose. It is indeed hardly
too much to say that the advantage of the Treaty
was received only by France, and that the only
object Napoleon can have had in signing it was
to inflict more harm on Prussia than he could in-
flict by simply continuing the war. Such was
the downfall of Prussia. The tremendousness of
the catastrophe strikes us less because we know
that it was soon retrieved, and that Prussia rose
again and became greater than ever. But could
this recovery be anticipated ? A great nation,
we say, cannot be dissolved by a few disasters;
patriotism and energy will retrieve everything.
But precisely these seemed wanting. The State
seemed to have fallen in pieces because it had no
principle of cohesion, and was only held together
by an artificial bureaucracy. It had been cre-
ated by the energy of its government and the
efficiency of its soldiers, and now it appeared to
come to an end because its government had
ceased to be energetic and its soldiers to be effi-
cient. The catastrophe could not but seem as
irremediable as it was sudden and complete."
There may be discerned "three distinct causes
for it. First, tlie undecided and pusillanimous
policy pursued by the Prussian government since
1803 had an evident influence upon the result by
making the great Powers, particularly England
and Austria, slow to render it assistance, and also
by making the commanders, especially Bruns-
wick, irresolute in action because they could not,
even at the last moment, believe the war to be
serious. This indecision we have observed to
have been connected with a mal-organisation of
the Foreign Department. Secondly, the corrup-
tion of the military system, which led to the sur-
render of the fortresses. Tliirdly, a misfortune
for which Prussia was not responsible, its deser-
tion by Russia at a critical moment, and tlie for-
mation of a close alliance between Russia and
France." — J. R. Seeley, Life and Time^ of Stein,
pt. 2, ch. 5 (e. 1).
A. D. 1807-1808.— The great Revolutionary
Reforms of Hardenberg, Stein and Scharn-
horst. — Edict of Emancipation. — Military re-
organization. — Beginning of local self-govern-
ment. — Seeds of a nev? national life. — "The
work of those who resisted Napoleon — even if
no one of them should ever be placed in the high-
est class of the benefactors of mankind — has in
some cases proved enduring, and nowhere so
much as iu Germany. They began two great
works — the reorganisation of Prussia and the
revival of the German nationality, and time has
deliberately ratified their views. Without retro-
gression, without mistake, e.xcept the mistake
which in such matters is the most venial that can
be committed, that, namely, of over-caution, of
excessive hesitation, the edifice which was then
founded has been raised higher and higher till
it is near completion. . . . Because Frederick-
William III. remains quietly seated on the throne
through the whole period, we remain totally un-
aware that a Prussian revolution took place then
— a revolution so comprehensive that the old
reign and glories of Frederick may fairly be said
to belong to another world — to an ' ancien re-
gime ' that has utterly passed away. It was a
revolution which, though it did not touch the
actual framework of government in such a way
as to substitute one of Aristotle's forms of gov-
ernment for another, yet went so far beyond gov-
ernment, and made such a transformation both in
Industry and culture, that it deserves the name
of revolution far more, for instance, than our
English Revolution of the 17th century. ... In
Prussia few of the most distinguished statesmen,
few even of those wlio took the lead in her libera-
tion from Napoleon, were Prussians. Bllicher
himself began life in the service of Sweden,
Scharnhorst was a Hanoverian, so was Harden-
berg, and Stein came from Nassau. Niebuhr
was enticed to Berlin from the Bank of Copen-
hagen. Hardenberg served George III. and
afterwards the Duke of Brunswick before he en-
tered the service of Frederick- William II. ; and
when Stein was dismissed by Frederick- William
III. in the midst of the war of 1806, though he
was a man of property and rank, he took meas-
ures to ascertain whether they were in want of
a Finance Minister at St. Petersburg. . . . We
misapprehend the nature of what took place
when we say, as we usually do, that some im-
portant and useful reforms were introduced by
Stein, Hardenberg, and Scharnhorst. In the first
place, such a word as reform is not properly ap-
plied to changes so vast, and in the second place,
the changes then made or at least commenced,
went far be3'ond legislation. We want some
word stronger than reform which shall convey
that one of the greatest events of modern history
now took place in Prussia. Revolution would
convey this, but unfortunately we appropriate
that word to changes in the form of government,
or even mere changes of dynast}', provided they
are violent, though such changes are commonly
quite insignificant compared to what now took
place in Prussia. . . . The form of government
indeed was not changed. Not merely did the
king continue to reign, but no Parliament was
created even with powers ever so restricted.
Another generation had to pass away before this
innovation, which to us seems tlie beginning of
political life, took place. But a nation must be
made before it can be made free, and, as we have
said, in Prussia there was an administration (in
great disorder) and an army, but no nation. AVlien
1548
GERMANY, 1807-1808.
The Prussian
awakening.
GERMANY, 1808.
Stein was placed at the head of affairs in the
autumn of 1807, he seems, at first, hardly to have
been aware that anything was called for beyond
the reform of the administration, and the removal
of some abuses in the army. Accordingly ho did
reform the administration from the top to the
bottom, remodelling the whole machinery both
of central and local government which had come
down from the father of Frederick the Great.
But the other work also was forced ujion him,
and he began to create the nation by emancipat-
ing the peasantry, while Scharnhorst and Gneise-
nau were brooding over the ideas which, five
years later, took shape in the Landwehr of East
Prussia. Besitles emaucipating the peasant he
emancipated industry,^ everywhere abolishing
that strange caste system which divided the popu-
lation rigidly into nobles, citizens, and peasants,
and even stamped every acre of land in the
country with its own unalterable rank as noble,
or citizen, or peasant laud. Emancipation, so to
speak, had to be given before enfranchisement.
The peasant must have something to live for;
freewill must be awakened in the citizen ; and he
must be taught to fight for something before he
could receive political liberty. Of such liberty
Stein only provided one modest germ. By his
Stadteordnung he introduced popular election
into the towns. Thus Prussia and France set
out towards political liberty by different roads.
Prussia began modestly with local liberties, but
did not for a long time attem])t a Parliament.
France with her charte, and in imitation of France
many of the small German States, had grand popu-
lar Parliaments, but no local liberties. And so
for a long time Prussia was regarded as a back-
ward State. ... It was only by accident that
Stein stopped short at municipal liberties and
created no Parliament. He would have gone
further, and in the last years of the wartime
Hardenberg did summon deliberative assemblies,
which, however, fell into disuse again after the
peace. ... In spite however of all reaction, the
change irrevocably made by the legislation of
that time was similar to that made in France by
the Revolution, and caused the age before Jena
to be regarded as an ' ancien regime. ' But in
addition to this, a change had been made in men's
minds and thoughts by the shocks of the time,
which prepared tlie way for legislative changes
which have taken place since. How unprece-
dented in Prussia, for instance, was the dicta-
torial authority wielded by Hardenberg early in
1807, by Stein in the latter part of that year and
in 1808, and by Hardenberg again from 1810
onwards! Before that time in the history of
Prussia we find no subject eclipsing or even ap-
proaching the King in importance. Prussia had
been made what she was almost entirely by her
electors and kings. In war and organisation
alike all had been done by the Great Elector or
Frederick-William I., or Frederick the Great.
But now this is suddenly changed. Everything
now turns on the minister. Weak ministers are
expelled by pressure put upon the king, strong
ones are forced upon him. He is compelled to
create a new ministerial power much greater than
that of an English Prime Minister, and more like
that of a Grand Vizier, and by these dictators
the most comprehensive innovations are made.
The loyalty of the people was not impaired by
this ; on the contrary, Stein and Hardenberg saved
the Monarchy; but it evidently transferred the
Monarchy, though safely, to a lower pedestal." —
J. R. Seeley, Prussian History (Maomillan's Mag.,
V. 36, pp. 342-351).
Also in : The same, Life and Times of Stein,
pt. 3-5 {v. 1-2). — R. B. D. Morier, Agrarian
Legislation of Prussia {Systems of Land Tenure:
Cohden Club Essays, ch. 5),
A. D. i8o8. — The Awakening of the national
spirit. — Effects of the Spanish rising, and of
Fichte's Addresses. — The beginnings of the
great rising in Spain against Napoleon (see
Spain: A. D. 1808, and after) "were watched
by Stein from Berlin while he was engaged
in negotiating with Daru ; we can imagine with
what feehngs! His cause had been, since his
ministry began, substantially the same as that
of Spain; but he had perhaps understood it
himself but dimly, at any rate hoped but
faintly to see it prosper. But now he ripens at
once into a great nationality statesman; the
reforms of Prussia begin at once to take a more
military stamp, and to point more decisively to
a great uprising of the German race against the
foreign oppressor. The change of feeling which
took place in Prussia after the beginning of the
Spanish troubles is very clearly marked in Stein's
autobiography. After describing the negotia-
tions at Paris and Berlin, ... he begins a new
paragraph thus: 'The popular war which had
broken out in Spain and was attended with good
success, had heightened the irritation of the
inhabitants of the Prussian State caused by the
humiliation they had suffered. All thirsted for
revenge ; plans of insurrection, which aimed at
exterminating the French scattered about the
country, were arranged ; among others, one was
to be carried out at Berlin, and I had the greatest
trouble to keep the leaders, who confided their
intentions to me, from a premature outbreak.
We all watched the progress of the Spanish war
and the commencement of the Austrian, for the
preparations of that Power had not remained
a secret; expectation was strained to the highest
point ; pains were necessary to moderate the ex-
cited eagerness for resistance in order to profit by
it in more favourable circumstances. . . . Fichte's
Addresses to the Germans, delivered during the
French occupation of Berlin and printed under
the censorship of M. Bignon, the Intendant, had
a great effect upon the feelings of the cultivated
class.' . . . That iu the midst of such weighty
matters be should remember to mention Fichte's
Addresses is a remarkable testimony to the effect
produced by them on the public mind, and at
the same time it leads us to conjecture that they
must have strongly influenced his own. They
had been delivered in the winter at Berlin and
of course could not be heard by Stein, who was
then with the King, but they were not published
till April. As affecting public opinion there-
fore, and also as known to Stein, the book was
almost exactly of the same date as the Spanish
Rebellion, and it is not unnatural that he should
mention the two influences together. . . . When
the lectures were delivered at Berlin a rising in
Spain was not dreamed of, and even when they
were published it had not taken place, nor could
clearly be foreseen. And yet they teach the
same lesson. That doctrine of nationality which
was taught affirmatively by Spain had been
suggested to Fichte's mind by the reductio ad
absurdum which events had given to the
negation of it in Germany. Nothing could be
1549
GERMANY, 1808.
stein and
the Tugendbund.
GERMANY, 1808.
more convincing than the concurrence of the
two methods of proof at the same moment, and
the prophetic elevation of these discourses
(which may have furnished a model to Carlyle)
was well fitted to drive the lesson home, par-
ticularly to a mind like Stein's, which was quite
capable of being impressed by large principles.
. . . Fichte's Addresses do not profess to have
in the first instance nationality for their subject.
They profess to inquire whether there exists
any grand comprehensive remedy for the evils
with which Germany is afflicted. They find
such a remedy where Turgot long before had
looked for deliverance from the selfishness to
which he traced all the abuses of the old regime,
that is, in a grand system of national education.
Fichte reiterates the favourite doctrine of
modern Liberalism, that education as hitherto
conducted by the Church has aimed only at
securing for men happiness in another life, and
that this is not enough, inasmuch as they need
also to be taught how to bear themselves in the
present life so as to do their duty to the state, to
others and themselves. He is as sure as Turgot
that a system of national education will work so
powerfully upon the nation that in a few years
they will not be recognisable, and he explains at
great length what should be the nature of this
system, dwelling principally upon the impor-
tance of instilling a love of duty for its own
sake rather than for reward. Tlie method to be
adopted is that of Pestalozzi. Out of fourteen
lectures the first three are entirely occupied with
this. But then the subject is changed, and we
find ourselves plunged into a long discussion of
the peculiar characteristics which distinguish
Germany from other nations and particularly
other nations of German origin. At the present
day this discussion, which occupies four lectures,
seems hardly satisfactory ; but it is a striking
deviation from the fashion of that age. . . . But
up to this point we perceive only that the sub-
ject of German nationality occupies Fichte's mind
very much, and that there was more significance
than we first remarked in the title. Addresses to
the German Nation ; otherwise we have met with
nothing likely to seem of great importance to a
statesman. But the eightTi Lecture propounds
the question, What is a Nation in the higher
signification of the word, and what is patriot-
ism? It is here that he delivers what might
seem a commentary on the Spanish Revolution,
which had not yet taken place. . . . Fichte
proclaims the Nation not only to be different
from the State, but to be something far higher
and greater. . . . Applied to Germany this
doctrine would lead to the practical conclusion
that a united German State ought to be set up
in which the separate German States should be
absorbed. ... In the lecture before us he con-
tents himself with advising that patriotism as
distinguished from loyalty to the State should be
carefully inculcated in the new education, and
should influence the individual German Govern-
ments. It would not indeed have been safe for
Fichte to propose a political reform, but it
rather appears that he thought it an advantage
rather than a disadvantage that the Nation and
the State should be distinct. ... I should not
have lingered so long over this book if it did not
strike me as the prophetical or canonical book
which announces and explains a great tran-
sition in modern Europe, and the prophecies of
which began to be fulfilled immediately after its
publication by the rising in Spain. ... It is
this Spanish Revolution which when it has
extended to the other countries we call the Anti-
Napoleonic Revolution of Europe. It gave
Europe years of unparalleled bloodshed, but at
the same time years over which there broods a
light of poetry ; for no conception can be more
profoundly poetical than that which now woke
up in every part of Europe, the conception of
the Nation. Those years also led the way to the
great movements which have filled so much of
the nineteenth century, and have rearranged the
whole central part of the map of Europe on a
more nattu-al system." — J. R. Seeley, Life and
Tim^3 of Stein, pt. 4, ch. 1 (c. 3).
A. D. i8o8 (January). — Kehl, Cassel and
Wesel annexed to France. See France: A. D.
1807-1808 (November — February).
A. D. i8o8 (April — December).— The Tu-
gendbund, and Stein's relations to it. — "Eng-
lish people think of Stein almost exclusively in
connexion with land laws. But the second and
more warlike period of his Ministry has also left
a faint impression in the minds of many among
us, who are in the habit of regarding him as the
founder of the Tugendbund. In August and Sep-
tember [1808], the very months in which Stein
was taking up his new position, this society was
attracting general attention, and accordingly this
is the place to consider Stein's relation to it.
That he was secretly animating and urging it on
must have seemed at the time more than prob-
able, almost self-evident. It aimed at the very
objects which he had at heart, it spoke of him
with warm admiration, and in general it used
language which seemed an echo of his own. . . .
Whatever his connexion with the Tugendbund
may have been, it cannot have commenced till
April, 1808, for it was in that month that the
Tugendbund began its existence, and therefore
nothing can be more absurd than to represent
Stein as beginning to revolutionise the country
with the help of the Tugendbund, for his revolu-
tionary edict had been promulgated in the Octo-
ber before. ... In his autobiography . . . Stein
[says] : ' An effect and not the cause of this pas-
sionate national indignation at the despotism of
Napoleon was the Tugendbund, of which I was
no more the founder than I was a member, as I
can assert on my honour and as is well known to
its originators. About July, 1808, there was
formed at Konigsberg a society consisting of
several officers, for example. Col. Gneisenau,
Grolmann, &c. , and learned men, such as Pro-
fessor Krug, in order to combat selfishness and
to rouse the nobler moral feelings ; and according
to the requirements of the existing laws they
communicated their statutes and the list of their
members to the King's Majesty, who sanctioned
the former without any action on my part, it
being my belief in general that there was no
need of any other institute but to put new life
into the spirit of Christian patriotism, the germ
of which lay already in the existing institutions
of State and Church. The new Society held its
meetings, but of the proceedings I knew nothing,
and wlien lat«r it proposed to exert an indirect
influence upon educational and military institu-
tions I rejected the proposal as encroaching on
the department of the civil and ecclesiastical
governing bodies. As I was driven soon after-
wards out of the public service, I know nothing
1550
GERMANY, 1808.
NapoleotCs attack
on Austria,
GERMANY, 1809.
of the further operations of this Society.' . . .
He certainly seems to intend his readers to un-
derstand that he had not even any indirect or un-
derhand connexion with it, but from first to last
stood entirely aloof, except in one case when he
interfered to restrain its action. It is even pos-
sible that by telling us that he had nothing to do
with the step taken by the King wlien he sanc-
tioned the statutes of the society he means to hint
that, liad his advice been taken, the society would
not have been even allowed to exist. . . . The
principal fact affirmed by Stein is indeed now be-
yond controversy ; Stein was certainly not either
the founder or a member of the Tugendbund.
The society commonly known by that name,
which however designated itself as the Moral and
Scientific Union, was founded by a number of
persons, of whom many were Freemasons, at
KOnigsberg in the month of April. Professor
Krug, mentioned by Stein, was one of them;
Gneisenau and Grolmann, whom he also men-
tions, were not among the first members, and
Gneisenau, it seems, was never a member. The
statutes were drawn b}' Krug, Bardeleben and
Baersch, and if any one person can be called the
Founder of the Tugendbund, the second of these,
Bardeleben, seems best to deserve the title. The
Order of Cabinet by which the society was
licensed is dated KOnigsberg, June 30th, and
runs as follows : ' The revival of morality, reli-
gion, serious taste and public spirit, is assuredly
most commendable ; and, so far as the society
now being formed under the name of a Virtue
Union (Tugendverein) is occupied with this within
the limits of the laws of the country and without
any interference in politics or public administra-
tion, His Majesty the King of Prussia approves
the object and constitution of the society. ' . . .
From KOnigsberg missionaries went forth who
established branch associations, called Chambers,
in other towns, first those of the Province of
Prussia, Braunsberg, Elbing, Graudenz, Eylau,
Hohenstein, Memel, StallupOhnen; then in August
and September Bardeleben spread the movement
with great success through Silesia. The spirit
which animated the new society could not but be
approved by every patriot. They had been deeply
struck with the decay of the nation, as shown in
the occurrences of the war, and their views of
the way in which it might be revived were much
the same as those of Stein and Fichte. The only
question was whether they were wise in organis-
ing a society in order to promulgate these views,
whether such a society was likely to do much
good, and also whether it might not by possibil-
ity do much harm. Stein's view, as he has given
it, was that it was not likely to do much good,
and that such an organisation was unnecessary.
... It did not follow because he desired Estates
or Parliaments that he was prepared to sanction
a political club. ... It may well have seemed
to him that to suffer a political club to come
into existence was to allow the guidance of the
Revolution which he had begun to pass out of
his hands. There appears, then, when we con-
sider it closely, nothing unnatural in the course
which Stein declares himself to have taken. " — J.
R. Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, pt. 4, ch. 3 (v. 2).
Also in ; T. Frost, Secret Societies of the Euro-
pean Remlution, v. 1, ch. 4.
A. D. i8o8 (September— October).— Imperial
conference and Treaty of Erfurt. See France :
A. D. 1808 (September — October).
A. D. 1809 (January — June). — Outburst of
Austrian feeling against France. — Reopening
of war. — Napoleon's advance to Vienna. — His
defeat at Aspern and perilous situation. — Aus-
trian reverses in Italy and Hungary. — "The
one man of all the Austrians who felt the least
amount of hatred against France, was, perhaps,
the Emperor. All his family and all his people
— nobles and priests, the middle classes and the
peasantry — evinced a feeling full of anger
against the nation which had upset Europe. . . .
By reason of the French, the disturbers and
spoilers, the enemies of the human race, despisers
of morality and religion alike. Princes were suffer-
ing in their palaces, workmen in their shops,
business men in their offices, priests in their
churches, soldiers in their camps, peasants in
their huts. The movement of exasperation was
irresistible. Every one said that it was a mistake
to have laid down their arms ; that they ought
against France to have fought on to the bitter
end, and to have sacrificed the last man and the
last florin ; that they had been wrong in not hav-
ing gone to the assistance of Prussia after the
Jena Campaign; and that the moment had ar-
rived for all the Powers to coalesce against the com-
mon enemy and crush him. . . . All Europe had
arrived at a paroxysm of indignation. What was
she waiting for before rising ? A signal. That
signal Austria was about to give. And this time
with what chances of success I The motto was to
be ' victory or death. ' But they were sure of vic-
tory. The French army, scattered from the Oder
to the Tagus, from the mountains of Bohemia to
the Sierra Morena, would not be able to resist the
onslaught of so many nations eager to break their
bonds. . . . Vienna, in 1809, indulged in the
same language, and felt the same passions, that
Beriin did in 1806. . . . The Landwehr, then
only organized a few months, were impatiently
awaiting the hour when they should measure
themselves against the Veterans of the French
army. Volunteers flocked in crowds to the col-
ours. Patriotic subscriptions flowed in. . . .
Boys wanted to leave school to fight. All classes
of society vied with each other in zeal, courage,
and a spirit of sacrifice. When the news was
made public that the Archduke Charles had, on
the 20th of February, 1809, been appointed Gen-
eralissimo, there was an outburst of joy and con-
fidence from one end of the Empire to the other."
■ — Imbert de Saint- Amand, Memoirs of the Empress
Marie Louise, pt. 1, ch. 2. — " On receiving decisive
intelligence of these hostile preparations, Napo-
leon returned with extraordinary expedition from
Spain to Paris, in January, 1809, and gave orders
to concentrate his forces in Germany, and call
out the full contingents of the Confederation of
the Rhine. Some further time was consumed by
the preparations on either side. At last, on the
8th of April, the Austrian troops crossed the fron-
tiers at once on the Inn, in Bohemia, in the Tyrol
and in Italy. The whole burthen of the war
rested on Austria alone, for Prussia remained neu-
tral, and Russia, now allied to France, was even
bound to make a show at least, though it were no
more, of hostility to Austria. On the same day
on which the Austrian forces crossed the frontiers,
the Tyrol rose in insurrection [see below : A. D.
1809-1810 (April — February)], and was swept
clear of the enemy in four days, with the excep-
tion of a Bavarian garrison, that still held out in
Kufstein. The French army was at this time
1551
GERMANY, 1809.
Ifapoleon in
Vienna.
GERMANY, 1809.
dispersed over a line of forty leagues in exteut,
with numerous undefended apertures between the
corps ; 80 that the fairest possible opportunity pre-
sented itself to the Austrians for cutting to pieces
the scattered forces of the French, and marching
in triumph to the Rhine. As usual, however,
the archduke's early movements were subject-
ed to most impolitic delays by the Aulic Coun-
cil; and time was allowed Napoleon to arrive on
the theatre of war (April 17), and repair the faults
committed by his adjutant-general, Berthier. lie
instantly extricated his army from its perilous
position — almost cut in two by the advance of
the Austrians — and, beginning on the 19th, he
beat the latter in five battles on five successive
days, at Thaun, Abensberg, Landshut, Eckmilhl,
and Ratisbon. The Archduke Charles retired
into Bohemia to collect reinforcements, but Gen-
eral Hiller was, in consequence of the delay in re-
pairing the fortifications of Linz, unable to main-
tain that place, the possession of which was
important, on account of its forming a connecting
point between Bohemia and the Austrian Ober-
land. Hiller, however, at least saved his honour
by pushing forward to the Traun, and in a fear-
fully bloody encounter at Ebersberg, captured
three Frencli eagles, one of his colours alone fall-
ing into the enemy's hands. He was, neverthe-
less, compelled to retire before the superior forces
of the French, and crossing over at Krems to the
Igft bank of the Danube, he formed a junction
with the Archduke Charles. The way was now
clear to Vienna, which, after a slight show of de-
fence, capitulated to Napoleon on the 12th of
May. The Archduke Charles had hoped to reach
the capital before the Frencli, and to give battle
to them beneath its walls ; but as he had to make
a circuit whilst the French pushed forward in a
direct line, his plan was frustrated, and he ar-
rived, when too late, fromBohemia. Both armies,
separated by the Danube, stood opposed to one
another tn the vicinity of the imperial city. Both
commanders were desirous of coming to a decisive
engagement. The French had secured the island
of Lobau, to serve as a mustering place, and point
of transit across the Danube. The archduke al-
lowed them to establish a bridge of boats, being
resolved to await them on the Marchfeld. There
it was that Rudolph of Habsburg, in the battle
against Ottakar, had laid the foundation of the
greatness of the house of Austria ; and there the
political existence of that house and the fate of
the monarchy were now to be decided. Having
crossed the river, Napoleon was received on the
opposite bank, near Aspern and Esslingen, by his
opponent, and, after a dreadful battle [in which
Marshal Lanues was killed], that was carried on
with unwearied animosity for two days. May 21st
and 22nd, 1809, he was completely beaten, and
compelled to fly for refuge to the island of Lobau.
The rising stream had, meanwhile, carried away
the bridge, Napoleon's sole chance of escape to
the opposite bank. For two days he remained on
the island with his defeated troops, without pro-
visions, and in hourly expectation of being cut to
pieces ; the Austrians, however, neglected to turn
the opportunity to advantage, and allowed the
French leisure to rebuild the bridge, a work of
extreme difficulty. During six weeks afterwards,
the two armies continued to occupy their former
positions under the walls of Vienna, on the right
and left banks of the Danube, narrowdj' watching
each other's movements, and preparing for a final
struggle. Whilst these events were in progress,
the Archduke John had successfully penetrated
into Italy, where he had totally defeated the Vice-
roy Eugene at Salice, on the 16th of April. Fa-
voured by tlio simultaneous revolt of the Tyro-
lese, he might have obtained the most decisive
results from this victory, but the extraordinary
progress of Napoleon down the valley of the Dan-
ube rendered necessary the concentration of the
whole forces of the monarchy for the defence of the
capital. Having begun a retreat, he was pursued
by Eugene, and defeated on the Piave, with
great loss, on the 8th of May. Escaping thence,
without further molestation, to Villach, in Carin-
thia, he received intelligence of the fall of Vienna,
together with a letter from the Archduke Charles,
of the 15th of May, directing him to move with
all his forces upon Lintz, to act on the rear and
communications of Napoleon. Instead of obey-
ing these orders, he thought proper to march into
Hungary, abandoning the Tyrol and the whole
projected operations on the Upper Danube to
their fate. His disobedience was disastrous
to the fortunes of his house, for it caused the
fruits of the victorj- at Aspern to be lost. He
might have arrived, with 50,000 men, on the 24th
or 25th, at Lintz, where no one remained but
Bernadottc and tlie Saxons, who were incapable
of offering any serious resistance. Such a force,
concentrated on the direct line of Napoleon's com-
munications, iramediatelj' after his defeat at As-
pern, on the 22nd, would have deprived him of
all means of extricating himself from the most
perilous situation in which ho had yet been placed
since ascending the consular throne. After totally
defeating Jellachich in the valley of the Muhr,
Eugene desisted from his pursuit of the army of
Italy, and joi-ied Napoleon at Vienna. The Arch-
duke John united his forces at Raal) with those
of the Hungarian insurrection, under his brother,
tlie Palatine. The viceroy again marched against
him, and defeated him at fiaab on the 14th of
June. The Palatine remained with the Hunga-
rian insurrection in Komorn ; Archduke John
moved on to Presburg. In the north, the Arch-
duke Ferdinand, who had advanced as far as
Warsaw, had been driven back by the Poles
under Poniatowsky, and by a Russian force sent
by the Emperor Alexander to their aid, which, on
this success, invaded Galicia." — W. K. Kelly,
Hist, of the House of Austria (Continuation of
Coxe), ch. 4.
Also in: Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, 1789-
1815, ch. 56-57(0. 13).— Duke de Rovigo, Memoirs,
v. 2, pt. 2, ch. 3-12. — Baron Jomini, Life of Napo-
leon, ch. 14 {i\ 3). — Baron de Marbot, Memoirs,
i\ 1, eh. 43-48.
A. D. 1809 (April — July). — Risings against
the French in the North. — " A general revolt
against the French had nearly taken place in
Saxonj' and AVestphalia, where the enormous
burdens imposed on the people, and the insolence
of the French troops, had kindled a deadly spirit
of hostility against the oppressors. Everywhere
the Tugendbund were in activity; and the ad-
vance of the Austriaus towards Franconia and
Saxony, at the beginning of the war, blew up
the flame. The two first attempts at insurrec-
tion, headed respectively by Katt, a Prussian
oflicer (April 3), and Dornberg, a Westphalian
colonel (April 33), proved abortive ; but the en-
terprise of the celebrated Schill was of a more
formidable character. This enthusiastic patriot.
1552
GERMANY, 1809.
Wagram, and the
Peace of Schonbrunn.
GERMANY, 1809.
then a colonel in the Prussian army, had been
compromised in the revolt of Dornberg; and
finding himself discovered, he boldly raised the
standard (April 29) at the head of 600 soldiers.
His force speedily received accessions, but failing
in his attempts on Wittenberg and Magdeburg,
he moved towards the Baltic, in hope of succour
from the British cruisers, and at last threw him-
self into Stralsund. Here he was speedily in-
vested; the place was stormed (j\Iay 31), and the
gallant Schill slain in the assault, a few hours
only before the appearance of the British vessels
— the timely arrival of which might have secured
the place, and spread the rising over all Northern
Germany. The Duke of Brunswick-Oels, with
his ' black band ' of volunteers, had at the same
time invaded Saxony from Bohemia; and though
then obliged to retreat, he made a second incur-
sion in June, occupied Dresden and Leipsic, and
drove the King of AVestphalia into France. After
the battle of Wagram he made his way across
all Northern Germany, and was eventually con-
veyed, with his gallant followers, still 2,000
strong, to England."— Epitome of Alisons Hist,
of Europe, sect. .52.5-526.
A. D. 1809 (July— September).— Napoleon s
victory at Wagram.— The Peace of Schon-
brunn.— Immense surrender of Austrian terri-
tory.—" The operation of establishing the bridges
between the French camp and the left bank of
the Danube commenced on the night of the 30th
of June ; and during the night of the 4th of July
the whole French army, passing between the vil-
lages of Enzersdorf and ISIuhlleuten, debouched
on the Marchfeld, wheeling to their left. Napo-
leon was on horseback in the midst of them by
daylight ; all the Austrian fortifications erected
to defend the former bridge were turned, the vil-
lages occupied by their army taken, and the
Archduke Charles was menaced both in flank and
rear, the French line of battle appuyed on En-
zersdorf being at a right angle to his left wing.
Under these circumstances the Archduke, retiring
his left, attempted to outflank the French right,
while Napoleon bore down upon his centre at
Wagram. This village became the scene of a
sanguinary struggle, and one house only remained
standing when night closed in. The Archduke
sent courier after courier to hasten the advance
of his brother, between whom and himself was
Napoleon, whose line on the night of the 5th ex-
tended from Loibersdorf on the right to some two
miles beyond Wagram on the left. Napoleon
passed the night in massing his centre, still de-
termining to manceuvre by his left in order to
throw back the Archduke Charles on that side
before the Archduke John could come up on the
other. At six o'clock on the morning of the 6th
of July he commanded the attack in person.
Disregarding all risk, he appeared throughout
the day in the hottest of the fire, mounted on a
snow-white charger, Euphrates, a present from
the Shah of Persia. The Archduke Charles as
usual committed the error which Napoleon's ene-
mies had not even yet learned was invariably
fatal to them ; extending his line too greatly he
weakened his centre, at the same time opening
tremendous assaults on the French wings, which
suffered dreadfully. Napoleon ordered Lauriston
to advance upon the Austrian centre with a hun-
dred guns, supported by two whole divisions of
infantry in column. The artillery, when within
balf cannon-shot, opened a terrific fire: nothing
could withstand such a shock. The infantry,
led by Macdonald, charged; the Austrian line
was broken and the centre driven back in con-
fusion. The right, in a panic, retrograded ; the
French cavalry then bore down upon them and
decided the battle, the Archduke still fighting to
secure his retreat, which he at length eft'ected in
tolerably good order. By noon the whole Aus-
trian army was abandoning the contest. Their
defeat so demoralized them that the Archduke
John, who came up on Napoleon's right before
the battle was over, was glad to retire with the
rest, unnoticed by the enemy. That evening the
Marchfeld and Wagram were in possession ot the
French. The population of Vienna had watched
the battle from the roofs and ramparts of the
city and saw the retreat of their army with fear
and gloom. Between 300,000 and 400,000 men
were engaged, and the loss on both sides was
nearly equal. About 20,000 dead and 30,000
wounded strewed the ground ; the latter were
conveyed to the hospitals of Vienna. . . . Twenty
thousand Austrians were taken prisoners, but the
number would have been greater had the French
cavalry acted with their usual spirit. Bernadotte,
issuing a bulletin, almost assuming to himself
the sole merit of the. victory, was removed from
his command. Macdonald was created a marshal
of the empire on the morning after the battle.
. The battle of Wagram was won more by
good fortune than skill. Napoleon's strategy
was at fault, and had the Austrians fought as
stoutly as they did at Aspern, Napoleon would
have been signally defeated. Had the Archduke
John acted promptly and vigorously, he might
have united with his brother's left— which was
intact — and overwhelmed the French. . . . The
defeated army retired to Znaim, followed by the
French ; but further resistance was abandoned by
the Emperor of Austria. The Archduke Charles
solicited an armistice on the 9th; hostilities
ceased, and Napoleon returned to the palace of
Schiinbrunn while the plenipotentiaries settled
the terms of peace. . . . English Ministers dis-
played another instance of their customary spint
of procrastination. Exactly eight days after the
armistice of Znaim, which assured tliem^ that
Austria was no longer in a position to profit by
or co-operate with their proceedings, they sent
more than 80,000 fighting men, under the com-
mand of Lord Chatham, to besiege Antwerp [see
England: A. D. 1809 (July— December)]. . . .
Operations against Naples proved equally abor-
tive. ... In Spain alone English arms were suc-
cessful Sir Arthur Wellesley won the battle of
Talavera on the 28th of July [see Spain : A. D.
1809 (February— July)]. . . . A treaty of peace
between France and Austria was signed on the
14th of October at Vienna [sometimes called the
Treaty of Vienna, but more commonly the Peace
of Schonbrunn]. The Emperor of Austria ceded
Salzburg and a part of Upper Austria to the Con-
federation of the Rhine ; ixirt of Bohemia, Cra-
cow, and Western Galicia to the King of Saxony
as Grand Duke of Warsaw; part of Eastern
Galicia to the Emperor of Russia ; and Trieste,
Carniola, Friuli, Villach, and some part of Croatia
and Dalmatia to France: thus connecting the
kingdom of Italy with Napoleon's lUyrian pos-
sessions, making him master of the entire coast
of the Adriatic, and depriving Austria of its last
seaport. It was computed that the Emperor
Francis gave up territory to the amount of
1553
GERMANY, 1809-1810.
Revolt in the
Tyrol.
GERMANY, 1809-1810.
45,000 square miles, with a population of nearly
4,000,000. He also paid a large contribution in
money. " — R. H. Home, Life of Napoleon, ch. 33.
— "The cessions made directly to Napoleon were
the county of GOrtz, or Goricia, and tliat of Mon-
tefalcone, forming the Austrian Friuli ; the town
and government of Trieste, Carniola, the circle
of Villach in Carinthia, part of Croatia and Dal-
matia, and the lordship of Razuns in the Grison
territory. All these provinces, with the excep-
tion of Razuns, were incorporated by a decree of
Napoleon, with Dalmatia and its islands, into a
single state with the name of the Illyrian Prov-
inces. They were never united with France, but
always governed by Napoleon as an independent
state. A few districts before possessed by Napo-
leon were also incorporated with them: as Vene-
tian Istria :uid Dalmatia with the Bocca di Cat-
taro, Ragusa, and part of the Tyrol. . . . The
only other articles of the treaty of much impor-
tance are the recognition by Austria of any
changes made, or to be made, in Spain, Portugal,
and Italy ; the adherence of the Emperor to the
prohibitive system adopted by France and Rus-
sia, and his engaging to cease all correspondence
and relationship with Great Britain. By a de-
cree made at Ratisbon, April 34th, 1809, Napoleon
had suppressed the Teutonic Order in all the
States belonging to the Rhenish Confederation,
reannexed its possessions to the domains of the
prince in which they were situated, and incorpo-
rated Mergentheim, with the rights, domains,
and revenues attached to the Grand jMastership
of the Order, with the Kingdom of Wiirtemberg.
These dispositions were confirmed by the Treaty
of SchOnbrunn. The effect aimed at by the
Treaty of Schonbrunn was to surround Austria
with powerful states, and thus to paralyse all her
military efforts. . . . The Emperor of Russia
. . . was very ill satisfied with the small portion
of the spoils assigned to him, and the augmenta-
tion awarded to the duchy of Warsaw. Hence
the first occasion of coldness between him and
Napoleon, whom he suspected of a design to re-
establish the Kingdom of Poland. " — T. H. Dyer,
Hist, of Modern Europe, bk. 7, eh. 14 («. 4).
Also in : Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, 1789-
1815, ch. 59-60 (o. 13).— Gen. Count M. Dumas,
Memoirs, ch. 13 (». 2). — E. Baines, Hist, of tlis
Wars of the French Bet., bk. 4, ch. 9 {i\ 3).— J. C.
Ropes, The First Napoleon, lect. 4.
A. D. 1809-1810. — Humboldt's reform of Pub-
lic Instruction in Prussia. See Education,
MoDEUN : European Countries. — Prussia :
A. D. 1809.
A. D. 1809-1810 (April— February).— The re-
volt in the Tyrol. — Heroic struggle of Andrew
Hofer and his countrymen. — "The Tyrol, for
centuries a possession of Austria, was ceded to
Bavaria by the Peace of Presburg in 1805. The
Bavarians made many innovations, in the French
style, some good and some bad ; but the moun-
taineers, clinging to their ancient ways, resisted
them all alike. They hated the Bavarians as
foreign masters forced upon them ; and especially
detested the military conscription, to which
Austria had never subjected them. The priests
had an almost unlimited influence over these
faithful Catholics, and the Bavarians, who treated
them rudely, were regarded as innovators and
allies of revolutionary France. Thus the coun-
try submitted restlessly to the yoke of the Rhine
League until the spring of 1809. A secret un-
derstanding was maintained with Austria and the
Archduke John, and the people never abandoned
the hope of returning to their Austrian allegiance.
When the great war of 1809 began, the Emperor
Francis summoned all his people to arms. The
Tyrolese answered the call. . . . They are a peo-
ple trained in early life to the use of arms, and to
activity, courage, and ready devices in hunting,
and in traveling on their mountain paths. Aus-
tria could be sure of the faithfulness of the Tyrol,
and made haste to occupy the country. When
the first troops were seen entering the passes, the
people arose and drove away the Bavarian gar-
risons. The alarm was soon sounded through
the deepest ravines of the land. Never was there
a more united people, and each troop or company
chose its own officers, in the ancient German
style, from among their strongest and best men.
Their commanders were hunters, shepherds,
priests: the former gamekeeper, Speckbacher;
the innkeeper, Martin Teimer; the fiery Capu-
chin monk, Haspiuger, whose sole weapon in the
field was a huge ebony crucifix, and many more
of like peaceful occupations. At the head of the
whole army was a man who, like Saul, towered
by a head above all others, while his handsome
black beard fell to his girdle — Andrew Hofer,
formerly an innkeeper at Passeyr — a man of
humble piety and simple faithfulness, who fairly
represented the people he led. He regarded the
war as dutiful service to his religion, his emperor,
and his country. The whole land soon swarmed
with little bands of men, making their way to
luuspriick (April, 1809), whence the Bavarian
garrison fled. Meanwhile a small French corps
came from Italy to relieve them. Though fired
upon by the peasants from every ravine and hill,
they passed the Brenner, and reached the Isel-
berg, near Innspriick. But here they were sur-
rounded on every side, and forced to surrender.
The first Austrian soldiers, under General Chas-
teler, then reached the capital, and their welcome
was a popular festival. The liberators, as the
Tyrolese soldiers regarded themselves, committed
no cruelties, but carried on their enterprise in the
spirit of a national jubilee. The tidings of the
disasters at Regensburg [Ratisbon] now came
upon them like a thunderbolt. The withdrawal
of the Austrian army then left the Tyrol without
protection. Napoleon treated the war as a mu-
tiny, and set a price upon Chasteler's head.
Neither Chasteler nor any of the Austrian ofli-
cers with him understood the warfare of the
peasantry. The Tyrolese were left almost wholly
to themselves, but they resolved to defend their
mountains. On May 11 the Bavarians under
Wrede again set out from Salzburg, captured
the pass of the Strub after a bloody fight, and
then climbed into the valley of the Inn. They
practiced frightful cruelties in their way. A
fierce struggle took place at the little village of
Schwatz; the Bavarians burned the place, and
marched to Innspriick. Chasteler withdrew,
and the Bavarians and French, under Wrede and
Lefevre, entered the capital. The country again
appeared to be subdued. But cruelty had em-
bittered the people. Wrede was recalled, with
his corps, by Napoleon; and now Hofer, with
his South Tyrolese, recrossed the Brenner Pass.
Again the general alarm was given, the leaders
called to arms, and again every pass, every wall
of rock, every narrow road was seized. The
struggle took place at the Iselberg. The Bava-
1554
GERMANY. 1809-1810.
The Rising against
)ole(
Napoleon.
GERMANY, 1812-1813.
rians 7 000 in number, were defeated with heavy
loss ' The Tyrol now remained for several months
undisturbed, during the campaign around Vienna.
After the battle of Aspern, an impena procla-
mation formally assured the Tyrolese that they
should never be severed from the Austrian hm-
nire ■ and that no peace should be signed unless
their indissoluble union with the monarchy were
recognized. The Tyrolese quietly trusted the
emperor's promise, until the armistice of Znaira.
But in this the Tyrol was not mentioned, and the
French and their allies prepared to chastise the
loval and abandoned country. — C. i. ^e'W's
Hist of Germany, ch. 28.-" In the month of
July an army of 40,000 French and Bavarians
attacked the Tyrol from the German side; while
from Italy, General Rusca, with 18,000 men en_
tered from Clagenfurth, on the southern side of
the Tyrolese Alps. Undismayed by his double
and formidable invasion, they assailed the in-
vadevs as they penetrated into their fastnesses
defeated and destroyed them The fate of a
division of 10,000 men, belonging to the French
and Bavarian army, which entered the Upper
Innthal, or Valley of the Inn, will explam m
part th2 means by which these victories were ob-
tained The invading troops advanced in a long
column up a road bordered on the one side by
the river Inn, there a deep and rapid torrent
where cliffs of immense height overhang both
road and river. The vanguard was permitted
to advance unopposed as far as Prutz, the object
of their expedition. The rest of the army were
therefore induced to trust themselves still deeper
in this tremendous pass, wliere the precipices,
becoming more and more narrow as they ad-
vanced, seemed about to close above their heads.
No sound but of the screaming of the eagles dis-
turbed from their eyries, and the roar of the
river reached the ears of the soldier, and on the
precipices, partly enveloped in a hazy mist, no
human forms showed themselves. At length the
voice of a man was heard calling across the
ravine 'Shall we begin?'— 'No,' was returned
in an authoritative tone of voice, by one who
like the first speaker, seemed the inhabitant ot
some upper region. The Bavarian detachment
halted, and sent to the general for orders; when
presently was heard the terrible signal, In the
name of the Holy Trinity, cut all loose ! Huge
rocks and trunks of trees, long prepared and
laid i'n heaps for the purpose, began now to de-
scend rapidly in every direction, while the deadly
fire of the Tyrolese, who never throw away a
shot opened from every bush, crag, or corner of
rock which would aflEord the shooter cover. As
this dreadful attack was made on the whole line
at once two-thirds of the enemy were instantly
destroyed; while the Tyrolese, rushing from
their shelter, with swords, spears, axes, scythes
clubs and all other rustic instruments which
could be converted into weapons, beat down and
routed the shattered remainder. As the van-
guard which liad reached Prutz, was obliged to
surrender, very few of the 10,000 invaders are
computed to have extricated themselves from the
fatal pass. But not all the courage of the Tyro-
lese not all the strength of their country, could
possibly enable them to defend themselves, when
the peace with Austria had permitted Buonaparte
to engage his whole immense means for the ac-
quisition of these mountains. Austria too —
Austria herself, in whose cause they had incurred
all the dangers of war, instead of securing their
indemnity by some stipulations in the treaty, sent
them a cold exhortation to lay down their arms.
Resistance, therefore, was abandoned as fruitless;
Hofer chief commander of the Tyrolese, resigned
his command, and the Bavarians regained the
possession of a country which they could never
have won back by their own efforts. Holer
and about thirty chiefs of these valiant defenders
of their country, were put to deatli [February
18101 in poor revenge for the loss their bravery
had occasioned. But their fame, as their immor-
tal spirit, was beyond the power of the judge
alike and executioner; and the place where their
blood was shed, becomes sacred to the thoughts
of freedom, as the precincts of a temple to those
of religion. "-Sir W. Scott, Life of Napoleon, v.
^' Also in; Sir A. Alison, Hut of Europe 1789-
1815, cJi. 58 (V. n).-Hut. o/W'^'- (^^'^«">f^,'
July, 1817). -C. H. Hall, Life of Ai^re'J^ Hofeu
A D i8io. — Annexation of the Hanse
Towns and territory on the North Sea to
France. See France ; A. D. 1810 (February-
December). , . u a ,^v.
A D 1810-1812.— Marriage of the Arcn-
duchess Marie Louise of Austria to Napoleon
-Alliance of German powers with Napoleon
against Russia. See France; A. D-. 1810-181^.
A D 1812.— The Russian campaign of Na-
poleon and its disastrous ending. See Russia;
A. D. 1812 (JiiNE— September), (September),
and (October— December). .
AD. i8i2-i8i3.-The Teutomc up"smg
against Napoleon.-Beginning of the War of
Liberation.-Alliance of Prussia and Russia
—"During Napoleon's march on Moscow ana
his fatal return, Macdonald remained on the
Lower Dwina, before Riga, with an observation
corps of Prussians and Poles, nor had he ever
received an order to retreat from Napoleon.
Learning of the misfortunes of the grand army,
he went from the Dwina towards the Niemen.
As he passed through Couriand, General York,
commander of the Prussian troops allowed him
to lead the way with the Poles, and then signed
an agreement of neutrality with the Russians
(December 30, 1812). The Prussian troops, from
a military spirit of honor, had fought the Rus-
sians bravely ; they retained some scruples rela-
tive to the worthy marshal under whom they
served and forsook without betraying him, that
is they left him time to escape. This was a
most important event and the beginning of the
inevitable defection of Germany. The attitude
of Czar Alexander decided General \ork; the
former was completely dazzled by his triumphs,
and aspired to nothing less than to destroy Na-
poleon and liberate Europe, even France ! With
mingled enthusiasm and calculation, he promised
all things to all men ; on returning to Wilna, he
D-ranted an amnesty for all acts committed in Po-
Tand against Russian authority. On the one
hand he circulated a rumor that he was about
to make himself King of Poland, and, on the
other hand, he announced to the Prussians that
he was ready to restore the Polish provinces
taken from them by Napoleon. He authorized
ex-Minister Stein to take possession, as we may
say of Old Prussia, just evacuated by the
French and to promise the speedy enfranchise-
ment of Germany, protesting, at the same time,
that he would not dispute ' the legitimate great-
1555
GERMANY, 1813-1813.
The War
of Liberation.
GERMANY, 1813-1813.
ness ' of France. The French army, on hearing
of York's defection, left KOnigsberg with ten or
twelve thousand sick men and eight or ten
thousand armed troops, withdrawing to the Vis-
tula and thence to Warta and Posen. General
Rapp had succeeded in gathering at Dantzic,
the great French depot of stores and reserves,
25,000 men, few of whom had gone througli the
Russian campaign, and a division of almost
equal numbers occupied Berlin. The French
had in all barely 80,000 men, from Dantzic to
the Rhine, not inchiding their Austrian and
Saxon allies, who had fallen back on Warsaw
and seemed disposed to fight no more. Jlurat,
to whom Napoleon confided the remains of the
grand army, followed the Emperor's example
and set out to defend his Neapolitan kingdom,
leaving the chief command to Prince Eugene.
Great agitation prevailed around the feeble
French forces still occupying Germany. The
Russians themselves, worn out, did not press the
French very hotly ; but York and Stein, masters
of KOnigsberg, organized and armed Old Prussia
without awaiting authorization from the king,
who was not considered as a free agent, being
under foreign rule. Pamphlets, proclamations,
and popular songs were circulated everywhere,
provoking the people to rebellion. The idea of
German union ran like wildfire from the Niemen
to the Rhine ; federal union, not unity in a
single body or state, which was not thought of
then." — H. Martin, Popular Hist, of France from
1780, V. 3, ch. 16. — "The king of Prussia had
suddenly abandoned Berlin [January, 1813],
which was still in the hands of the French, for
Breslau, whence he declared war against France.
A conference also took place between him and
the emperor Alexander at Calisch [Kalisch], and,
on the 28th of Februar}', 1813, an offensive and
defensive alliance was concluded between them.
The hour for vengeance had at length arrived.
The whole Prussian nation, eager to throw off
the hated yoke of the foreigner, to obliterate
their disgrace in 1806, to regain their ancient
name, cheerfully hastened to place their lives
and property at the service of the impoverished
government. The whole of the able-bodied pop-
ulation was put under arras. The standing
army was increased : to each regiment were ap-
pended troops of volunteers, Jaegers, composed
of young men belonging to the higher classes,
who furnished their own equipments : a numer-
ous Landwehr, a sort of militia, was, as in Aus-
tria, raised besides the standing army, and
measures were even taken to call out, in case of
necessity, the heads of families and elderly men
remaining at home, under the name of the Land-
sturm. The enthusiastic people, besides fur-
nishing the customary supplies and paying the
taxes, contributed to the full extent of their
means towards defraying the immense expense
of this general arming. Every heart throbbed
high with pride and hope. . . . More loudly
than even in 1809 in Austria was the German
cause now discussed, the great name of the Ger-
man empire now invoked in Prussia, for in that
name alone could all the races of Germany be
united against their hereditary foe. The cele-
brated proclamation, promising external and in-
ternal liberty to Germany, was, with this view,
published at Calisch by Prussia and Russia. Nor
was the appeal vain. It found an echo in every
German heart, and such plain demonstrations of
the state of the popular feeling on this side the
Rhine were made, that Davoust sent serious
warning to Napoleon, who contemptuously re-
plied, 'Pahl Germans never can become Span-
iards ! ' With his customary rapidity he levied
in France a fresh army 300,000 strong, with
which he so completely awed the Rhenish con-
federation as to compel it once more to take the
field with thousands of Germans against their
brother Germans. The troops, however, re-
luctantly obeyed, and even the traitors were but
lukewarm, for they doubted of success. ]Meck-
lenburg alone sided with Prussia. Austria re-
mained neutral. A Russian corps under General
Tettenborn had preceded the rest of the troops
and reached the coasts of the Baltic. As early
as the 24th of March, 1813, it appeared in Ham-
burg and expelled the French authorities from
the city. The heavily oppressed people of Ham-
burg, whose commerce had been totally annihi-
lated by the continental system, gave way to the
utmost demonstrations of delight, received their
deliverers with open arms, revived their ancient
rights, and immediately raised a Hanseatic corps
destined to take the field against Napoleon.
DOrnberg, the ancient foe to France, with an-
other flj'ing squadron took the French division
under Morand prisoner, and the Prussian, Major
Hellwig (the same who, in 1806, liberated the
garrison of Erfurt), dispersed, with merely 120
hussars, a Bavarian regiment 1,300 strong and
captured five pieces of artillery. In January,
the peasantry of the upper country had already
revolted against the conscription, and, in Febru-
ary, patriotic proclamations had been dissemi-
nated throughout Westphalia under the signature
of the Baron von Stein. In this month, also.
Captain Maas and two other patriots, who had
attempted to raise a rebellion, were executed.
As the army advanced. Stein was nominated
chief of the provisional government of the still
unconquered provinces of Western Germany.
The first Russian army, 17,000 strong, under
Wittgenstein, pushed forward to Magdeburg,
and, at MOkern, repulsed 40,000 French who
were advancing upon Berlin. The PrussianSj
under their veteran general, BlUcher, entered
Saxony and garrisoned Dresden, on the 27th of
March, 1813, after an arch of the fine bridge
across the Elbe [had] been uselessly blown up by
the French. Bliicher, whose gallantry in the
former wars had gained for him the general es-
teem and whose kind and generous disposition
had won the affection of the soldiery, was nomi-
nated generalissimo of the Prussian forces, but
subordinate in command to Wittgenstein, who
replaced Kutusow as generalissimo of the united
forces of Russia and Prussia. The Emperor of
Russia and the King of Prussia accompanied the
army and were received with loud acclamations
by the people of Dresden and Leipzig." — W.
Menzel, Hist, of Germany, ch. 260 {v. 3). — Berna-
dotte, the adopted Crown Prince and expectant
King of Sweden, had been finally thrown into
the arms of the new Coalition against Napoleon,
by the refusal of the latter to take Norway from
Denmark and give it to Sweden. ' ' The disastrous
retreat of the French from Moscow . . . led to the
signature of the Treaty of Stockholm on the 2d
of March, 1813, by which England acceded to
the union of Norway to Sweden, and a Swedish
force was sent to Pomerania under General San-
dels. On the 18th of May, 1813, Bernadotte
1556
GERMANY, 1812-1813.
Saxony humbled.
GERMANY, 1813.
landed at Stralsund."-Lady Bloomfield, Mog
Sketch ofSernadotte (Memoir of Lord Bloomfield,
"■ Aifso^iN : J. R. Secley, Life and Tijnss of Stein
pt. 7 (v. 3).— A. Thiers, Hist, of the CoimUate and
the Empire, hk. 47 (r. 4). .
A D. 1813 (April-May).-Battle of Lutzen.
—Humiliation of the King of Saxony.— On
the 14th April, Napoleon left Pans to assume the
command of the army. Previous to his depar-
ture with a view, perhaps, of paymg a compli-
ment to the Emperor of Austria, the Empress
Marie Louise was appointed regent in his absence ;
but Prince Schwarzenberg, who had arrived on a
special mission from Vienna was treated only as
the commander of an au.xiliary corps to which
orders would immediately be transmitted. On
the 16th he reached Mayence, where, for the
last time, vassal princes assembled courtier-like
around him; and on the 20th he^as. already at
Erfurt in the midst of his newly-raised army.
The roads were everywhere cro^^;ded with troops
and artillery, closing in towards the b?n.ks of the
Saale. From Italy, Marshal Bertrand joined with
40 000 men, old trained soldiers; the Viceroy
brought an equal number from the vicinity of
Magdeburg; and Marshal Macdonald having on
the 29th tiken Merseburg by assault, the who e
armv which Bade, the ablest and most accurate
of the authors who have written on this campaign,
estimates at 140,000 men, was assembled for ac-
«on With this mighty force Napoleon deter-
mined to seek out the enemy, and bring them
ouickly to battle. The Russian and Prussian
armies were no sooner united, after the alliance
concluded between the sovereigns, than they
crossed the Elbe, occupied Dresden, which the
Kine of Saxony had abandoned, and advanced to
the banks of the Saale. General Bllicher com-
manded the Prussians, and Count Wittgenstein
the Russian corps; and, death having closed the
career of old Marshal KutusofE, . . the com-
mand of both armies devolved upon the last men-
tioned officer. Informed of the rapid advance of
the French the allied monarchs joined their
forces which were drawn together in the plains
between the Saale and the Elbe; their numerous
cavalrv giving them perfect command of this
wide and open country. Napoleon, always anx-
ious for battle, determined to press on towards
Leipzig behind which he expected to hnd the
Allied army, who, as it proved were much
nearer than he anticipated. At the passage of
the Rippach, a small stream that borders the wide
plain of Latzen, he already encountered a body
of Russian cavalry and artillery under Count
Winzingerode; and as the French were weak in
horse, they had to bring the whole of Marshal
Ney's corps into action before they could oblige
the Russians to retire. Marshal Bessieres. the
commander of the Imperial Guard, was killed.
On the evening of the 1st of Jlay, Napoleon
established his quarters in the small town of Lut-
zen The Allies, conscious of the vast numerical
suneriority of the French, did not intend to risk
a general action on the left bank of the Elbe ; but
the length of the hostile column of march, which
extended from beyond Naumberg almost to the
eates of Leipzig, induced Scharnhorst to propose
In advance from the direction of Borna and
Pegau against the right flank of the enemy, and
a sudden attack on the centre of their line in
the plain of Lutzen. It was expected that a de-
cisive blow might be struck against tbib centre
and the hostile army broken before the distant
wings could close up and take an effective part
in the battle. The open nature of the country
well adapted to the action of cava ry, which
formed the principal strength "J, *e^ ^J^^vf P°^^
in favour of the plan. . . . The bo d attempt
was immediately resolved upon, and the onset
fixed for the following morning. The annals ot
war can hardly offer a plan of battle more skil-
fully conceived than the one of which we have
here spoken ; but unfortunately the execution fell
far short of the admirable conception. Napoleon,
with his Guards and the corps of Launston was
already at the gates of Leipzig, preparing for an
attack on the city, when about one o clock [May
21 the roar of artillery burst suddenly on the ear
and gathering thicker and thicker as it rolled
alonl, proclaimed that a general action was en-
gaged in the plain of Liitzen,- proclaimed that
the army was taken completely at fault and
placed in the most imminent peril. . . . 1 he Al-
lies who, by means of their numerous cavabry,
could easily mask their movement, had advanced
unobserved into the plain of Lutzen a,nd the
action was begun by a brigade of Blilcher s corps
attacking the French in the viUage of Great-
GarscheS (Gross-G5rschen). "Reinforcements
poured in from both sides, and the narrow
and intersected ground between the villages be-
came the scene of a most murderous and closely-
contested combat of infantry. ... But no at-
tempt was made to employ the numerous and
splendid cavalry, that stood idly exposed, on open
plain, to the shot of the French artillery . .
When night put an end to the combat, Great-
G&rschen was the sole trophy of the murderous
fight that remained in the hands of the Allies
On the side of the Allies, 3, 000 Russians and
8 boo Prussians had been killed or wounded:
among the slain was Prince Leopold of Hessen-
Homburg; among the wounded was the admir-
able Scharnhorst, who died a few weeks after-
wards The loss sustained by the French is
not exactly known; but . . . Jomini tells us that
the 3d corps, to which he was attached as chief
of the staff, had alone 500 officers and 12,000 men
• hors de combat. ' Both parties laid claim to the
victory • the French, because the Allies retired on
the day after the action; the Allies, because they
remained masters of part of the captured battle^
field had taken two pieces of artillery, and HOW
nrisoners. ... The Allies alleged, or pretended
perhaps, that it was their intention to renew the
action on the following morning : in the Prussian
army every man, from the king to the humblest
soldier was anxious indeed to continue the tray ;
and the wrath of BUtcher, who deemed victory
certain was altogether boundless when he tound
the retreat determined upon. But . . opinion
has by de"Tees, justified Count AVittgenstem s
resolution to recross the Elbe and fall back on
the reinforcements advancing to join the armjr.
On the 8th of May, Napoleon held his tri-
umphal entrance into Dresden. ... On the ad-
vance of the Allies, the Saxon monarch had re-
tired to Ratisbon, and from thence to Prague,
intending, as he informed Napoleon, to join his
efforts to the mediation of Austria. Orders had,
at the same time, been given to General Ihiei-
man commanding the Saxon troops at Torgau, to
maintain the most perfect neutrality, and to ad-
mit neither of the contending parties \nthln the
1557
GERMANY, 1813,
Napoleon's
infatuation.
GERMANY, 1813.
walls of the fortress. Exasperated by this show
of independence, Napoleon caused the following
demands to be submitted to the King, allowing
him only six hours to determine on their accept-
ance or refusal : — 1. ' General Thielnian and the
Saxon troops instantly evacuate Torgau, and
form the 7th corps under General Iteynier ; and
all the resources of the country to be at the dis-
posal of the Emperor, in conformity with the
principles of the Confederation of the Rhine. ' 3.
' The Saxon Cavalry ' — some regiments had ac-
companied the King — 'return immediately to
Dresden.' 3. ' The King declares, in a letter to
the Emperor, that he is still a member of the Con-
federation of the Rhine, and read}' to fulfil all the
obligations which it imposes upon him. ' ' If
these conditions are not immediately complied
vpith,' says Napoleon in the instructions to his
messenger, 'you will cause his Majesty to be in-
formed that he is guilty of felony, has forfeited
the Imperial protection, and has ceased to reign. '
. . . Frederick Augustus, finding himself threat-
ened with the loss of his crown by an overbearing
conqueror already in possession of his capital,
. . . yielded in an evil hour to those imperious
demands, and returned to Dresden. . . . Fortune
appeared again to smile upon her spoiled and
favoured child; and he resolved, on his part, to
leave no expedient untried to make the most of
her returning aid. The mediation of Austria,
which from the first had been galling to his pride,
became more hateful every day, as it gradually
assumed the appearance of an armed interference,
ready to enforce its demands by military means.
. . . Tidings having arrived that the allied army,
instead of continuing their retreat, had halted and
taken post at Bautzen, he immediately resolved
to strike a decisive blow in the field, as the
best means of thwarting the pacific efforts of his
father-in-law."— Lt. -Col. J. Mitchell, The Fall of
Napoleon, bk. 3, ch. 1 (». 3).
Also in: Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, 1789-
1815, ch. 75 (i\ 13). — Duchess d' Abrantes, Mem-
oirs of Napoleon, i\ 3, ch. 44,
A. D. 1813 (May— August).— Battle of Baut-
zen. — Armistice of Pleswitz. — Accession of
Austria and Great Britain to the Coalition
against Napoleon. — " While the Emperor paused
at Dresden, Ney made various demonstrations in
the direction of Berlin, with the view of inducing
the Allies to quit Bautzen ; but it soon became
manifest that they had resolved to sacrifice the
Prussian capital, if it were necessary, rather than
forego their position. . . . Having replaced by
■wood-work some arches of the magnificent bridge
over the Elbe at Dresden, which the Allies had
blown up on their retreat, Napoleon now moved
towards Bautzen, and came in sight of the posi-
tion on the morning of the 31st of May, Its
strength was obviously great. In their front
was the river Spree: wooded hills supported
tlieir right, and eminences well fortified their
left. The action began with an attempt to turn
tlieir right, but Barclay de Tolly anticipated this
movement, and repelled it with such vigour that
a whole column of 7,000 dispersed and fled into
the hills of Bohemia for safety. The Emperor
then determined to pass the Spree in front of the
■enemy, and they permitted him to do so, rather
than come down from their position. He took
up his quarters in the town of Bautzen, and his
■whole army bivouacked in presence of the Allies,
The battle was resumed at daybreak on the 33d;
when Ney on the right, and Oudinot on the left,
attempted simultaneously to turn the flanks of
the position ; while Soult and Napoleon himself
directed charge after charge on the centre. Dur-
ing four hours the struggle ■was maintained with
unflinching obstinacy ; the wooded heights, where
Blucher commanded, had been taken and retaken
several times — the bloodshed on either side had
been terrible — ere . . . the Allies perceived the
necessity either of retiring, or of continuing the
fight against superior numbers on disadvanta-
geous ground. "They withdrew accordingly ; but
still with all the deliberate coolness of a parade,
halting at every favourable spot and renewing
their cannonade. ' What,' exclaimed Napoleon,
'no results! not a gun! not a prisoner! — these
people will not leave me so much as a nail.'
During the whole day he urged the pursuit with
impetuous rage, reproacliing even his chosen
generals as 'creeping scoundrels,' and exposing
his own person in the very hottest of the fire."
His closest friend, Duroc, Grand Master of the
Palace, was mortally wounded by his side, be-
fore he gave up the pursuit. "The Allies,
being strongly posted during most of the day,
had suffered less than the French ; the latter had
lost 15,000, the former 10,000 men. They con-
tinued their retreat into Upper Silesia; and Buo-
naparte advanced to Breslau, and released the
garrison of Glogau. Meanwhile the Austrian,
having watched these indecisive though bloody
fields, once more renewed his offers of mediation.
The sovereigns of Russia and Prussia expressed
great willingness to accept it; and Napoleon
also appears to have been sincerely desirous for
the moment of bringing his disputes to a peace-
ful termination. He agreed to an armistice [of
six weeks], and in arranging Its conditions agreed
to fall back out of Silesia; thus enabling the
allied princes to reopen communications with
Berlin. The lines of country to be occupied by
the armies, respectively, during the truce, were
at length settled, and it was signed on the 1st of
June [at Poischwitz, though the negotiations
were mostly carried on at Pleswitz, whence the
Armistice is usualh' named]. The French Em-
peror then returned to Dresden, and a general
congress of diplomatists prepared to meet at
Prague. England alone refused to send any rep-
resentative to Prague, alleging that Buonaparte
had as yet signified no disposition to recede from
his pretensions on Spain, and that he had con-
sented to the armistice with the sole view of
gaining time for political intrigue and further
military preparation. It may be doubted whether
any of the allied powers who took part in the
Congress did so with much hope that the disputes
with Napoleon could find a peaceful end. . , ,
But it was of the utmost importance to gain time
for the advance of Bernadotte; for the arrival of
new reinforcements from Russia ; for the comple-
tion of the Prussian organization ; and, above all,
for determining the policy of Vienna, Metter-
nich, the Austrian minister, repaired in person to
Dresden, and while inferior diplomatists wasted
time in endless discussions at Prague, one inter-
view between him and Napoleon brought the
whole question to a definite issue. The Emperor
. . . assumed at once that Austria had no wish
but to drive a good bargain for herself, and asked
broadly, ' What is your price ? Will lUyria sat-
isfy you ? I only wish you to be neutral — I can
deal with these Russians and Prussians single-
1558
GERMANY, 1813.
The new Coalition.
GERMANY, 1813.
handed. ' Metternlch stated plainly that the time
in which Austria could be neutral was past ; that
the situation of Europe at large must be consid-
ered ; . . . that events had proved the impossi-
bility of a steadfast peace unless the sovereigns
of the Continent were restored to the ranii of in-
dependence; in a word, tliat the Rlienish Con-
federacy must be broken up ; tliat France must
be contented with the boundary of the Rhine,
and pretend no longer to maintain her usurped
and unnatural influence in Germany. Napoleon
replied by a gross personal insult: 'Come, Met-
ternlch, ' said he, ' tell me honestly how much
the English have given you to talie their part
against me. ' The Austrian court at length sent
a formal document, containing its ultimatum, the
tenor of which Metternlch had sufficiently indi-
cated in this conversation. Talleyrand and Fou-
che, who had now arrived from Paris, urged the
Emperor to accede to the proffered terms. They
represented to him the madness of rousing all
Europe to conspire for his destruction, and in-
sinuated that the progress of discontent was
rapid in France itself. Their arguments were
backed by intelligence of the most disastrous
character from Spain [see Spain: A. D. 1812-
1814]. . . . Napoleon was urged by his military
as well as political advisers, to appreciate duly
the crisis which his affairs had reached. ... He
proceeded to insult both ministers and generals
. . . and ended by announcing that he did not
wish for any plans of theirs, but their service in
the execution of his. Thus blinded by arro-
gance and self-confidence, and incapable of weigh-
ing any other considerations against what he
considered as the essence of his personal glory,
Napoleon refused to abate one iota of his preten-
sions — until it was too late. Then, indeed, . . .
he did show some symptoms of concession. A
courier arrived at Prague with a note, in which
he signified his willingness to accede to a consid-
erable number of the Austrian stipulations. But
this was on the 11th of August. The day pre-
ceding was that on which, by the agreement, the
armistice was to end. On that day Austria had
to sign ah alliance, offensive and defensive, with
Russia and Prussia. On the night between the
10th and 11th, rockets answering rockets, from
height to heiglit along the frontiers of Bohemia
and Silesia, had announced to all the armies of
the Allies this accession of strength, and the im-
mediate recommencement of hostilities." — J. G.
Lockhart, Life of Napoleon Buonaparte, ch. 33-
33.^" On the 14th of June Great Britain had be-
come a party to the treaty concluded between
Russia and Prussia. She had promised assis-
tance in this great struggle; but no aid could
have been more effectual than that which she
was rendering in the Peninsula." — C. Knight,
Popular Hint, of Eng. , ch. 33 («. 7).
Also in : G. R. Gleig, The Leipsic Campaign,
eh. 7-16. — A. Thiers, Hist, of tlie Consulate and
the Empire, bk. 48-49 (v. 4). — Prince Metternich,
Memoirs, 1773-1815, bk. 1, ch. 8 (v. 1).— J. R.
Seeley, Life and Times of Stein, pt. 7, ch. ir-5 (v.
3). — J. Philippart, Northern Campaigns, 1813-
1813. V. 3.
A. D. 1813 (August).— Great battle and vic-
tory of Napoleon at Dresden. — French defeats
at Kulm, Gross-Beeren and the Katzbach. —
"Dresden, during the armistice, had been con-
verted by Napoleon into such a place of strength
that it might be called one citadel. All the trees
in Uie neighbourhood, as well as those which had
formed the ornament of the public gardens and
walks of that beautiful capital, were cut down
and converted into abattis and palisades; re-
doubts, field-works, and fosses had been con-
structed. The chain of fortresses garrisoned by
French troops secured to Napoleon the rich val-
ley of the Elbe. Hamburg, Dantzic, and many
strong places on the Oder and Vistula were in his
possession. . . . His army assembled at the seat
of war amounted to nearly 300,000 men, including
the Bavarian reserve of 35,000 under General
Wrede, and he had greatly increased his cavalry.
This powerful force was divided into eleven
army corps, commanded by Vandamme, Victor,
Bertrand, Ney, Lauriston, Marmont, Reynier,
Poniatowski, Macdonald, Oudiuot, and St. Cyr.
Murat, who, roused by the news of the victories
of Lutzen and Bautzen, had left his capital, was
made commander-in-chief of all the cavalry. . . .
Davoust held Hamburg with 20,000 men. Au-
gereau with 24, 000 occupietl Bavaria. Tlie armies
of the allies were computed at nearly 400,000
men, including the divisions destined to invade
Italy. Those ready for action at the seat of war
in Germany were divided into three great masses,
— the army of Bohemia, consisting mainly of
Austrians commanded by Prince Schwartzen-
burg ; the army of Silesia, commanded by Blu-
cher ; and the troops under the command of Ber-
nadotte, stationed near Berlin. These immense
hosts were strong la cavalry and artillery, and in
discipline and experience far exceeded the French
soldiers, who were nearly all young conscripts.
Two Frenchmen of eminence were leaders in the
ranks of the enemies of France, — Bernadotte
and Moreau; Jomini, late chief of the engineer
department in Napoleon's army, was a Swiss.
These three men, well instructed by the great
master of the art of war, directed the coimsels of
the allied Sovereigns and taught them how to
conquer. Bernadotte pointed out that Napoleon
lay in Dresden with his guard of five-and-twenty
thousand men, while his marshals were stationed
in various strong positions on the frontiers of
Saxony. The moment a French corps d'armee
was attacked Napoleon would spring from his
central point upon the flank of the assailants,
and as such a blow would be irresistible he would
thus beat the allied armies in detail. To obviate
this danger Bernadotte recommended that the
first general who attacked a French division and
brought Napoleon into the field should retreat,
luring the Emperor onward in pursuit, when the
other bodies of allied troops, simultaneously
closing upon his rear, should surround him and
cut him off from his base. This plan was fol-
lowed: Blucher advanced from Silesia, menacing
the armies of Macdonald and Ney, and Napoleon,
with the activity expected, issued from Dresden
on the 15th of August, rapidly reached the point
of danger, and assumed the offensive. But he
was unable to bring the Prussian general to a de-
cisive action, for Blucher, continuing to retreat
before him, the pursuit was only arrested by an
estafette reporting on the 23rd that the main
body of the allies threatened Dresden. On the
25th, at 4 in the afternoon, 200,000 allied troops
led by Schwartzenburg appeared before that city.
St. Cyr, who had been left to observe the passes
of the Bohemian mountains with 20,000 men, re-
treated before the irresistible torrent and threw
himself into the Saxon capital, which he prepared
1559
GERMANY, 1813.
Prench Victory
and Defeats.
GERMANY, 1813.
to defend with his own forces and the garrison
left by the Emperor. It was a service of the last
importance. With Dresden Napoleon would lose
liis recruiting depot and supplies of every kind.
. . . The Austrian commander-in-chief deferred
the attack till the following day, replying to the
expostulations of Jomini that Napoleon was en-
gaged in the Silesian passes. Early on the morn-
ing of the 36th the allies advanced to the assault
in six columns, under cover of a tremendous ar-
tillery tire. They carried one great redoubt, then
another, and closed with the defenders of the
city at every point, shells and balls falling thick
on the houses, many of which were on fire. St.
Cyr conducted the defence with heroism ; but be-
fore midday a surrender was talked of. . . .
Suddenly, from the opposite bank of the Elbe
columns of soldiers were seen hastening towards
the city. They pressed across the bridges, swept
through the streets, and with loud shouts de-
manded to be led into battle, although they had
made forced marches from the frontiers of Silesia.
Napoleon, with the Old Guard and cuirassiers,
was in the midst of them. His enemies had cal-
culated on only half his energy and rapidity, and
had forgotten that he could return as quickly as
he left. The Prussians had penetrated the Grosse
Garten on the French left, and so close was the
Russian fire that Witgenstein's guns enfiladed the
road by which Napoleon had to pass ; consequent-
ly, to reach the city in safety, he was compelled to
dismount at the most exposed part, and, accord-
ing to Baron Odeleben (one of his aides-de-camp),
creep along on his hands and knees (ventre &,
terre). Napoleon halted at the palace to reassure
the King of Saxony, and then joined his troops
who were already at the gates. Sallies were
made by Ney and Mortier under his direction.
The astonished assailants were driven back. The
Young Guard recaptured the redoubts, and the
French army deployed on the plateau lately in
possession of their enemies. . . . The fury of the
fight gradually slackened, and the armies took up
their positions for the night. The French wings
bivouacked to the right and left of the city,
which itself formed Napoleon's centre. The
allies were ranged in a semicircle cresting the
heights. . . . They had not greatly the advan-
tage in numbers, for Klenau's division never
came up ; and Napoleon, now that Victor and
Marraont's corps had arrived, concentrated nearly
200,000 men. . . . The next day broke in a tem-
pest of wind and rain. At six o'clock Napoleon
was on horseback, and ordered his columns to
advance. Their order of battle has been aptly
compared to 'a fan when it expands.' Their
position could scarcely have been worse. . . .
Knowing that in case of disaster retreat would
be almost an impossibility, Napoleon began an
attack on both flanks of the allied army, certain
that their defeat would demoralize the centre,
which he could overwhelm by a simultaneous
concentric attack, supported by the fire of 100
guns. The stormy weather which concealed
their movements favoured them; and Murat
turning and breaking the Austrian left, and Ney
completely rolling up the Austrian right, the re-
sult was a decisive victory. By three in the
afternoon of the 27th the battle was concluded,
and the allies were in full retreat, pursued by
the French. The roads to Bohemia and those to
the south were barred by Murat's and Van-
damme's corps, and tie allied Sovereigns were
obliged to take such country paths and byways
as they could find — which had been rendered
almost impassable by the heavy rain. They lost
25,000 prisoners, 40 standards, 60 pieces of can-
non, and many waggons. The killed and wound-
ed amounted on each side to seven or eight thou-
sand. The first cannon-shot fired by the guard
under the direction of Napoleon mortally wound-
ed Moreau while talking to the Emperor Alexan-
der. . . . The French left wing, composed of
the three corps of Vandamme, St. Cyr, and Mar-
mont, were ordered to march by their left along
the Pirna road in pursuit of the foe, who was re-
treating into Bohemia in three columns, and had
traversed the gorges of the Hartz Mountains in
safety, though much baggage, several ammuni-
tion waggons, and 2,000 prisoners, fell into the
hands of the French. The Russians, under Os-
termann, halted on the plain of Culm [or Kulm]
for the arrival of Kleist's Prussians; the Austri-
ans hurried along the Prague route. Vandamme
marched boldly on, neglecting even the precau-
tion of guarding the defile of Peterswald in his
rear. Trusting to the rapid advance of the other
French corps, he was lured on by the hope of
capturing the allied Sovereigns in their head-
quarters at Toplitz. Barclay de Tolly, having
executed a rapid detour from left to right,
brought the bulk of his Russian forces to bear oa
Vandamme, who, on reaching Culm, was attacked
in front and rear [August 29-30], surprised and
taken, losing the whole of his artillery and be-
tween 7,000 and 8,000 prisoners; the rest of his
corps escaped and rejoined the army. This dis-
aster totally deranged Napoleon's plans, which
would have led him to follow up the pursuit to-
wards Bohemia in person. Oudiuot was ordered
to march against Billow's corps at Berlin and the
Swedes commanded by Bernadotte, taking with
him the divisions of Bertraud and Reynier — a
force of 80,000 men. Reynier, who marched In
advance, fell in with the allies at Gross-Beeren,
attacked them precipitately and suffered severely,
his division, chiefly composed of Saxons, taking
flight. Oudinot also sustained considerable losses,
and retreated to Torgau on the Elbe. Girard,
sallying out of Magdeburg with 5,000 or 6,006
men, was defeated near Leibnitz, with the loss
of 1,000 men, and some cannon and baggage.
Macdonald encountered Blucher in the plains be-
tween Wahlstadt and the Katzbach under disad-
vantageous circumstances [August 26], and was
obliged to retire in disorder." — R. H. Home,
Hist, of Napoleon, ch. 37. — " The great battle of
the Katzbach, the counterpart to that of Hohen-
linden, [was] one of the most glorious ever gained
in the annals of European fame. Its trophies
were immense. . . . Eighteen thousand prison-
ers, 103 pieces of cannon, and 230 caissons, be-
sides 7,000 killed and wounded, presented a total
loss to the French of 25,000 men."— Sir A. Ali-
son, Hist, of Europe, ch. 80, sect. 68 {v. 17).— "Of
the battle of Kulm it is not too much to say that
it was the most critical in the whole war of Ger-
man liberation. The fate of the coalition was
determined absolutely by its results. Had Van-
damme been strong enough to keep his hold of
Bohemia, and to block up ^rom them the mouths
of the passes, the allied columns, forced back
into the exhausted mountain district through
which they were retreating, must have perished
for lack of food, or dissolved themselves." — G.
R. Gleig, The Leipzig Campaign, ch. 27.
1560
GERMANY, 1813.
The Allies at
Leipsic.
GERMANY, 1813.
Also in : Baron Jomini, Life of Napoleon, eh.
20 (b. 4). — Major C. Adams, Oreat Campaigns in
Europe, 1796 to 1870, ch. 5.
A. D. 1813 (September— October). — French
reverse at Dennewitz. — Napoleon's evacuation
of Dresden. — Allied concentration at Leipsic.
— Preparations for the decisive battle. — "The
[allied] Armj' of the North had been nearly idle
since the battle of Grossbeeren. The Prussian
generals were extremely indignant against Berna-
dotte, whose slowness and inaction were intoler-
able to them. It took them, under his orders, a
fortnight to advance as far as a good footman
could march in a day. They then unexpectedly
met a new French army advancing against them
from a fortified camp at Wittenberg. Napoleon
had now assigned to Marshal Ney — ■' the bravest
of the brave ' — the work of beating ' the Cossack
hordes and the poor militia,' and taking Berlin.
Under him were Oudiuot, Regnier, Bertrand,
and Arrighi, with 70,000 men. On September 6
Tauenzien met their superior forces at Jilterbogk,
but sustained himself valiantly through a peril-
ous fight. Bernadotte was but two hours' march
away, but as usual disregarded Billow's request
to bring aid. But Billow himself brought up his
corps on the right, and took the brunt of the
battle, extending it through the villages south of
Jilterbogk, of which Dennewitz was the centre.
The Prussians took these villages by storm, and
when evening came their victory was complete,
though Bernadotte had not stretched out a hand
to help them. . . . Billow bore the name of
Dennewitz afterward in honor of his victory.
Ney reported to his master that he was entirely
defeated. Napoleon unwisely ascribed his defeat
entirely to the Saxons, who fought well that day
for him, but for the last time. By his reproaches
he entirely alienated the people froni him. The
French loss in this battle was 10,000 killed and
•wounded, and 10,000 prisoners, besides 80 guns.
The Prussians lost in killed and wounded more
than 5,000. Thus five victories had been won
by the Allies in a fortnight, compensating fully
for the loss of the battle of Dresden. The way
to the Elbe lay open to the Army of the North.
But Bernadotte continued to move with extreme
slowness. Billow and Tauenzien seriously pro-
posed to Blucher to leave the Swedish prince,
whom they openly denounced as a traitor. Blii-
cher approached the Elbe across the Lausitz from
Bohemia, and it would have been easy to cross
the river and unite the two armies, threatening
Napoleon's rear, and making Dresden untenable
for him. Napoleon advanced in vain against
Blucher to Bausitz. The Prussian general wisely
avoided a battle. Then the emperor turned
against the Army of Bohemia, but it was too
strong in its position in the valley of Teplitz,
with the mountains in its rear, to be attacked.
Then again he moved toward Bliicher, but again
failed to bring about an action. At this time
public opinion throughout Europe was undergo-
ing a rapid change, and Napoleon's name was
losing its magic. The near prospect of his fall
made the nations he had oppressed eager and im-
patient for it, and his German allies and subjects
lost all regard and hgpe for his cause. On Oc-
tober 8 the Bavarian plenipotentiary. General
Wrede, concluded a treaty with Austria at Ried,
by the terms of which Bavaria left Napoleon and
joined the allies. This important defection,
though it had been for some weeks expected, was
felt by the French emperor as a severe blow to
his prospects. Napoleon's circle of movement
around Dresden began to be narrowed. The
Russian reserves under Beuningsen, 57, 000 strong,
were also advancing through Silesia toward Bo-
hemia. Blucher was therefore not needed in
Bohemia, and he pressed forward vigorously to
cross the Elbe. His army advanced along the
right bank of the Black Elster to its mouth above
Wittenberg. On the opposite bank of the Elbe,
in the bend of the stream, stands the village of
AVartenburg, and just at the bend Bliicher built
two bridges of boats without opposition. On
October 3 York's corps crossed the river. But
now on the west side, among the thickets and
swamps before the village, arose a furious strug-
gle with a body of 20,000 French, Italians, and
Germans of the Rhine League under Bertrand.
York displayed eminent patience, coolness, and
judgment, and won a decided victor}' out of a
great danger. Bernadotte, though with much
hesitation, also crossed the Elbe at the mouth of
the Mulde, and the army of the North and of
Silesia were thus united in Napoleon's rear. It
was now evident that the successes of these armies
had brought the French into extreme danger,
and the allied sovereigns resolved upon a con-
certed attack. Leipsic was designated as the
point at which the armies should combine. Na-
poleon could no longer hold Dresden, lest he
should be cut off from France by a vastly su-
perior force. The partisan corps of the allies were
also growing bolder and more active far in Na-
poleon's rear, and on October 1 Czernichefl drove
Jerome out of Cassel and proclaimed the king-
dom of Westphalia dissolved. This was the
work of a handful of Cossacks, without infantry
and artillery ; but though Jerome soon returned,
the moral effect of this sudden and easy over-
throw of one of Napoleon's military kingdoms
was immense. On October 7 Napoleon left Dres-
den, and marched to the Mulde. Bliicher's forces
were arrayed along both sides of this stream,
below Dliben. But he quietly and successfully
retired, on perceiving Napoleon's purpose to at-
tack him, and moved westward to the Saale, in
order to draw after him Bernadotte and the
Northern army. The plan was successful, and
the united armies took up a position behind the
Saale, extending from Merseburg to Alsleben,
Bernadotte occupying the. northern end of the
line next to the Elbe. Napoleon, disappointed
in his first effort, now formed a plan whose bold-
ness astonished both friend and foe. He resolved
to cross the Elbe, to seize Berlin and the Marches,
now uncovered, and thus, supported by his for-
tresses of Jlagdeburg, Stettin, Dantzic, and Ham-
burg, where he still had bodies of troops and
magazines, to give the war an entirely new
aspect. But the murmurs of his worn-out troops,
and even of his generals, compelled him to aban-
don this plan, which was desperate, but might
have been effectual. The suggestion of it terri-
fied Bernadotte, whose province of Lower Pome-
rania would be threatened, and he would have
withdrawn in headlong haste across the Elbe had
not Bliicher persisted in detaining him. Napo-
leon now resolved to march against the Bohe-
mian army at Leipsic. On October 14, on ap-
proaching the city from the north, he heard
cannon-shots on the opposite side. It was the
advanced guard of the main army, which was
descending from the Erz-Gebirge range, after a
1561
GERMANY, 1813.
Battle of the
Nations.
GERMANY, 1813.
sharp but indecisive cavalry battle with Murat
at the village of Liebertwolkwitz, south of Dres-
den. In the broad, thickly settled plains around
Leipsic, the armies of Europe now assembled for
the tinal and decisive conflict. Napoleon's com-
mand included Portuguese, Spaniards, Neapoli-
tans, and large contingents of Germans from the
Rhine League, as well as the flower of the French
youth; while the allies brought against him
Cossacks and Calmucks, Swedes and Magyars,
besides all the resources of Prussian patriotism
and Austrian discipline. Never since the awful
struggle at Chalons, which saved Western civili-
zation from Attila, liad there been a strife so well
deserving the name of ' the battle of the nations. '
West of the city of Leipsic runs the Pleisse, and
flows into the Elster on the northwest side.
Above their junction, the two streams run for
some distance near one another, inclosing a sharp
angle of swampy land. The great highway to
Lindenau from Leipsic crosses the Elster, and
then runs southwesterly to Llltzen and AYeissen-
fels. South of the city and east of the Pleisse
lie a number of villages, of which Wachau,
Liebertwolkwitz, and Probstlieida, nearer the
city, were important points during the battle.
The little river Partha approaches the city on
the cast, and then runs north, reaching the Elster
at Gohlis. Napoleon occupied the villages north,
east and south of the city, in a small circle around
it." — C. T. Lewis, Hist, of Oermany, ch. 30, sect.
7-11.
Also w: E. Baines, Sist. of tlie Wars of the
French Hev. , l>k. 4, ch. 33 {v. 3).
A. D. 1813 (October).— " The Battle of the
Nations." — "Tlie town of Leipsic has four sides
and four gates. . . . On the south is the rising
ground called the Swedish Camp, and another
called the Sheep-walk, bordering on the banks of
the Pleisse. To this quarter the Grand Army of
the Allies was seen advancing on the 15th of
October. Buonaparte made his arrangements
accordingly. Bertrand and Poniatowski defend-
ed Lindenau and the east side of the city, by
which the French must retreat. Augereau was
posted farther to the left, on the elevated plain
of Wachau, and on the south, Victor, Lauriston,
and Macdonald confronted the advance of the
Allies with the Imperial Guai-ds placed as a
reserve. On the north, Marmout was placed
between Moeckcrn and Euterist, to make head
against Blucher, should he arrive in time to take
part in the battle. On the opposite quarter, the
sentinels of the two armies were within musket-
shot of each other, when evening fell. . . . The
number of men who engaged the next morning
was estimated at 136,000 French, and 330,000 on
the part of the Allies. . . . Napoleon remained
all night in the rear of his own Guards, behind
the central position, facing a village called
Gossa, occupied by the Austrians. At day-
break on the 16tli of October the battle began.
The French position was assailed along all the
southern front with the greatest fury. . . . The
Allies having made si.\ desperate attempts, . . .
all of them unsuccessful, Napoleon in turn as-
sumed the offensive. . . . This was about noon.
The village of Gossa was carried by the bayonet.
Macdonald made himself master of the Swedish
Camp ; and the eminence called the Sheep-walk
was near being taken in the same maimer. The
impetuosity of the French had fairly broken
through the centre of the Allies, and Napoleon
sent the tidings of his success to the King of
Saxony, who ordered all the bells in the city tO'
be rung. . . . The King of Naples, with Latour-
Maubo'irg aud Kellermann, poured through the
gap in 'he enemy's centre at the head of the whole
body of cavalry, and thundered forward as far as
Magdeburg, a village in the rear of the Allies,
bearing down General Rayefskoi with the Grena-
diers of the Russian reserve. At this moment,
while the French were disordered by their own
success, Alexander, who was ])resent, ordered
forward the Cossacks of his Guard, who, with
their long lances, bore back the dense body of
cavalry that had so nearly carried the day.
Meantime, as had been apprehended, Blucher
arrived before the city, and suddenly came into
action- with Marmont, being three times his
numbers. He in consequence obtained great
and decided advantages; and before night-fall
had taken the village of Mceckern, together
with 30 pieces of artillery and 3,000 prisoners.
But on the soutli side the contest continued
doubtful. Gossa was still disputed. . . . Gen-
eral Mehrfeldt fell into the hands of the French.
The battle raged till night-fall, when it ceased
by mutual consent. . . . The armies slept on
the ground they had occupied during the day.
The French on the southern side had not relin-
quished one foot of their original position,
though attacked by such superior numbers.
Marmont had indeed been forced back by Blu-
cher, and com]3elled to crowd his line of defence-
nearer the walls of Leipsic. Thus pressed on all
sides with doubtful issues, Buonaparte availed
himself of the capture of General Mehrfeldt tO'
demand an armistice and to signify his accept-
ance of the terms proposed by the Allies, but
which were now found to be too moderate. . . .
Napoleon received no answer till his troops had
recrossed the Rhine ; and the reason assigned is,
that the Allies had pledged themselves solemnly
to each other to enter into no treaty with him
'while a single individual of the French army
remained in Germany.' . . . The 17th was spent
in preparations on both sides, without any actual
hostilities. At eight o'clock on the morning of
the 18th they were renewed with tenfold fury.
Napoleon had considerably contracted his cir-
cuit of defence, and the French were posted
on an inner line, nearer to Leipsic, of which
Probtsheyda was the central point. . . . Bar-
clay, Wittgenstein, and Kleist advanced on
Probtsheyda, where they were opposed by
Murat, Victor, Augereau, aud Lauriston, under
the eye of Napoleon himself. On the left Mac-
donald had drawn back his division to a village
called Stoetteritz. Along this whole line the
contest was maintained furiously on both sides;
nor could the terrified spectators, from the walls
and steeples of Leipsic, perceive that it either
receded or advanced. About two o'clock the
Allies forced their way . . . into Probtsheyda;
the camp-followers began to fly ; the tumult was
excessive. Napoleon . . . placed the reserve of
the Old Guard in order, led tnem in person to
recover the village, and saw them force their
entrance ere he withdrew to the eminence from
whence he watched the battle. . . . The Allies,
at length, felt themselves obliged to desist from'
the murderous attacks on the villages wliich
cost them so dear; and, withdrawing their
troops, kept up a dreadful fire with their artil-
lery. The French replied with equal spirit^
1562
GERMANY, 1813.
Battle of the
Nations.
GERMANY, 1813.
though they had fewer guns; and, besides, their
ammunition was falling short. Still, however.
Napoleon completely maintained the day on the
south of Leipsic, where he commanded in per-
son. On the northern side, the yet greater su-
periority of numbers placed Ney in a precarious
situation; and, pressed hard both by Blucher
and the Crown-Prince, he was compelled to
draw nearer the town, and had made a stand on
an eminence called Heiterblick, when on a sud-
den the Saxons, who were stationed in that part
of the field, deserted from the French and went
over to the enemy. In consequence of this un-
expected disaster, Ney was unable any longer to
defend himself. It was in vain that Buonaparte
dispatched his reserves of cavalry to fill up the
chasm that had been made ; and Ney drew up
the remainder of his forces close under the walls
of Leipsic. The battle once more ceased at all
points. . . Although the French army had
thus kept its ground up to the last moment on
these two days, yet there was no prospect of
their being able to hold out much longer at
Leipsic. . . . All things counselled a retreat,
which was destined (like the rest of late) to be
unfortunate. . . . The retreat was commenced in
the night-time; and Napoleon spent a third
harassing night in giving the necessary orders for
the march. He appointed Macdonald and Ponia-
towski ... to defend the rear. ... A tempo-
rary bridge which had been erected had given
way, and the old bridge on the road to Linde-
nau was the only one that remained for the pas-
sage of the whole French army. But the de-
fence of the suburbs had been so gallant and
obstinate that time was allowed for this purpose.
At length the rear- guard itself was about to
retreat, when, as they approached the banks of
the river, the bridge blew up by the mistake of
a sergeant of a company of sappers who . . .
set fire to the mine of which he had charge
before the proper moment. This catastrophe
effectually barred the escape of all those who
still remained on the Leipsic side of the river,
except a few who succeeded in swimming across,
among whom was Marshal Macdonald. Ponia-
towski . . . was drowned in making the same
attempt. In him, it might be said, perished
the last of the Poles. About 25,000 French
were made prisoners of war, with a great quan-
tity of artillery and baggage." — W. Hazlitt, Life
of Napoleon, ch. 50 (». 6). — "The battle of Leip-
sic was over. Already had the allied sovereigns
entered the town, and forcing, not without dif-
ficulty, their way through the crowd, passed on
to the market-place. Here, the house in which
the King of Saxony had lodged was at once made
known to them by the appearance of the Saxon
troops whom Napoleon had left to guard their
master. . . . Moreover, the King himself . . .
stood bare-headed on the steps of the stairs. But
the Emperor of Russia, who appears at once to
have assumed the chief direction of affairs, took no
notice of the suppliants. . . . The battle of Leip-
sic constitutes one of those great hinges on which
the fortunes of the world may be said from time
to time to turn. The importance of its political
consequence cannot be overestimated. ... As
a great military operation, the one feature which
forces itself prominently upon our notice is the
eraorraous extent of the means employed on both
sides to accomplish an end. Never since the
days when Persia poured her millions into Greece
had armies so numerous been marshalled against
each other. Nor does history tell of trains of ar-
tillery so vast having been at any time brought
into action with more murderous effect. . . .
About 1,300 pieces, on the one side, were an-
swered, during two days, by little short of 1,000
on the other. . . . We look in vain for any mani-
festations of genius or military skill, either in the
combinations which rendered the battle of Leip-
sic inevitable, or in the arrangements according
to which the attack and defence of the field were
conducted. . . . It was the triumph, not of mili-
tary skill, but of numbers. " — G. R. Gleig, The
Leipsic Campaign, ch. 41. — "No more here than at
Moscow must we seek in the failure of the leader's,
talents the cause of such deplorable results, —
for he was never more fruitful in resource, more
bold, more resolute, nor more a soldier, — but in
the illusions of pride, in the wish to regain at a
blow an immense fortune which he had lost, in
the difficulty of acknowledging to himself his de-
feat in time, in a word, in all those errors which
we may discern in miniature and caricature in an
ordinary gambler, who madly risks riches ac-
quired by folly ; errors which are found on a large
and terrible scale in this gigantic gambler, who
plays with human blood as others play Avith
money. As gamblers lose their fortunes twice, —
once from not knowing where to stop, and a
second time from wishing, to restore it at a single
cast, — so Napoleon endangered his at Moscow by
wishing to make it exorbitantly large, and in the
Dresden campaign by seeking to restore it in its
full extent. The cause was always the same, the
alteration not in the genius, but in the character,
by the deteriorating influence of unlimited power
and success." — A. Thiers, Hist, of the Consulate
and the Empire, bk. 50 (v. 4).
Also in : Duke de Rovigo, Memoirs, v. 3, pt. 3,
ch. 17. — J. C. Ropes, The First Napoleon. — Baron
de Marbot, Ifemoirs, v. 3, ch. 38-39.
A. D. 1813 (October — December). — Retreat
of Napoleon beyond the Rhine. — Battle of
Hanau. — Fall of the kingdom of Westphalia. —
Surrender of French garrisons and forces. —
Liberation achieved. — "Blucher, withLangeron
and Sacken, moved in pursuit of the French
army, which, disorganised and dejected, was wend-
ing its way towards the Rhine. At the passage
of the Unstrutt, at Freyberg, 1,000 prisoners and
18 guns were captured by the Prussian hussars;
but on the 23d the French reached Erfurth, the
citadels and magazines of which afforded them at
once security and relief from their privations.
Here Napoleon halted two days, employed in re-
organising his army, the thirteen corps of which
were now formed into six, commanded by Victor,
Ney, Bertrand, Augereau, Marmont, and Mac-
donald, and amounting in all to less than 90,000
men ; while twice that number were left block-
aded in the fortresses on the Elbe, the Oder, and
the Vistula. On the 2oth, after parting for the
last time with Murat, who here quitted him and re-
turned to Naples, he resumed his march, retreat-
ing with such rapidity through the Thuringian
forest, that the Cossacks alone of the pursuing
army could keep up with the retiring columns —
while the men dropped, exhausted by fatigue and
hunger, or deserted their ranks by hundreds ; so
that when the fugitive host approached the Maine,
not more than 50,000 remained effective round
their colours — 10,000 had fallen or been made
prisoners, and at least 30,000 were straggling
15G3
GERJIANY, 1813.
NapoleoTi's
retreat.
GERMANY, 1814.
in the rear. But here fresh dangers awaited
thera. After the treaty of the 8th October, by
which Bavaria had acceded to the grand alhance,
an Austro-Bavarian force under Jfarshal Wrede
had moved in the direction of Frankfort, and was
posted, to the number of 45,000 men, in the oak
forest near Hanau across the great road to May-
ence, and blocking up entirely the French line of
retreat. The battle commenced at 11 A. M. on
the 30th; but the French van, under Victor and
Macdonald, after fighting its way through the
forest, was arrested, when attempting to issue
from its skirts, by the concentric fire of 70 pieces
of cannon, and for four hours the combat con-
tinued, till the arrival of the guards and main
body changed the aspect of affairs. Under cover
of the terrible fire of Drouot's artillery, Sebasti-
ani and Nansouty charged with the cavalry of the
guard, and overthrew everything opposed to
them, and Wrede at length drew off his shattered
army behind the Kinzig. Hanau was bombarded
and taken, and Mortier and Marmont, with the
rear divisions, cut their way through on the fol-
lowing day, with considerable loss to their op-
ponents. The total losses of the Allies amounted
to 10,000 men, of whom 4,000 were prisoners;
and the victory threw a parting ray of glory over
the long career of the revolutionary arms in Ger-
many. On the 2d of November the French
reached Ma\'ence, and Napoleon, after remaining
there six days to collect tlie remains of his army,
set out for Paris, where he arrived on the 9th;
and thus the French eagles bade a final adieu to
the German plains. In the mean time, the Al-
lied troops, following closely on the footsteps of
the retreating French, poured in prodigious
strength down the valley of the Jlaine. Ou the
5th of November the Emperor Alexander entered
Frankfort in triumph, at the head of 20,000 horse ;
and on the 9th the fortified post of Hochheim, in
advance of the tete-du-pont of Mayence at Cas-
sel, was stormed by Giulay. From the heights
beyond the town the victorious armies of Germany
beheld the winding stream of the Rhine ; a shout
of enthusiasm ran from rank to rank as they saw
the mighty river of the Fatherland, which their
arms had liberated ; those in the rear hurried to the
front, and soon a hundred thousand voices joined
in the cheers which told the world that the war of
independence was ended and Germany delivered.
Nothing now remained but to reap the fruits of
this mighty victory ; yet so vast was the ruin that
even this was a task of time and difficulty. The
rickety kingdom of Westphalia fell at once, never
more to rise ; the revolutionary d_ynasty in Berg
followed its fate ; and the authority of the King
of Britain was re-established by acclamation in
Hanover, at the first appearance of Bernadotte
and Benningsen. The reduction of Davoust, who
had been left in Hamburg with 25,000 French
and 10,000 Danes, was an undertaking of more
dilflculty ; and against him Walmodeu and Ber-
nadotte moved with 40,000 men. The French
marshal had taken up a position ou the Stecknitz;
but, fearful of being cut off from Hamburg, he
retired behind the Bille on the advance of the
Allies, separating himself from the Danes, who
were compelled to capitulate. The operations of
the Crown-Prince against Denmark, the ancient
rival of Sweden, were now pushed with a vigour
and activity strongly contrasting with his luke-
warmness in the general campaign ; and the court
of Copenhagen, seeing its dominions on the point
of being overrun, signed an armistice on the 15th
December, on which was soon after based a per-
manent treaty [of Kiel — see .Scandinavian
Stated : A. D. 1S13-1814]. . . . When Napoleon
(Oct. 7) marched northwards from Dresden, he
had left St. Cyr in that city with 30,000 men, op-
posed only by a newly-raised Russian corps under
Tolstoi , which St. Cyr, by a sudden attack, routed
with the loss of 3,000 men and 10 guns. But no
sooner was the battle of Leipsic decided, than
Dresden was again blockaded by 50.000 men un-
der Kleuau and Tolstoi ; and St. Cyr, who was
encumbered with a vast number of sick and
wounded, and was almost without jjrovisions,
was obliged, after a fruitless sortie on the 6th
November, to surrender on the 11th, on condition
of being sent with his troops to France. The
capitulation, however, was disallowed by Schwart-
zenberg, and the whole were made prisoners of
war — a proceeding which the French, not with-
out some justice, declaim against as a gross breach
of faith — and thus no less than 33 generals, 1,795
officers, and 33,000 rank and file, with 240 pieces
of cannon, fell into the power of the Allies. The
fall of Dresden was soon followed by that of the
other fortresses on the Vistula and the Oder.
Stettin, with 8,000 men and 350 guns, surrendered
on the 21st November; and Torgau, which .on
tained the militarj' hospitals and reserve parks of
artillery left by the grand army on its retreat from
the Elbe, yielded at discretion to Tauenzein (Dec.
26), after a siege of two months. But such was
the dreadful state of the garrison, from the rav-
ages of typhus fever, that the Allies dared not
enter this great pest-house till the 10th January;
and the terrible epidemic which issued from its
walls made the circuit, during the four following
years, of every country in Europe. Dantzic, with
its motley garrison of 35,000 men, had been
blockaded ever since the Moscow retreat ; but the
blockading corps, which was not of greater
strength, could not confine the French within the
walls; and Rapp made several sorties in force
during the spring and summer, by which he pro-
cured abundance of provisions. It was not till
after the termination of the armistice of Pleswitz
that the siege was commenced in form ; and after
sustaining a severe bombardment, Rapp, deprived
of all hope by the battle of Leipsic, capitulated
(Nov. 29) with his garrison, now reduced by the
sword, sickness, and desertion, to 16,000 men.
Zamosc, with 3,000 men, surrendered on the 22d
December, and Modlin, with 1,300, on the 25th;
and at the close of the year, France retained be-
yond the Rhine onl}' Hamburg, Magdeburg, and
Wittenberg, on the Elbe ; Custrin and Glogau on
the Oder; and the citadels of Erfurth and Wiirtz-
burg, which held out after the capitulation of the
towns." — Epitome of Alison's Hist, of Europe,
sect. 737-742 (ch. 83, v. 17, in complete work). —
"The princes of the Confederation of the Rhine,
with the exception of the captive King of Sax-
ony, and one or two minor princes, deserted Na-
poleon, and entered into treaties with the Allies."
— T. H. Dyer, Hist, of Modern Europe, ■». 4, p.
538.
Also in: M. Bourrienne, Private Memoirs of
Napoleon, v. 4, ch. 16. — T/ie Tear of Liberation:
Journal of the Defence of Hamburgh. — J. Philip-
part, Campaign in Oermany and France, 1813,
V. 1, ;;/). 230-278.
A. D. 1814.— The Allies in France and in
possession of Paris. — Fall of Napoleon. Se«
1564
GERMANY, 1814.
Germanic
Confederation.
GERMANY, 1814-1820.
Prance; A. D. 1814 (January — March), and
(March— April).
A. D. 1814 (May). — Readjustment of French
boundaries by the Treaty of Paris. See
France; A. D. 1814 (April — June).
A. D. 1814-1815. — The Congress of Vienna.
— Its territorial and political readjustments.
See Vienna, The Congress op.
A. D. 1814-182Q. — Reconstruction of Ger-
many. — The Germanic Confederation and its
constitution. — "Germany was now utterly dis-
integrated. The Holy Roman Empire bad ceased
to exist; the Confederation of the Rhine had fol-
lowed it ; and from the Black Forest to the Rus-
sian frontier there was nothing but angry ambi-
tions, vengeances, and fears. If there was ever
to be peace again in all these wide regions, it was
clearly necessary to create something new. What
was to be created was a far more difficult ques-
tion; but already, on the 30th of May 1814, the
powers had come to some sort of understanding,
if not with regard to the means to be pursued, at
least with regard to the end to be attained. In
the Treaty of Paris we find these words : ' Les
etats de I'Allemagne seront iudependants et unis
par un lien federatif.' But how was this to bo
effected? There were some who wished the Holy
Roman Empire to be restored. ... Of course
neither Prussia, Bavaria, nor Wurtemberg, could
look kindly upon a plan so obviously unfavour-
able to them ; but not even Austria really wished
it, and indeed it had few powerful friends. Then
there was a project of a North and South Ger-
many, with the Maine for boundary; but this
was very much the reverse of acceptable to the
minor princes, who had no idea of being grouped
like so many satellites, some around Austria and
some around Prussia. Next came a plan of re-
construction by circles, the effect of which would
have been to have thrown all the power of Ger-
many into the hands of a few of the larger states.
To this all the smaller independent states were
bitterly opposed, and it broke down, although
supported by the great authority of Stein, as well
as by Gagern. If Germany had been in a later
phase of political development, public opinion
would perhaps have forced the sovereigns to con-
sent to the formation of a really united Fatherland
with a powerful executive and a national parlia-
ment — but the time for that had not arrived.
What was the opposition of a few hundred clear-
sighted men with their few thousand followers,
that it should prevail over the masters of so many
legions? What these potentates cared most about
were their sovereign rights, and the dream of
German unity was very readily sacrificed to the
determination of each of them to be, as far as he
possibly could, absolute master in his own do-
minions. Therefore it was that it soon became
evident that the results of the deliberation on the
future of Germany would be, not a federative
state, but a confederation of states — a Staaten-
Bund, not a Bundes-Staat. There is no doubt,
however, that much mischief might have been
avoided if all the stronger powers had worked
conscientiously together to give this Staaten-
Bund as national a character as possible. . . .
Prussia was really honestly desirous to effect
something of this kind, and Stein, Hardenberg,
William von Humboldt, Count Miinster, and
other statesmen, laboured hard to bring it about.
Austria, on the other hand, aided by Bavaria,
Wurtemberg, and Baden; did all she could
to oppose such projects. Things would per-
liaps have been settled better than they ulti-
mately were, if the return of Napoleon from
Elba had not frightened all Europe from its pro-
priety, and turned the attention of the sovereigns
towards warlike preparations. . . . The docu-
ment by which the Germanic Confederation is
created is of so much importance that we may
say a word about the various stages through
which it passed. First, then, it appears as a
paper drawn up by Stein in March 1814, and
submitted to Hardenberg, Count Miinster, and
the Emperor Alexander. Next, in the month of
Septemlser, it took the form of an official plan,
handed by Hardenberg to Metternich, and con-
sisting of forty-one articles. This plan contem-
plated the creation of a confederation which should
have the character rather of a Bundes-Staat than
of a Staaten-Bund ; but it went to pieces in con-
sequence of the difficulties which we have noticed
above, and out of it, and of ten other official pro-
posals, twelve articles were sublimated by the
rival chemistry of Hardenberg and Metternich.
Upon these twelve articles the representatives of
Austria, Prussia, Hanover, and Wurtemberg, de-
liberated. Their sittings were cut short partly by
the ominous appearance which was presented In
the autumn of 1814 by the Saxon and Polish
questions, and partly by the difficulties from the
side of Bavaria and Wurtemberg, which we have
already noticed. The spring brought a project
of the Austrian statesman Wessenberg, who pro-
posed a Staaten-Bund rather than a Bundes-
Staat ; and out of this and a new Prussian project
drawn up by W. von Humboldt, grew the last
sketch, which was submitted on the 23d of May
1815 to the general conference of the plenipoten-
tiaries of all Germany. They made short work
of it at the last, and the Federal-Act (Bundes-
Acte) bears date June 8th, 1815. This is the
document which is incorporated in the principal
act of the Congress of Vienna, and placed under
the guarantee of eight European powers, includ-
ing France and England. Wurtemberg, Baden,
and Hesse-Homburg, did not form part of the
Confederation for some little time — the latter
not till 1817 ; but after they were added to the
powers at first consenting, the number of the
sovereign states in the Confederation was alto-
gether thirty-nine. . . . The following are the
chief stipulations of the Federal Act. The ob-
ject of the Confederation is the external and in-
ternal security of Germany, and the independence
and inviolability of the confederate states. A
difete federative (Bundes-Versammlung) is to be
created, and its attributions are sketched. The
Diet is, as soon as possible, to draw up the funda-
mental laws of the Confederation. No state is
to make war with another, on any pretence.
All federal territories are mutually guaranteed.
There is to be in each state a ' Landstitndische
Verfassung' — 'il y aura des assemblees d'etats
dans tous les pays de la Confederation.' Art. 14
reserves many rights to the mediatised princes.
Equal civil and political rights are guaranteed to
all Christians in all German States, and stipula-
tions are made in favour of the Jews. The Diet
did not actually assemble before the 5th of
November 1816. Its first measures, and, above
all, its first words, were not unpopular. The
Holy Allies, however, pressed with each succeed-
ing month more heavily upon Germany, and got
at last the control of the Confederation entirely
1565
GERMANY, 1814-1820. The Burschcischaft. GERMANY, 1817-1840.
into their hands. The chief epochs in this sad
history were the Congress of Carlsbad, 1819 — the
resolutions of which against the freedom of the
press were pronounced by Gentz to be a victory
more glorious than Leipzig ; the ministerial con-
ferences which immediately succeeded it at
Vienna; and the adoption by the Diet of the
Final Act (Schluss Acte) of the Confederation on
the 8th of June 1830. The following are the
chief stipulations of the Final Act: — The Con-
federation is indissoluble. No new member can
be admitted without the unanimous consent of
all the states, and no federal territory can be
ceded to a foreign power without their permis-
sion. The regulations for the conduct of busi-
ness by the Diet are amplified and more carefully
defined. All quarrels between members of the
Confederation are to be stopped before recourse
is had to violence. The Diet may interfere to
keep order in a state where the government of
that state is notoriously incapable of doing so.
Federal execution is provided for in case any
government resists the authority of the Diet.
Other articles declare the right of the Confedera-
tion to make war and peace as a body, to guard
the rights of each separate state from injury, to
take into consideration the differences between its
members and foreign nations, to mediate between
them, to maintain the neutrality of its territory,
to make war when a state belonging to the Con-
federation is attacked in its non-federal territory
if the attack seems likely to endanger Germany."
— M. E. G. Dufl, Studies in European Polities,
ch. 5.
Also m: J. R. Seeley, Life and TYmes of Stein,
pt. 8 (v. 3).— E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe by
Treaty, v. 1, no. 26 {Text of Federative Constitu-
tion). — See, also, Vienna: Congress op.
A. D. 1815. —Napoleon's return from Elba.
— The Quadruple Alliance. — The Waterloo
campaign and its results. See France: A. D.
1814^1815.
A. D. 1815. — Final Overthrow of Napoleon.
— The Allies again in Paris. — Second treaty
with France. — Restitutions and indemnities.
— French frontier of 1790 re-established. See
Fkauce; a. D. 1815 (June), (.July-Novem-
ber).
A. D. 1815.— The Holy Alliance. See Holt
Alliance.
A. D. 1817-1820.— The Burschenschaft.—
Assassination of Kotzebue. — The Karlsbad
Conference.— "In 1817, the students of several
Universities assembled at the Wartburg in order
to celebrate the tercentenary of the Reformation.
In the evening, a small number of them, the
majority having already left, were carried away
by enthusiastic zeal, and, in imitation of Luther,
burnt a number of writings recently published
against German freedom, together with other
emblems of wliat was considered hateful in the
institutions of some of the German States. These
youthful excesses were viewed by the Govern-
ments as symptoms of grave peril. At the same
time, a large number of students united to form
one great German Burschenschaft [association of
students], whose aim was the cultivation of a
love of country, a love of freedom, and the moral
sense. Thereupon increased anxiety on the part
of the Governments, followed by vexatious po-
lice interference. Matters grew worse in conse-
quence of the rash act of a fanatical student,
named Sand. It became known that the Russian
Government was using all its powerful influence
to have liberal ideas suppressed in Germany, and
that the play-wright Kotzebue had secretly sent
to Russia slanderous and libellous reports on
German patriots. Sand travelled to Mannheim
and thrust a dagger into Kotzebue's heart. The
consequences were most disastrous to the cause
of freedom in Germany. The distrust of the
Governments reached its height: it washeld that
this blood}' deed must needs be the result of a
wide-spread conspiracy : the authorities sus-
pected demagogues everywhere. Ministers, of
course at the instigation of Metternich, met at
Karlsbad, and determined on repressive meas-
ures. These were afterwards adopted by the
Federal Diet at Frankfort, which henceforth be-
came an instrument in the hands of the Emperor
Francis and his Minister for guiding the internal
policy of the German States. Accordingly, the
cession of state-constitutions was opposed, and
prosecutions were instituted throughout Ger-
many against all who identified themselves with
the popular movement ; many young men were
thrown into prison ; gymnastic and other socie-
ties were arbitrarily suppressed ; a rigid censor-
ship of the press was established, and the free-
dom of the Universities restrained ; various pro-
fessors, among them Arndt, whose songs had
helped to fire the enthusiasm of the Freiheits-
kiimpfer — the soldiers of Freedom — in the re-
cent war, were deprived of their offices ; the
Burschenschaft was dissolved, and the wearing of
their colours, the future colours of the German
Empire, black, red, and gold, was forbidden. . . .
The Universities continued to uphold the national
idea ; the Burschenschaft soon secretly revived
as a private association, and as early as 1820 there
again existed at most German Universities,
Burschenschaften, which, though their aims
were not sharply defined, Isore a political colour-
ing and placed the demand for German Unity in
the foreground." — G. Krause, The Crrowth of
Oenntin Unity, ch. 8.
A. D. 1817-1840. — Tendencies towards Ger-
manic union and Prussian leadership. — The
ZoUverein. — "In Austria, in the decades suc-
ceeding the wars of liberation, there reigned
the most immovable quiet. The much-praised
system of government consisted in unthinking
inactivity. The Emperor Francis, a man with
the nature of a subaltern ofiicial, hated anything
that approached to a constitution, and a say-
ing of his was often quoted : ' Totus mundus
stultizat et vult habere constitutiones novas.'
Metternich's power rested on the ' dead motion-
lessness ' of affairs. As far as his German policy
was concerned his aim was to hold fast to the
preponderating influence of Austria over the
German states, but not to undertake any respon-
sibilities towards them. ... As for Prussia, in
spite of the great sacrifices which she had made,
she emerged from the diplomatic negotiations
and intrigues of the Vienna Congress with the
most unfavorable disposition of territory imag-
inable. To the five million inhabitants that had
remained to her five and a half millions were
added in districts that had belonged to more
than a hundred different territories and had stood
under the most varied laws. There began now
for this state a time well filled with quiet work,
the aim and object being to create a whole out
of the various parts."— Bruno-Gebhardt. Lehr-
buch derdcutschen Gesehichte {trans, from the Ger-
1566
GERMANY, 1817-1840.
The ZoUverein.
GERMANY. 1819-1847,
inati) V 3, pp. 501-504.—" The German confedera-
tion was, on the whole, provisional in its charac-
ter • this fact comes out more and more plainly
with each thorough analysis and illustration of
its constitution and of its institutions . . . lecn-
nically the emperor of Austria had the honorary
direction of the confederation ; practically he
possessed as emperor of Germany little or no
power . . In reality the strongest member ot
the German confederation was the kingdom ot
Prussia. . . . Only gradually, in the various
heads, did the opinion begin to form of the his-
torical vocation of Prussia to take her place at
the head of the German confederation or possi-
blv of a new German empire. Gradually this
opinion ripened into a firmer and firmer convic-
tion and gained more and more supporters. 1 he
more evidently impossible an actual guidance ot
Germany by Austria became, the more conscious
did men'grow of the danger of the whole situation
should the dualism be allowed to continue In
consequence of this the idea of the Prussian hege-
mony began to be viewed with constantly increas-
iuo- favor. A great step forward in this direction
was taken by the Prussian government when it
called into being the ZoUverein [or customs-unionj.
The ZoUverein laid iron binds around the separate
parts of the German uation. It was utterly im-
possible to think of forming a customs- union with
Austria for all economic interests were as widely
different as possible ; on purely material grounds
the division between Austria and Prussia showed
itself to be a necessity. On the other hand the
economic bonds between Prussia and the rest ot
tlie German lands grew stronger from day to
dav This material union was the prelude to
the political one : the ZoUverein was the best and
most effectual preparation for the German fed-
eral state or for the German empire of later
days" — W Maurenbrecher, Orinidung des
deutschen Reichs, pp. 4, 5. -" Paul Pfizer wrote
in 1831 his ' Correspondence of Two Germans,
the first writing in the German language in
which liberation from Austria and union with
Prussia was put down as the solution of the Ger-
man question, and in which faith in Prussia was
made a part of such love to the German father-
land as should be no longer a mere dream. . . .
' So little as the dead shall rise again this side
the grave, so little wiU Austria, which once held
the heritage of German fame and German glory,
ever again become for Germany what she has once
teen'" — W. Oncken, Das Zcitalter des Kaisers
Wilhelm (trans, from the German), v. l.pp. 69, 70.
—The formation of the ZoUverein "was the
most important occurrence since the wars of
liberation : a deed of peace of more far-reaching
consequences and productive of more lasting re-
sults than many a battle won. The economic
blessings of the ZoUverein soon began to show
themselves in the increasing sum total of the
amount of commerce and in the regularly grow-
ing customs revenues of the individual states.
These revenues, for example, increased between
1884 and 1842 from 13 to 21 million thalers.
Forei.n-n countries began to look with respect
and in part also with envy on this commercial
unity of Germany and on the results which could
not fail to come. ... A second event happened
in Germany in 1834, less marked in its begin-
nings and "yet scarcely less important m its re-
sults than tiie ZoUverein. Between Leipzig and
Dresden the first large raihroad in Germany was
started, the first mesh in that network of roada
that was soon to branch out in all directions and
spread itself over aU Germany. ... A direct
poUtical occurrence, independent of the ZoUver-
ein and the raihoads, was, in the course of the
thirties, to assist in awakening and strengthening
the idea of unity in the German people by mak-
in" evident and "plain the lack of such unity and
its°disastrous consequences. This was the Han-
overian 'coup d'etat' of the year 1837. . _ . In
that year William IV. of England died without
direct successors. . . . Hanover came into the
hands of the Duke of Cumberland. Ernest Au-
eustus. . . . The new king, soon after his in-
Su"-uration, refused to recognize the constitution
that had been given to Hanover in 1833, on the
ground that his ratification as next heir to the
throne had not been asked at that time. . ._.
By persistmit efforts Ernest Augustus . . . m
1840 brou"-ht about a constitution that suited
him Still more than this constitutional strug-
gle itself did a single incident connected with it
Sccupy and excite public opinion far and wide.
Seven professors of the Gottingen university
protested against the abrogation of the constitu-
tion of 1833. . . . Without more ado they were
dismissed from their positions. . . . The brave
deed of the Gottingen professors and the new
act of violence committed against them caused
intense excitement throughout all Germany.
In the course of the forties the idea ot
nationality penetrated more and more all the
pores of German opinion and gave to it more
and more, by pressure from all sides, the direc-
tion of a great and common goal. At first there
were only isolated attempts at reform ... but
soon the "national needs outgrew such single ex-
pressions of good will. ... A tendency began
to show itself in the public opinion of Ger
many to accept the plan of a Prussian leader
ship of aU iin- Austrian Germany."— K. Bieder
maun, Dreissig Jahre deutscher Oeschiehte, v. 1,
»n. 9-91. , ...
AD 1819-1847.— Arbitrary rulers and dis-
contented subjects.— The ferment before rev-
olution.— Formation ol the ZoUverein.— "The
history of Germany during the thirty years of
peace which followed [the Congress of Carlsbadj
is marked by very few events of importance. It
was a season of gradual reaction on the part of
the rulers, and of increasing impatience and en
mity on the part of the people. Instead of be-
coming loving famOies, as the Holy AUiance de-
si n-ned the states (except some of the iittle
principalities) were divided into two hostile
classes There was material growth everywhere ;
the wounds left by war and foreign occupation
\Yere gradually healed ; there was order, security
for all who abstained from politics, and a com-
fortable repose for such as were indifferent to the
future But it was a sad and disheartening
period for the men who were able to see clearly
how Germany, with all the elements of a freer
and strono;er"lite existing in her people, was fall-
ing behind the political development of other
countries. The three days' Revolution of 1830
which placed Louis Philippe on the throne of
France was followed by popular uprisings in
some parts of Germany. Prussia and -A-Ustria
were too strong, and their people too well held
in check, to be affected ; but in Brunswick the
despotic Duke, Karl, was deposed. Saxony and
Hesse-Cassel were obliged to accept co-rulers
1567
GERMANY, 1819-1847.
Arbitrary
Government.
GERMANY, 1848.
(out of their reigning families) and tlie English
Duke, Ernest Augustus, was made viceroy of
Hannover. These four States also adopted a
constitutional form of government. The Ger-
man Diet, as a matter of course, used what power
it possessed to counteract these movements, but
its influence was limited by its own laws of
action. The hopes and aspirations of the people
were kept alive, in spite of the system of repres-
sion, and some of the smaller States took advan-
tage of their independence to introduce various
measures of reform. As industry, commerce and
travel increased, the existence of so many boini-
daries, with their custom-houses, taxes and other
hindrances, became an unendurable burden. Ba-
varia and Wlirtemberg formed a customs union
in 1838, Prussia followed, and by 1836 all of Ger-
many except Austria was united in the Zoll-
verein (Tariff Union) [see Tariff Legislation
(Germany): A. D. 1833], which was not only a
great material advantage, but helped to inculcate
the idea of a closer political union. On the other
hand, however, the monarchical reaction against
liberal government was stronger than ever.
Ernest Augustus of Hannover arbitrarily over-
threw the constitution he had accepted, and Lud-
wig I. of Bavaria, renouncing all his former pro-
fessions, made his land a very nest of absolutism
and Jesuitism. In Prussia, such men as Stein,
Gueisenau, and Wilhelm von Humboldt had long
lost their influence, while others of less personal
renown, but of similar political sentiments, were
subjected to contemptible forms of persecution.
In March, 1835, Francis II. of Austria died, and
was succeeded by his son, Ferdinand I., a man of
such weak intellect that he was in some respects
idiotic. On the 7th of June, 1840, Frederick
William III. of Prussia died, and was also suc-
ceeded by his son, Frederick William IV., a man
of great wit and intelligence, who had made him-
self popular as Crown-prince, and whose acces-
sion the people hailed with joy, in the enthu.si-
astic belief that better days were coming. The
two dead monarchs, each of whom had reigned
43 years, left behind them a better memory
among their people than they actually deserved.
They were both weak, unstable and narrow-
minded ; had they not been controlled by others,
they would have ruined Germany ; but they were
alike of excellent personal character, amiable,
and very kindly disposed towards their subjects
so long as the latter were perfectly obedient and
reverential. There was no change in the condi-
tion of Austria, for Metternich remained the real
ruler, as before. In Prussia a few unimportant
concessions were made, an amnesty for political
offences was declared, Alexander von Humboldt
became the king's chosen associate, and much
was done for science and art ; but in their main
hope of a liberal reorganization of the govern-
ment, the people were bitterly deceived. Fred-
erick William IV. took no steps towards the
adoption of a Constitution ; he made the censor-
ship and the supervision of the police more
severe ; he Interfered in the most arbitrary and
bigoted manner in the system of religious in-
struction in the schools ; and all his acts showed
that his policy was to strengthen his throne by
the support of the nobility and the civil service,
without regard to the just claims of the people.
Thus, in spite of the external quiet and order, the
political atmosphere gradually became more sul-
try and disturbed. . . . There were signs of im-
patience in all quarters ; various local outbreaks
occurred, and the aspects were so threatening
that in February, 1847, Fi-ederick William IV.
endeavored to silence the growing opposition
by ordering the formation of a Legislative As-
sembly. But the provinces were represented,
not the people, and the measure only emboldened
the latter to clamor for a direct representation.
Thereupon, the king closed the Assembly, after
a short session, and the attempt was probably
productive of more harm than good. In most
of the other German States, the situation was
very similar ; everywhere there were elements of
opposition, all the more violent and dangerous,
because they had been kept down with a strong
hand for so many years." — B. Taylor, Bist. of
Germany, ch. 37.
Also in : C. A. Fyffe, Hist, of Modern Europe,
V. 2, ch. Sandl. — See, also, Austria: A. D. 1815-
1835.
A. D. 1820-1822. — The Congresses of Trop-
pau, Laybach and Verona. See Verona, The
Congress op.
A. D. 1835-1846.— Death of the Emperor
Francis I. of Austria. — Accession of Ferdi-
nand I. — Extinction of the Polish republic of
Cracow. — Its annexation to Austria. See
Austria: A. D. 1815-1846.
A. D. 1839-1840. — The Turko-Egyptian
question and its settlement. — Quadruple Al-
liance. See Titrks: A. D. 1831-1^40.
A. D. 1848 (March). — Revolutionary out-
breaks. — The King of Prussia heads a national
movement. — Mistaken battle of soldiers and
citizens at Berlin. — "The French revolution of
February, the flight of Louis Philippe and the
fall of the throne of the barricades, and the proc-
lamation of a republic, had kindled from one
end to the other of Europe the enthusiasm of the
republican party. The conflagration rapidly ex-
tended itself. The Rhenish provinces of Prussia,
whose near neighbourhood and former connexion
with France made them more peculiarly combus-
tible, broke out with a cry for the most extensive
reforms ; that is to say, for representative insti-
tutions, the passion for which had spread over
the whole of Germany. . . . The reform fever
which had attacked the Rhenish provinces
quickly spread to the rest of the body politic.
The urban populace — a class in all countries
rarely incited to agitation — took the lead. They
were headed by the students. Breslau, Kbnigs-
berg, and Berlin, were in violent commotion. In
the month of JMarch, a great open air meeting
was held at Berlin : it ended in a riot. The troops
were called out to act against the mob. For
near a week, Berlin was in a state of chronic dis-
turbance. The troops acted with great firmness.
The mob gathered together, but did not show
much fight; but they were dispersed with difB-
culty, and continued to offer a passive resistance
to the soldiers. On the 15th, ten persons were
said to have been killed, and over 100 wounded.
At the same time, similar scenes were being en-
acted at Breslau and Konigsberg, where several
persons lost their lives. A deputation from the
Rhenish provinces arrived at Berlin on the 18th,
bearing a petition from Cologne to the king for
reform. He promised to grant it. . . . Finding
he could not keep the movement in check, he re-
solved to put himself at the head of it. It was
probably the only course open to him, if he
would preserve his crown. . . . The lung must
1568
GERMANY, 1848.
Revolutionary
Movements.
GERMANY, 1848.
have previously had the questions which were
agitating Germany under careful consideration ;
for he at once published a proclamation embody-
ing the whole of them : the unity of Germany,
by forming it into a federal state, with a fed";al
representation ; representative institutions for the
separate states ; a general military system for all
Germany, under one federal banner; a German
fleet; a tribunal for settling disputes between
the states, and a right for all Germans to settle
and trade in any part of Germany they thought
fit ; the whole of Germany formed into one cus-
toms union, and included in the ZoUvereln ; one
system of money, weights, and measures; and
the freedom of the press. These were the sub-
jects touched upon. . . . The popularity of the
proclamation with the mob-leaders was un-
bounded, and the mob shouted. Every line of it
contained their own ideas, vigorously expressed.
Their delight was proportionate to their astonish-
ment. A crowd got together at the palace to ex-
press their gratitude ; the king came out of a
window, and was loudly cheered. Two regi-
ments of dragoons unluckily mistook the cheer-
ing for an attack, and began pushing them back
by forcing their horses forward. . . . Unfor-
tunately, as the conflict (if conflict it could be
called, which was only a bout of which could
push hardest) was going forward, two musket-
shots were fired by a regiment of infantry. It
appears that the muskets went off accidentally.
No one was injured by them. It is not clear
they were not blank cartridges; but the people
took fright. They imagined that there was a
design to slaughter them. At once they rushed
to arms; barricades were thrown up in every
street. . . . Sharpshooters placed themselves in
-the windows and behind the barricades, and
opened a fire on the soldiery. These, exasper-
ated by what they thought an unfair species of
fighting, were by no means unwilling for the
fray. . . . The troops carried barricade after bar-
ricade, and gave no quarter even to the unresist-
ing. As they took the houses, they slaughtered
all the sharpshooters they found in them, not
very accurately discriminating those engaged in
hostilities from those who were not. Horrible
cruelties were committed on both sides. . . . The
fight raged for fifteen hours. Either the king
lost his head when it began, or the troops, hav-
ing their blood up, would not stop. . . . The
firing began at two o'clock on the 18th of March,
and the authorities succeeded in withdrawing the
troops and stopping it the next morning at five
o'clock, they having been during that time suc-
cessful at all points. . . . The king put out a
manifesto at seven o'clock, declaring that the
whole business arose from an unlucky misunder-
standing between the troops and the people, as
it unquestionably did, and the people appear to
have been aware of the fact and ashamed of
themselves. ... A general amnesty was pro-
claimed for all parties concerned, and orders
were given to form at once a burgher guard to
supply the place of the military, who were to be
witlidrawn. A new ministry was appointed, of
a liberal character. . . . The troops were marched
out of the town, and were cheered by the people.
... It is estimated that, of the populace, about
200 were killed ; 187 received a public funeral.
No accurate account of the wounded can be ob-
tained. ... Of the troops, accox'ding to the of-
ficial returns, there fell 3 officers and 17 non-
commissioned officers and privates ; of wounded
there were 14 officers, 14 non-commissioned offi-
cers, and 235 privates, and 1 surgeon. . . . Tlie
king's object was to divert popular enthusiasm
into another channel ; he therefore assumed the
lead in the regeneration of Germany. On the
21st he issued a proclamation, enlarging on these
views, and rode through the streets with the
proscribed German tricolor on his helmet, and
was vociferously cheered as he passed along.
Prussia was not tlie first of the German states
where the old order of things was overturned.
During the whole of the month of March, Ger-
many underwent the process of revolution. . . .
On the 3d of March . . . the new order of things
. . . began at Wurtemberg. The Duke of Hesse-
Darmstadt abdicated. In Bavaria, things took a
more practical turn. The people insisted on the
dismissal of the king's mistress, Lola Montez:
she was sent away, but, trusting to the king's
dotage, she came back, police or no police — was
received by the king — he created her Countess
of Lansfeldt. This was a climax to which the
people were not prepared to submit. . . . The
king was compelled to expel her, to annul her
patent of naturalization, and resume the grant
he had made of property in her favour. This
was more than he could stand, and he shortly
after abdicated in favour of his heir. In Saxony
the king gave way, after his troops had refused
to act, and the freedom of the press was estab-
lished, and other popular demands granted. In
Vienna, the old system of Metternich was abol-
ished, after a revolution which was little more
than a street row. The king of Hanover refused
to move, but was eventually induced to receive
Stube as one of his ministers, who had been pre-
viously in prison for his opinions. However, he
was firmer than most of his brother monarchs,
and his country suffered less than the rest of
Germany in consequence." — E. S. Cayley, The
European Revolutions of 1848, v. 2: Germany,
ch. 2.
Also IN: C. E. Maurice, The Revolutionary
Movement of 1848-9, ch. 7.
A. D. 1848 (March— September).— Election
and meeting of the National Assembly at
Frankfort. — Resignation of the Diet. — Elec-
tion of Archduke John to be Administrator of
Germany. — Powerlessness of the new govern-
ment. — Troubles rising from the Schleswig-
Holstein question. — Outbreak at Frankfort. —
The setting in of Reaction. — "In south-western
Germany the liberal party set itself at the head
of the movement. . . . The Heidelberg assem-
bly of March 5th, consisting of the former oppo-
sition leaders in the various Chambers, issued a
call to the German nation, and chose a commis-
sion of seven men, who were to make proposi-
tions with regard to a permanent parliament and
to summon a preliminary parliament at Frank-
fort. This preliminary parliament assembled in
St. Paul's church, March 31st. . . . The ma-
jority, consisting of constitutional monarchists,
resolved that an assembly chosen by direct vote
of the people . . . should meet in the month of
May, with full and sovereign power to frame a
constitution for all Germany. . . . These meas-
ures did not satisfy the radical party, whose
leaders were Hecker and Struve. As their propo-
sition to set up a sovereign assembly, and repub-
licanize Germany, was rejected, they left Frank-
fort, and held in the higlUands of Baden popular
99
L569
GERMANY, 1848.
The National
GERMANY, 1848.
meetings at. which they demanded the proclama-
tion of the republic. A Hesse- Darmstadt corps
under Frederic von Gagern . . . was sent to
disperse them. An engagement took place at
Kandern, in which Gagern was shot, but Hecker
and his followers were put to flight. . . . The
disturbances in Odenwald, and in the Main and
Tauber districts, once the home of the peasant
war, were of a different description. There the
country people rose against the landed proprie-
tors, destroyed the archives, with the odious
tithe and rental books, and demolished a few
castles. The Diet, which in the meantime con-
tinued its illusory existence, thought to extricate
itself from the present difficulties by a few con-
cessions. It . . . invited the governments to
send confidential delegates to undertake, along
with its members, a revision of the constitution
of the confederation. . . . These confidential
delegates, among them the poet Uhland, from
WUrtemberg, began their work on the 30th of
March. The elections for the National Assembly
stirred to their innermost fibres the German peo-
ple, dreaming of the restoration of their former
greatness. May 18th about 320 delegates assem-
bled in the Imperial Hall, in the Romer (the
Rathhaus), at Frankfort. . . . Never has a po-
litical assembly contained a greater number of
Intellectual and scholarly men — men of charac-
ter and capable of self-sacrifice ; but it certainly
was not the forte of these numerous professors
and jurists to conduct practical politics. The
moderate party was decidedly in the majorit)'.
... It was decided . . . that a provisional cen-
tral executive should be created in the place of
the Diet, and created, not by the National As-
sembly in concert with the princes, but by the
National Assembly alone. June 37th, following
out the bold conception of its president, the as-
sembly decided to appoint an irresponsible ad-
ministrator, with a responsible ministry; and
June 39th, Archduke John of Austria was chosen
Administrator of Germany by 436 votes out of
546. He made his entry into Frankfort July
11th, and entered upon his office on the following
day. The hour of the Diet had struck, appar-
ently for the last time. It resigned its authority
into the hands of the Administrator, and, after
an existence of 33 years, left the stage un-
mourned. Archduke John was a popular prince,
who found more pleasure in the mountain air of
Tyrol and Styria than in the perfumed atmos-
phere of the Vienna court. But, as a novice 66
years of age, he was not equal to the task of
governing, and as a thorough Austrian he lacked
a heart for all Germany. The main question for
him and for the National Assembly was, what
force they could apply in case the individual
governments refused obedience to the decrees
issued in the name of the National Assembly.
This was the Achilles's heel of the German revo-
lution. . . . Orders were issued by the federal
minister of war that all the troops of the Con-
federation should swear allegiance to the federal
administrator on the 6th of August ; but Prussia
and Austria, with the exception of the Vienna
garrison, paid no attention to these orders ; Ernest
Augustus, in Hanover, successfully set his hard
head against them, and only the lesser states
obeyed. . . . There certainly was no other way
out of the difficulty than by the formation of a
parliamentary army. . . . Instead of meeting
these dangers resolutely, and in a common-sense
way, the Assembly left matters to go as they
would, outside of Frankfort. One humiliation
was submitted to after another, while the Assem-
bly, busying itself for months with a theoretical
question, as if it were a juristic faculty, entered
into a detailed consideration of the fundamental
rights of the German people. The Schleswig-
Holstein question, which had just entered upon
a new phase of its existence, was the first matter
of any importance to manifest the disagreement
between the central administration and the sepa-
rate governments ; and it opened, as well, a dan-
gerous gulf in the Assembly itself. The question
at issue was one of succession [see ScANDiKAVTAir
States (Denmark) : A. D. 1848-1862]. . . . The
Estates of the duchies [Schleswig and Holstein]
established a provisional government, applied at
Frankfort for the admission of Schleswig into
the German confederation, and besought armed
assistance both there and at Berlin. The prelim-
inary parliament [tliis having occurred in April,
before the meeting of the National Assembly]
approved the application of Schleswig for ad-
mission, and commissioned Prussia, in conjunc-
tion with the 10th army corps of the Confedera-
tion, to occupy Schleswig and Holstein. On the
21st of April, 1848, General Wrangel crossed the
Eider as commander of the forces of the Confed-
eration; and on the 33d, in conjunction with the
Schleswig-Holstein troops, he drove the Danes
out of the Danewerk. On the following day the
Danes were defeated at Oeversee by the 10th
army corps, and all Schleswig-Holstein was free.
Wrangel entered Jutland and imposed a war tax
of 3,000,000 thalers (about $3, 250, 000). He
meant to occupy this province until the Danes —
who, owing to the inexcusable smallness of the
Prussian navy, were in a position unhindered to
injure the commerce of the Baltic — had indem-
nified Prussia for her losses ; but Prussia, touched
to the quick by the destruction of her commerce,
and intimidated by the threatening attitude of
Russia, Sweden, and England, recalled her
troops, and concluded an armistice at Malmo, in
Sweden, on the 36th of August. All measures
of the provisional government were pronounced
invalid ; a common government for the duchies
was to be appointed, one half by Denmark, and
the other by the German confederation; the
Schleswig troops were to be separated from those
of Holstein ; and the war was not to be renewed
before the 1st of April, 1849 — i. e. , not in the
winter, a time unfavorable for the Danes. This
treaty was unquestionably no masterpiece on the
part of the Prussians. All the advantage was
on the side of the conquered Danes. ... It was
not merely the radicals who urged, if not the
final rejection, at least a provisional cessation of
tlie arvnistice, and the countermanding of the
order to retreat. ... A bill to that effect, de-
manded by the honor of Germany, had scarcely
been passed by the majority, on the 5th of Sep-
tember, when the moderate party reflected that
such action, involving a breach with Prussia,
must lead to civil war and revolution, and call
into play the wildest passions of the already ex-
cited people. In consequence of this the previ-
ous vote was rescinded, and the armistice of
Malmo accepted by the Assembly, after the most
excited debates, September 16th." This gave the
radicals a welcome opportunity to appeal to the
fists of the lower classes, and imitate the June
outbreak of the social democrats In Paris. . . .
1570
GERMANY, 1848.
The FriLSsian
National Assembly.
GERMANY, 1848-1850.
A collision ensued [September 18] ; barricades
were erected, but were carried by the troops
without much bloodshed. . . . General Auers-
wald and Prince Lichnowsky, riding on horse-
back near the city, were followed by a mob.
They took refuse in a gardener s house on tne
Bornheimer-heidc, but were dragged out and
murdered witli tlie most disgraceful atrocities
Thereupon the city was declared in a state ot
siege all societies were forbidden, and strong
measures were taken for the maintenance ot
order The March revolution had passed its
season, and reaction was again beginning to
bloom . Reaction drew moderate men to its
side, and then used them as stepping-stones to
Immoderation. "-W. Miiller, Political Hut. of
Becent Tim£s, sect. n.
Also k; Sir A. Alison, Hist, of Europe, 1815-
1853, ch. 53. . . . .„
A D. 1848-1849.— Revolutionary risings in
Austria and Hungary.-Bombardment of Vi-
enna.-The war in Hungary.-Abdication of
the Emperor Ferdinand.-Accession of Fi-a"-
cis Joseph. See AusTRLV. A. D. 1848-lb49.
A D 1848-1850.— The Prussian National
Assembly, and its dissolution.-The work and
the failure of the National Assembly of Frank-
fort — Refusal of the imperial crown by the
King- of Prussia.— End of the movement for
Germanic unity.-" The elections for the new
Prussian Constituent Assembly, as well as tor
the Frankfort Parliament, were to take place
(May 1) The Prussian National Assembly was
to meet May 23. The Prussian people, under
the new election law, if left to themselves, would
have quietly chosen a body of competent repre-
sentatives; but the revolutionary party thought
nothing could be done without the as and the
musket. ... The people of Berlin, from March
to October, were . . . really in the hands of the
mob . The newly-elected Prussian National
Assembly was opened by the king. May 31. . .
One of the first resolutions proceeded from Beh-
rend of the Extreme Left. ' The Assembly rec-
o-^nizes the revolution, and declares that the com-
batants who fought at the barricades, on March
18 and 19, merit the thanks of the country. . . .
The motion was rejected. On issuing from the
building into the street, after the sitting, the
members who had voted against it, were received
by the mob with threats and insults. • • • la the
evening of the same day, in consequence ot the
reiection of the Behrend resolution the arsenal
was attacked by a large body of aborers. The
burgher-guard were not prepared, and macle a
feeble defense. There was a great riot. The
building was stormed and partially plundered.
The sketch of a constitution proposed by
the kino- was now laid before the Assembly. It
provided two Chambers — a House of Lords, and
a House of Commons. The last to be elected by
the democratic electoral law ; the first to consist
of all the princes of the royal house m their own
rin-ht and, in addition, 60 members from the
wealthiest of the kingdom to be selected by the
king their office hereditary. This constitution
was immediately reiected. On the rejection of
the constitution the ministry Camphausen re-
signed ■ The Assembly, elected exclusively
to frame a constitution, instead of performing its
duty . attempted to legislate, with despotic
power, on subjects over which it had no juris-
diction As the drama drew nearer its close, the
Assembly became more open in its intention to
overthrow the monarchy. On October 13 dis-
cussions began upon a resolution to strike trom
the king's tftle the words, 'By the grace of God.
and to tbolish all titles of nobility and distinc-
tions of rank. The Assembly building, during
the sitting, was generally surrounded by threat-
ening crowds. . . . Of course, during this period
busiSess was suspended, and want, beggary, and
drunkenness, as well as lawless disorder, in-
creased . The writer was one day alone in the
diplomatic box, following an excited debate. A
speaker in the tribune was urging the overthrow
of the monarchy, when suddenly the entire As-
sembly was struck mute with stupefaction, ine
Prince of Prussia, the late Emperor WiUiaml.,
supposed to be in England, in terror for his lite,
appeared at the door, accompanied by two offi-
cers all Ihree in full uniform, and marched di-
rectly up to the tribune. The Assembly could
not have been more astounded had old Barbarossa
himself, with his seven-hundred-years-long beard,
marched into the hall out of his mountain cave.
After a slight delay, the President, Mr. von
Grabow, accorded the tribune to the prince He
ascended and made a short address, which was
listened to with breathless attention, by every
individual present. He spoke with the assurance
of an heir to a throne which was not m the
slightest danger of being abolished ; but he spoke
with the modesty and good sense of a pnnce who
frankly accepted the vast transformation which
the government had undergone, and who in-
tended honestly to endeavor to carry out the wiU
of the whole nation. . . . This was one of many
occasions on which the honesty and superiority
of the prince's character made itself felt even by
his enemies. . . . Berlin was now thoroughly
tired of street tumults and the horn of the
burgher-guard. . . . The Prussian troops which
had been engaged in the Schleswig-Holstein war,
were now placed under General Wrange , . _. .
He proceeded without delay to encircle the city
with the 35,000 troops. At the same time, a
cabinet order of the king (September 31 named
a new ministry. ... At this moment, the revo-
lution over all Europe was nearly exhausted.
Cavaignac had put down the June insurrection.
The Prussian flag waved above the flag ot Ger-
manv The Frankfort Parliament was rapidly
dvin'r out. ... On November 2, Count Bran-
denburg stated to the Assembly that the king
had requested him to form a new ministry . _.
On the same day. Count Brandenburg, with his
colleagues, appeared in the hall of the Prussian
National Assembly, and announced his desire to
read a message from his Majesty the King. . . .
' As the debates are no longer free in Berlin, the
Assembly is hereby adjourned to November 27.
It will then meet, and thereafter hold its meet-
ino-s not in Berlin, but in Brandenburg (fitty
mfle's from Berlin). After reading the message
Count Brandenburg, his colleagues, and all tne
members of the Right retired. ., . .. The Assem-
blv adjourned, and met again m the evening.
" On November 10, the Assembly met again.
Their debates were interrupted by General
Wrann-el who had entered Berhn by the Bran-
denburg gate, at the head of 25,000 troops . . .
An officer from General Wrangel entered thehaU
and politely announced tliat he had received
orders to disperse the Assembly. The members
submitted, and left the hall. ... An order was
]571
GERMANY, 1848-1850.
End of
the Revolution,
GERMANY, 1861-1866.
now issued dissolving the burgher-guard. On
the 12th, Berlin was declared in a state of siege.
. . . During the state of siege, the Assembly
met again under the presidency of Mr. von
Unruh. A body of troops entered the hall, and
commanded the persons present to leave it. Pres-
ident von Unruh declared he could not consis-
tently obey the order. There was, he said, no
power higher than the Assembly. The soldiers
did not fire on him, or cut him down with their
sabers ; but good-naturedly lifted his chair with
him in it, and gently deposited both in tlie street.
. . . On November 27, Count Brandenburg went
to Brandenburg to open the Assembly; but he
could not find any. It had split into two parts.
. . . There was no longer a quorum. Thus the
Prussian National Assembly disappeared. On
December 5, appeared a royal decree, dissolving
the National Assembly. . . . Then appeared a
provisional octroyirte electoral law, for the elec-
tion of two Chambers. . . . The new Chambers
met February 26, 1849. . . . Prussia had thus
closed the revolution of 1848, as far as she was
concerned. Bismarck was elected member of
the Second Chamber." Meantime, in the Frank-
fort Parliament, "the great question, Austria's
position with regard to the new Germany, came
up in the early part of November, 1848. Among
many propositions, we mention three: I. Aus-
tria should abandon her German provinces. . . .
II. Austria should remain as a separate whole,
with all her provinces. . . . III. The Austrian
plan. All the German States, and all the Austrian
provinces (German and non-German), should be
united into one gigantic empire . . . with Aus-
tria at the head. . . . Meanwhile, the debates
went on upon the questions: What shall be the
form, and who shall be the chief of what may be
called the Prussian-Germany ? Among the va-
rious propositions (all rejected) were the follow-
ing : I. A Directorj', consisting of Austria. Prus-
sia, Bavaria, Wlirtemberg, and Sa.xony. II. The
King of Prussia and Emperor of Austria to alter-
nate in succession every six years, as Emperor.
III. A chief magistracy, to which every German
citizen might aspire. IV. Revival of the old
Bundestag, with certain improvements. On Janu-
ary 23, 1849, the resolution that one of the reign-
ing German princes should be elected, with the
title of Emperor of Germany, was adopted (258
against 211). As it was plain the throne could be
offered to no one but Prussia, this was a breach
between the Parliament and Austria. . . . The
first reading of the constitution was completed,
February 3, 1849. The middle and smaller Ger-
man States declared themselves ready to accept it,
but the kingdoms remained silent. . . . The real
question before the Parliament was, whether
Prussia or Austria should be leader of Germany.
... On March 37, the hereditability passed by a
majority of four. On JIarch 28, the constitution,
with the democratic electoral law, universal suf-
frage, the ballot, and the suspensive veto, was
voted and accepted. . . . President Simson then
called the name of each member to vote upon the
question of the Emperor. There were 290 votes
for Frederic William IV. . . . A deputation, con-
sisting of 30 of the most distinguished members,
was immediately sent to Berlin to communicate to
the king his election as Emperor. ... To the offer
of the crown, his Majesty replied he 'could not ac-
cept without the consent of all the governments,
and without having more carefully examined the
constitution.'. . . Austria instantly rejected the
constitution, protested against the authority of
the Parliament, and recalled all her representa-
tives from Frankfort. The King of Wllrtemberg
accepted ; but rejected the House of Hohenzollern
as head of the Empire. Bavaria, Hanover, Sax-
onjr, rejected ; 28 of the smaller German States
accepted. In these were included the free-cities
Hamburg, Bremen, Lubeck. ... On April 28,
Prussia addressed a circular note to the govern-
ments, inviting them to send representatives to
Berlin, for the purpose of framing a new constitu-
tion. The note added : In case of any attempt to
force the Fi-ankf ort constitution upon the country,
Prussia was read j' to render to the governments all
necessary assistance. . . . On May 3, an insurrec-
tion broke out in Saxony. . . . On May 6, Prussian
troops appeared, called by the Saxon government,
and attacked the barricades. The battle lasted
three days. . . . The insurgents abandoned the
city. Dresden was declared in a state of siege.
. . . The King of Prussia now recalled [from the
Frankfort Parliament] all the Prussian represen-
tatives. . . . By the gradual disappearance of
most of the moderate members . . . the Parlia-
ment, now a mere revolutionary committee, dwin-
dled down to about 100 members. A resolution,
proposed by Carl Vogt, was passed to transfer
the sittings to Stuttgart. . . . On June 6, the
Rump Parliament in Stuttgart elected a central
government of its own. . . . The Assembly was
then dispersed. . . . The German revolutions
commenced and ended in the Grand Duchy of
Baden. . . . By a mutiny in the regular army,
it intrenched itself in the first-class fortress, Ras-
tadt. There were, in all, three attempts at revolu-
tion in Baden [and one in the Palatinate]. ... A
large number of the leaders were tried and shot.
... It was for taking part in this insurrection
that Gottfried Kinkel was sentenced to impris-
onment for life in the fortress of Spandau. Carl
Schurz aided him in escaping." — T. S. Fay, TAe
Three Germanys, ch. 35-26 (w. 2).
Also in : C. A. Fyffe, Hist, of Modern Europe,
i\ 3, cli. 2. — H. von Sybel, The Founding of the
German Empire, bk. 2-5 (v. 1-3). — See, also, Con-
stitution OF Prussi.\.
A. D. 1848-1862. — Opening of the Schleswig-
Holstein question. — War ■with Denmark. See
Scandinavian States (Denmabk) : A. D. 1848-
1863.
A. D. 1853-1875. — Commercial treatieswith
Austria and France. — Progress towards free
trade. See Tariff Legislation (Germany):
A. D. 1853-1893.
A. D. 1861-1866.— Advent of King William
I. and Prince Bismarck in Prussia. — The
"Blood and Iron Speech." — Reopening of
the Schleswig-Holstein question. — Conquest
of the duchies by Prussia and Austria. — Con-
sequent quarrel and war. — King Frederick Wil-
liam IV. [of Prussia], never a man of strong
head, had for years been growing weaker and
more eccentric. In 1857, symptoms of softening
of the brain began to show themselves. That
disorder so developed itself that in October, 1857,
he gave a delegation to the Prince of Prussia [his
brother] to act as regent ; but the first commis-
sion was only for three months. The Prince's
commission was renewed from time to time ; but
it soon became apparent that Frederick William's
case was hopeless, and his brother was formally
installed as Regent in October, 1858. Ultimately
1572
GERMANY, 1861-1866.
Bismarck.
GERMANY, 1861-1866.
the King died iu January, 1861, and his brother
succeeded to the throne as William I. In Sep-
tember, 1863, Otto von Bismarck became the new
King's chief minister, witli General Roon for
Minister of War, appointed to carry out a reor-
ganization of the Prussian army which King
William had determined to effect. " Otto von
Bismarck- Schoenhauseu, born April, 1, 181.5,
was a Junker [squire, aristocrat] from top to toe,
but from the very first, as was the case with all
the Junkers of Prussia, Pomeraniaand the Mark,
his lite had been thoroughly merged in that of
the Prussian state. He had first called attention
to himself in 1847 at tlie general diet [Vereinigter
Landtag]. In 1849 he came forward in the
chamber of deputies, in 18.50 in the Union Parlia-
ment at Frankfort — always as the goad of the
extreme right, and each time his appearance
gave the signal for a violent conflict. Perfectly
unsparing of all his opponents, very anti-liberal
but very Prussian, very national-minded, in spite
of being such a Junker, Bismarck flared up with
especial violence against the democratic attacks
on the army and the monarchy. ... To Frank-
fort Bismarck came as the sworn defender of
the policy of reaction. ... In Frankfort, too,
he learned thoroughly to know German affairs ;
the utter weakness of the Confederation and the
misery of having so many petty states. ... To
Ills mind the goal of Prussian policy was to drive
Austria out of Germany and then to bring about
a subordination of the other German states to
Prussia. . . . Nor did he make the least secret
of his warlike attitude towards Austria. When
an Austrian arch-duke, who was passing through,
once asked him maliciously whether all the many
decorations which he wore on his breast had been
won by bravery in battle : ' All gained before
the enemy, all gained here in Frankfort,' was the
ready answer. In the year 1859 came the com-
plications between Austria and Italy, the latter
being joined by France. This Italian war be-
tween Austria and France thoroughly roused the
German nation. . . . Many wanted to protect
Austria, others showed a disinclination to enter
the lists for Austria's rule over Italy. . . . Bis-
marck's advice at this time was that Prussia
should side against Austria and should join
Italy. In the spring of 1859, however, he was
transferred from Frankfort on the Main to St.
Petersburg : ' put on ice on the Neva,' as he said
himself, 'like champagne for future use.' . . . In
June, 1859, in view of the Italian war, it had
been decreed in Prussia that the army should be
mobilized and kept iu readiness to fight. . . .
Wlien, later, in the summer of this year, the
probability of war had gone by, the Landwehr
was not dismissed but, on the contrary, a begin-
ning was made with a new formation of regi-
ments which had already been planned and talked
over. ... On February 10, 1860, the question
of the military reorganization was laid before the
diet, where doubts and objections were raised
against it. . . . On the 4th of May, at the same
time when the law about civil marriages was re-
jected, the land-tax, by which the cost of the
army-reorganization was to have been covered,
was refused by the Upper House. The liberals
were disappointed and angered. The ministry
was soon in a bad dilemma ; should it give way
to the liberal opposition and dissolve the newly
formed regiments ? The expedient that was
thought of seemed clever enough but it led in
15'
reality to a blind alley and was productive of the
most baneful consequences. The ministry moved
a single grant of 9,000,000 thalers for the pur-
pose of completing the army and maintaining
its efficiency on the former footing. The mo-
tion was carried on May 15, 1860, by a vote of
315 against 3. . . . The new elections for the
house of deputies iu December, 1861, produced a
diet of an entirely different stamp from that of
18.58. . . . The moderate majority was now to
atone for the sin of not having come to any real
arrangement with the ministry on the army
question; for the new majority came to Berlin
with the full intention of crushing the army-
reform. . . . The chief task of the newly formed
ministry of 1863 was to solve the military ques-
tion, for the longer it had remained in abeyance
the more complicated had the matter become.
The newly-elected diet had been in session since
the 19th of May. . . . The battle cry of the ma-
jority of the diet was that all further demands of
the government for the military reform were to
be refused. . . . By September, 1863, the belli-
gerent and uncompromising attitude of the lib-
eral majority had induced King William to lay
aside his earlier distrust of Bismarck. He al-
lowed him to be summoned and placed him at
the head of the ministry. Most stirring was the
first audience which Bismarck had with his king
in the Park of Babelsberg on September 33. The
king first of all laid before Bismarck the decla-
ration of his abdication. Very much startled,
Bismarck said ; ' To that it should never be al-
lowed to come ! ' The king replied that he had
tried everything and knew no other alternative.
His convictions, contrary to which he could not
act, contrary to which he could not reign, for-
bade him to relinquish the army-reorganization.
Thereupon Bismarck explained to the king his
own different view of the matter and closed with
the request that his Majesty might abandon all
thoughts of abdication. 'The king than asked
the minister if he woidd undertake to carry on
the government without a majority and without
a budget, Bismarck answered both questions
iu the affirmative and with the utmost decision.
. . . The alliance between the king and his min-
ister was closed and cemented on that 33rd of
September in Babelsberg to endure tor all time."
— W. Maurenbrecher, Grundinig des deutschen
liciehs (trans, from the German), p. 13. — A
week later, Bismarck made his famous "Blood
and Iron " speech in the Prussian Diet, when he
said ; " It is a fact, the great self-assertion of
individuality among us makes constitutional
government very iiard in Prussia. . . . We are
perhaps too ' cultured ' to tolerate a constitution ;
we are too critical ; the ability to pass judgment
on measures of the government or acts of the
legislature is too universal; there is a large num-
ber of ' C'atilinarian Characters ' [existences in
the original] in the land whose chief interest is
in revolutions. All this may sound paradoxical;
yet it proves how hard constitutional life is in
Prussia. The people are too sensitive about the
faults of the government ; as if the whole did
not suffer when this or that individual minister
blunders. Public opinion is changeable, the press
is not public opinion ; every one knows how tlie
pre.ss originates ; the representatives have the
higher task of directing opinion, of being above
it. To return once more to our people : our
blood is too hot, we are fond of bearing an armor
73
GERMANY, 1861-1866. Prussia ayainst Austria. GERMANY, 1861-1866.
too large for our small body ; now let us utilize
it. Germany does not look at Prussia's liberalism
but at its power. Let Bavaria, Wiirtemberg,
Baden indulge in liberalism, yet no one will as-
sign to them the role of Prussia ; Prussia must
consolidate its might and hold it together for
the favorable moment, which has been allowed
to pass unheeded several times. Prussia's boun-
daries, as determined by the Congress of Vienna,
are not conducive to its wholesome existence
as a sovereign state. Not by speeches and res-
olutions of majorities the mighty problems of
the age are solved — that was the mistake of
1848 and 1849 — but by Blood and Ima."— Die
Politiselun Reden des Filrsten, Bismarck (trans,
from tlie German) v. 3, pp. 20, 28-30. — Bismarck
found his first opportunity for the aggrandize-
ment of Prussia in a reopening of the Sleswig-
Holsteiu question, which came about in Novem-
ber, 1863, when "Frederic of Denmark died,
and Prince Christian succeeded to the throne of
that kingdom. Already before his accession, the
duchies were possessions of the Danish mon-
archy, but had in certain respects a separate ad-
ministrative existence. This Denmark, in the
year of Christian's accession, had materially in-
fringed in the case of Sleswig, by a law which
virtually incorporated that duchy with the Danish
monarchy. The German Confederation protested
against this ' Danification ' of Sleswig, and
having pronounced a decree of Federal execution
against the aev/ King of Denmark as Duke of
Holsteiu and, in virtue of that duchy, a member
of the German Confederation, sent into Holstein
Federal troops belonging to the smaller States of
the Confederation. The Confederation, as a col-
lective body, favoured the establishment of the
independence of the duchies, and had with it the
wishes probably of the great mass of the German
nation. But the independence of Sleswig and
Holstein scarcely suited the views of Bismarck.
He desired the annexation to Prussia of at all
events Holstein, because in Holstein is the great
harbour of Kiel, all important in view of the new
fleet with which he purposed equipping Prussia ;
if Sleswig could be cwnpassed along with Hol-
stein, so much the better. But there were two
difliculties in Bismarck's way. Prussia was a
co-signatory of the Treaty of London. If he
were to grasp at the duchies single-handed, a
host of enemies might confront him. England
was burning to take up arms in 'the cau.se of the
father of the beautiful princess she had adopted
as her own. The German Confederation would
oppose Prussia's naked effort to aggrandise her-
self ; and Austria, in the double character of a
party to the Treaty of London and of a member
of the Confederation, would rejoice in the oppor
tunity to strike a blow at a power of whose rising
pretensions she had begun to be jealous. The
wily Bismarck had to dissemble. He made the
proposal to Austria that the two states should
ignore their participation as individual States in
the Treaty of London, and that as corporate
members of the German Confederation they
should constitute themselves the executors of the
Federal decree, and put aside the minor states
whose troops had been charged with that office.
Austria acceded. It was a bad hour for her
when she did, yet she moves no compassion for
the misfortunes which befell her as the issue.
. . . The Diet had to s\ibmit. The Austro-Prus-
siau troops marched through Holstein into Sles-
wig, and on the 2nd of February, 1864, struck at
the Danes occupying the Dannewerke. . . . The
venerable Marshal Wrangel was commander-in-
chief of the combined forces until after the fall
of Diippel, when Prince Frederic Charles suc-
ceeded him in that position ; but throughout the
campaign the control of the dispositions was
mainly exercised by the Red Prince. But neither
strategy nor tactics were very strenuously
brought into use for the discomfiture of the un-
fortunate Danes. Their ruin was wrought partly
because of the overwhelmingly superior force of
their allied opponents, partly because of their
own unpreparedness for war in almost everj'thing
save the possession of heroic bravery ; but most
of all by the flre of the needle-gun and the Prus-
sian advantage in the possession of rifled artillery.
Only part of the Prussian infantry had used the
needle-gun in the reduction of the Baden insur-
rection in 1848 ; now, however, the whole army
was equipped with it. . . . In their retreat from
the Dannewerke into the Dt'ippel position, the
Danes suffered severely from the inclemency of
the weather, and fought a desperate rear-guard
engagement with the Austrians. . . . The Prus-
sians undertook the task of reducing Diippel ;
the Austrians marched northward into Jutland,
and driving back the Danish troops they en-
countered in their march, sat down before the
fortress of Fredericia, and swept the Little Belt
with their cannon. The sieges, both of Di'ippel
and of Fredericia, were conducted with extreme
inertness." But the former was taken and the
latter abandoned. " The Danish war was termi-
nated by the Treaty of Vienna on the 30th Octo-
ber, 1864, under which the duchies of Sleswig,
Holstein, and Lauenburg were handed over to
the sovereigns of Austria and Prussia. . . . Out
of the Danish war of 1864 grew almost inevita-
bly the war of 1866, between Prussia and Aus-
tria. The wolves quite naturally wrangled over
the carcase. . . . 'The condominium of the two
Powers in the duchies produced constant fric-
tion, which was probably Bismarck's intention,
especially as Prussia had taken care to keep
stationed in them twice as many troops as Aus-
tria had left there. Relations were becoming
very strained when in August, 1865, the Em-
peror Francis Joseph and King William met at
the little watering-place of Gastein, and from
their interview originated the short-lived ar-
rangement known as the Convention of Gastein.
By that compact, while the two Powers pre-
served the common sovereignty over the duchies,
Austria accepted the administration of Holstein,
Prussia undertaking that of Sleswig. Prussia
was to have rights of way through Holstein to
Sleswig, was given over the right of construc-
tion of a North Sea and Baltic Canal ; and while
Kiel was constituted a Federal harbour, Prussia
was authorised to construct there the requisite
fortifications and marine establishments, and to
maintain an adequate force for the protection of
these. Assuming the arrangement to be pro-
visional, as on all hands it was regarded, Prussia
clearly had the advantage under it, . . , But
the Gastein Convention contained another pro-
vision — that Austria should sell to Prussia all
her rights in the duchy of Lauenburg (an out-
lying appanage of Holstein) for the sum of
2,500,000 thalers: thus making market of rights
of which she was but a trustee for the Ger-
man Confederation. The Convention of Gastein
1574
GERMANY, 1861-1866.
Seven Weeks War.
GERJVIANY, 1866.
pleased nobody, but that mattered little to Bis-
marck. . . . Bickerings recommenced before the
year 1865 was out, and early in 1866 Austria began
to arm. ... In M;>rch, 1866, a secret treaty was
formed between Italy and Prussia. . . . Prussia
threw the Convention of Gastein to the winds by
civilly but masterfully turning the Austrian bri-
gade of occupation out of Holstein. Then Austria
in the Federal Diet, complaining that by this act
Prussia had disturbed the peace of the German
Confederation, moved for a decree of Federal
execution against that state, to be enforced by
the Confederation's armed strength. On the
14th June, Austria's motion was carried by the
Diet, its last act ; for Prussia next day wrecked
the flimsy organisation of the German Confedera-
tion, by declaring war against three of its com-
ponent members, Hanover, Hesse, and Saxony.
There was no formal declaration of war between
Austria and Prussia, only a notification of in-
tended hostile action sent by the Prussian com-
manders to the Austrian foreposts. On the 17th
the Emperor Francis Joseph published his war
manifesto ; King William on the 18th emitted
his to ' My People ; ' on the 20th, Italy declared
war against Austria and Bavaria." — A. Forbes,
William of Oermani/, c/i. 7-8. — See, also, Scan-
dinavian States (Denmark): A. D. 1848-1863.
Also in : H. von Sybel, T/ie Fonnding of the
German Empire, bk. 9-16 {v. 3-4). — C. Lowe,
Prince Bismarck, ch. 5-7 (?'. 1), and app. A, B,
C{i\ S).— J. G. L. Hesekiel, Life of Bismnrck.
bk. 5, ch. 3. — Count von Beust, Memoirs, v. 1, ch.
22-28.
A. D. 1863.— First Socialist Party. See
Social Movements : A. D. 1863-1864.
A. D. 1866.— The Seven "Weeks War.—
Defeat of Austria. — Victory and Supremacy
of Prussia. — Her Absorption of Hanover,
Hesse, Nassau, Frankfort and Schleswig-
Holstein. — Formation of the North German
Confederation. — Exclusion of Austria from
the Germanic organization. — "Prussia had
built excellent railroads throughout the country,
and quietly placed her troops on the frontier;
within 14 days she had 500,000 men under arms.
By the end of May they were on the frontiers
ready for action, while Austria was only half
prepared, and her allies only beginning to arm.
On the 14th of June the diet, by a vote of nine
to six, had ordered the immediate mobilization
of a federal army ; whereupon Prussia declared
the federal compact dissolved and extinguished.
In Vienna and the petty courts men said,
' Within fourteen days after the outbreak of
hostilities the allied armies will enter Berlin in
triumph and dictate peace ; the power of Prussia
will be broken by two blows. ' The Legitimists
were exultant; even the majority of the
democracy in South Germany joined with the
Ultramontane party in sliouting for Austria. On
the 10th of June, Bismark laid before the Ger-
man governments the outlines of a new federal
constitution, but was not listened to; onthel5tli
he made proposals to the states in the immediate
neighborhood of Prussia for a peace on these
foundations, and demanded their neutrality, add-
ing that if they declined his peaceful offers he
would treat them as enemies. The cabinets of
Dresden and Hanover, of Cassel and Wiesbaden,
declined them. Immediately, on the night of
the 15th and 16th of June, Prussian troops
entered Hanover, Hesse and Saxony. In four
or five days Prussia had disarmed all North
Germany, and broken all resistance from tlie
North Sea to the Main. On the 18th of June,
the Prussian general Bayer entered Cassel ; the
Elector was surprised at Wilhelmshohe. As he
still refused all terms he was arrested by the
direct order of the king of Prussia and sent as
a prisoner to Stettin. On the 17th, General
Vogel von Falkenstein entered Hanover. King
George with his army of 18,000 men sought to
escape to South Germany. After a gallant
struggle at Langensalza on the 37th, his brave
troops were surrounded. Tlie King capitulated
on the 39th. His army was disbanded, he him-
self allowed to go to Vienna. On the 18tli the
Prussians were in Dresden ; on the 19th, in
Leipzig; by the 20th, all Saxony except the
fortress of Konigstein was in their hands. The
king and army of Saxony, on the approach of
the Prussians, had left the country by the rail-
roads to Bohemia to form a junction with the
Austrians. The Saxon army consisted of 33,000
men and 60 cannon. Every one had expected
Austria to occupy a country of such strategic
value as Saxony before the Prussians could
touch it. The Austrian army consisted of seven
corps, 180,000 infantry, 24,000 cavalry, 763
guns. The popular opinion had forced the
emperor to make Benedek the commander-in-
chief in Bohemia. Everything there was new
to him. The Prussians were divided into three
armies; the army of the Elbe, 40,000 men, under
Herwarth von Bittenfeld; the first army, 100,000
men, under Prince Frederick Charles ; the second
or Silesian army under the Crown Prince,
116,000 strong. The reserve consisted of 24,000
Laudwehr. The whole force in this quarter
numbered 380,000 men and 800 guns. . . . The
Prussians knew what they were fighting for.
To the Austrians the idea of this war was some-
thing strange. At Vienna, Benedek had spoken
against war; after the first Prussian successes,
he had in confidence advised the emperor to
make peace as soon as possible. As he was un-
able, from want of means, to attack, he con-
centrated his army between Josephstadt and the
county of Glatz. He thought only of defence.
. . . On the 33rd of .lune the great Prussian
army commenced contemporaneously its march
to Bohemia from the Riesengebirge, from
Lusatia, from Dresden. It advanced from four
points to Josephstadt-Koniggriltz, where the
junction was to take place. Bismarck had
ordered, from financial as well as political
reasons, that the war must be short. The
Prussian armies had at all points debouched
from the passes and entered iJohemia before a
single Austrian corps had come near these
passes. ... In a couple of days Benedek lost
in a series of fights against the three Prussian
advancing armies nearly 35,000 men; five of his
seven corps had been beaten. He concentrated
these seven corps at Koniggratz in the ground
before this fortress; he determined to accept
battle between the Elbe and the Bistritz. He
had, however, previously reported to the
emperor that his army after its losses was not in
a condition for a pitched battle. He wished to
retire to Moravia and avoid a battle till he had
received reinforcements. This telegram of
Benedek arrived in the middle of the exultation
which filled the court of Vicuna after hearing of
the victory over the Italians at Custozza [see
1575
GERJVIANY, 1866.
The Seven Weeks
War.
GERMANY, 1866.
Italy: A. D. 1863-1866]. The emperor replied
by ordering liim briefly to give battle im-
mediately. Beuedek, on the 1st of July, again
sent word to the emperor, 'Your majesty must
conclude peace.' Yet on these repeated warn-
ings came tlie order to fight at once. Benedek
had provided for such an answer by his arrange-
ments for July the 2nd. He had placed his 500
guns in the most favorable positions, and occu-
pied tlie country between the Elbe and the little
river Bistritz for the extent of a league. As
soon as the Prussians heard of this movement
they resolved to attacli the Austrians on tlie 3d.
On the 2d the king, accompanied by Count
Bismarck, Von Roon and Von Moltke, had joined
the army. He assumed command of the three
armies. The Crown Prince and Herwarth were
ordered to advance against KOniggratz. Part of
the Crown Prince's army were still five German
miles from the intended battle ground. Prince
Frederick Charles and Herwartli had alone
sustained the whole force of Austria in the
struggle around Sadowa, which began at
8 o'clock in the morning. Frederick Charles
attacked in the centre over against Sadowa ; Her-
warth on the riglit at Nechanitz ; the Crown
Prince was to advance on the left from Konigin-
hof. The Crown Prince received orders at
four o'clock in the morning ; he could not in all
probability reach the field before one or two
o'clock after noon. All depended on his arrival
in good time. Prince Frederick Charles forced
the passage of the Bistritz and took Sadowa and
other places, but could not take the heights.
His troops suffered terribly from the awful fire
of the Austrian batteries. The King himself
and his staff came under fire, from which the
earnest entreaties of Bismarck induced him to
retire. About one o'clock the danger in the
Prussitin centre was great. After five hours of
fighting they could not advance, and began to
talk of retreat. On the right, things were better.
Herwarth had defeated the Sa.xons, and threat-
ened the Austrian left. Yet, if the army of the
Crown Prince did not arrive, the battle was lost,
for the Prussian centre was broken. But the
Crown Prince brought the expected succor.
About two o'clock came the news that a part of
the Crown Prince's army had been engaged since
one o'clock. The Austrians, attacked on their
right flank and rear, had to give way in front.
Under loud shouts of 'Forward,' Prince Fred-
erick Charles took the Wood of Sadowa at three,
and the heights of Lipa at four o'clock. At this
very time, four o'clock, Benedek had already
given orders to retreat. . . . From the . . .
first the Prussians were superior to the Austrians
in ammunition, provisions and supplies. They
had a better organization, better preparation,
and the needle-gun, which proved very destruc-
tive to the Austrians. The Austrian troops
fought with thorough gallantry. . . . Respect-
ing this campaign, an Austrian writes: 'Given
in Vienna a powerful coterie which reserves to
itself all the high commands and regards the
army as its private estate for its own private
benefit, and defeat is inevitable.' The Austrians
lost at Sadowa, according to the official accounts
at Vienna, 174 cannon, 18,000 prisoners, 11 colors,
4,190 killed, 11,900 wounded, 21,400 missing, in-
cluding the prisoners. The Prussians acknow-
ledged a loss of only 10,000 men. The result of
the battle was heavier for Austria than the loss
in the action and the retreat. The armistice
which Benedek asked for on the 4th of July was
refused by the Prussians: a second request on
the 10th was also rejected. On the 5th of July
the emperor of Austria sought the mediation of
France to restore peace. . . . All further move-
ments were put a stop to by the five days'
armistice, which began on the 32d of July at
noon, and was followed by an armistice for four
weeks. . . . Hostilities were at an end on
Austrian territory when the war began on the
Main against the allies of Austria. The Bavarian
army, under the aged Prince Charles, dis-
tinguished itself by being driven by the less
numerous forces of Prussia under General
Falkenstein across the Saale and the Main. . . .
The eighth federal army corps of 50,000 men,
composed of contingents from Baden, Wilrtera-
berg. Electoral Hesse, Hesse-Darmstadt, Nassau,
and 12,000 Austrians under Prince Alexander of
Hesse, was so mismanaged that the Wiirtemberg
contingent believed itself sold and betrayed.
... On the 16th of July, in the evening,
Falkenstein entered Frankfort, and in the name
of the king of Prussia took possession of this
Free City, of Upper Hesse and Nassau. Frank-
fort, on account of its Austrian sympathies, had
to pay a contribution of six millions of gulden
to Falkenstein, and on the 19th of July a further
sum of nineteen millions to Manteuffel, the suc-
cessor of Falkenstein. The latter sum was re-
mitted when the hitherto Free City became a
Prussian city. Manteuffel, in several actions
from the 23d to the 26th of July, drove the
federal army back to Wurzburg; GSben de-
feated the army of Baden at Werbach, and that
of Wiirtemberg at Tauberbischofsheim ; before
this the eighth federal army corps joimed the
Bavarian army, and on the 25tli and 26th of July
the united forces were defeated at Gerschheim
and Rossbrunn, and on the 27th, the citadel of
Wurzburg was invested. The court of Vienna
had abandoned its South German allies when it
concluded the armistice ; it had not included its
allies either in the armistice or the truce. . . .
On the 29th of July, the Baden troops marched
off homewards in the night, the Austrians
marched to Bohemia, the Bavarians purchased
an armistice by surrendering Wurzburg to the
Prussians. Thus of the eighth army corps, the
Wiirtembergers and Hessians alone kept the
field. On the 2d of August these remains of the
eighth army corps were included in the armistice
of Nicholsburg. ... On the 23d of August
peace was signed between Austria and Prussia
at Prague. Bismarck treated Austria with great
consideration, and demanded only twenty millions
of thalers as war indemnity ; Wiirtemberg had
to pay eight millions of gulden, Baden six
millions, Hesse-Darmstadt three millions, Bavaria
thirty millions of gulden. The Wiirtemberg
minister, Varnbiller, and the Baden minister,
Freydorf, offered to form an offensive and de-
fensive alliance with Priissia for the purpose of
saving the ruling families, and in alarm lest
Bavaria and Hesse-Darmstadt might seek in
their territories compensation for cessions to
Prussia. Bavaria also formed an alliance with
Prussia, and ceded a smull district in the
north. Hesse-Darmstadt ceded Hesse-Hom-
burg and some pieces of territory, and entered
the North German Confederation, giving to
Prussia the right of keeping a garrison in
1576
GERMANY"
rtmn THE coNGRUs or
VIENNA
1815.
:>
GKRMANY, 1866.
Hegemony of
Prussia.
GERMANY, 1866-1870.
Maiuz. Austria renounced her claims on
Sclileswig and Holstein, acknowledged the dis-
solution of the German Confederation and a
modification of Germany by which Austria was
excluded. It recognized the creation of the
North German Confederation, the union of
Venetia to Italy, the territorial alterations in
North Germany. Prussia acknowledged the
territorial possessions of Austria with the sole
exception of Venetia ; and also of Saxony ; and
undertook to obtain the assent of the King of
Italy to the peace. Prussia announced the in-
corporation of Scbleswig-Holstein, the Free City
of Frankfort, the Kingdom of Hanover, the
Electorate of Hesse, and the Duchy of Nassau,
subject to the payment of annual incomes to the
deposed princes. The Kingdom of Saxony, the
twoMecklenburgs, the Hanse-towns, Oldenburg.
Brunswick, and the Thuringian states entered
the North German Confederation. Prussia now
contained twenty-four millions of inhabitants,
or including the Northern Confederation, twenty-
nine millions. The military forces of the Con-
federation were placed under the command of
Prussia. The states north of the Main were at
liberty to form a Southern Confederation, the
connection of which with the Northern Con-
federation was to be a subject of future discus-
sion. Moreover, Bavaria, Baden and Wilrtera-
berg had engaged ' in case of war to place their
whole military force at the disposal of Prussia,'
and Prussia guaranteed their sovereignty and
the integrity of their territory. Saxony paid
ten millions of thalers as a war indemnity.
Prussia received on the whole, as war indemni-
ties, eighty-two millions of gulden. Thus ended
in the year 18G6 the struggle [known as the
Seven Weeks War] between Austria and Prussia
for the leadership of Germany." — W. Zimmer-
mann, Popular Hist, of Oerinany, bk. 6, c/i. 3
(». 4).
Also in : H. von Sybel, 77i^ Founding of the
German Empire, bk. 17-30 (». 5). — Major C.
Adams, O-reat Campaigns in Europe from 1796 to
1870, ch. 10. — Count von Beust, Memoirs, v. 1,
ch. 29-34.-6. B. Malleson, The Mefomiding
of the Oerman Empire, ch. 6-10.
A. D. 1866-1867. — Foreshadowings of the
ne-w Empire. — "We may make the statement
that in the autumn of 1866 the German Empire
was founded. . . . The Southern States were
not yet members of the Confederation, but were
already, to use an old expression, relatives of the
Confederation (Bundesverwandte) in virtue of
the offensive and defensive alliances with Prus-
sia and of the new organization of the Tariff-
Union. . . . The natural and inevitable course of
events must here irresistibly break its way, luiless
some circumstance not to be foreseen should throw
down the barriers beforehand. How soon such a
crisis might take place no one could at that time
estimate. But in regard to the certainty of the
final result there was in Germany no longer any
doubt. . . . Three-fourths of the territory of this
Empire was dominated by a Government that was
in the first place eflicieut in military organization,
guided by the firm hand of King William, coun-
selled by the representatives of the North Ger-
man Sovereigns, and recognized by all the Powers
of Europe. The opening of that Parliament was
near at hand, that should in common with this
Government determine the limitations to be placed
upon the powers of the Confederation in its rela-
tion to the individual states and also the functions
of the new Reichstag in the legislation and in the
control of the finances of the Confederation. . . .
It was, in the first place, certain that the functions
of tlie future supreme Confederate authority
would be in general the same as those specified
in the Imperial Constitution of 1849. . . . The
most radical difference between 1849 and 1866
consisted in the form of the Confederate Govern-
ment. The former period aimed at the appoint-
ment of a Constitutional and hereditary emperor,
with respon.sible ministers, to the utter exclusion
of the German sovereigns: whereas now the plan
included all of these sovereigns in a Confederate
Council (Bundesrath) organized after the fashion
of the old Confederate Diet, with committees for
the various branches of the administration, and
under the presidency of the King of Prussia, who
should occupy a superior position in virtue of
the conduct, placed in his hands once for all, of
the foreign policy, the army and the navy, but
who otherwise in the Confederate Council, in spite
of the increase of his votes, could be outvoted
like every other prince by a decree of the Majority.
. . . Before the time of the peace-conferences,
when all definite arrangements of Germany's
future seemed suspended in the balance and un-
decided, the Crown Prince Frederick William,
who ill general had in mind for the supreme head
of the Confederation a higher rank and position
of power than did the King, maintained that his
father should bear the title of King of Germany.
Bismarck reminded him that there were other
Kings in Germany: the Kings of Hanover, of
Saxony, etc. 'The.se,' was the reply, ' will then
take the title of Dukes.' 'But they will not
agree to that. ' ' They will have to ! ' cried His
Royal Highness. After the further course of
events, the Crown Prince indeed gave up his proj-
ect; but in the early part of 1867 he asserted
that the King should assume the title of German
Emperor, arguing that the people would connect
no tangible idea with the title of President of the
Confederation, whereas the renewal of the im-
perial dignity would represent to them the actual
incorporation of the unity finally attained, and
the remembrance of the old glory and power of
the Empire would kindle all hearts. This Idea,
as we have experienced and continue to experience
its realization, was in itself perfectly correct.
But it was evidently at that time premature: a
North German empire would have aroused no
enthusiasm in the north, and would have seriously
hindered the accomplishment of the national aim
in the south. King William rejected this propo-
sition very decidedly : in his own simple way he
wished to be nothing more than Confederate
Commander-in-chief and the first among his
peers." — H. von Sybel, The Founding of the
German Emjnre by William I., bk. 20, ch. 4 {v.
5).
A. D. 1866-1870. — Territorial concessions
demanded by France. — Rapid progress of
German unification. — The Zollparlament. —
The Luxemburg question. — French determina-
tion for war. — "The conditions of peace . . .
left it open to the Southern States to choose what
relationship they would form with the Northern
Confederation. This was a compromise between
Bismarck and Napoleon, the latter fearing a
United Germany, the former preferring to restrict
himself to what was attainable at the time, and
taking care not to humiliate or seriously to injure
1577
GERMANY, 1866-1870.
lYussia
and France.
GERMANY, 1866-1870.
Austria, whose friendship he foresaw that
Germany would need. Meanwhile Napoleon's
interference continiied. Scarcely had Benedetti,
who had followed Bismarck to the battle-fields,
returned to Berlin, when he received orders from
his Government to demand not less than the left
bank of the Rhine as a compensation for
Prussia's increase of territory. For this purpose
he submitted the draft of a treaty by which
Prussia was even to bind herself to lend an
active support to the cession of the Bavarian and
Hessian possessions west of the Rhine! . . .
Bismarck would listen to no mention of ceding
German territory. 'Si vous refusez,' said the
conceited Corsican, ' c'est la guerre. ' — 'Ehbien,
la guerre,' replied Bismarck calmly. Just as
little success had Benedetti with King William.
' Not a clod of German soil, not a chimney of a
German village,' was William's kingly reply.
Napoleon was not disposed at the time to carry
out his threat. He disavowed Benedetti's action,
declaring that the instructions had been obtained
from him during his illness and that he wished
to live in peace and friendship with Prussia.
Napoleon's covetousness had at least one good
effect : it furthered the work of German union.
Bavaria and Wilrtemberg, who during the war
had sided with Austria, had at first appealed to
Napoleon to mediate between them and Prussia.
But when the Ministers of the four South Ger-
man States appeared at Berlin to negotiate with
Bismarck, and Benedetti's draft-treaty was com-
municated to them, there was a complete change
of disposition. They then wished to go much
further than the Prussian Statesman was pre-
pared to go: they asked, in order to be protected
from French encroachments, to be admitted into
the North German Confederation. But Bismarck
would not depart from the stipulations of the
Treaty of Nikolsburg. The most important re-
sult of the negotiations was that secret treaties
were concluded by which the Southern States
bound themselves to an alliance with the
Northern Confederation for the defence of
Germany, and engaged to place their troops
under the supreme command of the Prussian
King in the event of any attack by a foreign
Power. In a military sense Klein- Deutschland
was now one, though not yet politically. . . .
That Prussia was the truly representative Ger-
man State had been obvious to the thoughtful
long before : the fact now stood out in clear light
to all who would open their eyes to see. Prog-
ress had meanwhile been made with the con-
struction of the North German Confederation,
which embraced all the States to the north of the
river Main. Its affairs were to be regulated by
a Reichstag elected by universal suffrage and
by a Federal Council formed of the representa-
tives of the North German Governments. In a
military sense it was a Single State, politically a
Confederate State, with the King of Prussia as
President. This arrangement was not of course
regarded as final: and in his speech from the
throne to the North German Reichstag, King
William emphasized the declaration that Ger-
many, so long torn, so long powerless, so long
the theatre of war for foreign nations, would
henceforth strive to recover the greatness of her
past. ... A first step towards ' bridging over
the Main,' i. e., causing South and North to join
hands again, was taken by the creation of a
Zollparlament, or Customs Parliament, which
was elected by the whole of Klein-Deutschland,
and met at Berlin, henceforth the capital of
Germany. It was also a step in advance that
Baden and Hesse-Darmstadt signed conventions,
by which their military system was put on the
same footing as that of the North German Con-
federation. Baden indeed would willingly have
entered into political union with the North, had
the same disposition prevailed at the time in
the other South German States. The National
Liberals however had to contend with strong
opposition from the Democrats in Wilrtemberg,
and from the Ultramontanes in Bavaria. The
latter were hostile to Prussia on account of her
Protestantism, the former on account of the stern
principles and severe discipline that pervaded
her administration. ... In the work of German
unification the Bonapartes have an important
share. . . . By outraging the principle of
nationality. Napoleon I. had re-awakened the
feeling of nationality among Germans : Napoleon
III., by attempting to prevent the unification of
Germany, actually hastened it on. . . . When
King William had replied that he would not
yield up an inch of German soil, ' patriotic
pangs ' at Prussian successes and the thirst for
' compensation ' continued to disturb the sleep
of the French Emperor, and as he was unwilling
to appear baffled in his purpose, he returned to
the charge. On the 16th of August, 1866,
through his Ambassador Benedetti, he demanded
the cession of Landau, Saarbrilcken, Saarlouis,
and Luxemburg, together with Prussia's con-
sent to the annexation of Belgium by France.
If that could not be obtained, he would be satis-
fied with Luxemburg and Belgium; he would
even exclude Antwerp from the territory claimed
that it might be created a free town. Thus he
hoped to spare the susceptibilities of England.
As a gracious return he offered the alliance of
France. After his first interview Benedetti gave
up his demand for the three German towns, and
submitted a new scheme, according to which
Germany should induce the King of the Nether-
lands to a cession of Luxemburg, and should
support France in the conquest of Belgium;
whilst, on his part, Napoleon would permit the
formation of a federal union between the
Northern Confederation and the South German
States, and would enter into a defensive and
offensive alliance with Germany. Count Bis-
marck treated these propositions, as he himself
has stated, ' in a dilatory manner,' that is to say,
he did not reject them, but he took good care
not to make any definite promises. When the
Prussian Prime Minister returned from his
furlough to Berlin, towards the end of 1866,
Benedetti resumed his negotiations, but now
only with regard to Luxemburg, still garrisoned
by Prussian troops as at the time of the old
Germanic Confederation. Though the Grand-
Duchy of Luxemburg did not belong to the
new North German Confederation, Bismarck
was not willing to allow it to be annexed by
France. Moltke moreover declared that the
fortress could only be evacuated by the Prussian
troops if the fortifications were razed. But
without its fortifications Napoleon would not
have it. And when, with regard to the Em-
peror's intentions upon Belgium, Prussia offered
no active support, but only promised observance
of neutrality, France renounced the idea of an
alliance with Prussia, and entered into direct
1578
GERMANY, 1866-1870.
Germanic
Confederation.
GERMANY, 1871.
negotiations with the King of Holland, as
Grand-Duke of Luxemburg. Great excitement
was thereby caused in Germany, and, as a time-
ly warning to France, Bismarcli surprised the
world with the publication of the secret treaties
between Prussia and the South German States.
But when it became known that the King of
Holland was actually consenting to the sale of
his rights in Luxemburg to Napoleon, there was
so loud a cry of indignation in all parts of Ger-
many, there was so powerful a protest in the
North German Parliament against any sale of
German territory by the King of Holland, that
Count Bismarck, himself surprised at the vigour
of the patriotic outburst, declared to the Govern-
ment of the Hague that the cession of Luxem-
burg would he considered a casus belli. This
peremptory declaration had the desired effect:
the cession did not take place. This was the
first success in European politics of a united
Germany, united not yet politically, but in spirit.
That was satisfactory. A Conference of the
Great Powers then met in London [May, 1867] :
by its decision, Luxemburg was separated from
Germany, and, — to give some kind of satisfac-
tion to the Emperor of the French, — was formed
into a neutral State. From a national point of
view, that was unsatisfactory. . . . The danger
of an outbreak of war between France and Ger-
many had only been warded off for a time by
the international settlement of the Luxemburg
question. ... In the early part of July, 1870,
Prince Leopold of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, at
the request of the Spanish Government, became
a candidate for the Spanish throne. Napoleon
III. seized the occasion to carry into effect his
hostile intentions against Germany. " — G. Krause,
The Orowtli of Oermaii Unity, ch. 13-14.
Also in: E. Simon, The Emperor William and
his Reign, ch. 9-10 (v. 1).— C. A. Fyffe, Hist, of
Modern Europe, v. 3, ch. 5-6.
A. D. 1870 (June— July).— " The Hohenzol-
lern incident." — French Declaration of War.
SeeFKAKCE: A. D. 1870 (Jlwe— July).
A. D. 1870 (September— December).— The
Germanic Confederation completed. — Feder-
ative treaties with the states of South Ger-
many. — Suggestion of the Empire. — "Having
decided on taking Strasburg and Metz from
France" Prussia "could only justify that con-
quest by considerations of the safety of South
Germany, and she could only defend these inter-
ests by effecting the union of North and South.
She found it necessary to realise this union at any
price, even by some concessions in favour of the
autonomy of those States, and especially of
Bavaria. Such was the spirit in which negotia-
tions were opened, in the middle of September,
1870, between Bavaria and Prussia, with the par-
ticipation of Baden, Wurtemberg and Hesse-
Darmstadt. . . . Prussia asked at first for entire
and unreserved adhesion to the Northern Confed-
eration, a solution acceptable to Baden, Wurteni-
berg and Hesse-Darmstadt, but not to Bavaria,
who demanded for herself the preservation of
certain rights, and for her King a privileged
position in the future Confederation next to the
King of Prussia. The negotiations with Baden
and Hesse-Darmstadt came to a conclusion on
the 15th of November; and on the 25th, Wurteni-
berg accepted the same arrangement. These
three States agreed to the constitution, slightly
modified, of the Northern Confederation; the
new treaties were completed by military conven-
tions, establishing the fusion of the respective
Corps d'Armee with the Federal Army of the
North, under the command of the King of Prus-
sia. The Treaty with Bavaria was signed at
Versailles on the 23rd of November. The con-
cessions obtained by the Cabinet of Munich were
reduced to mere trifles. . . . The King of Bavaria
was allowed the command of his army in time of
peace. He was granted the administration of
the Post-Oflice and partial autonomy of indirect
contributions. A committee was conceded, in
the Federal Council, for Foreign Affairs, under
the Presidency of Bavaria. The right of the
King of Prussia, as President of this Council,
to declare war, was made conditional on its con-
sent. Such were the Treaties submitted on the
24th of November to the sanction of the Parlia-
ment of the North, assembled in an Extraordi-
nary Session. Thejf met with intense opposition
from the National Liberal and from the Progres-
sive Party," but "the Parliament sanctioned the
treaties on the 10th of December. According to
the Treaties, the new association received the
title of Germanic Confederation, and the King of
Prussia that of its President. These titles were
soon to undergo an important alteration. The
King of Bavaria, satisfied with the concessions,
more apparent than real, made by the Prussian
Cabinet to his rights of sovereignty, consented to
defer to the wishes of King William. On the
4th of December, King Louis addressed him
[King William] a letter, informing him that he
had invited the Confederate sovereigns to revive
the German Empire and confer the title of Em-
peror on the President of the Confederation. . . .
The sovereigns immediately gave their consent, so
that the Imperial titles could be introduced into
the new Constitution before the final vote of the
Parliament of the North. ... To tell the truth,
King William attached slight importance to the
votes of the various Chambers. He was not de-
sirous of receiving his new dignity from the
hands of a Parliament ; the assent of the sover-
eigns was in his eyes far more es.sential." — E.
Simon, The Emperor William and his Beign, ch.
13 (». 2).
Also en: G. Freytag, The Croxcn Prince and
the Imperial Crown.
A. D. 1870-1871.— Victorious war with
France. — Siege of Paris. — Occupation of the
city. — Enormous indemnity exacted. — Acqui-
sition of Alsace and part of Lorraine. See
Fkance: a. D. 1870 (July— August) to 1871
(.Jajju.^ry — May).
A. D. 1871 (January). — Assumption of the
Imperial dignity by King William, at Ver-
sailles. — "Early in December the proposition
came from King Ludwig of Bavaria to King
William, that the possession of the presidential
rights of the Confederacy vested in the Prussian
monarch should be coupled with the imperial
title. The King of Saxony spoke to the same
purport; and in one day a measure providing for
the amendment of the Constitution by the sub-
stitution of the words ' Emperor ' and ' Empire '
for ' President ' and ' Confederation ' was passed
through the North German Parliament, which
voted also an address to his Majesty, from which
the following is an extract: 'The North German
Parliament, in unison with the Princes of Ger-
many, approaches with the prayer that your
Majesty will deign to consecrate the work of
1579
GERMANY, 1871.
The neio Empire.
GERMANY, 1871-1879.
unification by accepting the Imperial Crown of
Germany. The Teutonic Crown on the head of
your Majesty will inaugurate, for the re-estab-
lished Empire of the German nation, an era of
power, of peace, of well-being, and of liberty
secured under the protection of the laws. ' Tlie
address of the German Parliament was presented
to the King at Versailles on Sunday, the 18th of
December, by its speaker, Herr Simson, who, as
speaker of the Frankfort Parliament in 1848, had
made the identical proffer to William's brother
and predecessor [see above: A. D. 1848-1850].
. . . The formal ratification of assent to the
Prussian King's assumption of the imperial dig-
nity had yet to be received from the minor Ger-
man States; but this was a foregone conclusion,
and the unification of Germany really dates from
that 18th of December, and from the solemn
ceremonial in the prefecture of Versailles. " — A.
Forbes, William of Oermany, ch. 13. — King Wil-
liam's formal assumption of the Imperial dignity
took place on the 18th of January, 1871. "The
Crown Prince was entrusted with all the prepa-
rations for the ceremony. Every regiment in
the army of investment was instructed to send
its colours in charge of an officer and two non-
commissioned oflicers to Versailles, and all tlie
liigher officers who could be spared from duty
were ordered to attend, for tlie army was to
represent the German nation at this memorable
scene. The Crown Prince escorted his father
from the Prefecture to the palace of Versailles,
where all the German Princes or their represen-
tatives were assembled in the Galerie des Glaces.
A special service was read by the military chap-
lains, and then the Emperor, mounting on the
dais, announced his a.ssumption of Imperial au-
thority, and instructed his Chancellor to read the
Proclamation issued to the whole German nation.
Then the Crown Prince, as the first subject of
the Empire, came forward and performed the
solemn act of homage, kneeling down before liis
Imperial Fatlier. The Emperor raised him and
clasped to his arms the son who had toiled and
fought and borne so great a share in achieving
what many generations had desired in vain." —
R. Rodd, Frederick, Crown Prince and Umperor,
ch. 5.
Also in: C. Lowe, Prince Bismarck, ch. 9
(V. 1).
A. D. 1871 (April).— The Constitution of the
new Empire. — By a proclamation dated April
16, 1871, the German Emperor ordered, "in the
name of the German Empire, by and with the
consent of the Council of the Confederation and
of the Imperial Diet," that "in the place of the
Constitution of the German Confederation," as
agreed to in November 1870, tlicre be substituted
a Constitution for the German Empire, — the text
of which appeared as an appendi.x to this im-
perial decree. For a full translation of the te.xt
see Constitution op Germany.
Also in : E. Hertslet, The Map of Europe hy
TreMy, v. 3, A'». 442.
A. D. 1871-1873.— The Gold Standard. See
Monet .\ni) B.\nking : A. I). 1871-1873.
A. D. 1871-1879.— Organization of the gov-
ernment of Alsace-Lorraine as an imperial
province. — "How to garner the territorial har-
vest of the war — Alsace-Lorraine — was a ques-
tion which greatly vexed the pru'liamentary mind.
Several possible solutions had presented them-
selves. The conquered provinces might be made
neutral territory, which, with Belgium on one
side, and Switzerland on the other, would thus
interpose a continuous barrier against French
aggression from the mouth of the Rhine to its
source. But one fatal objection, among several
others, to the adoption of this course, was the
utter lack, in the Alsace-Lorrainers, of the primary
condition of the existence of all neutral States —
a determination on the part of the neutralised
people themselves to be and remain neutral. And
none knew better than Bismarck that it would
take 3'ears of the most careful nursing to recon-
cile the kidnapped children of France to their
adoptive parent. For him, the only serious ques-
tion was whether Alsace-Lorraine should be an-
nexed to Prussia, or be made an immediate
Reichsland (Imperial Province). ' From the very
first,' he said, ' I was most decidedly for the latter
alternative, first — because there is no reason why
dynastic questions should be mixed up with
political ones ; and, secondly ■ — ■ because I think
it will be easier for the Alsatians to take to the
name of " German " than to that of "Prussian,"
the latter being detested in France in comparison
with the other. ' In its first session, accordingly,
the Diet was .Tsked to pass a law incorporating
Alsace-Lorraine with the Empire, and placing
the annexed provinces under a provisional dic-
tatorship till tlie 1st January, 1874, when they
would enter into the enjoyment of constitutional
rights in common with the rest of the nation.
But the latter clause provoked much controversy.
... A compromise was ultimately effected by
which the duration of the dictatorship, or jjcriod
within which the Imperial Government alone was
to liavc the right of making laws for Alsace-Lor-
raine, was shortened till 1st January, 1873 ; while
the Diet, on the other hand, w'as only to have
supervision of such loans or guarantees as affected
the Empire. In the following year, however, the
Diet came to the conclusion that, after all, the
original term fixed for the dictatorship was the
more advisable of the two, and prolonged it ac-
cordingly. For the next three years, therefore,
the Reichsland was governed from the Wilhelm-
strasse, as India is ruled from Downing Street.
. . . In the beginning of 1874 . . . fifteen depu-
ties from Alsace-Lorraine — now thus far ad-
mitted within the pale of the Constitution — took
their seats in the second German Parliament. Of
these fifteen deputies, five were out-and-out
French Protesters, and the rest Clericals — seven
of the latter being clergymen, including the
Bishops of Metz and Strasburg. They entered
the Diet in a body, with much theatrical pomp,
the clergy wearing their robes ; and one of the
French Protesters — bearingthe vmfortunatoname
of Teutsch — immediately tabled a motion that
the inhabitants of Alsace-Lorraine, having been
annexed to Germany without being themselves
consulted, should now be granted an opportunity
of expressing their opinion on the subject by a
plebiscite. . . . The motion of French M. Teutsch,
who spoke fluent German, was of course rejected ;
whereupon he and several of his compatriots
straightway returned home, and left the Diet to
deal with the interests of their constituents as it
liked. Those of his colleagues who remained be-
hind only did so to complain of the ' intolerable
tyranny ' under which the provinces were groan-
ing, and to move for the repeal of the law (of
December, 1871) which invested the local Gov-
ernment with dictatorial powers. . . . Believing
1580
GERMANY, 1871-1879.
The Culturkampf. GERiyiANY, 1873-1887.
home-rule to be one of the best guarantees of
federal cohesion, Bismarck determined to try the
effect of this cementing agency on the newest
Bart of the Imperial edifice; and, m the autumn
of 1874 he advised the Emperor to grant tne
Alsace-Lorrainers (not by law, but by ordinance,
which could easily be revolied) a previous voice
on all bills to be submitted to the Reichstag on
the domestic and fiscal affairs of the Provinces.
In the following summer (June, 1875), there-
fore there met at Strasburg the first Landesaus-
schuss or Provincial Committee, composed of
delegates, thirty in number, from the administra-
?ive^District Councils. ... So ^vell, indeed on
the whole, did this arrangement work that witnm
two years of its creation the Landesausschuss
was invested with much broader powers . .
Thus it came about that, while the Reichsland
continued to be governed from Berhn, the mak-
ing of its laws was more and more confined to
Stfasbure. . . . The party of the Irreconcilables
had been gradually giving way to the Autono-
ndsts, or those who subordinated the question of
nationality to that of home-rule RaPKUy gain-
iuo- in strength, this latter party at last (in the
sprin- of 1879) petitioned the Reichstag for an
independent Government, with its seat m Stras-
burcr for the representation of the Reichsland in
tlie Federal Council, and for an enlargement of
the functions of the Provincial Committee. Noth-
ing could have been more gratifying to Bismarck
thSn this request, amounting, as it did, to a re-
luctant recognition of the Treaty of Frankfort on
the part of the Alsace-Lorrainers. He therefore
replied that he was quite willing to confer on
tlie provinces ' the highest degree of independence
compatible with the military secunty of the Em-
pire ' The Diet, without distinction of part}
applauded his words; and not only that but it
hastened to pass a bill embodying ideas at ^^ Inch
the Chancellor himself had hinted in the previous
vear By this bill, the government of Alsace-
Lorraine was to centre in a Stattlialter, or Im-
perial Viceroy, living at Strasburg, it^tead of, as
heretofore, in the chancellor. . . . Without be-
ing a Sovereign, this Statthalter was to. exercise
all but sovereign rights. . . . For this high office
the Emperor selected the brilliant soldier-states-
man. Marshal Manteuffel Certainly His
Maiesty could not possibly have chosen a better
man for the responsible office, which the Marshal
assumed on the 1st October, 1879. Heucetorth
the conquered provinces entered an entirely ne^v
phase of their existence. . . . Whether the Reichs-
land will ever ripen into an integral part ot
Prussia, or into a regular Federal State with a
Prussian prince for its Sovereign the future
alone can show."-C. Lowe, Pnnce Bismarcl, ch.
AD 187V1887.— The Culturkampf.— The
" May Laws " and their repeal.-" The German
Culturkampf, or civilization-fight, as its illus-
trious chief promoter is said to have named it,
may equally well be styled the religion combat,
or education strife. . . . The arena of the Cul-
turkampf in Germany is, strictly speaking Prus-
sia and Hesse Darmstadt— pre-eminently the for-
mer. According to the last census, taken Decem-
ber 1 1880, the population of Prussia is 27,2/8,911.
Of these, the Protestants are 17,645 462 bemg
64 7 per cent., and the Cathohcs 9,305,136 or
34' 1 per cent., of the total population. The
remainder are principally Jews, amounting to
qfiq 7q0 or 1 334 per cent. It was on the 9th
of January, 1873,^hat Dr. Falk, Minister of
Public Worship, first introduced into the Prussian
Diet the bills, which were afterwards to be
known as the May Laws [so called ^ecause they
were generally passed m the f oftl^ °f, J^^,{'
although in different years, but also called the
Falk Laws, from the Minister who framed them].
These laws, which, for the future, were to regu-
late the relations of Church and State, purported
to apply to the Evangelical or united Protestant
State Church of Prussia . . as well as to the
Catholic Church. Their professed mam fbjerts
were • first, to insure greater liberty to individual
lay members of those churches; secondly, to se-
cure a German and national, rather than an Ul-
tramontane ' and non-national, training for the
clergy and, thirdly, to protect the infenor
clerly against the tyranny of their supenors-
whidi simply meant, as proved in the ?equel the
withdrawal of priests and people, in matters
Tplritual, from the jurisdiction of the bishops
and the separation of Cathohc_Pr_ussia from the
Centre of Unity; thus substituting a local or
national Church, bound hand and foot, under
State regulation, for a flounshmg branch of the
Universal Church. To promote these objects, it
was provided, that all Ecclesiastical semmanes
should be placed under State control ; and that all
candidates for the priesthood shou d pass a State
examination in the usual subjects of a liberal
education; and it was further provided, that the
State should have the right to confirm or to reject
all appointments of clergy. These bills were
readily passed: and all the religious orders and
congregations were suppressed with the provis-
ional Exception of those which devoted them-
selves to the care of the sick; and al Catholic
seminaries were closed. . . . The Bishops re-
fused to obey the new laws, which in conscience
they could not accept; and they subscribed a col-
lective declaration to this effect, on the 26th of
Mav 1873. On the 7th of August following.
Pope Pius IX. addressed a strong letter of remon-
strance to the Emperor William ; but entirely
without effect, as may be seen in the Imperial re-
ply of the 5th of September. In punishrnent of
their opposition, several of the Bishops and great
numbers of their clergy were fined, imprisoned,
exiled and deprived of their salaries. Especially
notable among the victims of persecution, were
the venerable Archbishop of Cologne Prinaate
of Prussia, the Bishop of Munster the Pnnce
Bishop of Breslau, the Bishop of Paderbom, and
Cardinal Ledochowski, Archbishop of Gnesen
and Posen, on whom, then in prison, a Cardmal_s
hat was conferred by the Pope, in March 18. 0,
as a mark of sympathy, encouragement, and ap-
proval The fifteen Catholic dioceses of
Prussia comprised, in January 1873, a Catholic
aggregate of 8,711,585 souls. They were admin- .
istfred by 4,627 parish-priests, and 3,813 coadju^
tor-priests, or curates, bemg a total of 8,4d»
clergy Eight years later, owing to the opera-
tion of the May Laws, there were exiled or dead,
without being replaced, 1,770 of these clergy,
viz 1 135 parish-priests, and 645 coadjutor-
priests;' and there were 601 parishes comprising
644 697 souls, quite destitute of clencal care,
and 584 parishes, or 1,501,994 souls partialy
destitute thereof. Besides these 1,770 sewlar
priests, dead or exiled, and not replaced there
were the regular clergy (the members of rehgious
1581
GERMANY, 1873-1887.
Frederick HI.
and William XL
GERMANY, 1888.
orders), all of whoni had been expelled." — J. N.
Murphy, The Chair of Peter, ch. 29. — "Why-
was the Kulturkampf undertaken? This is a
question often asked, and answered in different
ways. That Ultramontanism is a danger to the
Empire is the usual explanation; but proof is
not producible. . . . Ultramontanism, as it is
understood in France and Belgium, has never
taken root in Germany. It was represented by
the Jesuits, and when they were got rid of,
Catholicism remained as a religion, but not as a
political factor. . . . The real purpose of the
Kulturkampf has been, I conceive, centralisation.
It has not been waged against the Roman Church
only, for the same process has been followed
with the Protestant Churches. It was intolerable
in a strong centralising Government to have a
Calvinist and a Lutheran Church side by side, and
both to call themselves Protestant. It interfered
with systematic and neat account-keeping of pub-
lic expenditure for religious purposes. Conse-
quently, in 1839, the King of Prussia suppressed
Calvinism and Lutheranism, and established a
new Evangelical Church on their ruins, with con-
stitution and liturgy chiefly of his own drawing
up. The Protestant churches of Baden, Nassau,
Hesse, and the Bavarian Palatinate have also
been fused and organised on the Prussian pattern.
In Schleswig-Holstein and in Hanover existed
pure Lutherans, but they, for uniformity's sake,
have been also recently unified and melted into
the Landeskirche of Prussia. A military govern-
ment cannot tolerate any sort of double allegiance
in its subjects. Education and religion, medicine
and jurisprudence, telegraphs and post-office,
must be under the jurisdiction of the State. . . .
From the point of view of a military despotism,
the May laws are reasonable and necessary. As
Germany is a great camp, the clergy, Protestant
and Catholic, must be military chaplains amen-
able to the general in command. ... I have no
doubt whatever that this is the real explanation
of the Kulturkampf, and that all other explana-
tions are excuses and inventions. . . . The Chan-
cellor, when he began the crusade, had probably
no idea of the opposition he would meet with,
and when the opposition manifested itself, it
irritated him, and made him more dogged in pur-
suing his scheme. " — S. Baring-Gould, Oermany,
Present and PaU, ch. 13 (». 2). — "The passive
resistance of the clergy and laity, standing on
their own ground, and acting together in com-
plete agreement, succeeded in the end. The
laity had recognised their own priests, even when
suspended by government, and had resolutely re-
fused to receive others; and both priests and
laity insisted upon the Church regulating its own
theological education. Prussia and Baden be-
came weary of the contest. In 1880 and 1881
the ' May Laws ' were suspended, and, after ne-
gotiation with Leo XIII., they were to a large
extent repealed. By this change, completed in
April, 1887, the obligations of civil marriage
and the vesting of Catholic property in the
hands of lay trustees were retained, but the legis-
lative interference with the administration of
the Church, including the education required for
the priesthood, was wholly abandoned. The
Prussian Government had entirely miscalculated
its power with the Church." — The same. The
Church in Oermany, ch. 21. — By the Bill passed
in 1887, "all religious congregations which ex-
isted before the passing of the law of May 31,
1875, were to be allowed to re-establish them-
selves, i:)rovided their objects were purely reli-
gious, charitable, or contemplative. . . . The
Society of .Jesus, which is a teaching order, was
not included in this permission. But Prince Bis-
marck's determination never to readmit the Jesu-
its is well known. . . . The Bill left very few
vestiges of the May laws remaining." — Annual
Register, 1887, pt. 1, p. 245. See Papacy : A. D.
1870-1874.
Also in : C. Lowe, Prince Bisinnrck, ch. 12-13.
A. D. 1878-1879.— Adoption of the Protec-
tive policy. See Tariff Legislation (Ger-
many) : A. D. 18.53-1893.
A. D. 1878-1893.— The Socialist Parties.—
Socialistic Measures. See Social Move-
ments : A. D. 187.1-1893 ; 1883-1889.
A. D. 1882.— The Triple Alliance. See
TiiiPLB Alliance.
A. D. 1884-1894. — Colonization in Africa.—
Territorial seizures. — The Berlin Conference.
See Afuk-a : A. D. 1883; 1884-1891 ; and after.
A. D. 1888.— Death of the Emperor William
1. — Accession and death of Frederick III. —
Accession of William II. — The Emperor Wil-
liam died on the 9th of March, 1888. He was
succeeded by his son, proclaimed under the title
of Frederick III. The new Emperor was then at
San Remo, undergoing treatment for a mortal
malady of the throat. He returned at once to
Berlin, where an unfavorable turn of the disease
soon appeared. " Consequently an Imperial de-
cree, dated the 21st of March, was addressed to
the Crown Prince and publislied, expressing the
wish of the Emperor that the Prince should make
himself conversant with the affairs of State by
immediate participation therein. His Imperial
Highness was accordingly entrusted with the
preparation and discharge of such State business
as the Emperor should assign to him, and he was
empowered in the performance of this duty to
affix all necessary signatures, as the representa-
tive of the Emperor, without obtaining an es-
pecial authorisation on each occasion. . . . The
insidious malady from which the Emperor suf-
fered exhibited many fluctuations," but the end
came on the 15th of June, his reign having lasted
only three months. He was succeeded by his
eldest son, who became Emperor William II. —
Eminent Persons : Biographies reprinted from 27ie
Times, d. 4, pp. 112-115.
Also IN: R. Rodd, Frederick, Crown, Prince and
Emperor. — G. Freytag, The Crown Prince.
A. D. 1888.— The end of the Free Cities.—
"The last two cities to uphold the name and
traditions of the Hanseatic League, Hamburg
and Bremen, have been incorporated into the
German Zoll Verein, thus finally surrendering
their old historical privileges as free ports. Lu-
beck took this step some twenty-two years ago
[1866], Hamburg and Bremen not till October,
1888 — so long had they resisted Prince Bis-
marck's more or less gentle suasions to enter his
Protection League. . . . They, and Hamburg in
particular, held out nobly, jealous, and rightly
jealous, of the curtailment of those privileges
which distinguished them from the other cities
of the German Empire. It was after the foun-
dation of this empire that the claim of the two
cities to remain free ports was conceded and
ratified in the Imperial Constitution of April,
1871, though the privilege, in the case of Ham-
burg, was restricted to the city and port, and
1582
GERMANY, 1888.
Bismarck
and William IJ.
GERMANY, 1889-1890.
withdrawn from the rest of the State, which ex-
tends to the mouth of the Elbe and embraces
about 160 square miles, while the free-port terri-
tory was reduced to 28 square miles. This was
the first serious interference with the city's liberty,
and others followed, perhaps rather of a petty,
annoying, than of a seriously aggressive, charac-
ter, but enough to show the direction in which
the wind was blowing. It was in 1880 that the
proposal to include Hamburg in the Customs
Union was first politically discussed. ... In
May, 1881, . . . was drafted a proposal to the
effect that the whole of the city and port of
Hamburg should be included in the Zoll Verein."
After long and earnest discussion the proposition
was adopted by the Senate and the House of
Burgesses. "The details for carrying into effect
this conclusion have occupied seven years, and
the event was finally celebrated with great pomp,
the Emperor William II. coming in person to
enhance the solemnity of the sacrifice brought
by the burghers of the erst free city for the com-
mon weal of the German Fatherland. . . . The
last and only privilege the three once powerful
Hanseatic cities retain is that of being entitled,
like the greatest States in the empire, to send
their own representatives to the Bundesrath and
to the Reichstag." — H. Ziramern, The Eanaa
Towns, period 3, ch. 8, note.
A. D. 1 888-1 889. — Prussian Free School
laws. See Education, Modern: Europban
Countries. — Prussia: 1885-1889.
A. D. 1889-1890. — Rupture between Em-
peror William II. and Chancellor Bismarck. —
Retirement of the great Chancellor. — Soon after
the accession of William II. , signs of discord be-
tween the young Emperor and the veteran states-
man, Chancellor Bismarck, began to appear.
"In March, 1889, the Minister of Finance had
drawn up a Bill for the reform of the income tax,
which had been sanctioned by the Emperor ; sud-
denly Prince Bismarck interfered, declaring that
it was against the agrarian interest, and the Land-
tag, summoned expressly to vote that Bill, was
dismissed ' re inacta. ' Count Waldersee, the Chief
of the General Staff, an eminent and independent
man, and standing high in favour, had for years
been a thorn in the Chancellor's side, who looked
upon him as a possible rival ; he had tried to over-
throw him under Frederic III., but had not suc-
ceeded, Moltke protesting that the general was
indispensable to the army. When Waldersee, in
the summer of 1889, accompanied the Emperor to
Norway, a letter appeared in the Hamburger
Nachrichten, to the effect that in a Memoir he
had directed his sovereign's attention to the
threatening character of the Russian armaments,
and had advised, in contradiction to the Chancel-
lor's policy, the forcing of war upon Russia.
The Count from Trondhjem addressed a tele-
graphic denial to the paper, stating that he had
never presented such a Memoir ; but the Nach-
richten registered this declaration in a garbled
form and in small type, and the Norddeutsche
Zeitung, which at the same time had published
an article, to the effect that according to General
von Clausewitz, war is only the continuation of
a certain policy, and that therefore the Chief of
the General Staff must needs be under the order
of the Foreign Minister, took no notice of the
Count's protest. ... In the winter session of
the Reichstag the Government presented a Bill
tending to make the law against Social- Democracy
a permanent one, but even the pliant National
Liberals objected to the clause that the police
should be entitled to expel Social-Democrats from
the large towns. They would have been ready
to grant that permission for two years, but the
Government did not accept this, and the Bill fell
to the ground. The reason, which at that time
was not generally understood, was, that there ex-
isted already a hitch between the policy of the
Chancellor and that of the Emperor, who had ar-
rived at the conviction that the law against Social
Democrats was not only barren, but had increased
their power. This difference was accentuated by
the Imperial decree of February 4 in favour of
the protection of children's and women's labour,
which the Chancellor had steadily resisted, and
by the invitation of an international conference for
that end. Prince Bismarck resigned the Ministry
of Commerce, and was replaced by Herr von
Berlepsch, who was to preside at the conference.
The elections for the Reichstag were now at hand,
a new surprise was expected for maintaining the
majority obtained by the cry of 1887; but it did
not come, and the result was a crushing defeat of
the Chancellor. Perhaps even then the Emperor
had discerned that he could not go on with Bis-
marck, and that it would be difficult to get rid
of him, if he obtained another majority for five
years. At least it seems certain that William II.
already in the beginning of February had asked
General von Caprivi whether he would be ready
to take the Chancellor's place. Affairs were now
rapidly pushing to a crisis. Bismarck asked the
Emperor that, in virtue of a Cabinet order of
1852, his colleagues should be bound to submit
beforehand to him any proposals of political
importance before bringing it to the cognizance
of the Sovereign. The Emperor refused, and
insisted upon that order being cancelled. The
last drop which made the cup overflow was an
interview of the Chancellor with Windthorst.
The Emperor, calling upon Bismarck the next
morning, asked to hear what had passed in
that conversation ; the Chancellor declined to give
any account of it, as he could not submit his in-
tercourse with deputies to any control, and added
that he was ready to resign." — The Change of Gov-
ernment in Germany (Fortnightly Review, Au-
gust, 1890), pp. 301-304.— "Early on the 17th of
March the Emperor sent word that he was
waiting for Bismarck's resignation. The Prince
refused to resign, on grounds of conscience and
of self-respect. . . . The Emperor must dismiss
him. A second messenger came, in the course
of the day, with a direct order from the Emperor
that the Prince should send in his resignation
within a given number of hours. At the same
time Bismarck was informed that the Emperor
intended to make him Duke of Lauenburg. The
Prince responded that he might have had that
title before if he had wished it. He was then
assured (referring to the grounds on which he
had previously declined the title) that the Em-
peror would pledge himself to secure such a
legislative grant as would suffice for the proper
maintenance of the ducal dignity. Bismarck
declined this also, declaring that he could not be
expected to close such a career as his had been
' by running after a gratuity such as is given to
a faithful letter-carrier at New Year's.' His
resignation, of course, he would send in as soon
as possible, but he owed it to himself and to his-
tory to draw up a proper memorial. This he
1583
GERMANY, 1889-1890.
The Modern Empire
GERMANY, 1895.
took two days to write. ... He has since re-
peatedly demanded the publication of this memo-
rial, but without success. . . . Ou March 20,
the Emperor, in a most graciously worded letter
(which was immediately published), accepted
Bismarck's 'resignation.'. . . The immediate
nomination of his successor [General von C'ap-
rivi] forced Bismarck to quit the Chancellor's
official residence in such haste that . . . ' Bis-
marck himself compared his exit to the expul-
sion of a German family from Paris in 1870.' " —
Nation, March 22, 1894 (reviewing ' Das deutscJie
Reich zur Zeit Bismarcks,' by Dr. lTan.s Blum).
A. D. 1890. — Settlement of African claims
with England. — Acquisition of Heligoland.
See Africa : A. D. 1884-1891.
A. D. 1894. — Reconciliation of Bismarck
with the Emperor. — In January, 1894, the com-
plete rupture of friendly relations between Prince
Bismarck and the Emperor, and the Emperor's
government, which had existed since the dismis-
sal of the former, was terminated by a dramatic
reconciliation. The Emperor made a peace-oflfer-
ing, upon the occasion of the Prince's recovery
from an illness, by sending his congratulations,
with a gift of wine. Prince Bismarck responded
amiably, "and was then invited to Berlin, to be
entertained as a guest in the royal palace. The
invitation was accepted, the visit promptly made
on the 26th of January, and an enthusiastic re-
ception was accorded to the venerable ex-chan-
cellor at the capital, by court and populace alike.
A. D. 1895. — The present organization of
the modern German Empire. — "The idea of
the unity of the empire in its purest and most
unadulterated form is most clearly typified by
the German diet. This assembly, resulting from
general elections of the whole people, shows all
the clefts and schisms which partisanship and
the spirit of faction have simultaneously brought
about among the different classes of the people
and among their representatives. But there
. . . never has been a single case where in
taking a vote North Germans have come forward
in a body against South Germans or vice versa,
or where small and medium states have been
pitted against the one large state. . . . How in-
dispensable a parliamentary organ which actu-
ally represents the unity of the people is to every
state in a confederation is best shown by the
energy with which the Prussian government
again and again demanded a German parliament
at the very time when it fairly despaired about
coming to an understanding with its own body
of representatives. In the middle between the
head of the empire and such a diet as we have
described is the place occupied by the Federal
Council (Bundesrath) : not until we have made
this clear to ourselves can we fully understand
the nature of this latter institution. Each of its
members is the plenipotentiary of his sovereign
just as were the old Regensburg and Frankfort
envoys. It is a duty, for instance, for Bavaria's
representative to investigate each measure pro-
posed and to see whether it is advantageous or
not for the land of Bavaria. The Federal Coun-
cil is and is meant to be the speaking-tube by
which the voice of the separate interests shall
reach the ear of the legislator. But all the same,
held together as it is by the firm stability of the
.seventeen votes which"it holds itself and by the
balancing power of the emperor and of the diet,
it is the place where daily habit educates the
representatives of the individual states to see
that by furthering the welfare of the common
fatherland they take the best means of further-
ing their own local interests. Taken each by
himself the plenipotentiaries represent their own
individual states ; taken as a whole the assembly
represents a conglomeration of all the German
states. It is the upholder of the sovereignty of
the empire. If, then, the federal council already
represents the whole empire, still more is this
true of the general body of officials, constituted
through appointment by the emperor,- although
with a considerable amount of co-operation on
the part of the federal council. The imperial
chancellor is the responsible minister of the em-
peror for the whole of the empire. At his side
is the imperial chancery, a body of officials who,
in turn, have to do in each department with the
affairs of the whole empire The imperial court,
too, in spite of all its limitations, is none the
less a court for the whole empire. Not less clearly
is the territorial unity expressed in the unity of
legislation. In the circumstances in which we
left the old empire there could scarcely be any
question any longer of real imperial legislation.
Under the confederation beginnings were made,
nor were they unsuccessful ; but once again
it was primarily the struggle against the striv-
ings for unity that chiefly impelled the princes
to united action. The ' Carlsbad Decrees ' placed
limits to separate teixitorial legislation to an
extent that even the imperial legislation of
to-day would not venture upon in many ways.
The empire of the year 1848 at once took up the
idea of imperial legislation ; a 'Reichsgesetzblatt'
[imperial legislative gazette] was issued. In this
the imperial ministry, after first passing them in
the form of a decree, published among other
things a set of rules regulating exchange. The
plan was broached of drawing up a code of com-
mercial law for all Germany for the benefit of
that class of the population to which a uniform
regulation of its legal relationships was an actual
question of life and death. So firmly rooted was
such legislation in the national needs that even
the reaction of the fifties did not venture to undo
what had been done. Indeed, the idea of a uni-
versal code of commercial law was carried on by
most of the governments with the best will in the
world. A number of conferences were called, and
by the end of the decade a plan had been drawn
up, thoroughly worked out and adopted. It has
remained up to this very day the legal basis for
commercial intercourse. It is true it was not the
general decrees of these conferences that gave
legal authority to this code, but rather its subse-
quent acceptance by the governments of the in-
dividual states. But the practical result never-
theless was that, in one important branch of law,
the same code was in use in all German states.
Never before, so long as Germany had had a
history, had a codification of private law been
introduced by means of legislation into the Ger-
man states in common : for the first time princes
and subjects learned by its fruits the blessing of
united legislation. But a few years later they
were ready enough to give over to the newly
established empire an actual power of legisla-
tion : only, indeed, for such matters as were
adapted for common regulation, but, so far as
these were concerned, so fully and freely that no
local territorial law can in any way interfere.
What the lawgiver of the German empire an-
1584
GERMANY, 1895.
The Modern Empire.
GERMANY, 1895.
nounces as his will must be accepted from the
foot of the Alps to the waves of the German
Ocean. Thus after long national striving the
view had made a way for itself that, without
threatening the existence of the individual states,
the soil of the empire nevertheless formed a
united territorial whole. But not only the soil,
its inhabitants also had to be welded together
into one organization. The old empire had lost
all touch with its subjects — a very much graver
evil than the disintegration of its territory. So
formidable an array of intermediate powers had
thrust itself in between the emperor and his sub-
jects that at last the citizen and the peasant
never by any chance any more heard the voice
of their imperial master. ... In three ways the
German emperor now found the way to his sub-
jects. Already as king of Prussia the emperor
of the future had been obeyed by 19 millions of
the whole German population as his immediate
subjects. By tlie entrance of a further 8 millions
into the same relationship on the resignation of
their own territorial lords by far the majority of
all Germans became immediate subjects of the
emperor. The German empire, secondly, in
those branches of the administration which it
created anew or at least reorganized, made it a
rule to preserve from the very beginning the
most immediate contact with fts subjects: so in
the army, so in the department of foreign af-
fairs. The empire, finally, even where it left the
administration to the individual states, exercised
the wholesome pressure of a supreme national
authoritative organization by setting up certain
general rules to be observed. The empire, for
instance, will not allow any distinctions to be
made among its subjects which would interfere
with national unity. If the Swabian comes to
Hesse, the Hessian to Bavaria, the Bavarian to
Oldenburg, his inborn right of citizenship gives
him a claim to all the privileges of one born
within those limits. For all Germany there is a
common right of citizenship ; and this common
bond receives its true significance through nu-
merous actual migrations from one state to an-
other, the right of choosing a domicile being
guaranteed. ... It belongs in the nature of a
federative state that it should not claim for itself
all state-duties but should content itself with
exercising only such functions as demand a cen-
tralized organization. In consequence we see
the individual states unfolding great activity in
the field of internal administration, in the further-
ance of education, art and science, in the care
of the poor : matters with which the empire as a
whole has practically nothing to do. All those
affairs of the states, on the other hand, which by
their nature demand a centralized administration
have been taken in hand by the empire, and the
unity of public interests to which the activity of
the empire gives utterance is shown in the most
different ways. There are certain affairs admin-
istered by the empire which it has brought as
much under a central organization as ever the
Prussian state did the affairs of the amalgamated
territories within its limits. With regard to
others the empire has preserved for itself nothing
more than the chief superintendence ; with re-
gard to others still it is content to set up princi-
ples which are to be generally followed and to
exercise a right of supervision. It would be
wrong, however, to imagine that the two last-
mentioned prerogatives are only of secondary
importance. The superintendence which the
German emperor exercises over the affairs of the
army, the chief part of which, indeed, is under
his direction as king of Prussia, is sufficient in
its workings to make the laud-aiiny, in time of
war, as much of a imit as is the consolidated
navy. . . . Customs matters form a third cate-
gory, with regard to which the empire possesses
only the beginnings of an administrative appa-
ratus: all the same we have seen in the last years
how the right of general supervision was suffi-
cient in this field to bring about a change in the
direction of centralization, the importance of
which is recognizable from the loud expressions
of approval of its supporters and also in equal
measure from the loud opposition of its antago-
nists. ... In the field of finance the empire has
advanced with caution and consideration and at
the same time with vigor. In general the sepa-
rate states have retained their systems of direct
and indirect taxation. Only that amount of con-
solidation without which the unity of the empire
as a whole would have been illusory was firmly
decreed : ' Germany forms one customs and com-
mercial unit bounded by common customs limits.'
The internal inter-state customs were abolished.
The finances that remained continued to belong
to the individual states — the direct taxes in their
entirety, the indirect to a great extent. The ad-
ministration of the customs on the borders even
remained in the hands of the local customs-offi-
cials, only that when collected they were placed
to the general account. But the unconditional
right of the empire to lay down the principles of
customs legislation gave it more and more of an
opportunity to create finances of its own and to
become more and more independent of the sched-
uled contributions from the separate states. . . .
Judicial matters are the affair of the individual
state. With his complaints and with his accusa-
tions the citizen whose rights have been infringed
turns to the court established by his territorial
lord. But already it has been found possible to
organize a common mode of procedure for this
court throughout the whole empire ; the rules of
court, the forms for criminal as well as civil
suits are everywhere the same. . . . The general
German commercial code and the exchange reg-
ulations, which almost all the states had pro-
claimed law on the ground of the conferences
under the confederation, were proclaimed again
in the name of the empire and were supplemented
in certain particulars. As to criminal law a
general German criminal code has unified the
more important matters, and with regard to those
of less importance, has legally fixed the limits to
be observed by the individual states. Work is
constantly going on at a civil code which is to
be drawn up much on the same lines. The
German nation is busily engaged in creating a
German legal system according to which the
Prussian as well as the Bavarian, Saxon or
Swabian judge is to render his decisions. Fur-
thermore, a century-long development in our
civilized states has brought it about that a su-
pervision, itself in the form of legal decisions,
should be exercised over the legality of judicial
sentences. Here again it was in commercial
matters that the jurisdiction of a supreme court
first showed Itself to be an unavoidable neces-
sity. Then it was, however, that after a slumber
of seventy years the old imperial court rose again
from the dead, not entirely without limitations.
1585
GERMAKY, 1895.
GERUSIA.
but absolutely without the power to make ex-
ceptions. The imperial court at Leipzig is a
court for the whole empire and for one and all of
its subjects. If we turn to the internal adminis-
tration it is chiefly matters concerning traffic and
intercommunication which call by their very
nature for regulation under one system. Al-
though the management of local and to some
extent also of provincial postal affairs is left
as far as possible to the individual states them-
selves, the German post is nevertheless imperial,
all the higher officials are appointed by the em-
peror, the imperial post office passes its rules
and regulations and sees that they are carried
out witli reference to the whole empire. . . .
What is true of the post is true also of the tele-
graph, which has come again to be one with it.
. . . The railroads stand under the direction
or supervisory administration of the individual
states, but unity with regard to time-tables,
connections, fares, and forwarding has been in
so far preserved that differences which might
interrupt traffic are avoided as far as possible.
The governments of the confederated states are
under obligations ' to allow the German rail-
roads, iu the interests of general communication,
to be administered as one unbroken network.'
A separate Imperial Railroad Bureau watches
over the fulfillment of this agreement. Nothing,
however, has given clearer expression to a uni-
fied system of intercommunication in Germany
than the equalization of the coinage. . . . Still
worse than with regard to coined money . . .
did the want of unity show itself in the mat-
ter of paper money. Not only did the various
states have different principles on which they
issued it, and a different system of securities
in funding it, but one and the same state
would continue to use its old paper money even
when issuing new on another principle. . . .
Pounded thus on a system of firm finances, on
the uniform administration of justice in all lands,
on an internal administration which, however
varied, nevertheless fulfills the necessary de-
mands of unity, the German empire shows a
measure of consolidation, the best outward ex-
pression to which is given by its army. Among
the two million men of Teutonic blood on land
and on sea who are ready to protect the Father-
land's boundaries there is not one who has not
sworn fidelity to his imperial master." — I. Jas-
trow, OescMchte des deutsehen EMieitatra'umes
•und seiner Erfullung {trans, from the Oerman),
pp. 285-803.
GERMINAL, The month. See France :
A. D. 1793 (October).
GERONA, Siege of. See Spain : A. D. 1809
(February — .Tune).
GERONTES.— Spartan senators, or members
of the Gerusia. See Sparta : The Constitu-
tion, &c.
GERONTOCRACY. SeeHAYTi : A. D. 1804
-1880.
GEROUSIA. See Gerusia.
GERRY, Elbridge, and the framing of the
Federal Constitution. See United States of
Am.: A. D. 1787.
GERRYMANDERING.— "In the composi-
tion of the House of Representatives fof the Con-
gress of the United States] the state legislatures
play a very important part. For the purposes
of the election a state is divided into districts
corresponding to the number of representatives
the state is entitled to send to Congress. These
electoral districts are marked out by the legisla-
ture, and the division is apt to be made by the
preponderating party with an unfairness that is
at once shameful and ridiculous. The aim, of
course, is so to lay out the districts ' as to secure
in the greatest possible number of them a ma-
jority for the party which conducts the opera-
tion. This is done sometimes by throwing the
greatest possible number of hostile voters into a
district which is anyhow certain tc be hostile,
sometimes by adding to a district where parties
are equally divided some place in which the ma-
jority of friendly voters is sufficient to turn the
scale. There is a district in Mississippi (the so-
called Shoe-String District) 2.50 miles long by 30
broad, and another iu Pennsylvania resembling
adumb-bell.' . . . This trick is called gerryman-
dering, from Elbridge Gerry, of Massachusetts.
... In 1812, while Gerry was governor of that
state, the Republican legislature redistributed the
districts in such wise that the shapes of the towns
forming a single district in Essex county gave to
the district a somewhat dragon-like contour. This
was indicated upon a map of Massachusetts which
Benjamin Russell, an ardent Federalist and editor
of the ' Centinel,' hung up over the desk in his
office. The celebrated painter, Gilbert Stuart,
coming into the office one day and observing the
uncouth figure, added with his pencil a head,
wings and claws, and exclaimed, ' That will do
for a salamander ! ' ' Better say a Gerrymander ! '
growled the editor ; and the outlandish name, thus
duly coined, soon came into general currency." —
J. Fiske, Civil Gov't in the U. 8., pp. 216-218.
Also in : J. W. Dean, I%e Oerryinander (N-
Bng. Hist, and Genealogical Beg., Oct., 1892).
GERSCHHEIM, Battle of. See Germany:
A. D. 1866.
GERTRUYDENBERG: Prince Maurice's
siege and capture of. See Netherlands : A. D.
1588-1593.
Conferences at. See Prance : A. D. 1710.
GERUSIA, OR GEROUSIA, The.— "There
is the strongest reason to believe that among the
Dorians, as in all the heroic states, there was,
from time immemorial, a council of elders. Not
only is it utterly incredible that the Spartan
council (called the gerusia, or senate) was first
instituted by Lycurgus, it is not even clear that
he introduced any important alteration in its con-
stitution or functions. It was composed of thirty
members, corresponding to the number of the
'obes,' a division as ancient as that of the tribes.
. . . The mode of election breathes a spirit of
primitive simplicity : the candidates, who were
required to have reached the age of sixty, pre-
sented themselves in succession to the assembly,
and were received with applause proportioned to
the esteem in which they were held by their fel-
low-citizens. These manifestations of popular
feeling were noted by persons appointed for the
purpose, who were shut up in an adjacent room,
where they could hear the shouts, but could not
see the competitors. He who in their judgment
had been greeted with the loudest plaudits, won
the prize — the highest dignity in the common-
wealth next to the throne." — "C. Thirlwall, Hist.
of Greece, ch. 8 {v. 1).
]586
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY, LOS ANGELES
COLLEGE LIBRARY
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