THE
NATIONALITIES OF EUROPE.THE
NATIONALITIES OF EUROPE.
E. G. LATHAM, M.A, M.D., F.E.S., <&c.,
LATE FELLOW OF KING’S COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE; AND LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON.
IN TWO VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
LONDON:
W¥ H. ALLEN & CO., 13, WATERLOO PLACE, S.W.
1863.
The Right of Translation and Reproduction is Reserved.5-yjOÄA-
v.x-
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Ottoman Empire.—Albania .	.	.	......................1
CHAPTER II.
Descent of the Modem Greeks....................................14
CHAPTER III.
Greece from 1821 to 1843.—The Revolution.......................34
CHAPTER IV.
he Bulgarians.—Their Ethnological Elements.—Their History.—Latin Elements in the Bulgarian Creed...................................53
CHAPTER V.
The Ottoman Turks, or Osmanlis.—The Turks of Roum.—The Turks in Europe 67
CHAPTER VI.
Population.—Mixed Districts.—Rumelia.—Bulgaria....................98
CHAPTER VII.
Mixed Districts.—Macedonia.—The Greek and Bulgarian Districts.—The
Macedonian Koniarids.—The Yuruks.............................106
CHAPTER VIII.
Mixed Districts.—Thessaly.—The Despotat of Epirus.—The Valachian and
Greek Regions.—The Thessalian Koniarids.......................109
CHAPTER IX.
Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan.—Parts to the West of the Euphrates.— Turks and Turkomans.—Populations other than Turk.—Greeks.—Lazes.— Armenians.—Kurds..................................................114VI
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER X.
PAGE
Asia Minor, &c.—Parts to the East of the Euphrates.—The Pashaliks of Kars,
Erzerûm, Mush, Bayezid, Yan and Diarbekir.—Kurdistan	.	.	.128
CHAPTER XI.
The Syrians and Arabs of the Ottoman Empire.—Mesopotamia, Assyria,
Syria, &c....................................	... 132
CHAPTER XII.
Creeds and Denominations of Assyria and Syria.—Yezids.—Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites.—Nusairiyeh, Druzes, Ismaeliyeh.—Mutawileh, Wahabis.
—Samaritans, Jews		. 137
CHAPTER XIII. Servia		. 189
CHAPTER XIY. The Danubian Principalities, Yalachia, and Moldavia	. 212
CHAPTER XV. Montenegro.—Servia again.—The Montenegro Question .	. 226
CHAPTER XYI. Italy.—Descent of the Modem Italians		. 242
CHAPTER XVII.	
Italy.—Rome from the Beginning of the Fourth Century'to the Present Time . 250
CHAPTER XVIII.
The Existing Foreign Elements in Italy.—The Non-Italian Populations of the Frontier.—The Colonists.—Equivocal Dialects, transitional between the French and Italian Languages.....................................282
CHAPTER XIX.
France.—Its National Unity.—Its Heterogeneous Elements, GiaUic, Iberic, Latin, Herman, (?) Slavonic, &c.—The Colonies of Chamavi, Warasci, &c.— Existing Elements other than French ; Flemish, Herman, Italian, Breton,
Basque................................................ 291
CHAPTER XX.
The Spanish Peninsula.—The Basque National Poetry.............298
CHAPTER XXI.
Hermany.—Its Connection with Italy and Austria.—Original Herman Area.—
Its Extension.—Chiefly at the Expense of the Slavonians and Lithuanians.—
The Original Slavonic Area.—Objections Considered.—The Hermania of Tacitus.—Extract from Constantine Porphyrogeneta.—The Term Goth.—
The Thuringians.—The Franks, Merovingian and Carlovingian.—The Ale-manni and Bavarians.—The Saxons.—Brandenburgh.—The Hessians . 304CONTENTS.	vii
CHAPTER XXII.
PAGK
Germany.—The Empire.—Connection with the Empire of Rome.—Carlovingian Period.—The Hohenstauffen Dynasty, &c.—The Secularizations.—Present Organization.—Value as a Bond of Union..........................330
CHAPTER XXIII.
Denmark.........................................................350
CHAPTER XXIV.
Holland ......................................................  351
CHAPTER XXV.
Belgium...................................................* 352
CHAPTER XXVI.
The British Islands.—Heligoland.—Gibraltar.—Malta.—The Ionian Islands.—
The Channel Islands ........................................353
CHAPTER XXVII.
Switzerland.................................... .	.	.	.355
CHAPTER XXVIII.
Heterogeneous Elements in Germany.—In Saxony.—In Prussia.—Slavonians, Lithuanians................................................. 357
CHAPTER XXIX.
Austria.........................................................367
CHAPTER XXX.
German Portion of Austria.—Its Slavonic, Avar, Gepid, and other Elements . 373 CHAPTER XXXI.
Bohemia and Moravia.............................................378
CHAPTER XXXII.
Galicia and Cracow.—Poles and Russniaks.—Austrian Silesia.—The Bukho-vinia ............. 387
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Hungary.—Transylvania, Rumanyo and German .	.	.	.	. 390
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Hungary.—The Magyars.—Their Origin.—The Szeklers.— The Chunsag.—The Jassag.—The War of 1849......................................394
CHAPTER XXXV.
The Slavonians of Slavonia, Syrmia, and the Banat.—The Croatians and Dalmatians ..................................................   413Vili
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
PAGE
Venetia ............. 416
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Scandinavia.—Denmark.—Sweden.—Norway. —The Gothlands.—Lithuanie or
Prussian Hypothesis. - The Liberation...................420
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Denmark.—The Danish and German Languages in Sleswick .	.	.	.441
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Language Questions. —Panslavonism, &c.—Conclusion..........456THE
NATIONALITIES OF EUROPE.
CHAPTER I.
The Ottoman Empire.—Albania.
Next in order to Russia in the number and complexity of its elements comes Turkey: in many respects the parallel, in many the contrast, to the empire of the Ozar. Both are what may be called representative empires; and both represent a religion as well as race. The Czars is the great power of the Slavonic, the Sultan’s that of the Turk, world. And both the Turks and the Slavonians are among the most important families of mankind. The Turk class, however, is the smaller, and it is, perhaps, the simpler one also. In some senses it is certainly so. The great majority of the Turks is, in language at least, less unlike an Osmanli than a Bohemian is unlike a Russian: though when we go farther and take into consideration the whole complex of the characteristics of the different sections of the two groups it is doubtful whether the observation applies. The civilization of the Slavonians is of a much more uniform character than that of the Turks; and no Slavonian differs in this respect from another so much as a Yakut from the shores of the Arctic Sea or a Kara-kalpak from the frontier of Mongolia differs from a Turk of Constantinople. Yet it is nearly certain that these differences are chiefly due to circumstances of comparatively recent occurrence; so that what applies to the Turks of the present day would not have applied five hundred years ago. Before the diffusion of the
VOL. TI.	B9
THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
Mahometan religion, the difference between one Turk and another must have been but slight: for it must be remembered that there are, at present, not only Mahometan, but Christian, Pagan, and, probably, Buddhist Turks; these differences of creed giving rise to distinctions which, when all Central Asia was simply pagan, must have amounted to very little.
But, though the Ottoman Empire is to the Turk much as Bus-si a is to the Slavonic world, there are Turks who know but little and care less about the Sultan. Many of them are Christians; a few Pagans; none enthusiastic, or even decided, Mahometans. Still less, do they place the Sultan above the Czar; for, whatever may be the case with the. Mahometans of Kazan or Orenburg, the Pagan and Christian Turks of Siberia are as good Kussian subjects as they would be if there were no such an individual as the Sultan. But Russia has the parallels, and more than the parallels, of these in the comparative indifference of the Bohemian Tsheks and the positive hostility of Poland. Still, Panslavonism has its analogue in Turkey; and with form and organization it might act upon the Uzbeks of Khiva and Bokhara much as Russian influence tells upon Servia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro. And, in all probability, there has been at different times more of it than appears on the face of history. That the religious feeling has been appealed to over and over again there is ample evidence. The appeals to that of nationality or race have been fewer and less patent; probably because the chief enemies with which Turkey has had to contend have been Christians, against whom the appeal to religion was sufficient.
In creed the Sultan is, at least, the equal of the Czar as the representative of a great section of a great creed. If Christianity fall into the Latin, the Greek, and the Protestant Churches, and if, of the Greek Church, the Czar, layman as he is, is the ever visible symbol, Mahometanism, with its divisions into the Shiites and the Sunnites, has a similar symbol for Sunnitism in the Sultan. It was a little before the extinction of the Kalifat that this title arose; Mahmud of Ghuzni being, as far as we may make a negative statement, the first who assumed it. The highest before his, time was, probably, Khan or Khaghan. In the Sultan every Sunnite sees the successor and equivalent of the Kalif, and, with a few exceptions, every Turk who is aTHE OTTOMAN TURKS.
3
Mahometan at all, is a Sunnite. The Shah of Persia is scarcely this in the eyes of the Shiite, though the Persian language and the Shiite creed coincide as closely as do the Turkish and the Sunnite. The difference, however, is accidental rather than real. The Sultan is more of a symbol in Mahometanism than the Shah, inasmuch as, being on the frontier of the Mahometan world, it is he who most looks like the bulwark of the faith.
Again. Of the Mahometan populations which are neither Turk nor Persian there are more which are Sunnite than Shiite: in other words, there is more of the Turk doctrine beyond Turkestan than there is of the Persian beyond Persia. The great Arab division of the Mahometan world is chiefly Sunnite; and of the two Mahometan kingdoms which (though at long intervals) the nearest approach Turkey and Persia, the former is wholly Sunnite, the latter partially so. Morocco, with its population of Arabs and Berbers, is Turk in creed; Bokhara is the same in respect to its dynasty and the dominant population.
Arabia itself is more Turk both in creed and political feeling than Persian; indeed a portion of it is nominally Turk. That it is a land which has never been thoroughly and permanently reduced, is true; but it is also true that the loose and current statements as to its absolute independence are exaggerated. It has been held in partial subjection by Borne, and it is held to some extent at the present time in an imperfect state of vassalage by the Porte. Hence, the relations between Bussia and Greece repeat themselves in those between Turkey and Arabia. The mother-countries of the two creeds and the sources of the civilization which these creeds carried with them, were Greece and Arabia. The political power, however, is in other hands. The eldest son, so to say, of the Greek Church is Bussia: the eldest son of Islam is Turkey—eldest son meaning the Bepresentative Power.
We saw this in the history of the great Caucasian war under Shamil. We see it in almost all the relations of the Mahometans who come in contact with Europe. In India, indeed, Persia has an influence of the kind in question; but it is, in no wise, to be compared with that of the Sultan in Europe.
Neither must we forget that the Mahometans of the Crusades were Turks; and that this means the only real Mahometans who
b 24
THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
have even been prominent in the history of France, England, and the Empire. In Spain it was different. The infidels with whom the Spaniards have the credit of having waged a chronic, national, and separate crusade of their own were the true original Mahometans of Arabia. But it was only in Spain and Africa that these were formidable. The Kalifat broke up before the Crusades began, and the infidels who interrupted the pilgrimages to Jerusalem, the infidels against whom Peter the Hermit preached, the infidels against whom Bichard I. drew his sword, the infidels who held Jerusalem, were Turks, Turks under the Sultan of Iconium. Their greatest hero, Saladin, seems to have been a Kurd, and the Mamelukes of Egypt were of mixed blood, Turk, Arab, and Circassian. But, as a general rule, the Mahometans of the Crusades were Turks: indeed they were nearly the same Turks who conquered Constantinople.
The great Tartar conqueror Tamerlane, or Timor, was also a Turk: a fact which leads us to ask how far the Turk language and Turk history coincide with the Turk blood. They do so but partially. In the recognition of a strong Turk element in the Mongol armies, I only follow current opinion; going no further than the facts suggested by the names Timur and The Great Mogul. The Great Mogul was so named because he was a descendant of Baber, who was a descendant of Timur, who passed for a descendant of Tshingiz. Whether he were so in reality is doubtful. It is only certain, on one side, that, dynasti-cally, he was considered as such; and that, on the other, he was a Turk, who knew the Mongols of his frontier only as strangers and enemies; who, in all probability, could speak no word of Mongol; and who had, at most, in his army, only a few companies who could do so. Whatever the Mongols were elsewhere, the Moguls of India were Tshagatai Turks. They affected a Mongol lineage; just as Timur professed a descent from Tshingis, whilst the Tshagatai tribe to which he belonged took its name from Tshingis’s huntsman, Zagatai. This is a matter of history. Mutatis mutandis, I believe that Tshingis himself connected his line with the Mantshus. At any rate his Mongol son bore the name of a Mantshu predecessor. Again, he professed descent from a virgin. So did Apaoki and Kitan, both Mantshus, before him.
I give a Mantshu element to the Mongol history of theseTHE OTTOMAN TURKS.
5
times because, word for word, I think Mongol and Mantshu are the same, and because I find reason for thinking that the name originated within the Mantshurian rather than the Mongol area. In the Chinese notices referred to of the sixth century we find the names Muky, Mokho, and Moho. That the -n is early got rid-of we learn from the term Mogul. This, however, is not the main point: inasmuch as the identity is not only not doubted but has been suggested by others, by Klaproth at least, whose suggestion is recognized by Castren, The doubt that stands over applies to the identity of Mongol and Mantshu. I find, however, the term Mongon meaning Mongol. I find the word Mantshu modified in as many ways as Mongol. I find that, word for word, the existing forms Mongolia and Mantshuria, considering that they denote conterminous countries, occupied, to some extent, by a common population, are too much alike to have the likeness wholly referred to accident. I find, in favour of its being from Mantshuria rather than from Mongolia, that the name was derived, the fact of the name of Oktai (a successor of Tshingiz and a Mongol) being (as aforesaid) nearly identical with that of Agutlia, a Mantshu and a predecessor of Tshingiz. I find that Tshingiz changed his own name from Temudzhin. I find that he. changed the name of his tribe from Bide to Koko-Mongol, or Blue (Black) Mongol. I find that it is only since this change was made that the name Mongol became applied to what is now the population of Mongolia. From this I am inclined to believe that the nucleus of the Temudzhinian armies was Mantshu; that the name, from the fact of the previous Kitan dynasty having ruled over China, was honourable; and that it was adopted by the populations which this nucleus congregated around itself.
Let us recognize, then, a Mantshu element in Mongolia, and a Mongol element in Turkestan. To this add an old Ugrian, and a new Circassian, element, for the blood of the nobler Turks of Constantinople is both Circassian and Greek, and that to a large extent.
* * * # * *-
I begin the details of the heterogeneous elements of the Ottoman Empire with Albania and Greece: taking the two together for reasons which will become clear as we proceed. In Greece two questions will take inordinate prominence,6
ALBANIA.
1.	The analysis of the Greek genealogy in the way of blood, and in respect to the relations of the modern Greeks to the ancient,
2.	The Greek Revolution,
* # *
Few countries have clearer and more definite natural boundaries than Albania, with the Adriatic on the west, the range of the Cambunian mountains on the east, Montenegro on the north, and (very nearly) the Gulf of Arta on the south. Few countries, too, have a more uniform aspect; the whole being a system of mountains and valleys, well fitted for the occupancy of a hardy, brave, and independent population.
In few countries, too, is the intermixture of foreign elements less. They are scarce, in whatever way we look at them. The patches of foreign settlers with the outward and visible characteristics of language, name, and nationality, are few; and the amount of foreign blood, disguised by Albanian characteristics, is small. In neither case, however, are examples wholly wanting. There is some Greek, Slavonic, and Latin blood, under the cover of an Albanian exterior; and there are certain foreign settlements of Yalachians, Slavonians, and Greeks, which, though they are few as compared with similar heterogeneities elsewhere, are still too notable to be ignored. Upon the whole, however, the Albanian stock, within the limits of Albania, is, comparatively speaking, pure.
But the Albanians are, by no means, limited to Albania. In Italy, and Sicily, they are numerous. There are some in Russia, some in Austria, an inordinate number in Greece. Indeed, much of Greece is more Albanian than Greek.
That the population is as uniform in its character as the land on which it lives is, by no means, the case. On the contrary, it is signalized by differences of dialect which in their extreme forms almost amount to differences of language; by differences of religion; by differences of nationality. On the other hand, the general character of the men and women is the same throughout. We may call them Albanians. We may call them Arnauts. We may call them Skipetar. The first name is the ordinary European one; the second is the one applied by the Turks; the third the one applied by the Albanians themselves.ALBANIA.
7
Though shepherds, robbers, and soldiers, the Albanians must not be looked upon as exclusively landsmen. Those of the islands exhibit great naval aptitude. As sailors they are both bold and skilful.
They marry young; and become betrothed still younger. When this is the case the principals have but a small voice in the marriage preliminaries. The parents effect these long before the sons and daughters are adolescent.
The best traits in the Skipetar character are their love of liberty, their love of their country, their courage, and their confidence in each other. Hence their chief representatives in history have been warriors; first and foremost of whom stands George Castriotes, Little Alexander, or Scanderbeg. That there was Skipetar blood in more than one of the heroes of antiquity is nearly certain. There was Skipetar blood in the veins of more than one of the kings of the Hellenic world. Pyrrhus, for instance, and the Temenids of Macedonia were, probably, more or less Skipetar.
In the details of their division the primary sections are those of the Gheghs and the Tosks: the Gheghs on the north, the'Tosks on the south. The chief character is the language; the valley of Skumbi or Stirnatza, between Berat and Elbassan being, there or thereabouts, the boundary between the two forms of it. That the two dialects are mutually unintelligible has been over-boldly and over-hastily asserted. It is doubtful whether, even, the most northern sub-dialect of the one and the most southern of the other, verify this statement. That there is anything like an approximation to mutual unintelligibility on the frontier is out of the question.' Still, the division is natural. It is with the Slavonians that the Gheghs, with the Greeks that the Tosks, come the most in contact. Again, when a Skipetar is a Christian his Christianity is that of his frontier, so that the Christianity of the Tosks is that of the Greek, the Christianity of the Gheghs that of the Latin Church. Of the Latin Christians the Mirdits are the chief tribe. Among the Lyapid and Tshamid divisions of the Tosks, the Greek Church has its chief adherents. The mass, however, professes Mahometanism; though not often with bigotry and not always with sincerity.
The singularly mild form of their Mahometanism is referable8
ALBANIA.
to several causes. In the first place, their Christianity was always of an imperfect character, being underlaid from the beginning to the end by the original paganism which, at the present time, crops out on every occasion where a superstition can find a chance of showing itself. It was more Greek than Latin, though not without Latin elements. Neither was the Greek part of it typically Greek. No vernacular translation of the Scriptures helped to fix the language, as vernacular translations fixed the Slavonic of Bulgaria, Servia, and Dalmatia. No notable saints, no polemic bishops, figure in their annals. Monasteries were never numerous in their rude and suspicious mountains. All this favoured the natural vitality of the old mythology.
Secondly. Many of the conversions were made from political motives: to save an estate, to keep an office, to take a place in a privileged class. In many families the Mahometanism is scarcely three generations old.
Thirdly. Amongst the Christians themselves the two rival denominations were prevented from quarrelling with one another by their geographical position. The Romanist Mirdits lay on the north, the orthodox Tshamids and Lyapids on the south. Between them lay the great block of the Mahometanism of the middle district as a breakwater to their natural intolerance.
Fourthly. There was never much religious persecution: which was wanting not because the Ottomans were tolerant, but because (from a variety of reasons differing with the difference of circumstances) the Christians of Albania managed to keep the right of bearing arms, and knew well how to wield them. For this they had to thank their own bold tempers and the impracticable nature of their occupancies.
In all this we get the explanation of a fact upon which the historian of the Greek Revolution has founded a safe generalization and remarked that whilst, with the Greeks, the ecclesiastic spirit was stronger than the national, the national, with the Albanians, was stronger than the ecclesiastic. The fact itself, whatever may be its explanation, is beyond doubt; a fact which makes itself apparent in every page of the later history of Greece—wherein we find Albanians and Greeks fighting side by side, for the political freedom of the soil of Greece—the adopted country of an inordinate number of Albanian colonists—-the country in which, not-ALBANIA.
9
withstanding the difference of blood and language, the Albanians comported themselves as Greeks.
Nor have these characteristics been exhibited without reason. If ever the time come when the Greek Kingdom shall strengthen itself at the expense of the Turkish, whatever may be the doubts as to the amalgamation of the Bulgarians and Bumanyos in a Great Byzantine Empire, the practicability of a fusion between the Greeks and Albanians, even if everything else be denied, must be recognized. Greece, at the present time, is, to a great extent, Albanian; and, if it had not been for its Albanian element, would, in all probability, never have been independent Greece. "With Albania released from Turkey, a similar series of migrations in the opposite direction is likely: in which case Albania would be partially Hellenized — the Albanians holding the hills, the Greeks the towns. On the other hand, however, the Albanians are, by no means, either malcontents or bad subjects of the Porte.
It were well for many Christian countries if they were so—well for Christendom in general; for it is through the unscrupulous instrumentality of the Albanian garrisons that the worst acts in the Ottoman history have been perpetrated. Faithful to his pay the Albanian is as careless of human suffering as he is bold, as rapacious as he is trusty. Faithful he is and brave he is, but brave and faithful after the fashion of a brave and faithful mercenary.
From the compactness of its area the Albanian nationality is isolated; by which I mean that the Albanian has no near kinsmen elsewhere by whom his political sympathies are extended beyond the frontiers of his own country. Such relations as exist between Servia and Bulgaria, between Alsatia and Germany, between Lower Canada and France, whatever may be their value, have no existence in the Skipetar world. Except in the case of its colonies it is self-contained. Albania, if united with any second nation, must be united with one which differs in many important ethnological characteristics from itself.
From the tenor of its previous history, itself determined by the physical conditions of the country, the Albanian nationality is local, sectional, and provincial, rather than general: in other words, it consists of a series of small nationalities rather than of one great one. The country has never played a prominent and acknowledged part in the world's history. An Albanian10
ALBANIA.
empire, eo nomine, has never existed. An Albanian kingdom has only been approximated. There is no such tiling as a royal Albanian dynasty. The nearest approaches to anything of this kind have been made by certain Bulgarian and Wallaehian principalities founded in Albania. But even these, except in Byzantine history, have never been of importance. What there is instead of this, is a series of tribual captains, of guerilla chieftains, of (at the best) popular heroes whose fame has been co-extensive with the small domain of Albanian language; the greatest of whom, the only one whose exploits have arrested the attention of the general historian, was Scanderbeg.
In ethnology, so wanting has it been in method and principle, the exertion of a minimum of common-sense or the recognition of the most patent presumption takes the guise of a discovery. Hence, the doctrine broached by Thunman, that the modern Albanians are neither more nor less than the descendants of the ancient Illyrians, has been looked upon by some as a valuable suggestion, by others as a bold hypothesis. Yet it is simply the prima facie view. What should they be else ? It is not, however, on the mere presumptions that the doctrine rests. Local names and glosses confirm it; and there are few critics, at the present time, who doubt it. The exact details of the boundaries are another matter. So is the original extent of the area. How far Albania ran northwards before it touched the Slavonic frontier, how far it ran east and south before it touched the Hellenic, are questions of more or less. Questions, too, of more or less are those touching the blood of Pyrrhus, Philip, and Alexander, Epirots and Macedonians who were certainly in blood more or less what a Greek would call Barbarian. That the Gheghs represent the Illyrians in the limited sense of the term rather than the Epirots, and the Tosks the Epirots rather than the Illyrians, is likely.
1.	Let us call the first epoch in the history of Albania the Illyrian period, a period on which the history of classical Greece throws a little light, that of Macedonia, more.
2.	The Roman period succeeds this; succeeded by
3.	The Bulgarian and Wallaehian; which will be noticed in our sketch of Bulgaria.
4.	The Ottoman.
With this last we begin; and begin with a notice of the Suliots.ALBANIA.
11
The tyranny of Ali Pasha led to their revolt, and the movements in Albania, of which the Suliot revolt was one, were among the chief preliminaries to the emancipation of Greece.
With the unsettled times of the Venetian war, the history of Suli begins. As Christians of the Greek Church the Suliots loved the Venetians no better than the Turks; and the Turks, aware of this, relaxed their restrictions and allowed them to hear arms. The habits thus engendered took root, and Suli became a military community in a natural fortress; with a gorge in front and impracticable mountains on each side. But, like a fortress, it was stinted in its supply of food and land, and a chronic system of either robbery or black-mail, was the result. In 1780 the number of Suliot families which bore arms was about a hundred. When Ali began his attacks, nineteen pharas gave four hundred and fifty, and about fifteen hundred fighting-men, distributed over four villages, with the historical names of Djavella, and Botzaris among their chief. Speaking roughly, we may give each family a traitor and each a patriot. If one Botzaris or Djavella gave his services to Ali, some other of the name died in a death-struggle against him. Still, the names of Botzaris and Djavella are best known from their bad deeds.
The attacks of Ali against Suli lasted about fifteen years. At one time he was suspected of being only half in ad 1y88_1303 earnest against them and of prolonging the war for purposes of his own. His stimulated energy, however, left no room for doubt as to his ultimate intentions. Nor was repression, if repression only had been intended, unneeded. The tillers of the soil suffered from either inroads or exactions, in excuse of which the poverty and circumscription of the soil of the Suli were pleaded before indulgent judges; for both Russia and Prance sympathized, or intrigued, with these brave and efficient marauders. Much of what is now going on in Montenegro went on during the last years of the last century in the four villages; Kako Suli (well-named), Avariko, Samoneva, and Kiapha, a miniature Lacedaemon.
With George Botzaris Suli lost seventy families, or about one hundred soldiers. Djavella took off others. Kako Suli was betrayed by Pyho Gousi. Avariko followed. To Kiapha alone attaches the interest which the name of Suliot inspires. The man whom12
ALBANIA.
no bribes seduced, no dangers terrified, and no promises deceived, was an Albanian, of mysterious origin, who had dropped upon Suli as it were from the skies. He is said to have been a native of Andros. His name was Samuel; but he called himself The Last Judgment, a term which suggests the secret of his authority. The ecclesistical dynasts had joined with Ali against the Suliots. The Bishop of Arta had forbidden the Christians of his diocese to assist them. The Bishop of Paramythia had allowed Ali to dictate a letter to the same effect. The spiritual censure of the Metropolitan of Joannina had been directed against them. But the Church, in the eyes of Samuel, was selling itself to Mahomet; and, full of his mission, he made light of both its censures and its exhortations. It was, probably, no difficult matter to infuse his own spirit of insubordination into the hearts of the Suliots. They made him their military chief.
He had charge of the hill of Kughni, and the village of Kiapha. All around was conquered or coerced. The men guarded the paths; while the women carried them water and provisions under the fire of the besiegers, who treated them as combatants. The number of the families was three hundred; but their resistance was sufficiently prolonged to induce Ali to offer terms; and a eapitu-lation was signed, by which Kughni and Kiapha were delivered up to Yeli Pasha and Photo Djavella.
The Suliots who had concluded separate treaties with Ali had betaken themselves to Zalongo. The terms of the capitulation of Kughni and Kiapha were never meant to be kept; for, after permission had been given to Zervas and Drako to retire with their pharas to Parga, Ali placed an ambuscade on their road. They escaped it; but the treachery was the same. In like manner, Ali surprised Zalongo. Some of its defenders were made slaves of; some were killed fighting; some threw themselves from the rock rather than fall into the hand of Ali; and of these the greater part were women. Some dashed their infants down first. Such is the general picture, which is, perhaps, vague and indistinct. Let us remember that the whole garrison was but a fraction of a fraction of the reduced Suliot population, and then see whether we can find a numerical return. Sixty men, twenty-two women, and four children—these are the imperfect statistics for the occupants of Zalongo who died dashed to pieces. Samuel, in Kughni, whenALBANIA.
13
lie saw that all was lost, retired to the powder-magazine and lit a match. We know what comes when resolute men do this.
Though the Suliots are the most notable warriors of their class (the class of the semi-independent, privileged, and Christian Albanians), the Chimariots and Parginots are in the same category. By the Treaty of Campo Pormio, the Venetian dependencies off and in Albania became French, and Ali Pacha was the Friend of the French, to whom he represented the Chimariots as rebels to his lord the Sultan, and reduced them by a bloody massacre for himself.
In 1798, however, he ejects the French themselves from all the fortresses on the continent which they held under their title from Venice, Parga alone remaining independent.
In 1800, everything which had ever been Venetian is made over to Turkey. This gave Parga to the Sultan as its nominal, hut to Ali as its real, master. Even the Sultan assented to its remaining as it was; so that for nineteen years its cession was in abeyance. In 1819, however, England was called upon to make good the convention of 1800, and Parga was unwillingly ceded. Bather than submit to Ali, the Parginots emigrated in a body. They will he noticed, again, when the Ionian Islands come under consideration.J 4
DESCENT OF TIIE MODERN GREEKS.
CHAPTER II.
Descent of the Modem Greeks.
How far are the modern, the descendants of the ancient, Greeks?
I take as a kind of a text to the forthcoming dissertation a passage from Constantine Porpliyrogeneta; one with which some of my readers are familiar; and one which, to say the least of it, has done a good deal of useful service—«// Greece was Slavon-¿zed and became Barbarian. That this means that the ancient Hellas was Slavonic in the way that the Governments of Vladimir and Tula are Eussian, no one imagines. The passage, however, though it has never been wrested into such an import as this, has been made to carry a great deal more than it can fairly bear. The disquisitions of Eallermayer are well known. Colonel Leake had drawn attention to the fact of several of the local names in Greece being significant in the Slavonic; in short, to their being simply Slavonic words. Some of them are this beyond doubt. A district beyond a mountain named Zagora; a lake named Ezero, tell their own tale. No one needs much study of the Eussian to see what they mean. They appear in the ordinary maps of Eussia just like hill and mere in those of England. Whether every name that every speculator has brought forward is in the same category is another question. The whole question is one of more or less.
In the hands of Fallermayer the doctrine that this suggests takes inordinate dimensions, and emerges into the paradox (real or apparent) that the modern Greeks are no descendants from the ancient ones at all, being little more than Eussians, Servians, or Bulgarians, who speak Greek. That the Greeks themselves protest against this pedigree is what we expect. Satisfied to call their language Eomaic or Eoman, they are not content to be Slavonized; or rather they deny that any notable amount of Slavonians hasSLAVONIC ELEMENTS.
15
been brought to take the garb of Greeks. This, again, is a question of more or less.
In opposing the doctrine they are right; for, as matters go on the Continent, no one can tell what a piece of speculative ethnology may lead to. The present writer only hopes that he may have the credit of claiming for each and every nation that comes under his cognizance the greatest amount of good government that circumstances permit, no matter what may be that nation s origin. If the descendants of the Cities of the Plain be in being they have a right to this, and the descendants of the Pilgrim Fathers have a right to no more. The rigid rule of right, however, is not that which regulates the activity of the sympathies on the part of a looker-on in national contests. These are, doubtless, affected by appeals to noble blood and ancestral services rendered to the world at large; and our nature will have deteriorated when such appeals are made in vain. Still, they may be made on exaggerated grounds and for purposes which disturb others. That the modern Greeks are inclined to make capital of the ancient ones no one who knows their aspirations will deny.
Laying, however, all this aside, and divesting the question of all its practical uses or abuses, the historical fact, as a simple historical or scientific truth, still stands over.
No one who fixes the date of the earliest Slavonic settlement in Greece will do much, unless he can divest himself of the notion that, because the Goths and Vandals were associated in arms, they were both members of the same sub-section of the human race; or that, because the Goths were Germans, the Yandals were the same. The shadow of an argument that may be got for this view from the fact of their political or military union scarcely amounts to a presumption. All the world over, confederations, of all sorts and sizes, are made up of members as different as Englishmen and Eussians, Greeks and Swedes. With small ones, like those of the native Indians in America, this has been the case; and with large ones, like those of the Turks and Mongols, it has been the case also.
Such are the preliminaries to the patent fact, upon which there is no reason to refine, that, word for word, Vandal is Vend, and that Vend is the name by which, early or late, north or south, east or west, the Germans designate the Slavonians. Whether16
DESCENT OF THE MODERN GREEKS.
the Germans were the only population who so applied the name is doubftul. Whether every nation that bore the name was so called by a German is also doubtful. But that, when a German population and a population other than German come into contact, when one names the other, and when Vend is the name applied, the population that takes it is Slave is certain. There is no evidence of any German ever calling other Germans so; no evidence of their ever calling any one so who was not a Slavonian.
There were, then, Slavonians in Greece as early as there were Vandals; and there were Vandals as early as there were Goths; which takes us as far back as the third century.
After the Vandals come the Huns, of whom the earliest notice is that of Procopius, who carries a large army of them through the pass of Thermopylse as early as a.d. 540. That these were Bulgarians under another name is probable; but even if we suppose them to have been the true Huns of the Turk stock there is good reason for believing (indeed there is the express evidence of the historian) that they were accompanied by Slavonians. Turk, however, or Slave, there was a foreign element of some sort.
In 581, another great invasion is mentioned, and within ten years later a third; the invaders in this last being the Avars. “ These Avars,” writes the Patriarch Nikolaos to the Emperor Alexius, “had held possession of the Peloponessus for two hundred and eighteen years, and had so completely separated it from the Byzantine empire that no Byzantine official dared to put his foot in the country.” This is from a notice of the foundation of the Bishopric of Patras, by Nieephorus I. in 807, the date from which the two hundred and eighteen years must be calculated.
The Avars were members of the Turk stock. I think they were this because, unlike Hun, Avar is a name used with tolerable accuracy and precision. Still, there are good reasons for attaching a great host of Slavonians to their armies. As Patras was besieged by them they must have penetrated beyond the Isthmus. Of the Slavonic settlements in Macedonia no notice is here taken.
The reign of Justinian induces us to draw attention to another factor in this question, viz.:—the system of slavery. I am inclined to adopt the opinion of Mr. Finlay as to its importanceSLAVONIC ELEMENTS.
17
He thinks that the proportion of the slaves to the freemen in Greece must have been greater than it is in the Southern States of America; the importation of the former being free. It may he added that the conditions under which they gave their compulsory labour were, in some respects, more favourable to population. Their labour was, certainly, lighter, and of a less deleterious kind. On the other hand, the proportion of the sexes may have been against it. The soil, however, along with the production of manufactured articles, was almost wholly on their hands. Finlay puts them at, at least, one-half of the population. That they were chiefly of Sarmatian blood is an inference from the countries that supplied them, Dacia and Mcesia; though they were not the only ones. A chronic malady as slavery was upon Greek soil during the whole of the pagan period, its effects upon the nationality during the time when it was at its maximum must have been hut slight: a slave, chattel as he was, being scarcely a part of the nation. Emancipated, he was in a different predicament. He could till the land and exercise trade for himself. His blood, at first, foreign, would gradually mix itself with that of his former masters; and as it was their language which he would adopt, he would, ere long, though ever so Dacian or Slavonic in blood, take upon himself the guise of a Greek.
In an account of St. Willibald’s pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a.d. 723, the saint is said, after leaving Sicily, to have touched at Manafasia, i. e. Monemvasia, in the Slavonian land.
Between 842 and 852 the Melingi and Ezeritse were conquered by Theoktistos under the regency of Theodora during the minority of her son Michael III.; hut only for a time. Between 920 and 944 they are again in arms; are threatened with extermination ; are constrained to pay tribute; are supported by an allied population of Slavesians: and, finally, are allowed to elect their own chiefs. The partial independence that this privilege procured them lasted more than two hundred years; for Slavonians were found in the Morea by the Franks about 1205, in Laconia, in Arcadia, and in Elis. The latest notice of their language carries it into the fourteenth century.
The valley of the Apidanus looks like another of these Non-hellenic localities. Just where it joins the Peneus, stands, in the modern maps, the village of Kutzochevo. Follow the stream, to
VOL. II.	c18
DESCENT OF THE MODERN GREEKS.
its bifurcation, and you come to a Ylakho Iani. Cross the watershed and near the mouth of the Sperchius stands Zeitoun, in the country of the Maleans, on the Sinus Maliacus, not far to the north of Thermopylae. Roughly speaking, and for the sake of bringing in two old familiar names, let us say that the evidence of Valachian occupancy extends from Larissa to Thermopylae, taking-in parts of Pelasgiotis, Thessaliotis, Phthiotis, and the Maliensis, with Pharsalia and Thaumakia on the west, and Pherae on the east; being part, also, of the Pelasgian Argos with the range of Pelion and the battle-ground of the Centaurs and Lapithae between it and the sea. I conclude with remarking that the modern name of Pelion is Zagora, a Slavonic word meaning over the mountain. It applies to a town on the eastern slope; and, consequently, places the Slavonians who applied it on the west. This gives the south-eastern quarter of Thessaly, more or less, to two intrusive populations. Zeitouni is brought-in because it is mentioned by Benjamin of Tudela as the southern limit of what he calls Great Vallachia. “ Here are the confines of Yallachia, a country the inhabitants of which are called Ylachi. They are as nimble as deer, and descend from the mountains into the plains of Greece, committing robberies and making booty. Nobody ventures to make war upon them, nor can any king bring them to submission; and they do not profess the Christian faith. Their names are of Jewish origin, and some even say they have been Jews, which nation they call brethren whenever they meet an Israelite; they rob, but never kill him as they do the Greeks. They profess no religious creed.”
That the names of Samuel, Simeon, Gabriel, Daniel, and Moses appear in almost every page of Valachian history, is a remark of Finlay’s, from whom the preceding extract is taken.
When did these Yalachians enter this part of Thessaly and whence came they ? Anna Comnena mentions them as being the masters of several Thessalian towns. Kinnamos observes the affinity between their language and the Latin. Finlay suggests the year 1040 as a probable approximate date for their introduction, under Basil II.; who, he thinks, may have introduced them in order to re-people the country which the Bulgarians had depopulated.
In dealing, however, with this question we must, by no means,VALACHIAN ELEMENTÓ.
19
overlook the term Kutzo. In more than one of the ordinary works on the Kumanyo language, the Valachians of Greece—not these (for they are scarcely to he found speaking their original language in the valley of Apidanus), but some others which will be mentioned in the sequel—are called Kutzo-Valachians, a compound which is explained to mean Lame, i. e. False Valachians, or something equally disparaging. The writers, however, who lay this before us overlook the following notice, while Zeuss, to whom it is due, though he suggests the connection between the Kutzi and the Valachians, seems unaware of the existence of the compound which adds so much in favour of his hypothesis.
1.	Codinus mentions the Bishopric of the Kutziagri as one of the sees of Thessaly.
2.	In the heading of a chapter in the Life of the Archbishop of Thessalonica are the words “ Civil war between the city and Muru and Kuver the Bulgarian.”
3.	In a life of John, Archbishop of Salónica, who lived in the latter half of the seventh century, is the statement that the Khan of the Avars brought back from Pannonia and the parts about Sirmium, a number of men out of captivity, whom he claimed as his own subjects, and who, when they reached his dominions, mixed themselves with the Avars and Bulgarians; that he placed over them a captain named Kuver (Koi/jSs^); that Kuver affected independence; that he carried the Captivity with him, and, finally, that the whole mass moved towards Thessalonica—whence arose the war alluded to in the second notice.
The connection of the Kutziaguri with what we may call the Kutz element in the Kutzo -Valachians was suggested (as aforesaid) by Zeuss, apparently without knowing that they were called anything but simple Valachians. The next suggestion is the present authors. The Kutziaguri were the nation to which the captain Kuver belonged; and they were Turks of either the Hun or Avar name. But the men over whom he was placed and whom the Avar king claimed were Rumanyos—probably ordinary Eumanyos of Dacia, but not impossibly of Pannonia.
Yet it does not follow that because the mass of these Macedonian Slaves were from the parts beyond the Balkan, from the countries which the Macedonian frontier touched, from Bulgaria, and from Servia, that all the others were the same. A notice of the parts about Thessalonica suggests a fresh source.
c 220
DESCENT OF THE MODERN GREEKS.
Here we find in an account of, perhaps, the ninth century, that in the time of Archbishop John, the Dragovitse, the Sagudatae, the Yelegezetae, the Yaiunetae, and the Berzetae, invaded the Cha-chidic Peninsula. Most of these names occur elsewhere. The Bishop of Philippopolis styles himself the Exarch of all Europe and Dragovintia. The Sagudates and the Dragovites are specially mentioned as paying tribute to the Scythian empire on that frontier. The names Sougdaia and Souodalia are again the names of bishoprics; and that they are the names of a Sagudat see is likely. The King of Bulgaria threatens Yerzetia. The Ye^ legezetae are placed in Thessaly. Finally, there is a Thessalian Bishop of the EZs^o;, Ezero, or Lake; one of the Smoleni; and one of the Galazi; words which may be compared with Smolensk and Galaez—whilst Susdal is the name of a district east of Moscow. But, though this is enough to establish a Slavonic migration, it scarcely makes it Russian. The invasion, however, was made by sea. More than this, it was made in boats made out of single trees—monoxyla—a fact which suggests the likelihood of the origin of the migrations having been high up some of the rivers of Russia. More than this. In Nestor we get the name Dragovitse, in its true natural form Eragoviczi, accompanied with the statement that the men who bore the name dwelt between the Dwina and the Pripec.
The Norman name now comes under notice.
Thirty years ago, it was necessary for the writer who would describe the countrymen of William the Conqueror (among whose invasions that of England, though the most permanent and important, was, by no means, the most adventurous, whilst it was also only one out of many), to guard his reader against the notion that they were merely Frenchmen of the Duchy of Normandy. It was needful for him to draw attention to their earlier history, and to show that Normandy itself was but a secondary occupancy; that their real home was Scandinavia, and that Normandy was simply the land conquered and appropriated by the Northmen of Denmark and Norway—one or both, or the two combined, as the case might be. At the present time, so strong has been the reaction from the opinion suggested by the French character of the Duchy, that the opposite caution is now required, and it is necessary for anyone, who is not writing for Danish and Norwegian readers, to guard against the notion that they were mereNORMAN ELEMENTS.
21
Scandinavians. The greater attention paid to the old Norse literature, combined with the well-deserved influence of the over-patriotic Scandinavian antiquarians, led to this. Still, though the main fact is true, it has been unduly exaggerated. The men who conquered Neustria, and changed its name to Normandy, were neither pure nor unmodified Norwegians. They were more Danes than Norwegians, and, to a great extent, North Germans as well as Danes. For another reason, too, the blood in Normandy was largely German. A great portion of the old Saxon Shore (Litus Saxonicum) consisted of the Norman coast, and the Saxon Shore took its existence as early as the third century. Again, a fair case, resting on the character of the names of the several Richards, Henrys, and Williams, who were at one and the same time Dukes of Normandy and Kings of England, is in favour of the dynasty having been Gothic rather than even Frank, Gothic, through the conquest of France by Adolphus, or Ataulfus, in the fifth century.*
Leaving this, however, as a point of minute ethnology, it is certain that before three generations were over, the Northmen of Normandy, with the exception of a stiff-necked remnant in Bayeux, were, in language, nationality, laws, and arts, Frenchmen; and it is as French, rather than as Scandinavian, conquests that we must look upon the reductions of England, Southern Italy, and Sicily.
Four times did the Normans, who had fixed themselves as rulers in this last named island, attempt the conquest of Constantinople, or, at least, a dismemberment of the great Byzantine empire. There was a narrow stream of salt water between Italy and Greece; and what was that to men whose original home had been on the Eyder and the firths of Norway ? men whose arms, except by the Arabs of Spain, had never been foiled; who saw in the wealth of Constantinople even a greater prize than the crown of England, so lately won by one of their countrymen.
About twenty years, then, after the battle of Hastings, a.d. 1081. Robert Guiscard sailed from Brindisi with an armament of thirty thousand men and a hundred and fifty ships, but succeeded only in reducing Corfu and in landing in Epirus.
* This doctrine is given more at length in a chapter, by the present writer, in Professor Ansteds work on the Channel Islands.22
DESCENT OF THE MODERN GREEKS.
ad 1107	was 3*n ®P*ms ^atj twenty-six years afterwards,
Bohemund landed; but only to lay siege to Dyrrha-cln’um, retire from it, and acknowledge himself a liegeman of the Byzantine emperor.
Itogers invasion was the third, and it was by far the most formidable. An insurrection of the inhabitants put him in easy possession of Corfu. From Corfu his admiral sailed to Monem-vasia, which was successfully defended by the bold population, which then was Slavonic in language and nationality as well as in blood. Euboea was then plundered; and, afterwards, by a return voyage, the coasts of iEtolia and Acamania. Having landed near the ancient Naupactus, the troops made straight for Thebes, then a wealthy and industrious town, with two thousand Jews amongst the dyers and silk*weavers that contributed to its wealth. It was sacked, and Corinth was sacked soon after. Whether any notable portion of the invading army was left on the soil of Greece is unknown. Numerous women, however, and artisans were violently transplanted to Palermo, and, under their industry and instruction, the silk-manufacture took root in Sicily. A treaty was afterwards made between the Emperor Manuel and William I., but no provisions were made in favour of the expatriated Greeks.
The fourth and last attempt was made by Tancred in the reign a d 1185	The details are the same as those
’of the preceding one. The army was landed at Dyr-rhachium, the fleet went round. The great siege of this campaign was that of Saloniki in which cruelty predominated over avarice. Upon the whole, however, the attempt miscarried, and at the battle of Demerige the hitherto formidable and successful Normans were signally defeated. Dyrrhachium was subsequently abandoned, and all that Tancred could do was to return with the fleets and the fragments of the army to Sicily.
As no permanent Norman settlements are known to have been made during these attempts, the details of them are of slight -importance in the ethnological history of Greece. In another respect, however, they deserve notice. They inflamed the enmity between the Greek and Latin Churches; they were the vaunt-couriers to the greater invasions which were effected under the Crusaders. They propagated the name and influence of theFRANK AND ITALIAN ELEMENTS.
23
Franks. These Normans, whatever they were at first, were now Frenchmen. England was as French as a French dynasty could make it. Spain was Mahometan. Germany had yet to cut her way eastward. Whatever was known in Constantinople as other than Italian, Slavonic, or Hungarian, was known as Frank. No wonder, then, that when Constantinople became Turk, the word Frank should have become synonymous with European, or, at least, with European of Western Europe.
Whatever may have been the earlier encroachments upon the nationality of the Greeks and the foreign elements which mixed themselves up with their blood, the real dismemberment of the country dates from the fourth crusade. It was in the fourth crusade that the nefarious bargains were driven between the Franks (for so we may call the Crusaders) and the Venetians. The latter were to do the transport work and land so many men on the soil of Greece. Between the three parties, the Franks, the Venetians, and the Emperor, disputes arose by times. It ended in a partition. The details of the history, as a whole, belong to the biographies of the great Doge Dandolo; Baldwin, Count of Flanders; and Boniface, Marquis of Montserrat. They ended in the sack of Constantinople, and the virtual annihilation of the Byzantine empire in Europe. It was afterwards restored, but only partially. The whole system, however, was changed—so changed that, until long after the death of Mahomet II., Greece (and this means Macedonia and Rumelia) was, instead of a province under a centralized government from a magnificent and opulent capital, as pure a mass of feudal fiefs as Italy or Germany itself. Ephemeral kingdoms, ephemeral principalities, ephemeral despotats, ephemeral dukedoms are what we are now to meet with. The minutiæ of them are tiresome and complex ; still, with a few leading principles, not hopelessly so. Let us first note that when the Crusaders took possession of Constantinople and its European dependencies, the Byzantine-empire withdrew to Asia Minor; thus removing the seat of the empire to Nicæa. Hence there are always two Emperors; the Frank Emperor in Constantinople, the ejected Oonstantino-politan in Nicæa. In the tissue of feudalisms which ensue, this distinction is important; because a pretender to any minor division of the empire might transfer or divide his allegiance ; as, on certain occasions, was done. A title from Nicæa was held good24
DESCENT OF THE MODERN GREEKS.
against a title from Constantinople. This was done after the restoration as well as before it; or, at any rate, we find that after the old line had been restored titles were held under the Frank sovereigns—interlopers originally, now pretenders.
The division of the spoil, and the spoil was a great and old empire, ran thusUntil the debt to the republic was paid, the ‘Venetians were to hold three-fourths, the Crusaders one-fourth of the booty and provinces. This gives us a broad division between the two classes of appropriators. Those who held under Venice Italianized, those who held under the Crusaders Gallicized or Germanized, their respective fiefs. The principle of allotment differed accordingly* The Crusaders, with their French and German nobles, granted territories on purely feudal terms, and created a number of vassals in chief, with subordinates, great and small. The republic took no immediate possession of its share; but made grants to private citizens, and, in some cases, to adventurers on condition of their completing the conquest. In pne case—a case where Genoa rather than Venice was the suzerain—a grant was made to a company. More on this matter, however, will appear in the sequel. Whoever else miglit be consulted in these arrangements no one thought of the subject populations themselves. The whole mass of the empire was treated as the merest of chattels. One example, out of several, will illustrate this.
Of the three best claimants of the Imperial crown the Doge Dandolo, Boniface Marquis of Montserrat, and Baldwin Count of Flanders, the latter was elected, and his Empire was that of Romania; whilst Boniface received a feudatory kingdom in Asia. Crete had been promised to him by Alexius IV., or, at any rate, he put in a claim for it. But the Venetians had some territory in Thessaly. With them he made an exchange; having, either previously or at the same time, relinquished his Asiatic kingdom for Thessalonica, with the title of king of Saloniki.
So we begin—with an empire and a kingdom at once. But when the Emperor announced his intention of visiting Saloniki and receiving the oath of allegiance, the vassal demurred; and a civil war between the Flemings and the Lombards was on the point of breaking out when the matter was arranged, and Boniface, King and Marquis, was appointed commander-in-chief of the army by which the feudalism of the rest of Greece was toFRANK AND ITALIAN ELEMENTS.
25
he enforced—in other words, Boniface was to be suzerain to some subordinate, who was to have vassals under him, who were to be sovereign to some one below themselves. Meanwhile the King of Bulgaria was assisting insurgents in Adrianople; the Greeks in Asia were rallying round the Emperor whose capital was Nicaea; the Venetians were adopting as much of the feudal regulations of the Franks as suited their convenience and habits; the Greeks living according to their own institutions; and every guild of traders or factors regulating its own affairs according to its own usages.
By 1261 the empire of Romania was abolished; and the Greek dynasty re-instated. The kingdom, too, had become something different to what it was under Boniface. The Emperor was killed in a battle against the Bulgarians, leaving his crown to a minor.
Meanwhile the Despotat of Epirus had grown-up; a Despotat of which the history belongs to Albania rather than Greece. The Despot, however, of Epirus took advantage of the troubles and factions of Saloniki which the emperor and suzerain, Peter Courtenay, was unable to support; conquered it without difficulty; appropriated it, and made it into an empire— the third concurrent empire now in existence for these parts.
Whilst King of Saloniki, Boniface, either as a subordinate to Emperor, or on his own title, had constituted four fiefs between the southern frontier of his own kingdom and the Isthmus, receiving homage from four dukes—a Duke of Boudonitza, a Duke of Salona, a Duke of Euboea, and a Duke of Athens. It is the history of the last of these that alone is either worth giving, or can be given, in any detail. The dukedom comprised Thebes; and Otto de la Roche was the first duke. Guy II., the fourth of the house of De la Roche, was succeeded by his cousin Walter de Brienne. Then came the barbarous rule of the Catalans, then Dukes of Athens and Neopatras of the Sicilian ^	1326
branch of the house of Arragon, and finally, dukes of the Florentine family of the Acciaiouli—strange names and strange titles to find in the history of Athens and Thebes; names and titles, however, which are eminently suggestive of the difference between the Athens of the Ionic confederacy and tte Athens of the Frank fief.26
DESCENT OE THE MODERN GREEKS.
But perhaps the climax of the antipodes between the Greece of the classics and medieval Greece is best exhibited by the following proper names. Let us remember that the date is 1304, and that Athens is the locality.
Then and there, Guy II. married Maud of Hainault, daughter of Isabella Yillehardouin, princess of Achaia; took Kalamata as the Villehardouin fief for dowry; claimed the whole principality against Philip of Savoy; and took in service to support his claims Fernando Ximenes. But as he died without sons, the male line of De la Roche became extinct and the duchy went to his cousin Walter de Brienne, son of Isabella, the sister of John and William de la Roche, who had married Hugh de Brienne, Count of Lecce, great-grand-nephew of John de Brienne, King of Jerusalem and Emperor of Romania. The Catalans who supported Walter (and here let us note the Spanish names) had among their earlier magnates, Roger de Florez, assassinated by the Greeks; D’Entenza, murdered by the troops themselves; Don Fernando of Majorca, who had left them as impracticable or irreclaimable brigands; Rocafort, who was betrayed by his own officers to the French; and fourteen others, who were murdered by the soldiers for betraying him. Two knights, an Adalil, and a colonel of Almogavars* were then elected as heads of the executive, with a council of twelve to advise them. Much (I will not say all) of this has come down to us in the narra^ tive which tells us that when Walter first made his offers to the Catalans they were in their winter quarters at Cassandra, and they
had to cut their way southwards. The Greeks of Mace-a.d. 1309.	.	J
donia opposed them, the Slavonians of Macedonia opposed them, the Yalachians of Macedonia opposed them, and they opposed them so effectually that they got no further than Thessaly on their road before spring. Then, however, they received pay from Duke Walter; their numbers being—in cavalry three thousand five hundred—in infantry three thousand—total, six thousand five hundred. Each horseman in heavy armour took four gold ounces a month, each light-armed horsman two, and each foot-soldier one. If we can forget that the foot-soldiers
* Almogavar = foot-soldier. If Arabic, as both the words seem to be, and if Almogavar = Mogrebin, they suggest a Moorish, i. e. an Arab and Berber, or native African, element.SPANISH ELEMENTS—THE CATALANS.
27
were called Almogavars and that the paymaster was a Walter de Brienne, this reads like the account of the free companies of the Anabasis.
As measures, however, of the assets of the Athenian dukes and of the proportion borne by this new Spanish element to the native population, the numbers are of value.
The Duke and the Catalans agreed at first; disagreed afterwards. The one would fain have dismissed the others when their work was done; the others would not be dismissed. The whole history is so thoroughly an anamorphosis of the Anabasis that we can read it beforehand. The Catalans ask leave to do the best they can for themselves by marching forwards into the Morea and demanding that their arrears of pay should be made good.
Nothing comes of either asking; and it ends in a trial of strength. The Catalans win the battle that ensues; and the Duke is killed. Indeed all the magnates are killed, save and except Boniface of Verona and Eoger Deslau of Bousillon.
But the house of Brienne had fiefs elsewhere; and, in Nauplia and Argos, the son of the slain Walter maintained the family title, until, after an adventurous series of attempts to reconquer the original dukedom, he became a general of Florence, a Constable of France, and one of the numerous French nobles who was left dead on the field of Poitiers. The Dukes of Athens were now the Catalan captains.
In the Morea, Misithra, Monemvasia, and Maina were the three fortresses which reverted to the empire after the battle of Pelagonia, won against the Franks; and from these the attempts to re-con * quer the whole peninsula were made. The Slavonians of Mount Taygetus, the Mainots, and theTzakonians, were sufficiently under the cover of the Byzantine garrisons to shake off the French dominion altogether. The Skortiot Slavonians, more closely watched, were more unsuccessful in their attempts. There is little disguise on the part of the Despots, for this is the title under which the Imperial portion of the Morea is now administered, as to their intentions. They stir up the Greek population against their French masters; and the appeal to arms is soon made.
In the two battles of Prinitza and Makryplagi the French have the advantage; in the latter a decided one. A truce, however* is made, and the original concessions are retained by the defeated Despot28
DESCENT OP THE MODERN GREEKS.
In the reign of John Paleeologus, a number of the barons themselves offered the sovereignty of even the French part of the Peninsula to the Greek Emperor. Nothing came of this until the power of Cantacuzene became consolidated; when he made his son, Manuel, Despot.
It was against the French of his immediate frontiers, against the Catalans of Attica, and against the Turk pirates that Manuel had to direct his best energies. His administration forms an important epoch in Peloponnesian history.
He taxed his subjects for a fleet to repel the Turkish corsairs, and a rebellion was the result—a rebellion which he succeeded, with the assistance of a body of Albanian mercenaries, in putting down.
I follow Finlay, whose care and learning make him a trustworthy guide even when he ventures on the dangerous risk of a negative assertion, in drawing attention to this Albanian company as the first upon record which mixed itself up with the affairs of Greece. The intruders who had preceded them were Slavonians; but from this time forwards the Slavonian name loses importance, whilst the Albanian gains it. We shall hear but little more of the Slavonians of Taygetus and Skortos. Other Albanian colonies we shall notice afterwards.
About the same date with the earliest notice of an Albanian element in the Morea is that of the earliest notice of the Ottoman Turks. Cantacuzene, we may remember, wTas a usurper; so that the title of his son to the Despotat was a bad one. John V. deputed Asan to supersede him. The son, however, of the usurper kept his place during his lifetime. Theodore Palseologus, the son of the Emperor, succeeded him, and finding that his despotism was threatened by the resistance of his subjects, called in, in support of his authority, a body of auxiliaries under Evrenos, one of the ablest of Amurath’s generals. There had been piracy on the coast of the Morea long before this; but of Ottoman soldiers on the soil of the peninsula this (I again quote Finlay) is the first notice.
And now, though the Imperial power is but small, that of the French is less. Indeed it is waning. So is the language and nationality of the Slavonians; whilst colonization from Albania increases. Hardier and ruder than the children of the soil, the Skipetar, year after year, increase in number. Some come asALBANIAN ELEMENTS.
29
mercenaries, some as labourers and squatters: these latter, most probably, with their wives and families. Though the details are obscure, there is a notice of a single immigration consisting of ten thousand Skipetar. Another notice of these times and parts is one of a razzia made by the Ottomans, in which, besides the slain, thirty thousand Peloponnesians were carried off as slaves. A famine followed, and then a strange remedy on the part of the Despot. He offered to sell Misithra to the Knights Hospitallers of Khodes. The transfer, however, was resisted by the Greeks.
At the beginning of the fifteenth century, the Pope was the possessor of Patras, the Venetians of Modon, Coron, Nauplia, Argos, and Thermisi; the Italian Counts, of Cephalonia, and Clarentza; in other words, the French possessions were notably diminished— two-thirds of the peninsula being now Byzantine, Provincial, or Imperial. But the empire itself is coming to an end, and little remains of it beyond the walls of Constantinople. Of Ottoman inroads on the Morea previous to the final conquest by Mahomet II. there are several notices; and, as a general rule, they tell us of some thousands having been led away into slavery. There must be exaggeration in some of these numbers. With thirty thousand in one expedition, sixty thousand in another, not to mention minor razzias, what remains ? However, the very belief in such wholesale miseries is evidence of distress, depopulation, and change of blood.
The Albanian insurrection claims a short notice. When the poverty in the Morea was pressing heaviest an increase was attempted to be made of the rents paid by the Albanian colonists. Their spirit, then at its highest (for the fame of their countryman, Scanderbeg, had reached them), and an actual conquest of the Morea seemed scarcely an illegitimate aspiration. And many malcontent Greeks encouraged and joined them, one of whom was a noble, who thought that by adapting himself to their nationality he might make them instrumental to his ambition. Instead of his Greek name Manuel he called himself by the Albanian name Ghin, whilst his wife, who was a Maria, affected that of Cuchia. The insurgents were, on the whole, successful. On each side, however, Ottoman intervention was invoked. It was exerted so as to protect the Greeks without crushing the Albanians. Indeed, they kept the cattle they had stolen and retained their lands at a fixed rent.30
DESCENT OF THE MODERN GREEKS.
The islands still stand over for notice. It will not surprise us, when we consider the maritime character of the power of the Venetians, to find that it is with the history of the Republic rather than with that of the Crusaders that they are linked. The nature of the compact between the Franks and the Republic, and the principles upon which the partition of the empire was regulated, have already been noticed; and it has been stated that the policy of the Venetians in respect to their share of the division was peculiar.
In the first instance, the islands allotted to the Crusaders were those that had previously formed the iEgean Theme. They suited, however, the Venetians better than a territory on the mainland; and it is in the hands of a Venetian that we find them; although the transaction which put him in possession of them is obscure or unknown. Mark Sanudo was the first Duke of Naxos and of those islands of the Archipelago to which it was the political centre, viz. Paros, Antiparos, Ios, Sikinos, Polykandros, Kimolos, Melos, Amorgos, Thera or Santorin, and Anaphe.
Of these, Melos plays a part of some importance; whilst Ios commands notice from the fact of its having been depopulated by an invasion of the Turks to such an extent as to lose the bulk, if not the whole, of its Greek population, which was made good by a colony from Albania; so that, at the present moment, Ios, like so many districts on the Continent, is an actual Albanian occupancy.
A principle, not unlike the one upon which our Indian empire was allowed to develope itself in the hands of a private company of merchant adventurers, was adopted by the Venetians in respect to its territory in the islands. Private individuals were allowed to reduce certain islands, archipelagoes, or parts of islands, on condition of holding them as fiefs under the Republic. In this way Marco Dandolo and Jacomo Viaro occupied Gallipoli.
Marino Dandolo .... Andros.
The Ghisi family .	. J Tenos Mykone, Skyros,
C Skiathos, and Skopelos.
The Justiniani and Michieli.	. Keos.
The Navigajosas.... Lemnos. The Quirini .... Astypalaea.*
* For further changes see the notice of the conquest of Lesbos by Mahomet II.THE ISLANDS.
31
But Mark Sanudo, the first Duke of Naxos, was more powerful than all the rest put together; and the Naxian archipelago was the true representative of Venice in the iEgean. Mark Sanudo appeared as a feudatory of the empire at the great parliament of Ravenika, and received investiture from the Emperor Henry. He bore allegiance both to the Empire and the Republic. Soon after, when the Venetians called upon him to assist in the reduction of Crete, which, along with Corfu, was reserved as a colony of the Republic, he acted with more than ordinary hostility and perfidy; indeed, he attempted to reduce the island for himself, and joined in a conspiracy with some of the native Greeks to displace the governor, Tiepolo, whom he had affected to defend. This treachery, though it all but succeeded, failed in the eleventh hour. He was able, however, to pass-off an excuse on the Republic, and was left unpunished.
Both he and his successor were as tolerant in religion as the priests and the popes would allow them to be. Mark II. was very nearly a persecutor; Nicholas I., an active wamer; Nicholas II., a brave soldier, always at war with the Turks, at whose expense he earned the title of The Disperser— Spezzabanda. Nicholas III., the ninth Duke, was the last of the house of Sanudo. He was assassinated by his kinsman, Francis Crispo, Signor of Milo; and it was to the family of Crispo that the last eleven Dukes belonged—Jameses and Johns, for the most part, and by no means of the same mark and vigour as the Dukes of the first dynasty, i. e. the Sanudos.
Soon after the settlement of the Albanian colony in Ios, Keos and Cythnos were similarly occupied, though not to the same extent. Andros, too, became largely Albanian ; indeed it is half Albanian at the present time, though several of the colonists are of later introduction.
The complement to this is the history of a small, and, in some sense, a pretentious, empire; that of Trebizond: a self-named empire; an empire which stood to the true empire of Constantinople much as the empires of Morocco, Brazil, or Souloque’s piece of mimicry in Hayti stands to Germany; an empire famous in romance rather than in real history: still, in some sense, an empire, though no larger than a German principality or an English county. Until the discovery by Fallermayer, among32
DESCENT OP THE MODERN GREEKS.
the books of Cardinal Bessarion preserved at Venice, of the Chronicle of Michael Panaretos, the little that was known of the details of the history of Trebizond was collected from the works of the Constantinopolitan writers; who could scarcely have been either accurately informed or impartial. The voids which they left exercised the critical acumen of Ducange and stimulated the curiosity of Gibbon. They are now, to a great degree, filled up. They tell us much worth knowing. They leave, however, the Trebizond of history far below the Trebizond of romance.
When Asia Minor, Anatolia, or Eoum, became Turk, Trebizond remained Imperial; Imperial and, to a great extent, Greek. Whilst Constantinople was in the hands of the Crusaders, Trebizond remained what may by courtesy be called Eoman. But the town itself was but a small part of the Trapezuntine remnant. To take the measure of this we must extend Asia Minor, and carry it into Georgia, as far as Imereti, as far, perhaps, as Suaneti—at any rate beyond the Phasis. We must include the Lazic district of the wars under Justinian. We must include the ancient and mythic Colchis. We must include a portion both of Georgia and Armenia.
Whilst under the Byzantine Empire the Trapezuntines were connected with an important name, and one suggestive of more speculation than can be indulged in; for the theme to which Trebizond belonged was the theme Chaldia, and its Dukes were the Dukes of Chaldia.
The Trapezuntine wars were alliances chiefly with the Turks, under the Sultan of Iconium or Konieh, the Empire, and the Turcomans; and, when the Sultans were strong and the Trapezuntine Emperors weak, the former took the supremacy of suzerain, whilst the latter yielded the homage of the vassal.
Other political relations were with the Khans of Khawerezm, or Transoxiana, with the Temudzhinian Mongols, and with the Genoese of Kaffa, who, upon the whole, were their most formidable enemies. In spite, however, of the dangers of its environment, Trebizond flourished ; was never reconquered by the Emperors; and lasted as an independent State from 1204 to 1461, when it was reduced by Mahomet II.
The retribution that followed the tyranny of Andronicus I.TREBIZOND.
33
showed the weakness of the Emperor, and disorganized the empire ; and, in doing this, suggested ideas of independence to the more distant themes. Trebizond was one of these, and a scion of the Comnenian family, on the male side, who had fair grounds for looking upon the ruling Emperor as a usurper, declared himself independent and something more. He denominated himself Emperor, and considered Trebizond to be the true capital of the Eastern Empire. As far as he was concerned he removed, in his own ambitious fancy, Constantinople to Trebizond. His title was The Faithful (Orthodox) King and Autocrat of all the East (Anatolia), the Iberians, the Perateia, and the Great (Grand) Comnenus—Perateia meaning a portion of the Crimea and Cher-son, in which the Gothic district of Gothia was German.
Trebizond itself was Greek; Greek, at least in language, for the purposes of commerce, literature, and diplomacy. But the mass of the country, on the eastern side at least, was Georgian, and on the south Armenian, and, perhaps, Kurd. Add to this the likelihood of certain Turcomans having been included within its boundaries.
Alexios I. held his own, and transmitted his sceptre to his sons and his sons sons, Georges, Johns, Manuels, Michaels, Basils, and Andronici, as Kings; Irenes and Theodoras, as Queens. These names are given on the strength of their truly Byzantine character, and as contrasts to the French and Italian names of Greece and the Archipelago.
As a town, or as a province, Trebizond flourished. As an empire, it was but a small and pretentious affair. The dynasty was legitimate, and, as far as it was Greek, native. The men who formed its armies and manned its fleets were neither Italians nor French; neither Genoese nor Catalans. They were, on the contrary, essentially Asiatics—more so than even the most Asiatic portion of the true empire.
VOL. II.
D34
GREEK REVOLUTION.
CHAPTER III.
Greece from 1821 to 1848.—The Revolution.
At the beginning of the year 1821 two concurrent movements are going on, one in the Danuhian Principalities, one in Greece itself. The Danuhian Principalities, Rumanyo in language, mixed in blood, administered by two Phanariot Greeks, and lying on the frontier of Russia, are the theatre of the abortive insurrections of which Alexander Ypsilantes is the nominal head, with Georgaki, Savas, and Yladimiresco assistants. The first, a native of Mount Olympus, had been captain of the Albanian guard under the hospodar Alexander Soutzos; while Savas, of Patmos, had been appointed commander of the garrison at Bucharest by the regency which administered the government after Soutzos’ death; and Theodore Vladimiresco was a native boyard, who had been a lieutenant-colonel in the Russian army, and a Knight of the order of St. Vladimir. Ypsilantes, himself, was the son of a hospodar, who had been deposed in 1806, his deposition being the pretext of a Russian war which followed it. He was major-general in the Russian army and relied on Russian support. The Danuhian Principalities and Odessa were full of members of the Philike Hetairia, a secret society, by which many of the details of the insurrection were organized, and it was through the Philike Hetairia that the leadership of the revolution, after having been refused by Capodistrias, was vested in Ypsilantes.
The Valachians and Moldavians, whose country was administered by Greeks, supported by Albanian and Bulgarian regiments, had little sympathy with the principles of the Philike Hetairia, and it was as a Rumanyo rather than as a Greek that Vladimiresco lent his services to Ypsilantes, services which he withdrew when the critical period had approached.
Some Turkish ships at Galatz were plundered, and the men who manned them murdered. About fifty men in an Ottoman body-guard, at Yassi, were induced to lay down their arms, andGREEK REVOLUTION.
35
they were slaughtered also. The Turks were threatened with extermination. On the 6th of March Ypsilantes crossed the Pruth, on the 9th of April he reached Bucharest. To his approval of the massacre of the Turkish soldiers and sailors he added more than one act of extortion and more than one exhibition of childish folly and ostentation. He comported himself as a prince, and wasted time in doing so. When he reached Bucharest neither Savas nor Vladimi-resco would acknowledge him as chief: the former having decided upon making the movement a Valachian rather than a Greek one. Savas hated Yladimiresco, Vladimiresco Savas. Both distrusted Ypsilantes; yet both joined him so far as, by doing so, they might cabal against one another. Meanwhile the Sultan was assembling troops on the frontier, the Patriarch of Constantinople had anathematized the Hetairia, and the Czar, from the Congress of Laybach then sitting, disowned it as revolutionary: the opposition of Austria being more decided. After this, a tissue of tergiversation and duplicity ends in Georgaki being commissioned to arrest Vladimiresco who is given over to Ypsilantes and killed a few days after, in Savas turning traitor and meeting a traitor’s reward, and in Ypsilantes escaping into Austria where he was treated as a Russian deserter.
This revolution was put down without much bloodshed. A battle with the insurgents during the retreat, or flight, of Ypsilantes, was followed by a bold movement of Georgaki to cut his way to the Russian frontier. Joined by Pharmaki, a Macedonian, he reached the monastery of Seko, rejected terms of capitulation, and defended himself in the belfry, till the wooden roof being in flames, and surrender or death under the blazing rafters being the only alternatives, he cut a way through the enemy. What took place is unknown, except that Georgaki, as the flame grew fiercer, declared that no Turk should see him alive and that those who chose might find their way to the main building, that he threw open the door, that a chest of powder exploded, that one man alone escaped, and that Georgaki was not he. Pharmaki held the main building a fortnight longer, when he was persuaded to capitulate on terms which were violated. He was sent to Constantinople, tortured and beheaded.
In Moldavia, the handful of Greeks, deserted by their captain, Cantacuzenos, who made his escape into Bessarabia, held out
d 236
GREEK REVOLUTION.
bravely against an overwhelming force at Skulene. Most of them were killed; a few only, who plunged into the river, and reached the bank, escaping. There was indecision and cowardice in this abortive insurrection; but the fate of the heroes of Skulene, the obstinacy of Georgaki and Pharmaki, and the signally brave corps calling itself the Sacred Battalion, and binding its members by an oath (which was kept) to either conquer or die, sufficiently show that there was no want of true heroism.
But the insurrection on the Danube was the signal for a struggle rather than the struggle itself. In Greece, the 6th of April was the day fixed for what, by a mild euphemism, we may call the outbreak of the revolution. Outbreaks, however, of revolutions fixed for a day named by the committee of a secret society are very like what a cynic might call a Sicilian Yesper,— except that they are spread over a longer time. This is the interpretation of the following passage from Finlay:—“In the month of April, 1821, a Mussulman population, amounting to upwards of twenty thousand souls, was living, dispersed in Greece, and employed in agriculture. Before two months had elapsed the greater part was slain—men, women, and children were murdered without mercy or remorse. Old men still point to heaps of stones, and tell the traveller * There stood the pyrgos (tower) of Ali Aga, and there we slew him, his harem, and his slavesand the old man walks calmly on to plough the fields which once belonged to Ali Aga, without a thought that any vengeful fury can attend his path.
“ The crime was a nation’s crime, and whatever perturbations it may produce must be in a nations conscience, as the deeds by which it can be expiated must be the acts of a nation.”
These are statements which the writer himself must hope are exaggerated. Yet who has corrected them? The two months were not months of battle, except so far as the small combats with surprised garrisons deserve that name. It was not till afterwards that the struggle with the regular troops began.
Such the report. The evidence of it lies in the details, which are, of course, imperfect. Enough, however, is known of them to give a rough view of the penalty which overtakes vicious governments and intolerable oppression. It was in the Morea and the neighbourhood of Patras that the Hetserists held the meeting atGREEK REVOLUTION.
37
Vostitza, and. as they heard little about the movements „ ,
.	J	.	February.
in Valachia, they counselled delay. Let the Archbishop of Arta, who is at Pisa, and let Ypsilantes, who is, or ought to be, at Bucharest, be consulted. Let the Turks who, to say the least, have grown suspicious, be deceived. Let the people wait till after the 6th. But the people were less patient than the majority of the committee which would guide them. On the 25th of March three Turkish couriers were waylaid and killed at Agridha. The next day were killed eight Albanian collectors of the haratch. The leader of the men who killed them increased his band to three hundred, and at Bersova killed twenty and disarmed forty Mussulmans—like the haratch collectors, Albanians. On the 2nd of April many Turks were murdered at different places. On the 3rd, the fort of Kalavryta which the Turks, (on hearing of a special act of violence contemplated, but not carried into effect against Seid Aga of Lalla,) had made into a kind of barricade, surrendered on terms; and three hundred soldiers fell into the hands of the Greeks. Half of these are considered to have been put to death by the following August. On the same day Kalamata was besieged, and on the 4th it surrendered. The prisoners were distributed among the conquerors as domestic slaves. Before the year was out “ the moon had devoured them.” The Varduniot Albanians, when they heard of the outbreak at Kalamata, in passing through Mistra, on their way to Tripolitza, spread the alarm among the Turks of that district, who tried to escape to Tripolitza or Monemvasia. About five thousand out of nineteen thousand of these are supposed to have been either surprised or killed on the way. Meanwhile in the parts about Patras regular fighting had begun.
I have given these details as I find them in Finlay; partly because such details are the elements of our generalities, and partly because they give us approximate numbers, dates, and places. They are the details of a fortnight in the Morea only, and, details of which the narrative has come down to us. Allow for what is unrecorded, and take fourteen days in the Morea as a sample of fourteen days elsewhere and the picture gets distinctness.
From the smaller let us go to the greater details. The first victory won by the Greeks, on anything deserving the name of a battle-field,38
GREEK REVOLUTION.
was at Valtetzi, one of the positions for blockading Tripolitza. About five thousand Turks and three thousand Greeks were engaged; and of the latter one hundred and fifty, of the former four hundred, were killed. The first fortress that capitulated was Monemvasia; the second, Navarin; the third, Tripolitza— all in August. The general character of these and the other sieges was the same. The Turks had neglected all adequate preparation. The Greeks blockaded the towns and trusted to famine—to famine and treachery. The general rule seems to have been for some of the Greek captains to tamper with some of the Albanian portions of the garrison; to drive private bargains with some of the wealthier Turks; to regulate the energy of the attack according to the amount of money or jewels that they could extort from the possessors of them without being obliged to either share it with the common soldier as prize-money or to pay a portion of it into the national treasury. At Monemvasia there was a further complication. Demetrius Ypsilantes insisted on the surrender being made in his name. The Peloponnesian Senate overruled this piece of presumption, and decided that it should be given up to the Greek Government. Still, the three towns were taken; and broken faith and bloodshed attended the taking of each. At Monemvasia it was merely the murder of several Turks. At Navarin it was a general massacre of men, women, and children—women cut down with sabres, and deliberately shot; children dashed against the rocks, or hurled into the sea. After this the conquerors quarrelled among themselves about the booty.
The fraud, the bad faith, the intestine quarrels, the separate capitulation of Tripolitza were those of Navarin, only on a larger scale. The system of separate bargains attained here its completeness, and Greek women entered the city to persuade Turkish women to save their lives and honour, by giving up their jewels. One Bobolina, the widow of a Spetziot shipowner, was the great agent in these patriotic pieces of rapacity. Meanwhile, the chiefs drove bargains with the Turks or Mahometan Albanians of their old neighbourhoods, until the soldiers, more than suspicious of their double-dealing, determined upon storming the town as the only means of getting their own in the way of plunder. The Albanians took care of themselves and got away free; but the Turks wereGREEK REVOLUTION,
39
massacred. Two thousand of them, chiefly women and children, twenty-four hours after the town had been taken, and when the hot blood of the besiegers had had time to cool, were deliberately led to a ravine, and, one and all, murdered. This is Finlay’s notice. Gordon puts the number of Turks killed during the whole siege at eight thousand. It is safe to say that not half of these died a soldier’s death. The affair at Valtetzi will not account for an eighth of them; nor does it appear that the famine had actually reached that point when death by hundreds takes place from it.
The revolution continued as it began; and the Constitution of Epidaurus and the Presidency of Mavrocordata were its results. Then events took a turn, and Greece was in a fair way of being reconquered. The change began in 1823, and it was not until the battle of Navarino, which is only another name for foreign intervention, that anything like definite success attends the Greek cause. The details of the interval are, upon the whole, discreditable to the insurgents. The spirit of the people was the same; the contempt of danger; the hatred of the Turks ; the resolution to be free. But the faults of the individual leaders become both more prominent and more dangerous; and the selfishness of individual bodies is more and more disgraceful. Above all, the absolute inability, on the part of anyone who had a chance of appropriating money, to resist the temptation of diverting funds intended for the service of the country at large, to his own individual advantage, becomes sadly apparent. During this interval the famous Greek loan was contracted; and as a pendant to it two civil wars broke out.
The great scene of undeserved calamity was Chios. A favoured island, it was comparatively beyond the influence which had elsewhere goaded the Greeks into rebellion. But it was not allowed to be left alone. A Samian, of the name of Lycurgus, undertook to revolutionize it: landed with an inadequate force; behaved as in a hostile country; and inflicted many of the miseries of war on the wealthy and peaceful population before the real conflict with the Turks had begun. The garrison, previously strengthened, was reinforced. A strong body of Turkish troops was landed. A decided superiority of power was exhibited, Lycurgus made his escape, leaving the Chiots, unwill ingly connected with the revolution, to their fate. Had they been the first instigators they could scarcely have been treated40
GREEK REVOLUTION.
with greater severity; and severity, in Turkish warfare, means revolting and inhuman cruelty. That the massacre, after it had lasted some days, was partially checked by the captain-paslia must be recorded in his favour. That the Greeks had been the first to stain their hands with the blood of unarmed prisoners is true as against the Samiots under Lycurgus. That the revolt of Chios may have appeared to the Sultan pre-eminently uncalled for and gratuitous is likely. But it is beyond doubt, that of all the actors in the revolution, the Chiots were those who, for the smallest provocation, suffered the most. In the number of those who were massacred, and in the greater number of those who were sold as slaves, there is exaggeration; but in one monastery three, in another two, thousand were either cut to pieces or burnt with the building; whilst, as measures of coldblooded cruelty, between seventy and eighty hostages, previously taken as securities against the revolt, were executed. Finlay, though he treats the high number of forty thousand Chiots either murdered or enslaved as an exaggeration, considers that in the January of ’%% the population of the island was one hundred thousand, in August thirty thousand; of which only twenty thousand are accounted for as having escaped. Let the margin be what it may the penalty paid by the miserable islanders for the folly, crime, and cowardice of the Greeks under Lycurgus, was of the bloodiest.
In one respect, however, it was productive of good. The severity of the Sultan defeated its own end. Of all the events which directed the attention of Western Europe towards the affairs of Greece the massacres of Chios were, by far, the most important. It was this which most especially appealed to the common feeling of humanity; this that most strongly excited the indignation of all Christian nations; this that first taught statesmen that such a thing as a war of extermination was not impossibly contemplated; and that when this was the case, the principle of non-intervention should give way to the natural instincts and impulses of humanity.
The event which was the most ominous to Greece, and which, if Greece could by any means be welded into a unity, was most likely to have abolished all minor factions, was the reconciliation between the Sultan and Mahomet Ali. Mahomet Ali undertook the reduction of the Morea. Besides this, the conquest of theGREEK REVOLUTION.
41
islands and of Northern Greece was undertaken from Constantinople. A victory gained by the orthodox Tosks over the Eoman Catholic Mirdits opened the campaign. Then came the disgraceful pillage of Skiathos and Skopelos, Greek islands, by the Greek fugitives. Eeshid Pasha had driven the armatoli of Olympus out of Thessaly. They took refuge on the two islands just named, and pillaged them as if they had been parts of an enemy's country. Then there were naval actions; one of which was followed by a violation of the neutrality of the Ionian Islands—neither for the first nor the second time. Then came the first instalment of the Greek loan, which put a stop to the first of the two civil wars. This was the result of the enmity between the parties of Kolettes and Konduriotes on the one side, and of Kolokotrones on the other; the former being in office, the latter, perhaps unjustly, excluded from it. His sons held Nauplia. However, one of the first payments out of the loan prevailed upon him to evacuate it, and the wounds of the first civil war were healed. It had lasted about nine months. The same son of the same patriot appears in the second, in which he was killed. This was between the ministerialists (if we may call them so) and the party of Zaimes and Landos—Zaimes, whom Lord Byron pronounced to be the one honest man with whom he had come in contact. Yet he was not honest enough to be quiet during a time when union was strength and disunion was weakness.
Such was the anarchy on land. By sea the navies of Hydra and Spetzas were either inactive or mischievous. The shipowners jobbed, and palmed off crazy vessels for sound ones, the payment being made out of the loan. The men did nothing unless when paid in advance. When united with the Psariots and the Kasiots they quarrelled about plunder and fought. They quarrelled, indeed, with the Psariots because they had set a bad example by serving before they had received their pay. So Kasos and Psara were sacked by the Turks. With opponents at war with one another it was no hard matter for an able commander like Ibrahim Pasha to overrun the Morea; easy, too, it was for Eeshid and Kosreff Pashas to reconquer the greater part of northern and western Greece. Missolonghi was taken after an obstinate—a heroic—resistance.	The chief warriors in these
events were Kolokotrones, who was generally defeated; Odys-42
GREEK REVOLUTION.
sens, who turned traitor and joined the Turks; and the admiral Miaoulis, who, whether successful or unsuccessful, was always brave, vigilant, prudent, and thoroughly patriotic. In ’26, Athens, after a long siege and many ineffectual attempts to relieve it, was finally retaken.
All this is so like a reconquest that when we take the main events of these four years in succession, the battle of Navarino looks like a simple act of violence on the part of the Western Powers. A rebellion has broken out. The Sultan has put it down. He must now he compelled to yield to it. Greece is nearly as much his own as it was in 1820; and the revolution begins afresh. Such is the view of the prominently conspicuous events above noticed. But this view—a view which charges England, France, and Russia with a most gratuitous piece of intervention— is only the superficial one. The battle of Navarino was merely the conclusion of a long series of interferences, which ran concurrently with the events just alluded to, through, at least, the same years. Remonstrance had followed remonstrance; suggestion, suggestion; and the affairs of Greece had been matters for the three cabinets ever since the end of 1822.
The division of continental Greece into three hospodariats, with native hospodars, whose subordinate officers should he natives chosen by the Sultan; with the iEgean Islands as a separate Government, directly under the Porte, hut with guarantees for good administration; and a municipal system on the principles of that of Chios, Hydra, and Psara; one or all—this was the Russian plan. It was meant to paralyze the revolutionary principle, to keep up a feeling of hostility (for the Turks were to garrison the fortresses), and to put Russia in the position of a protector; and it was well contrived for the purpose. Nor was that purpose concealed. Paralyser Vinjluence des revolutionaires dans toate la Greece, is part of a sentence in the notification of the proposal. To this, however, England objected; England, with Canning as Prime Minister. To him the Greeks had addressed a protest against the Russian plan, and an answer to this was addressed direct to the Greeks themselves; pro tantoy an approximate acknowledgment of them as an independent Power. But he said, also, that England and Turkey were friendly Powers. Philellenism, at this time, was strong in England. Money had been subscribed.GREEK REVOLUTION.
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The famous Greek loan was being contracted. The neutrality of the Ionian Islands was all on one side. The English ambassador at Constantinople, Lord Strangford, had both the authority and the will to urge the claims of Greece as strongly as the temper of the Sultan would allow. That Sultan, however, was Mahmud, who remonstrated in his turn. Colonel Stanhope was ordered home. The Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands prohibited, by proclamation, the deposit of arms and ammunition intended for Greece. But the policy of Mr. Canning was known, and there was no secret as to the Pliilellenic feelings of the British Commodore in the Mediterranean. To a document ^	^ ^
empowering England to treat with the Sultan for the independence of Greece, with an authority which had as yet been entrusted to neither any other Power nor to England before, the signatures of the most influential men of Greece were attached. By a subsequent decree this was interpreted to mean the Sultan’s suzerainty and a fixed tribute. On this, in a modified form, Kussia soon afterwards agreed to act in union with England. Then came the fruits of the Holy Alliance as they showed themselves in ’26; especially the occupation of Spain by French troops, and the counter-movement of English troops into Portugal: the act by which England and the Holy Alliance were brought to the extreme points of their divergence. They went no further; and in ’27, France joined the two; so that the Treaty of London was effected for the special pacification of Greece. Internal independence, Turkish suzerainty, and an armistice pending the negotiations—this was the gist of it. Notified to both belligerents, the armistice was accepted by the Greeks, rejected by the Turks.
The navies kept the sea; and on the 29th of September, Hastings gained an important victory over the Turks at Salona; which Ibrahim Pasha, who was off Navarino when he heard of it, interpreted as a violation of the armistice—and that rightly; as far, at least, as he, as a belligerent, was concerned. Whether it were or not, the Turks were not bound by it. He sent, therefore, a squadron against Hastings, which Sir Edward Codrington sent back. It joined the main body of the fleet, and, with it, lay at anchor at Navarino. Partly for the sake of the harbour; partly to keep the Egyptian fleet from active operations against the Greeks,
April, 1826.
December, 1826.
July.44
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October 20, 1827.
Declared April 26, 1826.
the allied admirals determined to do the same. In the bay, then, of Navarino the two fleets lay side by side. We know the result.
But the battle of Navarino still left Ibrahim in possession of the Morea. A convention, however, for its evacuation was signed between Mehemet Ali and Sir Pulteney Malcolm, Sir Edward Codrington s successor. Russia was now at variance with England and France, and had also a private war against Turkey. Instead of hastening, this, complicated by the death of Canning, retarded, matters. It was not till the 28th of July, ’28 that the French undertook to clear the Morea; and, it is needless to say, that they did it effectually.
The choice of Capodistrias, after the publication of the Constitution of Troezene, as President of Greece, for a term of seven years, was the act of the National Assembly, and, though not an unwise, it was scarcely a national, one. It was, to a certain extent, condemnatory of the principles of nationality and independence; since it rested on the avowed doctrine that, amongst the true Greek and Albanian actors in the Revolution, no one was deemed competent to administer Greece. For Capodistrias was, at best, but half a Greek. By birth a Corfiot he was by education a Venetian. He spoke Italian better than Greek, and French as well. He began as a physician, and ended as a diplomatist; bought and sold to Russia. His official career he opened when the Ionian Islands were converted into an ephemeral republic. When they became French he found favour in the eyes of the Czar, and was employed in T5 in the negotiations at Paris. Here, as was natural, he was for the independence of the islands to which he belonged; or, failing this, for the establishment of Russian influence in them. He was foiled; and hated England accordingly. The Presidency of Greece he accepted under the permission of Alexander, and when he opened the States he was dressed in a Russian uniform. Of one of his brothers he made a general. To the other he assigned the administration of Hydra, Poros, Spetzas, and iEgina. With the exception of Kanaris few of the prominent revolutionists held offices of honour under him. Demetrius Ypsilantes shared the management of the army with Sir Richard Church an Englishman, and Fabvier a Frenchman. The organization of the finances, the disbandment of the unnecessary part of the army, the suppression of brigandage, the com-GREEK REVOLUTION.
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pletion of a constitution, the details of the frontier, the diplomatic relations with both friendly and hostile Powers—all had to he attended to, and they would have taxed the abilities of a man of a greater genius and a more single-minded ambition than Ca-podistrias. A vile intrigue with the Russian admiral ended in the disgrace of the brave Miaoulis and the sack of Poros; the two chief details of what may he called the first civil war of the Presidency.
Meanwhile, the three protecting Powers were looking about for a king, and the fourth year of the seven for which Capodistrias was elected was advancing; Prince Leopold, the present king of the Belgians, being the favoured scion of royalty to whom the equivocal offer of a crown was to be made. The very last man in Greece whom Greece was prepared to accept was the one who would have to make way for him. And this threw Capodistrias out of the strait, though not very narrow, barriers, of the Constitution. It was his policy either to persuade the Greeks that he was the only man who could administer the country, or, by either intrigue or violence, to force himself upon them. He affected a tyranny, and died by the hands of an assassin, having silenced the press and effected the sack of Poros during his presidency, and leaving behind him a faction which effected the fourth civil war, the civil war of the Interim or State of Anarchy. Indeed, before his death, Greece was in a state of just insurrection against him.
The Senate, on the news of his murder, placed the executive power in the hands of a committee of three—Kolokotrones a Klephth, Agostino the brother of Capodistrias, and Kolettes a Greek Yalachian. The reasonable demand for an amnesty to all political offenders (the accomplices only in the assassination of the late president being excluded) was rejected, and it became a war in behalf of the Constitution on the one side and the private interests of the three on the other. Of this the Morea was the chief scene, with the Russians and the French as partisans, which lasted until the notification on the part of the protecting Powers that the King Elect of Greece was to he a Roman Catholic and a Bavarian.
By the treaty of July (1832) the Sultan recognized the kingdom of Greece, on the receipt of a pecuniary indemnity which the allies paid.46
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In October the Germanic Confederation recognized Prince Otho as King of Greece.
In November the prince’s father, as king of Bavaria, concluded an alliance with Greece, engaging to relieve the French army of occupation, by three thousand five hundred Bavarians, to be paid out of the allied loan.
On the 6th of February, 1833, the new king entered Nauplia, whither he had been conveyed by an English frigate.
Magnus ab integro seclorum nascitur ordo.
The young king was a minor, within about two years and a half from his majority. This implied a regency, a regency of which the King of Bavaria had the appointment. The Triumvirate which composed it was a Bavarian one; the secretary and treasurer being Bavarians also. Of the six Germans thus entrusted with the organization of a kingdom only one had any personal knowledge of Greece. They jobbed, and quarrelled, and postponed the question of the Constitution and the responsibility of the Government. On the day of his landing the king issued a proclamation, confirmed such ministers as held office in their appointments, and left the Senate to die a natural death. The protecting Powers had also proclaimed, when the nomination of King Otho was announced to the Greeks, that a constitution should be framed, and that the Greeks should aid their King in framing it. But the Kegency ended in ’35 without this promise being fulfilled.
By August ’34 a change had come over the character of the Begency. It was still a Begency, and still German, but two of its members, Maurer and Abel, had been recalled. Maurer was a jurist, and the little praise that is due to the administration to which he belongs is due to Maurer for what he did in the department of public justice. Abel, though not one of the regents, was the secretary to the Begency with a voice in consultation—a quasiregent. The third genuine Eegent was General Heideck. It was he who knew something about Greece beforehand; in this respect having the advantage of his colleagues. On the other hand, he had the disadvantage of being, more than aught else, the expositor of the personal feelings of the King of Bavaria, the real Begent, the Viceroy over the minor Otho. The President of the Begency was Count Armansperg. During the time that he acted with MaurerGREEK REVOLUTION.
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and Heideck, he established, inter alia, the national coinage. What Capodistrias had called a phoenic, the Eegents called a drachma, divided into lepta. He had also instituted an Order of Knighthood, and named it the Order of the Eedeemer. It fell into five classes, of which the highest was that of the Grand Cross. Amongst the forty-nine favoured individuals upon whom it was conferred, the Greeks amounted to three. Neither Kanaris nor Mavrocordato, neither Fabvier nor Gordon, were honoured
with it. And as it began so it continued. In the Greek Almanac for 1837, the Knights of the Order are—
Bavarians and Foreigners..................374
Greeks............................. .	154
Philellenes...............................2d
Total	594
the rest being crowned heads, or members of some royal family. In re-organizing the army, they enrolled as many as five thousand Bavarian volunteers, the officers, who were Bavarian also, being more than proportionate to the number of foreign soldiers—itself disproportionate to the remaining, or Greek, portion of the army. With the departure of Maurer and Abel, the influence of France declined; for the sympathies of Armansperg were decidedly English. And this tells us how the influence of the protecting Powers was divided. France and England were, as far as the high officials were connected, in the ascendant; whilst Eussia, without much support from the Bavarians, was favoured by the national party, i. e. by the ministerial Greeks themselves, especially by Kolettes. Kolettes, at this time, was the most powerful of the native Greeks—and Kolettes was a Yalachian. In the recall, however, of Maurer and Abel, Eussia and England acted in concert; for each pressed upon the King of Bavaria the necessity of it. It was a French cabal in which they were engaged; so that the national party acted with England.
Heideck remained, hut did little; whilst Maurer was superseded by Yon Kobell, a cypher.
On the first of June, 1835, the King attained his majority, a fact which changed the title of Count Armansperg from that of President of the Eegency to that of Arch-chancellor. The48
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power, however, remained much as it was. Armansperg was the real head of the executive, and he kept his power partly through English influence, partly through his own kingcraft. He had two factions to manage; that of Kolettes, and that of the Capodis-trian family and policy. He had a bilingual ministry (a ministry not formed by accident), of Greeks who spoke no German and of Germans who spoke no Greek. He had a minister of foreign affairs who could not spell the Eomaic correctly.
So he managed to manage the finance department in his own way, and a deficit which brought on an application to the protecting Powers for the third instalment of the loan was the result: and this, as far as England was concerned, he got. In ’86, Lord Palmerston applied to Parliament for power to enable the Government to guarantee its proportion of the instalment without the concurrence of the other Powers. The entente cordial between Greece as represented by Count Armansperg and England under the Whigs was now at its maximum.
February 14 saw him dismissed from office. The King had not come of age, but had left Greece for a wife, and returned with one, the daughter of the Duke of Oldenhurgh, and, as such, a German. The minister by whom Armansperg was superseded was Count Eudhart, and with Count Eudhart came in a new policy ; not in any way Philellene. As little Eussian as French, as little French as English, Count Eudhart introduced an Austrian policy.
This was more Anti-english than Austrian politics are generally believed to be. It was generally and personally offensive to the British minister; and the claims of England to he listened to were somewhat strongly urged. Better still, those of Greece were insisted on; her right to a constitution, and her reasonable expectations that more should be done for her material welfare, her credit, and the development of the national resources than either the King or Armansperg, than either Maurer or Eudhart, had shown themselves inclined to do.
Eudhart held office ten months; and Zographos, who succeeded him, was the first Greek, as Eudhart was the last German, Prime Minister. The war minister, however, still continued to be a Bavarian, and the Bavarian interest, though diminished, also continued.
The native ministers were controlled by Bavarian secretaries,GREEK REVOLUTION.
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who called themselves referendaries. There was an irresponsible police, exaggerated punishments for political crimes and a gagged press—an Austria in miniature. Besides this, there was, what was not to he found in Austria, brigandage on land, and piracy by sea. There were insurrections in Albania and serious troubles all over Greece.
Nothing, or little, has hitherto been said about Maina: though, throughout the whole of the history of modem Greece, Maina has been prominent as an impracticable and irreducible district. The Arabs of Greece—the Mainots—have never been thoroughly brought under the dominion of the law. They have been coerced, but they have not been kept from brigandage, and from piracy. Occupants of one of the most inaccessible parts of the Morea, they have ever managed to keep a fortress instead of house; a tower of stone, with windows on the first floor, and a ladder to get up to them with. Such were the towers of the Mainots, which King Otho determined on razing. This was during the administration of Armansperg; and, under Armansperg, a partial demolition took place. But the spirit of insubordination, fanned into a flame by the spirit of a party which resented the neglect of some true and some equivocal Philellenes, spread itself from Maina to the rest of Greece.
The Mainots, in one of the most Slavonized districts of Greece, divide with the Tzakonians (word for word, Lakonians) the credit of being the best representatives of the old Greek blood as it ran on the Spartan and Argive frontier. Nor can it be shown that either Albanians or Slaves effected any permanent settlements on Mainot ground. As far, however, as an archaic dialect goes, the Tzakones have the voice of the philologues on their side. Both are probably as Hellenic as anything in Hellas. During one of their revolts a part migrated to Corsica : amongst them a certain Kalomeros (kóckov f¿épo$) the Good Part, or Bonaparte; whose lineage accordingly is Greek: just as the lineage of the Romaic Greeks is that of Miltiades and Themistocles—both of whom, by the way, were half-bloods.
However, Maina was insubordinate, under Armansperg; and under Otho, after his majority, all Greece was as Maina had been. The brigandage, however, was put down by General Gordon; an effective Philellene now as he had been before. How far the
VOh. II.
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people sympathized with the Government may he seen from the following scene at the Athenian Old Bailey. On the 5th of August, 1839, two analogues of the old mounted highwaymen of England, Bibisi and Trakadha—the Tom King and Dick Turpin of Greece—had to he guillotined. The executioner elect was assassinated. His successor fainted on the scaffold. The municipality could not act. A reprieve was demanded and given. The two felons escaped, and went on robbing as before. A price was put on Bibisi s head, and an ex-brigand gendarme shot him; Trakadha having been shot somewhat earlier.
A bad brigand may make a good revolutionist, and the revolution of 1843 was at hand. England and Russia advised constitutional government; France a policy of moderation. The policy of England was that of the nation at large, so that when Lord Palmerston “hoped that Her Majesty’s Government would urge upon the King of Greece the necessity of his giving a constitution to his people in redemption of the pledge given by the three Powers in 1832 and repeated by Baron Gise, his fathers counsellor,”—Sir Robert Peel, who had succeeded him, said that the matter should be attended to—“ Russia, France, and England have made strong representations likewise, on other matters connected with the necessity of giving satisfaction to the just wishes of the people. I can assure the House that many points alluded to by the noble lord have not been overlooked.” But the revolution broke out.
General Makryiannes, ordered to he arrested, escaped and defied the gendarmes; and, when the shots that were exchanged about his house were heard by the inspector of cavalry, General Kalerges, he rode up to the barracks, and was greeted by the cry of “ Long live the Constitution.” The cry of “ Death to Bavarians” he checked, but that of the “Constitution” was heard again—even by the King, who showed himself, and held a conversation with Kalerges.
The King to the troops.—Retire to your quarters.
The Inspector of the Cavalry {to the soldiers).—Attention. {to the King very politely). —The troops expect your Majesty’s orders through me, and will wait patiently for your royal decision iu their present position.
After this a deputation waited on the King with a request that heGREEK REVOLUTION.
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would dismiss the Bavarians. During the conference the English, and Russian ministers drove up for an interview, and were courteously informed by Kalerges that His Majesty was engaged with a deputation. Assured that the King’s person should be treated with the greatest respect, they went back. Then, seeing the field clear, came those of Austria and Prussia and insisted on seeing the King. Kalerges represented to them the propriety of following the example set them by the Russian envoy. On hearing that the Germans had been prevented from seeing him, the King yielded, and the Constitution of September 15th, 1843, was the result. In this lay the second and secondary triumph of the Greek nationality. The first and great struggle had been against the Turks and was complete. The second was against the Bavarians. It was, however, only moderately complete (the movements of the present year show this), and, as compared with the former, it was a chronic struggle rather than a paroxysmal one.
Upon the crimes of the first revolution I have enlarged, as I have upon the crimes and follies which brought Poland to its mutilations, its partitions, and its present state. For one who would willingly see Poland revive, and for a Philellene, this is bad backing. But the question is not one for either Poland or Greece alone. Nor, when we come to the Magyars of Hungary, will it be merely a Magyar discussion. No religion has ever got rid of persecution without a tendency to encroach upon the rights of others and to construe its freedom into aggression: and, in like manner, no nationality has ever made itself successful without aiming at some secondary object involving the rights of some nation or people.
Every Greek, at the present moment, wants, for Greece, more than she has got. Every Magyar means, in freedom for Hungary influence (to say the least) over Croatia, as well as over many thousands of Rumanyos and Germans. Few Poles would be satisfied with a pure and simple Poland. They want the old Polish sovereignty over Lithuania, Little Russia, Gallicia, and, perhaps, a part of the Baltic Provinces.
That the Croatian should appreciate the worth of the Magyar, the Lithuanian that of the Pole, the Bulgarian, the Albanian, and the Rumanyo that of the Greek, is right and proper. But it is also right and proper that either they or their well-wishers should
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know the Greek weaknesses. Before a nation forfeits its own claim for freedom it must sin and blunder inordinately; and it always sins and blunders in retrieving them. Before it can claim even a share in the direction of anything hut itself, it must show more wisdom than any nation has yet shown; probably, more than any will ever show. The Greeks think that, in case of a break-up of Turkey, the nations who, either rightly or wrongly, are believed to he less intellectual than themselves will have no statesmen. What the Greek statesmen are, their history shows. That they have nobly won hack their own freehold is sufficient praise. Upon their claim to administer for others, others must judge.
On the other hand, the joint action of the Albanians and Greeks should guard us against any undue extension of this criticism. The Albanians, however, entered into a partnership on their own judgment: probably, knowing the worst as well as the best parts of the alliance. Similar unity, with similar knowledge, on the part of the Croatians towards the Magyars, and on that of the Lithuanians towards the Poles, is a matter for the parties who bestow the trust to determine for themselves; not for those who receive it. No one can be taken at his own valuation—no individual, no mass of individuals: and before confidence can be given by others, the bad and good must be equally known.BULGARIA.
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CHAPTER IV.
The Bulgarians.—Their ethnological Elements.—Their History.—Latin Elements in the Bulgarian Creed.
The Bulgarians at the present time are, to all appearance, Slavonians. Their language is a well-marked dialect of the Slavonic; yet not without one very important characteristic and some minor ones. Their physical form is, if not exactly that of a Russian or Servian, that of the Slavonic populations in general, especially the Slovak; their creed that of the Greek Church. This they have held from the time of their first conversion (with certain exceptions which will be mentioned in the sequel) ; and many high authorities hold that the language of the old Slavonic translation of the Scriptures, the liturgical language for all the Slavonians of the Greek Church, with its archaic alphabet and old forms, is Bulgarian.
If it were not for certain complicating points of detail it would he unnecessary to refine on this view. Two facts, however, have engendered the doctrine that the blood is other than Slavonic; in other words, that the Bulgarians are either Turks or Tins who have adopted the Slavonic language. The reasons for this are sufficiently valid to justify the view to a certain extent; though there are serious obstacles to accepting it without reserve.
In noticing it I shall begin with the break-up of the Roman Empire, without, at present, considering the complex and obscure details of the early history of Moesia.
How far the Romans introduced the Latin language is uncertain. The Mcesias were certainly not provinces which were thoroughly Romanized. I imagine they were about as Roman as Wales ; in other words, that the original language was never wholly displaced by the Latin; perhaps only to a very slight degree. Still, some Roman elements were introduced. Upon these, their most notable graft was one effected in the third century by the Goths and Vandals.54
GOTHS OP M(ESIA.
In the reign of Caracalla the name Goth first appears, the population to which it applies being then occupants of the country of the ancient Getce ; and from this time forwards until the reign of a Gothic king in Eome there is a continuous system of Gothic wars, sometimes on one, sometimes on the other, side of the Danube—in Moesia most especially. There is a Gothic war under Maximus and Balbinus; a Gothic war under the Gordians;
a d 251 a	war> disastrous to the Romans, under Decius,
in which that vigorous and brave Emperor met his death on the field of battle. His successor, Gall us, bought a peace.
At the beginning of their migration, the Goths were in alliance with the Vandals, and, as they moved down the Danube, they seemed to have succeeded in forming an offensive alliance with almost all the nations of their ever-changing frontier. They reach the mouth of the river, and effect naval victories as well as military ones. They plunder Trebizond in the east, Byzantium in the south. Cyzicus, Ephesus, Athens, Crete, the cities of the Illyrian sea-board are all plundered by them. A great victory by Claudius Gothicus checked them, and Aurelian drove them across the Danube; but ceded Dacia to the barbarians, who, with the new-comers, held it until it was reduced and consolidated into a kingdom by Attila. But between the Goths and Huns hostilities set in, and the former re-crossed the Danube to fight their way to Italy, Erance, and Spain. All this wrould be foreign to the ethnology of Mcesia, if it were not for the fact that, during the migration, a colony had settled therein, one which, after Moesia had become Bulgaria, still remained. The foot of the mountains in the parts about Nicopolis was the country of what Jomandes, who supplies the notice, calls the Gothi Minores. They were poor, simple, and peaceful; shepherds and herdsmen; living largely on milk. They were Christians. Ulphilas, their bishop, had translated the Scriptures into their language; indeed they were the men whose language, under the exceptionable name Moesogothic, has come down to us as the earliest specimen of the German. 'The Book of Kings, according to a doctrine current during the last century, was omitted, for fear, it is said, that it might encourage the warlike tendencies of the race. Unfortunately, fragments of it have since been discovered. The blood, then, of the peasants about Nicopolis is, in some small degree,BULGARIA.
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that of the peasants of Coburg and Saxe Meinungen; not unmixed with a Slavonic element from the Vandals.
It is in a Panegyric by Ennodius, addressed to the Emperor Theodoric, that the name Bulgaria first appears; and with this appear the difficulties which traverse the inferences from the present Slavonism of its people. It connects them, by implication, with a Turk tribe, the Huns. More than this, the name Bulgaria itself suggests a Fin affinity.
“ I see before me,” says the bombastic panegyrist, who, however, from the simple fact of his being a contemporary, is a valuable witness for such facts as are incapable of exaggeration, et Libertem, the chief of the Bulgarians, prostrate, yet alive: alive, lest he should be missing in your monuments; broken, lest he should be an encouragement to the arrogant. This is the nation which, before your time, took all it wanted; in which, he who would earn titles, must shed the blood of an enemy; the nation to which the field of battle was the blazon of blood; the redder the sword, the greater the honour;—a nation that was never to be starved, for horse’s milk with horse’s flesh is a delicacy to the Bulgarian. Who can withstand the enemy who is both fed and carried by his steed ? All the world was once accessible to them. Now they abstain from that part of it only which you protect.” Zeuss, who opens his identification of the Bulgarians with the Huns with this passage, remarks, with reason, that, to a new nation, language like this, even in the mouth of a professed encomiast, can scarcely apply; though it may easily apply to an old and famous nation with a new name. He adds that Procopius, though he has much to say concerning the Bulgarians, rarely uses the word Hun. Lastly, he shows that one name, at least, that of the Onoguri, is mentioned both as Hun and as Bulgarian.
But a simple Turk basis will not explain the name. Word for word, Bulga-ria is Volga. Place for place, there is, on the Volga, not only a Bulgarian country but a Great Bulgaria. From these parts came, without doubt, the Magyars of Hungary. Why not, then, the Bulgarians? Besides this, the minute details of the invasion of the Magyars are obscure, and excellent reasons may be given for believing that they were not the first members of the stock who set foot in Europe as conquerors.
If so, a Turk overlaid a Ugrian element; a Slavonic, a Hun, ele-56
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ment. Yet within two hundred years from the notice of Ennodius, and within a hundred from the time of Procopius, the history of the Bulgarians becomes clear, definite, and authentic; clear, definite, and, at the same time, undeniably and purely Slavonic; and so it continues till now. With this before us we must be curiously careful to limit our interpretation of the opposing facts to the bare necessities they impose on us. Ignore them we cannot.
The hypothesis I suggest is the following:—
1.	That the name Bulgaria was limited, in the first instance, to what its name denotes (the valley of a river), and that it applied only to the country immediately along the course of the Danube. This limits the area of the Non-slavonic element.
2.	That either there were Asiatic Bulgarians in the Hun armies, or that the Huns had, before they left Asia, taken up the word in question from the Ugrians, with whom they were in contact, or upon whose land they had encroached. That it was a wTord common to the two languages from the beginning, I think unlikely ; though upon this point I should be glad to be corrected by some special Turk scholar.
Let Bulgaria, then, mean the banks of the Danube, and there is no objection to its having been Hun; but, on the contrary, good reason for making it so. Aurelian relinquished Dacia, clearing Moesia of such Goths as were dangerous. Until the time of Yalens the frontier was kept tolerably clear. In the reign of Yalens it was invaded; not, however, by the Huns, but by the Goths, whom the Huns drove out of what is now Moldavia, and who recrossed the Danube. Attila at the height of his power held a band of fifty miles in breadth on the south of the Danube; fifty miles, and no more. After his death the Slavonians were more formidable than the Huns.
The Avars appear for the first time in the reign of Justinian. They never conquered Bulgaria; and even if they had done so, their invasion would not account for the use of the term in a speech to Tbeodoric. All that is absolutely required for the panegyric of Ennodius is a population of Huns on the Danube. They need not even have been on both sides of it.
Soon after the Avar invasion the Bulgarian kingdom of Krum, Bogoris, and their pagan predecessors began.BULGARIA.
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How early the Bulgarians became Slavonized we cannot tell. Nor yet can we give the details of the Bulgarian kingdom on its origin. We only know that during the prevalence of the Hun name that of the Bulgarian was unknown; and that soon after the break-up of the kingdom of Attila the word Bulgarian presents itself. As a rule, they are the enemies of the empire ; and, as a rule, they are allied with the Slavonians, the Antse, and (so far as they were, themselves, other than Hun) the Huns.
With which of these they are, at the time when they first appear in history, to be more especially connected is doubtful. Zeuss connects them with the countrymen of Attila; and that so closely that h# commits himself to the doctrine that the Bulgarians were simply Huns under another name. Gibbon throws them in the same class with the Slavonians; and in that class comprises those wild populations in general, who, in the reign of Justinian, were wandering over the plains of Bussia, Poland, and Lithuania. The outline, however, of his class is faint and general, and the intermediate boundary between its two great divisions obscure and fluctuating. He adds, however, that, by the Greek writers, the Bulgarians were connected with the Huns, and that they had once touched not only the Black Sea but the Sea of Azof. In the time of Justinian, however, they are in the country which now bears their name; with the Antse of Valachia to the north, the Servians of Servia to the west, and the Boman province of Thraerf^to the south of them.
They are pagans and warriors; warriors, Mo, wh6*are ready to join their allies in distant, as well as in near, enterprises. There was a Bulgarian element in the army of Alboin when Italy was invaded by the Lombards; and Bulgarian blood from this source is still extant in a small district in southern Italy to the north-east of Naples—the district about the towns of Ssepinum, Bovianum, and iEsernia. Here it was that the son of the Lombard King, Grimoald, planted the Bulgarians who, under a leader named Alzeco, had separated themselves from the rest of their countrymen and betaken themselves to Italy. They constituted what the narrator of the event calls an army; and offered their services to the Lombard King. He recommended them to his son, and the settlement under notice was the result. In the58
BULGARIA.
eighth century they spoke Latin, hut they also spoke the original Bulgarian amongst themselves.
There is another Bulgarian migration, and that a distant one, connected with the name of Altzeco; though Zeuss suggests that the two may be connected. He thinks that the Altzeco who led the Bulgarians into Italy may have previously had them under his headship in Bavaria, (whither nine thousand males, with their wives and children, had betaken themselves,) fugitives from Hungary. In Hungary a civil war had risen out of a disputed succession, and the Avars had conquered the Bulgarians. The latter put themselves under the protection of the Franks, and are received by Dagobert as temporary settlers in Bavaria. The massacre of these unfortunate Bulgarians is a parallel to that of St. Bartholomew and the Sicilian Vespers. In one night, with the exception of seventy families and Altzeco himself, they are set upon by the Bavarians, and murdered. The remnant escapes to the Slavonic frontier, and is harboured by the Ban Walluc. The disgrace of this massacre lies against the Germans—the Germans of Bavaria. ad 717 797	Isaurian dynasty the history of the
Bulgarians becomes clearer; and clearer still under the Armenian, the Amorian, and the Basilian.
About the middle of the eighth century, Constantine V. put a check upon their ordinary practice of ravaging the frontier, and, by the abduction of the population as slaves, made it an approximate solitude. He repaired the fortifications of the marches and mountain-passes, and built others. He rejected the demands of the King, who, on the plea that some of the forts had been planted on Bulgarian ground, had applied for the payment of an annual tribute. He repelled the invading army, which had approached the very walls of Constantinople. He made peace on favourable terms; and, when it was broken, carried the war into the country of the enemy. An occasional repulse never dismayed him. The wreck of his fleet of more than two thousand vessels, upon which he had embarked his infantry, only suspended his activity. He acted again on the offensive; again made peace; which was again broken.
In 775 he died, bequeathing to his successors the coercion of the Bulgarians as a condition of the security of the northern provinces of his empire. Their power, however, long survivedBULGARIA.
59
him; John Zimiskes his distant successor being the great conqueror of the Bulgarians of the empire. It was not, however, long in reviving: indeed, the effects of the victory of Zimiskes, though he reduced Bulgaria to a province, may be said to have interrupted the continuity of the kingdom rather than to have abolished it.
Still, it is usual to speak of two Bulgarian kingdoms. The second was founded a few years after the overthrow of the first; though, at the same time, at a sufficient interval to justify us in treating it separately. The dynasty, too, is a different one; and the area over which the authority of the Bulgarian King was stretched is notably different from that of the earlier kingdom—different in many important details, though still, on the whole, Bulgarian. Soon after the death of Zimiskes, four brothers, out of many leaders in a movement towards independence, asserted their claims to the leadership. Of these, three either died or disappeared; one, at least, unless report belied the survivor, at the hands, or through the machinations, of his brother. So Samuel, for this was the name of the fourth, took the title of King. That he was unscrupulous we have seen. We shall see, too, that he was bold, energetic, and sagacious; and that he was, at the very onset, successful. He expelled the Byzantine garrison from Bulgaria, and he kindled the flame of rebellion in Macedonia. This, well nigh as Slavonic as Bulgaria itself, joined the rebellion. From Macedonia, Samuel invaded Thessaly; from Thessaly, Livadia; from Livadia, the Morea. The occupants of the ancient town of Larissa he removed to Prespa, which he proposed to make his own capital, and whither he also removed the body of a St. Achilles, the tutelary saint and martyr. In the first campaign against him, the Emperor Basil was unsuccessful. He taught him, however, that some stronger place than Prespa was needed for his metropolis. The plains of Bulgaria were not the localities that Bulgarian warfare was best fitted for. To Achrida, then, a town of Albania, rather than either Bulgaria or Macedonia, the Bulgarian Patriarchate was transferred; and from this transfer, this otherwise obscure town, on the edge of (or within) an actual Mahometan district, held an ecclesiastical jurisdiction over certain suffragan60
BULGARIA.
bishoprics, independent of the Patriarch of Constantinople. As a military position it was eminently well-chosen.
This second kingdom was far wider than the first. Macedonia, parts of Albania, the chain of Pindus, the port and fortress of Dyrrhachium (Durazzo), all belonged to it. The nationality, on the other hand, was somewhat mixed : as there was Greek blood in Macedon, Skipetar blood in the parts about Achrida and Dyrrhachium.
But, by far, the most important of all the foreign elements was the Rumanyo or Valachian. Whether all the ancestors of certain Yalachian populations, who, at the present time, are scattered along the Pindus range, were occupants of the country in the time of Samuel is uncertain. It is only certain that the blood of the second Bulgarian kingdom was more mixed than that of the first. A great battle, on the banks of the Spercheius, broke the rising power of Samuel. Domestic trouble and treachery on the part of his officers followed. He had entrusted his son-in-law with the government of Durazzo, and his son-in-law made it over to the Byzantines. This was the loss not only of a fortress but of a valuable port on the Adriatic.
But, though Durazzo is lost, and a great battle has been won by the Emperor, much has to be done before Bulgaria is recovered. The campaign of the following year is conducted systematically, and (perhaps) slowly. Town after town, and fortress after fortress undergo regular sieges, and, from Thessalonica, as the base of his operations, Basil succeeds in Presthlava, Plescova, Berrhcea, Servia, and Vodena, or Edessa, the capital of the Macedonians in the times before Philip. Niden and Skupi (a town which, from its name, I consider Albanian) are taken in the next campaign from Philippopolis.
And now ten years pass without a decisive blow being struck, when, on the 29th of July, 1014, a bloody victory, followed by still bloodier cruelties, is gained by the Byzantines. On hearing of the extent of his calamities, and the horrible inhumanity shown to the prisoners, the brave, but not unscrupulous, Samuel is said to have fallen senseless, and, two days afterwards, to have died from grief and agony. He leaves a brave and active son, Gabriel Radomer, who still fights a losing fight against a powerful armyBULGARIA.
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and an active Emperor, until he is murdered by John Ladislas, who, to gain time, attempts to trifle with Basil by sending ambassadors with specious offers of peace. But it is the determination as well as the policy of his opponent to permanently break the Bulgarian power.
For four years longer the war continues. However, after the death of Ladislas, Bulgaria (both the old and the new) becomes a Roman province. The number of its cities and its fortresses is some measure of its civilization. So is its taxation. It was fixed by Samuel that for each yoke of oxen a certain amount of com, and for each strema (whatever that might be) of vineyard a jar of wine should be paid in kind.
Some years afterwards, when this tax was meddled with, and an attempt was made to replace it by a money payment, another rebellion was developed. This was between 1042 and 1054, in the reign of Michael the Paphlagonian, when the empire was declining from its high and palmy state under Basil II., Basil the Slayer of the Bulgarians, Basil Bulgaroktonos—a sanguinary soldier, well-named. Servia, under Stephen Bogislav, has already emancipated herself; and the fiscal oppressions of John the Orphanotrophos, the eunuch brother of the Emperor, is goading the provinces into insurrection. The details of the movements consequent upon his interference with the institutions of Samuel, which Basil was wise enough to leave as he found them, are measures of the rottenness of the empire rather than of the patriotism of the Bulgarians. Three men stand prominent in disgrace ; all three, more or less, bound to Constantinople. There is a Bulgarian slave who escapes from his master, and proclaims himself the grandson of Samuel. There is the general who is sent against him at the head of a Slavonic army in the Byzantine service. There is a younger brother of Ladislas. Their names, just worth naming, in order to be branded with infamy, are Deleanos, Teichomeros, and Alusianos; Alusianos, the brother of the King, Teichomeros, the traitorous captain, and Deleanos, the runaway. The runaway persuades the captain, who is sent against him, to join him in his rebellion, and instigates his creatures to murder him, lest the authority of a single chief should be weakened. The royal brother joins the runaway, and loses a62
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battle through want of skill* Alusianos and Deleanos must each destroy the other before either can rule in single-handed safety. The treachery of Alusianos is the first to be carried into effect. He obtains the kingdom of his brother, and betrays it. Having resigned the Title of King, he betrays his kingdom and dies in Constantinople. The name of a fourth, Ibatzes, completes the list; and Ibatzes was a deserter. He had fought for the Emperor against his country and for Alusianos against his former masters.
Such was the Bulgarian dynasty; a dynasty which ended in Azan conquered by Amurath I.
A notice of the extent to which Bulgaria was Latin rather than Greek in the way of creed now stands over.
During the Popedom of Nicolas the First, when the great schism was brought to a final separation between the Greek and the Latin Churches, the conversion of Bogoris, and the labours of Cyril and Methodius become prominent. These were the times when Christianity was first introduced among the Southern Slavonians who, in some districts, at least, were no further from Rome than from Constantinople in respect to their geography, and in respect to the missionaries by which they wTere converted as much Latin as Greek. This was the case with Bulgaria, Servia, Moravia, and, to some extent, with Bohemia.
“ There is a strange uniformity,” writes the historian of Latin Christianity, “in the instruments employed in the conversion of barbarous princes, and through the princes, of their barbarous subjects. A female of rank and influence; a zealous monk, some national calamity; no sooner do these three agencies coincide than the land opens itself to Christianity.” * And in accordance with, or rather as exposition of, this remark the history of the conversion of Bulgarians runs thus:—Bogoris was their king. His sister had lived, as a captive, for upwards of thirty-eight years at Constantinople: during a part of which time Theodosius Cupharas had lived as a slave, in Bulgaria. An exchange took place: when a pestilence broke out, and raged until Bogoris prayed to the God of his restored and Christian sister; when it abated. The impression of this on the king was strong, on his subjects somewhat weak. In vain were they addressed in their * Milman, book v., chap. 8.RELATIONS WITII THE LATIN CHURCH.
63
own language by the two brothers, Cyril and Methodius : in vain did a painting, by Methodius, of the horrors of the Last Judgment appeal through their sight to their fears.
This was at the time when the Greek Church was divided between the upholders and the abominators of the worship of images; the Empress Theodora being one of the upholders. She replied to the request of Bogoris that the hands of the two monks might be strengthened in their mission, by sending a bishop, who should baptize the King. But this could only be done secretly; and when the secret came to light the people broke out in defence of the old gods. With only forty-eight attendants, and the cross on his breast, Bogoris affronted the revolt. The insurgents fled. Such of the nobles, however, as Bogoris could lay hand on he put to death.
Thus far the work is Greek. It is in Constantinople that the royal princess has found her new creed. It is a Greek monk by whom her brother is half persuaded to be a Christian. It is two Greek monks by whom the Gospel is preached to the people; and it is a Greek bishop who baptizes Bogoris; henceforward to be known as Micael. Above all, it is on the Greek, that the Cyrillian, alphabet, the alphabet in which the first translation of the Scriptures into the language of the Eastern Slavonians was made, is founded.
The authority, however, of the Pope was not unknown to the Bulgarian convert: and better known than the authority of the Pope were the scandalous factions to which the Photian and Ignatian quarrel had given rise. It was when this was at its height that a visit, either accidental or well timed, of some Latin missionaries suggested to King Bogoris, who was in doubts as to some fourscore points of discipline, a reference to Rome. To the one hundred and six questions thus referred the answers of Nicolas I. were prompt, prudent, parental.
“ Would the king be forgiven the murder of his nobles ? ”
“ Upon doing penance, Yes. But such severity was not to be repeated. Apostates only were to be punished. Where there was no conversion God alone was to judge the obstinate.”
“ Were prayers for their fathers who had died in darkness and unbelief to be offered ? ”	“ By no means/’
“Were holy places to serve as asylums?”
“Yes. Even mur-BULGARIA.
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derers if they could reach a church were to be protected by the bishop.”
“ May we fight ? ”
“ Wars will, doubtless, continue; but let the banner be the cross, not the horse-tail as of old.”
" May we fight on holydays ? ” “ Not on days which are merely looked upon as lucky, and not on the strength of old saws or auguries. When you go to the war, go to the Church first.”
“ Be less severe and less ready with some of your punishments.” A Greek had baptized some Bulgarians. By the inspiration of God, Bogoris, having found out that he was not a priest, cut off his nose and ears, scourged, and expelled him. For this inhumanity he is blamed by Nicolas, who admits the validity of the baptism.
The custom of the king was to eat his meals alone. Let him be more sociable in this matter.
The oaths were taken on the sword. Take them on the Gospels instead.
Polygamy, and marriage within the degrees are strictly forbidden.
So, in a general way, is the adoption of the errors of the Greeks and Armenians.
The bearer of these answers was Formosus, afterwards Pope. That the Latin writers credit him with the primary conversion of the Bulgarians is not to be wondered at. The tendency of the Western writers is all in this direction. That Formosus was the Apostle of Bulgarians, that Bulgaria had been Roman from the time of Pope Damasus, that Bulgaria was part and parcel of the province of Illyricum, are the definite elements in the Roman claim. It was urgently pressed by all the early successors of Nicolas: and it has never been formally withdrawn. It was resisted from the beginning, by even the Romanizing Ignatius, who, when the Greek bishops were ordered to withdraw from the Roman soil of Bulgaria, was not only Patriarch of Constantinople, but Patriarch through the influence and decision of Rome. Yet he resisted the cession of Bulgaria.
This King took prisoner Baldwin I., the firstLatin Emperor of Constantinople. A successful revolt of the Greeks of Adrianopolis had been added to the thousand-and-one quarrels, intrigues, and jealousies which followed the partition. The insurgent Greeks had obtained the help of the King of Bulgaria and Val-BULGARIA.
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achia. His relations with the Pope Innocent III. are curious. The Pope had condemned the attack upon Constantinople; the Venetians he laid under an interdict; the Franks he had threatened with one. The success, however, of the offenders was gradually reconciling him to the offence. The Venetian nominee to the Patriarchate, though not the details of his nomination, had been approved. The establishment of a Latin church in the East had begun. The Emperor had asked for a supply of breviaries, and missals, of rituals, ministers, and monks: and Innocent had appealed to the prelates of France in support of the request. “ Samaria,M he wrote, iC had returned to Jerusalem. God had transferred the empire of the Greeks from the proud to the lowly, from the superstitious to the religious, from the schismatics to the catholics, from the disobedient to the devoted servants of God.”
Meanwhile, the King of Bulgaria had received the royal unction from one of his legates, submitted the Bulgarian to Borne; and, in the eye of the Pope, at least, he was a spiritual subject from whom he might expect support and obedience. The object of the Bulgarian was a share in the spoils of the Eastern empire. He was now a Latin sovereign, and, as a Latin sovereign and a frontager, had an interest in the distribution of the territory. So having taken offence at the rejection of his offers of alliance, his activity on the other side moved the Emperor, the old Doge Dandolo, and the Count of Blois, with all the troops they could command, against him. The Count was left dead on the field of battle. The Emperor was taken prisoner. His brother, who took upon himself the administration of the empire, lost no time in applying for the intercession of the Pope; and the Pope, in a mild letter, reminded the Bulgarian king that the consecrated banner which he had received was given him that he should rule in peace. There “ is an army collecting in France and Germany, and it is your interest to make peace with the occupants of Constantinople by restoring to them their Emperor. This is a suggestion, not a command.” On his own part he would lay his injunction on the Emperor Henry to abstain from all invasion of the borders of Bulgaria. That kingdom, so devoutly dedicated to St. Peter and the Church of Borne, was to remain in its inviolable security! The Bulgarian replied that “ he had offered terms of peace to the Latins, which they had rejected with contempt; they
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had demanded the surrender of all the territories which they accused him of having usurped from the Empire of Constantinople, themselves being the real usurpers. These lands he occupied by a better right than that by which they held Constantinople. He had received his crown from the Supreme Pontiff; they bad violently seized and invested themselves with that of the Eastern Empire: the Empire which belonged to him rather than to them. He was fighting under the banner consecrated by St. Peter: they with the cross on their shoulders, which they had falsely assumed. He had been defied, had fought in self-defence, had won a glorious victory, which he ascribed to the intercession of the Prince of the Apostles. As to the Emperor, his release was impossible. He had gone the way of all flesh.”
The remaining part of the history of Bulgaria is mixed-up with that of Servians and Ottomans. Hence, the notice of the last king of Bulgaria, Sisvan, will appear in the sequel.THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
67
CHAPTER V.
The Ottoman Turks, or Osmanlis.—The Turks of Roum.—The Turks in Europe.
Such is the sketch of the three chief factors in our analysis of the complex elements which constitute the European portion of the Ottoman Empire. Such the notice of three notably different populations; all of which, however, agree in two important points. They are, each and all, other than Ottoman in blood, language, and nationality. They are, each and all, more numerous than the Ottomans to whom they are subject; the Ottomans themselves (the fourth of our factors) who are now submitted to consideration.
They are a foreign population. But this, as a characteristic, is of no great importance. Most populations are, more or less, foreign; most were, at some time or other, intruders on the soil which they afterwards treated as their own.
They are strangers of recent introduction. Four hundred years junior in the date of their original conquest to the Norman conquerors of England; six hundred years junior to the Magyar conquerors of Hungary; seven hundred years junior to the Mahometan occupants of Spain, they are, in respect to the antiquity of their tenure, the novi homines of Europe; and on the strength of their being this a good deal of declamation has been wasted. That the Ottoman Empire is a mere encampment, that the Ottoman Turks are mere squatters, that the Ottomans hold Constantinople by sufferance, that they should he driven hack to the deserts and steppes of their original Asia, are flowers of rhetoric which may he found in writings of influential authors; just as, in the works of their antagonists, exaggerations of the validity of the Ottoman title and panegyrics upon the efficiency of the Ottoman reforms take suspicious prominence. As far as
f %68
THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
the question of time is concerned, the title of the Ottomans to Constantinople is what that of the English was to London in the reign of Edgar and that of the Magyars to Hungary in the year 1300.
They are Asiatics. As a simple matter of geography this is as true as the truest of the preceding propositions. Othman was horn in Asia Minor, and the germ of his kingdom lay in Bithynia. On this there is thorough unanimity of opinion, though on the value, or want of value, of the orientalism of Asia as contrasted with the occidentalism of Europe there is, in the way of weighty opinion, any amount of diversity. What the mere fact of an origin in Asia carries with it, he it for good or he it for had, is so thoroughly connected with the particular conditions of time and place as to he utterly unsusceptible of any useful generalization.
But are the Ottomans in reality so very Asiatic, so very foreign to Europe as many of the generalities concerning them induce us to believe ? No! in the extreme views respecting their early power, and their almost ubiquitous presence in Italy, in Africa, in Syria, in Arabia, and in Asia Minor; in the enormous extent to which a great portion of the older history of the world, under captains and nations of divers names, was Turk; in all the results of minute and hypercritical ethnology of which the present writer is himself thoroughly convinced, he asks no credence from his reader. This, with the like, belongs to speculative, not to say transcendental or microscopic ethnology; upon which, in the present work, he abstains from enlarging. He only deals with those plain and patent facts connected with their appearance in Europe which are, at one and the same time, early and undoubted. He abstains from even pressing the Scythians into his argument, inasmuch as there are still authorities who hold that they were Mongols; only remarking that, just as, in the fifth and sixth centuries, the Goth carried with him the Vandal, so, up to the thirteenth, did the Mongol carry with him the Turk. He abstains from calling even the Huns and early Bulgarians Turk: because upon these there is a difference of opinion. He pretermits (in the present chapter at least), the Alans. He rests his position only on the Avars, the Petshinegs, the Uz, and the Romanians; the Avars of Pannonia, Noricum, and Bhsetia; the Petshinegs of Dacia, theTHE OTTOMAN TURKS.
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Uz and Romanians of Volynia; and, lastly, for the coniines of Asia and Europe, on the Khazars of the present Eussian Governments of Caucasus and Tauris. These were all of the Turk stock; probably a different division of it to that which contained the Ottoman Turks; hut still of the great Turk stock. If so, the conquerors under notice were the sixth section of their family which invaded Europe. On the other hand, they were the first which crossed the Hellespont; the line of the others having been to the north of the Caucasus, across the Straits of Yenikaleh, or across the Don.
They are Mahometans. Being this, they are, certainly, in a strong contrast to the Christians of Europe. And it may be added that they are Mahometans who have long outlived the time when there was even an approximation to equality of power on the part of the two creeds. They are Mahometans on Christian ground, and on ground that will scarcely become Mahometan. They are exceptionable Mahometans in a Christian system. The difficulties created by their position are great; but for four hundred years they have not been great enough to prevent the Christians doing political business with them. Still, their Mahometanism is a great distinctive feature; one, indeed, which takes more political prominence than all the rest put together. As Mahometans they are, to a great extent, impracticable members of the European system, and they would be this if they were ever so civilized, ever so European. On the contrary, if Christian, they might be parvenus, Asiatics, and barbarians without much inconvenience. Besides this, they are not only Mahometans, but they are likely to remain so.
They are, according to many writers on ethnology, Mongolians, the word Mongolian being used in a technical, if not a scientific, sense, and the phrase meaning that they belong to a division of mankind different from, and, perhaps, inferior to, the great Caucasian race—so called by amateurs and novel-writers. In France this notion of race has a greater prevalence than in England, and, in America, for obvious reasons, more prevalence than in France. They certainly belong to a division, in some respects natural, in some artificial, which includes the Mongolians Proper, the Mantshus, the Chinese, the Fins, and others; hut what Mongolism carries with it is a point of which the recognized elucidator70
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is unborn. Under any view, however, the Turks, whether from the original oseulancy of the classes, or from intermixture, are the most Caucasian (so-called) of the (so-called) Mongols.
They are barbarians. A good deal of the connotation of this term is that of the term Asiatic also. In the eyes of a Greek, they would, doubtless, have been barbarous. In the eyes of a Parisian or a Londoner they are, more or less, barbarous now. But it is not against the ancient Greek, with his merits appraised by himself, or with the Englishman or Frenchman of the nineteenth century, also taken at his own valuation, that either the old Ottoman or the modern Turk is to be matched. His true measure is to be found in Servia, Bosnia, Wallachia and Albania; and, with these regions as a standard, it is not too much to say, that the rudest Ottoman of any century is not below the rudest Skipetar of the same date, the most civilized Yalachian not above the most enlightened Ottoman.
What the Ottomans do belong to is this. They belong to a class of which many members, at the present moment, may fairly be called barbarians; of these cognizance was taken when the Turks of Siberia were under notice. They also belong to a class of which the most civilized members were rude and illiterate, when Greece and Italy were classical. Thirdly, they belong to a class of which they themselves are the most civilized members, but who are not civilized after the fashion of the nations of Western Europe. I am not prepared to say that, in some cases, this difference is not a difference of kind rather than degree.
How far they belonged to that branch of their stock which attained the maximum of civilization is best seen by attending to some of the differences which separate, at the present time, and which separated more than ten centuries ago, the Nomad from the civilized tribes.
Let us call the Nomad tribes Turkomans: the representatives of the family as it existed from the times anterior to history, and as it exists at the present time in the impracticable steppes of what is by courtesy named Independent Tartary.
The Turkomans, out of whom the Turks of the towns and cities of Southern and Western Asia sprung, were, apparently, t those of the Persian frontier, the ancestors of the present Yamud, Goklan, Tekke, and Ersan tribes, who lie along theTHE TURKOMANS.
71
frontier of Persia from the Caspian to the south-western feeders of the Oxus. Except on the valley of the Attruk, where they have developed an imperfect agriculture, more akin to gardening than to farming, they are nomads; with no towns, with more tents than houses, and with pre-eminently predatory habits; as the Persians of Khorasan and Asterabad know to their cost. Unrivalled riders with a breed of horses that will endure any hardship they are infamous for their forays; and, as they have a great robbing-ground to the south where the occupants are other than Turk they are more incorrigible plunderers than even the central Kirghiz and Usbeks. When settled in more favourable localities they are slow to lay aside their original habits. So far as they are mixed in blood, it is the Persian element that has mixed them. Such are the Turkomans.
The second are the occupants of the Valley of Oxus, and the parts beyond it; in some cases the occupants of the Amur or Jihon. With these, the decided contrasts to the Turkoman arise from their being the occupants of countries where Persian civilization had taken root. They have towns; though the industrial habits that appertain to a town are Persian and the towns themselves of Persian origin. Bokhara, Balk, Ferghana, Kokan, and other smaller States, are the districts wherein these reside as a dominant and intrusive race: Turk in many respects, but in many respects Persian also; Persian in the way of their culture. Here, the distinction between the conqueror and the conquerors has been permanent. The dynasty is Turk: but the cultivator of the soil is a Parsiwan, a Tajik, or a Sart; in all cases a man who speaks Persian and is a Shiite rather than a Sunnite. The present masters of the position in this respect are the Uzbeks. In the time we speak of they were something different; Uzbek being a name of comparatively recent origin. In the time we speak of they were in the eyes of the Persians, Kharasmians, Corasmians, or Carizmians; in the eyes of the Arab men of Mahawulnahar; in the eyes of the Bomans, Transoxanians or men from beyond the Oxus. Sogdiana and Chorasmia were the older names for their land. The Persian element was strong in them; but they lay also on the Mongol frontiers, and these it is who, in the several Tartar conquests, were mixed-up with the Mongols, much as in Europe the Goths were mixed-up with the Vandals. Like*72
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the Goths they left behind them the stronger traces of their blood and language.
That these differences were of equal value through the whole of the two areas I, by no means, maintain. On the confines they graduated into one another. They do so now. There are Turkomans who are of (comparatively) settled habits. There are Uzbeks, who love the tent better than the house, the sheep-walk rather than the village. In language the difference, at the most, was slight. In creed it was, perhaps, greater. The Turkomans must have been but imperfect Mussulmans. Still, in the extremes, there was a contrast. Between the Turk from Ferghana and the Turk from the bare plateau between the Attruk and the Oxus, there was as great a difference as between an old borderer from the Cheviot hills and an Englishman from York, or Warwick. Let us suppose a body of immigrants from each of these districts to meet in Lancashire. They would speak English and have a certain amount of common Anglehood; but the manner in which they comported themselves in their new homes would be different, and the difference be lasting.
Upon the possible history of the earliest emigrants from the Turkestan, I abstain from writing. It might satisfy others less than it satisfies me. I begin with the times immediately following the Mahometan conquest of Persia, a conquest that carried the Kalifat beyond the Turk frontier; the Kalifat which is still Arab, though, from the addition of such a kingdom as Persia, Arab with Persian elements.
The Turks become Mahometans, and there is no reason for supposing that before their conversion they were Pagan. Some of them may have been so; but, to a great extent, they were what the Persians were, lettered fire-worshippers. Some, too, were Christians; thanks to the Nestorian missionaries from Syria. The existence of the old Uighur alphabet, formed on the basis of the Syrian, is evidence to this; evidence which only confirms the statements supplied by the history of Syrian Christianity.
It is from Turkestan that the armies of the Kalifat are recruited, and that to an extent which gives us a repetition of the history of the Praetorians in Borne. The external history of the several incorporations of the Turk element is either wholly wanting or very scanty. The break-up, however, of the great empireBREAK-UP OF THE KALIFAT.
73
of the Prophet, makes up for this deficiency. Every kingdom which grows out of its dissolution, ofi which the history is known in detail, is Turk; whilst of those whereof the details are unknown, there is none for which a strong case in favour of its having been Turk cannot he made out.
When the central authority of the Kalif grew weak, a large portion of Persia passed out of the hands of his representatives in the East into that of the Soffarids, apparently Turk, succeeded by the Samanids, apparently Turk also. Under one of the Samanid kings, Sebectegin affected what his son acquired—absolute independence in Khorasan. This son was Mahmud, and his capital Ghuzni, and by Mahmud the Ghuznivid India was conquered from Afghanistan. But the power of the dynasty was expended on the conquest; so that Ghuzni with India as a dependency became like Normandy after the conquest of England. It changed hands, and that quickly. What Mahmud was to his Samanid suzerain Togrul Beg was to his son. Togrul Beg achieved an independent kingdom in Persia. His son, Alp Arslan, extended it. He overthrew the Kalifat, and reigned from Bagdad. He followed the Euphrates into Georgia. He left a vast and unwieldy empire to his son Malek Shah; which Malek Shah held together, but which for his sons and successors was far too unwieldy and too vast. It was divided. Persia formed one share; and to the Shah of Persia the holders of the other elements owed, or professed to owe, a kind of suzerain. This last fell into three divisions—Syria, or the domain of the Atahegs, and Roum or Asia Minor, with Iconium for its capital.
It is the fortunes of the descendants of Togrul Beg in Roum that we follow—the history of the Sultans of Roum, a subdivision of a division of the empire of Malek Shah, an offset of the empire Mahmud of Ghuzni, a branch of the Samanid empire, a portion of the Kalifat. It is the history of the Caris-mian rather than the Turkoman Turks.
But the kingdom of which Iconium was the capital broke-up: and the power of Othman grew out of it. This was, however, in about 1300, whereas the Sultanship of Roum, or Iconium, was founded more than two hundred and fifty years before. What took place in the interval will he considered from one point of view only. It will be considered with the view of getting a rough approxima-74
THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
tion as to the manner of the men that Othman represented, especially in respect to their capacity and training as soldiers and administrators, as conquerors and legislators. It is only by doing this that we shall see the real nature of the antecedents which gave us the Ottoman dynasty, the conquest of a large part of Europe, a series of permanent and vital institutions, the capture of Constantinople, the menace of Vienna. Something will be done in the explanation of all this if it can be shown that, for more than three centuries, the Turks of Asia Minor had been disciplined in a good school of war, of war on European principles, of war which made them all but Europeans in point of skill and tactics. It will show how far it carried them, and where it left them. They did much against European troops; much they failed to do; but what they did, they did as men who knew what European fighting actually was, as well as the Germans or the French themselves. Lessons in European warfare they may have wanted, and these they found. Lessons in diplomacy they found also. Lessons in cruelty were, perhaps, superfluous; but these the Crusaders may also have taught them.
How they learned to fight against Europeans is all that is here examined; but to treat the Turks as learners is to suggest inferiority. And such, when we compare them with the warriors of Western Europe, was really the case. Viewed from Europe, and as pieces of the history of France, Germany, and England, the Crusades seem to be little more than a series of wasteful, unsuccessful wars; and, if we look to their material results only, this view is the right one. From the same point of view, they look like so many isolated expeditions, without system, without a base of operations, without continuity. The first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth Crusades are merely so many Papal licences issued at divers times and on sundry occasions; just as a fit of excitement came upon Europe or an impulse of authority upon the Pope. The campaigns themselves, like irregular flashes of lightning, which dazzle for a time, but only to leave darkness in the interval, are points of biography in the lives of so many unconnected heroes—Godfrey of Boulogne, St. Bernard, Bichard III., Louis IX., and others. Far different, however, is their aspect, if, taking our point of view from the Holy Land itself, we treat them as a series of continuous events in theTHE CRUSADES.
75
history of the Kingdom of Jerusalem. They, then, exhibit mass, order, and continuity, and become, what they really are, the details of the history of the dynasty of Baldwin I.,'of the Knights Templar, of the Knights of the Hospital of St. John. These are the constants of the scene. The Roberts and Richards, the Frederics and the Louis, the birds of passage, as it were, of the stormy period, here to-day and gone to-morrow, are, if not the mere accidents of the real history, the exponents of the fanaticism, the ambition, or the restlessness of Europe, rather than the agents in the true Crusaders of the Holy Land in situ. Of these, it may be said that, however unsuccessful the Crusades were as a whole, there was no failure on their part. The heavy losses were all on the passage. The success at the terminus was great. This is written to show that, as a general rule, the Turks, like the Mongols and Magyars, perhaps like every invader from the East, never gained any permanent advantages against the soldiers of Western Europe. They were always held in abeyance by the Empire; always held in abeyance by the French and English. Their successes, in short, are explicable on two grounds. They were limited in extent. For such as they effected they had ample teaching.
As compared with the army that started on the first Crusade, the remnant that reached Palestine was but a handful; and it was a handful as compared with the enemies it found on the ground. Yet Nicsea, Antioch, Tarsus, Edessa, Tripoli, Jerusalem, are taken within the year; and in all cases against great odds in the way of number. Gaza follows; and after a severer contest, Ascalon. After quarrels have broken out, and after more than one apostate has disgraced the cause, Edessa is lost, and Damascus unsuccessfully attempted. On the other hand, Egypt is overrun, and when the great battle of Tiberias, followed by the taking of Jerusalem, leaves the real power of the King of Jerusalem broken, the victory is won by an army of inordinate magnitude, and by the greatest warrior of the time. When Saladin enters Jerusalem that city has been the capital of a Christian kingdom for eighty-seven years; the Frank capital of Syria as truly as Adrianople, two hundred years after, was the Ottoman capital of Rumelia.
As this was before the third crusade and as the second did nothing, the establishment of the Franks in Jerusalem must be looked upon as the achievement of some thirty thousand men76
THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
landed in Palestine more than eighty years before the battle of Tiberias.
The third crusade, signalized only by the taking of Acre, was marred by the quarrels of the royal warriors, Richard I. of England, Philip Augustus of France, the Duke of Austria, and the Emperor. The fourth never reached Palestine at all. Instead of Jerusalem, it conquered Constantinople. The fifth crusade was little more than a visit of the King of Hungary to Acre; the sixth an alliance between Frederic II. and the Sultan of Egypt, against the Sultan of Damascus, for which the restoration of Jerusalem was the price. The Emperor who recovered it was under the ban of excommunication. On his departure the city was retaken; to be taken again in the seventh crusade (1240), and to be again lost. The two campaigns of St. Louis in Egypt were unsuccessful ones. After his death, Prince Edward of England, afterwards Edward I., obtained a truce for ten years, which was broken before the time was over, and which preceded by only a few years the final abandonment of the last Frank stronghold on the Continent and the shipment of the last soldiers of the kingdom of Jerusalem to Cyprus, thence to be transplanted to Rhodes.
The passage to Cyprus took place in 129U ; so that the duration of the kingdom of Jerusalem and the occupancy of Acre lasted for about two hundred years; during the whole of which time there was not ten years of peace. But besides wars there were treaties, and, in the eyes at least of the lookers-on in Europe, unholy alliances between the Franks and the infidels—especially those of Egypt. Under such conditions the warfare of the Western Turks, however rude it may have been at the beginning, could not fail to end in being, in kind, at least, the same as that of the Germans, and of the Normans; the latter the most formidable soldiers in Christendom.
That the scene of the great Syrian conflict was not exactly on the frontiers of the Turks of Roum is plain; but the network of alliances among all the Powers of Western Asia, was a wide one, and the civilization of them all was of the same kind. The immediate frontagers of the ancestors of the Ottomans, though not such warriors as the Knights of the Holy Land, were amply sufficient to discipline even the rudest tribes from the most remote parts of Asia. For a school of war against the Greeks,TREBIZOND.
77
indeed, the districts in which the Ottoman power originated were, in many respects, better than even the immediate frontier of the Crusaders; especially after the ejection of the Greek dynasty from Constantinople and the establishment of the two real or titular empires of Nicæa and Trebizond. Placed between these two hostile districts the Sultans of Iconium were generally at war with the one, in alliance with the other of them ; favouring the Greek Emperor rather than his rival of Trebizond. Trebizond, on the other hand, was frequently in alliance with the Crusaders ; indeed, it was definitely and decidedly within the Frank sphere of hostilities. Beyond Trebizond, Georgia was a powerful kingdom ; under a native dynasty respectable, and under the rule of its great Queen Thamar formidable. In Armenia there was a debateable ground. The Genoese of Kaffa traded with the ports of Pontus and Paphlagonia. With a capital, then, in Iconium, with a port in Samsoun, with Georgians, Armenians, Greeks of Nicæa, Greeks of Trebizond, and Crusaders, the Turks of Roum cultivated the arts of both war and peace from a.d. 107J (the date of the battle of Manzikert, in which the Greeks were defeated) to the battle of Kousadak in 1244—the battle of Kousadak being the one by which they were compelled to pay tribute to the Mongols. Of the interval between the battle of Kousadak (1244) and the death of Othman (1326) it is necessary to take a separate, though short, notice elsewhere. This is because all the current accounts of the relations of Othman to the sovereigns of the parts around him, as well as the character of the institutions connected with either his name or lineage, along with his pedigree, are unsatisfactory. What I believe Othman to have been is either a paid captain, or a feudatory under the Greek Emperor ; and I submit that if this doctrine be right, the view which it suggests as to the relations between the Turks of his name and the Con-stantinopolitan Greeks whom they conquered is of sufficient importance to command special attention. In this question, however, inference has much more to do than historical testimony. True and definite historical testimony begins only a little before Oth-mans death.
Let us begin then, for the present, with Orkhan, an Emir (not a Sultan) of Asia Minor, whose territory, there or thereabouts, coincided with the western half of the ancient78
THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
district of Bithynia. Its nucleus is the classical range of Mount Olympus: its chief town Brusa, the last of the conquests of Othman. It lies on the Propontis, and almost on the Dardanelles. If Constantinople is to he conquered from Asia, this is just the place from which the conquerors are to he expected.
In the first year of his reign, Orkhan takes Nicomedia; four years afterwards Nicsea; both in Bithynia, both won from the Greeks.
Pergamus, with Mysia, is won, six years later, from a Turkish Prince. This in Asia—what Orkhan did in Europe was but little; still, it was in Orkhans reign that the first steps were towards Constantinople, and they were taken in the near neighbourhood of the capital itself. Cantacuzen, a usurper, in spite of the difference of religion, was his father-in-law; for Orkhan had married his daughter, and had assisted him against the legitimate Paleeologi in return. This was one alliance. On the other hand the Genoese had the suburb of Galata, and the Venetians that of Pera; but the Venetians were the allies of Canta-cuzene, the Genoese of Orkhan. With complications like this, with ambition, with opportunity, with nothing against them but the weak tie of relationship by marriage, the friendship between Cantacuzen and Orkhan came to an end: indeed John Palseo-logus, like Orkhan himself, was a son-in-law of Cantacuzen. In a Genoese bark, Soliman, the son of Orkhan, crossed the Bosphorus and surprised Tzympe. Instead of recovering it, Cantacuzen asked the aid of Orkhan. This was administered by Orkhan, and the forces of Palseologus routed. Money was offered by Cantacuzene for Tzympe, but before it was paid circumstances had changed, and Gallipoli was taken and fortified. Soliman died before his father, who was succeeded by
Amurath I. For thirty years did Amurath reign (Orkhan had reigned thirty-three) and by 1361 had reduced Adrianople, which he made his capital. And now there crowded upon him enemies more formidable than the Constantinopolitan Greeks—Servian leagues, Wallachian leagues, Hungarian leagues, Crusaders instigated by the Pope, the chivalry of Western Europe.
The first of the great battles fought against the enemies thus banded against him was that of the Maritza, near Adrianople, which gave him Bumelia.THEIR PROGRESS IN EUROPE.
79
In '76 he took Nissa, a frontier town of Servia. The Prince of Servia paid tribute; the King of Bulgaria, Sisvan, gave his daughter in marriage.
About this time the Republic of Ragusa placed itself under his protection as against the Venetians.
In 1389, after the taking of Shumla, Hirnova, Pravadi, Drid-zha, and Hirshova, Bulgaria was permanently reduced.
In the same year the great battle of Kossova decided the fate of Servia. Amurath was slain in it, and the Servian king, Lazarus, was executed immediately after it. His son, Stephen Lazarevitsh, gave the Sultan his sister to wife, paid tribute, and rendered faithful military service.
In 1391, Wallachia submitted.
Bajazet I., Amurath's successor, was now in contact with Hungary, and the battle of Nicopolis, as described in a previous chapter, was fought. Bajazet invaded and overran Greece, and the extent to which Greece was, at that time, Frank may be better inferred from the following extract than from any more elaborate account. Barring the geographical names it looks like a piece of Spanish, French, or Italian history.
Daring the period the duchy of Athens was possessed by the Sicilian branch of the house of Aragon, the Catalans were engaged in wars with all their neighbours. * * * * The lieutenants general of the dukes, who arrived from Sicily, were always compelled to bring with them fresh supplies of mercenary troops. The lieutenants of the Sicilian dukes mentioned in history are, Berengar d’Estanot, and Alphonso, the natural son of King Frederic II., who governed in succession during the life of Manfred. Roger de Lauria, son of the renowned admiral, represented Frederic of Randazyo. Afterwards, Frances George, Marquis of Boudonitza, Philip of Dalmas, and Roger and Antonio de Lauria, sons of the preceding Roger, ruled the duchy. During the government of Rog ^r and Antonio de Lauria, Louis, Count of Salona, son of the Regent Alphonso, died, leaving an only daughter as his heiress. Louis was proprietor of a very large portion of the duchy, and the disputes that arose concerning the marriage of his daughter, caused the ruin of the Catalan power, and the conquest of Athens by Nerio Acciaiuoli, the Governor of Corinth.
The Catalans were the constant rivals of the Franks of Achaia, and, as Nerio Acciaiuoli, as Governor of Corinth, was the guardian of the principality against their hostile projects, the marriage of the young Countess of Salona involved the two parties in war. The mother of the bride was a Greek lady; she betrothed her daughter to Simeon, son of the Prince of Yallachian Thessaly; and the Catalans, with the two Laurias at their head, supported this arrangement. But the bozans of Achaia, headed by Nerio Acciaiuoli, pretended that the feudal suzerain of Athens and Achaia was entitled to dispose of the hand of the Countess, though the race of Baldwin II. was extinct; for Jacques de Baux,80
THE OTTOMAN TURKS.
the last titular Emperor of Romania, died before the war between the Catalans and the Governor of Corinth commenced. Nerio was nevertheless determined to bestow the young Countess, with all her immense possessions, on a relation of the Acciaiuoli family, named Peter Sarrasin. The wars concerning the Countess of Salona and her heritage appears to have commenced about the year 1386. The Catalans were defeated, and Nerio gained possession of Athens, Thebes, and Livadea; but a few of the Spanish proprietors, and the remains of the military force attached to the viceroys, continued for some years to offer a most determined resistance in other parts of the duchy, and rallied round them a body of Navarrese troops in the service of the last Spanish governors.
During the war, a quarrel broke out between the dowager Countess of Salona and the Bishop of Phocis. The Athenian historian Chalcocondylas narrates that the bishop accused the lady, whose name was Helena Kantakuzena, of adultery with a priest, and that this conscientious bishop hastened to the court of the Sultan Bayezid I. (Ilderim), who was then in Thessaly, and begged him to remove the scandal from Greek society by conquering the country. In order to attract the sultan, who was passionately fond of the chace, the reverend bishop vaunted the extent of the marshes of Boeotia, filled with herons and cranes, and the numerous advantages the country offered for hunting and hawking. Bayezid made his interference a pretext for occupying the northern part of the duchy around Neopatras ; but, being soon after engaged with other projects, the Turks do not appear to have retained permanent possession of the district then seized. Chalcocondylas affirmed that the dowager countess delivered up her daughter to Bayezid to be placed in his harem, which would imply that her marriage with the Prince of Ylachia had not yet been celebrated.
The Laurias, pressed by the Turks on the north, and by Nerio Acciaiuoli and the Pranks of Achaia on the south, abandoned the duchy, in which only a few small bands of troops continued to defend themselves almost in the capacity of brigands.
After the death of Bajazet I. there was a breathing time.
A repulse before Belgrade; a repulse off Rhodes; the resistance of Scanderbeg—in these lie the exceptions to the general career of victory that signalized the reigns of the predecessors of Mahomet II. in Europe. In Asia there were the Karamanian wars of Bayazid I. and the great defeat at Angora. But conquest was the rule.
Conquest, too, the rule during the reign of Mahomet II.; con-quest, beginning with that of Constantinople.
Next came that of Greece, begun by Bajazet I. This he divided into what we may call larger and smaller fiefs, under the names of Ziamets and Timars.* The number of these gives us a rough measure of the depression of the old Frank magnates, as well as one of that of the native Greeks.
* See list at end of next chapter.MAHOMET II.
81
	Ziamets.	Timars.
The Sandzhak of the Morea	. 109	342
Negropont	. 12	188
	Thessaly	. 60	344
	Epakto	. 13	287
	Karlili	. 11	119
	Yanina	. 62	345
	267	1625
The tribute of children (one-fifth of the males) he instituted as the means of recruiting his army.
Then he began on the islands.
The first of the archipelagoes that was conquered was that of Lesbos; and the Lesbian Archipelago means Lemnos, Imbros, Thasos, Samothrace, and New Phocsea, a settlement on the Persea, or continent. Lesbos (and probably the rest) constituted a fief granted by the Emperor John Palseologus V. to Francis Gattilusio of Genoa who married his sister. The title was Signore. A plausible, if not a fair reason for reducing the Signoralty lay in the protection which it had always afforded to the Venetian and Arragonese pirates, which was carried to such an extent that Lesbos was to the Turk, what Algiers was in after times to the Christian, captives. Nicolas Gattilusio had killed his brother Domenic in order to obtain the Signoralty; and, when Mahomet attacked him, he became an easy convert to Mahometanism, getting nothing, however, by his apostacy but the bowstring. One-third of his subjects was sold, one-third transplanted to Constantinople, one-third left in helotage.
In 1370, Euboea was reduced. Then Kaffa and Tana were taken from the Genoese. Then Trebizond, Karamania, and the Crimea ; Servia being permanently annexed. With Castriotes died out the last sparks of Albanian independence, and, as the Herzegovna went with Albania, the frontiers of Venice were touched.
Then fell, with the exception of Zante, the fief of the Toccos, which we may call Karlili and The Islands; Karlili meaning the county of Charles, as the Turks called the parts about Arta. The Persea was a Despotat. The islands'Leucadia, Cephalonia, or Zante, formed a dukedom and a county of which the fief was granted in 1353, by Kobert II. of Tarentum, one of the titular kings of Eomania.
VOL. II.
G82
THE TURKS IN EUROPE.
The reign of Bayazet II. was disturbed by civil and domestic tumults.
Selim I. was a religious persecutor, so that his wars were more against Mahometans than Christians. He massacred forty thousand Shiites and reduced
1, 2. Diarbekir and Armenia.
3, 4. Syria and iEgypt.
The conquest of iEgypt put him in the place of the Kalifs; and made the Turks, instead of the Arabs, the representative nation of Mahometanism.
Solyman I., the Magnificent, reigned when the great kingdoms of Europe had become consolidated; when Charles Y. ruled in Spain, and Francis I. in France. With the latter he contracted alliances.
In 1526, Hungary was conquered on the bloody field of Mohaez, Buda being taken, Louis, the king, died childless, and the archduke of Austria, Ferdinand, claimed the Hungarian crown, as brother-in-law to the late king. The Hungarians would recognize none but a native; and Zapolya, one of the nobles, was their spokesman and champion. Worsted by Ferdinand, he betook himself to Solyman, and became a native king of Hungary under a suzerain. The wars with Austria arose out of the first siege of Yienna; where Solyman was repulsed. He was also unsuccessful against Malta; but Mesopotamia, part of Arabia, and the Barbary States, he reduced; Candia, Cyprus, Georgia, and Caucasus, being all he left for his successors.
But the great conquest of Solyman's reign was one which, though the smallest in the matter of territorial acquisition, was in its moral effects greater than any which had been made since the taking of Constantinople. It was made in the face of civilized Europe, which looked on and did nothing to retard it; and it was against the oldest and most formidable enemy to Mahometanism that it was effected. The Knights of St. John were something more than mere enemies of the Ottoman Empire. Long before it existed, when the distant ancestors of Ottoman were but rude soldiers, or, at best, but subordinate captains, they constituted the working force of the Crusades, so discreditable to the pilgrim warriors of Europe, so glorious to the permanent occupants of either Acre or Jerusalem. The Island of Rhodes, under the Knights of St. John, had foiled the vast fleet and army of Mahomet II.,SIEGE OF RHODES.
83
fresh from victories in every part of the Levant; and their grand master D’Aubusson had been succeded by men in whom his spirit glowed with equal intensity. It was against greater odds that Lisle Adam had to contend. The actual numbers in all wars, except those of modern times, are unattainable; and the tendency is always to exaggerate differences where notable differences exist.
At the election, however, of Fabricius Caretto in 1513, the list of the suffragan knights was as follows :—
Of the	French	language	100
99	Provençal	—	90
99	Castilian and Portuguese —		88
99	Auvergnat	—	34
99	Arragonese	—	66
99	Italian	—	60
99	English	—	38
99	German	—	5
453
This favours the accuracy of the number of knights and men-at-arms found in the garrison when Lisle Adam, expecting that the dawn of the next day would bring the Turkish fleet in sight, made his inspection: viz.—
Of Men-at-arms .	.	.	4500
„ Knights •	.	.	600
5100
To this may be added the companies formed by the Khodians themselves, the crews of the vessels in the harbour, and the force of the country people; who were made available as pioneers. Against this is given to the army of Solyman:—
Soldiers...................... 140,000
Pioneers, &c.................. 60,000
200,000
On the 26th of June, 1522, it was signalled that the Turkish fleet was in sight. The procession of the Feast of St. John was going on, and it was finished with its usual solemnity. Mass was then said: when the grand-master having walked towards the altar
G 284
SIEGE OF RHODES.
elevated the Host, and prayed to the Most High for his succour in the struggle that was impending. After this each man betook himself to his post: the French, the Proveíais, the English, the Spaniards, and the Italians, to the five bastions hearing the name of their several languages.
There was some real, some imputed treachery. There was a Turkish slave who attempted to fire the city; a female. There was a Jew physician. There was a suspected knight. The guilt, —of which the historian* here followed acquits him,—of the unhappy D’Amaral is doubtful. His position was such as to have warranted him in contesting the grand-mastership against even Lisle Adam; and he bore his defeat suspiciously. Distrusted from the first, he was accused by one of his followers, who was found on one of the bastions with a how in his hand; the arrow during the siege being the chief means by which communications were effected. He accused his master, who was condemned, disgraced, beheaded; a brave knight, and lost to the defence when no single hand could be spared.
The mounds by which the Turks tried to command the town rose higher and higher, until they overlooked the Spanish and Auvergnat bastions: and on the English bastion the storm beat stronger still. A few minutes longer and it would have been taken. When the alarm reached the chapel of St. Mary of Victory, the words—
“ Deus in adjutorium meum intende.”
were being intoned : and the grand-master accepted the augury— “ Come, my brethren, let us exchange the sacrifice of our prayers and praises for that of our lives; and let us die, if God so will it, in defence of our religion/* The storm of the unfaithful was rolled hack. On the 13th of September the Italian, on the 17th the English, bastion was attempted ; and on the 24th those of Spain, Italy, and Auvergne, were simultaneously attacked; but September and October passed before signs of surrender showed themselves. By the knights they were spumed to the last; but the citizens sent deputations, and the bishop supported them. The brave and skilful engineer, Martinigo, to whom, after the grand-master, the siege owes the glory which alone rewarded
* Porter ; History of the Knights of Malta.SIEGE OF RHODES.
85
its resistance, gave a solemn and responsible opinion that the works were no longer in a condition to be held. The voice of the knights was that they would he buried under their ruins.
November wore through ; and the 6th of December came before a white flag, waving from the top of one of the churches, was answered by another from one of the Turkish positions. The terms of capitulation followed. The knights, and such citizens as chose, were free to leave the town, with their personal property. Those who remained were to he free from tribute for five years. The churches, and all property, public and private, were to he respected. The other alternative was, the worst that a victorious army, and that army a Turkish one, could do.
After the terms had been accepted, the Sultan took certain exceptions to the form; and for eleven days longer hostilities continued; after which, terms essentially the same were agreed to. Nor were they violated. “ There has been nothing so well lost in the world as Rhodes,” was the remark of Charles Y. when he heard of its fall.
Under Selim began the first war with Russia, an unsuccessful one on the part of Turkey; the field of battle being the parts between Astrakan and the Caucasus.
The conquest of the islands (with the exception of the Lesbian group, reduced by Mahomet II.) still stands over.
Chios was a Genoese dependency administered by the Maona, an analogue to our own East India Company; a joint-stock adventure in which the Justiniani were the great hereditary directors. The good it did is measured by the material prosperity of the island. The bad lay in the encouragement of piracy and the slave-trade. It was, indeed, pre-eminently infamous as a slave depot. Reduced by Piali, it suffered less than any other island during its transfer; indeed, until the year 1821 Chios was the favoured spot in the Archipelago.
The same year saw the reduction of Naxos. The Greeks offered to betray the Duke, John VI., on condition that the farming of the revenues might be made over to them. The Duke was betrayed; but the collection of the revenues was given to a Portuguese Jew, who sent a Romanist Spaniard as his deputy. Mahometan sovereignty, Hebrew finance, and Castilian toleration were the rewards of the greedy Naxiots.86
TURKS IN EUROPE.
Cyprus was wrested by Richard CceuyÚe Lion in the second crusade from the Pasha of Egypt, under the rule of the Seld-zhukian Turks, long before the founder of the Ottomans was born : so that it was in no respect a portion of the modern Turkish Empire. When the Holy City was lost to the Crusaders the title of King of Jerusalem accompanied that of the King of Cyprus. The Lusignan family gave the dynasty—a dynasty, like that of the Emperors of Trebizond, more prominent in romance and heraldry than in real history. It now became Turk.
Connected with Maina as ancient Crete was with Sparta, the Venetian corsairs of Candia had always abetted the indestructible Mainot spirit of insubordination. They ran their cargoes into the harbours of Cape Matapan and shared their booty with the mountaineers ; always in rebellions, often put down. Einlay is probably right in stating that the Ottoman government was intermediate in character to that of the Genoese of Chios and the oligarchy of Venice ; more tyrannical than the commercial, less oppressive than the aristocratic, rule. “ If,” writes Paul Sarpi, “ the gentlemen of these colonies do tyrannize over the villages of their dominion, it is best not to let them see it, that there may be no kindness between them and their subjects ; but if they offend in anything else ’twill be well to chastise them severely, that they may not brag of their privileges more than others.”
A single detail, the murder of an accepted son-in-law, who was a despised Greek, by the father of the bride who had gone to church to marry her, along with the local insurrection that arose out of it, an abortive Sicilian Vespers, gives us a concrete instance of the pride, dissimulation, and cruelty of the dominant class. Other details convey a notion of the extent of the piracy which, between the Knights from Malta and the Venetians from Crete, rivalled that of the Barbary States. And in this piracy the Spaniards and Italians joined—Catalans from so respectable a kingdom as Arra-gon, Italians from such Republics as Pisa, Lucca, and Florence. Out of these grew the war which cost Venice Candia; the last important conquest of the Ottomans.
The preparations were made as if against Malta ; but the storm (not unexpected) broke on Crete, which was harassed or blockaded for twenty-three years. The Greeks favoured the Turks,CYPRUS AND CRETE.
87
and were plundered and killed by the Venetians for their want of patriotism. In 1666 the Grand—we may say the Great—Vizier Kiuprili took the command himself, and, after a protracted resistance, the keys of Candia were given up to him by Morosini in '69.
The interval between the conquest of Candia and the beginning of the Venetian war in the Morea was one of sixteen years; and they were years in which the arrogance of the Porte displayed itself at the expense of almost every Government in Europe-more, however, by haughtiness of language, by the contemptuous rejection of just complaints, and by the barbarous treatment of ambassadors, than by any acts of aggressive warfare on a great scale. Of border forays there were many : forays by the Kosaks from Poland; forays by the Morlaks from Dalmatia; piracies on the part of the Uskoks at the head of the Adriatic; piracies on the part of the Knights of Malta. The proper redress for these injuries should have been found in appeal to Venice as a maritime Power, to Austria and Poland as great Powers by land. But such appeals were disregarded to an extent which seems to have been amply sufficient to put the Christian Powers in the wrong. They trifled and prevaricated. They would and they would not. Half Hungary was already under the suzerainty of the Sultan, and the Austrian half was governed on purely Austrian principles. What these are now they were in the days between the conquest of Candia and the second siege of Vienna. One man alone, without respect to either prudential fears or diplomatic considerations, was purely and simply inveterate and unswerving in his hostility to the name of Turk and Infidel; the great Polish warrior and king, John Sobieski. His relief of Vienna has been noticed elsewhere.
Scarcely his rival as a soldier, but incomparably above him as a politician and an administrator, Morosini, still alive and in his sixty-sixth year, was called by the republic to retrieve the loss of Candia; though it was Morosini himself who had surrendered it. Neglected, if not disgraced, after doing all that skill or courage could do, for not prolonging the tenure of an untenable fortress, he was now entrusted with the command of the Republic, which had determined on a war against Turkey.
The capture of Santa Maura was followed by that of Prevesa ;88
THE TURKS IN EUROPE.
and the conquest of the Morea was inaugurated by the reduction of Coron. Eelying (on certain occasions too much) on the discontent of the Greeks, especially that of the fickle Mainots, Morosini landed his forces, and, during the campaign of ’55, the strong and central fortress of Patras was reduced. After the Morea, with the exceptions of Misitra and Monemvasia, was evacuated, Athens became a Venetian possession. The Turks, who held out until the city was no longer tenable, were allowed, on their capitulation, to embark with their families; and about two thousand five hundred individuals sailed for Smyrna. About thirty remained and were baptized. That Athens, defended by a Turkish garrison, always brave, and, when behind stone walls, of more than ordinary obstinacy, should be taken without damage to the beautiful remains of its ancient architecture, was not to be hoped. It was in the front of the Propylsea that the Turks had constructed their chief batteries, and it was in the Parthenon that they stowed the bulk of their movable property and some of their gunpowder. Both the Parthenon and the Propylsea were battered and burnt. One of the mosques became a Catholic, another a Lutheran, chapel. The last act of Morosini, when, driven out by the plague, he quitted Athens, was to take away, among other discreditable trophies which he was less successful in getting to Venice, the four lions which still guard the Venetian arsenal. For ten years Morosini, either as general or Doge, directed this war; in which, besides the temporary occupancy of Athens, Euboea was unsuccessfully attempted, Chios taken, and several strongholds in Northern Greece surrendered. Still, towards the end of the campaign, the war languished, and when peace was made between the Emperor, the King of Poland, the Republic, and the Porte, Venice retained, besides its conquests in Dalmatia, and besides iEgina, the whole of the Morea. The tribute exacted by the Sultan for Zante was also given up. Prevesa, on the other hand, and Lepanto were surrendered to the Porte after the destruction of their fortresses. This was in 1699, the date of the treaty of Carlowitz, the first of the numerous treaties to which it will be necessary to allude.
Up to the surrender of Candia our epochs had been the reigns of the sultans; each of whom, with few exceptions, was a conqueror. Who it was that conquered Lesbos, iEgypt, Rhodes, or such other particular districts as may have been under notice, was,THE TURKS IN EUROPE.
89
up to that time, our chief question. From the peace of Carlowitz, however, our epochs will be different. They will be supplied by the treaties; and, as a general rule, the import of a treaty is a diminution of the power of the Ottomans. Two, indeed, are exceptions—that of the Pruth and that of Belgrade; but the issues of the treaties of the last century and a half have been unfavourable to the Porte. Though the Morea is destined to be reconquered, the war under notice, which made it Venetian, is an important one ; for the loss of the Morea was the first great loss which the Ottoman empire sustained; and it followed, by the short interval of only sixteen years, the last of its important conquests. During the interval there was the death of one of the best, and the rise of one of the worst viziers that ever administered the empire—of Aehmet Kiuprili under whom Candia was conquered, and of Kara Mustapha, who was bow-stringed for being panic-struck before the walls of Vienna by Sobieski.
But it was only from its definite and palpable character that the Morean war is a date from which the decline of the Ottomans is to be measured; and it is only for the general reader that it is one of much importance. Him it suits, because it is convenient. The special historian sees the signs of the decay at a much earlier period.
“ With the exception of the now reigning Sultan,” wrote Sir Edward Creasy, before the accession of the present one, “ and of the great, though unsuccessful man, who was his immediate predecessor on the throne of Constantinople; perhaps with the exceptions also of Mustapha II. and Selim III.; the Turkish princes whom we are proceeding to contemplate, form figures of but languid interest on the historic page. The decay of the State accords with the degeneracy of its rulers; and minute descriptions of the troubles and calamities of a declining empire are generally monotonous and unattractive. We shall, indeed, still have our attention drawn to fierce and eventful wars; and we shall still meet with names that must ever live high in martial renown; but they are wars, in which the Crescent has generally, though not invariably, gone back; they are principally the names of commanders, who have grown great, not in the advancement, but at the expense of the House of Othman; such names as Montecuculi, Sobieski, Eugene, and Suwarrow. Yet gleams of glory and success on the Turkish side will not be found altogether90
THE TURKS IN EUROPE.
wanting; and, besides the individual sultans, who have been already specified as honourable exceptions to the general character of the royal house since the fourth Amurath, there have been truly great men in the councils and the armies of Turkey. She has had her Kiuprilis, and others, whose names have long deserved and commanded more than merely oriental celebrity. We may remark also, that these last two centuries of Ottoman history, though loss picturesque and spirit-stirring than its earlier periods, are more practically instructive and valuable for us to study, with reference to the great problems which the States of Central and Western Europe are now called on to solve—how to redress the international balance of power, and how to provide securities against the aggressive ambition of Eussia. It is also from comparatively recent scenes in the Turkish annals, that we gain the best materials for judging what probability there is of such reforms and reorganizations being effected in the Ottoman empire as may enable it hereafter to hold its own in the conflicts of the great Powers of the world, instead of depending on the jealousies which those Powers entertain of each other, for protection, almost as perilous to its recipient as the subjugation which for a time it averts.” *
This opens the account of the reign of Ibrahim, the successor of Amurath IV., who died a.d. 1640, and the details of the narrative which immediately follows are amply sufficient to verify the remark. Personally Ibrahim was a bad ruler. At Amurath’s death he was the sole surviving representative, in the male line, of Othman. Yet he had been doomed to death by his brother, and, when the sudden notice of his accession to the throne was brought to him, his fears misinterpreted it into a preliminary to his execution. It was only when his mother had ordered the dead body of his brother to be laid before him that he believed himself a king. A revolt of Janissaries disturbed his reign; and when he died, his son, Mahomet IV., was a minor.
Under Mahomet IV. began the vizierate of the first Kiuprili, “the founder of a dynasty of ministers, that raised Turkey, in spite of the deficiency of her princes, once more to comparative power, and prosperity, and glory, and who long retarded, if they could not avert, the ultimate decline of the Ottoman Empire.”
As Mahomet IV. grew up he grew into neither a general * History of the Ottoman Turks, yol. ii. ch. 1,THE TURKS IN EUROPE.
91
nor an administrator. He was a mighty hunter rather than aught else. In one respect, however, he was better than a better man.
The simple fact of the successes of the Ottomans having been for more than two hundred years regulated by the personal character of the rulers to an extent beyond that of the other European kingdoms, condemns either the institutions or the character of the people. Yet such was the case from Orkan to Solyman; and when Mahomet IY. succeeded Ibrahim, it was the viziers of the family of Kiuprili who did the work of the early sultans; and it was by leaving matters in stronger hands than his own that Mahomet IY. did well.
In 1664, more than ten thousand Turks were killed in the great battle of St. Gothard; and, as this was the first great action in which the Ottomans were defeated, it is an important one. It was won by Austrian troops under an Italian general, Montecuculi. The treaty of Carlowitz followed another great defeat, that of Zenta. In the present chapter, however, the Morean war, in which the Venetians were the principals, is the only portion of its eventful antecedents which has been noticed.
But the complement to the Venetian war lies in the details of the Polish and Austrian campaigns; the chief of which has already been given. Besides the Morea to the Venetians, the Turks lost Podolia to the Poles and their half of Hungary to the Austrians. Heavy as these losses were, they are scarcely the most significant parts of the treaty. Neither England nor Holland were parties to the war; yet, in the congress that preceded the peace, each was represented. In this we see the recognition of the intervention of non-belligerents. In the treaty, too, of Carlowitz, Russia, for the first time, in a congress of like generality, took a part. Russia, however, though not a member of the Polish, Austrian, and Venetian alliance, was a belligerent, and the peace which Russia made was a separate, independent, and partial one. It was, indeed, merely an armistice for two years; afterwards converted into one for thirty.
Between the peace of Carlowitz and that of Passaro- ^ ^ vitsh, in which England and Holland also took a part, were won those advantages over Russia which led to the exceptionally favourable treaty of the Pruth. The Morea, too, was re^*92
THE TURKS IN EUROPE.
conquered. Austria, however, gained Temesvar, Belgrade, Little Yalachia, and parts of Serna and Bosnia.
In 1723, the Sultan and the Czar are such firm friends as to arrange between themselves the partition of Persia; the Czar taking Asterabad, Mazenderan, Gilan, with parts of Shirvan and Lesgistan; the Sultan, the greater part of Kurdistan and Aderbijan. If the Shah would recognize the mutilation he might retain the remainder of his kingdom; largely diminished, on the east, by the independence and encroachments of the Afghans. This strengthened the Turks in Caucasus; though, at the same time, it engendered complications with Russia. As the Persians were Shiites, the Turks were justified in what they did. Their punishment, however, grew out of their crime. It was in the defence of the integrity of the Persian empire that the formidable Kuli Khan first emerged from the obscurity of a slave and a robber to become the most formidable conqueror of his age and country— or, by a change of name, the famous Nadir Shah, king of Persia, conqueror of Georgia, devastator of Northern India.
^ The treaty of Belgrade was to the advantage of Turkey, and it was the more creditable because it was against Austria and Russia combined that the advantages were gained.
Twenty-nine years of comparative peace follow. They bring us to the time of Mustapha III., Frederic the Great of Prussia, Catherine II. of Russia, George III. of England, the Seven Years' War, the Partition of Poland; the times, in short, immediately preceding our own.
ad 1774 The treaty of Kainardzhi is less remarkable for the territorial concessions made to Russia, than for the power of intervention and interference with which its clauses invest the Czar, or, rather, the Czarina. In behalf of Moldavia, and Vala-chia, the Russian minister at Constantinople was free to remonstrate as often as legitimate complaints reached him, and such remonstrances were to be listened to “ with all the attention which is due to a respected and friendly Power." Similar remonstrances on behalf of the Christians of the Empire in general were to be listened to with similar attention. The Great and Little Kabardas were to be ceded to the Tartar Khan; who was, in his turn, to cede them to Russia. From Georgia and Mingrelia, Russia was to withdraw her garrisons: the claim of the Porte being left, by a veryTHE TURKS IN EUROPE.
93
indefinite clause, open for investigation. Azov, Kertsh, Yeni-kaleh, and Kilburn, were, with their ports and districts, to he retained by Russia. The Tartars of the Crimea were to he independent of the Porte, and equally independent of Russia—neither interfering “ under any pretext whatever, with the election of the said Khan, or in the domestic, political, civil, and internal affairs of the said State; hut, on the contrary, they shall acknowledge and consider the said Tartar nation, in its political and civil state, upon the same footing as other Powers, who are governed by themselves, and are dependent upon God alone.”
How far they were left alone by Russia is known from their after-history. The independence of Tartary was neither more nor less than the independence of Poland.
As Kilburn was Russian, the Dnieper was now the frontier to a part, at least, of Russia. On the opposite hank Oczakof remained Turkish. But only for a while.
By the treaty of Yassi it became Russian ; and, with ^ it, all the country between the Dnieper and the Dniester. The treaty of Yassi also strengthened the hands of Russia against Georgia, Imeretia, and Mingrelia. The Sultan was not to interfere with them; in other words, Russia was their protectress.
By the treaty of Bukharest, 1812, the Pruth became the boundary; this meaning that Bessarabia became Russian.
The preliminaries to the cessions of 1792 were the victories of Suvarof.
The events of 1812 touch our own times much more nearly, belonging, as they do, to the period of the great Napoleonic wars, in which they followed the meeting between the Emperor at Tilsit, and were almost concurrent with the conquest of Finland. The aggressions of Russia had now lost whatever obscurity or plausibility they may previously have been invested with. In the time of Catherine the extent to which Constantinople was aimed at was not only not concealed but was ostentatiously and gratuitously paraded. Between Alexander and Napoleon it was an idea of the nearest approximation to universal monopoly that the boundless ambition of a dualism of conquerors would admit. But the re-arrangements of 1815 which followed the overthrow of Napoleon overthrew this as a generality; just as the events of 1812 had broken up the details agreed upon by the two Emperors.94
TREATY OF UNKIAR SKELESSL
In 1826 the treaty of Akkermau, by strengthening the approximate autocracies (though they were this in very different degrees) of Servia on the one side and the Danubian Principalities on the other (both, more or less, under the special supervision of Russia), weakened the Porte—not, however, in a way that the cosmopolitan politician (if such a thing exist) regrets.
In 1830 the passage of the Balkan under Diebitsh had brought a Russian army dangerously near to Constantinople; and, as its real weakness was unknown, another disadvantageous treaty was effected. The gains of Russia, however, so far as the indirect benefit of having her protégés (Servia and the Danubian Principalities) strengthened in their imperfect independence, were chiefly in Caucasus. Georgia, Mingrelia, Imeretia, and Guriel, had their relations to the Porte settled in a manner more definite than equitable ; though, considering that they are Christian countries, whilst Turkey is neither Christian nor tolerant, no great harm to civilization in general was done in the settlement. Akaltsik, Akalka-liki, and some other minor districts, were retained by Russia ; some out of several of the conquests of Paskievitsh.
In 1830 the French invaded Algiers, a dependency of the Porte ; though a nominal one.
Then came the quarrel with Mehemet Ali, and the administrative independence of Egypt. Mehemet Ali, however, was coerced into something like moderation by Russia ; England being accused of laches in leaving too much of the settlement with the Czar. The price for his assistance is declared in the treaty of
„ Unkiar Skelessi, which bound the Sultan, hand and a.d. 1833.	_	. .	,,	. .
foot, to his old enemy, now his protector.
There was to be an offensive and defensive alliance between the two contracting Powers, and the Straits of the Dardanelles were to be closed against the armed vessels of all other foreign Powers ; the article that carried this was a secret one.
In virtue of one of the clauses of the first article of the patent treaty of defensive alliance concluded between the Imperial Court of Russia and the Sublime Porte, the two high contracting parties are bound to afford to each other mutually substantial aid, and the most efficacious assistance for the safety of their respective dominions. Nevertheless, as His Majesty the Emperor of all the Russias, wishing to spare the sublime Ottoman Porte the expense and inconvenience which might be occasioned to it by affording substantial aid, will not ask for that aid if circumstances should place the Sublime Porte under the obligationGRIM TARTARY.
95
of furnishing it, the Sublime Ottoman Porte, in place of the aid which it is bound to furnish in case of need, according to the principle of reciprocity of the patent treaty, shall confine its action in favour of the Imperial Court of Russia to close the Strait of the Dardanelles, that is to say, to not allowing any foreign vessels of war to enter therein under any pretext whatsoever. The present separate and secret article shall have the same force and value as if it was inserted word for word in the treaty of alliance of this day.
A small addition to the Bessarabian frontier on the Sulina mouth of the Danube, gave Russia a footing on the bank of that important river.
* * * * * # *
Though the Crimea was conquered in the reign of Mahomet
II., little has been said about it. It was not a conquest by that
victorious and active Sultan in person, but one by his captain Ahmed
Keduk. It was, in the first instance, an attack upon its
A	a.d. 1475.
most important town, the Genoese port of Kaffa, admirably situated on the south-eastern coast for trade with the towns of Greek origin in Caucasus and Trebizond. And at this time the fringe of coast that lay between the Circassian mountains and the sea was thickly studded with thriving towns; commercial and Christian, but piratical withal. The power of Apkazia and Georgia had declined. The ruins, however, of their churches and monasteries bear witness to their former civilization and security. That there was a remnant of Germans, apparently (though the question is not without its complications) descendants of the subjects of the great Hermanrik, on the Genoese frontier, is nearly certain. At any rate, Gothia was the name of a Circassian district; and German was spoken in the Crimea in the time of Busbequius.
Among the Crimean Tartars themselves there was a domestic war ; and it was the part of the Khan, whom his brothers had deposed, which Ahmed Keduk took up. That his aid was effective is what we expect. That it was gratuitous we are unready to believe. The Kkan died a vassal to Mahomet. The fate of forty thousand of the Genoese (I give the numbers as I find them) was, to be transplanted to Constantinople; the fate of fifteen hundred more, to be draughted into the Janissaries.
The semi-independent character of the Crimean Khanat has separated its history from that of the Turks of Constantinople. Its fate was a different one from that of the ordinary conquests. When the land was purged of the Genoese it was a Mahometan96
GRIM TARTARY.
principality. It was a distant one. It was on the way to nowhere; for Russia, that lay at its hack, was a land that neither tempted nor encouraged Mahomet II. It was not like Asia Minor the occupancy of old and hostile neighbours, like the Khans, Emirs, or Sultans of Karamania, who only saw in the Ottoman Empire the success of a young and insolent ex-occupant of their own country. It was not like Greece an easy conquest. It was not like Servia Bosnia, or Albania a formidable frontage. It was left very much to itself; with its hostilities and alliances regulated by the power of the countries around it—Caucasus, Russia, Yalachia, Poland, and the ambiguous, but high-spirited, Kosaks. Its history, then, is concurrent with that of Turkey rather than connected with it; and, doubtless, before the time of Peter the Great the Russians and Poles who attacked the Crimea thought much more of their immediate neighbour than of the Sultan at Constantinople. The great fortresses, however, of the frontier, especially those of Kamin-iec and Khoczim, were objects of imperial interest. So, indeed, was the whole of Podolia; inasmuch as it was in contact with Yalachia. The occupants, however, of the centre and the interior, fought their own battles under their own Khans of the house of Giray; some of whom were active warriors, though after a barbaric fashion. These it was who had among their subjects the rudest of the true nomad Tartars—the Petshinegs, the Uzes, the Comanians, and the Nogays.
When the Kosaks and the Poles had prepared the way, Peter the Great made for the permanent possession of Azov. It had been occupied by one of his predecessors: then surrendered; then dismantled. But Peter made it the Russian port for the Black Sea, just as he had built St. Petersburg on the Baltic. Before his time the only Russian port was Arkangel. When the Crimean Khans became independent of the Sultan, or, in other words, protected by the Czar, the southward extension of the power of Russia became merely a matter of time. The value of the Khanat lay in its sea-board, and its relation to Caucasus and Astrakan. Kherson and Ekaterinoslav are poor countries. Podolia, which is a rich one, though originally Crimean, was wrested from the Turks by Poland; and it was as a part of Poland that it went to swell the empire, and round-off the frontier, of Russia.
The treaty of Unkiar Skelessi is the last which will here beTREATY OF UNKIAR SKELE8SL
97
noticed. It contains less of tlie material, and more of the diplomatic, element than any of the ones 'which preceded it; and, doing this, differs from them. Of transfers in the way of territory, it contains little ; of engagements, preferential concessions, and secret clauses, much. And it is in favour of Eussia that these are made. Pro tan to, then, they are measures not only of the weakness of Turkey, hut of the extent to which her formidable neighbour is taking advantage of it.
The interventions of England and France characterize the history of our own times : in which the diplomatic element in the importance of the Porte has, greatly to the loss of its national independence, attained its maximum. At present, however, it is convenient to proceed in our analysis.
VOL. II.
H98
VALACHIANS IN GEEECE.
CHAPTER VI.
Population. —Mixed Districts. —Rumelia.—Bulgaria.
Four mixed districts now stand over for consideration.
1.	Rumelia, or the proper Turkish part of Europe, the country wherein, alone, the Turks are in a decided majority as compared with the other occupants.
2.	Bulgaria, where they are numerous ; though not so numerous as the proper Bulgarians.
3.	Macedonia, where they are, perhaps, as numerous as the Bulgarians and Greeks.
4.	Thessaly, which is, perhaps, a Greek district, with a large Turk intermixture.
The difficulty of ascertaining the proportions will appear as we go on.
As no Ottoman occupancy is exclusively Ottoman, some other population, or populations, must he complementary; and of these the most important are the three which have last come under notice, the Albanian, the Greek, and the Bulgarian: the Greek and Bulgarian more especially.
Because these three are this, they have taken precedence in our notice. They are our factors, so to say. To them, however, a fourth must he added; one which it was not convenient to take so early as the others; viz. the Valachian. Yalachia must, now, he borne in mind—though, upon Valachia as a country little has hitherto been written. The place for Yalachia is that of the comparatively independent portions of the Ottoman Empire; and these come after the consideration of the Ottomans themselves.
As much, however, as need he said about the Yalachians of Greece and Albania may be said now. When Constantinople was taken by the Franks, a concurrent empire was established at Nicsea, and a subordinate kingdom at Thessalonica. TheVALACHIANS IN GREECE.
99
kingdom of Tliessalonica was Frank; and a very ephemeral kingdom it was. It then became an equally ephemeral empire, of which the Despotat of Epirus was a part—or (inasmuch as it survived it) a remainder. As the Despotat of Epirus extended itself, it took-in the principality of Ylakhia.
At some uncertain date, hut in connection with either the early Slavonic or Semi-slavonic conquest, or the second Bulgarian kingdom, a large tract in Thessaly had become Yalachian —perhaps Moldavian as well. But Ylakhia is the only name that is prominent. Of the traces of this in the valley of the Apidanus notice has already been taken; and it will he seen that the present chapter improves the evidence of the preceding one.
The existing Yalachian districts are:—
1.	The parts between Moskhopolis (to the east of Berat) and Kastoria. The exact boundaries of the region are uncertain. Maltebrun, however, states that to the north of Kastoria five languages are spoken ; the Greek, the Albanian, the Servian, the Turk, and the Valachian. Unless by Servian, he means Bulgarian, he might, probably, have added a sixth.
2.	The head-waters of the river Arta. Of these Sirako, the birth-place of Kolettes, and Kalarites, are the most frequently mentioned.
3.	The head-waters of the Aspropotamo. Both these districts are Albanian. In both, however, the population extends across the mountains into Greece.
4.	The parts about Karpenisi. Such the list; the order of the localities being from north to south. I have given them separately, though I consider that, if the details were better known, the three last would be confluent or continuous.
That these Yalachians are called Kutzo-Valachians, and that Kutzo is interpreted lamey false, or imperfect, and, finally, that an exception can be taken to this explanation, has already been stated. As a rule, these Valachians are shepherds. Little, however, is known about them.
5.	Of a fifth Valachian district to the north of all the preceding I have seen no definite account, so that I only surmise its very probable existence.
6.	Of the actual existing details of a sixth I was unaware when I wrote about the Valachians of the Valley of the Peneus and the
h 2100
YALACHIANS IN GREECE,
parts about Mount Pelion—Zagora; though they are mentioned hy Leake, as will he seen in the sequel.
These are the fragments of the Ylakhian principality of the twelfth and fourteenth centuries; itself the fragment of the second Yalachian or Bulgarian kingdom.
When the Despotat of Epirus first incorporated Vlakia, or Vlakhokhoria, it was, to a great extent, independent. It was a Toparchy, and there is an express statement that the authority of the capital told hut little with the Toparchs. However, in the construction of the Despotat of Epirus the Toparchy of Ylachia became Epirot. In the dissolution of it it became independent: its princes being—
John Ducas from 1258 to 1290 His son (?)	„	1290 „ 1300
John Ducas „	1300 „ 1308.
During this short period the Ducas family contracted alliances and joined in wars. Their end, however, was to see their principality divided between the Dukes of Athens and the Greek Emperor; the former taking the title of Dukes of Athens and Neopatras. How far these Athenian conquests touched the northern Valachians (for Neopatras was the capital of the most southern and eastern members of the family), or how far the northern Yalachians formed a part of the principality, is uncertain.
The Yalachians, then, give us the fourth of our factors.
* * * * * *
Of Rumelia it may be said that, considering the fact of such a city as Constantinople being its capital, it is one of the most unexplored districts in Europe. If the present writer were the first who made this remark it might not go for much. It might only show that he had overlooked some competent and sufficient authority. But it is a common one. Few who write about the Ottomans at all go much beyond the precincts of Constantinople. Those, however, who, instead of the capital, have to speak about the country, generally find it due to themselves, to excuse the imperfection of their details by a notice of the want of materials. The statistician, the archseologist, the chorographer, the military historian, all do this; and the political ethnologist must do the same.RUMELIA.
101
In a general way, all that he can state of Rumelia is, that whilst the urban population is Greek, or Turk, the population of the villages and hamlets is Bulgarian; that the proportion of the Greeks of the towns is greater on the coast than inland; that more than half the population of the whole province is centred in Constantinople; and that in Constantinople itself, independent of the Greek and other foreign Quarters, there is a mixture of blood at once extensive and heterogeneous. Constantinople, however, is the capital of the Ottoman Empire. The capital of Rumelia, the oldest occupancy of the Ottomans in Europe, was Adrianople. Its census, like those of all eastern towns, is scarcely a census at all. A hundred and thirty thousand inhabitants, in its most flourishing times, it may possibly have held. At any rate, this is one pf the numbers that have been given for its population. Eighty-five thousand, of which thirty thousand are Mahometans, is another. Both, however, are merely the estimates of travellers; and, in such estimates, the formula is nearly the same throughout. The first remark, when the population of an Eastern totfn is under notice, is that some previous traveller put it at such a number; the next is that the number is too high by about half; the third is that the population has decreased since such or such an event (the war of such a year, the migration of such a one, and the like); the fourth is, that, at the present time, it contains so many hearths, houses, or families, of which so many are Mahometan, so many Christian. As far as it goes this method is good; hut it applies only to the localities visited by the observer.
By far the fullest list of towns and villages thus dealt with, which has come under my notice, is, that of Lieutenant-general Jochmus, of the Russian service, who, in 1847, made a careful exploration of the Eastern half of the Balkan, or range of Mount Hsemus. Starting from Constantinople he made Timova his furthest point. Along and on each side of his somewhat devious route lay the villages of the following list, for which he has supplied us with data of the kind in question. No excuse is made for giving it in extenso. In all questions concerning the future fate of the Ottoman Empire, the real proportion of its Turk to the non-Turk elements is of primary importance; yet just in those parts where the analysis is most complicated our data are the fewest.102
RUMELIA.
T. Turkish B. Bulgarian
Village.	Houses.
Nat ash . . 120 T.B. Chataleha . 120 T.
--------.	.	180	C.
Avren ... 50 T.B. Yenikoi . . 40 B. Serai . . . 250 T.C. Bunarhissar . 120 T.
-----------.	120	G.
-----------.	iso	B.
Yene . . . 20 T.
----... 150 G.
----... 50 B.
*Kirk-kelesia 600 T.
---------- 1000 B.G.J.
Erekli. . . 50 T. Dolet-agach . 40 B.+ Karabunar . 30 B. Rusukastro .	5	T.
-----------.	35	B.
Aidos . . . 200 T.
----... 100 B.
Topjiler . . 40 T. Kaibilar . • 50 T. Faki ... 50 B. Kutshuk Ali. 50 M. Bana ...	6	G.£
Chavderlik . 30 T. Nadir ... 10 T. §Uflakni . 30 T. Boghazdere . 40 T. Karanla . • 35 T. Rudcha . . 30 T. Kamtshik Maha-lesi . . . 80 T.
Abbreviations.
G. Greek J. Jewish A. Armenian
Villages.
Village.	Houses.
Dobral	. 40 T.
Marata. .	. 30 T.
Yenikoi .	. 30 G.B.
Hojakoi .	. 20 T.
Aivatshik	. 20 T.
Karamancha	. 20 T.
Kaldumay	. 25 T.
Shimanli .	. 50 T.
Karatepe	. 25 T.
Ahkli . .	. 25 T.
Nabat. .	. 600 M.
Korkeshah	. 25 T.
Yenijekoi	. 25 T.
Balabariche	. 30 T.
Isinplu .	. 25 T.
Papaskoi .	. 100 B.
		 .	. 50 T.
Kazan • .	. 912 B.
Selimne . .	1000 T.
	950 B.J.A.
Kapinlu .	. 100 M.
Mindi . .	. 100 B.
Slatar . .	. 150 B.
Yenikoi .	. 120 B.T.
Chülün .	. 120 B.
Kesrova .	. % B.
Chehdecke	„ 100 T.B.
Laila . .	. 100 T.
Karasiler .	. 50 T.
Hassan Faki	. 40 T.B.
Zurtkoi .	. 50 T.
Ereskli .	. 200 M.
LowerBebrova300 M.	
Illiena	. 600 B.
M. Mahometan
C. Christian.	
Village. House?.	
Yakovzi . .	50 B.
Kovanlik. .	70 B.
Ravaditza	400 B.
Osman Bazaar 700 T.	
	100 B.
	
Ishehol . .	30 T.
Chatuk . .	150 M.
Sadova . .	45 T.
Keder-Fekli .	60 T.
Peklatch . .	25 T.
Malenich . ,	40 T.
Rubja . . .	50 T.
Murad-dere .	40 T.
Chalik Kavak	80 M.
Bairam-dere.	60 T.
Bekje . . .	55 T.
Lubnitza . .	60 T.
Mereke . •	60 T.
Buyuk Chenka 80 T.	
Kara Ahmed	
Mahalesi .	40 T.
Butresk . .	45 T.
Köpri-koi	40 T.B.
Kadikoi . .	100 T.B.
Fellakoi . .	30 T.B.'
Aiasma . .	80 T.B.'
Markovcha .	120 T.B.'
Kutefcha . .	30 T.B.
Madara . .	40 M.]
Kasbein . .	45 M.Î
Velshin . .	30 M.Ì
Paravate . .	220 Ì
Testajikoi .	40 M.
Avren . .	60 B.}|
It is only to the villages of a single road in Rumelia and only to the south-eastern part of Bulgaria that this list applies. At Tirnova on the west, and at Shumla on the north, our authority
* Reduced by	f Recent colonists.
$ The Greeks of Bana dress like Bulgarians.
§ The name suggests a Yalachian element.
II Transactions of the Royal Geographical Society. Vol. 24. Read Nov. 28, 1853. The date of the observations is 1847.RUMELIA.
103
leaves us: so tliat, even if he had exhausted all the villages of his circuit (which he has not), the details of more than three-fourths of the remainder of Bulgaria would want elucidating. And this they do want. That the further we go from the Turkish frontier the smaller will be the number of the Turks is likely : though in the great fortresses along the Danube we must expect to find them numerous. That there are Servians in the west, and Val-achians in the north-east, is probable; indeed, it is known that such is the case. The numbers, however, and the proportions are unknown. It is submitted that anything that throws light on such a question as this is of value.
Of the towns Kasan seems to he most Bulgarian; and as it was the district about Kasan that has supplied the fewest elements to the Bulgarian emigrations we may fairly look upon it as the centre of the nationality.
In Rumelia I believe that the mountain-range of Rhodope is Bulgarian.
It is stated by more than one authority that in some of the more impracticable ranges of either Rhodope or Hsemus remains of the old Thracians may be found. The exact proof of this is difficult; indeed, the test is unknown. The Thracians of the time of Constantine, and even of that of Augustus, may have been Bulgarian. It is only certain that no language older than the Bulgarian is known in these parts.
When Diebitsch crossed the Balkan, numbers of the Bulgarians joined his army, and most of them sympathized with him. In this we have a measure of the Bulgarian attachment to Russia.
In the way of creed, two obscure elements lurk in Bulgaria, the former plain and patent, though the degree of its extent, reality, and intensity is uncertain; the accounts of them coming either through France or Rome, and, as such, resting on the evidence of partisans. Still, there is much Romanism in Bulgaria; what part of it is new, what part as old as the time of Innocent III., what part as old as the mission of Formosus, being doubtful. Much, however, exists, of which much, as will be seen in the sequel, is very recent.
The other is, perhaps, more of an historical curiosity than aught else. In the thirteenth century, however, Bulgaria was the great centre of what is called Western Manicheism. This10 4}
RUMELIA.
reached Bulgaria from Asia. With a special reverence, implied by the denomination they bore, for the writings of St. Paul, combined with certain doctrines excerpted from the still surviving Manicheism of Syria and Asia Minor, the Paulicians, from their theological metropolis of Samosata, spread from the Tigris to the Dardanelles; and thence into Bulgaria. Persecuted during the ninth century by the Byzantine Emperors and Empresses (especially by Theodora) they rose in revolt. Tephrice, to the south of Trebizond, became their stronghold. They leagued with the Mahometans. They ravaged Asia Minor. Constantine Copronymus waged a war against them, and, with their own consent, transplanted a vast colony into Rumelia; a fact to be remembered in our analysis of the very heterogeneous blood of that province. John Zimiskes founded a second colony in Mount Haemus. It probably consisted of Armenians and Lazes, as well as Greeks and Turks. From Bulgaria it spread westward; especially in France; where the horrible Albigensian Crusade arrested and, perhaps, extirpated it. Even here, however, it was known as the Bulgarian heresy; as it was in Italy, Hungary, Germany, and Poland. What remains of this in Bulgaria, and how far it underlies the ordinary orthodox creed, is a question which is suggested rather than raised.
Though belonging to the Greek Church, the Bulgarians are not fond of hearing themselves called Greek Christians; or, rather, the term Greek Church is exceptionable. The name in which its adherents delight is that of the Orthodox Church; indeed, out of Greece, the other term is, more or less, offensive. Neither is the Greek language loved : still less the Greek individual. It is probable, indeed, that a Greek, provided that he be neither a soldier nor an official, is more disliked by the Bulgarian than a Turk. And the Turks of the Bulgarian villages are, as a rule, neither; but, on the contrary, plain cultivators like the Bulgarians themselves.
With Constantinople at hand, Bulgaria has been freer than any other part of the Turkish dominions from the curse of irresponsible and independent Pashas; and this, combined with their agricultural habits, and a considerable solidity of temper, has made the Bulgarians less malcontent than most other Ottoman subjects ; though this is saying but little.
With Servia the sympathies are not very strong. Almost asRUMELIA.
105
long as the two countries were independent they were separate; each with a different dynasty, a different history, and a different nationality—related to one another like England and Scotland, with a border between them which amply counteracted the amalgamating influences of a common creed, and a similar, but by no means an identical, language.106
MACEDONIA.
CHAPTER VII.
Mixed Districts.—Macedonia—The Greek and Bulgarian Districts.—The Macedonian Koniarids.—The Yuruks.
And now Macedonia comes under notice. When the Greek Revolution (of which the present work has hitherto taken cognizance only so far as it affected that part of the Hellenic world which constitutes the present kingdom of Greece) broke out, the spirit of independence stirred as strongly in the north as in the south. Ementes, in Thessaly and Macedonia, developed themselves into definite insurrections with their general details much the same as those of Livadia and the Morea. But the flames burnt the strongest on the frontiers. In the wide and fertile valleys of the larger rivers the Turk power preponderated. In proportion as the districts were mountainous or impracticable the chances of success were the better.
It should be stated, however, that the means for fighting had been abridged. The Armatoli, or Christians bearing arms, of the mountain-range between Greece and Albania had, to a great extent, been disbanded or disarmed by Ali Pasha—more especially in Macedonia. Arms, however, the Northern Greeks either found or made. Still, the northern rebellion was put down before the Southern had reached its height.
The most Greek district in Macedonia is the Chalehidic Peninsula; and, of this, the long projection of Mount Athos with its monasteries is the most famous portion. The monasteries, however, are, in some sense, Greek rather than Hellenic; by which is meant that they are monasteries for monks of the Greek Church, rather than for monks of the Greek nation. Hence, although the majority is Hellenic in the strictest sense of the term, it must be remembered that, besides the Greek, there are Russian, Bulgarian, and Bulgaro-Servian monasteries as well.
Another Greek district is in the parts about Verria (Berrhoea),MACEDONIA.
107
Niausta, and Vodhena; where, though in contact with Bulgarians and Turks, the Greeks are in so decided a majority as to give a definite Greek character to the districts. Niausta, indeed, was one of the towns which notably suffered for the part it took in the Involution. Between the Greeks, however, and the sea, the country is Bulgarian; and in some of the villages of the frontier there is both a mixture of blood and an interchange of characteristics. The Greeks of Karovajasi are specially stated by Leake to be Hellenized Bulgarians.
Of the northern and north-western third of Macedonia, of the hills and valleys of the Strymon and the Axius, the details are pre-eminently obscure. That there are both Servian and Bulgarian, both Albanian and Yalachian elements, here, is certain. What relation they bear to the Greek and Turk, what these bear to one another, remains to be investigated.
Of the Turks, the great centres are Saloniki as a town, and the Lower Strymon as a district. For Saloniki, Leake gives thirty-five thousand Turks, fifteen thousand Greeks, and thirteen thousand Jews—the latter being chiefly of Spanish origin, who settled in Greece, after their expulsion under Ferdinand and Isabella. Many of these are either nominal or real converts to Mahometanism. In Serres, too, the preponderance of the Turk population is decided—according to Leake as fifteen, to five, thousand.
In the parts about Serres and Saloniki the names Yurulc and Koniarid first occur. Both names apply to the Turks of Asia Minor rather than to the Ottomans. The former is the term applied to the numerous migratory nomads of Turkoman type in Anatolia; the latter a derivative from Konieh, or Iconium. The time of the Norman invasions, and the time of the earliest Ottoman conquests, are dates assigned to these settlements: and as there is no necessity for referring all the ancestors of all the Koniarids and Yuruks to any single immigration, both dates may be correct. That some of them are older occupants of European soil than the oldest Ottomans is certain; certain, too, that they represent the old Seldzhuk Turks of Iconium and Karamania: certain, too, that compared with the Turks of Constantinople, they are, pre-eminently, pure in blood. They cultivate the soil. As a body they are industrious, self-relying, and attached to their villages.108
MACEDONIA.
They hear arms, and constitute in the military organization of the Porte a class by themselves. Left to manage themselves, they are, in some sense, a privileged class; and, even at the present time, some of the powers of the old Dereh Beys are still exercised by their headmen. No class of Turks supplies fewer officials, or men who seek employment in the capital: indeed, the Yuruk and Koniarid capital is Saloniki rather than Constantinople. Ka-valla, one of the Koniarid villages, was the birthplace of Mehemet Ali; whose uncle was headman of the district. Either offended or oppressed he left Macedonia for iEgypt, with a few followers. The chief Yuruk villages are Gumertzina, Drama, Nevrykopo, Strumitza, Radhovitzi, Tifkis, Karadagh.
In noting that the Revolution was suppressed with comparative ease in Macedonia, we must remember that Saloniki is the most Turkish town south of Constantinople; and that, in Thessaly as in Macedonia, there is a settlement, Koniarid aud Yuruk, of Anatolian Turks.THESSALY.
109
CHAPTER VIII.
Mixed Districts. — Thessaly.—The Despotat of Epirus.—The Valachian and Greek Regions.—The Thessalian Koniarids.
A short notice of the Despotat of Epirus is a convenient preliminary to the political ethnology of Thessaly.
When Constantinople was taken by the Franks, Michael I. of Epirus, a cousin of the two Emperors, Isaac II. and Alexius III., was illegitimate. Theodore, his brother, was legitimate. Manuel and Constantine—legitimate or illegitimate—were the brothers or half-brothers of Theodore. The Emperor in Nicsea is also named Theodore.
Michael fled to Epirus; married an Epirot lady; contracted power; founded a principality; took, under the Nicsean Emperor, the title of Despot; ruled in Epirus till assassinated.
Theodore, his brother, who had sworn allegiance to his Imperial namesake at Nicsea succeeded; conquered the Constantinopolitan Emperor; threw off his allegiance; reduced Thessalonica and called himself Emperor; threatened Constantinople; was defeated by Asan, the King of Bulgaria, and blinded. His brother, Manuel, succeeded. Meanwhile, Asan had married Theodores daughter; whose father returned to Bulgaria; hut, as a blind man, was constrained to place the government in the hands of his son John with the title of Despot.
Constantine, during these events, holds authority in Thessaly. Manuel escapes to Nicsea. He attacks John and Theodore; but the latter, in the capacity of ambassador and plenipotentiary from his son, persuades them to make a family compact against both the Greeks and the Franks. This leaves John Emperor of Thessalonica; though unable to hold the empire. Reduced by the Emperor of Nicsea, he is satisfied with the recognition of his Despotats in110
THESSALY.
Epirus and Thessalonica; though fated to lose both. Thessa-lonica goes hack to the empire; Epirus to Michael II., a natural son of Michael I. Epirus, however, has extended its frontiers: whilst the old blind Theodore retains the district of Yodhena in Thessalia. But this lasts only for a time. John III. confirms Michael in the title of Despot of Epirus, and Michael acknowledges John III. as Emperor. But Theodore intrigues. Michael and John quarrel. The former gives up Theodore and relinquishes a part of his Despotat. The battle of Pelagonia weakens him still more. He partially recovers his strength; and is succeeded by his son Nicephorus; who reduces parts of Etolia and Aear-nania. Attacked by the Greeks and the Genoese, he is assisted by the Count of Cephalonia, with whom he contracts alliances; dies; and is succeeded by his son Thomas. The Count of Cephalonia murders his nephew Thomas, in 1318; who is murdered by his brother John; who is murdered by liis wife Anne.
Thus, the Cephalonian Counts of the family of Tocco become Despots of Epirus. By 1350, however, the northern part of Albania is conquered by Stephen Dushan ; and, though the Southern part goes with Cephalonia, it remains Servian till the time of the Ottomans.
Thessaly in the way of blood is largely either Slavonic or Yalachian; or, if not exactly this, Slavono-valachian, i. e. a mixture of the two.
The Valachians of the Sperchius, the Apidanus, and the mountain range of Magnesia, have already been noticed. It need only be added that, at the present time, Ylakho Livadho, Kokkinoplo, Eetra, and Neokhori, in the parts about Mount Ossa, are Yalachian. Larissa is Turk—i. e. it has (about) eight thousand Turks, (about) three hundred and fifty Jewish (Spanish), and (about) four hundred Greek and Armenian families.
To the north of Larissa is a Koniarid district; with a population of about twelve thousand. In the other towns the majority is Greek; in some very decidedly so. In Alassona, for instance, the ancient Oloosson, it is three-fourths of the whole. The blood, however, of the surrounding region, the drainage of the Titaresius, is largely Slavonic. The local names (among others Turnovo, Tzaritzeno, Velenitchi, Ezero) are decidedly so.
The upper half of the main stream of the Peneus is, perhaps,THESSALY.
Ill
the most Hellenic part of Thessaly in the way of blood; Zagora being so in the way of politics. This means that the part taken in the Revolution is the test. The occupants of Zagora are left to govern themselves, through magistrates of their own election. In ordinary times the district thrives; but in 1820, there had been a failure in the product of both the silk and oil, and distress weighed heavy on the dense and industrious population. Forty-five thousand inhabitants to twenty-four village communities is the population ascribed by Finlay to Zagora at this time ; Turkish occupancy being the exception. Nevertheless, in Lekhoria, they were numerous enough for six hundred of them to be massacred by the insurgents, who, after some intestine quarrels established a Thessalo-Magnesian Senate. The reduction of Yolo was the chief object of the movement in these parts, but Yolo was relieved. Trichen held out the longest, inasmuch as it was not reduced until 1823, when, on the surrender of its vessels and the admission of a Turkish garrison, an amnesty was granted.
The Yalachians of the district of the watershed between the Peneus and the Aspropotamo were among the first to revolt; for, like the Christian Albanians of Hellas, the Yalachians adted as Greeks. They were coerced, however, by Kurshid Pasha.
In noting that the Revolution was suppressed with comparative ease, in Thessaly, we must remember that Larissa is the most Turkish town south of Saloniki; and that in Macedonia, as in Thessaly, there is a settlement of Anatolian Turks.
* * * * * * *
That there is a Servian element in Albania is suggested by the notice of the great Servian king, Stephen Dushan, under whom the power of Servia as a kingdom attained its height. That there is Servian element on the frontier, especially in Upper Moesia, and the parts about Montenegro, will be seen in the sequel. But it is, in all probability, secondary to the Valachian and Bulgarian: indeed, I find it stated by Finlay, on the high authority of Colonel Leake, that the Bulgarian language was spoken within the present generation (as it, perhaps, is spoken at the present moment) in some villages to the south of Akrida.
Meanwhile, the Greek language deeply indents the southern frontier, whilst along the sea-coast there is much Venetian blood.112
THESSALY.
With all this, Albania is one of the pure-blooded districts of Europe; the term being used comparatively.
* ^
The following is a list of the feudatories of Acbaia from Count Beugnot’s Assizes de Jerusalem, as given by Finlay.*
It shows the extent, if not of Greek and French intermixture, of, at least, the surface over which the two elements came in contact.
Secular.
District.	Holder.			No. of Fiefs.
1. Kalamata .	Geoffrey de Yillehardouin			. - 0)
2. Akova	Walter de Rosières			. 22
3. Karitena (Skorta)	Hugh de Brières .			. . 24
4. Patras	William de Alaman			. . (?)
5. Yostitza . .	Hugh de Charpigny			. . 8
6. Chalandritza	Robert de Tremouille			. 4
7. Kalavryta .	Otho de Toumay.			. . 12
8. Nikli.	William (?) .			. . 6
9. Yeligosti .	Mathew de Mons.			. 4
10. Gritzena .	Luke (?)			. 4
11. Geraka	Guy de Nivel et .			. 6
12. Passava	John de Neuilly .			. 4
	Ecclesiastic.			
1. Archbishop of Patras	....			. 8
2. Bishop of Olerios .	....			. 4
3. 	 Modon .	. . . .			. 4
4. 	 Coron .	....			. 4
5. 	 Yeligosti	...»			• .4
6. 	 Nikli, Moukhli (Amyclæ)				. 4
7. 	 Lacedæmon ....				. 4
Military Orders.				
1. Knights of St. John				
2.	The Temple		.	.	. 4
3. The Teutonic Order	.	•	.	. 4
^ ^	* *		*	
The following gives, from Hahns Albanesische Studien, the present Albanian population of Greece. Let any one who investigates the question as to the purity or impurity of the Hellenic blood compare this with Finlay’s map. Let him, after noting the Albanian districts, proceed with the Slavonic and Yalachian; finishing with a survey of the local names. He will find that, with the exception of Maina, Tzakonia, and the towns, but little is left for a pure and proper Hellas.
* Medieval Greece and Trebizond, p. 216.ALBANIANS IN GREECE.
113
Attica, Megara and Salamis	. 80,000
Boeotia (nearly all)		. 25,000
Phocis		
Valley of the Spercheios ....	. 10,000
South Euboea		. 25,000
North Andros		. 6,000
Argolis and Poros		. 25,000
Korinth and Akhaia		. 15,000
South Arkadia		. 10,000
Hydra (all)		. 12,000
Spezzia (all) 			. 10,000 173,000
Of the Albanians in Italy and elsewhere notice will he taken in the sequel.
* All, except the towns of Athens, Megara, and the Piraeus, f All, except the town of Carysto.
VOL. II.
ITURKS OP ASIA MINOR.
114
CHAPTER IX.
Asia Minor, Armenia, and Kurdistan.—Parts to the west of the Euphrates.— Turks and Turkomans.—Populations other than Turk.—Greeks.—Lazes.— Armenians. —Kurds.
Whatever the Turks may he in Rumelia, Bulgaria, Macedonia, and Thessaly, in respect to the numerical proportion which they hear to populations other than Turk, the thoroughly Turk character of the population of Asia Minor is beyond doubt. Asia Minor is Turk as South Britain is English. It may not have been so originally; neither was England originally English. It is so, however, at the present time: and that decidedly— decidedly, but not exclusively: just as South Britain is not exclusively English.
With Asia Minor, however, of which the Euphrates seems both now and of old to have been the boundary on the east, it is convenient to associate Armenia and Kurdistan; indeed, that part of Mesopotamia in which the population is Kurd rather than Arab.
The general view of the district thus defined is as follows.
The mass of the population is Turkish.
The iEgean islands are Greek. So are Proconesus, the peninsula of Cyzicus, and, perhaps, the majority of the Trapezuntines.
The north-eastern extremity is Laz; the Laz form of the Georgian language being spoken as far south and east as the parts about Baiburt and Trebizond.
The eastern frontier, so far as it is other than Turk, is Armenian and Kurd.
On the south and south-east the population becomes Arab.
Turks, Greeks, Lazes, Armenians, Kurds, Arabs—these are our factors for the political ethnology of the parts under notice.
The difference between the ordinary Anatolian Turk of Asia Minor and the Turk of that special section which bears the name of Ottoman or Osmanli has already been indicated. All theTURKOMANS.
115
Ottomans were, originally, Turks of Asia Minor; though all the Turks of Asia Minor were not Ottomans. We have seen that even in Europe the Yuruks and the Koniarids, though occupants of ground conquered by the Ottomans, were other than Ottoman. In Europe the Ottoman Turk was the rule, the Anatolian the exception. In Asia, on the other hand, the Ottoman is the exception, the Anatolian the rule.
Again—the difference between the settled Turk of the town and village as contrasted with the nomad Turkoman of the movable tent and encampment, though alluded to in our preliminary notice, has hitherto been of no prominent importance. In Europe the true Turkomans are of little more importance as a class than so many Gipsies. In Asia Minor they cover large tracts of country, fall into tribes and sub-tribes, and, in all respects comport themselves as a definite division of the population—more Turk than aught else, but more Turkoman than Turk.
The most general statement that can he made concerning the difference between the Anatolian Turks and the Ottoman is that, in the former both the vices and the virtues of a dominant class are developed to less extent. They do more work for themselves: in other words, they are less tempted to sit easily and look on whilst a subordinate population labours for them. There is evidence to this in every department of industry, and at every date. During the time of the Genoese and the Trapezuntines the Turks so far from being a nation either disinclined to trade, or unfitted for naval enterprise, developed the commerce of the best harbor they had on the Black Sea, the harbor of the Sinus Amissenus, or (word for word) Samsun. This as early as the thirteenth century was as flourishing a port for Turkestan as Amalfi was for the Normans of Southern Italy. They are manufacturers. It is Angora, whence the Turkey carpets come. They are agricultural. The land under the plough in Europe is tilled by Bulgarians rather than Greeks, and by Greeks rather than Turks. They are less arrogant, inasmuch as they are less in contact with vassals: and they are less sensual, because, if not less wealthy, their wealth is earned by being worked for, and has less occasion to be spent in ostentatious display or idle pastime. Their military aptitudes, and their self-respect are, probably, less. That they are more
i %116
TURKS OF ASIA MINOR.
bigoted is a fact. But much of the Ottoman liberality is tbe liberality of latitudinarianism rather than of Mahometanism, of the French philosophy of the last century rather than the Koran. In all these points the Koniarids and Yuruks of Europe agree with the Asiatics.
In war they are certainly more the inferiors rather than the superiors of Kurds; the Kurds being a nation with whom war, uncontaminated by industry, is the sole trade. But here the parallel holds good. Compare the agricultural Ottoman of Europe with the Albanian, the analogue of the Kurd, and the same difference exists.
They are provincial Turks: and if ever the time come when with a full knowledge of tbe history of the old Seldzhuk dynasties, with a clear appreciation of such a conqueror as Alp Arslan as compared with such a conqueror as Orkan or Amurath, and with a sufficient knowledge of the history of modern Europe, their history shall be written by some unborn native historian, the most unfortunate event in their annals will probably be the conquest of Constantinople. It cost them an Asiatic capital. It put them in a position in which Normandy would have been placed had it remained English.
Their civilization is of a lower kind than that of the Ottomans, their inkling of European science is less. Their literature is far less. Their diffusion of what are called advanced ideasi is next to nothing. They are comparatively quiet and stationary ; and they are this for many palpable reasons. They are not only provincial but they lie on the Asiatic side of the capital. At the same time, such culture as they have is natural.
How far they foster any remains of that feeling which in the thirteenth century may have despised Othman and Orkan as novi homines cannot be given in any general terms. How far the memory of such Sultans as Alaeddin of Konieh may still survive is unknown. It is probable that some feelings of this kind still exist; of different intensity in different districts. Bithynia was the original domain of Othman; and that long before Anatolia, in the limited sense of the term, had become Ottoman. Roum was Turkoman, Seldzhuk, and Trapezuntine; Karamania, Kara-manian, i. e. the Khanat of a native dynasty eminently Seldzhuk and pre-eminently Anti-Ottoman. Until the time of Mahomet II.,THE DEREII BEYS.	117
the princes of Karamania were ever biting at the heel of the European Sultans.
But, though little can be said concerning the dynastic feeling in Asia Minor, the existence of what is nearly akin to an aristocratic one may be safely predicated. Asia Minor is pre-eminently the country of the Dereh Beys, or, as the word may he literally translated, the Lords of the Valley. The Dereh Beys can scarcely be called feudal nobles; though the feudal nobles give us a rough measure of their power. They were hereditary signiors, with certain powers of jurisdiction and with military followings or courtlike retinues according to their power and influence. They exercised the right of private war; and contracted alliances with each other. The system, however, wanted too many of the incidents of the feudalism of Germany and France to be called purely feudal. Above all, it was simpler. The complexities of sub-infeudation were fewer. Bather may it be compared with the clan-system of the Gaelic part of Scotland.
It was old. The name is, perhaps, later than the thirteenth century; when some of the Dereh Beys appear to have been called emirs. The thing itself, however, is as old or older: Gonsalez de Clavijo was the ambassador for Henry III. of Castile to Timor. On his return he joined an embassy of Timor’s own. In the hilly country to the south of Trebizond, where the Laz, Turk, and Greek districts meet, he came into a region of which John Kaba-sites, prominent for other actions in the history of Trebizond, was the lord, signior, emir, or Dereh Bey. Though Timor was at the zenith of his power; though the embassy was one of Timor’s; and though Timor’s armies were actually on the soil of Asia, John Kabasites insisted upon black-mail, and got it.
One of the changes effected by Mahmud II. was the suppression of the Dereh Beys; and for the parts between the Euphrates and the iEgean he has the credit of having succeeded. In the Pasha-liks, however, of Kars, Bayazid, Mush, Van, and Diarbekir, the evidence of most travellers speaks decidedly to the existence of the spirit of the Dereh Bey system if not to its actual existence eo nomine. There was, however, no want of vigour in the suppression. In Brant’s notice of these parts he mentions a group of three Beyliks; the Beys of which were all in banishment at Adrianople.TURKS OP ASIA MINOR.
1 18
It is only in these extreme forms that the Turk and Turkoman are separated from one another by broad and definite lines of demarcation ; those, for instance, that lie between a merchant of Angora or Tokat and some of those Turkomans of the broken tribes whom travellers compare with Gipsies. On the frontier the two classes graduate into one another. A large and powerful tribe, with a district in which the winter and the summer quarters are at no great distance from one another, with a village for its fixed occupancy, closely approaches a rude Beylik. Of the pure and proper Turkoman, the tent, the change of residence with the change of season, and the tribual system, are the characteristics. Of the central districts the most important tribe is that of the Black Sheep : of which the history goes back to the Trapezuntine period. It was between the Turkomans of the Black Sheep and the Turkomans of the White Sheep that some of the late Emperors of Trebizond had to steer their course with somewhat unroyal caution. Alexios III. had formed* matrimonial alliances with both. The Black Sheep, at first, prevailed. This tribe, indeed, had its famous chief Kara Yusuf lived, might have anticipated the Ottomans and founded an empire. At the head of thirty-thousand cavalry, Kara Yusuf had opposed Timor; been defeated by him; fled into Egypt; opposed him again; put himself under the protection of Bayazid I.; escaped after the defeat at Angora; re-organized his resources; and awaited the death of Timor. On the eve of a battle which he was about to fight with one of Timor’s sons he was stricken with apoplexy. The army broke up on his death, and no battle was delivered. His chief occupancy was on the north-east, on the frontier of Lazistan and Trebizond; and it was at the expense of more than one of the Turk emirs of the neighbourhood that he had extended his frontier. Allied with Alexios III. he had also taken tribute from him. When the troops entered his tent on the news of his sudden death they found the corpse watched and waited over by black eunuchs. When they left it, they had stripped the dead chieftain of his jewels and cut off his ears for the sake of the earrings. Such were the Black Sheep Turkomans, master and men.
With men like Kara Yusuf, and men like John Kaba-a d 14:20	7
sites, a system like that of the Dereh Beys easily and
naturally develops itself. And John and Joseph were oniy twoSULTANS.
119
out of many independent or semi-independent dynasts : tlie former a vassal of the Trapezuntine Emperor rather than of the Seld-zhuk Sultan; the latter a Seldzhuk vassal so far as he was one at all. For the parts between Sinope and the Georgian frontier we have the most details. They give us, at least, six small principalities—emirates as we may, not inconveniently, call them; the emirs all hearing Turk names, such as Taliarten, Tadjeddin, Kutlu Bey, and the like. They wage private wars, in which we get a measure of the weakness of the central government: and they also intermarry with the royal families of both Trehizond and Georgia.
Of all this—of the commercial power of the Anatolian Turks as measured by the trade of Samsun and Sinope, and of the extent to which they had diffused themselves over the whole of Asia Minor—the immediate cause was the conquest of Asia Minor by Alp Arslan, the son of Togrul Beg. He was the contemporary of Mahmud of Ghuzni, the son of Sehektegin, and, as both were the contemporaries of William the Conqueror, an Englishman has a convenient date for the study of either Turkish or Indian history —in each of which the chief epoch coincides with a great one in his own annals; a fact which gives a concurrency to two histories, the Turk and the Norman. The analogies between them are, by no means, under present notice. The common character of the epoch has been indicated, solely and wholly, on the score of convenience, and for the sake of helping the memory.*
With the conquest of Babylon, the empire of the Seleucidse went to the Arabian Kalifs; and with the conquest of Bagdad, the Kalifat went to the Turks of the dynasty of Togrul Beg, Alp Arslan, and Malek Shah. I submit that it was on the strength of this that they took the title Seldzhuk or Seldzhukian, appropriating to themselves thereby the title of successors of Seleuous, and through him of the Great Alexander. That this hypothesis is in diametrical opposition to the opinion of the highest authorities is certain: in whose eyes Seldzhuk is a Turk, grandfather, great-grandfather, or some remote ancestor of Togrul Beg. They admit, however, that the evidence of his existence is of the weakest. It is no better, in short, than that in favour of the personal existence of Romulus.
It was from Bagdad that Asia Minor was conquered: and it
* The Comnenian dynasty in Constantinople begins about the same time; i. e. Isaac I. began to reign a.d. 1057-120
TURKS OF ASIA MINOR.
seems to have been along the course of the Euphrates that the conquering armies effected their invasions. This took them into the present Pashaliks of Diarbekir, Erzerum, and Trebizond (the districts which were farthest from Constantinople and Nicaea), and which are defended by the Armenians, the Kurds, and the Georgians, rather than by the Greeks. It was by these invasions that an inordinately large Turk element in Armenia seems to have been introduced ; by these the Turkish element of Karabagh and Karadagh. Caucasus rather than the Dardanelles seems to have been the terminus of the first Seldzhuk inroads; their effect being greater in the northern than in the central districts. Kurdistan was comparatively inaccessible; and, at the present time, in the proper Kurd country the Turks are in a decided minority; indeed, in some districts, they are non-existent. Further to the north, however, they are numerous, and when we pass the thirty-eighth parallel, they are numerous to the east as well. The power of Georgia was at the time at its height. At the same time it was on the verge of a sudden downfall.
The central and southern districts of Asia Minor became Turk; partly from a westward extension of the Turks of the Armenian and Georgian frontiers, and partly from concurrent inroads from Syria. The details, however, of the eastern Pashaliks are the more important. In these there is a mixed population. In these there are the suspicious neighbourhoods of both Persia and Russia.
The battle of Manzikert, in which the emperor Romanus was defeated, and by which a great part of Asia Minor became Turk, was fought a.d. 1071. Let us place the adolescence of Othman in 1271. The result is two hundred years for the Pre-Ottoman period. During this time the area in which the Anatolian power was at its maximum had, there or thereabouts, the following boundaries.
On the east, the Euphrates as far as the watershed between it and the Tshorok; afterwards a line running north and west, and ending on the Black Sea, in the parts between Kerasus and (Enaeum—
On the west, the rivers Sangarius and Maeander, and a line, from (about) Pessinus to Apamea, joining them.
This gives them all Rum and Karamania, along with the northern and southern thirds of Anatolia, leaving the north-westernSELDZHUKIAN SULTANS.
121
parts to the empire of Nicsea and the north-eastern to the empire of Trebizond; of course with a doubtful and a fluctuating frontier on each side.
Whatever else may have been omitted or committed by the Seldzhuk Sultans, one thing was done effectively ; viz. the diffusion of the Turk language, creed, and nationality over the whole of the conquered districts. Compare in this respect Rum with Rumelia, Karamania with Bulgaria, Anatolia with Macedonia, the eastern Paslialiks with Thessaly, and the difference in favour of the Turk character of the Anatolian conquests is apparent. How it was accomplished is another question. They were, doubtless, both ejectments and massacres. There was, doubtless, intermarriage ; doubtless, fusion. The proportion, however, which the two systems bore to one another is uninvestigated; is, probably, beyond investigation. The mass, however, of the land is now Turk in language and creed.
The Seldzhuk Turks, if the doctrine concerning the origin of their name, which has just been submitted to the reader, he sound, constitute a great class of which the Anatolian Turks, or the Turks of Asia Minor in general, are only a secondary division. The true seat of the Seldzhuk dynasty was Bagdad, and their nominal dominion extended over part of Persia, over Syria, and over Asia Minor. But Asia Minor, itself, fell into divisions and subdivisions: of which Karamania, or Iconium, was only a part —only a part, though, certainly, the most important one. It may have made a third of the whole: a third in which the elements other than Turk were at their minimum. Of the condition of the remainder, we can only get an approximation : and this takes clearness and definitude in proportion as we approach the two northern extremities : the northern extremities which, contrasted with the intermediate portion, are also contrasted with one another.
On the north-east, the character of the district about Trebizond was strongly characterized by its Georgian element. It had also begun to he independent before the establishment of the Empire under Alexios I. The intrusion of the Turks under Alp Arslan was neither permanent nor general: the names of Gabras and Taronites being prominent during the history of the wars that were waged against them. Theodore Gahras122
TURKS OF ASIA MINOR.
was an independent prince or duke (we may call him the chief of Trebizond, or Ohaldia) about a.d. 1100; for he held his own against both the Turks and the Byzantine Emperor. Gregory Taronites defied the Emperor, fought against him, was conquered, was imprisoned, was restored, turned his arms against the Turks, was defeated by them, was ransomed. The details of his reign give us a glimpse of the condition of the more remote Seldzhuk provinces. The empire was, even then, weak at its extremities. There is an Emir of Kamakh, and an Emir of Melitene ; and it is with the former that Gregory allies himself against the latter; a fact which carries the theatre of the war as far south as the frontier of Syria. Indeed, the whole drainage of the Upper Euphrates seems to have been held by either independent Emirs, or by Christian princes of Armenia. As for Lazistan it was simply Georgian; this being the time when the Georgian dynasty of the Bagratid© was at its zenith. Its fall was approaching: still, at the time under notice, Georgia was extended far into Asia Minor. The western part of Trebizond, indeed, was Georgian, as the eastern was Greek, and the southern Armenian. At the same time, the Turks made deep indentations on the frontier.
Paphlagonia was a debateable ground, and that between three combatants: the Byzantine or Nicsean Greeks from the east; the Trapezuntines from the east; the Turks from the south; not to mention the Genoese of the sea-coast. It was, however, specially connected with both Constantinople and Trebizond, as being the native country of the great Comnenian family; who were Paphlo-ganized Homans. Neokaisareia was held by the Turks. Samsun, too, was a Turk port. If we add to this that Paphlagonia is one of the districts in which we find a number of old Emirates, or Principalities, we may infer that, upon the whole, it was Turk rather than Greek.
Bithynia, on the other hand, was Greek rather than Turk ; Byzantine and Greek, rather than Trapezuntine and Greek,— Greek, pure and simple, rather than Greek and Georgian, or Greek and Armenian. As the land of Vataces, it is specially mentioned, in 1252, by Rubriquis, as being independent. Indeed, it was Bithynia which constituted the Nicsean Empire. As its frontiers varied, we cannot say where the pure Turk districts began. It is only certain that the western half of Cappadocia,SELDZHUKIAN SULTANS,
123
and Lycaonia, were not only Turk, but Karamanian Turk, in the strictest sense of the term. As this, they were under the direct influence of the Sultan. As this, they were the metropolitan portion of the empire. As this, they stood in contrast with Cilicia, Lycia, Caria, Lydia, and part of Mysia, which constituted from fifteen to twenty Emirates; some of which were, to a great extent, independent.
The civilization of the Turks of Iconium was, for Asiatic civilization, high : this being an inference from the condition of their nearest congeners rather than a fact from evidence. Their language had long been written; for they came from that part of Asia into which the old Uighur alphabet, upon which the Mongol and Mantshu are founded, was introduced more than five hundred years before by the Nestorian missionaries from Syria. Besides this, they were Mahometans of long standing, who had long been in contact with the civilization of the Kalifat. They were the near congeners of the Ghaznevid Turks, who, under Mahmud, had conquered India; Mahmud, who was the contemporary, and, in some sense, the patron of the fathers of Persian poetry and Persian history—Eirdusi, and Tabari. They had come in contact with Syrians, Egyptians, Greeks, and Crusaders. Hence, much of the admiration which is often bestowed on the early Oriental conquerors as vigorous barbarians of unassisted common-sense is misplaced. It is eminently misplaced in the case of the Iconian Sultans ; and it is, probably, misplaced in the ruder instances of Tamerlane, and Tshingiz Khan. They differed in degree from such literary monarchs as Mahmud of Ghuzni and Baber: but they agreed in kind. How many of the institutions which are currently attributed to the Ottomans are due to such sultans as Azeddin, and Alaeddin, has yet to be ascertained. Azeddins body of mercenaries is a near approach to the Janissaries; whilst Alaeddin seems to have been a statesman and administrator of the highest class, as well as a brave soldier.
In early Turkish history, we rarely get to the fountain-head. The Ottoman Turks are traced back to the Anatolian; the Anatolian to the Seldzhukian; the Seldzhukian to the Turks of the break-up of the Kalifat, and these to that vast district to the north of the Persian frontier, a district of which the present region of Tartary is only a part. This was a fountain which was124
TURKS OF ASIA MINOR.
always overflowing: and, in the earliest times, as now, there was a difference of civilization in its different elements. At the present time, Bokhara and Ferghana, where the Uzbek intruders are mixed with the Persian Tadzhiks, are, comparatively, civilized: the Turkomans of the Khorasan frontier being ruder, being nomads, being robbers, hut still Mahometans. In the north, however, and on the Siberian, Mongolian, and Mantshurian frontiers, the nomad and the robber is, in many cases, very nearly a pagan as well—but a Turk, nevertheless; and one, who, either now or two thousand years ago, might help to swell an army against Persia, Syria, or any more favoured country of the south; in alliance with Persians, or in alliance with Mongols, as the case might be. Hence, wherever there is one wave of Turk conquest, there is another to succeed it; and with every such wave, new blood, fresh barbarism. In this barbarism, however, there were, even within the bounds of the original fatherland, degrees. The Turk from Sogdiana (Bokhara), of the Tshagatai, or Uighur, type was more civilized than the Turk from Chorasmia, or Khiva, of the Uzbek type; and both were greatly superior to the Turk of the parts beyond the Aral and the Mongol. Still, even the barbarism of the Mongol may be overvalued. Long before the dawn of the historical period, he had emerged from the state of pure paganism and had become a fire-worshipper after the fashion of the not illiterate Sassanians. He had also been touched by Syrian, or Nestorian, Christianity ; though of these, only the fragments and the corruption remained.
Such the preliminary to the analysis of those complex Turk elements which, whilst they were other than Seldzhuk, were introduced into the Seldzhuk portion of the Turk world. From each of the divisions of the original Turkestan just noticed a great inroad was made upon Anatolia.
There was the Khorasmian inroad—one from a land of medium barbarity; from the parts on the Lower Oxus, from what is now the great Uzbek Khanat of Khiva. It was part of the great Khorasmian invasion of the history of the Crusades, the invasion of Syria, which, by the great victory of Gaza, gave the last blow Battle of Aklat, to tho power of the Franks. In Anatolia, how-
a.d. 1229, or ever, the Khorasmian Sultan Gelaleddin was de-
123°*	feated by Alaeddin.THE WHITE SHEEP HORDE.
125
There were the Mongol inroads—Alaeddin resisted them: but his son was defeated at Kousdak, and became a vassal ^	^
to either Tshingiz Khan, or his immediate successor.
There was the conquest by Timor—the composition of whose armies was, probably, but little different from that of the armies of Tshingiz Khan; though the former was a Turk, the latter a Mongol: the Turks and Mongols being blended together in many of their conquests as inextricably as the Goths and Vandals* Some Mongol elements, however, must have been introduced into Anatolia during these wars.
The times between the Mongols and Timur were those of Othman, and Orkan ; the times for the development of the fourth, or Ottoman, element. This was largely European: since it was from ftumelia rather than from the original Ottoman domain that Asia Minor was conquered by the Sultans of Constantinople.
That the most formidable opponent of Timur was a Turkoman chief rather than a Karamanian Sultan has already been noticed. But, though Kara Yusuf was the greatest of the Turkoman chieftains, his tribe was only one out of many. Nor was it always the strongest tribe of the time. The balance of imperial alliances with the Emperors of Trebizond seems to have been in favour of the White Sheep and the descendants of Thur Alibeg. These remained in power and independence until the reign of Mahomet II.
That the greater part of Asia Minor was made Ottoman by the Ottomans in their capacity of conquerors from Europe rather than occupants of a part of Bithynia has already been shown. The reduction of the north-eastern districts is an extreme example in evidence of it. Before Mahomet II. conquered Trebizond and the parts about it, he had taken Constantinople. There was, then, some Greek independence in Trebizond; much Georgian independence in the Laz country; and much Turkoman freedom in the great horde of the White Sheep—much of more than mere freedom. There was a vast territorial area; an able captain; skill; ambition; the prospect of conquest.
However, the last days of Trebizond were those of the Emperors John IV. and David; David being the usurping uncle over a minor nephew. The factors in the contest against the conqueror of Constantinople were, (1) Trebizond, (2) Lazistan, (3) the Emir of Sinope, (4) the Sultan of Karamania, (5) Uzun126
TURKS OP ASIA MINOR.
Hassan, the Turkoman chief of the White Sheep, (6) the Genoese of Amastris, (7) the independent princes of Armenia and the Kurd districts. Of these the Lazes held out bravely, and preserved some independence till a later period; the Emir of Sinope was overreached and reduced; the Genoese were conquered ; the independent Armenians and Kurds stood over for a future day; and the Prince of Karamania did little. The hope of John IV. lay in the White Sheep. Against him Mahomet II. marched from Sinope along the valley of the Lycus, fought and won. Then the chief made a separate peace and Trehizond was left ad 1461	^ a^one* atta°k hy another Emir, the Emir of
Artebil, had previously weakened it. Karamania was reduced in 1466. The White Sheep, however, remained but nominally dependant on the Porte. It had had long wars against the Black Sheep, to which it had paid tribute ; and from which it had emancipated itself. The details of its full reduction are uncertain. After his defeat, however, by Mahomet II. Uzun Hassan invaded and conquered Persia.
Such the ethnological analysis, and such the sketch of the history of Anatolia in the eleventh, twelfth, thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries. They have been given in order to show what is Ottoman, or Osmanli; and what is other than Osmanli or Ottoman.
To the Osmanli Turks Anatolia gave origin; and by the Osmanli Turks, after they had become more or less European, it was reduced. Yet it was not, and is not, Osmanli; however much, on the strength of its being the pre-eminently Turk portion of Western Asia, it is an approximation of what is truly and typically Ottoman. What the import of the difference may be will be considered in the sequel.
The present notices carry us as far as the frontier of Georgia and the Euphrates, and the limits are natural. When we cross the Euphrates we are in the Armenian and Kurd, rather than in the proper Turk, districts; and in this lies the principle of the line of demarcation. That there are Armenians and Kurds to the west of the Euphrates is as true as it is true that there are Greeks on the western coast, and that the Georgian language is spoken as far west as Baiburt. But until we cross the Euphrates everything which is not Turk or Turkoman is the exception. InARMENIANS, ETC.
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every town in Asia Minor the Turks are in a decided majority, though there is generally, or always, an admixture of Greeks and Armenians. Kurds, too, are found at least as far west as the neighbourhood of Angora.
To the east, however, of the Euphrates, and to the south of the mountains which divide it from the Tsorok, the preponderating population is other than Turk; or, if not the preponderating population, the original. It is Armenian in the north, Kurd in the west, Arab in the south.128
TURKS OF ASIA MINOR.
CHAPTER X.
Asia Minor, &c.—Parts to the east of the Euphrates.—The Pashaliks of Kars, Erzerum, Mush, Bayezid, Yan and Diarbekir.— Kurdistan.
In Kars (Chorsene) so obscure are the boundaries of the Laz districts, that I am unable to say to what extent the population is Georgian; and the same applies to Erzerum. It is, however, in the north of these two Pashaliks that such Georgian blood as exists is to be sought. The Lazes are Mahometans with an underlying stratum of their original Christianity. They are, I believe, monogamist Mahometans.
In the towns of Kars and Erzerum (Arzes) the Turks preponderate ; and most Armenians speak Turkish as well as their own language. In the country the rule is probably this—there are more Armenians, Jews, and Kurds, taken collectively, than Turks; but more Turks than Kurds, Jews, or Armenians taken singly. This, however, I give with doubt and diffidence. The Armenians may possibly preponderate.
In Mush (Moxoene) the Armenians may be as numerous as the Turks. In Bayezid, at the foot of Mount Ararat, and in Yan (Buana) they appear to constitute more than half the inhabitants : the Kurd element increasing as we move eastward. Still, the exact details are uncertain.
In Yan and Diarbekir a fresh element presents itself—the Semitic.
In Yan we have Syrian Christians, and in Diarbekir both Syrian Christians and Arab Mahometans.
The Armenian area is divided between Turkey, Russia, and Persia; two of the pre-eminently Armenian districts of Yan and Bayezid being Turkish, whilst the other two, Erivan, and Nakhi-tshevan, are divided between Persia and Russia. From the express statements that in Russian Erivan the Armenians are about half the population, and that in Yan they form a majority, I infer theARMENIANS.
129
character of Bayezid, which I presume to be as Armenian as any other part of Armenia, and that of Kars and Erzerúm, which I presume to be somewhat less so. In all this, however, there is inference instead of evidence, and there are mere approximate guesses in the way of data. The importance, however, of the proportions is great. On the frontier of Turkey, Russia, and Persia, the Armenians are a Christian people with one Christian and two Mahometan masters—not to mention the fact of their being on ground that any disturbance may make debateable. At the same time they are hardly in a majority sufficient to make all Armenia Armenian.
The nationality of populations in this predicament is always attended with impracticable complications; and there are many populations like the Armenian. There are the Jews. There are the Germans of the Pin and Lithuanian provinces. With both, the populations are not only intermixed but intermixed sporadically; so that equal nationality is absolutely incompatible with the facts presented by the distribution of the occupants of the soil. It cannot be divided; yet it is essential to the nationality. Whatever may be the last steps taken to relieve such difficulties as these, good government, equal justice, religious freedom, and non-interference with the language, are the first.
The habits of the Armenians in Turkey, as elsewhere, are mercantile. Perhaps they are mercantile rather than industrial; in other words, they are connected with the exchange of commodities rather than with the production of them. When this is the case, there is always a large amount of patience under oppression, gratitude for small favours, and the absence of bold and sanguine aspirations. Too often the true country is the country of the best market. As a general rule, the wealth which this temper helps to create commands favour. It is not, however, by favour that nations are held together; and, in regard to the population under notice, it is well known that, though the disturbances which they create are but few, most of the Armenians are Russian in feeling. It is only natural that they should be so. To their creed they are strongly attached; no nation having supplied fewer renegades. Their language they are satisfied with using among themselves: indeed, with commercial habits, bigoted attachments to language are rare. The language of the forum,
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whatever it may be, is readily adopted. The language of their own Scriptures as readily passes into a learned language. Meanwhile, the provincial dialects become more and more provincial. What is to give culture to them ? The speech of the towns is something else.
This is the case with the Armenian; which is rapidly passing into the condition of the Hebrew, and becoming what we may call a secondary language, i. e. a language spoken concurrently with one of greater importance and one more firmly established than itself. The Armenian in Venice has to speak Italian ; the Armenian in India, Hindostani; the Armenian in Eussia, Eussian ; the Armenian in Armenia, Turkish.
Of active nationality in the abstract, or separated from the effects of bad and partial government and disconnected with his Christian creed, the Armenian has but a moderate share. He loves his language, his country, and his countrymen; but the more ambitious wishes connected with the influence of Armenia in the confederacy of nations, with an Armenian kingdom, an Armenian republic, or a restored Armenia, have little influence with him. Yet his political history is an important, and his religious history a noble, one. His Christianity, maintained against Mahometanism, was maintained against the Fire-worship which preceded Mahomet. His country was the best-defended part of the great Parthian empire. At the same time it seems always to have been the occupancy of a mixed population; and I think that much of the Armenian blood is Kurd, Persian, and Turk, and vice versa.
That even the abstract feeling of nationality as such is latent rather than non-existent, is not impossible. Like all other feelings it has its appropriate stimulus. What it has been in Greece for the last eighty years we know. Just excited by Eussia under Peter and Catherine, it broke out in a flame at the time of the French Eevolution, and in 1821 consummated a great revolution of its own. Similar stimuli, similar opportunities, may produce similar results elsewhere. The flame is as the fuel and the blast. The measure of the uneasiness of the Armenians under the Turk domination is to be found in the extent to which they have migrated into Eussia; partly by crossing the border and settling in Erivan, partly by joining the colonies of the Governments ofTHE KURDS*
131
Saratov and Ekaterinoslav. On the other hand, many of the emigrants have migrated back again.
The Turks are not the only holders of a hostile creed with whom the Armenians come in contact. Nor are they, though the lords and masters of the position, the worst. The worst are the Kurds, of whom a short notice must he taken. Sporadically they are distributed over the eastern part of Asia much after the manner of the Armenians; and there are whole tracts of country where the Kurd and Armenian villages alternate. The nucleus however, of the family lies south of Armenia; along the mountain-ridge which separates Asiatic Turkey from Persia. There are, also, a few Kurds within the Russian frontier.
There are some which pay allegiance to both Persia and Turkey. There are more which are independent of both. Some are well within the Turkish, others as well within the Persian, frontier. All are Persian in language. With all, the feeling of nationality is local and tribual rather than general. With all, the habits are rude and predatory. Mutatis mutandis, they are the Albanians of this part of Asia; hardy, brave, rapacious. In several districts they come in contact with Turkoman tribes of like habits and temper; with some of whom they keep on friendly terms, with others of whom they maintain a chronic state of warfare. Towards the Christians their bearing is that of the Druzes towards the Maronites.
On the south-west they come in contact with the Arabs of Mesopotamia; on the south-east they extend, under the names of Lak, Filli, and Baktyari, into Fars. Being mountaineers they are less migratory than the Turkomans and the Beduin Arabs, with whom in rudeness, robbery, their tribual organization, and a complete or incomplete independence, they agree.132
ARABS AND SYRIANS.
CHAPTER XI.
The Syrians and Arabs of the Ottoman Empire.—Mesopotamia, Assyria, Syria, &c.
In the parts about Diarbekir a change in the character of the population sets in ; and it is an important one. If we adopt the terms of Ancient Geography (and it is, for many reasons, convenient to do so) it takes us from Asia Minor and Armenia into Mesopotamia, Assyria, Babylonia, Syria, and Arabia. In Modern Geography, on the other hand, it takes us into Algezira and Irak Arabi.
As Diarbekir lies on the Tigris we are, when in the latitude of Diarbekir, in a true Mesopotamia, a tract between two rivers; and, as both sides of the Tigris belong to Turkey, we have two well-marked districts, one coinciding with Mesopotamia in the strict sense of the word, one with Assyria. Where the two rivers approach one another and the watershed becomes invisible Babylonia succeeds Assyria.
The northern part of the district beyond the Tigris is Kurd: indeed, it is Kurdistan, or the Kurd country, par excellence. The region, however, which coincides with ancient Assyria is Arab rather than Kurd; or, at any rate, Arab as well as Kurd.
It is the appearance of this Arab element which gives the parts under notice the importance assigned to them. At what point it begins to predominate is uncertain. Diarbekir, as a town, is Turkish; Mosul, as a town, is decidedly Arab.
It is in the parts about Diarbekir that, after having dealt with nothing but Turks, Kurds, Armenians and (to a less extent) ? Syrians, the ethnological geographer first meets with Arabs—first meets with Arabs in moving from north to south. On the south the Arab is the rule, the Turk or Kurd the exception. He reads, too, of Arabs who speak the Kurd language; though without finding the exact evidence which makes them Arab in otherARABS AND SYRIANS.
133
respects. Meanwhile* he has taken leave of the Armenians* except as settlers, for good. The Turk he expects to meet in garrisons; and as a nomad Turkoman. In short, the more he goes south the more the country is truly Arab; the Kurd being the last to leave him.
The Arab* however, is not the only member of his stock who requires notice; though he is, out of all proportion, the most important. There is the Syrian besides : the Syrian, who differs from the Arab in the way of language as a Lowland Scot may differ from a south-country Englishman. This, perhaps, is not much. It is, certainly, nothing as compared with the differences between the Arab and the Turk, the Arab and the Kurd, the Arab and the Armenian. But it is not the only difference. The Arab is a Mahometan, the Syrian a Christian. The Arab is the member of a dominant class of which the individuals are counted by millions. There are, at the most, one hundred and twenty thousand Syrians. Still, as the two families are closely connected in ethnology, we may, for all the purposes of the present notice, deal with the two as one, the object of the present notice being not so much to treat of the Arabs or Syrians as such, as to contrast the Arab, Syrian, Syro-arabian, or Arabo-syrian elements of the Ottoman empire with the Turkish.
Let us, in a rough way, compare the great Ottoman empire with that of Borne in the fourth century. There was for the Bomans a western empire and an eastern one; an Italian empire and a Greek one. There was the difference between Constantinople and Athens on one side, and that of Borne and Corduba on the other. That this division was something more than a mere geographical one is well known.
In like manner there is a northern division of the Ottoman empire, and a southern one; the former Turkish, Anatolian, and Constantinopolitan; the latter .¿Egyptian, Tunisian, African. Between the two empires of Borne there was the debateable ground of certain intermediate provinces. There is the same between the Egyptian and the Turk portions of the Ottoman empire. What Illyria was to Borne, Mesopotamia and Syria are to the Porte. That the parallel should run on all-fours no one expects. The illustration has been given simply for the sake of showing the importance of a distinction, and it may, possibly, have exaggerated134
ARABS AND SYRIANS.
it. Still, tlie contrast between Arabian Turkey and Turkish Turkey is of the strongest.
The influence of the Arabs upon the world’s history is known. So, in a general way, is that of the Turks. So is the contrast between the Turk and the Arabic languages. So also the real or supposed differences of their anatomical conformations. In the language of the lax ethnologist, the Turk is Mongol; the Arab Caucasian. The Turk affinities are with the Fins, Mongolians, and Tartars, the Arab with the Jews and Phenicians. Never mind the exact value of these distinctions. They express something; though the main fact is this—that all the south part of the Ottoman empire is Arab, or Arabiform.
There is a notable antipathy between the two divisions, an antipathy which it is difficult to either generalize or analyze. It is manifestly not an antipathy of creed. It is scarcely one of race, whatever that term may imply. It is not one based on historical remembrances like those that sustain the nationality of Poland and Italy. The history of the Arab subjects of the Porte is neither one and undivisible, nor definite. ¿Egypt has one history, Syria another; both, as far as their more glorious epochs are concerned, forgotten, for all sentimental purposes, by the existing Syrians and ¿Egyptians—neither of whom are, in language at least, the descendants of the subjects of the Ptolemies and Seleucidse, much less of the Pharaohs.
Above all, it is not the true Arab who is the Turkish subject. Arabia Proper is all but independent. The true Arab countries are Syria and -¿Egypt; and these are, at best, but Arabic and Syrian, Arabic and Hebrew, Arabic and Phenician, Arabic and Coptic, Arabic and Berber.
The times of the Mameluks of ¿Egypt, and the Atabegs of Syria, times of the Mahometan creed and a semi-native dynasty, are not to be overlooked. In these may lie the elements of a retrospective discontent. It has not, however, been shown that much value is to be given to them. It is not, then, because their histories have been different that the Arabs and Turks dislike one another.
The dislike, however, exists; and it seems to be the result of innumerable individual antipathies. The Turk is lordly, overbearing, arrogant. The Greek hates and fears him. The Arab,ARABS AND SYRIANS.
135
who, as a Mahometan bearing arms, is more on an equality, fears him less, hates him less ; but still is far from loving him.
This complex of individual and concrete enmities makes up a general distrust and repugnance; which is wholly diiferent from many of the ordinary forms of national antipathy. Of these several are compatible with friendship and respect for individuals ; indeed, the dislike of the nation in general, for some obscure or lax reason, is, in many European countries, perfectly compatible with a high esteem for nine-tenths of the individuals which compose it.
That other causes in the Arabic parts of Turkey concur with the one under notice is true; but the one in question is the most definite and prominent. It is also adequate to most of the effects with which it is connected. The recent history of .Egypt shows this; though upon the recent history of Egypt the present work says little. Egypt, like Servia and the Danubian Principalities, is, to a great extent, independent of the Porte; which, unlike Servia and the Danubian Principalities, is other than European. Its history will not be enlarged on. Nor yet will those of Tunis and Tripoli; nor yet that of the small fraction of Arabia Proper which is Turkish.
Syria, however, and Mesopotamia are in a different predicament. They are not in the semi-independent condition of Egypt. They are in a geographical continuity with the true Turk parts of Turkey. They are of great practical political importance. They, doubtless, gravitate towards -¿Egypt; indeed, it is only through European interference that they are not already -Egyptian. Beyond, however, the general facts of their Arab character: of their geographical position, the import of which is j>atent from a simple inspection of the map : and of the misgovern-ment common to them and the rest of the Ottoman Empire, there would be little concerning them to add to what has already been written if it were not for the extraordinary complexities of their religious sects and heresies which, along with Kurdistan and the southern part of Armenia, they exhibit.
In Kurdistan, Armenia, Mesopotamia, and Syria, we have, beyond the ordinary Mahometanism of the Turks and the ordinary Christianity of the Armenians, at least, the following denominations.136
ARABS AND SYRIANS.
1.	Yezids, chiefly in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan.
2.	Syrian Christians, falling into
a. Nestorians, h. Jacobites,
c.	Homan Catholics; chiefly in Mesopotamia and Armenia.
d.	Maronites in Lebanon.
3.	Nusairiyeh, North Syrian, in the Pashalik of Tripoli.
4.	Druzes. In the Pashalik of Damascus; especially in the Hauran.
5.	Ismaeliyeli.
6.	Mutawileh.
7.	Wahabis.
8.	Samaritans, a few about Nablus (Neopolis).
9.	Jews.
10.	Mendseans, or Christians of St. John.
Such the geographical arrangements, beginning with the north.TIIE YEZIDS.
137
CHAPTER XII.
Creeds and Denominations of Assyria and Syria.—Yezids.—Nestorians, Jacobites, Maronites. — Nusairiyeh, Druzes, Ismaeliyeh. — Mutawileh, Wahabis.— Samaritans, Jews.
Whatever may be the details as to the origin and extraction of the Yezids, it is almost certain that they give us the nearest representation of the old creed of this part of Asia as it stood before the diffusion of either Christianity or Mahometanism. It is, apparently, older than both; and by each it has been encroached upon and displaced. Hence the present Yezid localities are discontinuous or sporadic, indicating the fragments of a once continuous religion. From this point of view they cover a large field; probably a larger one than has been explored. Like most other fragments of either languages or creeds, it is in the mountain districts rather than in the level country that they are to be found. Hence it is to the north of the desert of Sinjar, along the eastern affluents of the Euphrates, along the main stream of the Tigris itself, and on the drainages of the Zab and Khabur that they appear; to the west of the Sinjar mountains, to the east of Julamerik, and to the north of Diarbekir—Diarbekir, Julamerik, Mosul, and Amadieh being the towns which, in the ordinary maps, best indicate their neighbourhood. Some lie as far north as Georgia. But these are immigrants.
Politically, they approach the boundaries of Persia and Russia. Ethnologic ally, they come in contact with the Arabs, the Turks, the Armenians, and the Laz ; and, above all, the Kurds. Indeed, in language and features they are themselves Kurd. Their hymns are in Arabic. A little Arabic is understood by the Sheikhs. But the language of the people is Kurd. I believe wholly so. They make no converts: nor if they did, are either Arabs or Turks, and still less the Armenians, easily converted. If, then, there be any foreign blood among them, it has long lost its original characteristics. The Yezid is a Kurd, with a Kurd138
THE YEZIDS.
physiognomy—spare frame, dark skin, prominent nose, projecting brow, retreating forehead, black hair. Except that some of them are shorter and more squarely-built than others, and some square, rather oval in face, this is the concurrent testimony of independent observers respecting the Yezids.
The Sinjar mountains are their chief occupancy. Here is the residence of the chief Sheikh; here, their chief burial-place; here, above all, their chief sanctuary and place of pilgrimage, Sheikh Adi. For these parts the ten tribes are those of—
1.	Heska.
2.	Mendka.
3.	Hubaba.
4.	Merkhan.
5.	Bukra.
6.	Beit Khaled.
7.	Amera.
8.	A1 Dakhi.
9.	Semoki.
10.	Kerani.
The Yezid dioceses, for this is a term which their general organization suggests, are four:—
1. Sinjar.	2. Northern Armenia.
2. Diarbekir.	3. Northern Syria.
In each of these the Kawals hold an annual visitation; the Kawals being one of the four orders of priests.
1.	The Pirs are the first. A Pir is an emeritus Sheikh, one who, from his superior sanctity, is invested with a halo of sanctity during even his lifetime. He is a prophet rather than a Sheikh.
2.	The Sheikhs are the mullahs, doctors, or superior teachers;
3.	The Kawals, the working, or inferior clergy;
4.	The Fakirs, the humbler officials, who light lamps, keep the shrines in order, and the like.
The Yezid Holy of Holies is the tomb of the Sheikh Adi. Around is the semblance of a village, consisting of temporary lodges, each appropriated to a particular tribe; whilst each part of the valley is known by the name of the tribe that lodges in it during the festival.
A fluted cone on a square base—this is the Yezid tomb, and it is sufficiently general and characteristic to denote a Yezid village.
Until lately the current notion of the Yezid was that he was a Devil-worshipper. He is, and he is not. He fears offending theTHE YEZIDS.
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Evil Spirit. He propitiates him as he best can. He never curses him. Bless him he cannot. So he never mentions him at all. It pains him to hear his name from others. An imprecation of Mr. Bayards, unconsciously and incompletely uttered, manifestly and seriously gave pain to his guest. Mr. Layard would have called a lad about him a young Satan, hut when he got as far as Shait— checked himself. It was too*late. The holt had been shot, and uneasiness, unwillingly, created. This horror of the name runs even into the eschewal of the semblance of it; so that, in some instances, the Yezid language, like those of Polynesia, taboos certain words. Any word beginning with shat, no matter what it mean, is avoided, and some approximate synonym used in its stead. Even haitan, though very good Kurd for & fringe, is not allowed. In like manner naal~horse-slioe, is considered to he too near in sound to laan—curse, to he a proper Yezid expression. That all this maybe referable to the old Persian doctrine of the Two Principles is likely; indeed, it is nearly certain as a matter of history, that such is the case. Without, however, any such antecedent, it is explicable on general principles. Numerous rude tribes hold that the Good Deity requires no positive propitiations, and that it is only the Evil one who takes offence at being neglected. Even Satan, then, is not so purely malevolent as to be beyond propitiation. Nor is he incapable of gratitude.
“ Dost thou believe that God is righteous and all-merciful,” said one of the Yezids of Bussian Armenia to Haxthausen.
“ I do.”
“ Was not Satan the best beloved of all the archangels, and will not God take pity on him who has been exiled so many thousand years, and restore to him his dominion over the world he created ? Will not Satan then reward the poor Yezids who alone have never spoken ill of him, and have suffered so much for him ? ”
Next to Satan are the seven archangels, Gabriel, Michael, Baphael, Azrael, Dedrael, Azraphael, and Shemkeel; the name of this last being a compound of Sltems, the i^rabic for Sun.
The element, however, in the Yezid creed which has given rise to the most speculation, and which, after all the criticism that has been expended upon it, is still obscure, is the respect paid to the image of a bird. There are several copies of it, one, at least, for each of the four districts; but the original has never been seen by140
THE YEZIDS.
anyone but a Yezid, and this is kept at Sheikh Adi. Never has one fallen in the hands of a Turk or Arab. Kawal Yussuf, on one of his missions as he was crossing the desert on his way to Sinjar, nearly lost one. He saw a body of Arabs coming down upon him. But he buried the sacred emblem and disentombed it when the danger had gone by. Mr. Layard saw one of the fac-similes. At Bedwan, on the Upper Tigris, his host conducted him into a darkened room. A red coverlet was removed with every sign of respect by the Kawals, who bowed and kissed the corners as they removed it. On a stand of metal stood the rude image of a bird. On certain occasions the original is exhibited to the faithful. The name of this image is Melik Taus; Melik being an Arabic word for King (also meaning Angel) and Taus being the Persian for Peacock; but also capable of meaning Cock. It is an old Persian word, being found as such in the Acharnenses.
The image; its sanctity; its name—these are the positive acts known about the Melik Taus; all beyond being speculation. And what they give, if we limit ourselves to plain literal and grammatical sense, is King Peacock. The reader who knows this knows as much as anyone who is neither a Sheikh nor a Kawal ; perhaps, as much as the Kawals and the Sheikhs themselves.
The following is the explanation of this bird-worship as given by a Yezid to an American missionary :—
“ When Christ was on the cross, in the absence of his friends, the Devil, in the fashion of a dervish, took him down, and carried him to heaven. The Marys soon came, and seeing that their Lord was not there, inquired of the dervish where he was. They could not believe his answer ; but they promised to do so, if he would take the pieces of a cooked chicken from which he was eating, and bring the animal to life. He assented to the proposal ; and, bringing back bone to his bone, the cock crew ! The dervish then announced his real character, and they expressed their astonishment by a burst of adoration. Having informed them that he would thenceforth always appear to his beloved in the shape of a beautiful bird, he departed.”
Individually, I believe that originally Malek Taus was, word for word, Malek Baud, or Daûdh, i. e. King David.
The Yezids have been cruelly afflicted : and that, both by the Pashas of Bagdad and Mosul, who are supposed to be under the authority of the Sultan, and those Kurd chieftains which are, for all the purposes of oppression and robbery, independent. And this is but the result of their position. Their creed is not only otherTHE YEZIDS.
141
than Mahometan, but it is, in the eyes of a Mahometan, a creed without a Scripture; a creed that is open to persecution beyond that of the Jews and Christians, or the men whose religion shows a Book. It is a creed, too, which has no powerful congeners; in other words, there is nothing like it in high places elsewhere. The Fire-worshippers, even if they acknowledged the relationship, could do nothing in the way of maintenance or protection.
As far, then, as they have any religious sympathies, they have them with the Christians of the parts around them; towards whom common suffering engenders a something like kindliness. We must remember that, like the Albanian Christians, the Yezids bear arms; that their country is impracticable; that they know every rock and defile in it; that they are Kurds in language, and, in the opinion of the present writers, in blood also. Hence, they practise savage and bloody reprisals on the Mahometans. But with the Christians they have friendly communion. In this they resemble another class of sectional religionists, in a very different part of Asia; viz. the Siaposh of Kafiristan: whose religion, like that of the Yezids, has no definite congeners. Indeed, it is, to some extent, the Yezidism of the East. It partakes of the nature of Fire-worship, though with a large, but unrecognized, amount of Indian elements either as a basis or an incorporation. Like the Yezid, the Siaposh spares the Christian—the Frank as he calls him—but kills all Mahometans, whom accident or razzias may deliver into his hands. Yezidism, too, and the infidelity of the Siaposh Kafir, are the only creeds south of Siberia, and north of Assam, which are so far pagan, as to be neither Mahometan nor Christian, neither Buddhist nor Brahmin. The Brahminism of the latter, like its Fire-worship, of which it has elements common with Yezidism, is only approximate— rudimentary or fragmentary as the case may be.
The absence of any canonic Scriptures for the Yezid creed has already been noticed: and so has the disadvantage of its non-existence. It excuses injustice and oppression on the part of the Mahometans. A recognized Scripture, however, is one thing; a body of religious compositions of non-canonic authority another. The latter may exist, even when the former is wanting. And that such is the case with the Yezids is to be hoped; perhaps, it is to be expected. A report as to the existence of some142
THE YEZIDS.
Yezid book is afloat; though no one, not even Mr. Layard who has been so favoured in his opportunities and has made such good use of them, has been able to inspect, or even see, it. Still, it may exist. With a persecuted creed, with a sporadic body of believers, the doctrine de non apparentibus et non existentibus eadem habenda est ratio fails to hold good. On the other hand, where the want of a book is a disadvantage and a reproach, the concoction of one, for the occasion, becomes probable.
As it is, however, the following is the only known Yezid composition. It is given as it stands in Mr. Badger’s Nestorian Bituals, a work to which something in the present, but more in the next, chapter is due.
The Eulogy of Sheikh Adi.
“ My wisdom knoweth the truth of things,
And my truth hath mingled with me.
My real descent is from myself:
I have not known evil to be with me.
All creation is under my control;
Through me are the habitable parts and the deserts,
And every created thing is subservient to me.
And I am he that decreeth and causeth existence.
I am he that spake the true word,
And I am he that dispenseth power, and I am the ruler of the earth.
And I am he that guideth mankind to worship my majesty.
And they came unto me, and kissed my feet.
And I am he that pervadeth the highest heavens;
And I am he that cried in the wilderness ;
And I am the Sheikh, the one, the only one;
And I am he that by myself revealeth things;
And I am he to whom the book of glad tidings came down From my Lord, who cleaveth the mountains;
And I am he to whom all men came,
Obedient to me they kissed my feet.
I am the mouth, the moisture of whose spittle
Is as my honey, wherewith I constitute my confidents.
And by his light he hath lighted the lamp of the morning.
I guide him that seeketh my direction.
And I am he that placed Adam in my paradise;
And I am he that made Nimrod a hot burning fire;
And I am he that guideth Ahmet, mine elect,
I gifted him with my way and guidance.
Mine are all existences together.
They are my gifts and under my direction.
And I am he that possesseth all majesty,
And beneficence and charity are from my grace.
And I am he that entereth the heart in my zeal,
And I shine through the power of my awfulness and majesty.
And I am he, to whom the lion of the desert came,THE YEZIDS.
143
I rebuked him, and he became like stone;
And I am he to whom the serpent came,
And by my will I made him like dust.
And I am he who shook the rock and made it tremble,
And sweet water flowed therefrom on every side.
And 1 am he that brought down an authentic herity,
A book whereby I will guide the prudent ones.
And I am he that enacted a powerful law,
And its promulgation was my gift.
And I am he that brought from the fountain water Limpid and sweeter than all waters :
And I am he that disclosed it in my mercy,
And in my might I called it the white (fountain).
And I am he to whom the Lord of heaven said:
Thou art the ruler and governor of the universe.
And I am he who manifested some of my wonders,
And some of my virtues are seen in the things that exist.
And I am he to whom the flinty mountains bow,
They are under me, and ask to do my pleasure.
And I am he before whose majesty the wild beasts wept,
They came and worshipped and kissed my feet.
I am Adi of the mark, a wanderer,—
The All-Merciful has distinguished me with names,
And my seat and throne are the wide-spread earth.
Tn the depth of my knowledge there is no God but me.
These things are subservient to my power,
How, then, can he deny me, 0 ! mine enemies ?
Ho not deny me, 0 men, but yield,
That in the day of the resurrection you may be happy in meeting me.
He who dies enraptured with me, I will cast him
In the midst of Paradise, after my pleasure, and by my will.
But he who dies neglectful of me,
Shall be punished with my contempt and rod.
And I declare that I am the essential one;
I create and provide for those who do my will,
And the world is lighted with some of my gifts.
I am the great and majestic king ;
It is I who provide for the wants of men.
I have made known to you, 0 congregation, some of my ways.
Who desireth me must forsake the world.
I am he that spake a true word;
The highest heavens are for those who obey me.
I sought out truth, and became the establisher of truth;
And with a similar truth shall they attain to the highest like me.” *
The legends, traditions, and floating opinions concerning both the ethnological and the religious relations are so numerous, and so heterogeneous, as to point in several directions at once.
* Prom the paper of Mr. Ainsworth’s, in the Transactions of the Ethnological Society, from which nearly the whole of this chapter is taken, I learn that there is a second translation of this poem by Mr. Eassam.144
THE YEZIDS.
There is an opinion that they come from the south, i. e. from the lower Euphrates, and there are high authorities who on this opinion lay considerable stress.
Again, the family of their chief affects a descent from the Ommiads of the Kalifat; and this is only one out of many facts which points towards Arabia. Nor is it the most important one. The Arab elements of the Yezid ritual and the Arab titles of the Yezid authorities, if they stood alone, would go far towards the doctrine that it was either Arabia or Syria, before those countries became Mahometan, which Yezidism more especially represented.
Then comes the statement of Hadzhi Khalfah which connects them with Mahometanism, but not with Arabia; making them Persian and Sufi, rather than aught else.
The Yezids reckon themselves disciples of Sheikh Adi, or Hadi, who was one of the Merwanian Khalifs. The Yezids were originally Sufites, who have fallen into error and darkness. Those whom they call their Sheikhs wear black turbans, whence they are called Kara Bash (black heads). They never hide their women. They buy places in Paradise from their Sheiks, and on no account curse the Devil or Yezid. The Sheikh Hadi has made our fast and prayer a part of their abominable faith, and they say that, at the day of judgment he will cause numbers to enter into Paradise. They have a great enmity to the doctors of law.
Then come the two following legends.* They are essentially the same. Yet the first, eo nomine Yezid, is from the north of Media, whilst the second is a tradition of the Fire-worshippers of Seistan in the south of Persia.
(1.)
Monseignore Tommaso, Bishop of Marquise, relates that when this Elias, after having been chosen bishop of Mogham—a city on the frontiers of Persia, and near the Caspian Sea—proceeded to enter on the duties of his diocese, he found it occupied by a barbarous people, immersed in superstition and idolatry.
The bishop, however, commenced his instructions: and his flock confessed that they received them with pleasure, were convinced of their truth, and were inclined to return to the true God, but that they were terrified at the thought of abandoning Yezid, the object of religious veneration of their ancestors. This idol, they said, conscious of approaching rejection and contempt, would not fail to revenge itself by their total destruction. Elias desired to be led to this object of their adoration. They conducted him to the summit of a neighbouring hill, from whence a dark wood extended into the valley below. From the bosom of this rose a plane-tree of enormous height, majestic in the spread of its boughs and deep obscurity of its shade ; but, transported with holy zeal, he demanded a hatchet, and rushing to the valley, sought the idol, whom he found lowering with a dark and menacing aspect. Nothing daunted, however, he raised the
From Mr. Ainsworth’s paper. See Note of preceding page.THE YEZIDS.
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axe, smote^down the image of the prince of darkness, and continued his work till not only was the mighty tree laid prostrate, but every one of the numerous younger shoots, termed by the barbarians the children of Yezid, was likewise demolished.
(2.)
In former times there existed, they say, a prophet named Hanlalah, whose life was prolonged to the measure of a thousand years. He was their ruler and benefactor; and, as by his agency, their flocks gave birth to young miraculously once a-week; though ignorant of the use of money, they enjoyed all the comforts of life with much gratitude to him. At length, however, he died, and was succeeded by his son, whom Satan, presuming on his inexperience, tempted to sin, by entering into a large mulberry tree, from whence he addressed the successor of Hanlalah, and called on him to worship the prince of darkness. Astonished, yet unshaken,- the youth resisted the temptation. But the miracle proved too much for the constancy of his flock, who began to turn to the worship of the devil. The young prophet, enraged at this, seized an axe and a saw, and prepared to cut down the tree, when he was arrested by the appearance of a human form, who exclaimed, “ Rash boy, desist! turn to me, and let us wrestle for victory: if you conquer, then fell the tree.”
The prophet consented, and vanquished his opponent, who, however, bought his own safety and that of the tree by the promise of a weekly treasure. After seven days the holy victor again visited the tree, to claim the gold or fell it to the ground; but Satan persuaded him to hazard another struggle, on promise that if conquered again the amount should be doubled. The second rencounter proved fatal to the youth, who was put to death by his spiritual antagonist; and the results confirmed the tribes over whom he had ruled in the worship of the tree and its tutelary demon.
This legend of the tree, however, is merely one detail out of many. The most general affinity of Yezidism with Fire-worship lies in the definitude of the Yezid recognition of the Evil Principle ; certainly the most prominent, and perhaps the most characteristic element of the creed.
With Christianity the recognition of the Scriptures connects it. But, in this recognition, the Old Testament commands more respect than the New; so that it is with either Judaizing Christianity or Christianizing Judaism, rather than with Christianity in its more purified forms, that the connection chiefly lies. Of this, however, the full import is pre-eminently obscure. There was much in both Judaism and Christianity that was less Judaic and Christian, in the limited sense of the terms, than it was something anterior to (at least) the later elements of each. How difficult is it to say where the St. John of the Mendeans is separated from the St. John of the New Testament: where the Elias of the numerous floating superstitions of Caucasus, Media, and even early Germany, is other than the Elias for whom
VOL. II.	L146
THE YEZ1DS.
our Saviour was taken; other than the Elijah of the Old Testament. Yet the triple connection, though obscure, is real; whilst the prophet Elijah is older than either the Christianity of St. John or the Talmud, older than the Fire-worship of the Sassanidse. Again, how far is the oriental belief a pure and proper tradition, or how far a mere educt from the text of the Old Testament misstated, misinterpreted, metamorphosed ? But besides the name of Iliyas, that of Esa, or Jesus, is Yezid.
Add to this the points of resemblance which inquirers minutely versed in the False Gospels, in the Talmud, and in the details of the Arabian superstitions before the time of Mahomet, could, doubtless, suggest, and the difficulties of our analysis become painfully visible. Much, however, as it may leave unexplained, there is still one principle which it inculcates, viz., the composite character of creeds like Yezidism and the difficulty of pronouncing what they are off-hand. They have too much of something else to be substantive religions; and, as they admit foreign elements from more quarters than one, the question of the relation which any one of them bears to the others may still remain, even when the extraneous elements themselves have been enumerated, insoluble—all the more so for the connected religions being themselves complex. There is always room for refinement and analysis. The Fire-worship of the Sassanidse is one thing; the Fire-worship which was incorporated with Christianity and became Manicheism is another. If Yezidism have grown out of the former it represents a separate substantive religion ; if out of the latter, it represents a Christian heresy.
The characteristics of the three denominations now coming under notice are:—
1.	Christianity as opposed to Mahometanism.
2.	The use of not only a Syriac liturgy but of the Syriac as a vernacular language.
The key to their leading characteristics lies in—
1.	The Council of Ephesus; a.d. 431.
2.	The Council of Chalcedon; a.d. 451.
3.	The influence of the Papal power from the sixteenth century to the present time.
We may extend the first of these three dates, and take the two centuries between the Council of Ephesus and the death ofNESTOR IANISM.
147
Mahomet, a.d. 632, as the epoch from which we may date those numerous modifications in our own creed out of which the fragments of Asiatic Christianity, as they exist at present, originated.
The Council of Ephesus sat on the opinions of Nestorius. Theologically, Nestorius was a Syrian; his Christianity being that of the Syrian discipline, which was based on the Syriac translation of the Scriptures then existing, and, perhaps, two hundred years old. At any rate Syria had a lettered language, and its Church had its great doctrinal authorities and controversialists; some writing in Greek, some in the vernacular. We may call them Fathers. It was, however, in Germanicia that Nestorius was born, and Germanicia I believe to have been Turk. His refinements upon the current doctrine as to Christ’s place in the Trinity may, simply as a matter of history, have had a Manichean origin. At the same time they may merely have arisen out of the half-intellectual, half-emotional feeling of which Manicheism was an independent, though an earlier, manifestation. Nestorius had subscribed to the Nicsean creed, and had been called to the Bishopric of Constantinople. But the Manhood of Christ, in the mind of Nestorius, could only be, at one and the same time, blended with the Godhead, and purified from the contamination of matter by the separation of Christ the Virgin-born from God the Pre existent. This was done by making the Virgin mother XpurroToxog and denying her to be (deoronog. She was the mother of the incarnate Christ, but not the mother of the eternal God. A quasi-separation of the Saviour from the second hypostasis in the Trinity was the inference from this; but it was intolerable at Rome, intolerable at Constantinople, most especially intolerable at Alexandria, of which the notorious Cyrill was then bishop.
The doctrine was condemned, Nestorius deposed, and banished. But many Syrian and Anatolian bishops continued to maintain either his cause or his principles; some firmly, some indifferently. Some supported his doctrines, some merely opposed his great enemy Cyrill. In Syria, in Cilicia, in Bithynia, and in Cappadocia, some bishop or other did this—a fact which is noted as a measure of the diffusion of the Nestorian spirit in the fifth century. The true Nestorianism, however, was rarer. It took ground in the districts where it is now found. But it was as a missionary creed that it told most effectively on the world’s
L 2148
THE SYRIAN CHRISTIANS.
history. And this it did to an extent that has scarcely been acknowledged. What form the Christianity of these early missionaries took when, enfranchised from the domain of the Greek language and the influence of the metropolis, it was preached in the very heart of Asia to the Turks on the frontier of Tibet and to the Mongolians along the wall of China, cannot be ascertained in detail. We know, however, the character of the religion with which it would come in contact. It would he that of the Fire-worship of the Sassanian epoch in the centre; which, in the east, would he tinged with Hinduism, on the north with Shamanism. Upon this the Nestorian Christianity would be engrafted, and into this it might, in time, degenerate; all the more easily from the fact of its having, itself, been originally tinged with the Magian doctrine of the two principles.
Two centuries, however, of Fire-worship, and five centuries of Mahometanism, intervene before we see the fruit of the seed thus sown; and, then, it is in its decay that we see it. We see it, too, in a form so doubtful and equivocal, that it can scarcely he recognized. That in some shape, however, it existed, and that its existence was the basis of the strange tales concerning a great Christian king in Mongolia, who was known to the Franks as Prester John, is, in the opinion of the present writer, as well as others of higher authority, the legitimate inference from the few trustworthy notices we have of the state of Central Asia at the beginning of the Temudzhinian era, i. e. the times of Tshingiz Khan and his Mongols. The history of the Christianity of India points in the same direction.
I, more than once, allude to an early Christianity and an early civilization, irregularly diffused among the fierce tribes to the north of Persia, whether Turk, Mongol, or mixed; and, whenever I do so, the times between the Nestorian persecution and the Mahometan conquest of Transoxiana are the times assigned to its introduction.
Such is one of the reasons against undervaluing the influence of Syrian Christianity as opposed to that of the Greeks and Armenians—Syrian Christianity, whether orthodox or heretical.
At the present time it shows itself, as has already been stated, in Armenia, Kurdistan,and Mesopotamia, under three forms: to which, when Syria comes under notice, we may add a fourth.THE JACOBITES.
149
(1.) The doctrines condemned by the Council of Ephesus have the greatest number of supporters; perhaps, as many as seventy thousand.
(2.) The doctrines condemned by the Council of Chalcedon, have the the fewest; and, what is more, the list of their adherents decreases annually. The number of their villages is as follows:—
In the Jebel Tur (to the south of Diarbekir,
their stronghold) . 150	
	 parts about Orfah	. 50
	— Kharput	. 15
	Diarbekir	. 6
Mosul	. 5
	Damascus	. 4
	230
The explanation of the decrease is found	the history of
the—	
(3.) Roman Catholic converts from the two	preceding deno-
ruinations. The approximate number of these is—
Families.
In the Diocese of Mosul .	.	.	.160
------------ Amida	....	466
------------ Sert .....	300
------------Kerkush	.	.	.	218
------------ Jezirah	.	•	.	.179
------------ Diarbekir .	.	.	.150
------------Khosraw	.	.	.	.150
------------ Bagdad	....	60
------------ Mardin	....	60
Total .1743
Adding to these the Roman Catholic Syrians beyond the dioceses here enumerated, Mr. Badger, the chief authority for the present condition of these three denominations, considers that they may amount altogether to twenty thousand—more numerous than the Chalcedonian, less numerous than the Ephesian, heretics, at whose expense they increase.150
THE SYRIAN CHRISTIANS.
It is the Ohalcedonian creed upon which these proselytizing Westerns more especially encroach, and it is from their conversions in Damascus, Mosul, and Diarbekir, that the numbers of the heterodox villages run so low. The four villages of Damascus are all that is left in that Pashalik; whilst in those of Aleppo and Bagdad the obliteration of the older creed is even more complete. Perhaps it is wholly so. In Jehel Tur, .on the other hand, the encroachment is at its minimum.
Ephesian, Ohalcedonian, Roman Gatholic—these are the three terms which have hitherto been used. And they have been used because they supply definite and tangible points of history by which the three denominations may be distinguished from each other. They are not, however, recognized names. The current names are Jacobite, Nestorian, and Chaldani, or Chaldcean. But these are European rather than Asiatic; scholastic or theological rather than vernacular. It is one thing for learned men in England or France to call the adherents to the creed condemned at Ephesus Nestorians: it is another thing for the adherents themselves to recognize the name thus bestowed upon them ab extra. The term by which the Jacobites and Nestorians most willingly designate themselves is Nsara Meshihaye, = Messianic Nazarenes, or Christians. They also call themselves Suraye or Syrians. By the term Nestor aye the Jacobites and Homan Catholics distinguish the Nestorians from themselves; and, though Nestorian is not the commonest name by which the holders of the doctrines of Nestorius designate themselves, it is, still, one which they recognize. Frank is the commoner, Catholic the rarer, name by which the Eastern Christians designate the Western; whilst Chaldeean or Chaldani, is the name which the Western Christians give themselves.
If this name were old, home-born, and vernacular, it would be an important one. It is, however, merely a manufacture of the Vatican; where the converts from the other two denominations were treated as the Christians of the diocese of Chaldaea. As compared with the Chaldseans, the Jacobites and Nestorians are (both) Monophysite. Monophysite, however, when used by itself, means a Jacobite rather than a Nestorian. The doctrine of Nestorius was Monophysite. The chief wars and tumults of the Eutychian period, however, which gave prominence to the name,THE MARONITES.
151
were subsequent to the exile of Nestorius—were Eutychian rather than Nestorian.
The intervention*of Rome dates from the middle of the sixteenth century, when Syrian Christianity broke into the fragments of a fragment. The bishoprics of Mosul, Amida (Diarbekir), like the Slavonic bishopric of Montenegro and the Electoral bishoprics of the German Empire, had become hereditary; and that in the families of Elias, Joseph, and Simeon, respectively. Feuds arose. The decision of Rome was appealed to. By 1681 either the whole province, or the chief see, had been named Chaldma, just as a Byzantine theme, in nearly the same parts, had been so named. It was a Roman See in partibus infidelium; so that Ghaldcea, as applied to it, is an old indigenous name just as Belgium is one as applied to the kingdom of King Leopold, i. e. not at all.
The fellow Monophysites of the Jacobites of Mesopotamia are the Copts of iEgypt. These, however, lie beyond the field of our observation.
Not so, however, the Maronites of Syria Proper. The Maro-nite is Syrian rather than Arabian in blood. The Syriac language, however, is spoken by only a few Maronites of one or two villages towards the south-eastern extremity of their area. It is the language, however, of their rituals, and the language of their translation of the Holy Scriptures. Like the Chaldani they are Roman Catholics; but, unlike the Chaldani, they are Roman Catholics of long standing. During the conflicts of the seventh century they were not only strenuous supporters of the Double Nature as against the Monophysites, but they were more than this. The doctrine of the Double or Single Nature had been refined upon; and instead of Nature the polemics of the time of Mahomet and Heraclius wrote Will. Monothelitism was the term for which blood was spilt and Christianity divided. The Mono-thelite, was succeeded by the Iconoclast, controversy; and, after the Iconoclast quarrel, the separation of the eastern and western churches became complete. I can only fix the time when the ideas which these events engendered arose.
The date of the Sixth Ecumenic council, the Third of Constantinople, is a.d. 678, and in this the Monothelite doctrines were condemned. The Emperor Heraclius had favoured them. For the sake of getting an epoch, we may take the Semi-eutychian152
THE SYRIAN CHRISTIANS.
Henotikon of Zeno as the edict with which the Monophysite controversy is most especially connected. On the same principle, we may take the Ecthesis of Heraclius and the Typns of Con-stans as the edicts which more especially belong to the history of Monothelitism.
In such lands of Monophysitism as Syria and Mesopotamia we naturally expect that Monothelitism will prevail. It seems to have done so. Still there were decided supporters of the Double Will even in Syria, and none more decided than Sophronius, Bishop of Jerusalem. It was the sad fate of Sophronius to be bishop when his metropolis was taken by the Mahometans, and still sadder was his function of taking the conqueror over the city and pointing out to him the Holy Places. He had more especially to show the very site of the Temple, in order that the Kalif might be able to build a mosque on it. “ Now indeed is the abomination of desolation on the Holy of Holies! ** was his miserable exclamation. But he had prepared the way for his own, his creed’s, and his country’s, degradation. He had been the life and soul of the Antimonothelites. The town was in the hands of Mahometans when he took Stephen, Bishop of Dora, to the site of Golgotha, and said: “ To that God who on this very place was crucified for thee, at his second coming to judge the quick and the dead, thou shalt render thy account, if thou delayest or art remiss in the defence of his imperilled faith. Go thou forth in my place. As thou knowest, on account of this Saracen invasion, now fallen upon us for our sins, I cannot bodily strive for the truth, and before the world proclaim to the end of the earth, to the apostolic throne of Borne, the tenets of orthodoxy/*
The last words of this speech deserve special attention. They show the extent to which he looked towards Borne. Syria was largely Monothelite. The Emperor was Monothelite. Borne alone was, at one and the same time, authoritative and orthodox.
During the Monothelite and the Iconoclast period, we find an unusual number of Syrian Popes—more, indeed, than at any other period of the papal history—John V., Sergius I., Sisinnius, and Constantine—all between a.d. 685 and a.d. 716. Again, Gregory III., who succeeded Gregory II. a.d. 731, was a Syrian.THE MARONITES.
153
Again, this was the time of the greatest of all the orthodox Syrian fathers, John of Damascus, who indited his theology in the capital of the Kalifs, the town he takes his name from.
Of the difference between the spirit of the Third Council of Constantinople which condemned, and of the Second of Nicsea which restored, images, the following extracts give a suggestive sketch:—
“ Anathema against the double-minded Germanus, the worshipper of wood ! Anathema against George,* the falsifier of the traditions of the fathers! Anathema against Ma.nsar,f the Saracen in heart, the traitor to the Empire ; Mansar the teacher of impiety, the false interpreter of Holy Scripture ! ”
Again—
“ We all believe, we all assent, we all subscribe. This is the faith of the apostles, this is the faith of the Church, this is the faith of the orthodox, this is the faith of the world. We, who adore the Trinity, worship images. Whoever does not the like, anathema upon him ! Anathema on all who call images idols! Anathema on all who communicate with them who do not worship images ! Anathema upon Theodorus, falsely called Bishop of Ephesus ,* against Sisinnius of Perga, against Basilius with the ill-omened name! Anathema against the new Arius, Nestorius and Dioscorus, Anastasius; against Constantine and Nicetas! Everlasting glory to the orthodox Germanus, to John of Damascus! To Gregory of Rome, everlasting glory ! Everlasting glory to the preachers of truth! ”
This, then, is the phase of Christianity which the Maronite creed represents; and if, at the present moment, it is Roman with some considerable differences, the time and place of its origin and the events which have taken place since it parted from the Eastern Church explain them. The contact with Mahometanism has told on their image-worship. The possession of an old translation of the Scriptures gives them a vernacular Dible. Thirdly, priests marry. With all this the Maronites are more Roman in their orthodoxy than the Romans themselves—though, in one sense, this is saying but little.
Of their present condition something will be said after their enemies, the Druzes, have come under notice.
Still, the list of even the different forms of Christianity found in Syria and Assyria is incomplete. The recent converts to Rome still stand over. As a rule, the Greeks, the Armenians, and the Assyrians, belong to their respective churches rather than
Of Cyprus.
f John of Damascus.154
THE NASARIYEH.
to any western one. Yet, the exceptions are numerous. Among the Chaldani proselytism still goes on. The Chaldani, however, may he held to represent the Papal intervention of the sixteenth century. The number of the converts made recently and sporadically is uncertain. The only figures I have met with are the following for the town of Aleppo :—
Families.
Greeks of the Greek Church	...	100
------------ Latin -------- .	.	.	1000
Armenians of the Greek Church .	.	180
---------------- Latin —	. .	600
Syrians of the Greek Church	...	?
--------------Latin--------- ...	350
That these numbers are only approximate is plain. They give, however, a great preponderance of Latins. Indeed, it is so decided, that it is only by taking in the members of the Eastern Church from other districts that the majority in favour of it can he made good.
Now come under notice three denominations of great obscurity, not to say mystery—the Nasariyeh, or Ansariyeh, the Ismaeliyeh, and the Druzes. Their tenets are obscure, because they are, to a great extent, secret. Of Ismaeliyeh and Nasariyeh books, few have been examined. Of the Druze Scriptures a little more is known; but the contents of these are obscure, and the collection is fragmentary. An elaborate treatise by Silvester de Sacy, contains nearly all that is known about them. As opposed to the Christian creeds just exhibited, they are Mahometan; but this is all that can be said. They are, apparently, more Mahometan than Yezid; though this is uncertain. In some respects they are more so, in others less. Historically, they seem to have taken their present form subsequently to the time of Mahomet. On the other hand, the germ of many of their doctrines is Ante-mahometan. Of many it is Extra-mahometan. Still, it seems that they began as Mahometan heresies. For this reason, they are thrown together.
How far do they agree with each other? The Ismaeliyeh have long been identified with the Assassins of the Crusades, and that on good grounds. Both the names are old; and the history, as will soon be seen, is circumstantial. FartherTHE NASARIYEH
155
comparisons connect them with the Nasariyeh; hut the details on which these rest are vague. That the Druze and Nasariyeh creeds are stamped by one common and important characteristic is beyond doubt. And this is the one which, more especially, separates them from Mahometanism and Yezidism; one which points neither to Arabia nor to Sassanian Persia. Still, so far as it is neither Indian nor Christian, it is Persian.
This characteristic we may call either Metempsychosis, or the Doctrine of Incarnations, according to the aspect under which we view it. The coarse form of the Nasariyeh doctrine, that such or such a human being has become such or such a beast—in proof whereof, we may find on a dog or a goat the same scars in the same places as we found them in some friend in the flesh—gives a Metempsychosis. The more refined doctrine that Ali was God, and that Mahomet was his prophet, on the other hand, gives an Incarnation. However, whether we call the ideas thus expressed Metempsychosis or Incarnation, it is plain that they are ideas wholly foreign to Mahometanism, and abominable to a Mahometan; though, at the same time, they are doctrines which might easily have been engrafted on Mahometanism. Equally distant are they from the concrete and material creed of the Yezids.
In respect to their geography, the Nasariyeh are the most northern of the three; the Pashaliks of Aleppo and Tripoli being their chief locality. Antioch on the north, and the Nahr-el-Kelb on the south, are their boundaries, their habitats being the villages of the hill-country. In these, to which they are strongly attached, they till the soil with a fair amount of industry and skill; and have the credit of being somewhat less warlike than the other mountain tribes. The names of four divisions of them are known ; Kamariyeh, Shamseyeh, JKleleseyeh, and Shimaleyeh. Are these denominations religious, tribual, or both ?
The Nasariyeh hate Mahometans; but are willing, when they visit the towns, to comport themselves as true believers. They keep as holidays Christmas Day, Epiphany, New Years Day, the Eourth of April, and the Seventeenth of April. They have secret signs, mysterious words, initiative ceremonies. That some of the mummeries of what, in the times of the Templars, represented Freemasonry have given origin to these is likely. Antioch and Edessa, it must be remembered, were among the first conquests156
THE DRUZES.
of the Crusaders; so that the contact with the Orders was considerable. As far as the three following pairs of names go, the first of which points to Judaism, the second to Christianity, the third to Mahometanism, it would seem as if the Druzes had gone on the principle of finding two contemporaries and reversing the order of their importance. Thus, between Adam and Abel, Jesus and St. Peter, Mahomet and Ali, there is a double relation; that of Incarnate Deity, and human Prophet; but whilst Adam, Jesus, and Mahomet represent Humanity, it is Abel, St. Peter, and Ali, who give the Incarnate Deity. I take this as I find it, as the most notable fact in their strange creed; indeed, as the only one of much importance known to me.
The Druze Avatar, to borrow an expression from the Indian mythology, is stranger still. It is important, however, as showing the historical origin of, at least, a portion of the creed. After the dynasty of the first Kalifs had come to an end, after the seat of the Kalifat had been removed from Damascus to Bagdad, and when iEgypt, separated from the Empire of the Abbassides, was under the rule of the Eatemites, arose an apostle named Hamza. He assisted in the violent persecutions, directed against both the Jews and the Christians, of the sixth Fatemite king, Hakem, who was born at Cairo, a.d. 1004, who ascended the throne when he was eleven years old, and who, in his thirtieth year became the Druze epoch: this meaning that the Druzes date from a.d. 1034. More than this, the bad mad Fatemite Hakem is the Druze Avatar; the last Incarnation of the Deity.
The reign of Hakem is a matter of history. So are his persecutions. So also the strangeness of his temper and character. But Hamza, Addi, and Darazi, have no personal verisimilitude. Hamza is sometimes called Addi; Addi, Hamza— Addi, be it noted, being the name of the great Yezid Sheikh, as well as that of the legendary founder of the Syrian Church. Darazi, meanwhile, composes the Druze Scriptures; heads the exodus from iEgypt into Syria; and, as is shown on the face of its history, gives his name to the settlers. Full of Scriptural terms, especially those that figure in the apocryphal writings, the Druze theology is also full of abstractions savouring strongly of a corrupted and misunderstood Christianity—the Soul, the Word, the Following, the Preceding, and the like. The followingTHE DRUZES.
157
extracts show this. They are selected from Mr. Chameaud’s translation of a Druze hook, made about ten years ago. Each has been chosen for the illustration of a different principle of the creed. They form about a fifth of the whole work. The first gives the origin of evil, in its thoroughly pseudo-spiritual aspect.
The Ocean of Time.
Chapter I.
The Creator, the supreme, created all things. The first thing He created was the minister Universal Mind, the praises of God be upon him! and the Creator gave to Mind the power to create, classify, and arrange all things.
The Spirit has the following attributes:—The Virgin of Power, The Receiver of Revelation, The Knower of the Wishes, The Explainer of Commands, The Spring of Light, The Will of Production, The Chosen of the Creator, and so forth.
It was this Spirit, or Mind, known by the above attributes, that arrayed the world.
The Mind is the Pen which writes upon stone, and the stone which it writes upon is The Soul.
The Mind is a perfect being, which being is at liberty to act, and is possessed of a free will; all he ordains or creates is in accordance with the will of the Creator.
When the Creator created Mind, He made him possessed of a free will, and with power to separate, or to remain and dwell with the Creator.
Ultimately Mind rebelled and abandoned the Creator, and thus became the spirit of sin, which sin was predestined to create the devil.
And the existence or creation of the devil occasioned the creation of another spirit called Universal Soul, and this spirit was the cause of the creation of all things existing.
The devil is perfect sin, and the creation of this spirit was permitted by the Creator, to show the unlimited power of the Creator in creating an opposite spirit to God.
Now when Mind rebelled against the Creator, the Creator threw him out of heaven ; but Mind knew that this was done by the Creator to test his faith, and to punish him for his sin; so he repented and asked for forgiveness, and implored help against the devil.
And the Creator pitied Mind, and created him a helpmate called Universal Soul; this spirit God created from the spirits of the knowledge of good and evil.
Then Mind told Soul to yield obedience to the Creator, and Soul yielded, and became a helpmate of Mind; and these two spirits tried to force into submission to the Creator the evil spirit or devil.
They came to the evil one, Mind from behind, and Soul from before, in this fashion to marshal the devil into the presence of the Creator; but the devil evaded them, being unguarded on either side, which enabled him to escape from them to the right and left.
The Mind and Soul, finding this to be the case, required each of them a helpmate : Mind required a helpmate to keep the evil one from the right side, Soul one to guard him on the left, so as to hem in the devil between them, and prevent his escape on any side.158
THE DRUZES.
So they moved and immediately two spirits were created; the one called Word, and the other the Preceding.
The devil now found himself hemmed in on all four sides, and felt the want of a spirit to help him ; and as to all things there must be an opposite, the Creator knowing the thoughts of the devil, inspired Mind, and thus created him a supporter; and when this supporter was created it was against the wishes of Soul.
The Mind and Soul commanded this supporter to yield to the Creator, and he yielded and worshipped the Creator.
And the Creator commanded the supporter to yield to Mind and Soul, but being instigated by the devil and tempted to disobedience, this supporter refused submission to Mind and Soul; whereupon, being cast out of heaven, he clung to the devil.
Then the Creator inspired Mind, and Mind inspired Soul, and created the Word (as already said).
And the Word could do good and evil.
And the Mind and Soul told Word to yield to the Creator, and the Word yielded; and the four spirits Mind, Devil, Soul, and the supporter, having inspired Word, created Preceding, who had good and evil in him, but more of the former than the latter; so that Preceding yielded ready obedience to the Creator, and was also subservient to Mind and Soul.
Now all these spirits above enumerated inspired Preceding, and thus created Ultimum, the last spirit created, and he yielded to the Creator.
And the Creator commanded Ultimum to be subservient to Mind, Soul, Word, and Preceding; and Ultimum was subservient.
Now all these spirits were true spirits before they entered the modern world, and their generation is as follows : the Creator created Mind, and Mind created Soul, and Soul created Word, and Word created Preceding, and Preceding created Ultimum, and Ultimum created the heavens and the earth and all therein.
And it came to pass that the aforesaid five spirits came to the devil, Mind from behind, Soul from before, Word from the left, and Preceding and Ultimum from the right, in order to force him to yield submission to the Creator; but the devil refused submission, and finding himself confined on all sides, with no means of issue, except upwards and downwards, and as, moreover, he feared fleeing upwards, where he must needs encounter the Creator, the devil fled downwards, and this was the origin of hell.
Chapter Till.
Enoch, SharJch, and Shutneel.
Hareth was serving in the priesthood with all the other angels, and he was among them when the Creator commanded them to be subjected to Shutneel.
And the Angels worshipped Shutneel, but Hareth refused and abandoned Paradise, and, quitting its borders, all the disciples of Falsehood fell with him, and Paradise was rid of their presence.
The Paradise of the Creator extended all over the earth, and the disciples of truth entered therein, and received the commands of Shutneel, the doctor.
And they kept apart from those who deny the Unity of God, and turned out the disciples of Falsehood from among them.
Then were established the order of Truth, and the words of verity (God’s peace be upon them).THE DRUZES.
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And the priesthood [belonged to Shutneel, who is Adam the happy; and Hareth and his followers were jealous and plotted contrivances to deprive him of his paradise, and to establish an enmity between him and his race.
How these deceivers never desisted from their object; they came and said, “ We have a piece of advice to give to you, 0 our lord, Enoch ; and to your partner, Sharkh, which is good for you both.”
This they kept repeating until they were admitted into the presence of Enoch and his partner, Sharkh.
When they came before them they worshipped them ; and Enoch, who is the second Adam, said, “ Perhaps you have repented and seek forgiveness for your blasphemy and disobedience to the priesthood in having assisted Ibliss and his associates.”
But the deceiver replied, “ Ho, I swear by your head and by the Creator, I have come to give you advice by reason of the interest I take in your welfare, and to warn you against the injustice of Shutneel in having compelled you to be subjected to him.
“ I have heard our Lord the Creator (praises be to Him !) say that the priesthood belonged only to Enoch and Sharkh, caitiffs in Paradise.”
Hereupon Enoch made him swear, and he swore to him.
And as it was the custom that whosoever swore by God falsely should be punished, no one dared to swear by him falsely.
And when the deceiver swore to Enoch and Sharkh that he was sincere in what he said, true in his deeds, and most pure in his words, they believed him, and fell into sin in many ways.
First, by neglecting the commandments of Shutneel.
Secondly, by changing the priesthood from the person to whom it belonged.'
Thirdly, by changing the will of the Creator (praises be to Him !) and opposing what he commanded them ; for the Creator had said, “ Do not approach this tree, that ye be not of the unjust.”
Fourthly, by believing in the words of one they knew to be deceitful.
And fifthly, by accepting advice from the father of deceit.
How after they had committed these sins, and had so far forgotten themselves, Enoch and Sharkh awoke to a sense of what they had done and perceived their baseness.
Knowing that Shutneel was aware of their thoughts, and that they had no other way left them but that of repentance and of suing for forgiveness, they went to Shutneel.
They went to him crying, repenting of, and confessing their sins, and spoke to the following effect:—
“ Thou art the forgiver, and we are the trangressors, thou art the pardoner of sins, thou art the merciful, thou art the Creator, thou art the element, oh! our God, forgive us.”
With such like words they sued for mercy.
And when Shutneel knew that Enoch and Sharkh were truly repentant he begged the Creator to forgive them and to restore them to the position they formerly occupied.
The creatures who committed this sin were five in number, Enoch, Sharkh, Aneel, Tabookh, and Hibal.
And Enoch is The Soul, Sharkh is my lord the Word, Aneel is the Plaintiff, and Tabookh, their speaker.
And the deceiver is the supporter of the devil, not Ibliss, and he blasphemed against Shutneel.160
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Moses, Jesus, Mahomet, Hakem.
Chapter XI.
And from the seed of Abraham prophets appeared, like unto Isaac, Jacob, Joseph, and others.
Then appeared Moses the son of Imram, and the people of truth followed his law, and the interpretation of his supporter, who was Joshua, the son of Nun.
Then there appeared other prophets, and their power in the knowledge of the unity was as the amount of saliva in the throat of man.
And these were Isaiah, Hezekiah, Nathaniel, Daniel, Doodoosalem, and the like from among the prophets.
From among the respectable doctors—Pythagoras, Plato, and Aristotle; the peace of God be upon them !
Chapter XII.
Now when Jesus, the son of Joseph, appeared with the New Testament, and established himself as the Lord, the Messiah who is Jesus (the peace of God be upon him !) he was accompanied by his four apostles, John, Matthew, Mark, and Luke (the peace of God be upon them !) and the people of Truth profited by his revelations, although they pretended to the truth, in the law, and copied the law of Moses in explaining the law of Jesus.
Then appeared Simon the happy, and the people of Truth were on his side until the time of the seven priests had passed away.
And the strength of the belief of the seven priests in the unity, was as the amount of saliva in the throat of man.
After this, Mohamed, the son of Abdalla, appeared with his law, which is the law of Islam.
And Mohamed established Ebn Abi Taleb as his supporter, and all the disciples of Truth followed the law of Islam, as they had done every other law that had preceded it.
Now Mahomed was in the time of Suleiman, the Persian.
When Ali Ebn Ali Taleb came forward with his explanations of the law of Islam, the people of Truth believed in them, and continued therein, until seven priests had passed away after him.
These seven priests were of the seed of Mohamed, and are Hassan, Hussein, Ali Ebn Abi il Hussein, Ebn Mohamed Ali, Jaffr Ebn Mohamed, Ismael Ebn Jaffar, and the name of the seventh is not known.
The time of Mohamed Ebn Abdalla was more evident and more demonstrative of power than all the epochs that preceded him ; consequently, they pretended for singleness in Ebn Ali Taleb ; moreover because the prophets Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Jesus foretold the appearance of a man, the highest of the high, whose rank is great, whose name be glorified.
This was Ali Ebn Abi Taleb.
When the term of the priesthood of Mohamed Ebn Abdalla was completed, Mohamed Ebn Ismael, the prophet, appeared, whose law is the final of all laws inciting to the right path ; and he is from the seed of Eli Ebn Taleb.
And to Mohamed Ebn Ismael there is a supporter secretly established in Paradise, and no one knows his name, because he does not appear in the manifestation of the law which we have.
But it is certain that Mohamed is a prophet, and that God has sent him an evident book, and he has an open law and a secret law, and his works are the works of the eloquent that have passed before him.THE DRUZES
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Not that Mohamed is not like unto one of them, but that he is their partner against injustice.
And he has brought forward the law, the invitation to annihilation, the establishment of a delegate, and the promulgation of licentiousness.
Chapter XV.
At the completion of this era of the world, there commenced a second era and the wisdom of God thought proper to produce Kaem, the Almighty, with Sayeed il Muhdi.
And those who recognized the unity of God were steadfast in the secrets of Truth, and in the faith of Ali Ebn Ali Taleb, his progeny.
And the secrets of Truth succeeded from one to another until Sayeed il Muhdi, and from Sayeed il Muhdi the secrets of Truth reached the Lord of Truth (may his name be reverenced !), and the people recognized Kaem as a powerful God, because they had witnessed his miracles, and because he made manifest to them wonderful miracles whilst he was an infant under the guardianship of Sayeed il Muhdi.
When II Kaem grew up, he took to the priesthood, and when he appeared in public, mounted on horseback, with the soldiers in his service, Sayeed il Muhdi used to walk before him, calling aloud, “ I am the servant and slave of our Lord Il Kaem, and the priesthood was a thing in my consignment, and he has taken it from me.”
After this Sayeed died, and his soul passed to Makhled Ebn Kebdad, one of the kings of the west.
Now, before Sayeed died, he had been an enemy of Keis Dad, the father of Makhded.
And when Makhded grew up, and his age was six, he was informed that Sayeed had been the enemy of his father, so he prepared to fight, and assembled his soldiers to go against II Kaem (may his name be reverenced !).
And when Makhled was eleven years old, the number of his soldiers reached four hundred thousand.
The reason of his assembling all these was, because the Almighty had said, " Behold the people of the cursed and abominable Makhled Ebn Kebdad, sur^ named Abi Yazeed, there are no people who are more sinful, more disorderly, and greater drunkards.”
Now, Abi Yazeed desired to have a contention with II Kaem (may his glory be sanctified !), and among his soldiers there was cheapness, and health, and peace, whilst to II Kaem’s soldiers there was only his presence and the presence of the forty-six.
And the soldiers of II Kaem were few; but be granted them his assistance and majesty, and went forth in person with them to fight Abn Yazeed.
And he defeated them, and killed them, and destroyed them, and revenged himself; and when this great miracle became known, the faith of II Kaem, the most glorious, reached the country of the West, and was promulgated all over the earth.
Chapter XVI.
At the close of the time of the Almighty Kaem, the Creator most praised manifested himself bodily and in the priesthood in Mansoor, and it was apparently visible that he was the son of II Kaem, and that II Kaem had transferred upon him the priesthood, and had clothed him with the Caliphat, and assigned his power to him.
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And tlie faith of Mansoor was promulgated all over the earth, and made known to all assemblies, and Mansoor performed miracles, and changed some of the articles of the law, as the Almighty Kaem had also done before him, and his priesthood took place in the country of the West.
After Mansoor came the chief Maaz in the priesthood, and the faith was assigned to him, and he acted as did Mansoor, and his time began in the country of the West.
And Maaz sent Abdalla, whose name was Gouhair, with soldiers to Egypt, and he defeated the sons of Abbas, and conquered Cairo.
After this, the Almighty Maaz went to Cairo, and concluded his faith in that city.
After Maaz appeared the chief Azeez the Almighty, and his appearance took place in Cairo, and to him Maaz consigned the priesthood.
And the Almighty Azeez manifested signs which explained and made evident the unity, and he performed miracles which could not be performed by any one unless inspired by God.
And he proclaimed his faith, and his miracles were known throughout the world, and there remained not a single man who did receive the faith. Praises be to him whose grace has been so promulgated by reason of his mercy!
Then the Creator most praised appeared in Hakem; may his power be glorified in Cairo !
And the five chiefs, 11 Kaem, Mansoor, Maaz, Azeez, and Hakem appeared as though they were sons of each other; and this secret priesthood passed together with the heavenly posts, from the post of Zacharias to the post of Hakem (may his power be glorified!), until it reached its real proprietor, Hamza, who, in truth, is the Kaem; the celebrated Hamza Ebn Ali; the blessings of God be upon him !
To the ordinary orthodox Sunnite Mahometanism all this is as decidedly opposed as it is to any creed in the world. To the Shiite Mahometanism of Persia, as modified by Sufism, it is somewhat less antagonistic. The practical view that the Druze takes of Mahomet is given in the following catechism:—
Q. What shall we say of Mohammed ?
A. He was a devil and the son of fornication.
Q. And why do we read in his books, and confess him to be a prophet, and weep at funerals like Moslems 1
A. By compulsion, for his religion was propagated by the sword; therefore we read with the tongue, but not with the heart. This is not forbidden by our Lord Hakem.
Q. Why do we pray to Mohammed before men ?
A. We pray to Mohammed Mokdad, who is Solomon the Persian, the true Messiah; but Mohammed the Koreishite, is a devil, the accursed son of fornication.
Q. Why do we publicly testify on the Koran, but deny its truth among ourselves ?
A. We deny it because it praises Mohammed the Koreishite. The words repeated are true, but taken from the Gospel which was dictated to four ministers by Solomon the Persian.THE DRUZES.
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Q. What are our views and language with reference to the deluge which the Christians and the rest of the people say drowned the world 1
A. The deluge is Mohammed the Koreishite and his sect who flooded the world.
I have suggested the doctrine that contact with the crusading Franks of the military orders may have had something to do with some of the ceremonies and secrets of the Nasariyeh. With the Druzes the evidence of this improves. The notice of them in D’Herbelot, written before the elaborate and valuable monograph of De Sacy, makes them little more than Syrian Franks. It is short. Indeed, all that it tells us is, that they considered themselves Frank in origin and that they were specially connected with the family of Lorraine.
One of the charges, truly or falsely, made against the Druzes, is that they worship the image of a calf; and this was one of the charges made against the Knights Templars during the process so infamously instituted against the Order by Philip the Fair.
It is only a fragment of their creed that is known; and it may be added that even the historical account of their origin is clouded with doubts. The statement, for instance, that Darazi was a man s name, that a man so called wrote a book, and that it was from the book and the man that the sect took its name, is traversed by the probability of the term Dur, Dru, or Dr, being a term as old as the Macedonian period. The suggestion that the older form Durz gives us the -tur- in I-tur-cea (? whence Keturah as an eponymus) is none of my own ; but one that has been current since the time of Herbelot. The exact details by which the letter-changes are justified I have not seen. I only know that, so far as the geography is concerned, the etymology is eminently satisfactory. The ancient Itursea, or Trachonitis, lying between the Hauran, Damascus, and the southern spurs of the Anti-libanus is just the region from which the Druzes of the Lebanon may reasonably be deduced; whilst, of the south-eastern Druzes, it is the exact locality. Hence, whatever may be the origin of the name, the descent of, at least, a large portion of the Druzes is, almost certainly, Iturean.
This, of course, is not the origin assigned to them by those who deduce them from iEgypt. Nor is it the one suggested by M. Chameneaud, the translator of the strange book from which so
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much has just been taken, and, as such, an authority of no slight influence. It is on the following extract that M. Chameneaud founds his doctrine that they were the Hivites:—
Judges, Chapter III.
1.	Now these are the nations which the Lord left, to prove Israel by them, even as many of Israel as had not known all the wars of Canaan;
2.	Only that the generations of the children of Israel might know, to teach them war, at the least such as before knew nothing thereof;
3.	Namely, five lords of the Philistines, and all the Canaanites, and the Sido-nians, and the Hivites that dwelt in mount Lebanon, from mount Baal-hermon unto the entering in of Hamath.
4.	And they were to prove Israel by them, to know whether they would hearken unto the commandments of the Lord, which he commanded their fathers by the hand of Moses.
5.	And the children of Israel dwelt among the Canaanites, Hittites, and Amorites, and Perizzites, and Hivites, and Jebusites :
6.	And they took their daughters to be their wives, and gave their daughters to their sons, and served their gods.
7.	And the children of Israel did evil in the sight of the Lord, and forgat the Lord their God, and served Baalim and the groves.
The descent from the Hivites implies that it is the Druzes of the Lebanon who most especially represent the denomination; which may or may not be the case. The two doctrines, however, are by no means incompatible; inasmuch as, if we scrutinize the details of the Hivites, we find that they are specially mentioned as extending to Mount Hermon; in other words, that Mount Hermon was a part of Lebanon, a fact which brings them into contact with Itursea. By a further extension, it gives Bashan and half Gilead to either the same people or their confederates. In short, it gives the eastern Druzes the half-share of Manasseh and all Gad, with parts of Asher and Napthali, and a district in Central Phenicia, between Berytus and Tyre.
In any other country but Syria, the question would he comparatively unimportant. In Syria, however, from the complexity of its creeds and genealogies, as well as from their high interest, the minutest details deserve notice.
With those who look upon the Druze and its allied creeds as mere offsets of Mahometanism, the heresy which commands the most attention is that of the Karmathians, indeed it is upon the the Karmathians that thq Ismaeliyeh are more especially affiliated; and, as Baalbek is one of the cities which the Karmathians took, the affiliation is probable enough; though it must not be con-THE DRUZES.
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strued so as to exclude the Nasariyeh and the Druzes from the same, direct or indirect, partial or complete, connection. The same applies to the Assassins. The Ismaeliyeh need not have been Assassins; though the Assassins may have been a special branch of the Ismaeliyeh. As stated before, the localities differ, The Ismaeliyeh district is the Kelat-el-Masaad to the west of Hamah, and on the head-waters of the Orontes. It is almost a south-eastern prolongation of the Nasariyeh area, as well as a north-western one of the Druzes of Damascus and the Hauran.
Tor the Karmathian heresy itself, the year a.d. 900 is a convenient date. The creed was then in full vigour. It had arisen a few years before, in the two hundred and seventy-seventh year of the Hejirah. Karmath, an Arabian of Kufa (I follow Gibbon), undertook to purify and spiritualize Mahometanism. He was the Guide, the Director, the Demonstrator of the Word, the Holy Spirit, the Camel, the Herald of the Messiah, the Favoured of Mahomet, the Son of Ali, St. John, and the Angel Gabriel. He was either a new prophet or a new incarnation. He attacked the ceremonial part of the Koran. He treated the pilgrims to Mecca, and the Holy City itself, with scant respect; indeed, he massacred some thousands of the first, and sacked and defiled the second. He polluted the holy well of Zemzem. He tore-up the veil of the Temple. He removed the Kaaba—he or his followers, Abu Saud, the father, and Ahu Taber, his son. Baalbek in Syria, and Bassora on the frontier of Persia, he sacked. He crossed the Tigris. The Kalif sent a deputy to him, who enlarged on the vast power and multitudinous armies of his master and recommended prudence and submission.
Abu Taher^to one of his men.—Plunge a dagger into thy heart.
To another.—Throw thyself into the Tigris.
To a third.—Cast thyself from that precipice.
And when each, without hesitation or delay, had done as the chief had commanded him, the imam turned round to the deputy, and said:—
“ Tell thy master what thou hast seen. He had not three such men in all his armies. To-morrow he shall he before the dogs.”
The essentials of this threat were made good; and a great,166
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though not a permanent, Karmathian conquest followed. That it spread in the direction of Phenicia we learn from the express statement that Baalbek was one of the cities it involved.
Though I have taken an exception to the doctrine that the Ismaeliyeh are either the descendants or the representatives of the Assassins of the Crusades, more especially of those whose occupancy was the mountain district near Acre, I by no means object to the converse of the proposition, or the doctrine that the Assassins of the Crusades were Ismaeliyehs. As far as assassination was concerned, the Ismaeliyeh form of fanaticism may have been found far beyond the proper boundaries of Ismaeliyehism : indeed, the ordinary Assassins may have been Nasariyeh with a certain recognition of the Ismaeliyeh discipline—i. e. the duty of assassination when ordered by a superior to whom implicit obedience was due. They may also have been true Ismaeliyeh extended westwards. What follows, however, is the history of the Ismaeliyeh, eo nomine and iis locis.
It begins, if we take the name as an epoch, in the seventh generation from Mahomet’s son-in-law, Ali.
With Ali, began the great schism between the Sunnites and the Shiites.
Of the Sunnites nothing need here be said.
The Shiites fell into four primary divisions.
Of these one was that of the Imami, or the men whose doctrine was determined by their notion as to the character of the Imam.
The Imami were one of a dichotomy.
Whilst the Kaissaniyeh and the Seidiyeh made the true successor to Mahomet simply a human being, (differing only as to who he was,) the Imami and the Gulhat spiritualized him into an Avatar; in other words, they agreed with one another in recognizing the doctrine of an incarnation.
The Imami fell into two divisions.
The Twelve-imam sectaries made the series of revealed Imams end with Mohammed Ben Hassan Askeri, the twelfth from Ali.
The Seven-imam doctrine stopped at Ismael, the son of Dzhafir Sadik; Ismael being the seventh from Ali; the order being;—THE ISMAELIYEH.
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1.	Ali.
2.	Hassan.
3.	Hussein.
4.	Ali Sein-al-alabidin.
5.	Mohammed Bekir.
6.	Dzhaffer Sadik.
7.	Ismael, who died before his father.
The Fatemites of iEgypt were of this line; and so good did their title seem to be, that the great Kalif Almansor, Abbassid as he was, is said to have named Ali Bisa the Eighth of the Twelve-men Imams, as his successor. He did so, however, to the great offence of the other Abbassids; and, under the pressure that their claims developed, a committee of doctors sat upon the question of the succession. This committee decided in favour of the powers that were; and, as it is from Sunnite accounts that Western Europe takes its chief notions of Mahometanism, the validity of the Eatemite, the Ismaeli, and the Twelve-men Jmami claims has generally been summarily dismissed. However, they were not so treated by a great subsequent authority, the Kadi Abubekir Bakilani, who held the opposite opinion; an opinion with which the modem historian (Yon Hammer) from whom is taken all concerning the Ismaeliyeh which is here laid before the reader, apparently agrees.
Mahommed was the son of Ismael;
Dzhafir Mosadik	„	Mohammed;
Mohammed Hab	„	Dzafir Mosadik;
Obeid Allah	„	Mohammed.
Obeid Allah was the fourth in descent from the seventh Imam, and the founder of Ismaeliyebism. He, it was, who asserted his rights to the Kalifat; his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather, having been unrevealed, or latent Imams.
Let us still remember that the Ismaeliyeh doctrine is Shiite rather than Sunnite, that the Shiites are pre-eminently Persian, and that Persia, as the land of Fire-worship, Zoroastrianism, Magianism, Manichism, the Two Principles, and much of the same sort* is the quarter in which we must seek the chief influences which in the way of spirituality and transcendentalism modify Mahometanism. During the first two centuries of the Hejira the ordinary phenomena present themselves. There is168
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the struggle of the pure typical and orthodox Sassanian Fire-worship, whatever that was, with ordinary Mahometanism. But besides this, there were Mahometan and fire-worshipping sectarians. There were, amongst others, the followers of Mazdak, whose influence on the politics of the Persian Empire, under the reign of Khosroes Nushirvan, has commanded the attention (and what escaped the notice?) of Gibbon. There were, amongst others, the followers of Hakem Ben Hashem; of whom, under that name, few English readers have heard; but who to the reader of Lalla Eookh is the real Veiled Prophet of Khorasan. There is also Babek, of less notoriety hut greater power, who was a Per-sianized Mahometan; and Karmath, of whom notice has already been taken. The evidence that he also was all hut a Eire-worshipper is satisfactory. He was the disciple of Hussein, who was the disciple of Ahmed, who was the son of Abdallah, the son of Maimun Kaddah, the son of Daissas the Dualist. He it was that used for his own purposes the malcontent spirit of the Ismaeliyeh ; he, who more especially organized the secret-society element in their political organization.
It developed itself still further in Cairo, under the Eatemites> whose dynasty, in Von Hammer, seems to have been mainly supported by secret societies. As an historical fact this is highly improbable. However, the following is a sketch of what we may call the Ismaeliyeh Lodge of iEgypt in the tenth century. Its name was the Society of Wisdom. The candidates were dressed in white. Every day the chief visited the Kalif, and either read to him an essay, or took a written receipt for one having been heard by his Holiness. The pupils, on the master’s return, touched the signature with their foreheads. The institution was subsidized to the amount of two hundred and fifty-seven thousand ducats. The noviciate was put on his trial and promised implicit obedience. When sufficiently puzzled by points of casuistry, he was told that the only explanation of them lay in the authority of the Imam. When more advanced, he learned how everything went by sevens; how God had made seven planets, seven heavens, seven earths, seven seas, seven colours, seven musical sounds, seven metals, seven Imams, seven lawgivers, each of which altered the doctrine of his predecessors. There were the speaking apostles. But, besides them, there were seven mutes. The seven speakingTHE ISMAELIYEH.
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prophets were Adam, Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mahomet, Ismael; their seven assistants, Seth, Shem, Ishmael (the son of Abraham), Aaron, Simeon, Ali, and Mahomet the son of Ismael.
The highest doctrines were transcendental inculcations of in-differentism, embellished by the names of Plato, Aristotle, and Pythagoras; the practical upshot of them being that nothing was true and everything allowed, that naught was to be believed and anything to he dared.
When, taking leave of the institution, we address ourselves to the individual men who invested it with life and influence, the first name that presents itself is that of Hassan Sabah. His father Ali was a Persian of Rei, a Shiite, of doubtful orthodoxy; of which he was so definitely accused that, in order to place himself above suspicion, he sent his son to sit at the feet of the famous Mowafekof Nishabur; unrivalled as a teacher, unquestioned as a Sunnite. All Mowafek’s pupils got on well in after-life; and among them three were conspicuous. The first was Omar Kiam, whose habits were those of an intellectual Epicurean, who loved astronomy better than anything but poetry, and poetry better than anything but his ease. The next was Nizam-ul-Mulk, who became the vizier of Malek Shah. The third was the founder of the Assassins, Hassan Ben Sabah himself.
“ As all the disciples of Mowakef,” said he, one day, to the other two, “ become successful in the world, let us promise that whoever succeeds first shall share his good fortune with the other two/*
“ Agreed/'
When Nizam-ul-Mulk became vizier, Omar Kiam was the first who found him out; hut high office at court, of which his old friend thought him worthy, had no charms for him. He was satisfied with being made Astronomer Royal. He has left behind him, however, more verses than observations.
Then came, some ten years afterwards, Hassan Saha, who wTas also promoted—only, however, to endanger the place of his benefactor by vile hut eminently skilful intrigues. However, he failed and was banished. Keeping himself concealed in the house of a friend at Ispahan, he wound up a tirade against Malek Shah and his vizier, by saying, tf that with two devoted friends to do his170
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bidding he would soon have overturned both the Turk and the peasant,” i. e. the Sultan and his vizier. His host thought him mad; and when dinner came set before him a pot of aromatics and saffron, a diet-drink which was esteemed useful in cerebral affections. After this Ilassan left Ispahan, and threw himself into that vortex of intrigue and mystery with which Fatemite -¿Egypt was overflowing. The following is his own account of himself :—
From my childhood, from my seventh year, my sole effort has been to extend the bounds of my knowledge, and to increase my capacities. Like my fathers I was educated in the tenets of the twelve imans (Imanie) and I formed acquaintance with an Ismaeliyeh Refik (Fellow) called Emise Dharab, with whom I cemented bonds of friendship. My opinion was, that the doctrine of Ismae-liyehs was like that of the philosophers, and that the ruler of Egypt was one of the initiated; whenever, therefore, Emise spoke in favour of their principles, I disputed with him, andthere was a great deal of discussion between us concerning points of faith. I did not in the least admit the justice of the reproaches which Emise lavished on my sect; nevertheless, they left a deep impression on my mind. In the meanwhile he left me, and I was attacked by a severe fit of illness, during which I blamed my obstinacy in not having embraced the doctrine of the Ismailiyehs, which was the true one ; and I dreaded lest, should death await me, from which God preserved me, I might die without obtaining a knowledge of the truth. At length I recovered, and met with another Ismailiyeh, Abu-Nedshm-Saraj, whom I questioned concerning the truth of this doctrine ; Abunedshm explained it to me in the most circumstantial manner that I came fully to understand it. Lastly, I found a Dai (missionary) called Mumin, to whom the Sheikh Abdolmelek-ben-Attash, the president of the missions of Isak, had granted permission to exercise that office. I entreated him to accept my homage in the name of the Fatimite Khalif; this he at first refused, because I was of higher rank than himself; but as I urged it most pressingly he at length acquiesced. Now when the Sheikh Abdolmelek arrived at Rei, and had become acquainted with my opinions in conversation, my demeanour pleased him so, that he immediately invested me with the office of Dai (religious and political missionary). He said to me ‘Thou must go to Egypt to enjoy the happiness of serving the Imam Mostanssrr (the reigning Fatimite Khalif).” On the Sheikh Abdolmelek’s departure from Rei, on his route to Ispahan, I journeyed into Egypt.”
Where he was received with honour. But the Kalif named either the more unpopular, or the more unfit, of his sons as his successor; and it was to the losing party that Hassan attached himself. Reluctantly his imperial patron ordered him into prison. But a tower, the strongest in Damietta, fell to the ground without any visible cause, and the fall was converted into a miracle in favour of Hassan. So he was shipped off. Then a storm drove him on the coast of Syria :THE ISMAELIYEH.
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and there he preached the doctrine of the Seven Imams and of the Fatemite claims to the Kalifat. He then seems to have traversed all Persia, from Bagdad and Kerman on the south to the frontier of Turkistan on the north. The district, however, of the Rudbar, to the south of the Caspian, on the boundaries of Dilem and Irak, was his final resting-place. There he gained the castle of Alamut, the citadel of the eastern and earlier branch of his abominable sect. There he resisted more than one attack of the captains of Malek Shah. Thence he spread his arms and influence around, nominally for the Fatemite Kalif, really for himself. He was not a sultan, not an emir. He was no prince. He was the Grand Master of a brotherhood rather than an ordinary sovereign; and it is remarkable that, in the way of date, his settlement in Dilem was exactly contemporary with that of the first crusaders in Palestine. Still more remarkable is the parallelism between his order and those of the Crusaders. He himself was the Sheikh. Immediately under him were the Dailkebirs, lieutenants, bishops, overseers, or administrators of the three provinces of Dzhehal, Kohistan, and Syria. Then came the Dai or initiated missionaries, then the Refiks or associates, then the Fedavi or devotee murderers, then the Lassik or novices, and lastly the uninitiated mass.
This was the working, political, or active organization : super-added to which was a concurrent one of a more spiritual, and a very unintelligible, kind. I give, however, the details of it, in order to show how thoroughly the number seven runs through it:—
1.	The Imam, divinely appointed.
2.	The Hudzhet, or the Proof, who take orders from the Imam.
3.	The Sumassa, who take order from the Hudzhet.
4.	The Dai.
5.	The Messuni, or Freed.
6.	The Mukellebi, or Hounds who beat about for either proselytes or victims.
7.	The Mumini or believers in general.
Their discipline consisted in the unscrupulous application of a knowledge of the weak parts of human nature and a system of casuistry. The introductory rule comprised such maxims as:—
Sow not on a barren soil.
Speak not in a house where there is a lamp.172
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Waste not words on the incapable.
Speak not in the presence of a lawyer.
The second set of rules was for gaining confidence by flattering passions and humouring weaknesses. The third was for raising religious doubts and leaving them for the authority of a superior to settle. The fourth rule was that of implicit and unquestioning obedience, with oaths to sanction it. The fifth course, one of instruction, was somewhat historical. It taught the opinions of the wise and good men of all ages, so far at least as they could be wrested to a conformation of the peculiar doctrines of Ismae-liyehism. The sixth delivered a recapitulation of all hitherto leamt. The seventh was essentially esoteric and delivered in full, and delivered the allegorical or non-natural sense in which all the positive and literal injunctions of the Koran were to be taken. As all was doubtful nothing was prohibited.
Such was the school, college, garrison, or court, at Alamut, in which, as a spider in his web, sat the wicked old Hassan.
The chief disciples, and most intimate confidants of the first Sheikh were Reis Mosaffer, Hussein of Kami, Abulfettah, and Kia Busurgomid; all, apparently, Persians from the northern provinces. Under these were their conquests effected and their assassinations achieved. For the possession of rich towns and fertile valleys they cared but little. What they most especially coveted was fortresses on inaccessible rocks. Hence, the line of their acquisitions has a physical or a geological outline: and Assassin castles appear sporadically and at distances from one another wherever there is the necessary condition of a mountain-range. Of the eastern Assassins the districts to the south of the Caspian at the foot of Dermavend, and the Persian Kohistan were the chief habitats. Their foremost, perhaps their earliest victim, was Nizam-ul-Mulk himself, the old school-fellow, friend, and patron of Hassan. Hated as benefactors are hated by the ungrateful and envious, and feared as the powerful vizier of Malek Shah, it was not long after that Sultans attempt to reduce Hussein Kami that Nizam*ul-Mulk was stabbed. The sultan died soon afterwards; supposed to have been poisoned. His death was followed by anarchy; and during the dispute between the brothers Barkyarok and Mohammed for the possession of Irak and Khorasan, some important acquisitions to the power of Hassan Saba were effected. They consisted of the castles of the Shah Durye, of Derkul, andTHE ISMAELIYEH.
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Khalendzhan near Ispahan; of Wastamkuh, of Tambur and Khalovkhan; of Damaghan, Firuskuh, and Kirdkuh; of Tabs, Kain, and Toon; of Esdahan and Lamsir, all in Persia.
Such are their chief actions in the field. Of the individuals whom they murdered, the list, though incomplete, is full enough to show the character of their warfare. They struck at the men in power. Three kinsmen of the reigning sultans and three viziers I find mentioned by name as their victims. The Sultan Sandzhar himself was only warned. One morning when he awoke, he found a dagger stuck in the ground close to his head. A few days afterwards he received the following note : “ Had we not been well-disposed towards the Sultan, we might have plunged the dagger into his heart instead of the ground.”
Sandzhar, either because such warnings moved him, or because (as some of his acts incline us to believe) he was not unfavourable to the institution, would willingly have made peace with them on the three following conditions:—
1.	That they should build no more castles.
2.	That they should purchase no more arms.
3.	That they should make no more proselytes.
But the doctors of the law and Koran forbade a compromise. Their opposition, however, only delayed the settlement. A few years later, peace was concluded between Hassan and Sandzhar; greatly to the favour of the former. The Ismaeliyeh of the district of Kirdkuh were freed from all impost, and an annual subsidy was assigned to them, charged upon the revenues of the district of Kumis.
Hassan was now old. He had survived his old schoolfellows, the Vizier whose murder he had procured, and the astronomer. Beis Mosaffer, too, director, or grand master in Damghan, after receiving a visit of honour from Sultan Sandzhak, had gone down to the grave as an honoured and aged patriarch. Abul-fettah had been tortured to death in Syria; having failed to defend the city of Apamea against the crusader Tancred, who gave him over to the vengeance of the sons of Khalaf the ejected governor. Hussein Kaini, though one of the triumvirate of the first assassins, had been himself assassinated; the suspected murderer being Ostad, one of the two sons of Hassan himself. For this he was ordered to death by his father; and, along with him, his brother.174
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So, now, Hassan, not only old but childless, feels his end approaching, and sends for the two best-deserving of the Dais— for Abu Ali, from Kaswin, and for Kia Busurgomid, from Lamsir; between whom he divides his power. To Abu Ali is allotted the external command and the civil administration; to Busurgomid the supreme spiritual power.
After this, Hassan died as quietly as if, instead of being a murderer and the father of murderers, he had passed a long life in the temperate and chastened exercise of both mind and body. Yet he had never, for thirty-five years, left the castle of Alamut; and only twice had he moved from his chamber to his terrace. He had merely received reports and issued orders. The murders and battles followed as a matter of course. In like manner had lived his successor whilst at Lamsir. To Lamsir Busurgomid had confined himself as strictly as Hassan had confined himself to Alamut.
All this has been the history of the eastern rather than the western branch of the Ismaeliyeh; of the Assassins of Persia rather than of the Assassins of Syria. This is because Persia is the country in which the institution originally developed itself, the Persian castle of Alamut being the metropolis of the creed. On the other hand, however, we must remember that it was in .¿Egypt that it appears to have begun; and, connecting it, in its origin, with iEgypt, we must bear in mind iEgypts vicinity to Syria.
The exact details of the introduction of the Ismaeliyeh creed into Syria are uncertain. We have seen that, in his escape from .¿Egypt, Hassan Sabah landed in the north of that country, where he promulgated his doctrines. Still, they may have crossed the frontier from -¿Egypt before the time of Hassan. However, it is pretty certain that there were Assassins in Syria as early as there were crusaders ,* and, deadly enemies as they were to the Franks afterwards, it is on the side of the Christians, rather than the Mahometans, that they first appear. The Count de St. Gilles is besieging the fortress of Hosnal-a-Kurd, when the Prince of Emesa, as he is moving to its relief, is assassinated. It was, however, as the enemy of Eisvan, Prince of Aleppo, rather than as the Mahometan warrior, that he fell; Eisvan of Aleppo, with whom lies the disgrace of having been the employer of the first Assassins of Syria. The agent who commanded his support was a physician, astrologer, and poisoner. The next was AbutaherTHE ISMAELIYEII.
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Essaigh, a Persian goldsmith, the commandant of Sarmin, a strong fort to the south of Aleppo. Abutaher had received Abulfettah, Hassan Saha’s nephew, as a resident emissary within the walls; this being much the same as making over the fort to the Assassins. A few years afterwards the inhabitants of Apamea rebelled against their governor, and invoked the aid of Abutaher. It was granted. Khalaf, the governor, was assassinated, and the town was held as a garrison of Risvan s. Only, however, to be taken by the Crusaders under Tancred; whose conquest of it brought about the death of Abulfettah, already noticed.
Abutaher, however, was ransomed, and for some years he is the most prominent member of the Syrian branch of his vile order. An attack upon a caravan, which miscarried and was repudiated; an attack on the fortress of Shisher, which also miscarried; the murder of Newdud, Prince of Mosul, stabbed at noon-day, in the great square of Damascus,—these are the chief events which are assigned to the Assassins of the parts about Aleppo, under the direction of Abutaher and during the reign of Risvan.
However much it might suit a wicked prince to avail himself of the daggers of the Assassins for the purpose of accomplishing some particular object, it is plain that the permanent reliance on them is a political impossibility. They might, at any time, turn against their patron. Either feeling this, or actuated by some higher motive, the son of Risvan, a youth of sixteen, began his reign by an attempted extermination of the sect. Nor was it an insignificant one. Three hundred put to death and two hundred imprisoned are the numbers for that part of the Ismaeliyeh.(or as it is also called the Bathenian* persecution) which has come down to us in the most definite form. Wide as these examples must have spread, they were utterly insufficient. All that followed the attempts of Akhras and his eunuch minister was revenge, and again revenge—assassination in the light of day; assassination under the shade of night; open razzias of armed men; solitary stabbings.
The Kalif of Bagdad had to receive the Atabeg of Damascus the Governor of Khorasan being present. Mistaken for the
* Though this word is differently derived, I suggest that it is merely the geographical term Batanccan.176
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Atabeg, the Governor was stabbed by the third of three Fedavi; two of whom had failed, and all of whom were slaughtered on the spot.
The Governor of Aleppo, with two of his sons, was on the way to the court of the Emir Ilghazi. The three were murdered on the road.
The following year, this same Emir Ilghazi received a message from Abu Mohammed, the head of the Ismaeliyeh, at Aleppo, demanding the fortress of Sherif. Such demands were frequent. They were also effective. Rarely was a bold denial hazarded; as rarely was a straightforward transfer made at once. Prevarication was the rule. Consent was given; but orders for the fortress to be either demolished or spoilt were superadded. Thus it was with Sherif. Ilghazi gave it up; but, before his orders reached Aleppo, the people had pulled down the walls and filled up the ditches. So famous a prince as Nureddin prevaricated in like manner with Bertlaha.
The thread of the Ismaeliyeh history is that of a labyrinth. This is because the scenes of action are numerous, and irregularly distributed; whilst the capital, in which the Sheikh sat resident and immovable, was generally distant from the most notable of them. The work is done in Syria: the order is given, and the reports received in Persia. Not that Persia is by any means without a history of its own; at times, as bad and bloody as that of Syria itself. It has also an Ismaelite literature; for more than one of the Sheikhs were either lovers of literature or pretenders to a literary taste. We shall hear of them as vain and ambitious preachers; as innovators upon their own innovations upon Mahometanism; as reformers of their imperfect system, i. e. as men who, by making the bad worse and the wicked wickeder, treated themselves as purifiers of doctrine and menders of discipline. Syria, however, is all that we need, here, look to— making an exception only in favour of the names by which the succession was kept up. These are always borne by occupants of the original metropolis, the fort of Alamut.
1.	Hassan I. (Saba) was succeeded by Kia Busurgomid.
2.	Kia Busurgomid	„	Mohammed	I.
3.	Mohammed I.	„	Hassan II.
4.	Hassan II.	„	Mohammed	II.THE ISMAELIYEH.
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5.	Mohammed II. was succeeded by Hassan III.
6. Hassan III. (Jelaleddin) „	Mohammed III.
7. Mohammed III.	„	Eokneddin Khorshah,
the last Sheik of the Order.
Such the order of succession in the mountain metropolis. In Syria, the history falls into six periods :—
1.	The first ends with the occupancy of Samin by Abul-fettah;
2.	The second, with that of Banias;
3.	The third, with the removal from Banias to Masaad, the present locality of the fragments of the sect;
4.	The fourth, with the accession of Rashededdin Sinan;
5.	The fifth, with the Mameluk Conquest;
6.	The sixth, with our own times.
Under Kia Busurgomid, Damascus, to a great extent, takes the place of Aleppo; and it is the Vizier of Damascus who most especially intrigues with, and employs, the Assassins. We know what will come of the connection. There will be a short friendship; a discovery of either treachery, or danger; a reaction; a bloody and vindictive massacre. The whole history is a cycle of such enormities. The main details, however, gather round the names of Behram, Ismail, and Abulwefa. It is Behram who works his way to the confidence of the Vizier of Damascus, from whom he obtains the town of Banias. Dreaded, however, as the Ismaeliyeh were by the Sunnite Turks, it was not by the Sunnites that their power was broken. In the valley of Taim, an out-lying portion of the Baalbek district, an Ismaeliyeh army was cut to pieces by a combined force of Nasariyeh, Druzes, and Magians —so the name stands—by which is, probably, meant the Mutuali. Ismail, like Behram (whom he succeeded in the administration of Banias) a Persian, on the news of the defeat, entrusts his plans to the triply treacherous Abulwefa; who, whilst pretending to act with the Emir of Damascus, enters into a secret treaty with the Christian King of Jerusalem and the Knights Templars to deliver Damascus into the hands of the Crusaders and to take Tyre in exchange. The plot miscarries and the Ismaeliyeh in Damascus are massacred. Meanwhile, the Crusaders take Banias and hold it for three years.
That more individuals were assassinated in the reign of Kia
VOL. II.
N178
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Busurgomid than in any other, can scarcely he stated with safety. What, however, we may state, without hesitation, is, that during the times under notice, more crowned heads and more high officials were stricken down than at any other period. The Prince of Mosul, the Yizier of the Sultan Sandzak, the Emir of Damascus (his son), the Mufti of Kaswin, the Reis of Ispahan, the Reis of Tabriz, one Kalif of .Egypt, two of Bagdad—of these we know the names, titles, and dates: the rank having ensured a record of their fate. Of those who died unregistered, who can even guess the number ? We can hope that the murders of the poor and weak bore no proportion to those of the great and powerful; and, considering the general character of the Assassin policy, that, like lightning, it struck chiefly at the highest, this is, by no means, an unreasonable hope.
Kia Busurgomid nominated his son as his successor; thus determining that the headship of the Order should be hereditary. In Mohammed’s reign, which was, in all its essentials, a mere continuation of Busurgomid’s, the Fatemite dynasty came to its end, and -¿Egypt was conquered by Nureddin, and his lieutenant the famous Saladin. The throne under which Ismaelitism first developed itself had now fallen.
Between 1330 and 1340 the castles of Kadmos, Kahaf, and Massiat came into the possession of the Ismaeliyeh; the first two by purchase, the second by conquest. Henceforth the sect is to be studied in its present locality.
Hassan II. was the preacher and reformer we have already alluded to. He proclaimed himself a Fatemite Imam; substituted the allegorical or non-natural interpretation for the literal and grammatical sense of the Koran; effectually separated Ismaelitism from Mahometanism; and authorized by both example and precept the doctrine that everything was doubtful and nothing forbidden. The effect was uncontrolled licence and licentiousness.
His son ruled much after the same fashion.
Such was Ismaelitism in the metropolis.
In Syria Saladin was Sultan: whilst, in .Egypt, the Fatemites were no more.
Saladin was every Assassins enemy. Thrice was his life attempted. Thrice the attempt failed. The details here have not only a general, but an English, interest. The son ofTHE ISMAELIYEH.
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Nureddin was a minor; his minister a eunuch, Gumushtegin. The movements and countermovements on the parts of Saladin and Gumushtegin belong to the general history of Syria. Suffice it to say that Gumushtegin suborned the Assassins. They failed and fell absolutely into the hands of Saladin; who, on the point of taking their stronghold Massaat, was dissuaded from it by his uncle the Emir of Hamah, who was over-persuaded by Bashi-deddin Sinan, the head of the Ismaeliyeh, of whom more will soon be said. On the condition that he should, to the end of his natural life, be safe from assassination, he granted them peace. And the agreement was kept. Yon Hammer, speculating on the motives that thus kept the daggers of the Assassins in their sheaths, and made the person of the great Sultan sacred, suggests more than one reason for their faithful abstinence from his blood. The previous failures may have frightened them. The balance of power may have commanded their attention. The sanctity of a treaty may possibly have withheld them from treachery. The old saw of Honour among Thieves, probably, conveys the true explanation. Safe, however, as far as the Assassins were concerned, Saladin remained till the day of his death.
Now comes the notice of their famous embassy to Amaury, King of Jerusalem, connected, by the events with which it closed, with the terrible name of Bichard I. of England. The ambassadors offered the baptism and conversion of their sect on condition of peace, friendship, and the remission of their tribute of two thousand ducats. As they were on the way homewards with the news of the acceptance of their terms, Walter de Dumesnil, under the orders of the Grand Master of the Templars, Odo de St. Amand, set-upon them from an ambuscade and killed the envoy. The scandal spread, and Amaury demanded at the hands of Odo the punishment of Dumesnil. It was nominal: whereupon Amaury bided his time, and, at a meeting at Sidon, dragged from their hospital and imprisoned several of the Templars—himself dying soon afterwards. The Grand Master himself was taken prisoner by Saladin at the battle of Sidon. All hope of converting the Ismaeliyeh was now gone; and they were free to be used as Assassins.
Nothing has hitherto been said of the Christians whom they murdered. It may now be noted that Baymond, the Count of
n 2180
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Tripoli, had been murdered by them about forty years before the time under notice, and that, now, they murdered Conrad the great Marquis of Montserrat, a kinsman of Leopold of Austria, and an enemy of Eichard of England.
The charge of having suborned them to this unhappy act was laid against the Lion-hearted King by his contemporaries, and has been echoed by our own. It is a likely one. Bad as the deed was, it would be far from the worst for which that cruel king has to answer. At the same time, it is not on the arguments of Yon Hammer that he can be convicted. A letter from the Old Man of the Mountain of the time—probably Kashideddin Sinan— exculpates him. It runs as follows:—
To Leopold, Duke of Austria, the Old Man of the Mountain sends, greeting.
“ Seeing that many kings and princes, beyond the sea, accuse the Lord Richard, King of England, of the death of the Marquiss, I swear, by the God who reigns for ever, and by the laws which we observe, that he had no share in his death; the cause of the Marquiss’s death was as follows:—
“ One of our brethren journeying in a ship, from Salteleya to our parts, was driven by a tempest, near to Tyre, and the Marquiss had him seized and put to death, and laid hands on his money. Now, we sent our messengers to the Marquiss, requiring him to restore our brother’s money, and give us satisfaction for our brother’s death, of which he accused Reginald, Lord of Sidon, but we ascertained the truth, by means of our friends, that it was the Marquiss himself who caused him to he slain, and his money to be seized.
“And again we sent another messenger to him, by name Eurisus, whom he would have thrown into the sea, had not our friends caused him to depart hastily from Tyre. He came quickly to us, and told us these things. We, therefore, from that hour have desired to slay the Marquiss. So, then, we sent two brethren to Tyre, who killed him openly, and almost before the whole people of Tyre.
“ This, therefore, was the cause of the Marquiss’s death; and we tell you of a truth, that the Lord Richard, King of England, hath had no share in this death of the Marquiss; and they who, on that account, ill-treat the King of England, do it unjustly, and without cause.
“ Know ye for certain, that we slay no man in this world for any gain or reward, unless he have first injured us.
“And know, that we have drawn up these present letters in our palace, in our castle of Massiat, in the middle of September, in the fifteen hundred and fifteenth year after Alexander.”
This Yon Hammer treats as a forgery. The date condemns it. The Hejira, or the accession of Hassan II., was the true Ismaeliyeh era. Again, in a second letter, mentioned by William of Newbury, the Sheikh calls himself simplicitas nostra, an unlikely phrase. Be it so. Von Hammers error, and it is aTHE ISMAELIYEH.
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notable one, consists in entirely ignoring the fact that both letters, which are in Latin only, are translations: indeed, he leaves it doubtful whether he does not actually believe that Latin was the diplomatic language between the Assassins and the Crusaders. How far the charge is made good on other grounds is another matter. All that the present writer does is to condemn as a maresnest the Austrian doctrine of the letter being a:forgery; and, he does so, because he has a vague notion that if Leopold and Yon Hammer had not been Austrians it would not have been put forward.
At this time the number of Assassins, high and low, is placed at about sixty thousand. Their forts were ten: the three that have already been named, and Akkar, Hosn-al-ekiad, Safita, Alika, Hosn-al-ekiad, Sihinn, and Sarmin. Eashideddin Sinan was their Sheikh, and under him the connection with the Persian metropolis of Alamut appears to cease. Naturally. Eashideddin held himself higher than either Sheikh or Imam. He gave out that it was an incarnation of the deity. Except in a coarse dress of hair he never showed himself. No one saw him eat, drink, sleep, or spit. He preached from a rock, and the sun rose and set upon his discourses. However, once, when he mixed with his followers on the level ground, he was observed to limp. The accident that had crippled him nearly cost him his life. It was only by his eloquence that he escaped being murdered as an impostor. He escaped to become, practically, the founder of the new Syrian discipline. The little that the existing Ismaeliyeh know about their early history attaches itself to the name of Eashideddin Sinan, and the few books they have are supposed to be of Eashideddin s writing. Like those of the Druzes they are a mixture of the Koran and the Bible.
Of Hassan III.—Dzhelaleddin Hassan—the character is wholly exceptional. He undid, as far as he could, the work of his latitudinarian father and grandfather; restored Mahometanism; and was recognized as a Mahometan prince by his contemporary sovereigns. Yon Hammer, after expressly stating that not so much as one murder can be laid to his charge, takes exceptions to his motives and his sincerity.
“ Brand him who will with base report,
He shall be free of mine.”182
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A degenerate Assassin, he seems to have been a respectable ruler. His son, however, was much like his other ancestors.
With Bokneddin Kharshah, the Persian sheikship ended; destroyed by the Mongols.
The same Mongols broke, rather than destroyed, the power of the Assassins of Syria; the final overthrow of whom was reserved for the -¿Egyptian sultan, Bihars —no Fatemite, hut one of the ablest and most powerful of the new dynasty of Mam-luks. Under his reign the Crusaders still took tribute from the Ismaeliyeh; and it was this sign of subjection which the tributaries were willing to transfer. Bibars, in a treaty, made a.d. 1265, with the Knights of St. John, had made the abolition of the Ismaeliyeh payments one of its conditions. The following year he received an embassy, with a sum of money, and with the petition “ that what had hitherto been paid to the Franks, should, in future, be paid to the Sultan, and serve for the pay of the defenders of the true faith.” Three years afterwards, when Bibars was marching against the Franks, the commanders of the different towns did him homage. Nedzhmeddin, however, the head of the Order, only requested a diminution of the tribute. This cost him his place ; Sarameddin, the commandant of Alika, being put over his head. In the name of the sultan of ./Egypt Sarameddin governed all the castles of the Assassins.
A reconciliation, partaking of the nature of a compromise, with Nedzhmeddin followed. The late sheikh, now more than seventy years old, threw himself, with his son, on the clemency of Bibars; who, taking from him an annual tribute of twenty thousand drachmas, and from Sarameddin one of two thousand gold pieces, allowed the two to divide the authority between them as they best could. But, when Sarameddin fell into disgrace, all the power returned to Nedzhmeddin, whose son Shemseddin was retained at Cairo as a hostage. Eventually the father joined him. Having learned that suspicions were rising against him, he presented himself at the Sultans court in person, offering to give up all the castles in Syria and to pass the remnant of his life in .Egypt. Shemseddin, when this was agreed to, left Egypt for Syria in order to induce the Assassins to complete the surrender. This was no easy matter; Menifa, Kadmus, Massiat, Sihun, and more especially Kehef, resisted; the last-named citadel with extraordinary obstinacy. That com-THE METAWILEH.—THE WAHABIS.
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missions of murder were issued is what we expect. Still, they scarcely seem to have been the main weapon. There was much brave fighting, much personal adventure, much heroic endurance. Of the Hamsa Nameh, or narrative of the actions of Hamsa, we only know that it was composed. Of the Ismaeliyeh heroes, however, in this their last great struggle, Hamsa was the greatest.
The Syrian Ismaeliyeh of the present time, occupants of eighteen villages in the parts about Massiat, are under the rule of a sheikh or emir, nominated by the Governor of Hamah, to whom he engages to pay sixteen thousand five hundred piastres annually. The Ismaeliyeh themselves fall into two divisions—the Suveidani, so named from one of their former sheiks, and the Khisrevi, or special venerators of the prophet Khisr Ilias; the second section being the more powerful one.
In 1809 there was a war between the Ismaeliyeh and the Nasariyeh, when the latter sacked Massiat; from which they were afterwards ejected by the Governor of Hamah.
Here I take leave of the Druzes, the Ismaeliyeh, the Assassins, and the Nasariyeh.
The next two denominations are simply Mahometan.
1.	The Metawileh, or Mutually occupants of the ancient Coele-syria and of the great ruin of Baalbek, or Heliopolis, are certainly Persian in creed, and, according to the common belief, Syrian in blood. In language, however, they are ordinary Arabs. Like the Druzes, they are too strong and too brave to be persecuted with impunity. As Shiites, however, and supporters of the succession of Ali, in opposition to that of Abubekir, Omar, and Othman, they are suspected and disliked by the Sunnites; and, by all invaders, whether actual or minitant, have been reckoned on as malcontents.
2.	The Wahabis belong to the Desert, and are, in every respect, Arabs. They are the fragments of a sect of which the political power was broken by Mehemet Ali, then the obedient Pasha of the Sultan, afterwards the rebel who took to himself ¿Egypt, overran Syria and Asia Minor, and threatened Constantinople— Mehemet Pasha, the Macedonian Koniarid.
Abdul Wahab, himself the founder of the Wahabis as a sect, lived in the latter half of the seventeenth century. He was an Arab of the Beni Temim tribe. He purified Mahometanism. Burkhardt, who, with more than ordinary knowledge of the ver-184
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nacular Arabic, and with a personal familiarity with the Arabs which no traveller with the exception of Wallin has approached, who was, also, in the country during the war of Mehemet Ali, commits himself most decidedly to Wahab’s orthodoxy. He was a reformer, not a heretic. His followers (writes Burkhardt) were the Puritans of Mahometanism; strict adherents to the orthodox teaching of Abu Hanifeh, one of the four great masters of the law, and pronounced by a syndic at Cairo to be orthodox; no doctrinal heresy being imputed to them. Still, they must have gone far in a heterodox direction. They anathematized all carnal indulgences. They anathematized tobacco. They denounced poetry. They impugned the overvaluation of even Mahomet himself. They despised pilgrimages and plundered pilgrims.
The religious doctrine, however, is one thing, the political power, another. The latter was developed by Ibn Saud, born at the beginning of the present century. He sacked Mecca. He threatened Syria and iEgypt. It was he whom Mehemet Ali conquered. The following is one of his proclamations :—
Ibu Saoud to the Inhabitants of MekTca, the highly honoured.
Praise be to God, the only God! who has no co-partner—to whom belongs dominion, and who is omnipotent.
In the name of the all-merciful God ! It is necessary that every chosen servant of God should have a true knowledge of the Almighty, for in the word of God (the Kor&n) we read, Know that there is no God but one God! Bokh&ry,* may God have mercy upon him ! said, First learn, then speak and act. If it be asked, What are the three foundations of knowledge! answer, The servant’s knowledge of his Lord, of his religion, and of his Prophet.
And first, as to the Knowledge of God; if they ask of thee, Who is thy Lord? answer, My Lord is God, through whose favour and grace I have been bred up; him I adore, and adore none but him. In proof of which we read (in the Koran), Praise be to the Lord of all creatures ! Whatever exists besides God belongs to the class of creatures, and I myself am one of this created world. If they ask further of thee, How didst thou know thy Lord ? answer, By the signs of his omnipotence and creation. In proof of which we read, And of his signs are the night and the day, the sun and the moon; and of his creation, heaven and earth, and whatever is upon them and whatever they contain. And we likewise read, Thy Lord is God, who created heaven and earth. If it be asked, For what purpose did God create thee ? answer, To adore him. In proof of this we read, I created spirits and men to be adored by them. If it be asked, What does God command ? answer, The Unity; which means, to adore him exclusively and solely; and what he above all prohibits is the association with him, or the adoring of any other god besides himself. In proof of which we read, Adore God
The compiler of Mohammed’s traditions.THE WAHABIS.
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and do not associate with him any other thing or being. The adoration by which thou art to worship him, thou evincest by the Islam; by faith and alms, by prayers, rows, sacrifices, by resignation, fear, hope, love, respect, humility, timidity, and by imploring his aid and protection.
In proof of the necessity of prayers we read, Pray, and I shall grant your wishes. Prayers, therefore, are true adoration. In proof of the necessity of making vows we read, Fulfil your vows and dread the day of which the evils have been foretold. To prove the necessity of slaughtering victims, we read, Pray to God, and kill victims. And the Prophet, may God’s mercy be upon him ! said, Cursed be he who sacrifices to any other but God.
The foundation of knowledge is the religion of Isl&m, which is submission to the Almighty. In proof of which we read, “ The religion before God is Islam. And to this refers the saying of the Prophet, on whom be the peace of God ! The chief of all business is Isl&m. If they ask, How many are the principal duties of our religion ? answer, Islam, faith, and good works. Each of these is divided into different parts:—Islam has five, viz.—the profession that there is no God but God, and that Mohammed is his prophet—the performance of the prescribed prayers—the distribution of alms—the observance of the fast of Ramadhan, and the pilgrimage to the holy house of God. In proof of the truth of the profession, of faith, we read, God declares that there is no God but himself; and the meaning of the expression, There is no God but God, confirms that there is but one God, and that nothing in this world is to be adored but God. And in proof of the profession, that Mohammed is the prophet of God, we read, And Mohammed is nothing but a prophet. Our duty is to obey his commands, to believe what he related, to renounce what he forbade; and it is by following his precepts that we evince our devotion to God. The reason for joining these two professions, viz. in saying, There is no god but God, and Mohammed is his prophet; is to show our piety and perfect obedience. In proof of prayers and alms, we read, Nothing was commanded but that they should adore God, with the true religion alone, that they should perform prayers, and distribute alms. In proof of fasts, we read, 0 ye true believers, we have ordained for you the fasts ! And in proof of the pilgrimage, we read, And God exacts the pilgrimage from those who are able to undertake the journey.
As a further proof of these five fundamental parts of the Islam, may be quoted the tradition of Ibu Omar, who says, The Prophet, may God’s mercy be with him, declared that the Islam rests upon five requisites ; the prayers, the alms, the fast, the pilgrimage, and the profession that there is no god, but God. The second of the principal duties of religion is the faith. It comprises seventy-nine ramifications. The highest of them is the declaration, There is no God but God; and the lowest, the removal of all deception from the road of the faithful. Shame is one of those ramifications. The faith divides into six parts. These are: to believe in God and his angels, and the revealed books, and his prophets, and the last day, and the omnipotence of God, from whom all good and evil proceed. In proof of which we read, This is not righteousness, to turn your faces towards the east or the west; but he is righteous who believes in God, and the last day, and the angels, and the sacred book, and the prophets. And in proof of the omnipotence, it is said, We created everything through our power. The third of the principal duties of religion consists in good works. These are comprised within one single precept, which is, Adore God, as if thou didst see him; and if thou canst not see him, know that he sees thee. In proof of which we read, He who turns his face towards the Almighty and confides in him, he is the well-doer, he holds fast by the firmest handle.186
THE WAHABIS.
The third foundation of knowledge is the knowledge of our prophet Mohammed, may God’s mercy and peace be with him! Mohammed the son of Abdullah the son of Abd el Motalleb, the son of Hashem, the son of Menaf, whose parentage ascends to Adam, who was himself a descendant of Ismayl, the son of Ibrahim, with whom and with our prophet may God’s mercy dwell! Mohammed, may God’s mercy be with him! is a delegate whom we dare not adore, and a prophet whom we dare not belie; but we must obey and follow him, for it has been ordained to spirits and to mortals to be his followers. He was born and appointed prophet at Mekka; his flight and his death were at Medinah. From him, to whom may God show his mercy ! we have the saying, I am the prophet, this is no false assertion, I am the son of Abd el Motalleb ! If it be asked, Is he a mortal? answer, Yes ; he is a mortal. In proof of which we read, Say, I am but a mortal like yourselves to whom it is revealed that your God is but one God. If it be asked, Is he sent to any particular class of mankind? answer, No ; he is sent to the whole race. In proof of which we read, 0 men, I am God’s prophet sent to you all! If it be asked, Can any other religion, but his, be acceptable ? answer, No other can be accepted; for we read, Whoever shall follow any other religion than Islám, will be rejected. And if it be asked, Does any prophet come after him? answer, No prophet comes after him; for after him comes the last day. In proof of which we read, He was father to none of your men, but the prophet of God, and the seal (that is the last) of all the prophets.
This was issued by Saud a little before bis final and unsuccessful struggle with Mehemet Ali. The break-up, however, of the Wahabi schism, like the break-up of the power of the Dereh Beys, though, for many of the purposes of the politician, it is an important reality, is in many other cases more nominal than real, because (as has so often been either stated or suggested) the political power of an institution is far less vital than the social. That no such a chief as Ibn Saud is now minitant in Arabia is true; but that the Wahabi doctrines are obliterated is far from being the case. Among the genuine Beduins they are common, especially among those of the great Shammar tribe. Of these, the occupants of the Dzhebel Shammar, the original district of the division, give the nearest approach to the old Wahabi creed in its primitive strictness, which elsewhere has abated some of its harshness. Whether pure, however, or modified, it has lost much of its political importance, and whether pure or modified, it belongs to Arabia Proper rather than the Arab part of Turkey; indeed of the two Mahometan sects, the Metawileh, though much less is known about them, are probably the more important.
Of the Jews the most numerous are those whose origin is comparatively recent; the most interesting the descendants of the original Judeans. These are found in Galilee rather than in Judea Proper; the neighbourhood of Tiberias and two or three otherTHE SAMARITANS.—THE MENDEANS.
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less important districts being their chief localities. In Jerusalem, on the other hand, the majority are decidedly recent—most decidedly the Spanish portion of it, i, e. the descendants of the refugees of the persecution under Ferdinand and Isabella.
The fragments of a fragment, however, are the Samaritans. Too small to command much attention as an element in our politics, the remnant which is still to be found in the neighbourhood of its old metropolis has only within the present year been visited and described in any detail. All that is known respecting its present condition may be found in the interesting account of Mr. Grove’s personal visit to Mount Gerizim. The Pentateuch, the only part of the Old Testament which the Samaritans recognize, differs from that of the Jews in some important readings and in its alphabet. The language, however, is the same for both. In their Chronicle, whilst the language is Arabic, the alphabet is Samaritan. Mr. Grove doubts whether the present Samaritans of Syria, all of whom are assembled in a single village near Nabluz, amount to more than a hundred individuals. A few more are to be found in Cairo.
The last name in this long and complex list of Syrian denominations is that of the Mendeans or Christians of St. John—Sabeans as they are often called. If the political ethnology of Persia were under notice, they would command some attention; though, even there, they are unimportant. All that need here be said is, that there are few of them in Mesopotamia.
I conclude with a notice of two of the names.
Of the word Maronite, a full explanation is given by Asemanni, himself, a Maronite; himself, the learned Maronite, tear I|o%uv. If we look to his text only, all is clear; and the notice of Maro, or Maron, the eponymus of the sect, is a definite piece of authentic biography. It is also the notice on which the common doctrines concerning him run. But the case becomes altered when we turn our eyes from the report to the evidence, and ask the names, dates, and value of Asemanni’s authorities. What he quotes is an ancient Arabic manuscript according to the abstract or translation made by a Bishop Gabriel Barclaius in 1495, i. e. some 700 years after Maro himself. Nor is the objection thus suggested improved by a reference to the earlier notices. Cedrenus makes the Maronites, or Mardaits, the men of a Maurus Mons. How-188
THE WORD MARONITE.
ever, they were bold soldiers, and spread their arms and creed as far as Jerusalem; even into Armenia. As for Maro himself, he was an abbot of about a.d. 700, pre-eminent for his successful opposition to the Monophysites and MonetheJites; in other words, to the Melkhites. Meleko = king, and Melkhite is said to be the term applied to the Monethelites and Monophysites, who espoused the cause of the Emperor; in other words, to the Imperialists. It is a word which has a fair amount of prominence in ecclesiastical history. Perhaps it is as good a collective name as any other for the Jacobites, the Nestorians, and their heterodox congeners.
Jacobite came from Jacob Baradseus, or Barhadades, also called Zanzalus, who was Bishop of Edessa. He lay heavily (incubuit) Died a.d. on the diocese, says Asemanni, from a.d. 844 to a.d. 852.
889- He was the pre-eminent supporter of Sergius the Monophysite Patriarch against Ephraim the Catholic Patriarch of Antioch. He is also called the Mafrian of his church, an Armenian title.
Such are the varieties of creed by which the normal Mahometanism of Syria is interrupted; ’ and, it may be added, that in no other country of equal size, are they equally numerous, heterogeneous, and strange. Only in ♦he Pashalik of Gaza, where the Mahometanism is comparatively pure, are these extraordinary forms of belief conspicuously absent. In those of Aleppo and Tripoli the Nasariyeh ; in those of Tripoli and Acre, the Maro-nites and Druzes preponderate. In Damascus there is well-nigh everything—Jews, Samaritans, Ismaeliyeh, Mutuali, Arabs.
Neither in the way of ethnology, as tested by blood and language, is the uniformity complete. Like the Arabs who fall into two divisions (the Settled and the Beduins), the Turks are separated into the Turks of the towns and the Turkomans; and of the wandering Turkomans the number is laid as high as thirty thousand. To these add twenty thousand tents of Kurds.SERVIA.
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CHAPTER XIII.
Servia.
The Servians, who now come under notice, differ from all the preceding populations, or denominations, in being, to a great extent, independent. In having their practical independence recognized they differ from the Bulgarians, and Macedonians, &c. In acknowledging the suzerainty of the Porte they differ from the Greeks of the kingdom of Greece.
If the objections made elsewhere against the doctrine that the ancestors of the present Servians were immigrants from some part of Dacia, Pannonia, or Noricum, and that they effected their settlements at some uncertain period between tbe sixth and ninth centuries be valid, we must look upon them as one of the nearest approximations to an aboriginal population in existence. To the west of Thrace, to the north of Macedon, they were on the frontier of the Odrysian kingdom of Sitalces, the Macedonian kingdom of Philip, and the Illyrian kingdom of Bardylis. But it is needless to say that the minute details of the boundaries of any one of these important areas are beyond investigation. Especially difficult are the questions concerning the original extent of the Skipetars eastwards, and of the Thracians westwards. That some Macedonians, some Illyrians, some Thracians, were either the actual ancestors of the Servians, or their very near congeners, is nearly certain. Where, however, the Slavonians whom the Servians represent, first presented themselves is doubtful. Still more doubtful are the boundaries of ancient Servia in the limited sense of the term. In classical geography the name which is most especially connected with it is that of the Triballi; the great Triballian Plain being generally connected with the valley of the Timok. This, however, is partly Bulgarian. Some, however, of the Triballi, possibly the very ones against whom Philip of Macedon led an army, were Servian. So also were190
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some of the tribes through whose country Alexander cut his way in his march to the Danube—some, hut not all.
With this amount of obscurity connected with the frontiers of early Servia, it is evident that what has so lately been predicated concerning the purity of blood on the part of its present occupants can only apply to them when we speak comparatively. It can only apply to the oldest part of the nation, whatever that may he. That, at the times anterior to the dawn of history, Servia was always Servian, or even Slavonic, is a doctrine to which I am unwilling to commit myself. I only hold that the present occupancy is full two thousand years old ; and that, notwithstanding some foreign elements, it is, as compared with that of most other countries, homogeneous; especially in the interior. Along the Danube it was not much so; but it is only politically that the main stream of the Danube is Servian. Ethnologically, Servia includes Bosnia, Rascia, Montenegro, and the Herzegovna.
For these parts the earliest accounts that make any approach to detail belong to Roman rather than to Greek history; and here they apply more particularly to a nation which, except for its claims to he the chief representative of the early Servians, would he of no great importance.
In the south of Bosnia, in Upper Mcesia, in part of Servia, on the frontiers of Montenegro, aud in Albania, the dominant nation towards the downfall of the Macedonian kingdom is that of the Autariatce. On the east lay the Triballi, occupants of the valley of the Angrus and Margus. The Angrus may possibly have been the boundary, or Ukraine, which divided the two nations. At any rate, Strabo mentions the Agrianes as if they were a frontier population. These Triballi are conquered and driven-off by the Autariatse. The result of the Autariat conquests was an Autariat dominion in Thrace and Illyria. It was not of long continuance. It was broken-up by the Scordisci, who seem to have been the people of Mount Scordus or Scardus, the modern Schartag. This, however, they were, as an Englishman is a Briton. They were also called Galatse. As the Autariatse had pressed on the Triballi, the Galatse or Scordisci pressed on the Autariatse, the Mysi, and the remainder of the Triballi. They fell into two divisions, the Greater and the Lesser Scordisci.SERVIA.
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The statement that they lived mixed with Thracians, Pseonians, and Illyrians is only good so far as it gives us a rough measure of their influence. It is more important to know that they laid waste the land of the Ardisei, the Agrianes (apparently a different nation from the former one, and, according to the views of the present writer, a different portion of the March), and the Dassaretse; a fact which brings them down to Lake Okrida. There is no doubt as to their importance.
What has hitherto been written comes from Strabo; but Livy speaks of them as well. Porcius Cato fought unsuccessfully, Servius Drusius successfully, against them. Didius and Drusius dealt heavier blows still. Beduced, obliterated, or amalgamated in the time of Ammianus Marcellinus, they had left behind them a formidable name and a bad reputation, for antiquity taught that to Mars and Bellona they sacrificed the captives taken in war and drank human blood out of human skulls. Appian mentions Scordiscans as occupying a part of Pseonia in his own time, and Ptolemy places some at the mouth of the Save. The identity of the men named Galatse with the Scordisci is so thoroughly beyond cavil, that we may attribute the invasion of Phocis and the sack of Delphi to these Scordiscans. They cut their way to the headwaters of the Sperchius, on the confines of the Malienses and Thessalians, by whom, according to Pausanias, they were so thoroughly destroyed that not a man got back again. Some, however, were probably left in the country. For another branch of the Galatse we have the explicit and trustworthy evidence of Polybius. “ Some of the Gauls, those who attached themselves to Comon-torius, who escaped from Delphi, and who were unwilling to cross over into Asia, settled near Byzantium; spread over part of Thrace, established a kingdom in Tule, and threatened the Byzantins, who paid them at first three thousand, then five thousand, and then one thousand pieces of gold not to waste their land. At last, they were forced to pay as much as eighty talents yearly; which they did till the time of Kavarus, when the kingdom was destroyed, and the nation was wholly destroyed by the Thracians.”
That these Scordiscan Galatae were not indigenous to the parts about Mount Scordus is likely. The Slavonians, who were either rightly or wrongly called Galatee, were numerous; and192
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their distribution was sporadic. A language which Tacitus calls Gallic was spoken to the north of the Marcomanni. I have long held the doctrine that this was the language of the country now called Galicia; and how little this is Gallic in the ordinary sense of the term every one knows.
The parts, however, on its frontier, far as they were from Greece, sent forth their armies of sacrilegious plunderers, and in the time of Pausanias, who is our authority for the fact, “ the Costoboci overran Hellas as robbers, and reached as far as Elatea.” Whatever may he our doubts as to the Slavonic origin of the Scordisci, there is no room for any refinements about the Costoboci. No one has made them Gauls; and, stranger still, though the Germans know all about them, they have never been claimed for Germany. They took a part in the Marcomannic war. They were threatened by the Astings. They were in geographical contact with the European Alans. Their name appears in a funeral inscription in which a Dacian female and Piejpor Rex Coistobo-cenis are named. They were Sarmatians.
These Costoboci were in immediate contact with the district where the Gallic language was spoken : and, as what they did in the time of Pausanias they may have done before that time, it is probable that some of the Galatse of the Scordiscan inroads may have been, more or less, Galician.
Holding that these Galatee were not Gauls, I also hold that it was they who, in the third century b.c., crossed the Hellespont, and, cutting their way deep into Asia Minor, reduced and gave their name to Galatia. If so, the historical importance of either the pure Servians or their close frontagers, increases.
Still, for the men in the heart of Servia, the early history is obscure. Yet it is these who especially command attention ; the men of the independent mountain-ranges; the men of the thick swine-feeding forests; the men by whose descendants the independence of the present Principality was achieved.
The Roman conquest of Servia is obscure. It took place in the reign of Augustus.
As a province the newly-acquired territory bore the name of Upper Mcesia; but this seems to have been a political name for an artificial division, rather than a term in ethnology. The true Mcesia was Mcesia Inferior, Lower Mcesia, or Bulgaria:SERVIA.
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and the true Moesians, for reasons too lengthy for the present notice, I hold to have been other than Servian. Other, too, than Servian were the Dardani; a population of northern Macedonia rather than Servia Proper—the Servia of the Drin, the Morava, and the watershed between them.
Of Servia during the dark ages the only important notice is a very obscure one; that of the Emmeram MS., a document giving a rough list of the chief Slavonic occupancies. The name Obotrit or Abotrit appears herein; and it is a very remarkable one. The true Obotrits lay in Mecklenburg; and, so doing, touched the Germans on their north-western frontier. It was on the south-east, however, that Germany touched Servia. Hence, the Servians, recognized as Slaves, are named the Abotritse of the East—Osterabtrezi. They were a formidable people. The following notice, obscure as it is, tells us this:—
Isti sunt qui juxta istorum fines resident. Osterabtrezi, in qua civitates plus quam c sunt. Miloxi, in qua civitates lxvii. Phesnuzi habent civitates lxx. Thadesi, plus quam cc urbes habent, Glopeani, in qua civitatas cccc, aut eo amplius. Zuireani habent civitates cccxxx. Busani * habent civitates ccxxxr. Sittici, regio immensa populis et urbibus munitissimis. Stadici, in qua civitates dxvi. populusque infinitus. Sebbirozi habent civitates xc. Unlizi, populus multus, civitates cccxviii. Neriuani habent civitates lxxviii. Attorozi habent cxlviii, populus ferocissimus. Eptaradici habent civitates cclxiii. Uuillerozi habent civitates clxxx. Zabrozi habent civitates ccxii. Znetalici habent civitates lxxiiii. Aturezani habent civitates cm. Chozirozi habent civitates ccl. Lendizi habent civitates xcviii. Thafnezi habent civitates cclvii. Zeriuani,* quod tantum est regnum ut ex eo cunctae gentes Sclauorum exortae sint et originem sicut affirmant ducant. Prissani, civitates lxv. Uelunzani, civitates lxx. Bruzi plus est undique quam de Enisa ad Rhenum. Uuizunbeire,* Caziri,* civitates c.
No wonder that the details are dark. Though Dalmatia was known to the Komans and Bulgaria to the Greeks, Servia, from its intermediate and ambiguous position, was just the country that was known on neither side.
Still, it is separated from both Dalmatia and Bulgaria. On the side of this last-named kingdom the valley of the Timok seems, at one time at least, to have been a debateable land: inasmuch as, in the ninth century, there is a special statement that the Abotritse, Predenecentse, or Timociani, had separated themselves from the Bulgarians and attached themselves to the Empire.
Nor is this the only instance of the Servians having gravitated
* Bosnia; Servia; the White Town, or Belgrad, as well suggested by Zeuss;
Cattaro.
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towards Germany. In creed they were Greek. In their political relations they were, in the main, Greek also. In the second Crusade, however, they offered to hold Nissa as a fief under the Emperor Barbarossa; and, somewhat later, the project of a political connection with the West made compatible with the integrity of their eastern creed was suggested. When the dominion of Constantinople was real it was, doubtless, oppressive: when nominal, it was scarcely worth abjuring. It is possible that Bulgaria, at the zenith of her power, was the more formidable enemy.
That, to some degree, the fortunes of these two countries were combined is evident from one or two facts. The times when Servia shows herself the most dependent on Constantinople are the times immediately following the great defeat of the Bulgarians under Basil Bulgaroktonos; these being, also, the times when she comes most in connection with the West. The enemy of the Greek Emperor is the friend of Servia. Venice is this; the German Emperor is this; the Pope is this: indeed, in Servia, as in Bulgaria, the influence of Borne during the time of the Crusades becomes notable. Gregory VII. tempted one of the Krais, or Zhupans, by offering him the title of king. The great Krai, however, equally Greek and independent, chose his own title.
This was in the middle of the fourteenth century; the epoch of the Servian greatness, which was, then, of undoubted reality and importance.
As a contemporary of the usurper Cantacuzen (who was not only an emperor but an imperial author), the great Servian Krai is not only an Agamemnon who has his Homer, but a hero who has the further advantage of his predecessors having been buried before him in obscurity. That some of them made great inroads on the neighbouring countries, that others threw off the yoke of the Byzantines, are facts in history, though obscure ones. They lay too far east for a Koman, too far west for a Greek, annalist. The actors did their work, and died without being proclaimed. This is the fate of all similar founders of political power. The development, also, of what they began was arrested. This, again, follows a similar law. The uprise of barbarism when it is enclosed between two civilizations—real or comparative—is always ephemeral. So it was with the great family of the Fins between the civilizations of Asia and of Europe. So it was with theSERVIA.
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Lithuanians between Poland and Russia. So it is here between the Pope, the German Empire, and Constantinople. Still, looking to Servia only (and it is to Servia only that the historian of that land has to look), Stephen Dushan was as an important conqueror. Bulgaria, Bosnia, a great part of Macedonia, a great part of Rumelia, were all under Stephen Dushan. He achieved a quasi-imperial crown for himself, and adopted the title of the God-fearing King of Macedonia. With Hungary, with Venice, with Ragusa, he had political relations. He had them to a still greater extent with Constantinople; the Turks being, at first, in the dim distance, though, before his death, they were dangerously near. When he began to reign, they were limited to Asia; but Cantacuzen, who used the alliance with the great Servian Krai only so long as it suited his purpose, was the very Emperor who tempted them to cross the Hellespont. Hence, we anticipate war between the Turks and the successors of Stephen Dushan. Indeed, it was against the Turks, rather than the Greeks of the empire, that his successors had to fight. The result of their struggles we have seen. The battle of Kossova made the Servians vassals, that of Varna subjects, of the Sultan.
We now pass over a period of nearly four hundred years.
# * * *- *
For the beginning of the movements which led to the comparatively independent position in which Servia is now standing the year 1787 is a convenient date. Events, like in character to those which then took place, had taken place before. There had, for instance, been wars in which Austria had been successful; wars in which the Servians had fought on the Austrian side; wars which had made over to Austria parts of Bosnia and even of Servia itself. There were wars and there were treaties; but of these treaties and these wars the,main results were remarkable for their negative character. It seemed, as it were, a law of the Danubian campaigns, that what Austria gained in one settlement she should-lose by another. The Servians, who knew what it was to be transferred from Turkish rule to Austrian, knew equally well the converse process which transferred them from Austria to Turkey. They changed hands; but at every change they anticipated a return to the original status. The peace most favourable to Austria was that of Passarovats, which gave to her not only the
o 2196	^ffVIA.
unreduced districts of Hungary and Little Valachia, but the greater part of Servia, along with parts of Bosnia and of Turkish Croatia. But all this was held for only twenty-one years. The Treaty of Belgrad restored them to Turkey. It restored the important fortress of Belgrad itself. Then came a peace of nearly thirty years. Then the war which, ending with the Treaty of Kainardzhi, cost the Porte Crim-Tartary ; and which, if it did not weaken her more than any of the treaties which preceded, at least impaired her prestige. Indeed, it effectively and permanently lowered her in the eyes of Europe and herself.
In the war which commenced in 1787, and which was conducted against the united forces of ftussia and Austria, the troops of the last-named Power had not only entered Servia, and made it, to a great extent, the seat of war, hut had been well received and actively assisted by the Servians. A body of Servian volunteers had attached itself to the Austrians, and, under more than one native officer, had rendered more than ordinary service. Especially had the regiment under Colonel Micaelovitsli distinguished itself by a bold march across a country which, since the time of Stephen Dushan, had never been traversed by regular troops, and the capture of the town of Krushevats. No wonder, then, that when, by the Treaty of Sistova, the fortresses in the occupation of Austria were evacuated, the military bearing and acquired skill of the hitherto despised rayas should have provoked wonder, not unmixed with suspicious apprehensions, on thb part of the Ottomans; their discipline being the more readily appreciated inasmuch as it was the introduction of European tactics at which the energetic Sultan, along with his best ministers and officers, was more especially labouring. Here, then, they had soldiers after the fashion of Western Europe ready formed. That they were Christians was the bitter matter of regret.
In comparing the Servian revolution with the Greek, the difference of the geographical relations of the two countries is of importance. On the frontier of Hungary and Croatia; allied in blood and language to the Oroatians (a nation of soldiers); in contact with Bosnia; equal in its warlike spirit to either of its neighbours; and, above all, in the mid-region between Constantinople and Vienna, Servia was in a thoroughly military atmosphere. Greece, on the other hand, as far as her soil was concerned, wasTHE REVOLUTION.
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on the road to nowhere ; and, except so far as she was Klephthic, had no practice in land warfare. In respect to the sea, however, the positions of the two countries were reversed. Servia was military or nothing. “ Neighbours! what have you made our rayas? ” was the exclamation of a Turkish officer to an Austrian when the latter paraded, out of one of the restored fortresses, a body of Servians, as well-accoutred and as likely-looking soldiers as his own Germans or Hungarians. Regiments of this kind are not easily disbanded; especially when the land they live in is poor and rugged and when the language has a mild name for robber. Klephth, in Greece, is heyduk, in Servia; and of heyduks— never wholly wanting—there was an inordinate proportion after the Treaty of Sistova.
The reform of the Turkish army has been alluded to. It had a definite, though indirect, bearing upon the changes in the temper and discipline of the Servians. The power of the janissaries had to be broken; but it was by no means easy to break it. Insubordinate in most districts, these Praetorians were pre-eminently insubordinate in Servia. The mode of recruiting them by means of the tribute of Christian children had long passed away. So had the necessity of their remaining unmarried. As soon as the service became remunerative, the men who derived advantage from it kept it for their own offspring, and became the fathers of the sons to whom it was transmitted. The tendency to remain in the districts in which they were garrisoned had set-in. The habit, in time of peace, of pursuing some civil occupation or trade had grown up. The captaincies were becoming hereditary. In some cases the captains usurped titles beyond their rank. The Ay as became Deys. That under such conditions they should be insolent and oppressive to Christians and civilians is what we expect. In Servia they had encroached upon the rights and even the property of the spahis, or those soldiers whose service was rendered as a feudal obligation. The lands which the Servian spahis held on this tenure the janissaries threatened to take for themselves; and on one occasion as many as fifteen spahis were murdered by their co-religionists and fellow-soldiers. At the head of the janissaries of Belgrad was Deli Akmet. The Sultan and the Minister of War knew him only as their Aga. He designated himself as the Dey.198
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To coerce these unruly troops Abu Bekir was sent as Pasha to Belgrad with more than ordinary powers. His first act was the treacherous murder of Deli Akmet; a blunder as well as a crime. The Pasha of Yiddin, the formidable Paswan Oglu, was then in a state of inchoate, if not actual, rebellion; and with Paswan Oglu the soldiers of the murdered Aga found a ready welcome. His own troops were a heterogeneous mixture of heyduks and adventurers, Christian as well as Mahometan. Of these— Krid-zhali as they were called—the rebel janissaries doubled the strength. At the head of these mixed companies Paswan Oglu invaded Servia, and tookTshernets, Kraiova, and Nikopolis, before liis career was notably checked.
Of the government of the Pasha Abu Bekir the Servians had nothing to complain. That of his successor Hadzhi Mustafa was remembered with gratitude, as shown by his hypocoristic cognomen, Srbska Mailca = Servia s Mother. Such services as the rayas were free to render, they rendered; and with their aid the career of Paswan and his myrmidons was checked. But
Non tali auxilio nec defensoribus istis
Est opus---
though not exactly the cry, was the sentiment in Constantinople. To reduce the Faithful by the help of the Infidel was an abomination in the eyes of the extreme, and even the moderate, Mahometans. “ If such are the terms on which the janissaries are to be coerced, re-admit them/* This was the gist of the new order of the Sultan.
Be-admitted, they took the power in their own hands. Four of their Agas they ennobled by the title of Dey, and allotted a district to each. The onslaught upon the rights of the spahis was continued. Ali Yidaitsh of Bosnia supported the aggressors. The humbler prayers of the rayas were now supported by the more influential remonstrances of the spahis; indeed, the lot of the spahis was a hard one. Whatever may have been their value on the field of battle in conjunction with the janissaries and against a common foe, they were wholly unequal to a struggle with the janissaries themselves. Neither did the Sultan sufficiently strengthen them. His threat, however, to the janissaries was one pregnant with consequences. <e It is a grievous thing,” he proclaimed, “for true believers to fight against each other.THE RÉVOLUTION.
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Soldiers of another nation and another creed shall be sent against you/* The threatened usurpers interpreted this to mean the Servians: and upon a massacre, sufficiently effective to make such assistance impossible, they at once decided. The onslaught took place in February, 1804.
The details of the beginning of a massacre, when the attack is made by the armed upon the unarmed, much as they may shock, do little in the way of instructing, us. They are numerous, and, all the world over, they are alike. Few difficulties have to be surmounted. Hence they are the measure of little except the cunning of the contrivers and the obduracy of the perpetrators. What really both affects and instructs us is the resistance.
Even in revolutions the most important characteristics are few in number, and, generally, of one kind. When fairly set a-going revolts present a remarkable sameness of aspect—the same courage, both active and passive, often rising into heroism, often sinking into brutal ferocity; the same horrible cruelties; too often the same contempt for the most solemn engagements; unity and unanimity when the pressure of the common enemy is heavy; discord and faction when that pressure is lightened; interminable jealousies and factions; exceptional treacheries; acts of sordid selfishness; foreign intervention; ingratitude and repudiation. That the spirit of liberty for which this, with the like, is the price, redeems the crimes and follies of individuals, is true; but in all this, except so far as they differ in degree, the best and the worst revolutions agree in the general character of their details. This is my excuse for not going into the minutise of the Servian struggle for independence. One revolution is already contained in this volume; and others will have to be noticed. But, like a war in an enemy’s country which an unscrupulous commander makes self-sustained, a revolution, when once fairly afloat, propagates itself. The first step towards it is the important one. This separates it from the previous state of things. And the inaugurator is the hero. This is the man whose courage is of the rarest kind, and for the work to be done, the most valuable and indispensable. The man who—to use an expression, of which the origin is in our nursery fables and its application in the history of Scotland—first dares to bell the cat is the man whose name,200
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when known, should never he left without its record and its honour. He is in political, what the leader of a forlorn hope is in military, history. He is rarely a blameless character; for the blameless character may turn the left cheek to the smiter of the right. He is not always wise in council; not always absolutely unexceptionable in his motives, good, had, or indifferent. However, he has the one quality of revolutionary daring which the hero of a hundred battles may admire.
For such a man Servia had not long to wait. Some twenty of his countrymen (we know the names of fourteen knezes and priests) may have been put to death before Kara George began the liberation of his country with a signal act of stern resolu-lution, hut one which his subsequent life showed to be in strict harmony with his character.
Kara George, Czerny George, Black George—they all mean the same; the first name being Turkish, the second Servian. I have chosen the Turkish adjective, not because it is, theoretically, the best, but because it sounds best.
Kara George had served during the Austrian war against the Turks. When the war was over, he seems to he what in Cumberland would be called a statesman or yeoman farmer. But his herds consisted of hogs—the common cattle of Servia. He bred and dealt in them. It is mere disparagement to call him a swineherd or a hog-jobher. Yet we can hardly call him a farmer or a merchant. He was essentially a man of the middle class; and, even before his elevation, a man of influence in his district.
He had completed a bargain, and was driving his swine to the place of delivery, accompanied by his father, when he saw a gang of janissaries in pursuit of him. For the younger man an escape was doubtful; for the older impossible. For whichever was taken a cruel death was the only certainty. Kara George saw this at once, and shot his father on the spot. After this he completed his escape.
It was across the Save that he fled, and on the hank or in the stream of that river he left the dead body of his father. It is in the rugged district of Shumadia that he is next found.
Shumadia, in the north of Servia, may he called the cradle of the revolution. It lies as a broad watershed .between the lowerTHE REVOLUTION.
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courses of the Drin and the Morava. On each side lie the valleys of those two streams and their feeders, each feeder with its valley. The largest* of these is that of the Kolubara. In Upper Servia, the valleys are both narrower and more complex; the country more truly mountainous ; the towns and villages smaller.
In Shumadia, the revolution was organized. There met the first triumvirate; Kara George, Yanko Katitsh, and Yasso Tsharo-pitsh. Katitsh had served against Paswan Oglu. The brother of Tsharopitsh had been one of the first victims of the massacre. They determined upon a general resistance. The apportionment of the country to the organizers of the different districts was an easy matter. So definite were the natural boundaries, that it may be said to have allotted itself. Nor were the men wanting to the place. For the districts beyond the Kolubara there were Yakob Nenadovitsh,. a knez ; Luka Lazarovitsh, a priest; and Kyurtshia, a heyduk: for the Upper Morava, Milenko, and Peter Theodorovitsh. These had the chief voice in the election of their leader, director, chief, general, or dictator. The first offer was made to Glavash, who had degenerated from a herdsman into a heyduk. His wife had lamented the falling-off. “ We are all heyduks in times like these,” was the husband’s answer. In the council, however, he admitted that his profession was a drawback, and stated that a heyduk was not the proper leader of the Servians. Then the choice fell on a knez (local magistrate, esquire, country-gentleman), Theodore Oratshi. “ The fit man,” said Oratshi, “ is Kara George; ” and as Oratshi was known to mean what he said, the votes went to Kara George. For the third time unfitness was pleaded. u I am too hot in temper. If offended, I strike at once.”
‘‘This is what we want; a man with a will. We are an unruly set. The strongest hand is the best for us.”
To this effect spoke the meeting and Kara George was named the leader. The character he gave himself was a true one: though only as far as it goes. That he was a kindly man when his angry fits were not upon him is just possible. The kindliness, however, with which he has been invested is of a doubtful kind. With the description that he gave of himself and with his fathers blood (whatever may have been the necessity for shedding it) on his hands, a little tenderness goes a long way. When a202
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man seems very bad it is easy to say that the appearances are worse than the reality.
He was severe, to say the least. When his’power and responsibilities were at their height, his brother scandalized the cause by an aggravated case of seduction—not, perhaps, the first that was charged against him. Him, Kara George ordered to be hung. The mother he forbade to wear mourning. That he enforced his order by clapping a live bee-hive over her head is only a floating report—perhaps a false one. True or false, however, it shows that Kara George had the credit of doing strange things.
The third of those sacrifices which Kara George had the evil hap to make of men who, under ordinary circumstances, would have been pre-eminently safe, was that of the knez to whom he owed his dictatorship. Before Kara George's dictatorship was over, orders had been given for Oratshi to be cut-down. “ May God punish him who gave cause for this quarrel," was his reflection on it.
Still, of purely gratuitous cruelty, no charge lies against Kara George. Nor yet any of perfidy or dissimulation. Neither was he warped from the simplicity of his original habits by the possession of power. Perhaps, in the plenitude of his power he was too ostentatiously simple. His first title was that of Commander : afterwards that of Highest Euler.
And now the war against the Deys became orgauzed; and, as the beginning of the Servian struggle was one of those strange conflicts which take the form of a triangular duel, it will be given in detail. There were three belligerents; indeed, in some sense, there were three parties. Two were certainly principals; the janissaries and the ray as.	The representatives of the
central government and the spahis were prepared to put down the former without admitting the latter to the full dignity of allies; though as allies, in the first instance, they were ready and willing to use them. Even the alliances were ambiguous, equivocal, and two-sided; as we may see from the example of the first of them.
Gushanz Ali joined the contest with a considerable body of kridzhalis. He was not disinclined to the Servians, not hostile to the rayas. He was a Mahometan. However, he fought on the side of Mahometanism and the Turks in either case. But he was not met more than half way by the Servians—-if so much. TheTHE REVOLUTION.
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fewer Turks they had among them the better; and, in this, we get a measure of their independent confidence. So the janissaries accepted him, and gave him a certain part of Belgrad to defend.
Then came, also on the same side, Ali Vidailsb, from Bosnia; and, at his expense, it seems that the first blood was drawn. He would and he would not; indeed, his whole conduct was a blunder. So thoroughly did he despise the rayas that, instead of placing himself at the head of his troops, he stayed at Szabacz, and sent them forward. At this time the Servians were busied on one of their first imperfect fortifications—apparently little more than a stockade—at Svileuva. The enemy advanced without its leader, and the rayas so managed their retreat that they left Ali’s soldiers entangled in the entrenchments. Thus circumvented, they made an excuse, and pretended they were only observing, recon-noitering, or something equally innocent. They had only come to note what was going on. On the strength of this they were allowed to march off unscathed. A body, however, of real and undoubted enemies who had joined them, was cut to pieces. Such was the affair at Svileuva.
And now three sieges were undertaken at once : that of Posha-revats by Milenko, that of Szabacz by Nenadovitsh, and that of Belgrad by Kara George. The history of the three is connected, that of Szabacz taking precedence in our notice. At the head of about eleven hundred kridzhalis, Noshina attempted to relieve it. In a cloister at some distance from the town lay Kyurtshia with two hundred heyduks. Nenadovitsh pressed upon him the importance of maintaining his position.
“ But the cloister,” said Kyurtshia, “ and the lives! ”
“ Cloisters can be rebuilt. The matter in hand is the taking of Szabacz.”
Out of this dialogue (unless, as is likely, there had been some previous cause of jealousy) arose deadly enmity between two men who, in different degrees, deserved well of their country. It led to the first deed of partizan atrocity. Kyurtshia himself withdrew. His men held the ground. Nenadovitsh went to the camp of Szabacz for a reinforcement. On his return every one of the two hundred lay dead. They had fought to the last against the eleven hundred kridzhalis, but in vain. Such was204s
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tlie Servian Thermopylse. The Turkish victory, however, was useless. Nenadovitsh had procured a gun; and this single gun did half the work in taking Szahacz. The inartistic character of the sieges is common to both the Greek and the Servian revolutions.
The same gun helped to reduce Posharavats, to which, after the capture of Szahacz, Nenadovitsh betook himself; Kara George, with such few forces as he could spare from Belgrad, accompanying him. Posharavats was taken, and the three captains joined their forces under Belgrad. And here they were joined by the Pasha of Bosnia, who was received with every demonstration of respect. He was, doubtless, welcome; for the walls of Belgrad had withstood severer sieges than any that such soldiers as the rayas could conduct. Still, for an auxiliary, he was superfluously strong. On the other hand, the extent to which the Servians had carried matters after their own fashion, and the evident determination they shewed to continue acting for themselves disturbed him. On the besieged, however, the effect was unequivocal. They saw the union of an imperial and a raya army. Worse still, their ally, Ali Gushanz, was preparing to betray them. Silently and in the dead of night did the four Deys float down the river to Orsova, leaving Belgrad to their deserted troops, to the Pasha, to the rayas— to anyone. The real master was Ali Gushanz.
Nothing short of personal revenge on the Deys would satisfy the Servians; and, to this inhuman feeling, the Pasha gave way. An order was given for the Governor of Orsova to admit Milenko and a certain number of followers. They kept together. A house was shown them. They came out of it with four bloody trophies, the four heads of the Deys.
This satisfied the Servians; and the Pasha expressed himself satisfied with them. In short, he told them that their services were no longer wanted, and that they might return to their respective homes. But they were as difficult to disband as the janissaries. At first their language was moderate; constitutional. The work was incomplete. The upper fortress of Belgrad had yet to be taken. So had Karanowats and Ushitza in the south.
The state of Belgrad under Gushanz Ali is characteristic. Upon the flight of the Deys he surrendered the town. But onlyTHE REVOLUTION.
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partially. The upper fortress he retained; “until,” he said, “ the arrears of pay which were due to him for his services during the siege were paid.” He had, of course, until the eleventh hour, fought for the janissaries. Nevertheless, the Pasha got him his pay—not from the Imperial treasury, hut from the Servians. He then tampered with his army with a view to obtaining the pashalik. But half the men declared for a second pretender, and the two factions added to the complications of a quarrel already over-complex by fighting against one another within the walls of the town.
The present state of Servia tells us that the Servians were anything hut disbanded. Ushitza was invested by Kara George, unsuccessfully; Karanowats by Milenko, successfully.
Let us now follow Kyurtshia; him who quarrelled with Nena-dovitsh before Szabacz. He crossed the Bosnian frontier, and brought over to the war of emancipation the districts of Jadar and Badzhevina. The grievances, however, whereof the Bosnians of these parts complained, were remedied, and the revolution was again limited to Servia. Kyurtshia, on his return, was charged with having given the enemy, by his absence, some opportunities of which they took advantage—unjustly, inasmuch as he had really effected a diversion. Without suspicion, he presented himself before Nenadovitsh, who received him as if they had always been friends, and feasted him until it was far in the night. The next morning he was attacked and murdered.
The war against the janissaries is over. The enemy is now the Sultan—purely and simply. The war goes on, but with the character of a guerilla. Neither is a compromise impossible; especially if effected by the intervention of some friendly Power. In the beginning of 1805, a legation returns from St. Petersburg, with promises that any reasonable application to the Porte shall have the support of Bussia. The Servians demand, amongst other things, the withdrawal of all Turks from the garrisons; in which none but Servian soldiers are to be admitted. The deputies are arrested, and the Pasha of Nish is ordered to disarm the rayas. The scabbard is now thrown away. The Pasha of Nish is defeated.
The great event of the campaign now comes on. An army under Hadzhi Bey, from the east, and another, consisting of forty206
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thousand men, under the Pasha of Scutari, are ordered to march upon the Servians and crush the rebellion at once. The actions now assume magnitude and their results become decisive. By an attack with a far inferior force, in which he was ably supported by Katitsh, Kara George, with desperate boldness and unsurpassed rapidity, fell upon the two divisions in detail and won the first of two great victories. The second follows soon after; and then the capture of Belgrad. By the campaign of 1806, the Turks were driven beyond the Drin.
The practical independence of the country is now, for a time, established. It has a constitution; with Kara George at the head of the executive. The Turks have full employment elsewhere. Butin 1810 hostilities recommence, and the success is on the side of the Ottomans. Faction, too, sets in; and Dobrinjaz accuses Kara George of affecting a dictatorship. The treaty of Bukarest leaves the Servians with the following amount of encouragement, viz. (secured by the eighth article) an amnesty, the right of administering their own internal government, and a moderate amount of impost, which was to he paid directly to the Porte instead of being farmed to contractors:—“ though it was impossible to doubt that the Sublime Porte would, according to its principles, act with gentleness and magnanimity to the Servians as a people that had long been under its dominion. Still, it was deemed just, in consideration of the part taken by the Servians in the war, to come to a solemn agreement respecting their security.” The most definite promises in behalf of Servia were those that have just been given. To the Sultan all the Servian fortresses were surrendered, and it was by Turkish soldiers that they were garrisoned.
The clauses were too indefinite to fix the condition of Servia, so that the revolution continued. The Turks demanded that the fortresses should he given-up to them as a preliminary to the establishment of the Servian autonomy. The Servians required that the autonomy should precede the delivery of the fortresses; especially the all-important one of Belgrad. It was Kara George who insisted on this, and he was acting under the advice of Bussia, whose policy it was to embarrass the Porte as little as possible; inasmuch as Napoleon, though his power was broken, was still formidable. Hence, though the Pasha of Viddin was in rebellion against the Sultan, he found no allies in Servia; a factTHE REVOLUTION.	207
which, along with many others of a like kind, exemplifies the extent to which Servia and Bulgaria have not acted together.
The campaign of 1813 was in favour of the Ottomans, the last of the patriots who held out with any notable effect being Veliko. He was cut in two by a cannon-ball while giving orders on the battlements of Negotin. Like Kyurtshia, a heyduk, he had served his country better than more respectable men. Unlike Kyurtshia, he fell on the field of battle, and, unlike Kyurtshia, at a time when he could ill be spared. Never was the prospect more discouraging. Except in the eyes of Yeliko himself, it was hopeless. The Shumadia alone was unreduced; and of the heroes of the Shumadia, the first organizers of the revolt, two were dead and one was untrue. As the danger increased, the energy of Kara George had fallen-off. He was seen but rarely; in the council or on the battle-field, never. He was more with the Russian Consul than with anyone else. During the whole of his government he had neither affected display, nor indulged in luxury. But money he was believed to have saved; and money he loved. He had probably buried what he had amassed.
On the 1st of October, however, he appeared in the camp on the Morava. On the 2nd, the Turks had crossed the river, and were advancing with a force apparently overwhelming. In 1806 Kara George took no pains to count his enemy, and it was against greater odds than this that his first victory had been won. But now, as if panic-stricken, he took flight: not with his army, for that he abandoned, but with his secretary and three others, Neoloba, Leonti, and Philippovitsh.
Milosh Obrenovitsh took his place. During the period of depression, he had been pressed to take refuge in Austria. “What/* he answered, “will my life profit me in Austria, while, in the meantime, the enemy will sell into slavery my wife, my child, and my aged mother ? No! whatever may be my fate of my countrymen shall be mine also! ” Truer to his country than to his own word, he had been pardoned and promoted by the Sultan. When required to make a personal submission and to deliver up his arms, his sword was all that was surrendered. And that was restored. Afterwards he was made Knez of Rudnik; and, had the cruelties inflicted on his countrv-men been moderate, he might have maintained the double relation of servant to the Porte and friend of Servia. But exe-208
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eutions multiplied ; and men were beheaded and impaled in every part of the country. Again the ray as rose in arms. Again they found a leader. There was bravery and violence; there were jealousies and factions as before. But, before the end of 1815, there were few Turkish soldiers in the villages. The fortresses they held; but from the rural districts they had retired. The next year, however, they advanced to the frontier. Instead of crossing it they negotiated. The necessity of watching the Powers assembled at Vienna suggested caution. Nor were the terms of Milosh much beyond those of the Treaty of Bukarest. He was recognized as Prince or Knez of Servia by the Sultan; whom he, in his turn, acknowledged as suzerain. Still, the condition of Servia was equivocal. The Greek revolution let matters ripen, and it was not until 1838 that the Servian Magna Charta was declared.
In the following extract from the firman, granted by the Sultan, thee means Milosh.
In conformity, then, with the organic statutes which I have just granted to the Servian nation, the dignity of prince is conferred on thee and upon thy family, in recompense of thy fidelity and of thy devotion, and agreeably to the contents of the Imperial berat, which thou hadst previously received.
The internal administration of the province is entrusted to thy faithful care, and four thousand purses of annual revenue are assigned unto thee for thine own disbursements. I confide unto thee, at the same time, the appointment of the different officers of the province, the execution of the established regulations and laws, the chief command of the garrisons necessary for the police and for preserving from all infraction the good order and tranquillity of the country ; the duty of levying and receiving the public taxes and imposts, of giving to all the officers and functionaries of the province the orders and directions for their conduct which may be requisite; of inflicting the punishments to which the guilty shall have been condemned according to the regulations; and I grant unto thee the right of pardoning, under suitable limitations, or at least of modifying the punishments.
These powers being entrusted unto thee, thou wilt consequently possess the absolute right, for the good administration of the country and of the inhabitants whereof the duties are imposed upon thee, to select, nominate, and employ three persons, who, placed under thy orders, shall form the central administration of the province, and shall occupy themselves, one with the affairs of the interior, another with the finances, and a third with the legal affairs of the country.
Thou shalt constitute a private chancery, which shall be under the directions of thy lieutenant, the Pristavink, whom thou shalt charge with the delivery of passports, and with the direction of the relations subsisting between the Servians and the foreign authorities.
There shall be formed and organized a council composed of the Primates and of the persons of the greatest consideration among the Servians.
The number of the members of this council shall be seventeen, one of whom shall be the president. No person who is not a Servian, or who shall not have received the character of a Servian in conformity with the statutes, who shall notSERVIA.
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have attained the age of thirty-five years, or who is not in possession of real property, can form part of the national council, or be reckoned among the number of its members.
The Servian rayas, tributary to the Sublime Porte, being Christians of the Greek religion, otherwise called the Church of the East, I grant to the Servian nation full liberty to observe the usual forms of their religion, and to choose from amongst themselves, with thy concurrence and under thy superintendence, their archbishops and bishops; provided that they shall be subject to the spiritual power of the patriarch residing at Constantinople, considered as the head of the religion and of its synod. And, as in virtue of the privileges and immunities granted, of old, to the Christian inhabitants of the Ottoman empire since the conquest, the administration of the affairs of religion and of the Church, as long as it does not interfere with political matters, should belong entirely to the heads of the clergy; as likewise the assignment on the part of the nation of the allowances to the metropolitans, bishops, igumens, and priests, as well as to the religious establishments belonging to the Church; the same rule shall be observed with regard to the allowances and preferment of the metropolitans and bishops in Servia. Places shall be appointed for the meeting of the special council of metropolitans and bishops for the purpose of regulating religious affairs, the affairs of the metropolitans and bishops, as well as those of the priests; and those relating to the churches of the country.
The sipahiliks, the timars, and the ziamets, having been abolished in Servia, this old custom shall never be introduced there for the future.
My Imperial will having settled and established the aforesaid regulations, this Imperial firman has been drawn up expressly in order to communicate them unto thee, and has been sent unto thee decorated with my illustrious Imperial signature. I order thee, therefore, to watch over the security of that Imperial province, as well internally as externally: having entrusted the rule thereof to thee and to thy family only on the express condition of obedience and of submission to the orders proceeding from me, to ensure the prosperity thereof, to employ thy efforts to devise means for securing to all the inhabitants repose and tranquillity, to respect the position, the honour, the rank, and the services of each; and, above all, to take care that the clauses and statutory conditions above expressed are carried into execution wholly and for ever, thus applying all thy zeal to draw down upon my Imperial person the prayers and blessings of all classes of the inhabitants of the country; and in this manner to confirm and justify my sovereign confidence and benevolence towards thee.
In like manner, I enjoin all the Servians in general to submit themselves to the orders of the Prince, acting in accordance with the statutes and institutions of the country, and carefully to conform themselves to what is necessary and fitting. I command that this Imperial Hatti-Sheriff be published, in order that the nation may have cognizance thereof; that every one, impressed more and more with gratitude for these concessions and benefits granted by my sovereign munificence to all alike, shall conduct himself under all circumstances in such a manner as to merit my approbation; and that the clauses of the present statute be executed, word for word, and for ever, without any infringement thereof at any time.
And thou likewise, my vizier, thou shalt so understand it; and thou shalfc join thy efforts to those of the Prince for the exact and strict execution of this present Imperial firman.
Such is the notice of the land at large. The personal history of
VOL. II.	p210
SERVIA AND BOSNIA.
the two protagonists is a sad one. "Kara George returned to Servia and was executed by the order of Milosh; Milosh was constrained to retire into Austria, having abdicated in favour of June 15, his son; whose successor was the so;n of Kara 1843. George, whose successor, as we shall see, was Milosh the father, restored.
# # * * #
In Bosnia, the Herzegovna, and Turkish Croatia, the point which more especially commands notice is that wherein they chiefly differ from Servia; and this they do in being Mahometan rather than Christian.
At the present time, Mahometanism preponderates in Bosnia; though not in its typical form. It is the Mahometanism of Lazistan; Mahometanism with a substratum of Christianity; Mahometanism with a minimum amount of polygamy; Mahometanism as held by renegades, recent converts, unwilling converts, converts with a clear knowledge that the creed of their forefathers was other than their own—a bigoted Mahometanism withal. Where the Sultan is tolerant, the temper of the people is fanatic; and in no part of the Ottoman dominions is the Christian subject to more insult and injury than he is in Bosnia and Turkish Croatia at the hands of men of his own blood and language.
In many respects the Bosnians are more Turk than the Ottomans themselves. For the supply of unfeeling and rapacious soldiers, brave and merciless, Albania stands foremost. The energetic Pasha, however, is the pre-eminent production of Bosnia; and energy, in Ottoman history, means unscrupulous blood-shedding, with just enough of decision and promptitude to command the admiration of the hero-worshipper.
No wonder. With the proud bravery of the Turk engrafted upon the intelligence and activity of the Slavonian Highlander military aptitude is the natural result. Again—the semi-feudal system of Bosnia fosters the same tendencies; for until the time of Mahmud II. the exact analogue of the Turkish Dereh Bey was to be found in every valley of Bosnia and Herzegovna. The land was a land of clans and chiefs. There was too little sub-infeud-ation, and the system was too simple to make it run on all-fours with the feudalism of France and Germany: still, as far as it -went, it was feudal. All this was centralized by Mahmud II.,SERVIA AND BOSNIA.
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just as the same state of things was centralized in Asia Minor. It is one thing, however, to break the political power, another to break the social influence, of a chief. A near approach to Dereh Bey system still exists. The bonds between Bosnia and the Porte have every year grown looser. Always, more or less, independent, it is now malcontent—all the more so from having Servia on its frontier.
Meanwhile, the Christian minority is considerable. It may amount to a third of the whole. But it is not homogeneous. Along the Save and Drin, and on the Slavonian and Syrmian frontier, it is Greek. Along the Verbaz, and on the frontiers of Croatia and Herzegovna, it is Roman Catholic.
Religious intolerance favoured the adoption of Mahometanism in Bosnia. The Paterines belonged to the same general division as the Albigenses. They were, to a great extent, Paulicians, and the Paulicians, though one, at least, of their writers has, expressly and by name, repudiated Manes, were deeply dipped in Mani-cheism. Indeed, what is called Western Manicheism was promulgated by the Paulicians of Bulgaria. To purify the spiritual part of our nature by asceticism, to reduce the connection between the sexes to the minimum required for the continuance of our species, to rejoice in the names of the Pure (Cathari) and the Perfect, were the principles of the Paterines. They held their goods in common. They bore with undaunted fortitude and resignation persecutions of barbarous atrocity. In the eleventh century they were persecuted in France. In the twelfth they were stricken by the sword of the Albigensean Crusaders. With a history like this in the far west, they may reasonably be looked for on the soil of their adopted country; in Bulgaria and the neighbouring countries. In Bosnia .they were either more numerous or more obstinate than even in Bulgaria; and in Bosnia they were sufficiently persecuted by the orthodox of both churches to prefer Mahometan oppressions to Christian.212
YALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
CHAPTER XIV.
The Danubian Principalities, Valachia and Moldavia.
At the dawn of history a portion of, at least, Moldavia was the occupancy of the Get®, hold riders and active bowmen; bowmen who discharged their terrible arrows from the backs of their horses, and, from doing so, were known as the Hippotoxot®, or horse-bowmen. The Greeks knew something of them, the Macedonians more, the Thracians most. Their assistance was valued : their hostility feared. They came in contact with the Hellenic world during the Peloponnesian war. They had, before this, come in contact with the Persian. That they belonged to the Eastern rather than the Western part of the present principalities, I infer from the Dobrudzha and Bessarabia having been called the Solitudes of the Get®.
The ceremonies of the worship of Zalmoxis, as described by Herodotus, were, if not exclusively Getic, common to the Get® and their neighbours the Thracians. The drunkenness and polygamy ascribed by the writers of the New Comedy to the barbarians of those parts were Getic. Lastly, a strange population with the features of Indians and the habits of gipsies, which Herodotus notices under the name Sigynn®, was an occupant of either the Getic territory or the Getic frontier.
This is what we learn about them from the Greeks, with whom the names Get® and Sigynn® are prominent; the term which is more particularly prominent in the Latin writers being a different one, Daci. I imagine that it applied to the occupants of Yalachia, rather than Moldavia, and of Transylvania rather than Valachia; or, at any rate, to the populations of the West rather than the East. It was known to Julius C®sar, and known to him through the geographers of Alexandria: though only as a term in geography. Of the Dacians as either enemies orVALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
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subjects he knew nothing. The arms of the Republic had yet to reach across the Danube.
Word for word, I believe that Dac-us is Tshekh, though whether the Dacians of Yalachia and Transylvania were the immediate conquerors of the ancestors of the present Bohemians is another question. They are powerful during the reign of Vespasian; formidable during that of Domitian. For reasons, however, which will be given, I doubt whether the whole of Transylvania was Dacian, or rather I doubt about the whole population of Dacia having been homogeneous. The conquest was effected by Trajan.
And now, in speech, at least, the whole mass of the population is destined to become Roman. The Getse, so far as they differed from the Dacians; the Dacians, so far as they differed from the Getse; the Scythians (for the high probability of a Scythian element must be recognized); and, finally, the mysterious Sigynnse, whatever else they may retain, lose the characteristic of language. And the Roman element is, itself, heterogeneous, as the occupancy is partly that of colonists from Italy, partly that of the miscellaneous legionaries of the army. Of the details, however, of the settlement we know but little; and little of the details of its abandonment by Aurelian.
After its abandonment hordes of barbarians overran it, displacing, in some districts, the Romanized population, in others modifying it. The invaders who did this were chiefly of the Turk or Ugrian stock, Huns, Bulgarians, Avars, Petshineks, and, lastly, Magyars. Even before the time of Aurelian these foreign elements had been partially introduced. Some of the Germans of Moesia must have been in some part of the ancient Dacia; i. e. on the Sereth and Pruth, not to mention the original inhabitants, who, in my mind, at least, were Lithuanic.
Of the Huns who drove them southwards, some must have settled, more or less permanently, along their tract. Indeed, from the fourth century downwards the little that we know of the history of these parts is the history of either the Huns, or some closely-allied tribe, of Turk origin—especially that of the Petshenegs.
This is a name that has undergone many metamorphoses: and strange is the disguise under which it exists at the present day. The word Zfess-arabia preserves it. The word Bud-zack does so too. So that in these parts we may suppose that the Petsheneg214
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blood is at its maximum. They are of some historical prominence—these Petshenegs. In Gibbons great work that name —and what name was too obscure to be overlooked by that erudite investigation ?—occurs but rarely. In Finlay, it is, by no means, infrequent. They were Turks, and the eleventh and twelfth centuries were the dates for their chief invasions. They were Turks who came later than the Khazars, and earlier than the Cumanians. They were, however, pre-eminently the Turks of Bessarabia and Moldavia. In these countries they must now have descendants, more or less pure in blood, who are Christians of the Greek Church, speaking a language of Latin origin— Romanized Turks, with nothing either Turkish or Mahometan about them. I am unable to say at what period they lost their more distinctive characteristics.
These remarks apply to the population only. The name is another matter. It may have been old; adopted only by the settlers in the Petsheneg country on their settlement therein. But even the settlement itself may have been old also; and I shall give reasons for believing that it was so. The term itself has gone through so many changes that we may believe anything about it; and individually I think that it is, word for word, the old classical term Peucini. Now, the Peucini were the occupants of Peuke, the delta of the Danube.
But the Peucini were only one tribe out of many. The Atmones, the Sidones, and above all, the formidable Bastarnee, were connected with them. With these were connected, either in blood or by confederation, the royal Sauromatse, the Iazyges, and the Koralli. The Bastarnse were also called Galatse; also Keltoscythee; also Germani. How they have, on the strength of this, been claimed for Gauls and Germans, any one who is conversant with the speculations of the Continental ethnologists easily sees. The connection is all the more urgently insisted on because it is a respectable one. Of all the fighting nations of antiquity the Bastamse were the first. They were the strongest and tallest of men. No one’s alliance was more anxiously sought. Nor did it require much solicitation. Wherever booty was to be won the Bastarna was to be found in arms. He neither ploughed nor sowed. He did nothing but fight. A nation of men of this kind (writes Mr. Kemble, in discussing another question) mayYALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
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safely be deemed a fictitious one. Still, to have the credit of doing such things implies strength and energy. Clondicus was one of their captains, and Clondicus is certainly neither a Gallic nor a German name. A term in a fragment of Scymnus suggests that they were new-comers. He calls them Bctarapvai ’ettyi^uoeç. Tacitus doubts whether they were Germans; holding that if they are so, they have degenerated through contact with the Sarmatæ, with whom they have mixed in marriages and whose manners they have adopted.
Still, it was only along the river and on the mountains of the boundary that the Bastarnæ and Peucini were to be found ; so that the question as to the population of the interior is still unexplained. I think that they were largely Scythian. At any raté the historical Petshenegs, whether older or newer than their name, were this. Germani, in my mind, is simply the root which is found in Germanicia, Karamania, Carmania, and so many other places in Persia ; the Turk word her man —castle, or fortified place. If so, the present name Ak-kerman—white fort, is as old as the Scythians.
I am afraid that to either Valachia, or Moldavia, or to both, must be assigned the nation which, unless belied, was the filthiest and most bestial of antiquity—thatr of the Taifalæ. The exact limits of their occupancy are uninvestigated. Taifalæ, however, were found as formidable opponents to the Roman armies on both the Thiess and on the main stream of the Danube. They also lay between the Danube and the Sereth ; a little beyond which they seem to have come in contact with the Goths of the Dniester. At any rate, a part of the Taifalæ accompanied the Goths who crossed the Danube, and after settling in Pannonia, invaded Italy, and conquered both Gaul and Spain. In Gaul they effected a settlement ; apparently a separate one, which, by Gregory of Tours, is called Theifalia, a pagus of the Pictavi. That some of their original turbulence remained with them, is an inference from the fate of one of the Gothic dukes, Austrapius, who was killed in quelling a Theifalian insurrection. On the other hand, the sainted priest Senoch was from Theifalia. Zeuss suggests that, word for word, Tifauge, on the Score, is this same Theifalia.
To conclude. The aborigines of the Principalities at the very216
VALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
earliest period, I believe to have been near congeners of the original Fins of Central Russia. Upon these, Slavonians encroached from the south; Lithuanians from the north-west; Scythians, followed by fresh hordes, from the east. Upon these, the Roman legionaries of the conquest by Trajan were superinduced: these being the source of the language; which by no means coincides with the blood.
When continuous history begins, however, the chief name is that of the Petslienegs; though even this belongs to the eastern half rather than the western. It can certainly be fixed on Bessarabia.
The name Vcilachian is by no means native. It is Slavonic and German. It is also Turk: for the Turks call Valachia, Ak-iJIak, or White Valachia, and Moldavia, Kara-iflak, or Black Valachia. The Magyar form is Olah.
The name by which a Valachian, a Moldavian, or a Bessarabian designates himself, is a name which we find, in some form or other, widely spread elsewhere, in a variety of forms, and with no slight latitude of meaning.
It is the name the Gipsies give themselves; which is Rom-mani.
It is the name of the Modern Greek language; which is Romaic.
It is the name of the language of the Grisons; which is Rumonsch.
It is the name of the old Romance language of France.
It is the name of that part of European Turkey which corresponds with ancient Thrace, and of which Constantinople is the capital, Rumelia.
It is the name of a large portion of Asia Minor, Roam.
It is a name as honourable as it is widely spread; for wherever we find it it reminds us of the old sovereignty of Rome.
The Rumanyo are dark-skinned, black-haired, and black-eyed; more tall than short, with prominent features, and faces rather long than round. Their resemblance to the figures on Trajan’s column has either been observed or imagined.
Their Christianity is still redolent of heathenism. At the headVALACIIIA AND MOLDAVIA.
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of their Pantheon stand Smou and Smeone, mother and son. Smou, the son, can change his shape, and visit men in any form he likes. He does so sometimes, and makes love to mortal maids incognito. His dwelling is underground. Here his mother, Smeone, keeps house for him ; upon the whole, being the better disposed being of the two ; for Smou, though possibly more good than bad, is fickle and odd-tempered. It is his mother who keeps him steady and good-humoured.
Smou is as much good as bad; but Bulduru is a being of unmodified evil. The fens, the bogs, the rocks, the glens, and the caverns are his residences; and when men find any of these more suspicious-looking than usual, they tremble lest Bulduru should lay hold of them.
Yilva is Yalachian, and Slavonic as well; in name, wholly; in attributes, but partially. In Servia she is the dark-eyed maiden of the night, with hair black and flowing, and eyes black and bright. In Yalachia she is half-dragon and half-snake.
Sina is the goddess of hunting; Sina, who is also called Dina and Diana. She may safely be identified with the Latin Diana. But it is by no means so safe to derive her from Italy. The Bohemians, far beyond the influences of Borne, had also a Diana, of which the classical mythologists take too little cognizance.
The Muma padura, the mother of the woods, is more good than bad, more kind than vicious, more old than young. When children lose themselves in a forest, she protects them.
The water, like the wood, has its divinities. When the Yalachian maid fills her vessel, she pours out a spoonful or two for the water goddess.
The Morii are ghosts in general. So are the Strigoi, in Latin Strigse. When a child is born, the bystanders throw a stone behind him, saying, this to the Strigoi.
The Sinit is the festival to the domestic genius special to each hearth, the Lar of the Bomans, with his feast-day under a Christian designation.
The Murony is the vampire, in which every Bumanyo believes.
Priccolitsh is a Murony under a modification, being, like the vampire, a bloodsucker. It is, however, horses, goats, pigs, and sheep, rather than men, that he drains. And this he docs only218
VALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
at night, and after changing himself from his usual form of a human being into a dog. A female Priceolitsh is a Priccolit-shone.
The hulk of the population in the Danubian principalities is Rumanyo. Sometimes the word is written Romanyo, sometimes Rouman. The latter name of French rather than aught else. It means Roman; just as it does in modern Greece, in Switzerland, in Asia Minor, and in the parts about Constantinople* and it means this because the men aud women who apply it to themselves consider that they are descended from the Romans; whereas all that it really implies is the fact of the district they occupy having been, at one time, a portion of the great Roman empire. In Yalachia, however, and in Moldavia, the word is less inapplicable than in many other countries; inasmuch as the language of these parts is really of Roman origin. It is a true descendant of the Latin. The Italian and Spanish are not more so. It is a truer descendant of the Latin, than is the French; as true a one as the Romance of the Grison districts in Switzerland. Whether the blood coincide with it is another question—scarcely a doubtful one. The blood is Sarmatian and Turk, rather than Italian, as has been already suggested.
The language is derived from the Latin: but not without having undergone more than one alteration. The c of the classical writer is, in Rumanyo,^?; so \h$X pectus ispepte, and nox> nopte. The definite article coalesces with its substantive; and follows, instead of preceding, its noun; just as it does in Scandinavian. Just, too, as it does in the neighbouring languages—mark the word neighbouring—of Bulgaria and Albania. Just, too, as to some extent, it does in the Lithuania It is needless to say that philologues have drawn an inference from this in favour of the original language of the country having been characterized by such a peculiarity. What this language was is not determined : not, at least, to everyone’s satisfaction. The present writer, along with others, both before and after him, believes that it was closely connected with the Lithuanic and Slavonic : with the former in some parts of the country, with the latter in others. This means that he finds reason for doubting that it was uniform throughout.
The following specimens of the language, from Schott’s Walla-VÀLÀCHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
219
chische Mcercken, shows thè Latin :—
Rumanyo.
Bela in larga valle amblà,
Erba verde lin calca ;
Canta, qui cantand pi auge à,
Quod tóti munti resunà.
Ea in genunchi se puneà,
Ocbi in sus indireptà ;
Ecce, asi vorbe faceà r “ Donine, domne, bune domne.”
Rumanyo.
Nucu, fagu, frassinu Mult se certà intra sène.
“ Nuce,” dice frassinu,
“ Quine vine, nuci cullege,
11 Cullegend si ramuri frange “ Vaide dar de pelle a tua !
“ Dar tu fage, mi vecine,
“ Que voi spune in ménte tene :
“ Multe fere saturasi ;
“ Qui prébéne nu ambiasi ;
“ Quum se au geru apropiat “ La pament te au si culcat,
“ Si in focu te au si aruncat, etc.”
extent to which it resembles the
Puella in larga valle ambulabat, Herbam viridem leniter calcabat, Cantabat, et cantando plangebat, Ut omnes montes resonarent :
Illa in genua se ponebat,
Oculos sursum dirigebat ;
Ecce, sic verba faciebat :
" Domine, domine, bone domine.”
2.
Latin,
Nux, fagus, fraxinus,
Multum certant inter se.
Nux, dicit fraxinus Quisquis venit, nuces legit, Colligendo ramos frangit :
Vae itaque pelli tuae !
At tu fage, mi vicine,
Quse exponam mente tene 1 Multas feras saturasti,
At haud bene ambulasti ;
Quum gelu appropinquat Ad pavimentum te deculcant Ad focum averruncant.
About 1300 the separate substantive history of Moldavia and Valachia begins; essentially a history of the Middle Ages. It was the continuation of a previous one : though that previous one was obscure. It was, certainly, the history of a population which, as far as freedom consists in immunity from the yoke of a foreign dynasty, had long been free. I cannot find, that, with the exception of the Roman supremacy which lasted only from the time of Trajan to that of Aurelian, any notable portion of either of the two countries had even constituted what is called a subject, much less a conquered, country. Neither had ever been a part of the Eastern Empire, to he ruled from Constantinople; nor of the Russian to he governed from Kiev. How far one tribe may have tyrannized over another no one can say. From one cause or another the ancestors of the present Rumanyos have had more than an ordinary amount of independence from the beginning.
It was from the hill-country towards the head-waters of the Aluta that the Rumanyo population is believed to have spread itself220
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over the lower levels of the northern portion of the basin of the Danube, and to have re-established itself on its old area. This is as if, the English power in Great Britain being depressed, broken up, or disorganized, the descendants of the Ancient Britons were to roll themselves down their Welsh fastnesses and reduce the Midland and Eastern counties to their original condition of a Keltic occupancy; or, as if the Highland Gaels were to recover the Lowland parts of Scotland. Such, at least, is the view that must be taken if we suppose that all the natives of the Danubian Principalities who speak the Bumanyo language are of Bumanyo blood, a view susceptible of modification, inasmuch as it is probable that many of them may be Petshineg rather than Bumanyo in lineage, though Bumanyo in speech. In either case, however, there has been a Bumanyo reaction of some kind or other, and that a considerable one. If it were not so, the traces of the Petshineg domination would be far greater at the present moment than they actually are. They would bear some proportion to that nation’s original importance ; which was, undoubtedly, great.
The Upper Aluta is the point that commands our attention ; the Upper Aluta in the last decennium of the thirteenth century. a.d.1290. rpkgH -j. wag tjiat one	y0yv0des, Badul the Black,
induced the hill-men to trust themselves and their industry to the plains. These were partly Bum any os, partly Germans from Saxony. The first towns that they founded were Kimpolung and Argish, on the rivers of that name. The Sereth, at length, became the boundary of the Yalachia of Badul; the Sereth that divided Ya-lachia from Moldavia, Brailov being the most western town thereof.
Badul was a Transylvanian rather than a Yalachian properly so-called. Hence, he owed a sort of feudal allegiance to the Crown of Hungary ; and the Yalachia of Badul and his first successor, though partially, perhaps largely, independent, was one of the territorial possessions of Hungary. The name given it by the Greeks of Constantinople was Hungarian Yalachia. Turkey won it from Hungary.
The Bumanyo reaction in Moldavia took place some sixty 1352 years later> e* m middle of the fourteenth century; the Moldavian parallel to the Valachian Badul being Andreas Laczovics. He, at least, it was who had the credit of having destroyed the last of the Petshineg (or, perhaps, Cumanian)VALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
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armies which ravaged the valleys of the Sereth and the Pruth. Before his time the state of the country is described as having been miserable and desolate beyond description. It was all forest —houseless and hearthless. “ It was all forest/’ writes one. “ It was utterly uninhabited,” writes another. In this there may be less exaggeration than appears at first sight; since the country may have formed a March between the Petshinegs of Bessarabia and the Hungarians. Schott remarks that the account of the reoccupation of Moldavia by the ancestors of the present - Moldavians, and the founders of the Moldavian nationality, has a mythic look, and he compares the Bumanyo narrative with a similar one attached to the Swiss Saanen-thal. It runs thus: Dragosch, the son of Bogdan, was a brave and wise man, a Valachian of Marmarosch on the Upper Theis. In a chase after an aurochs he crossed the Planina Pass in the Carpathians; he and some companions. Moving onwards and downwards towards the level country, he found that it was covered with wood, hut uninhabited. It was this state of solitude that he remedied, by settling (he and his followers) on the banks of the Moldav; whence the names Moldavian and Moldavia. a d 1391	was UI3(^er Bayazid I. that Yalachia was conquered
by the Ottomans; and of the Ottoman Empire it has been the least-disturbed portion. Occasionally invaded by Poland, often occupied by Russia, it has, nevertheless, changed masters, only for a time, and in part.
The first hospodars were the native princes; but when Prince Kantemir of Moldavia revolted to Russia, the principle of nomination was changed, and Greeks were appointed instead of Rumanyos. The Phanariot period, so called from the Phanar, or Greek quarter of Constantinople, ended in 1826, and the system of natives holding office for seven years, and being re-eligible, lasted until a few years ago, when the two hospodariats were united, or rather united themselves.
It was in the Danubian Principalities that the Greek Revolution broke out. It was in Yassi, Galacz, and Bucharest, that the secret societies had their more important centres. And for this there was a reason. The Turkish war with Russia had grown out of a Valachian disturbance, the deposition of one of the hospodars; and in no country were the Russian pretensions to interference in the religious and national questions of the222
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Christians under the Porte earlier displayed, more definitely put into action, or better (up to a certain point) understood—than in the Principalities. The extent to which Eussia limited her benevolent interpositions to her furtherance of her own ulterior views, and the readiness with which, when unnecessary, th§ protegee was abandoned, had yet to he learned. Perhaps it is still only imperfectly understood. Again, the Danubian Principalities were on the Eussian frontier. They were the outworks of the Ottoman Empire; almost a Debateable Land.
With Greeks, too, they swarmed; as all the countries in the Levant, especially where bargains are to he made about grain, and freights are to he secured, do. With Greece, too, the Pha-nariot hospodars had made the Eumanyos familiar. Subtract, however, the revolutionary elements administered by Greece and Eussia, and little enough remains. The hospodars were Greeks, supported by regiments of Albanians and Bulgarians. The boyards, when rich, were ostentatious and self-seeking; affecting the habits of that part of the Eussian nobility which most affected those of the French. When poor they were ignorant and narrow-minded. The people were, if not actual serfs, in a condition nearly approaching serfage. The whole trade was sacrificed to the monopolies by which the hospodars enriched themselves and the members of the monied interest with whom they came most immediately in contact. Of such intellectual activity as familiarity with manufacturing processes and the congregation of artizans and masters in large masses engenders, they had nothing.
On elements of this kind did the first promoters of the Greek Eevolution work; but instead of a Kara George, or a Milosh, they had the contemptible Alexander Hypsilantes, the son of the ex-hospodar.
He crossed the Pruth. Two, of the name of Soutzos, Micael in Moldavia and Alexander in Yalachia, of different families, were the hospodars; both members of the secret society—the Philike Hetairia. One lesson that the Eussians and Greeks succeeded in teaching the Yalachians was to believe in neither Greece nor Eussia. And this is an invaluable one. Let us only hope that it had been comprehended in full. Even before the blunders of Hypsilantes had brought matters to a crisis, the Emperor Alexander had, in giving them to understand that he was no friend to revo-„VALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
223
lutionary movements, repudiated the use of his name. That the Greek Revolution had to he fought-out on the soil of Greece has already been shown. One man, and one man only, of native blood, did the Principalities supply to the cause—Theodore Vladimi-resco; and him the Greeks brand as a traitor; though Finlay reasonably remarks that, had a Yalachian written the history of the Revolution, and had it become a Rumanyo one, Vladimiresco might have been a hero.
Even as far as it went, the war was like the one in Servia, at its beginning, a triple duel. The Greeks had their own view; the Rumanyos theirs ; the Turks one adverse to both. Vladimiresco’s was the amelioration of the condition of his own country. No wonder that, between Turk force and Greek fraud, he failed and fell. However, he, and he alone, represents his country.
He soon detected the utter incapability of Hypsilantes. So did Savas, a Greek. Both distrusted him. Each hated and distrusted one another. Yet they intrigued with him; whilst, at the same time, they intrigued with the Turkish Pashas. It was Little Yalachia that he occupied. His intrigues being suspected, an order was issued by Hypsilantes for his arrest. A copy of one of his letters to the secretary of the Pasha of Guirgevo was shown by Hypsilantes to Georgaki, who undertook to arrest him. Hypsilantes, who was himself meditating the abandonment of his followers, reproached him with treachery. Yladimiresco replied that he had served his country better than his accusers, and that he was thrown upon his correspondence with the enemy by the necessity of counteracting the treachery of Savas. Hypsilantes pretented to pardon him, and two days afterwards pardoned the men who murdered him.
In Moldavia, after the Czar’s repudiation of the Revolution became known, and after the battle of Skuleni, the Sultan’s authority was soon re established. In Yalachia it was re-established after the brave hut hopeless stand made by Georgaki and Pharmaki at Seko.
The chief change which has since taken place, viz., the union of the two hospodariats, has already been alluded to.
The halo of sentiment that invests the nationality of the Rumanyos is miserably dull; indeed, except in a revolutionary atmosphere, it flickers too dimly to he visible. A little may be got224
VALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
out of the name; which connects Valacliia and Moldavia with Dacia, and Dacia with Rome. Out of the language, too, there is a little political capital to he made in Paris ; where the notion of a French hegemony for all the speakers of the dialects derived from the Latin, finds place. The Rumanyo history, however, is obscure; its heroes few. Hunyades and Bogdan, though perhaps Rumanyo in blood, are only known as Hungarians and Kosaks.
The oppression of the Principalities for Turkish provinces, has been moderate. As long as the Krim Tartars were independent they defended them against Russia and Poland. For a short time Little Yalachia was Austrian. It would be so again if the Austrians had their will. The revolution was abortive.
On the other hand, the more material elements of our sympathy are pre-eminently real. A rich soil (which less than most others has been devastated by invasions), with a drainage which might make it as productive as Lombardy, has failed to enrich its population. And that population is a large one. The good or bad government of the Danubian Principalities affects nearly four millions of Rumanyos.
Their true policy, now that they have obtained practical independence along with the union between Moldavia and Yalachia, is intense selfishness of the narrowest and most provincial kind. The temptations to launch into cosmopolitanism are great. The Rumanyo language is that of Transylvania and the Bukovina; but to sympathize with these is to come in contact with Austria. The Rumanyo language is that of Bessarabia, and Bessarabia has only lately been tom away. But the grip of Russia is strong; and the Czar tolerates no intrigues for objects not his own. The notion of a great Christian metropolis in Constantinople ought to be foreign to them. They were never Romans of the Western Empire. They want no protection so long as they keep within the law ; which in the union of the hospodariats they have violated with advantage. To give Russia no opportunity for interference; to turn a deaf ear to Greek intrigues; to forget that they were ever connected with Hungary; to keep out Propaganda Romanists, the forerunners of French interposition; to live within the law as far as regards Turkey; to either violate or alter it as regards their own boyards; to make roads, irrigate fields, grow grain andVALACHIA AND MOLDAVIA.
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flax, freight their own vessels, and manage their own mercantile transactions, is at once their business and their policy. Absolute independence would probably he bought at the price of such a king and court as impoverish Greece. They have not the wealth for this. They have not the fighting power of the Servians. But this is only the view of the looker-on. The tendency to make a tolerable position easy, an easy one independent, an independent one splendid, is too much a law of human nature to he resisted; whilst the chances of success are different from different points of view. In some of these the foreigner, in others the native, is the best judge. Even when miscalculated they have led to good. Let it be hoped, however, that even among theBumanyos themselves the necessity of internal improvement in preference to external position is understood.
No country could more easily lose all that it has gained than the joint Hospodariats. No country has less chance of gaining more than it has got.
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CHAPTER XV.
Montenegro.—Servia again.—The Montenegro Question.
Tshejrnagoba in Slavonic, Karatag in Turkish, Malisi in Albanian, Montenegro in Italian, and Black Mountain in English, all mean the same.
A few weeks ago there was what might he called a Montenegro Question. The agitation of it has now paused; indeed, in the eyes of many, the matter is settled. In the opinion of the present writer this is far from being the case. Hence, an amount of detail will he laid before the reader which otherwise would be unnecessary.
The primary division of the Montenegro territory is into Nahias = Districts, Departments, Shires, Ridings, or Hundreds, just as we may choose to render the term. Of these, Maltebrun, in the translation of 1827, gives four. Bou6, our chief authority, gives eight Nahias, and he gives them in detail. They are the following:—
1.	Katunska Nahia, constituting about one-half of the whole territory, contains nine inferior divisions,—Cetigny, Osrinitshi, Niegush, Bielis, Tsutsi, Shiklitshi, Zagaratsh, Komani, and Plieshvitshi.
2.	Rieska Nahia, containing Seklin, Liubotin, Gradiani, Doharsozelo, and Kossieri.
3.	Tshernitsa Nahia, containing Podgor, Gluhido, Limliani, Dupilo, Sotonitshi, and Barskozelo.
4. Lieshanska Nahia, containing Gradats, Draiovina, and Burunye.
5.	Bielopavlitshi Nahia, containing Petuskinovitshi, Pavkovit-shi, and Yrayegermitsi.
6.	Moratsha Nahia, containing Rovtsi, Moratshadonye, and Moratshagornye.MONTENEGRO.	227
7.	Piperi Nahia, containing Serntsi, Spuzh, Stiena, and Guir-kovitshi.
8.	Kutshi Nahia, containing Zatriebalsh, Oraovo, Drakalovitshi, Bratonoyitshi, and Vassoevitshi.
The Sirdar is the head of the Nahia, the Knez of the village; over the whole domain the Vladika,
Unfortunately, however, for a district so little known as Montenegro, the Nahias of Boué by no means coincide with the map given by the only authority for the latest events. All we know about these is from a work of Lieutenant Arbuthnot, entitled Herzegovna; or, Omar Pasha and the Christian Bebels.
The map which accompanies this is presumed to be taken from that of the Boundary Commissioners under Captain Coxe. The division into Nahias (as such) it does not give us; neither does it give us, as anything bearing the semblance of a primary division, three of Boué’s names—those of the Katunska, the Eieska, ortho Lieshanska, Nahias. They are, however, easily fixed. The first contains the district in which the capital lies. The Eieska, probably, lies to the west of it; a small district, named from the little River (Rieka) which falls into the Lake of Scutari. The Lieshanska Nahia is not noticed by name.
Still, since Boué wrote, alterations which account for the difference may have taken place.
However, if we compare the outline of the Montenegro territory to a dumb-bell, and place the Bielopavlitshi Nahia in the narrow part, we get, in both the map and Boué, the Piperi Nahia to the south, and the Moratsha and Kutshi Nahias to the east, of it.
Montenegro is a dumb-bell running west and east, and every point of its outline is important.
On the west we must remark that it nowhere touches the sea.
On the north it marches with Herzegovna, to which the town of Niksish belongs ; the Niksish district cutting-in so as to give the narrow handle.
On the north-west it touches Bosnia; but the frontier here being impracticable commands but little attention.
Let us now begin afresh on the south, on the side of the Adriatic, and move along the line which separates Montenegro from Albania.
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The Tshernitsa Nahia meets us here—hilly.
Then comes the valley of the Bieka (? the Bieka Nahia), and then that of the Lower Moratsha; both falling into the Lake of Scutari. This implies an approach to level ground; and an approach to it there unfortunately is. It is this slope of the southern frontage that is the border-land between Montenegro and Albania whereon so much blood has been shed. When we hear, then, of border-feuds (and we may always hear of them) we must remember that the actors are the Albanians and the Tsher-nitza, Bieska, Kutshi, and Moratsha Montenegriners. There is no evidence that they bring-in the Montenegriners of the north; just as there is no evidence that the men of Durham were moss-troopers after the fashion of the men of Carlisle or Jedburgh.
A projection running due east, the Yassoevitshi district, protrudes into the terra incognita of Upper Moesia, or Bascia. Here lie the two divisions of the Vassoevitshi, the Upper Yassoevitshi and the Lower Yassoevitshi. The Upper Yassoevitshi lie in contact with the meh of the Moratsha Nahia. This tells us that we have crossed a watershed; a quaquaversal one; one dividing the waters which flow into the Adriatic direct (rather than into the Lake of Scutari) on the one side, and those that flow into the Danube on the other. All such districts are naturally impracticable. I may be showing ignorance, for it is difficult in these matters to say where the geologist or the surveyor may not have been; but I believe that, for Upper Moesia or Bascia, it is only the generalities that are generally known. In all the works I have seen, I merely learn that the Bascians * are the Servians or Bosnians, as the case may be, of the hill-ranges on the south. Of Upper Moesia I only find that it is the country which cuts-off Servia from the Adriatic, and that the Servians wish to have it. Nevertheless, it is, for ordinary readers, unexplored. That it may be known to some official in Turkey, as the
* Word for word, I believe this to be Rlicetia, and, for reasons given elsewhere, Rugii. The Servians of Slavonia and Syrmia are called Raitzen. It is, apparently, a Slave gloss; and, as such, indicates a population with certain characteristics, and a Servian population which may, or may not, be identical with itself, to give it the name.MONTENEGRO.
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interior of Vancouver’s Island is known to the English Colonial Office, is not unlikely. The Servian Minister of War, perhaps, knows a little more. Still, it must be a hazardous country to the explorer: about as safe as the interior of Caucasus or the midland districts of Kafraria.
What, however, is certain about it is this: that it is the way from Montenegro to Servia, and from Servia to Montenegro; that it is a short cut; that the Servians hanker after it; that Montenegro wants to make a common cause with Servia; that the Porte wants the very opposite; that England takes the views of the Porte; that Russia takes different * ones; that France and Austria take views of their own.
Montenegro is purely Slavonic, and, on the coast at least, there is nothing Albanian to the north of it. What is (or has been) called Austrian Albania is now no longer Albanian, but purely Slavonic—Slavonic in language, Roman Catholic in creed. On the south, however, Slavonia indents Albania. The towns of Ulkin, or Dulcigno, and Scodra are Albanian; and so is all the country to the south of them: but to the north the upper third of the district between those cities and Montenegro is Slavonic— there or thereabouts. Plavnitza and Vrana are Slavonic; but Tusi is both Albanian and Mahometan. Fundena is mixed. Grinitza is Slavonic; Shestani-Doni is two-thirds Albanian and Roman Catholic, one-third Slavonic and Greek. Shestani-Gori is wholly Albanian. Grutha is Albanian; but Merkovitsh is Slave.
During the times of the Ottoman conquest, the relations of Montenegro were with the Albanians to the south, as much as with the Bosnians to the north, of their almost inaccessible district; and it is with that of the tribes of the North Albania that the early history of Montenegro is more especially connected. One of its princes, Stephen, was joined in the obstinate resistance that was made against so powerful a Sultan as Mahomet II. by Scanderbeg; who, Albanian as he was, was an Albanian of the northern, or Mirdit, division; an Albanian of the debate-able land on the Montenegro frontier. In the next generation, however, there is a schism in the princely family, and one of the two sons of Ivan Tshernovitsh turns Mahometan, the other230
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Eoman Catholic. The Mahometan retires to Albania, the Romanist to Venice. Each carried his claims with him, and it was open to both the Turks and the Venetians to interfere in the affairs of Montenegro on the plea of supporting the rights of an exile of princely rank. The encroachments, however, from the Ottoman side were the more formidable until, at length, the number of Mahometans who either intruded from Bosnia and Albania, or that conversion within the territory itself had developed, began to endanger the faith as well as the independence of the mountaineers. They took counsel together, and fixed a day for a general massacre. Every Mahometan was either killed or driven out of Montenegro. In the obscure history of the earlier Montenegro wars this massacre, and the burning of Cettinye, are the chief details.
On the west, a fact to which particular attention is directed, the sea-board is nowhere Montenegrin. A thin strip, belonging chiefly to Austria, cuts-off even the spurs of Montenegro from the sea. There is a port (that of Cattaro) at the foot of the mountain, and there is the Bocce de Cattaro, which is the outfall of a Montenegro river. But Cattaro and the Bocce are Austrian. The little harbour of Spizza is Turk, and so, on the coast of Dalmatia a little further north, is Klek; but, as the northern boundary of the bay belongs to Austria, the Turks are forbidden to make it a free port. Those who are familiar with the map of the Hudsons Bay Territory are aware of a similar intermediate and anticommercial strip of coast on the side of the Pacific. The inland block of country is English. The ports are Russian. The Austrian prolongation, however, of the Dalmatian coast from Ragusa to Cattaro is shown on even the ordinary maps.
On the north-west, below the great indentation made by the Niksish district, lies Grahovo. On the north-east, and above it rises Mount Dormitor, the highest mountain of the Herzegovna, —some six thousand feet high.
Grahovo having long been the field for battle after battle, and razzia after razzia, was the scene of a great Montenegro victory against a superior force, in 1858. It broke whatever prestige the Ottoman name might have in Montenegro, and was indeed the palmary victory of the Montenegrins.MONTENEGRO.
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The sides of Mount Dormitor constitute the Drobniak district. Here lie the Uskoks; a population of brigands and outlaws. Drobniak must not be confounded with the Uskok country, which was also, in its origin, an asylum. This lies in the northern part of Dalmatia, and on the Croatian frontier. It belongs to Austria, and was, in its time, infamous for piracy. To the Drobniak Uskoks piracy is impossible : piracy, but not robbery.
The Baniani district on the Grahovo boundary professes, I believe, an imperfect independence.
On the north-east, the Yassoevitshi does the same; its nobles, chiefs, or princes, affecting a descent from the ancient kings of Dalmatia.
The great indentation on the south is Albanian, or Albanian and Slavonic; and here the condition of the population is semiindependent. Like the Suliots and Chimariots, the Mats and Matsors bear arms and comport themselves towards the Turks much like the Montenegriners. The religious mixture here is hopelessly heterogeneous—Albanian, Greek Church, and Bo-manist, and Mahometan. And the feuds are proportionate to the mixture. Still, on a whole, the maximum of hostility is that which the Slavonic Montenegrins and the Albanian Mirdits bear to one another. One general name for these Albanians is Mirdit. They are also called Clementines.
Lastly, it should be added, that even along the sea-coast there are notable traces of the original independence. The town of Cattaro, on becoming Venetian, insisted on retaining its municipal privileges. In the parts about Budna, and among an obscure population named the Krivyashes, similar privileges from the Venetian period are retained. Montenegro, then, is anything but an isolated district in the way of its comparative independence. The whole region is a region of freedom or anarchy according as our sympathies or our antipathies fix the term.
Herzegovna before the Turk conquest was a fief of Bosnia ; the Duchy of St. Saba, or simply the Duchy. After the death of the last king of Bosnia, the last Duke of the Herzegovna volunteered to pay tribute. His ministers objected. He afterwards gave up his son to the Porte as a hostage, abjured Christianity, married a daughter of the Sultan, and ruled in his old duchy as an Ottoman Pasha under the name of Akmet.232
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At present, the population of the Herzegovna is as follows:—
Mahometans..........................  60,000
Christians, Greek.................... 70,000
Latin.....................52,000
182,000
The Greek Christians alone are more numerous than the Mahometans; towards whom they are less hostile than they are towards the Roman Catholics. What applies to Armenia applies to the Herzegovna. There is an impracticable equality of creed. The blood and language, however, are the same.
Bosnia is more decidedly Mahometan than the Herzegovna; and more feudal than any other part of the Ottoman Empire. Of disturbances it has had more than its share. Still, they have not been of a national character. They have not been risings against the Ottomans either as Turks or Mahometans. They have rather been contests of the same kind with that of the janissaries against the Central Government: indeed, these have been of greater violence and duration in Bosnia than elsewhere. If Servia, then, be compared with Greece in its relations to Constantinople, Bosnia must be compared with Albania. Herzegovna s position is that of Macedonia or some similarly mixed district.
Still, the disturbances of Bosnia, as well as the condition of Montenegro, and the position of Servia, and even Bulgaria, must he borne in mind when the disturbances now coming under notice command our attention.
The Christian population is the thickest on the west; being Latin rather than Greek on the north, Greek rather than Latin on the south. The Greeks, too, are the more active. Russian, Servian, Montenegro, and Greek influences account for this.
Ever since the Russian war of ’28, which ended in the Treaty of Adrianople, and during which Diebitsh crossed the Balkan, surrounded by Bulgarian volunteers, there have been disturbances in Turkish Slavonia.
Of the numerous attacks upon Montenegro anterior to the battle of Grahovo, the only one which requires notice is that by Omar Pasha in 1850. He had nearly reduced it when Austria interposed.MONTENEGRO.
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For the rebellion in the south of Herzegovna which broke out in 1859, the parts to the south of Stolats are the scene; the chief towns (all small) being Gasko, Niksish (on the very edge of Montenegro), and the fortress of Krustach. Twenty villages broke out in revolt and interrupted the communications between Gasko and Niksish. They also attacked the Mahometans in the Plain of Gasko, and drove away their cattle. A company was sent against them. They broke up, went home, and met afresh. It was Ali Pasha who was sent against these insurgents and failed to put them down effectually. In the spring of *61, Omar Pasha was sent against them. He began his campaign with the following proclamation:—
What this proclamation is I let you all know.
His Majesty the Sultan has appointed me the chief of his armies in the Rou-melian provinces, and has sent me here to carry out in this mission all the just privileges which have not hitherto been fulfilled. In obedience to the commands of the Sultan, I have come here to show to you how kind and good are the intentions of our Sovereign to his subjects, and to announce without distinction to Mussulmans, Greeks, and Catholics together, the following decrees :—
1.	Every village has the power to name one or two chiefs as representatives, whom I will acknowledge.
2.	Every district has the power to name one or two representatives whomsoever the people of the district may choose.
3.	The Christians shall have full religious liberties, and shall be permitted to build churches and place bells therein, like the rest of the subjects in the empire.
4.	The Zaptieks (police) shall not be permitted to locate themselves in your houses, but an appointed place shall be set apart for them in every village.
5.	The arrangement which has been at Constantinople touching landowners and the agriculturists, and to which both parties have assented, shall immediately be put into execution.
6.	The taxes shall be collected by your own chiefs, and consigned by them to the officers sent by our Sultan to receive them.
7.	I will further recommend to the Greek Patriarch at Constantinople that a Bishop of your own nation should be nominated, who knows your language and customs.
8.	I will take such measures as shall secure you the right of purchasing landed property.
When this proclamation shall have been promulgated to you, and you should still have some further favour to ask at my hands, you may do so in writing, or by word of mouth. All that is possible for your welfare I will endeavour to fulfil.
Furthermore, it is your bounden duty to submit yourselves to your Sovereign, and to show humility to him.
When you shall have heard what I have promised, see that every one know of it, and what is necessary to execute, let me know, and it shall be fulfilled.234
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He had next to see how he stood in respect to Montenegro. Accompanied by the members of the European Commission, he went to a spot near the Lake of Scutari, expecting the Prince, and, as is reasonably believed, with fair terms to offer for either his aid or his neuterality. The Prince sent to say that his people forbid him to cross the frontier. The Commissioners strove in vain to change his decision. To the reasons they alleged his answer was, “ Eaites comprendre ces gens la.” The answer was “ C’est assez,” and their abrupt departure.
Concurrently with this, arose the disputes in Servia, and the very legitimate suspicions that Montenegro was prepared to join the Herzegovnans and Servia to join Montenegro.
By the beginning of autumn Montenegro, after a heroic resistance and the infliction of many heavy blows on the Ottomans, was reduced to come to terms. Grahovo was to he retained; hut the suzerainty of Turkey was to he acknowledged, and a military road with blockhouses to be allowed to he made through the country. The objections to this, on the part of the Montegriners have yet to he met. Still, there is an armistice at least.
In Servia, the disputes, which arose out of a just jealousy, on the part of the Porte, of the increase of the national and reasonable charges of Panslavonic intrigues, and of jealousy on the part of Servia at the strengthening of the Turkish fortresses, ended, under the mediation of the European ministers, in the Treaty of September 4 (present year), of which the following are the more important extracts:—
1.	In order to prevent the possibility of conflicts arising from the inter-
mixture in the same locality of Mussulman and Servian population, the Ottoman Government will transfer in full property to the Servian Government, on condition of indemnifying the proprietors, all the lands and houses in the suburb of Belgrade, belonging at the present time to Mussulmans. The Porte will abandon on the same condition to the said Government the walls, ditches, and works forming the ancient enclosure which separates the modern from the ancient town which is called the Faubourg, as well as the four gates of the Save, of Yaros, of Stamboul, and of Yidin. These ditches, walls, gates, and works shall be demolished and levelled. The Servians shall not erect any military work on this ground...........
2.	The Sublime Porte being determined to maintain in all their integrity its rights over the citadel of Belgrade, as sanctioned by treaties, but not wishing in any respect to make the conditions thereof more burdensome for the Servians, she is, nevertheless, resolved to seek the means for putting that fortress into aMONTENEGRO.
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proper state of defence, and deems it necessary to give to the present esplanade more regularity,and at certain points, where such extension cannot disturb the town, an increase of extent. This extension will therefore be made in the quarter almost exclusively occupied by the Mussulmans.................
4.	The Sublime Porte, firmly resolved to maintain all its rights without ever
exceeding them, protests that there is not the least foundation for the apprehension that the citadel of Belgrade, destined for the defence of the country, can be considered as the means for infringing the immunities granted to Servia by the Sultans and guaranteed by treaties. Its paternal feeling towards the Principal^ excludes any desire to exercise any pressure on the Prince’s Government, or any intimidation towards the population................
5.	The new circuit of the esplanade shall be marked out by a mixed Military Commission, composed of an officer named by each of the guaranteeing Powers and of an officer named by the Ottoman Government. This commission will avail itself of all local information which may assist it in resolving this question ; it shall make its report to the Sublime Porte, which will receive favourably any observations which the Servian Government may think right to submit
to it on this subject.............A Civil Mixed Commission, composed of
members named by the Ottoman Government and the Servian Government, shall decide all the questions of expropriation and of indemnity which are contemplated in the present arrangement, except those only which can be discussed only between the Turkish Government and the proprietors who are under its direct jurisdiction. This commission shall conclude its labours within the space of four months.
6.	The Sublime Porte, wishing to maintain in the Principality of Servia only
the number of fortified points which seem to her really necessary for the security of the Ottoman Empire,................has pleasure in declaring to the
Conference that her intention is to demolish ..... those of Sokol and Oujitza, which shall never be restored without the mutual consent of the Sublime Porte and the Servian Government. The Porte looks upon the maintenance of the fortresses of Feth-Islam, of Szabacz, and of Semendria, as indispensable to the general system of defence of Turkey.
7...............The Sublime Porte will maintain in the fortified points
which she occupies there, whether at Belgrade or at Feth-Islam, Semendria, and Szabacz, only garrisons proportionate to the extent of these places, and to the real requirements of their defence.
8.	The Sublime Porte engages to take immediate measures, in concert with
the Servian Government, so that all the Mussulman inhabitants who live around the five fortified points which she occupies in virtue of the treaties, and which are specified in the preceding articles, may dispose of their properties and withdraw from the Servian territory as quickly as possible............
9.	It is in the intention of the Sublime Porte to see that the Governor of the citadel of Belgrade confines himself strictly to the exercise of his military functions, and does not seek to exercise, directly or indirectly, any interference, however small, in the affairs of the city or of the Principality. She will likewise see that he observes, and causes to be observed, towards the Prince and his Government, all the respect to which they have right. On their part, the Prince and his Government will act in the same spirit towards the Governor of the citadel; they will not commit any encroachment upon his functions, and will see that all the Ottoman functionaries are treated in all cases conformably to236
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their rank. The same regard shall be observed between the commandants of the three forts which the Sublime Porte maintains outside the citadel of Belgrade and the neighbouring Servian authorities.
10.	Every corps recruited entirely from foreigners in Servia shall be disbanded, and the Servian Government shall carefully abstain from exciting distrust of the Sublime Porte by any abusive extension of the right of asylum.
11.	.	.... It is desirable, in particular, that Prince Michael should
endeavour to put an end to the apprehensions which the new military organization of Servia has created at Constantinople. The Sublime Porte has already declared that she will maintain in her fortresses only the number of men necessary to insure their defence; she naturally expects that the Servian Government will not maintain a larger number of men than is necessary for the maintenance of the tranquillity and the internal order of the country. The limits within which the Porte will exercise its rights of garrison are easy to be understood, and even to be declared. It will be easy for the Prince of Servia to give declarations equally satisfactory as to the number of men which will compose his usual effective force, and, by an exchange of confidential and friendly communications between the two parties, to come to an arrangement which, while it removes on both sides all doubts, and does not injure any rights of the Principality, will tranquillize the Sublime Porte as to the number and employment of the effective force, which should be in conformity with the spirit of the Hatti-Sherifs.
The complement to this was the following order given to the Governor of Belgrad: —
1.	You are aware that the internal Administration of the Principality of Servia is confided exclusively to the Prince and his functionaries. You will not, therefore, mix yourself up in any manner in matters which concern that Administration.
2.	You will do everything in your power to live in good harmony with the Servian Administration, and you will yourself pay, and cause all your subordinates to pay, to the Prince and to his functionaries all the respect which is due to them. In the same manner, the Servians will, of course, not interfere in any manner with what concerns the fortress, and they will show, and will cause to be shown to you, the respect due to a high functionary of the Sublime Porte, as well to the officers of the garrison.
3.	You will not permit any of the Mussulman inhabitants of Belgrade to live outside the citadel.
4.	You will not give any air of menace, which might without necessity disquiet or alarm the Servian population, to the disposition of your artillery on the ramparts directed towards the town.
5.	You will not use artillery except in case of a serious attack made against the fortress which you are charged to defend. In case of necessary defence, and in that case only, will you make use of your artillery, taking care to direct the fire only on those parts of the town whence the attack proceeds, and you will always be animated by the generous intentions of His Imperial Majesty to spare as far as possible a town to the preservation and prosperity of which he attaches the greatest importance.
6.	You must understand that the only object of the preceding article is to regulate the line of conduct which you should pursue in eventualities whichMONTENEGRO.
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you must do all in your power to avoid. If, after having exhausted all means of conciliation, you find yourself under the unhappy necessity of making use of your cannon to repel an attack on the fortress, you will endeavour to inform beforehand the foreign Consuls resident in Belgrade, and, if possible, the peaceable inhabitants of the town.
To a certain extent these extracts tell their own story. They speak to an incipient quarrel, cut short by the friendly interventions of the Powers which signed the Treaty of Paris ; though not cut short before it had run on to a length which, in the eyes of alarmists, threatened the peace of Europe. All such disturbances do this; especially when Russia and France are suspected of intrigues and when Austria and England act together.
For the details of the outbreak, there are, of course two stories; one throwing the blame on Turkey, one on Servia. The details, however, are unimportant. Whatever the particular cause of the first act of aggression may have been, the real cause of it is permanent and general. The incompatibility of temper, creed, nationality, and general political relations, between the Mahometan suzerains and the Christian dependents, is the causa mali. The embers are always smouldering; and a breath from either side fans them into an outbreak. The firman of *38 left Servia to the Servians. The Turks were, after a certain time, to leave the country, and compensation was to be granted to such as had to leave immovable property behind them. The few that were to stay were to be limited to the fortresses. But what was the reasonable time ? What the compensation ? What the definition of a fortress ? Did within the fortresses mean within the walls, or within the rayons ? A mixed commission was the simplest way of settling this; but the year '60 had begun before such a commission was organized. The delay was laid to the charge of Turkey, and that, to all appearances, justly. Then there were the further complications arising out of the number of fortresses to be kept up. That Belgrad was one of primary importance is transparently clear from every page of Turkish and Austrian history. No fortress has stood so many sieges as Belgrad, essentially the garrison between the Mahometan world and the Christian. But Szabacz, and Nish, and Ushitza, and Feth-Islam—these were of little use to anyone, except to Turkey as against Servia. Nor even here were they worth the charge of238
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the garrison. We have seen from the notice of the Revolution that they were anything hut formidable. Great things were done against them by Nenadovitsh and his solitary gun. That Turkey, however, would keep up as many, and Servia as few, as possible was clear. Servia, too, would relegate the remnant of the Turkish occupancy to their walls, whilst the Porte would make them free of the rayons.
The material points, however, were as nothing to the moral ones; the patent facts as nothing to the mutual suspicions. Our sketch of the Revolution ended at the election of the son of Kara George, as Prince, in place of Micael; who was deposed, and who had succeeded his father Milosh : his father who, after the murder of Kara George, had abdicated in favour of his son and retired to Russia. Here he lived till, in *59, at a good old age, he was restored. That he should he a partizan of Russia was natural. Micael, the present Prince, is the same. Soon after his accession he drew attention to the state of Turkish occupation, and pressed a settlement. The settlement was delayed: he increased the army. The Skuptshina (Diet or Parliament) supported him in his somewhat minitant attitude. On the first of June last, a boy was shot by one of the soldiers of the Turkish garrison at Eelgrad; excitement followed; more blood was shed; the guns of the garrison were turned on the town: indeed, there was a bombardment. Meanwhile, the insurrection in the Herzegovna was going on, and the campaign against Montenegro was beginning. That the Servians encouraged their Slavonic brethren is certain; that they would willingly have lent them material aid is probable : at any rate, the Porte looked with suspicion on their attitude. However, by the meditation of the Powers already named, the Treaty of ’62 was effected, and has been received by the Servians—not without strong expressions of ill-will to England for the part she took in supporting Turkey.
As to the Montenegro settlement, it can scarcely be called a settlement at all. Against the most important element in it, the right on the part of Turkey to make a military road through the Montenegro territory, Russia has protested, and the Porte has ignored the protest. In this state the matter rests. If it were not for the gravity of the question which it involves, the claim itself would be simply ridiculous. A demand on the part of theMONTENEGRO.
239
two kings of Brentford for a military road across Penmaenmaur at a time when there was not a highway in Middlesex would not have been more absurd. A military road in Montenegro before the Turks have got a turnpike in Rumelia is a mere pretext for military occupation. It is simply in the predicament of the Suez canal; an excuse for introducing intruders.
The broad facts of the Montenegro question lie in the resolution of the Montenegriners not to become subjects of the Porte, and the courage by which they have long resisted, and will still continue to resist, all attempts to subjugate them. That they are robbers is only too true—too true, also, that they are cut-throats, and that in the literal sense of the term. When they kill an enemy they take his head as a trophy, and it is hoped that they are the only Europeans who make a practice of doing so. That they keep treaties just as long as they are forced to keep them, and break them at the first convenient opportunity, is by no means to their credit. Their Vladika has a pension from Russia; and in the first campaign of Omar Pasha, Austria stood between them and the sack of their small capitals, Cettinye and Niegush. The Montenegriners are not only a thorn in the side of Turkey, but a venomous one. But, to a great extent, they are what they are through the pressure of circumstances which a little liberality could amend. Their robbery is well-nigh a necessity; the strip of land that cuts them off from the sea being the main cause of it. I do not say that, even if they had a free port and a cheap market, they might not, for a generation or two, be addicted to marauding. I only urge that in their present condition they cannot be other than marauders. In the constraint thus put upon them, Austria is as much to blame as Turkey.
In respect to allowing Turkey to permanently reduce them, I submit that even the greatest sticklers for the integrity of the Ottoman Empire must allow that, at present, the time for new annexations on the part of the Porte of any purely Christian district has gone by. How it can keep what it has got is a question of sufficient difficulty. That the system of limitations and guarantees which this statement involves has a tendency to engender presumption on the part of the protegees, and that in the particular instances of Greece and Servia it has engendered it to a large amount, is true. But Turkey itself is to all intents and240
MONTENEGRO.
purposes a guaranteed and protected empire, and as such must take the had with the good of its position.
The next fact, though it improves the case of Montenegro as against Turkey, can scarcely he said to improve it as a whole. It must he remembered, however, that it is not against the true and undoubted subjects of the Sultan that the chief Montenegro robberies are directed. The men who are chiefly pillaged are the Albanians of the southern frontier, and these are much in the same relation to the Porte as Montenegro itself. They are Albanians rather than either Slaves or Turks, and Eoman Catholics rather than either Christians of the orthodox Greek Church or Mahometans. As they occupy the lower levels, while Montenegro is a mountain range, their wars are chiefly defensive; in other words, the Montenegriners are generally the assailants. The Albanians want protection, though for this the suzerainty of Austria would probably be too high a price. At the same time, they stand in a different position to Austria from that of Montenegro. In Montenegro, where the creed is Greek, Austrian influence would be as bad as Turkish.
To conclude, no one but a sciolist would propose an offhand remedy for such a state of things as has been here described. On the other hand, a little impartiality may see what is not a remedy. Turkish suzerainty is only a complication, Turkish dominion a mischief: Austrian the same. Access to the sea would diminish the temptation to robbery; the spirit of independence no one would wish to abate. In resisting the pretended construction of the military road the Montenegriners are right; and, if Eussia do nothing worse than support their resistance to it, she does nothing that any well-informed friend of both the contending Powers need complain of.
Upon the behaviour of Servia since 1838, and upon her future prospects, there have been both criticism and speculation. Unless we treat the freedom on the part of a Christian population from the Ottoman rule as a bonum per se, there is much that, in the eyes of Turkish-minded critics, requires excuse. The history of the Servian Princes is bad—the defeetion*of Kara George, the abdication of Milosh, his exile, his return, the change of dynasty, the troubles with which the rule of the present Prince began. All this speaks to the existence of faction and the bad governmentMONTENEGRO AND SERVIA.
241
by which the spirit of faction is fed. The material improvement of the country has been slight, to say the least of it.
The undisguised Panslavonism of the leading men, along with their leaning towards Russia and the encouragement they have given to the organizers of sedition from other countries, has given reasonable umbrage to the Porte. Indeed, the determination to become wholly independent, to excite others to independence, and to make Servia a nucleus for a Slavonic confederacy formed out of the ruins of Turkey, has hardly been disguised ; indeed, it is so natural that it is hardly worth disguising.
Yet in all these elements of contrast between the actual state of things and the hopes with which a sanguine friend of the Servian Revolution might have been originally inspired, there is nothing that disappoints a reasonable looker-on ; especially one who can strike a balance between the admitted evils of even the best revolutions and the evils for which such revolutions are, too often, the only remedy.
Here, for the present, ends the notice of the heterogeneous elements of the Ottoman Empire.
Note.
Since the remarks upon the military road and the block-houses were printed, the following extract from a note by Prince Gortshakov, wherein the same points are alluded to, has been published. (The Times of November 1):— “It is therefore for these Powers to decide whether the clause which stipulates the construction of a military road, with block-houses occupied by Turkish troops, is not equivalent to a real military occupation—to a real taking possession of the country; whether it is not introducing into Montenegro a dangerous principle—that of the immediate contact of races—a principle which has just precisely been condemned according to its results, and finally abolished in Servia, as incompatible with the maintenance of the peaceful relations which Europe desires to see established and consolidated in the East for general security; whether, consequently, that clause does not entirely destroy the status quo which the Porte had engaged to maintain; and, finally, whether it is not of a nature to constitute a permanent state of war where the collective efforts of the Powers which intervened in the Convention of 1858 tended to prevent conflicts.”
It
VOL. II.242
ITALY.
CHAPTER XVI.
Italy.—Descent of the Modern Italians.
The empires which are most remarkable for the mixed character of their populations, are the two to which so much attention has just been given: the Russian and the Ottoman. The next in order in this respect is the Austrian ; and if the mixtures of blood, creed, and language, were the only points to which we directed our attention, Austria would now come under notice. It will, however, save some repetition if we now proceed to Italy, and, after Italy, notice the constitution of the German Empire, of which Austria is the representative.
* * * $ *
Of Italy itself our notice will be limited. Happily, with the exception of Rome and Venice, it can now he treated as a unity. AH, then, that will here he given is a general view of the ethnological elements of the Italian blood, pedigree, descent, or genealogy ; accompanied by a notice of Rome (Venice will he noticed under Austria) as an exceptional element. To go further and to go for any purpose, would he to devote a whole volume to the historical complexities of those numerous States which are now in the process of being amalgamated into what is hoped will he a great kingdom.
In respect to the point under notice, I shall limit myself to the relation of the modern Italians to the ancient; and so doing, begin with the middle of the fifth century, the years immediately succeeding the invasions of Alaric, Radagaisus, Genseric, and Attila, and those preceding that of Theodoric the Ostrogoth. Then it was that those permanent invasions which left notable and definite bodies of foreign intruders as permanent settlers on the soil of Italy began.DESCENT OF THE MODERN ITALIANS.
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a.d. 476, Augustulus, the son of Ricimer, a Suevian king-maker, was dethroned by another barbarian, Odoacer, the king of the Heruli. And Odoacer’s conquest was a permanent one. He confiscated the lands of the Homan nobles and divided them among his followers. He held the reins of government with a firm hand, and, as compared with his immediate predecessors, was a long-lived king. He was compelled, however, to divide the kingdom of Italy with Theodoric the Ostrogoth, by whose orders he was apparently murdered. His followers were despoiled of one-third of their lands; a subsequent insurrection was crushed.
After fully as much speculation as the matter is worth, I have come to the conclusion that Odoacer was a Slavonian. His name, which I believe to be, word for word, Ottocar; his relations with Styria and Rhsetia; the presumptions of the case, along with several minute details, each of which is cumulative to some other, bring me to this conclusion. But his army was mixed. That it contained Germans, or Goths of the debateable frontier between his own and Theodoric’s Transalpine domains is likely; but that it contained in the Sciri, the Turcilingi, and, perhaps, in the Heruli themselves, elements which, in after times, would have been called Hun, which a Greek historian might call Scythian, and which a modern ethnological would name Turk (using the word in its wide and/scientific sense), is as certain as anything equally obscure in these dark times. Neither does he seem to have been a pagan. At any rate, the preaching of either St. Severinus, or some of his forerunners, had made itself known within his territory. The name is not wholly unknown elsewhere ; being, apparently, borne by a formidable invader of Gaul some years later; taking in the pages of Gregory of Tours the form Adovachrius.
If Odoacer descended upon Italy from Styria he was by no means the rude barbarian from a distant country that he is often considered. Neither was the blood of. the mass of his followers very different from that of the northern and north-western parts of Italy. It was much what it is in-Carinthia and Carniola at the present time.
He yielded, however, to either the arms or the treachery of a stronger invader than himself—the Ostrogoth Theodoric. It was
r 2244
ITALY.
on the Lower Danube that the power which Theodoric wielded had been formed; for the jurisdiction of his father Triarius lay in Moesia. Theodoric’s seems to have been that of a Markgrave for the parts about Vienna; at that time occupied by a very heterogeneous population consisting of the older inhabitants of the country represented at present by the Slovaks and Moravians ; of the Goths and Vandals of the movement down the Danube; and of the Romans and legionaries who had partially Romanized Pannonia ; not to mention outlying Gothini and Juthungi, possible remnants of some previous invasion, who, in the mind of the present writer, were members of the Lithuanic family. Among these it would he strange if there were not some of the ubiquitous Alans. Except in their proportions there was little difference between the composition of Theodoric’s armies and Odoacers. However, that the German element prevailed, we infer, from the few fragments which have come down to us in the language of the Ulphiline Gospels.
One-third of the land was what Theodoric demanded of the Italians for protecting the remainder, and the distribution is believed to have been made regularly and systematically. It may easily have been registered in a book like our own Domesday Book. That the relation of the invaders to the Italians was not unlike that of the Normans to the English after the Conquest is probable. At any rate, we may suppose that the mixture of Goth and Italian was not unlike that of Englishman and Norman. That the German language gave way to the Italian was natural. But the number of personal names in Italy which are German, great as it is, is scarcely an argument in favour of their Gothic origin. They may have been Lombard as well. Under Theodoric took place the first introduction of a German element which was, at one and the same time, considerable in amount and permanent in duration.
The great German invasion, however, took place about half a century later; viz., that of the Lombards. Theodoric reigned thirty-three years, dying a.d. 526. He was a German of the Goth and Vandal alliance before he invaded Italy; and a German who, during his occupancy of Italy, may be said, in a good sense of the word, to have Romanized. He adopted the Roman habits; availed himself of the services of Roman officials; encouraged aTHE LOMBARDS.
245
fusion between tbe two populations; tolerated the orthodox form of Christianity, though himself an Arian; and kept the peace of the Peninsula; leaving Rome to the Pope, and himself favouring Pavia and Verona as residences.
Ten years, however, after his death, Belisarius is in Rome, and Italy is reconquered to the Eastern Empire; to be again contested by Totila and to be again re-annexed by Narses.
But Narses called-in the Lombards; whom, though all the world declaim against as inhuman barbarians, an Englishman should speak-of with tenderness. Of all the Germans who take a part in the decline and fall of Rome, the conquerors of Lombardy were the nearest congeners to the conquerors of Britain. The Germania of Tacitus places them in the Angle neighbourhood in the parts about Magdeburg. It mentions them just before the Angles. It is supported in this by Strabo and Ptolemy. The account of their wanderings, as found in Paulus Diaconus, deduces them from the far North ; indeed, the whole tenor of the few notices we have of them raises the presumption in favour of an Angle affinity. It may safely be said that, if there were nothing in the opposite scale, this would be the ordinary common-sense view of their lineage. Yet the doctrine that the Lombards were little better or worse than so many Englishmen is a paradox; and, what is more, a paradox against which there is one very weighty fact. The German glosses in the Lombard laws are other than English ; indeed, they are in a High-German dialect.
The explanation of this, upon which I have enlarged elsewhere, lies in the fact that soon after the invasion there was a great secession—a secession for which, if such a thing exist for these times, there is unexceptionable evidence. This secession, I submit, carried away a great part of. the true and genuine conquerors ; the men who remained behind being, in the next generation, swamped by an invasion of Bavarians, who established a Bavarian dynasty, and in a Bavarian dialect left those glosses from which the High German character of the Lombard is inferred. The true Lombards were no clerks. The laws begin after the change of dynasty, and the change of dynasty took place after the secession.
The details in favour of this, shortly given, are as follows :—246
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1.	The names of the first four Lombard tings, Audouin, Alboin, Klepho, and Autharis.—These are Anglo-Saxon. That they have not come down to us in an Anglo-Saxon form is plain; but it must he remembered that they have come to us through Latin and High German media, That Autharis and Klepho are Edgar and Clapa is only a suggestion. That Alboin and Audouin are Elfwine and Edwin is nearly certain. In the Travellers Song, a poem in Anglo-Saxon delivering a long list of geographical and personal names, Ealfwine and Eadwine are the actual royal names for Lombardy; and this, I conceive, was nothing more than what they called themselves, when they spoke in the language of their original district, the language of the nearest kinsmen of the ancestors of the Edwins and Edgars of England.
2.	The earlier notices of the invasion and the secession.—The history of the Lombard kings, either fortunately or unfortunately, has come down to us in a systematic form, composed by one who may by courtesy he termed a native national writer, Paul Warne-frid, the Deacon of Eriuli, or Paulus Diaconus as he is generally quoted. Written about the year 800, it is a good authority only for the events that took place after the Lombards had become partially Romanized, after they had learned to read, write, and to enact laws. For the times anterior to the invasion it is not only worthless, hut plainly and patently worthless; indeed, it is a mere tissue of impossible geography and legend—valuable, indeed, in its way as being this, hut as history exceptionable. This depreciatory criticism, which applies to the account of the Lombards while they lived in Germany, is simply the criticism of the world at large. In extending it, in a qualified manner, to the notices of the Italian period, I go, perhaps, further than my predecessors. At any rate, the invasion took place two hundred years before Warne-frid’s time, and he wrote about it after the different elements by which its armies were constituted had become amalgamated; when there was little more than the general name of Langobard, or Lombard, to be considered. For this reason his notice of the Saxons is hut slight; and we only know through his account that certain Saxons entered Italy from his notice of their secession. From the earlier writer, Gregory of Tours, however, we get fuller details. The Saxons, he tells us, who, along with theTHE LOMBARDS.
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Lombards, had invaded Italy, break into Gaul, and ask a settlement of the Emperor Sigebert. He gives them one ; but not in Gaul. He settles them in the district whence they originally came. The details of their conflicts with the population which had fixed itself there during their absence are obscure. This was in the parts between the Hartz and the Elbe, chiefly along the river Bode. Of these we find more than one notice during the sixth and seventh centuries. They are sometimes called Saxons, and sometimes North Suevians. The heading, however, of the laws for the Thuringians of these parts, gives us, totidem Uteris, the name Angli.
So much for the Saxon element in the Lombard invasion; the element which seems to have given us the names of the first four kings. It was not, eo nomine, Lombard; but it was important, was different from the Lombard element in little more than name, and was English. It may be added that it was withdrawn, just when the Lombard dynasty became Bavarian.
Minute ethnology may go further in the analysis of the Lombard blood; may notice the relations which subsisted between the Lombards, the Gepidee, and the Avars before the descent upon Italy; may notice, too, the statement of Warnefrid, that the Langobardi were original Winili; i. e. Vends or Slavonians. But with the prominence given to what may be called the English element in this important conquest, I pass from the original Lombards to the Bavarians.
Of all the German invasions of Italy, this one of the Bavarians is the most obscure. Yet of the Germans in the present sense of the term, of the Germans of the great Merovingian empire, it is the earliest. Of the Germans whom, at different times and on divers occasions, the Italians called-in upon Italy it is the first. It is earlier than the Frank invasions eo nomine; earlier than the descents which connected Italy with the Empire and the Empire with Italy; earlier than the times of Charlemagne, Pepin, or Charles Martel. More than this, it is the invasion which more especially made Italy Lombard; for, though the original Lombards were, by hypothesis, Englishmen, it cannot be proved that the ordinary Lombard institutions were English. That the original conquest was, in many respects, of the same character as that of248
ITALY.
the Bavarians, simply on the score of both being Germany’s likely enough. The original Lombards, however, were, if not all but barbarians, at any rate very different from the Germans of the Empire ; which, we must remember, began, in all its essentials, with the Merovingians. More than this ; the Bavarian element was a substitution for the Lombard rather than a graft upon it. The Bavarian conquest coincided with the Saxon secession. That there was something Saxon left behind is likely: still, the phenomena seem to be those of replacement and substitution rather than superaddition.
How heterogeneous was the ethnology of Bavaria will soon he seen. It was Slavonic pure and simple. It was Romano-slavonic. It was Germano-slavonic. Above all, it was Avar, Scythian, or Turk.
With the Bavarian invasion, a very modern name makes its first appearance, that of Garibaldi ; the Garibalds being the chief family of the Bavaria of the times under notice.
The next intruders were from the south and east; directly from the south, indirectly from the east. In the eighth century, the Saracens wrested Sicily from the Greek Emperor ; and with Sicily a part of Naples. The Arab, or Saracen, period in Sicily is as definite a piece of history as the rule of the Saracens in Spain ; and I doubt whether there is so much difference as is generally imagined between the influences therein exerted. The laws of Sicily were, till a late period, Arab ; the language partially .so. In Italy, Nocera was the chief Saracen strong-hold ; and more than once did the Saracens of Nocera threaten Rome—sometimes with the Christian King of Naples, nay, even with a Christian bishop, as their ally.
Lastly, came the Norman conquest of Naples and Sicily; and the dynasty of the Tancreds and Manfreds, the descendants of Robert Guiscard.
Concurrent with all these was the Greek, or Byzantine, element. When Alaric threatened Rome, the Emperor retired to Ravenna. When Lombardy became Lombard, a remnant of the eastern empire still exhibited itself in the east and south, in Ravenna and Naples. In each it was important; in Naples more important than in Ravenna ; in Sicily more important than in Naples. TheDESCENT OP THE MODERN ITALIANS.
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Greeks, however, of the south, existing as they do at the present time, will be noticed again.
The main elements, then, in the genealogy of the modern Italians, are—
1.	German (	q
( Lombard j Saxon.
( Bavarian.
2.	Norman.
3.	Arab.
4.	Greek.
Such are the chief populations which effected permanent settlements in Italy between a.d. 450 and a.d. 1200.
In the question as to the purity or mixture of the blood of the modern Italians, the foregoing are the chief elements. The minor ones are the numerous armies which, without making any permanent settlements of any great importance, would, nevertheless, to some extent, modify the occupants of the land over which they spread themselves. Of these, the German, French, and Spanish are most important. At the same time, the Swiss, the Breton, and the English elements in the free companies and mercenary troops are by no means inconsiderable. In Naples there were, during the time of Charles of Durazzo and Ladislas, Hungarians.
The Bulgarian settlement has been already noticed.250
DAMASCUS LIBERIUS.
CHAPTER XVII.
Italy.—Rome from the Beginning of the Fourth Century to the Present Time.
Let us take June 19, a.d. 325, the last year in the first quarter of the fourth century, as our starting-point. It was the day on which the great Council of Nicsea began its sittings on the great Trinitarian controversy. Christianity had ceased to he a persecuted religion. Indeed it was the religion of the Emperor if not of the Empire. The Church could receive bequests and hold land. A few years afterwards Constantine was baptized. The removal of the seat of empire to Constantinople and the division of the Empire increased the power of the Bishop of Rome. There was a law against Pagan sacrifices. There was the definite predominance of Christianity. There was good and bad. Faction had already begun; and, on the accession of Liherius, Felix was opposed to him; Felix the first Antipope. There were tumults during the contested election of Damasus and Ursicinus.
Under Innocent I., Rome was sacked by the Goths, under Alaric ; but Alaric, though an Arian, was a Christian, and it was the Pagans who suffered most from the Gothic conquest. Innocent died the Bishop, or Pope, of a city which was, in all its essentials, a Christian city. Leo I. preached and wrote in Latin. The early Christian literature of Rome had been Greek; Greek, too, with the exception of the laws, was the language of Constantinople. This connected Rome with the west; separated it from the east. The times of Odoacer and Theodoric succeeded. Death of Theodoric ruled from Pavia or Yerona rather than Theodoric, from Rome. Such power as the Emperors exercised A,D' ’ from Constantinople was exercised from Ravenna and Naples.
Under Gregory the Great, the Lombards threatened Rome, and it was the dangers from the side of Lombardy out of whichROME.
251
arose the connection of Rome with the Franks, of Italy with Germany, of the Popedom with the Empire. The other details of the history of Gregory belong to general Gregory, history, in which they are of primary importance.	A,D' 604,
The connection, however, between Italy and Germany, does not take form until the pontificate of Gregory II. Between the two Gregorys there is a succession of twenty-four Popes (all obscure) in a hundred years.
Gregory the Great, died .	.	604
Sabinianus (an	Italian)	.	604-606
Boniface III. ...	607
Boniface IV. (an Italian) .	608
Deusdedit	.	.	.	615-618
Boniface V. .	.	.	618-625
Honorius I. .	.	.	625-638
Severinus (2 months and 4 days) 639 John IV. (a Dalmatian) .	640
Theodoras 1.....................642
Martin I.	649-655
Eugenius 1......................654
Vitalianus ....	657
Adeodatus	672
Domnus	677
Agatho (a Sicilian)	679
Leo II		682
Benedict	os CO
John V. (a Syrian)	685
Gonon ....	686
Sergius (a Syrian from Sicily) 687-701	
John VI.	702
John VII. (a Greek)	705-707
Sisinnus (a Syrian)	708
Constantine (a Syrian) .	708
Gregory II.	716
The unusual extent to which the Popes of this period were Syrian rather than Italian has already been noticed; nor is the fact an accidental one. It was during the seventh century that the Emperors of Constantinople recovered much of their lost authority in Rome. During the pontificate of Vitalianus the Emperor Constans visited Rome, and was recognized both as a spiritual and a temporal sovereign by the Pope. Under Boniface IV. the Pantheon had been converted into a Christian Church. This, along with others, Constans stripped of its ornaments. He visited Rome as a plunderer and left it without a rebuke.
Constantine, however, was the last of the Popes who thus humbly submitted to the Eastern Emperor. The Emperor with whom Rome was now to come in contact, was from another quarter; the region beyond the Alps. Between the Greeks of the Exarchate of Ravenna, between the Pope, and the Lombards, there was a long and complex system of alliances and counter-alliances, which ended, in the first instance, in the ejection of the Greeks, in the second, in the aggrandizement of the Lombards.
Again, the Lombard system was feudal; and to the Lombards the breaking-up of Italy into dukedoms, counties, and252
ROME.
marquisates, or marches, is chiefly due. Their kingdom was a congeries of fiefs; some of which were isolated, some comparatively independent. Of these the most important were those of Spoieto on the Roman, and Benevento on the Neapolitan, frontier. Gregory II. mixed himself up in a quarrel with the Duke of Spoieto and his suzerain the King of the Lombards. There were other elements of antagonism besides, but the upshot of this interference was the loss, on the part of Rome, of Amelia, Orta, Polymartia, and Blera to the Lombards, and the application of the Pope to Charles Martel for assistance.
^	However, Charles and Gregory died within five weeks
’of one another. Before the results of the arrangement were achieved, Charles’s power was divided between his sons Pepin and Carloman ; but as the latter became a monk it ended in devolving upon Pepin: and Pepin, from the final break-up of the Merovingian power, which then took place and which he himself more especially effected, became Kiug of the Franks. The pontificate, however, of Zacharias and the reign of Luitprand passed over without his armed intervention.
Still, the coincidence of the displacement of the Merovingian by the Carlovingian dynasty with the pressure of the Lombards upon Rome, is important. Chilperic, the last of the Merovingians, became a monk; and the Pope Zacharias, to say the least, sanctioned the deposition of him. Had matters been left to themselves, Italy might possibly have been united under a Lombard king. For what may be called the Transalpine alliance she has paid dear; Germany, perhaps, dearer. Zacharias died the year that Pepin became King of France, or of the Franks.
Astolf was less amenable to Popish diplomacy than Luitprand. Stephen was less fit for diplomacy of that bold kind on which Zacharias relied, than his predecessor. Zacharias used to meet Luitprand bodily, and (to use a vulgar expression) talk him over. Stephen crossed the Alps and visited Pepin himself. His reception was such as a politic prince would have met him with. Sufficient honour could scarcely be shown. On the other hand, the Pope had his own agreements to make. If Pepin would clear the land of the accursed Lombards, he should be anointed by the Pope himself (he had already been anointed by the Bishop of Mentz); his usurpation should be made legitimate ; and excom-ROME.
253
munication should he launched against any Frank who gave hi3 allegiance to any king who was not descended from the loins of Charles Martel. Pepin crossed the Alps ; effected an arrangement; recrossed them, humbled Astolf, who had besieged Rome ; and left Italy with the exarchate and the patrimony of St. Peter in the hands of the Pope, and with the title of Patrician of Rome for himself. Astolf died. His brother Rachis, who had become a monk, left the cloister to claim the crown. Desiderius, Duke of Tuscany, opposed him—successfully. Amongst other dukes who affected independence were those of Spoleto and Benevento, who declared their allegiance to the King of the Franks.
Stephen dies. His brother succeeds ; a fact suggestive of the Papal power having a tendency to become not only temporal but hereditary. He is chosen by the people and clergy of Rome; hut his first act is to announce his election to Pepin. Meanwhile, Desiderius reduces the insubordinate dukes, and attacks the Imperial portion of Italy, i. e. Ravenna and Naples. Nor will it he long before he is before the walls of Rome. Still, during Paul’s lifetime there is peace.
At Paul’s death Toto, Duke of Nepi, enters Rome. He had three brothers; all laymen. However, a bishop is found who, perforce, extemporizes an ordination for one of them, Constantine; who is then set up as Pope. Hereon, Christopher, the Primi-cerius, applies for the intervention of Desiderius. Before this is obtained, the Lombards of Spoleto eject Constantine; who is succeeded by Philip as the Pope of the insurgents, and by Stephen III. as the Pope of their opponents. The following is the account of the cruelties now exercised:—
“ The scenes which followed in the city of the head of Christendom must not be concealed.........The Bishop Theodoras was
the chief object of animosity. They put out his eyes, cut off his tongue, and shut him up in the dungeon of a monastery, where he was left to die of hunger and of thirst, vainly imploring a drop of water in his agony. They put out the eyes of Passianus, the brother of the usurping Pope, and shut him up in a monastery : they plundered and confiscated all their possessions. The usurper was led through the city riding on a horse with a woman’s saddle, with heavy weights to his feet; then brought out, solemnly deposed (for he was yet Pope elect), and thrust into the monastery254
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of Centumcellse. Even tliere lie was not allowed to repent in peace of his ambition. A party of his enemies first seized a tribune of his faction named Gracilis, put out his eyes, surprised the convent, treated the Pope in the same inhuman manner, and left him blind and bleeding in the street. These atrocities were not confined to the adherents of Constantine. A Presbyter named Waldipert had taken a great part in the revolution, had accompanied Christopher, the leader of the deliverers, to Rome, but he had been guilty of the hasty election of Philip to the papacy. He was accused of a conspiracy to betray the city to the Duke of Spoleto. He fled to the church of the Virgin ad Martyres. Though he clung to and clasped the sacred image, he was dragged out, and plunged into one of the most noisome dungeons in the city. After a few days he was brought forth, his eyes put out, his tongue cut in so barbarous a manner that he died. Some of these might be the acts of a fierce, ungovernable, excited populace; but the clergy, in their collective and deliberative capacity, cannot be acquitted of as savage inhumanity/’ *
Desiderius now appears before Rome to deliver the Pope from the tyranny of Christopher. This he does; but, as an equivalent, maintains that certain of his previous concessions must be abrogated. Carloman, on the other hand, the brother of Pepin, who, after becoming a monk, left his monastery and mixed in all the intrigues and crimes of the time, maintains that Christopher and his party are the Pope’s friends.
Such was the ephemeral alliance between the Lombards and the Pope, on the strength of which it is probable that the natural hostility broke out all the more bitterly.
The nomination of a Pope by a petty lord of one of the smaller fiefs has been noticed, on the principle upon which the Antipopes, Felix and Ursicinus, as well as certain cases of nepotism and the tumults of the Roman people have been noticed. They are early instances of what will soon become common.
It was in the renewal of the hostilities between the Pope and the Lombards that Charlemagne interposed; and the result of his interposition was the defeat of Desiderius, the last king of the Lombards. In crossing the Alps, Charles was opposed by the brave Adelclii, the son of Desiderius; and suffered a defeat at * Milman, Latin Christianity, Book IV. chap. ii.ROME.
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his hands. But his progress was not arrested. Adelchi fled to Constantinople. In 774, Charlemagne appeared in Borne. His title of Patrician was renewed. What he awarded to the Pope and under what conditions, is uncertain. The exarchate, wrested from the Lombards, who had wrested it from the Greeks, was one portion of the Papal domain: Corsica another. Ravenna, under its bishop, resisted; partly as a Greek province, partly as an opponent to the claims of Borne for ecclesiastic supremacy. In vain.
Twice during the pontificate of Hadrian did Charlemagne leave Germany for Rome; once to celebrate the baptism of his son Pepin, once to put down a Lombard league formed by Arigiso, son-in-law of Desiderius and Duke of Benevento. Arigiso yielded to the storm, and his son held Benevento as a fief under Charlemagne. For being thus spared he showed his gratitude by opposing Pepin, Charlemagne’s son, when he claimed the crown of Italy. Whilst Charlemagne was at Borne, a general league against him was organized by Adelchi from Constantinople and was defeated.
By Leo III., Charlemagne, in the first year of the ^ ^ m ninth century, was crowned and anointed Emperor.
Hadrian had invested his two nephews, Paschalis and Campulus, with the offices of Primicerius and Sacellarius. They attacked and mutilated the new Popes. Against the Pope himself, however, a counter-charge was made. Hence, when Charlemagne visited Borne for the fourth and last time, he came, in the first instance at least, as a judge. In this we have a measure, if not of his suzerainty, of his power. But Leo cleared himself, and Charlemagne was crowned Emperor.
The kingdom of Italy, which did not carry with it the Empire, was bestowed by Charlemagne on his son Pepin. Pepin left it to his illegitimate son, Bernhardt. Louis, the Emperor, determined it should be held by his own son, Lothair. Bernhardt found anti-imperial and personal supporters in Italy: amongst others the Bishop of Milan. And now a separation from Germany, even the reconstruction of a Lombard kingdom with a Frank king of the illegitimate line, was possible. But the nobles were Imperial: the democracy and the feeling of independence being with the masses. There were tumults at the elections of the Popes, and Lothair visited Rome, to judge, regulate, and256
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chastise its factions, three times. The suffrage in the election was limited to either the nohles or the notables.
When Lothair became Emperor, the Romans elected and consecrated Sergius without consulting him. His son, Louis II., King of Italy, approached Rome at the head of an army, to take cognizance of the omission. It was skilfully rectified.
If the division of the Empire distracted the Popes and exercised their skill, it strengthened them. Under Charles the Bald and Charles the Fat they interfered more with Germany than Germany interfered with Italy—indeed, Nicolas I. and Hadrian II. are, even as against the German influence, powerful Popes. The penance which the latter exacted from Lothair, King of Lorraine (not the Emperor and King of Italy), for a cruel divorce from an unimpeached marriage is a measure of this.
Charles the Fat died, and with him ended the legitimate line of Charlemagne. One of his last acts was to force Pope John VIII. to acknowledge him as Emperor over the whole extent of the Empire.
Marinus succeeds John; Hadrian III., Marinus; Stephen V., Hadrian. Italy had now an opportunity of choosing a native king. The candidates were from the numerous dukedoms into which the peninsula was divided. Of these, Spoleto and Friuli sent the two chief. The prize was not merely Italy, hut the Empire ; as if the Germans were likely to acknowledge the claim. Whatever the rival dukes might he in their attempts to wear the crown of Italy, as Imperial candidates they were, at best, hut pretentious pretenders. Berengar of Friuli looked to Italy and the Empire only. Guido of Spoleto flattered himself with the chance of succeeding to the crown of Burgundy. This brought about a compromise. Guido crossed the Alps on a fool’s errand, and returned to find that Berengar considered him faithless to his compact, whatever that might have been. In the quarrel that ensues, Guido wins the second of two battles, and takes possession of Pavia, along with a great part of Lombardy, Berengar’s stronghold. Stephen Y. crowns Guido, and dies. Formosus, who had been excommunicated on the charge of conspiring against a Pope; who had taken an oath never to resume his functions and never to visit Rome, succeeds him; having, however, been absolved by Marinus. Yet he wasROME.
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only a successful Antipope. Sergius, who had been chosen by the opposite party, was torn from the altar as he was preparing for his inauguration; upon which he fled to Tuscany to support Guido.
It was in favour of Berengar as against Guido, and in favour of Arnulf, an illegitimate Carlovingian whom the Germans had elected, as against Berengar, that Formosus decided; and Berengar himself joined in the invitation to Arnulf.
Arnulf crossed the Alps, and at Bergamo, the first town which resisted, hung up the Count in full armour before the gates, giving the place to pillage. Guido fled to his dukedom; and Arnulf comported himself as king of Italy. However, sickness broke out in his army, and he re-crossed the Alps. At the death of Guido, which happened about this time, Formosus was constrained to send the imperial crown to his son Lambert.
The next year Arnulf again entered Italy; and, as Formosus was a prisoner to the populace of his own metropolis, was invited by the Pope to Borne, and crowned. In Borne he remained hut fourteen days; and having moved towards Spoleto, where the widow of Guido had taken refuge, was stricken with paralysis, attributed to poison. Before he reached Germany, Formosus died; and the cry of “ Down with the Germans ” arose from the united factions of Lambert and Berengario. Boniface VII., once deposed from his sub-diaconate, and once from his priesthood, was elected Pope. He held the office fifteen days. The first act of his successor, Stephen VI., was to disinter, insult, and mutilate the dead body of his Germanizing predecessor, Formosus; for which, by a change of feeling, or the success of a faction, he was himself thrown into prison and strangled. Bo-manus and Theodoras II., who succeeded him, lived but a few months each. John IX. restored the posthumous honours to Formosus, ignored the claims of Arnulf, recognized the title of Lambert, excommunicated Sergius. After a reign of about three years, he died in the first year of the tenth century.
Benedict IV., succeeded by Leo V., succeeded John; who, in the third month of his pontificate, was thrown into prison by one of his own chaplains. Benedict IV. crowned Louis of Provence Emperor on the death of Lambert, succeeded for a while by Berengar.
VOL. II.
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And here the series of events changes, and the unsuccessful Antipope, Sergius, supported by Adalbert II., Marquis of Tuscany, and by the first of three infamous heroines, is the protagonist. From his retreat in Tuscany, Sergius had watched events in Rome. The wife of Adalbert was Bertha, the mother, by her first husband, of Hugh of Provence; whom she first led into a war with Lambert, who defeated and imprisoned him. When Berengar succeeded, Adalbert supported him for a time; but, again, influenced by his wife, deserted him in favour of Louis. A third time, under the same instigation, he joined in a revolt against Louis, who surprised by Berengar, had his eyes put out. Lastly, with Bertha’s sanction, he supported Sergius, who, at the head of a body of Tuscan soldiers, deposed Christopher, who had deposed Leo.
Sergius held the papacy seven years; during which time the reputation of Bertha may be said to have revived. The papacy of Sergius showed that Italy had worse women than she—Theodora and Marozia. A priest, charged by the Archbishop of Ravenna with business at Rome, was fortunate, or unfortunate enough, to be passionately admired by Theodora. Sergius, who, rightly or wrongly, is charged with over-admiring her, is induced to appoint him to the see of Bologna. Before his consecration, the Archbishopric of Ravenna falls vacant, and to this he is collated instead.
Anastasius III. succeeds Sergius; Lando, Anastasius; the paramour of Theodora, John X., Lando. Better as a soldier than a priest, he was by no means wanting to his metropolis. Ravaged by the Hungarians, ravaged by the Saracens, liable at any time to an invasion from Germany, with private war among the numerous Dukes, and with a factious capitol, Italy was in danger from every quarter. To meet this, John effected a league among the Dukes, as well as a union between Constantine, the emperor of the East, and Berengar. More than this, he headed in person the army that drove the Saracens from their threatening fortress on the Garigliano. What he won foully, he used nobly.
Marozia, the daughter of Theodora, was married to Alberic, who affected the tyranny of Rome. The Pope succeeded in defeating and ejecting him. His death soon after his ejection (he was murdered) left Marozia a widow. She seized the castleROME,
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of St. Angelo, and offered it as a dowry to her second husband. The castle commanded Rome; and Guido, the son of Adalbert and Bertha, married her, and continued the war of the deceased Alberic against John. He had been the lover of Theodora, Marozias mother; but Theodora is now either dead or removed from the field of history. He is surprised. His brother is killed before his face, himself imprisoned. Before many months are over he is succeeded by Leo VI., who reigns a few months, succeeded by Stephen VII., who reigns two years and a month. During his Pontificate, Guido, the husband, dies, and after his death, Alberic, Marozias son by her first husband, of the same name, becomes Pope. Scandal made him (John XI.) the son of Pope Sergius.
Hugh of Provence, as son of Bertha by her first husband, was half-brother to the deceased Guido. But as Berengar had been murdered, he had entered Italy, and claimed the empire. Were the rules of the forbidden degrees of affinity to debar Marozia from a third husband, and that an Emperor ? Were they to separate the interest of that Emperor and the Pope? Besides this, there was the Dukedom of Tuscany, now held by Lambert, the brother of Guido. Bad as the times were, a marriage with two half-brothers in succession was a serious difficulty, even to an Emperor and the mother of a Pope. What Hugh did was this. He spread the report that Guido, Lambert, and Ermengarda, their sister, were not the offspring of Adalbert and Bertha. They were supposititious. Lambert appealed to the God of Battles, and defended the honour of his family in the lists. A picked man was chosen to fight him; but the picked man was beaten. Undeterred, Hugh got possession of Lambert by violence, and put out his eyes. Tuscany then passed to Boso, Hugh’s brother. After this he moved his army towards Rome; but Marozia, too cautious to admit him within the city walls, married him in the castle of St. Angelo. The Romans, however, loved not Hugh, and Alberic, another of Marozias sons, organized a conspiracy against his step-father, in which he made himself master of his mother, the Empress, and his brother, the Pope. Having thrown these into prison, he forced the Emperor to retreat.
Alberic was now the tyrant of Rome; and for four years he limited his brother John to the exclusive performance of his
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spiritual duties. Hugh offered him his daughter in marriage as a price for the surrender of Eome. Alberic married the lady, his own step-sister, and kept possession of the city. Leo VII., Stephen IX., Marinus II., Agepetus II., succeed John, all puppets of Alberic, as far as Italy is concerned, but beyond the Alps, strange to say, not without authority.
Hugh ruled Pavia; and finding it convenient to marry Alda, a daughter of King Lothair, declared his marriage with Marozia null and void. When Alda died he married the widow of Eodolf, King of Burgundy, whose daughter was, of course, his stepdaughter. Her he united to his own son. Of one of his bastards he made a bishop, of another a cardinal. His other ecclesiastical appointments were little better.
All this led the Italians to look toward Germany. They began with Eodolf of Burgundy ; hut him Hugh bribed to keep quiet. Arnolf of Bavaria came next; who, after the reduction of Verona, retreated in disgrace. The third candidate was Beren-gar of Ivrea, the husband of Hugh’s niece, Willa the daughter of Boso—that Boso upon whom Hugh conferred Tuscany so iniquitously obtained from Lambert.
Berengar prevailed, and, having obtained all the realities of the kingdom of Italy, left the title to Hugh. But Hugh, thus humbled, abandoned Italy. Hugh died a year after his retirement, Lothair two years later; poisoned, it is said, by Berengar, who was now, in fact and title, King of Italy—King of Italy with the exception of Borne; with the exception of Eome, which we left at the death of John under the tyranny (I use the word in the sense attached to it in the Greek republics) of Alberic.
Alberic held his own for twenty-two years, and bequeathed his power to his son Octavian; who, being in holy orders, effected, on the death of Agapetus, his election as Pope. The civil government he conducted under the name Octavian; the ecclesiastical under that of John XII. The struggle between him and Berengar was now at hand. But so also was the time for the Deus ex machind. The Emperor Otho was now in the plenitude of his power, and to him the Papal Patrician, John or Octavian, appealed. Berengar, his Queen Adalbert, and his son, found refuge among the Saracens, and shut themselves up in their fortresses.ROME.
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Otlio advanced to Pavia where he was crowned King of Italy; and to Rome where he was anointed Emperor. But the Pope, finding that he had drawn upon himself a master rather than an instrument, intrigued with Adalbert. A second time Otho appeared at the gates of Rome, and the Pope was forced to fly. A council was summoned by the Emperor to try him. Thrice cited he failed to appear, and was superseded by Leo, a layman; whose elevation, tolerated for a time, ended in being the cause of a revolt, a revolt which Otho put down; a revolt, which when Otho had turned his hack, again broke out. The son of Alberic, John Octavian, was again the well-beloved head of Rome, secular and ecclesiastical; and his party, having risen upon the undefended Leo, who was barely able to escape to the camp of Otho, wreaked their vengeance on the remains of the Germanizing imperialists. Of one they cut off the right hand, of another two fingers, of another the tongue, of another the nose, and sent them thus mutilated to Otho; whose just vengeance, however, was anticipated by the sudden death of John. The Romans elected Benedict, and Otho degraded him, banished him, and restored Leo; under whose definite recognition Otho was invested with the power of Charlemagne. He was to elect his own successors to the Empire and to confirm all the elections of the Pope.
But Leo died, and John XIII. succeeded. Ejected by the people, he appealed to Otho, who for a third time entered Rome. The details of his cruelties shocked even his supporters; but peace, for five years followed, and a few months after Benedict VI. had succeeded John, Otho I. was succeeded by Otho II., at whose accession a new name commands our attention, that of Bonifazio Francone. He seized the Pope, imprisoned, strangled, and succeeded him. Compelled to fly, he carried off the papal treasures with him. Benedict VII. was the nephew or grandson of Alberic, who having excommunicated Boniface reigned as long as nine years, when John XIV. succeeded him ; protected, but only for a while, by Otho, who died, at Rome, soon after his accession"; opening an opportunity of which Boniface lost no time in availing himself. He suddenly appeared in Rome, seized, imprisoned, and murdered John, whom he soon followed to the grave himself, dying suddenly.
Otho III., a minor, was no check upon the turbulent factions262
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of the city. Crescentius, apparently of the blood of Theodora and Marozia, seized St. Angelo, and, comporting himself as consul, drove the Pope, John XV., from Rome. A compromise, however, enabled him to return and hold the popedom for eleven years—eleven years of comparative quiet.
When John died Otho was old enough to have a policy of his own, and that policy was a German Pope. He celebrated Easter at Pavia, and at Ravenna was greeted by a message from Rome to the effect that John was dead.
“ Whom did Otho wish to be pope ?
“My chaplain, and kinsman, Bruno, son of the Duke of Carinthia, and a scion of the Empire/’
Rome submitted. Bruno became Gregory V., and, having interceded in behalf of Crescentius, flattered himself that his power was permanent. Before a year was over he was an exile in Pavia, and Crescentius, pardoned at first, but afterwards excommunicated, had found, in a Calabrian Greek, an Antipope—John XVI. with whom he could conveniently divide the secular and temporal power of the headship of Rome. But Otho was now free to support Gregory; and, again, shows himself at Rome. The fate of John was to have his eyes put out, his nose and tongue cut off, and to be paraded through the streets on an ass with his face towards the tail and a wine-bladder on his head. Crescentius, who for a time defied the Emperor from the Castle of St. Angelo, was persuaded to capitulate aud beheaded. Within a year Gregory V. died, perhaps from poison.
It was in the last year of the tenth century that Gregory died. The learned Gerbert, under the title of Sylvester III., favoured by Otho, succeeded him. But the days of Otho were drawing towards an end. Stephania, the widow of Crescentius, had been abandoned to the lust of the German soldiers of the army to which her husband surrendered. She bided her time, threw her charms in the way of Otho, suffered herself to be loved by him, poisoned him. A year after this the Pope died with suspicions of poison.
In the contest for the Empire, which succeeded the death of Otho, between the Marquis of Ivrea and Henry II., the latter was chosen. But the power over Rome was divided. John, the son of Crescentius, assumed the title of Patrician. The Counts ofROME.
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Tusculum, also of the house of Marozia and Alberic, nominated the Popes. In the end their authority became paramount. At the beginning, however, there was a division of influence. The Popes who more especially obeyed John, were John XVII., John XVIII., and Sergius IV. The more especial nominees of the Tusculan Counts were Benedict VIII., John XIX. (his brother and layman), and Benedict IX., the nephew of his two predecessors, who was a boy under twelve years of age. Him, in the eleventh year of his papacy, when he had grown old enough to be vicious, the people drove out, electing Sylvester III. in his stead. But Benedict returned, retook his office, grew tired of it, and sold it to Gregory VI. With these three Antipopes the Emperor, Henry III., interfered, and that effectively. Nothing less than the nomination of a stranger could purify the papacy. So the first of the German Popes was consecrated, not at Borne, but at Sutri.
The German Popes were—
1.	Suidiger, Bishop of Bamberg, under the title of Clement II.
2.	Poppo,	„	Brixen,	„	Damasus II.
3.	Bruno,	„	Toul,	„	Leo IX.
4.	Gebhard,	„	Eichstadt,	„	Victor II.
After the death of Victor there was an abatement in this extreme Germanism; and the fifth after him was the famous Hildebrand, or Gregory VII. Under him (it had began earlier) came the development of a new foreign element, that of the Normans of Sicily and the south of Italy, whom it became the policy of the popes to pit against the Germans. The Norman capture of Borne, in 1085, was a result. It was pillaged by the defenders of the popes.
In 1119 came, with the accession of Calixtus II., another complication. Calixtus was the first of the popes who were French rather than German, i. e. curators of the interest of the kings of the French, rather than of the Frank, Emperor. The great movement, however, under Arnold of Brescia, took place when the single English pontiff, Nicolas Breakspear, or Hadrian IV., was pope.
The disciple of Abelard, but differing from his master as a practical democrat differs from a pilosophic latitudinarian, Arnold of Brescia would willingly have undone all that Gre-264
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gory VII. had laboured, with success, to do. He was a virtuous republican, who denounced both the immorality of the clergy and the secular power, with its abuses, of the Pope. Banished from Italy by a Papal Council he crossed the Alps only to be hunted down and denounced by St. Bernard, the real pope in the battle against such men as Abelard and Arnold. For five years he is missing, and in the sixth he is within the walls of Rome, again Republican; and again is the metropolis of the world debased by the miserable jealousies of a provincial market town. That Tivoli, like Carthage, should be either demolished or humbled, was the cry of the Romans. It had been besieged, had capitulated, was not favoured by the Pope. Yet to the Pope a walled town in the neighbourhood of Rome might be useful. So Innocent balked the revenge of the Romans, who declared the Republic, restored the Senate, prepared to elect a Patrician—did all, in short, according to the stereotype tralatitious formula of a normal revolution. They then turned their eyes towards the Emperor, even as the Pope had turned his towards Naples.
In March, 1144, Lucius II. was elected Pope. In February, ’45, he was killed in an attack on the capitol; succeeded by Eugenius III.; who from Tivoli recovered Rome, and that without abusing his victory. In this contest Arnold, at the head of a body of Swiss adherents, took part. But the demolition of Tivoli was still the cry in Rome; and the Pope, who withstood it, retired to Viterbo, to Sienna, to Germany. After the departure of the crusade he returned,—at first to Viterbo, afterwards, semi-repentant, to Rome. And Rome he entered, simply as a spiritual bishop. Again, he retired, and again he returned; and, on his return, the people were ready to keep him. It was at his death that the English Pope was elected.
And now the great Emperor Frederic Barbarossa crossed the Alps, and approached Rome much as General Monk approached London. Of no one but himself had he taken counsel, and all that was known about him was, that he meant to take the crown of Italy at the hands of the Lombards and the Imperial Crown at those of the Pope. But whether he would favour the Patrician or the Pontiff was unknown. Neither Lombardy nor Tuscany opposed either his march or his claims.
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corgnation by the Pope was the surrender of Arnold, who had left Eome, been taken prisoner, and been rescued. Demanded from his rescuer, a noble of Campania, by the Emperor he was imprisoned in the Castle of St. Angelo. His ashes were cast into the Tiber. The exact details of his death are unknown. He was executed, however, by one of the papal officers, i. e. by a spiritual rather than a temporal executioner. Of the remains of his followers the Emperor made short work. To a pretentious address he answered at length; but his concluding words were, “ Look at my Teutonic nobles, my banded chivalry. These are the patricians, the true Romans. This is the Senate invested with perpetual authority. To what laws do you presume to appeal but those which I shall please to enact ? Your only liberty is to render allegiance to your sovereign/’ In a tumult during his coronation he slew one thousand of the insurgents.
Then came jealousies between the Pope ind the Emperor, intrigues with Naples, the death of Barbarossa, the coronation of Henry IV. The price of this was the demolition of Tusculum, an act of three parties, and an act equally disgraceful to them all. The Romans had always demanded it. More than one Pope had, out of policy or gratitude, resisted the wicked cry. However, Celes-tine III. was prepared to give over the town to the tender mercies of secular Rome. Threatened thus, the devoted town had obtained the protection of an imperial garrison. “ Betray Tusculum, and you shall be crowned.” So said Celestine to Henry, and the garrison received orders accordingly. Without notice to the inhabitants, it opened the gates to the Romans. Many of the citizens were massacred, and almost all were mutilated sive pedibus, sive manibus> seu aliis membris. The walls and citadels were demolished.
The betrayal of Tusculum was only the first of Henry’s injuries towards Italy. He conquered Naples and Sicily, Pisa and Genoa helping him; the little that the Pope was able to do being done on the side of humanity. He tried in vain to check the cruelties of Henry in Sicily by an excommunication, righteously fulminated. Nor was it removed until after the Emperor’s burial at Palermo; the burial of Henry IV., the conqueror and tyrant of Sicily, the Emperor who, in the south of Italy, superseded the Norman dynasty by the Im-266
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perial—the Imperial dynasty of the emperors of the House of Holienstaufen.
Frederic II. became the heir to the Empire in the third year of his age; so that during his minority there was room for Philip of Suabia, and Otho of Brunswick, to invest themselves with either anti-imperial or quasi-imperial authority. This was in the times of Innocent III., the history of whose popedom, like that of Gregory, belongs to the history of Europe at large, rather than to that of Italy taken singly.
It was Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. by whom Frederic II. was chiefly excommunicated; for Frederic II. it was to whom the ban of the Pope had most especially become one of the normal conditions of his life. Ever hostile, and ever formidable to Rome, he is this, for the most part, in his capacity of King of Naples. With the certainty of victory he is marching upon Rome, when Gregory dies. The Mongols were then on the Danube. Under the expectation that a Pope less personally hostile to himself would be chosen, the Emperor paused in his career. Celes-tine IV. lived ten days after his election, and a vacancy of two years followed his death. The kings of England and France urged the necessity of filling it up. The Emperor, charged with creating the delay, reproaches the cardinals for their dissensions. “ Sons of Belial! animals without heads ! sons of Ephraim who basely turned back in the day of battle! Not Jesus Christ the author of Peace, but Satan the Prince of the North, sits in the midst of their conclave, inflaming their discords, their mutual jealousies. The smallest creatures might read them a salutary lesson; birds fly not without a leader; bees live not without a King. They abandon the bark of the Church to the waves without a pilot.” Frederic advanced on Rome. Innocent IV. was elected, and he held high language with Frederic in respect to the excommunication under which he was lying. Strong in the extent of his dominions the Emperor was, through a sudden diminution of the Ghibelline influence, comparatively weak in Italy. In Viterbo the Guelfs gained the upper hand. Vercelli and Alexandria changed parties. The Marquises of Montserrat and Malespina abandoned him. The wife of the King of Naples sought a reconciliation with the Pope. The Pope himself had ventured to show himself at Rome.ROME.
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An agreement with the Emperor seems possible. The preliminaries take place. The Pope asks much that the Emperor unwillingly concedes; much that he opposes. The Emperor suspects intrigue. The Pope feels that his personal liberty is in danger. He escapes—first to Genoa, thence to Lyons, whence, after much intrigue and conflict, he issues a sentence of excommunication and deposition.
In the war that arose out of this the Pope prevailed; more, perhaps, as a Guelf of Genoa than as a Pope. It A,D‘ ’ was in Parma where the reaction against the Ghibel-lines was the strongest, and where it was fatal to the cause of Frederic. From his losses and disgrace before Parma his downward career was rapid, and in 1250 he died. The Pope considered that the crown of Naples had been forfeited to the Holy See, and disposed of it accordingly.
Frederic left two legitimate sons, Conrad and Henry, and Manfred an illegitimate one; Conrad who left the nominal government of Sicily to his son Henry, hut the real power to Manfred. All his skill and conduct were needed. Amongst his Guelf partisans of Northern Italy Innocent divided the chief of Naples. The crown itself he hawked about. It was offered to Richard, Duke of Cornwall, the son of Henry III. of England, who refused it; and it was accepted by his brother Edmund, who paid money for it. It had, however, to he won from the Hohenstaufen brothers; one of whom, Conrad, did his best to lose it. He disgraced, apparently without enraging, the more popular and able Manfred; who, never wanting in self-command, was satisfied with hiding his time. He survived both Conrad and Henry, who died early; the former leaving an infant son, Conradin, to whom Manfred acted as guardian. A child and a bastard now represented the Hohen-staufens.
The son of the King of Arragon married the daughter of Manfred : a fact of which the import will become clearer in the sequel.
It was one thing for Edmund of England to accept the crown of Sicily from the Pope. It was quite another matter to wrest it from Conradin under the regency of Manfred. The wrong time had been chosen; a better must he found. To Innocent and his successor Alexander IV., Charles of Anjou, the brother of St. Louis, recommended himself. Urban IV., a Frenchman, crowned him.268
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Manfred had to be ejected, and in the battle of Benevento he was killed. Conradin, three years later, had also to he reduced ; and in the battle of Tagliacozzo he was taken. The last of the Hohen-staufens, he was executed on a public scaffold.
The days of Urban and Alexander were the days of the Senator Brancaleone, another exponent of the secular and anti-papal feeling in Borne. He was called from Bologna to administer Borne, and, on the condition of hostages from thirty good families in Borne being sent to Bologna, he obeyed tbe call. The Pope, who ruled from Perugia, he called into residence at Borne, and he also laid him under restrictions in the way of temporal power. He kept his authority till he died, and, thanks to the effect of the thirty hostages, died in his bed.
The Arragon title to Sicily was the marriage with the daughter of Manfred. Peter of Arragon, Alfonso of Arragon, James of Arragon, all brothers, held the crown in succession. There was a shade over the title of James to the original crown of Arragon. He had also married the daughter of Charles of Naples. Boniface VIJL had availed himself of all this, and the price for the confirmation of James’s crown in Spain was the abandonment of Sicily. His brother Frederic was of a different temper. Of a very different temper were the Sicilians. James would and he would not. Envoys from Palermo demanded a categorical answer to the question whether he had ceded the island to the Pope and the King of Naples. He owned that he had.
“ What, then, is your brother Frederic to do ? ”
“He is a soldier, and he knows his duty. Ye, too, know yours.”
The Sicilians and Frederic construed this in their own way. A papal legate was sent into Sicily with a carte blanche for which they had only to inscribe a constitution and any amount of privileges.
“ It is by the sword, and not by parchments, that Sicily will win peace,” said Peter de Ansalo.
Frederic was crowned at Palermo : the Pope threatened excommunication; and named Frederic’s own brother James, the recreant ex-king, as standard-bearer in the war against his own dynasty. It was a long war, and a war of varied fortune; but it ended in Frederic leaving his crown to his descendants.ROME.
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Before Charles of Anjou died, his son (of the same name) had been taken prisoner; and a prisoner he remained until some years afterwards, when he recognized the title of the Arragon line to Sicily and was set free.
The papacy of Boniface VIII. was an important epoch to Borne well as to Sicily. His quarrel with Philip the Fair broke out in 1301. It ended in his imprisonment, his death, and the unrelenting persecution of his memory.
When Benedict XI. succeeded him, the question was how far Philip the Fair was to carry his implacability and his rapacity. The Colonnas, his partisans in the ratio that they were enemies of Boniface, had been excluded from the cardinalate. Were they to be re-admitted ?
Could Philip abate his personal hatred, not to Boniface who was dead, but to his memory ? Benedict did all that a mild but weak man could do in the way of conciliation. Philip recognized him; but an excommunication of all concerned in the imprisonment of Boniface follower j and the death of Benedict immediately followed this. In the conclave which elected his successor, Clement V., there was an Orsini on each side; but no Colonna anywhere. Clement V. was Bernard de Goth, Archbishop of Bordeaux, a Gascon by birth and an English subject. In an interview with Philip he agreed to six conditions—
1.	The full reconciliation of Philip with the Church.
2.	The absolution of all concerned in the murder of Boniface.
3.	The tenths from the clergy for five years.
4.	The condemnation of the memory of Boniface.
5.	The re-establishment of the Colonnas.
6.	A secret article—probably, the demolition of the Order of the Knights Templar.
The Pope was consecrated at Lyons. Italy he had no wish to revisit. The English parts of France belonged to an enemy of Philip. Avignon belonged to the Counts of Provence. Here he fixed himself, and to Avignon his successors were bound for more than seventy years; the Avignon Popes being the Popes of the Captivity; or of Popes not of Borne.
It was part of Philips policy for Charles of Valois to be Emperor. But Henry of Luxembourg was the successful candidate. Like so many of his predecessors he descended into Italy. Like270
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no one before him he descended as a pacificator. The hitter Guelfs were more papal than the Pope himself, who was little better or worse than a Ghibelline. But Henry of Luxembourg, the patriot king of his immortal contemporary, Dante, died during his mission. The desecration of the memory of Boniface Clement contrived to stave-off to the Greek Kalends. For two years and three months after his death there was an interregnum : after which John XXII. was elected. He was bishop of Avignon, and, by being this, determined Avignon as the seat of the Popedom. He opposed Louis of Bavaria as Emperor, who crossed the Alps and raised an Anti-pope. He quarrelled with the Visconti. He filled the conclave with French. Benedict XII. succeeded him on condition of keeping at Avignon. Clement VI., his successor, was simply a Frenchman.
In the papacy of Clement a voice from Rome began to make itself heard. It was the cry against Papal non-residence. It was neglected, and it grew into the movement of which Rienzi was the head. In this the pure republicanism of the Capitol reaches its climax. In the eyes of his neighbours and contemporaries Rienzi was the son of an innkeeper and a washerwoman. In a letter written by himself, after his elevation, and with the fumes of it in his head, his own account is as follows:—“ When Henry of Luxembourg went up to be crowned at Rome, the church of St. Peter, in which the coronation ought to have been celebrated, was in the power of his enemies, the Roman Guelfs and the King of Naples. Strong barricades and defences, as well as the deep Tiber, separated the two parts of the city. Henry was therefore compelled to hold his coronation in the church of St. John Lateran. But the religious Emperor was very anxious, before he left Rome, to pay his devotions at the shrine of St. Peter, and to see the church which had witnessed the coronation of so many Emperors. He put on the garb of a pilgrim, and in this disguise, with a single attendant, found his way into the Church of St. Peter. A report spread abroad that the Emperor had passed the barriers in secret; the gates and bridges were instantly closed and jealously watched; and a herald was sent to put the Guelfic faction on their guard, and to offer a large reward for his capture. As soon as the Emperor and his attendant perceived this movement, they stole hastily along the street by the bank of the river, and, finding all the passages closed, they took refuge, under pretenceRIENZI.
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of going in to drink, in the hostel or small inn kept by Rienzi’s supposed father. There they took possession of a small chamber, and lay hid for ten or fifteen days. The Emperor s attendant went out to procure provisions: in the mean time, Rienzi s mother, who was young and handsome, ministered to the Emperor ‘as their handmaids did to holy David and to the righteous Abraham/ ”
The youth, however, of Rienzi was spent at Anagni; whence he returned to Rome; married a rich wife; practised as notary; read and mused over Livy and Osesar; indulged in the contemplation of the ruins; painted; contrasted what he saw and felt with what he had read about. To Clement at Avignon he was charged with the three following requests.
1.	To confirm the magistrates appointed at Rome.
2.	To appoint a Jubilee every fiftieth year.
3.	To revisit Rome.
At Avignon he met Petrarch: and to Rome he returned with the promise that the Jubilee should be kept as they had requested, and that, circumstances permitting, he would revisit Rome. “May the Roman city arise from her long prostration, ascend the throne of her majesty, cast-off the garment of her widowhood, and put on the bridal purple. Let the crown of liberty adorn her head and rings of gold her neck; let her re-assume the sceptre of justice; and, regenerate in every virtue, go forth in her wedding
attire to meet her bridegroom..........Behold the most merciful
Lamb of God that confoundeth sin! The most Holy Pontiff, the father of the city, the bridegroom of the Lord, moved by the cries and complaints and wailings of his bride, compassionating her sufferings, her calamities, and her ruin—astonished at the regeneration of the city, the glory of the people, the joy and salvation of the world—by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost—opening the bosom of his clemency —has pledged himself to have mercy upon us, and promises grace and redemption to the whole world,
and to the nations remission of sins.”...........“ What Scipio,
what Csesar, or Metellus, or Marcellus, or Eabius, can be so fairly deemed the deliverer of their country, or so justly honoured with a statue ? They won hard victories by the calamities of war, by the bloodshed of citizens: he, unsolicited, by one holy and triumphant word, has achieved a victory over the present and future272
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disasters of his country, re-established the Roman commonwealth, and rescued the despairing people from death.”
He was also appointed Papal Notary. But the Pope remained an absentee, and Rienzi became an agitator. At a vast popular meeting he passed by acclamation, and, as a great plebiscite, the Laws of the Good Estate ; which, a few days afterwards, he was appointed to administer as Tribune. The nobles, at first contemptuous, were afterwards submissive : and to treat them— Colonnas, Orsinis, and Savellis—with contemptuous mercy was Rienzi’s first great mistake. He boasted, too, and called himself Augustus, Nicolas the Severe and Merciful, the Tribune of Freedom, Peace, and Justice, the Deliverer of the Roman Republic. He showed much elation ; was ostentatious. On the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin he was crowned by seven ecclesiastics with seven crowns ; of oak, of ivy, of myrtle, of laurel, of silver, and of gold.
His dealings with the nobles had not been free from treachery ; and the nobles knew the temper of the people. They bided their time till a change set-in, and then appeared in arms ; but prematurely. Their first onslaught failed ; and the revenge of Rienzi on such as fell was ignoble. The Pope declared against him. He felt that the people wavered. He failed, if not in physical courage, in energy and readiness.
For two years and a half (and here begins the second epoch in his wonderful personal history) he lay concealed among the Apennines ; a Franciscan of the Franciscans. And here his mind is acted on by strange thoughts suggested by the plague then depopulating Italy. He visits Rome during the Jubilee in disguise. Strange as they are, the exhortations of a hermit tell upon him. “ Rienzi has laboured enough for himself; he must now labour for the good of mankind. The universal reformation, foreseen by holy men, at the urgent prayer of the Virgin, is at hand : God has sent earthquakes and a great mortality on earth to chastise the sins of men. Such had been his predeterminate will before the coming of the blessed Francis. The prayers of St. Francis and St. Dominic, who had preached in the spirit of Enoch and Elias, had averted the doom. Since there is now not one that doeth good, and the very Elect have cast off their primitive virtues, God has prepared, is preparing, vengeance. After this the ChurchKIENZL
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will resume her primal holiness. There will be peace not only among Christians but between Christians and Saracens. The age of the Holy Ghost is at hand. For this end a holy man, chosen of God, is to be made known to mankind by a Divine revelation.” Other prophecies were added.
He goes to Prague and has an interview with Charles IV.
“ Knowest thou who I am ? ”
“ I imagine that you are the Tribune of Rome.”
“ I am he that was Tribune. I can overcome the Orsinis and Colonnas. I offer my only son, my Isaac, as a hostage. Whoever rules in Rome, when the Empire is not vacant, without leave of the Emperor, is an adulterer. The people at Avignon will slay the Pope; will elect a poor one. The peaceful reign of the Pope, the Emperor, and Rienzi will be an earthly image of the Trinity.”
Charles committed him to the keeping of the Archbishop of Prague: and it was under his wardership that he revealed the secret of his imperial birth. Both Charles and the Archbishop may be excused for thinking that they had, to say the least, a very impracticable man to deal with. Meanwhile, the Pope had asked that he should be given-up ; and given-up he was.
The first thing he did on reaching Avignon was to ask for Petrarch. Petrarch could help him but little in the first instance; and three ecclesiastics were appointed to determine his punishment. They delayed. A feeling rose in his favour. Chained to the wall of his dungeon, he was left alone with a Bible and a copy of Livy. He was not put to death. On the contrary, he was destined to revisit Rome and to taste once more a remnant of his former glory.
At Rome, faction still ran high. Albornoz, the Papal legate, was commissioned to punish, to pacify, to prepare Italy for the return of its Pope. He considered that Rienzi might help him to do all, and procured his release accordingly.
At this time, all the Romagna was in the hands of either the Roman barons or adventurers. Giovanni del Vico, the nominal Prefect of Rome, held Viterbo. For a time, two senators chosen from the nobles administered the city; for a time, Cerrone, a demagogue; for a time, Baroncelli, another demagogue. Ba-roncelli attempted a new constitution like that of- Florence.
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It was against Baroncelli that Bienzi was more especially pitted. He superseded him; but his dignity turned his head, and his second administration ended in an insurrection and in his death, Under Urban Y. the Visconti of Milan became formidable; under his successor, the Free Companies. The last of the Popes of the Captivity was Gregory XI.
The Schism followed the Captivity. The Pope resided in Borne: hut insurrection followed insurrection; Anti-pope, Antipope. The interposing Power was now Naples, under a Hungarian and a native dynasty ; or rather, under the conflict between the Neapolitan and Hungarian branch of the royal family. There is the Pope at Naples, Ladislas (mark the Slavonic name) at Borne. There is an abortive Crusade against Ladislas. The councils of Pisa, of Constance, and of Basle, sit on a new subject —the title to the Popedom, for which, at one time, there are three candidates. These are the times of Wyclifle and Huss ; heralds of a greater change than any that has yet taken place. In Florence and Ferrara, the union of the Greek Church with the Boman is discussed; but the union is of little importance, inasmuch as Con-1452 stan^noP^e *s conquered by the Turks. The revival of literature followed; and under Nicolas V. the city was beautified, the arts cultivated, learning encouraged. But the Emperor Frederic III., though he was the last who received his crown from the hands of the Pope, was crowned in Borne. And Porcaro, though nearly the last of the popular leaders, proclaimed, under Nicolas, the Bepublic. Of a noble family, of great eloquence, he was twice relegated from the city: once on an unimportant mission; once, in honourable exile, to Bologna. His nephew organized a conspiracy, which the uncle returned to join. The Pope was to be surprised while solemnizing mass. His stables were to be burnt; his treasury to be plundered. Porcaro, with nine of his accomplices, was hanged.
In the latter half of the fifteenth century, the ne-a.d. 1454.	J
potism of the Popes took a new form, and Sixtus IV.
made a grant to his nephew, Girolamo Biario, of Imola and Forli.
In this lay the foundation of the territorial acquisitions of the
Papacy as they stood in 1860. Alexander IV. succeeded; who,
if we believe only half the charges which are laid against him,
must be condemned as the wickedest of all the Popes: and, per-THE BORGIAS.
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haps, with the exceptions of Csesar Borgia his son and Lucretia Borgia his daughter as the wickedest individual in Italy. The charge that Lucretia was, at one and the same time,
—Alexandri filia, nupta, nurus,
can only he stated with the ambiguity of the venomous epigram which embodies it. The infamous scenes witnessed in the Borgia palace by the son, the father, and the sister, may be found in the decent obscurity of a learned language, as a necessary quotation, in one work * already; and for such a scene, one record of the evidence is enough. That the worst accusations are unproven is clearly shown by the biographer alluded to. They are made by the special enemies of the Borgia family, and are scarcely compatible with many acknowledged actions of the supposed monsters. What Borgia did was to deceive certain petty potentates whom he made his tools and victims by tissues of falsehood and deceit; to use them; to turn against them; and to take the lives of such as he had done-with. In the simple matter of treachery, Frederic the Great did as much, and on a larger scale; for Borgia’s field was a small one. Pesaro, however, he wrested from the Sforzas; Bimini from the Malatestas; Faenza from the Manfredi. He persuaded Bologna to join him in the coercion of Florence, Florence being required to abandon the support of Piombino, to take back the Medici, and to make Borgia himself condottiero of the Bepublic. It was by his ally, Louis XII. of France, and by his own father, the Pope, that his career was checked. That the father and son each attempted to poison the other is one of the unproven charges. Their aims were, to a great extent, the same: the augmentation of the Papal domains, and (notwithstanding the alliance with them) the expulsion of the French from Italy—for these were the times when the French were more formidable than the Germans; the times of Charles VIII. and Louis XII. Borgia, after the reduction of Urbino, Parma, Piacenza, and Beggio, aspired to the title of King of Umbria and the Bomagna. He died, however, in Spain; an exile.
At this time, the chief estates in Italy, over and above the Pope and Venice, which we may look upon as the permanently great and independent Powers, were Florence, Milan, and Naples
* Roscoe. Life of Leo X. Note at end of Volume I.
T 2276	ROME.
Florence was under the Medici. Milan was under Ludovico Sforza, whose power had succeeded that of the Visconti. Naples was held by an illegitimate branch of the house of Arragon. Meanwhile, Ferdinand of Arragon, the representative of the legitimate branch, had married Isabella of Castile, and consolidated the power of Spain. As a Spaniard he was, in Neapolitan matters, more for Arragon than France, and more for the legitimate branch of Arragon than the illegitimate. Still, in the first instance, he acted on the side of the ruling dynasty. The prime mover of the mischief which ensued was the Duke of Milan; whose dukedom was a fief of the Emperors, and, at the same time, a heritage of the Viscontis, through whom Louis XII. of France afterwards had the presumption to claim. But this is an anticipation. Sforza invited Charles VIII., the son of Louis XI., to cross the Alps and take possession of Naples; to which he had a claim as an Angevin, as well as through the will of the King of Provence, who had bequeathed the Neapolitan throne to him in preference to the son of his own daughter, as if (which was not the case) the law of succession had been the Salic law. Naples was a fief of the Pope’s. The details of the preliminary manoeuvres between France and Spain, the details of the fighting, are unnecessary. All that requires showing is the state of Italy. Charles VIII. entered Italy, visited Rome, failed to obtain the support of the Pope, overran Naples, left it to return to France. But his arrogance and violence in the Milanese had irritated or alarmed Sforza; who formed against him a league, in which Venice, the Pope, and Spain joined. This ended in the French being all but ejected from Naples. During the war, Sforza made a separate peace for himself; and the Spanish general, the Great Captain Gonsalvo de Cordova, relieved Rome of a remnant of the French at Ostia and was honoured as the saviour of the city.
Charles is succeeded by Louis XII., who, claiming (through the Visconti) Milan as well as Naples, crossed the Alps, with an Italian league in his favour; with the Pope, and Florence on his side; and with Venice also—Venice yielding to her jealousy of Milan and her hatred to Sforza. Savoy granted a passage. Spain was neutral, the Emperor engaged against the Swiss. The Milanese was reduced; a partition of Naples between France andROME.
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the legitimate branch of Arragon (in other words, Spain) agreed to. As far as the Pope went, this was confirmed.
It is Ferdinands son-in-law who negotiates; hut, before the announcement of the agreement reaches Gonsalvo de Cordova, he has reduced the kingdom in question. ' So Ferdinand repudiates the treaty. The last act of the deposed king, Frederic, of the illegitimate line, was to mediate a peace between the two kings who had united to strip him of his dominions. But the chronic state of hostilities still continued; for Louis still held the Milanese, and Italy caballed against him. Genoa and Pisa made overtures to the Great Captain, who reconciled the Orsinis with the Colonnas of Rome, and, in various ways, upheld his masters interests. Louis, too, formed fresh combinations, the foremost
of which was the League of Cambrav. By this,
. . i	„ Dec. 10, 1508.
Venice was to he partitioned among the Kings of
France and Spain, the Emperor, and the Pope: the Pope being Julius II. Previous to his election, Louis had attempted to force a French pontiff, the Cardinal D’Amboise, on the Cardinals. But Pius, who reigned only a month, was elected; and Julius succeeded him. Venice fell at once, when the success of the French alarmed the Italians, and the Holy League between Julius, Ferdinand, and Venice was formed to expel the French. The battle of Ravenna broke their power: but the battle led to no results. The Emperor was detached from the alliance. Henry VIII. of England, then the son-in-law of Ferdinand, joined it. The French retreated. The Italians quarrelled. Venice joined France; France and Venice were defeated. All this, dating from the descent of Charles VIII., took place within twenty years.
Julius II., pre-eminently the Pope militant (though, as far as his family and personal views were concerned, as hostile to the Borgias as the Borgias had been to Sixtus IV.), added Perugia and Bologna to the Papal territory.
The conflict between France and Spain pure and simple,, now becomes a conflict between France and Spain with the accession of the Empire. Instead of Ferdinand and Isabella against Charles VIII. and Louis XII., it is Charles V. against Francis I. The details, however, become simpler; Europe is becoming settled, and the idea of a balance of power is de-278
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veloping itself. The histoiy of the Popes is the history of the Papal Powers in general, rather than that of the city of Rome. There are no more Tribunes; no more Imperial coronations. Protestantism is growing strong. Under *Leo X., the Papal court is epicurean, literary, latitudinarian. Under Clement VII., Rome is sacked by the Constable Bourbon, fighting for Charles V. against France and against his brother. The temporal power is consolidated, the spiritual limited. Under Sixtus V., a new form of nepotism begins, which will be noticed more fully in the sequel. Under his successors, treaties are made without any recognition of the Pope. Even Papal fiefs, real or pretended, are transferred without consulting him ; a natural result of the increased influence of the Protestant Powers, Sweden, Holland, England.
Under Pius VII., the Napoleonic conquest of Italy takes place ; Rome being revolutionized, and the Pope imprisoned. Then comes the Concordat, with the re-establishment of his authority. Then the Treaty of Vienna. Then the movements in Italy, Spain, and Germany for the constitutions which the Allied Powers promised and withheld. Then the times of the present Pope.
At the accession of Pius IX., the reform of the Papal system was in the predicament of Catholic Emancipation in England at the accession of George IV., or of the Reform Bill at that of William IV. George III. had been adverse to the former, George IV. to the latter; whilst the demand had taken strength from the delay. In like manner, Gregory. XVI. had conceded nothing. At his death in 1846, it seemed as if an impatient people had been met by a reforming Pope; for as such Pius IX. began his reign. Much was expected from him, and it is possible that, if the political atmosphere of the environment had remained calm and cloudless, some good laws might have been passed. But the revolutionary year 1848 came too soon after Pius* accession. Like all his fellow-potentates, the Pope took alarm, and shrunk from reform just in proportion as it was demanded. He resisted, conceded, fled.
The triumvirs who administered the civil government, Saffi, Mazzini, Avezzana and Annellini, were intemperate republicans. The military command was in better hands, Garibaldi’s; and when it pleased the French Republic that the Pope should be restored,ROME.
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the first attack of the troops under General Oudinot was repulsed ; only, however, in the first instance. They entered Rome, and there they are now.
The tumults of which the foregoing general view has been given, were partly movements of the people, partly movements of the aristocracy. How far is the former the representative of the old Roman Plebs, the latter of the old Roman nobles ? It is probable that, when compared as Modern and Ancient, Rome is more Roman than Greece is Greek. That the present Trasteverini are the absolute descendants of the descendants of the mobs which, under the Csesars, clamoured for the doles of bread and the seats at the public games, is unlikely. In large towns the blood must be renewed from the country. Upon the whole, however, the blood of the Roman masses seems to be Italian.
Of the break-up of the old Roman aristocracy the history begins early. With the Caesars we have Roman, with the Flavii, Italian, families. But the beginning of the second century sees Trajan Emperor—Trajan, a Spaniard and the kinsman of his successor Adrian. The foreign element (we can scarcely call it the barbaric) begins thus early with the throne and the army.
At the beginning of the third century, Severus is an African in blood, possibly a Christian in creed. One of his sons bears the name of the old Getic slaves; the other that of Caracalla, a name with a very suspicious Turkish look. Elagabalus is a Syrian ; probably something between a Jew and a Fire-worshipper, and his successor is his cousin. Maximinus, a Thracian, succeeds. Philip is an Arab, a possible Semi-christian again. After a short interval come the emperors with what we may call the low Latin names ending in -ianus, as 'Florianus, Numerianus, Diode-Manus, Hannibal/a/zws, &c., the accumulation of which, at a certain period, can scarcely be accidental. All this time, the Roman authors are writing in Greek. The abeyance of the Latin language, as a vehicle of literature, during the second and third centuries has long been noticed. In the courts of Law alone was it supreme.
a.d. 275, however, a true Roman reigns for six months—Tacitus, who has the credit of having shown the good sense of boasting that he was a descendant of the historian. I do not say that the names of the Senate, if we knew them, in detail, would280
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not give us more signs of Roman blood than those of the emperors. I only submit that the names of the emperors are, on the whole, other than Roman. In all probability, the rulers were the least Roman part of Rome. The forms in -anus continue till a.d. 455, when they die-off with the last of the great emperors, Majorian—-the last, with the exception of Stilicho, of the old Romans.
The last Emperor of the west, the Little Augustus, was the son of the Suevian Ricimer.
Of the nearest approach to the old Roman noble in the time of Honorius we get a graphic account in Gibbon s notice of the Anician family; the wealthiest of a wealthy class, and, perhaps, the equal of any family in birth and influence. But the Anicii, with all their fellows who were Roman enough to be pagan also, were swept away and dispersed by the Gothic conquests
When the internal details of Christian and Papal Rome emerge into the light of history, three families take exclusive prominence, the Savelli, the Orsini, and the Colonnas. Their names are Latin. The Savelli may have once been Sabelli. That the descent of their present representatives may be continuous from the times of Imperial Rome is possible. No other family of any historical importance has any such pretensions. The other important names either show themselves for the first time at some particular epoch, and cannot be traced beyond a certain period, or else betray the comparative newness of their origin by being Gothic, Lombard, or Norman.
The existing families are mainly deducible from the nepotizing Popes; though, in noting this, it must be remembered that, though most of the Pontiffs were the founders of families, many were the representatives of families already powerful and influential. Before the return from Avignon, this source of permanent promotion ran scantily. Neither was it abundant during the time of the Schism and the Councils. With Sixtus IV. it began under the form that has been noticed. But, when the limits of the European States became settled and diplomacy began, this fountain was dried up. The early Sistine nepotism, however, was territorial.
In the next century, another Sixtus (the Sixth) inaugurated what (to borrow the language of the ecclesiastic architects)ROME.
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we may call the later Sistine variety, granting his favours in the form of charges on the undivided income of the Pope and the Cardinalate. Eanke, whom I follow, brings out the details of this (the second Sistine period) with great, with almost suspicious, clearness; referring the rise of the Aldobrandini to their connection with Clement VIII.; of the Borghesi to their connection with Paul V.; of the Barberini and Ludovisij to their connection with Gregory XV.
Of the demagogues, tyrants, prefects, or tribunes, of the anti-papal history, the majority are men of family; Rienzi, unless we accept the strange account of his imperial lineage, being the chief exception. Brancaleone was a Bolognese, Arnold a Brescian.
The Non-roman element in the Roman movement should arrest our attention. We find it early, and we find it late. In 1848 neither Garibaldi nor Mazzini were Romans.
Equally necessary is it to note the extent to which the Roman democrats, after ejecting their Popes, were in the habit of recalling them.
Upon this, however, more will be said in the sequel: more, too, on the difference between the wish of an united Italy to have Rome as its capital and the wish of Rome to be part of an Italian unity,282
FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN ITALY.
CHAPTEE XVIII.
The Existing Foreign Elements in Italy—The Non-Italian Populations of the
Frontier—The Colonists.—Equivocal Dialects, transitional between the
French and Italian Languages.
If we take Italy as a mere geographical expression—to use an arrogant expression of one of her worst enemies—we find that the frontier is irregular; that Italian populations indent France, Switzerland, the Tyrol, Carniola, and Istria; and that populations, other than Italian, indent Italy.
Of the populations that indent Italy there are two divisions:—
1.	That containing those Non-Italians who are in direct continuity with the French, Germans, or Slavonians of the adjoining districts;
2.	That containing those who have once been continuous; hut who, by a spread of the Italians around them in the parts between them and the frontier, have been cut off from the original stock and thereby become isolated.
These latter take the form of colonists or disconnected settlers. They form, however, ethnological islands; of which the neck of land, which originally made them peninsulas, has been washed away.
Of the occupants of Italy, as a geographical expression, the first are—
The French of the Val d’Aosta; which is, in respect to its dialect, Savoyard.
The second are the Germans, in continuity, of the slope of Monte Eosa; their villages being those of La Trinita de Gres-soney, Giacomo de San Pietro, Giovanni di Gressoney, Schamsil, Zer Trina ed Albezon, and others in Val Lesa, Val Sesia, Val Sermenta, Val Mastollone, and Val Anzasca; in number about five thousand eight hundred. They are a continuation of the German population of the Swiss Canton of the Valais, and have reached farther south than they do now. In the lower part of the several valleys, the origin is reasonably believed to be the same. The decided characteristics have, however, changed. These Germans speak German.FOREIGN ELEMENTS IN ITALY.
283
The continuity of what we may call the Little Germany of Northern Italy with the Little Germany of Southern Switzerland is more than a mere inference. Within the memory of man the villagers of Ornavasco, lying hut a little to the north of the Lago Maggiore, were German in language; and though the Italian is the current language at the present time, there are a few old men who still retain a knowledge of their native speech. These believe that their ancestors came from Glys, near Brieg, in the Valais. Moreover, it was the ancient practice to bury individuals who died at Ornavasco in the cemetery of Glys.
The Germans of the Italian Tyrol are—
In Fierrozzo, Frassilongo, Roveda, and Pergine, one thousand two hundred and fifty.
In the Yalle Sugana, on the head-waters of the Brenta, in the villages of Vignola, Levico, Borgo, Roncegno, and Torcegno, one thousand five hundred and forty. These are called Moccheni.
Further to the east, and on the drainage of the Astico, are the nine hundred and eighteen inhabitants of Folgaria, and also those of Lavarone, Laste, Basse, and Brancafori.
On the Lena, in Terragnuolo and Yal Arsa, one thousand.
On the head-waters of the Piave, the village of Sapada is German, with six hundred inhabitants, and, on the head-waters of the Tagliamento, Upper and Lower Sauris are the same.
The Germans who indent Italy from the Tyrol and occupy the Sette and Tredici Communi, near Yerona and Yicenza, have erroneously been supposed to represent the old Teutones and Cimbri. They merely represent a prolongation of the northern frontier. They are isolated.
Concerning certain Slavonians I doubt. There is an outlying population of the Yal de Rescia (? Rascia and Rhaetia), near Resciutta; the Rescia being a small river which falls into the Upper Tagliamento. The valley contains a population of about three thousand four hundred Slavonians, or Vends; of whom the village of Rustis is the chief locality. Osseaco, Gniva, Stolvizza, Poviey, Coritis, and Clin (the names of villages), and Posgost, Canin, Brumand, Plananica, Stolac, and Zlebac (of mountains), in this valley are all Slavonic. These Slavonians may or may not be continuous with the Slavonians of Carrisla.284
GALLO-ITÀLIAN DIALECTS.
The true colonists are—
1. Skipitar, or Albanians, of which there is a vast popula-
Calabria and Sicily.	In	numbers—	
Calabria Ulteriore			. 4,407
	 Citeriore			. 30,812
Basilicata . •			. 10,090
Capitanata .			• 13,463
Terra d’Otranto .			. 6,844
Abruzzo Ulteriore			220
Sicily . . •			. 19,743
85,579
2.	Greeks.—In Calabria, Numbers eighteen thousand and upwards.
3.	Catalonians.—In Sardinia, eight thousand.
The details of the Italian frontier take importance when we consider that both the French and Italians lay great stress on what is called a natural boundary. The term is ambiguous. It may mean a boundary formed by some physical barrier, such as a mountain range, a river, or a desert, or it may mean a difference of language, blood, or some other moral element of contrast. When the two coincide, all goes well. When they differ, there is a dilemma; and, when this dilemma occurs, politicians play fast and loose. Whatever the test of language may be worth, it is certainly, on the north-western frontier of Italy, in favour of France. The French indents Italy more than the Italian indents France. On the Swiss and Austrian frontiers the relation is reversed; and there is more of the Italian in Switzerland and the Tyrol (not to mention Istria and Dalmatia) than there is of the German in the north of Italy.
But even Italian itself is a term of uncertain import when applied to some of the dialects of Piedmont and Lombardy. However much the standard Italian of Florence may differ from the literary French of Paris, no clear line of demarcation can be drawn between the southern patois of France and the northern patois of Italy: which seem to graduate into each other. Indeed, the presence of the French nasals and the French sounds of u and eu, along with numerous other northern characteristics (foreign as they are to the centre and the south of Italy) is conspicuous in the provincial dialects on both sides of the Po. Nor have they been ignored byGALLO-ITALIAN DIALECTS.
285
even the most patriotic Italians. On the contrary, Gallo-Italian is the name given by Biondelli, and adopted by others, to a large primary group falling into the Piedmontese, the Lombard, and the Emilian divisions—Amilian (from the Via Mmilia) meaning the dialects of Piacenza, Parma, Modena, Bologna, and even Rimini and Pesaro.
Besides the debateable ground between the Italian and the French, there is another between the Italian and the Romance; the Romance being the language of the Grisons in Switzerland.
The following examples illustrate this. They consist of the beginning of the parable of the prodigal son (Lukexv. 11-19) in the following languages or dialects :—
1, 2, 3. The standard Italian, the standard French, the Romance of the Engadin.
4, 5. Dialects of Sestola on the western, and of Rimini on the eastern, limits of the Emilian (or southern) division of the Gallo-Italian group. These show the extent to which a language notably different from the classical Italian is spoken to the south of the Po and on the frontier of Tuscany.
6, 7. Alpine and Subalpine dialects of Western Piedmont. To be compared with the French.
8. Alpine dialect from Northern Lombardy. To be compared with the Engadino of Switzerland.
1.
Standard Italian.
11.	Un uomo aveva due figliuoli,
12.	E il minore di essi disse a suo padre : “Padre, dammi la parte de’ beni, che mi tocca.” Ed egli fece tra loro le parti delle facoltà.
13.	E di lì a pochi giorni, messo il tutto insieme, il figliuolo minore sene andò in lontano paese, e ivi dissipò tutto il suo in bagordi.
14.	E dato che ebbe fondo a ogni cosa, fu gran carestia in quel paese, ed egli principiò a mancare del necessario.
15.	E andò, e si insinuò presso di uno de’ cittadini di quel paese ; il quale lo mandò alla sua villa a fare il guardiano de’ porci.
16.	E bramava di empire il ventre delle ghiande, che mangiavano i porci : e nissuno gliene dava.
17.	Ma rientrato in se stesso, disse : “Quanti mercenarj in casa di mio padre hanno del pane in abbondanza ; e io qui mi muojo di fame !
18.	Mi alzerò, e anderò da mio padre, e dirò a lui : Padre, ho peccato contro del cielo, e contro di te :
19.	Non sono ornai degno di esser chiamato tuo figlio : trattami come uno de tuoi mercenarj.”286
GALLO-ITALIAN DIALECTS.
2.
Standard French.
11.	IJn homme avoit deux fils ;
12.	Et le plus jeune dit à son père : “ Mon père, donne-moi la part du bien qui m’appartient.” Et il leur partagea ses biens.
13.	Et peu de jours après, quand le plus jeune fils eut tout ramassé, il s’en alla dehors dans un pays éloigné ; et là il dissipa son bien en vivant dans la débauche.
14.	Et après qu’il eut tout dépensé, une grande famine survint en ce pays-là ; et il commença d’être dans la disette.
15.	Alors il s’en alla, et se mit au service d’un des habitans du pays, qui l’envoya dans ses possessions pour paître les pourceaux.
16.	Et il désiroit de se rassasier des gousses que les pourceaux mangeoient; mais personne ne lui en donnoit.
17.	Or étant revenu à lui-même, il dit : “ Combien y a-t-il de mercenaires dans la maison de mon père, qui ont du pain en abondance, et moi je meurs de faim !
18.	Je me leverai, et je m’en irai vers mon père, et je lui dirai : Mon père, j’a péché contre le ciel et devant toi ;
19.	Et je ne suis plus digne d’être appelé ton fils; traite-moi comme l’un de tes mercenaires.”
3.
Romance of the Engadin.
11.	tfn crastian haveiva duos filgs.
12.	E’1 plü juven d’els diss al bap : “ Bap, da’m la part dalla raba ch’im tocca.” E’1 bap partit ad els la raba.
13.	E pauc dids davo, il filg plü juven, haviand miss insemmel ogni chiaussa, giet el inavaunt seis viadi in pajais luntaun; èqua dissipet el sias facultads, vivand dissolutamaing.
14.	E dapo ch’el havet spais ogni chiaussa, venn üna greiva charestia in quel pajais ; tal ch’el cumanzet ad havair bsœng.
15.	E giet, è s’matet cun ün dais havdaduors da quella contrada, il qual il tramatet sün seis bains, à perchürar ils porcs.
16.	Et el desiderava da s’implir il corp cun las grüscas chia’ls porcs magliavan, mo ingün nul dava.
17.	Mo siand turnâ in sai svess, diss el : “ Quants mercenaris da meis bap haun paun largiamaing, et eug mour d’famm !
18.	Eug vœlg star sü, è vœlg ir prò meis bap, è’1 vœlg dir : Bap, eug nhai pecchiâ contr’ al tschel ed avaunt tai.
19.	E nun sun plü deng d’esser clamâ teis filg ; fa’m sco ün da teis mercenaris.”
4.
Sestola.
11.	Al gh’ era un òm ch’ 1’ ava dü fio ;
12.	E al piü zsóvn d’lor diss a sò padr : “ Papà, dam la part d’robba che m’ tocca ; ” e lü gh’ divìs la sò robba.
13.	E da B a qualch dì, al fiól piü zsóvn, quando 1’ ai ammüccià tütt al sò, s’ n’ andò furra dia patria in t’un paés luntàn ; e qui al strusciò tütt quel ch’ 1’ ava, vivènd in t’i bagórd.
14.	E dop ch’ 1’ ai consümà gni cosa, a s’ fè una gran carestìa in quel paés ; e lü principiò a sentir la misèria.G ALLO-IT ALI AN DIALECTS.
2S7
15.	Allora l’andò, e s’ès miss con un cittadìn d’ quel paés, eh’ al mandò in t’na sò villa, perchè al dass da mangiàr ai porcè.
16.	E al desiderava d’ampirs la panza d’ quella gianda, eh’ i porcè mangiàvn ; engiin gli’ in dava.
17.	Allora al tornò in sì, e s’diss : “ Quant garzòn èn in cà d’mè padr, eh’ abóndan d’ pan, e mi e m’in stag qui a miirìr d’fam !
18.	Torrò sii, e s’tornarò da mè padr, es egh’ dirò : Papà, jò offés Dii, es v’ ò oiFés vii ;
19.	Già e n’ son più degn d’èsser ciamà vostr fidi ; ma tolìm emud un di vostr garzòn.”
5.
Rimini.
11.	I era un zert òm eh’ l’aveva dó fìól ;
12.	E più pznèin d’lór e déss m’e pèdre : “Bah, dasìm la pèrta dia roba che m’tocca ; ” e e so bah e sparté la roba, e ei desé su pèrta.
13.	E dop poc gióme e mané tòt ni còsa st’ fìól più péccul e s’ mité in viaz, e l’andasé t’ una zittà da luntàn, e ilà e strusciò tòt la su roba, vivènd cun gran luss.
14.	E dop eh’ l’ave lugrè ogni cosa, e vné una gran cristija a t’ che paés ; e ló e pranzipiò andè in misèria.
15.	E 1’ andasé e s’ racmandò m* un sgnór d’ che sit, eh’ el mandò m’ una su pussiòun a badè i baghìn.
16.	E dala gran fama e zarchèva d’ rimpìs d’ eia gianda, eh’ magnèva chi baghìn ; ma nissón ei deva qual.
17.	E pranzipiò allóra a pensè, e e gé da par lo : “ Oh ! quent sarvitùr a t’hèsa de mi bab i à de pàn quant eh’ i vó, e me iqué a m’ mor da la fama !
18.	A turò so, arturnarò da mi pedre, e a i dirò : Bab, a jò ufés e Signor, e a v’ ò ufés a ma vó ;
19.	A n’ so’ più degn d’ ess ciamèd vost fìól; tulìm cumè un di vost sarvitùr.”
6.
Limone.
11.	Un ommi l’avìa dui ficz ;
12.	Lu pi zuvi da chesti gi à diz al pàiri : “Pàiri, dónama la part eh’ la m’ van ; ” e lo pàiri gi à donà la sua mità.
13.	Da si a pochi zurn lo ficz s’ è faz lo siu fagòt, s’ n’è partì dalla casa d’ son pàiri, e s’ n’è anà ant un paìs ban da lòin, e asì l’à faz anàr tiiz gi sav mnànd una vita dazzàn.
14.	E dop d’avér consiimà tut lo eh’ l’avìa, ecco eh’ la g’è arriibà una gran zarestia, e l’à comansà a patir la fam.
15.	E sei s’ n’è anà, e ar s’è arcomandà a un sgniuri da cal paìs, ch’arlu pranghessa al siu servissi ; e eh est issi l’à mandà ant la sua cascina a gardàr^l’ purchi.
16.	E sto ficz l’avìa tanta fam, eh’ ar volta ampirsa la trippa con gi aggiànt eh’ manzavu gi pure, e nisciiin d’na dunava.
17.	Allura 1’ è rientrà an. s estèss, e l’à diz : “ Canti servitùr ant’ la casa d’on pàiri i gi àn da manzàr fin al col, e mi issi gargiu la luna, e muru d’ fam !
18.	Ah ! vói luvarma d’issi, e anàr a la casa d’ on pàiri, e a gi dirài : Pàiri, mi ài pecca contia lu sei e dnans ai vostri ócz ;
19.	Mi sai pii uin dagn d’essri ciamà lu vos ficz ; ma accettàma ancàra come fin di vostri servitùr.”288
GALLO-ITALIAN DIALECTS.
7.
Oulx,
11.	Ün èmme avie dus éifàns ;
12.	Le plu zsuve d’iéllus dì a sun pàire : “Pàire, dùname la purziùn de ben cïie me revén ; ” e iè lus à partazsà le ben.
13.	Côehes zsurs aprè, aièn tut rebatà, le plU zsuve garsùn partì par l’éitrangi, par ün pai éilunià, e ithi u l’à dissipà sun ben en vivèn lüxüriusmén.
14.	Mè aprè ch’ ul’à agü tut cunsümà, l’es sürvegü üne grande famine dins qué pai, e jé méime u l’à cumensà a esse u besùn.
15.	Alure u se n’ èi anà, e u s’ èi attasza a ün dus abitàn de qué pai ; e seMssì. l’à mandà a sa mèisùn de campagne, par fà paisse lus cusciùns.
16.	Ithi u déisirave rempli sun ventre de las cròfas che mijàven lus cusciùns, e nengü n’ i en dunave.
17.	Rintrèn alure en sì mèime, u dì : “ Che de mersenère din la mèisùn de mun pàire àn de pan abundamén, e mi issi a crépu de fam !
18.	Ahi me levaréi, anaréi truvà mun pàire, e a li diréi : Pàire, ài pescià contre le Sé e contre vu ;
19.	Nau, a siu pa mai digne d’esse appelà votre garsùn ; trattàme vamà Un de votrus mersenère.”
8.
Val Pregallia.
IL TJn òm veva düi fi ;
12.	Â plü giùvan dgét con sé bap : “Bap, dam la mè part da roba;” a *1 lur
szpartìt i sé ben.
13.	À poc dì drè, cur eh’ al plü giùvan vet tüt quant robaczà, al get davènt in ün paés lontàn, a là ’1 dissipât la sé roba, menànt na vita deszmesüràda.
14.	A cur ch’el vet tüt fat andà, al nit na gran famina in quel paés, â ’1 szcomanzàt a sentì la misèria ;
15.	Alura ’1 gét, á s’metét al servìsei pet’ ün da qui dal pàés, ch’ il mandât in t’ i sè fond a cura i porcz.
16.	À ’1 vés dgiü güdgènt da s’podè sazia da quel ch’a mangia van i porcz ; ma nâgün n’ i an deva.
17.	Ma, s’impensànt pet sè stess, al dgét : “Quanti mersenari àn in la cà da mè dap gran bundianza da pàn a gé i mor da fam ;
18.	I m’voi leva, à andà ter mè bap, à ei dgéra : Mè bap, i à paca contra ’1 sèi a dinànt da té ;
19.	À i no son plü degn d’èsser noma tè fi, tràtam pür szcù ün di tè mersenari.”
Of these the Oulx and Pregallia specimens give us so much French and so much Romance spoken within the boundaries of Italy rather than any Italian dialects at all.
I now add that just the same transition which takes place between the Italian and the Romance, and between the Italian and the French, repeats itself between, the French and the Spanish ; and again between the Spanish and the Portuguese, and again between the Northern French (which in Belgium is called Walloon) and the Southern or Provençal.
The French of Paris, the Italian of Florence, the Castilian ofSTANDARD ITALIAN, ETC.
289
Madrid, are three lettered and literary languages. The provincial forms of them all are both numerous and well-marked, and at the circumferences of their several areas they stand in strong contrast to the central forms respectively. In still stronger contrast do the northern and southern, the eastern and the western, dialects stand to each other, e.g. the Béarnais to the Walloon, the Calabrian to the Genoese, the Murcian to the Galician ; the Galician being, though a dialect of Spain, more Portuguese than Spanish. With differences like these at the extremities, the dialects of the frontiers are dialects of which the philological position is ambiguous; dialects, which, whilst they graduate towards the French of Paris in one direction, are intelligible to the speakers of the dialects which graduate in the Castilian and the Florentine on the other. The line, then, of demarcation is, in some cases, obscure or faint. Yet the forms of speech are capable of being grouped, This is done by arranging them round some centre, and calling them French, Italian, or Spanish, as the case may be. Of these types the localities are Florence, Paris, Madrid, and Lisbon. But between them there are the equivocal dialects, and those which, compared with certain widely-different forms, give distinct languages. Indeed, the Provençal has always been treated as one. As such, it is common to both France and Spain, being Provençal in the former, Catalonian or Yalencian in the latter.
This is the result of the Italian, the French, the Provençal, and the Spanish being all languages derived from the Latin. To which it may be added, that the religion of Italy, Spain, and France, is Roman Catholic. That this, on a cursory view, is a presumption in favour of a community of blood, or of what is called race, is evident—only, however, on a cursory view. The basis in Italy is (?) Slavonic, Latin, Greek, and Gallic; in Spain, Iberic; in France (?) Slavonic, Gallic, and Iberic. Even if we admit that there was a notable amount of Keltic blood in Spain, (an inference from the term Keltiberian,) we do not go far. We leave the French Gallic, the Spaniards Iberic, the Italians Latin in the main.
Something, however, has been built upon it, viz. the doctrine that the three populations are allied by a sort of kindred ; and that, on the strength of this, combined with her high civilization
VOL.' II.	u290
STANDARD ITALIAN, ETC.
and her renown in war, France might well take upon herself a kind of leadership or hegemony for the three.
We shall see what is meant by Panslavonism. Mutatis mutandis, this is Parisian Panslavonism, Panslavonism with France in the place of Russia. Both doctrines are high generalizations in what we may call political ethnology. How far they are based on a sufficient induction in the way of fact is another matter; at least, when we consider the question from a purely scientific point of view. Whether the phenomena of race (whatever the word may mean) carry with them any such elective affinities as are here suggested is a point for the biologist rather than the politician. For the politician it is enough if the belief that they do so carry them exists. Common origin, when left to itself, may go for nothing: just as an unrecorded prophecy may end in nothing; in other words, may he no prophecy at all. But when men begin not only to think about their relations with others, hut to put a high value on the import of them, a force which had no existence at first may he developed; even as a prophecy which was worth nothing as an act of real prescience may fulfil its own accomplishment by being acted up to. These -isms, then, whether good or had as ethnological expressions, have some import in politics.
The closer, too, the range of like languages the easier the circulation of like ideas; a fact which makes similarity of language a force of some kind or other, though not of the kind usually intended.FRANCE.
291
CHAPTER XIX.
France.—Its National Unity.—Its Heterogeneous Elements, Gallic, Iberic, Latin, German, (!) Slavonic, &c.—The Colonies of Chamavi, Warasci, &c.—Existing Elements other than French ; Flemish, German, Italian, Breton, Basque.
If Italy has somewhat contemptuously been called a geographical expression, France may, by even its encomiast, be called a political one. In few countries have differences of blood, political history, and, to some extent, language, been more decidedly welded into one great national unity. The gorgeous glory of Louis XIV., the tremendous responsibilities of the Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, have been the chief instruments by which this unity has been accomplished.
On the language, a remark has already been made. Respecting the history, we need only go back to the reign of Louis XL, when Provence, Burgundy, and Britany, were, at best, but loosely-connected fiefs ; not to mention several others of less importance. Of the English wars under Edward III. and Henry V., as little need be said. Till the reign of Mary, Calais ; in the reign of Henry VI., Guienne and Gascony, were English ; or, if not English in the strictest sense of the term, Norman. Earlier still, unless we choose to say that England was Norman, Normandy was the same. At a later date, French Flanders and Franche Compté were Spanish; Alsace and Lorraine German. Rou-sillon, too, was originally Spanish. Savoy, Nice, and Monaco are now in the process of amalgamation.
In blood, France was, at the time of Cæsar, Gallic to the north, Iberic to the south, of the Loire. Individually, I believe that between the Rhone and the Alps, and, to some extent, along the Rhine, it was Slavonic. Savoy, at least, seems to have been so.
Then there were the indentations along the Lower and Middle Rhine from Germany.
ü 2292
FRANCF.
Roughly speaking, however, France, until the time of the Merovingians, was, in the main, Gallic in blood, Roman in speech. This applies, however, to Gaul rather than France. The Franks who, like Charlemagne, were Germans, left their name under two forms: as Franche Compte, the name of a local conquest by (apparently) the Burgundians, and as France, the name of the Empire. The Franks, however, were neither Gauls nor Romans; hut Germans. Nor were they either the first or the last of their stock. Though the Alemanni were but a section of a section, the Goths of the Yisigothic Empire under the successors of Alaric were a powerful nation until the conquest by Clovis. So were the Burgundians.
This on the east. On the west, as early as the fourth century, the whole coast of Picardy, with part of that of Normandy, constituted what was called the Saxon shore—Litus Saxonicum. The explanations of this term are numerous. Some have held that it denoted an ordinary Saxon conquest; just like that of Britain, only earlier. Others, that it was no true Saxon settlement at all, but merely a coast infested by the Saxons. Others, that the Saxons were a subsidized body of men of maritime habits, who defended it in the capacity of naval colonists— this latter view being the most probable. Explain the name, however, as we may, it gives us an early German element on the land which was afterwards called Normandy.
These Saxons of the Saxon shore, during the fifth century, had extended themselves so far to the south as to have not only ascended the Loire, but to have settled themselves in the islands at its mouth. “ Wherever you see a Saxon there you see a pirate, and in every Saxon boat are so many Saxon corsairs.” Such is the remark of a contemporary. With the habits here suggested, it is likely that they effected settlements in the Channel; indeed, they have a good claim to having helped to Germanize Normandy. As a rule, they hugged the coast; yet in one of their expeditions, under a chief whose name in Latin takes the form Adovacrius (Odoacer or Ottocar), they attacked Orleans, and were with difficulty repulsed. The fifth century was the time when their bad business most flourished.
In the ninth came the Normans. In Norway, William the Conqueror means William the Norman, and William the NormanFRANCHE COMPTE.
293
means William the Norwegian. He was a descendant of Eollo, who was the son of Eagnar, who was the Earl of More. He was a man of such gigantic build that no horse could carry him ; so that, from the constraint he was thus put under of always having to go on foot, he was named Eolf Ganger ; i. e. Eolf the Goer on foot, or Eolf Walker. His exploits are written in the hook of Dudo of St. Quentin on the Dukes of Normandy, which was written only two generations after the conquest of Normandy, and on the authority of the conqueror’s grandson. Be it so. It must he remembered, however, that this Norwegian extraction finds no place in the writings of the actual contemporaries of the Conquest ; and that, in Dudo, Eollo is always called a Dane: the Danes being called Danes or Northmen indifferently. These are omissions which are so conspicuous for their absence that they cannot be ignored. They suggest the likelihood of the real Eollo having been scarcely so important a hero as his historian has made him. They also suggest the likelihood of the Norwegians, when the Danes had ceased to be called Northmen and when that term was restricted to themselves, having affiliated him upon a Norwegian, chief.
I submit that the Normans were Danes rather than Norwegians, and, perhaps, they were also the northern kinsmen of the Saxons of the Litus Saxonicum as much as they were Danes. Bayeux. was the town which retained their language the longest.
On the south, Marseilles was a Greek town, and long remained so. On the south, too, were numerous Saracen and Jewish settlers ; indeed, the south was, at best, Provençal rather than French, and, on the side of Spain, all but Catalonian. It differed, too, in an inordinate degree from France in creed. Most of the Provenais were Albigensian heretics.
Such the chief elements—Gallic, Greek, Iberic, (?) Slavonic, Burgundian, Alemannie, Gothic, Frank, Saxon, Norman, Latin after the fashion of the proper Italians, Latin after the fashion of the soldiers of the heterogeneous legions of the Eoman army, Arab, Hebrew.
What now follows is a sketch of some ethnological curiosities rather than the exhibition of any important general element. Still, in the way of minute ethnology, they are curiosities.
Franche Compté, or the Francorum Comitatus, suggests its history by its name. But some of its occupants were a peculiar294
FRANCE.
population. They were Boman colonists rather than conquering invaders. The date of their settlement is the reign of Constan* tius and Julian : so that, in this respect, they are early introductions. The notices of them are curious ; though, in connecting the latest of them with the earliest, there is a small amount of hypothesis. Julian, whilst he is fighting against the Franks of the Lower Bhine and Ysel, writes that he intends to send some Leti, youths of barbaric blood, who either have been surrendered, or have deserted. For these Leti, there is decided evidence that they were used largely as colonists.
Now, it was by Julian s colleague that Franche Compté was colonized by Franks and Chamavi—Us nominibus ; the very nations whom Julian was at war with. “ At your nod, Augustus,” writes the panegyrist, Eumenius, “ did the Frank Letus till the wasted plains of the Treviri and Nervii : so that, whatsoever may have been the scourges of Amiens, of Beauvais, of Treves, and of the land of the Lingones, they now revive. And it is the barbarians who revive them. Their hiding-places in the woods have failed to protect them. With their wives and their children and with all that was once waste, they have retired ; but into lands which they themselves may have wasted. There they cultivate. For you the Frisian, for you the Chamavian, ploughs. He buys and sells at the very market which he helps to lower.” The next neighbours to the Chamavi of the Ysel were the Attuarii.
Let us now pass over three centuries, and come to the will of St. Widrad, founder and abbot of Flavigny in Franche Compté. He devises such and such lands in pago Comavorum and Amavorum, others in pago Athoariorum; and from his time downwards there is hardly a charter or document in which these names are not repeated.
Stolingus.
Macareæ.
In pago Comavorum. Cariniacum.
Casellæ.
Fraxinus.
Maceriæ.
Campus Yellii.
Blandoniacum.
Colonica.
Yedis-vineæ.
Pussessio.
Hicium.
In pago Athoariorum. Yoguntiaæ.
Lucum.
Sagonicum.
Flexum.
Blandonerum.
Bustellus. Maiascus. Auxiliacum. Lucus Medianus. Novus vicus.
Pontus. Yivarius.THE WAR ASCI.—TOE ALANS.
295
With these Chamavi were associated colonists from the valley of the Regnitz, whose introduction was somewhat less peaceful. E gilbert, in his Life of St. Ermenfrid, writes that Eustace converted the Warasci, who came from a town named Stadevanga, on the Regnitz; who first fought against the Burgundians, and were beaten; who then settled in the localities under notice, recruited their strength, fought again, and won. Now, these Warasci were apparently the descendants of the Naristae of Dio and Strabo, who, by hypothesis, were the original Slavonians of the district. But, to come from a town named Stadevanga, they must have become Germanized. They may have become this under the Gothic invasions, or else under those of the Burgundians. Probably, however, they were Slavonians from the country around.
Along with these Warasci were certain Scodings, Scorings, or Scudings, occupants of Sesilae and Salinae.
That there was a considerable Slavonic element in Gaul has now been sufficiently suggested. But there is another, which, if not important, is interesting. Turks in France, except such as were left dead on the field of Chalons, are not what we expect from the common histories. Yet Turks there were—in Lorraine, in Alsatia, and in Poitou; perhaps in Orleans, perhaps in Britany. Attila was neither the first Scythian, as he may be called, nor a new and unexpected portent. The way from the Theiss to the Marne was prepared for him. The Burgundians were in contact with the Alans of Bavaria and Styria. Political relations followed. Gunther, the famous King of Burgundy, was only one of the supporters of the pretender Jovinus. Another was Goar, King of the Alans. All notion of the Alemanni being mistaken for Alani is here out of the question. Goar is an Alan name, and in one of the passages that mention the Burgundian invasions, the Alemanni and Alani are both mentioned. No wonder, then, that some years later we hear of an Alan army before Orleans, and of an Alan army in Brittany.
The migrations of these Alani are some of the most remarkable in history; and, it should be added, that they are essentially historical; i. e. they are authenticated in every detail by cotemporary and trustworthy witnesses. No others, equally distant, are, considering the facts, so elaborate, so complicated, and, at the296
FRANGE.
same time, so well established. We find Alans in Britany; far beyond the utmost limit ever given to the more formidable and famous Huns. We find them even beyond Britany. They joined the Goths and Silingian Vandals in the conquest of the Spanish peninsula; in which Galicia and Portugal were allotted to them. Afterwards, when Genseric invaded Africa, they joined his fleet, and helped to conquer what was once Carthage. They reached, in this way, the present Beylik of Tunis; a Beylik which the modem Ottomans have conquered from Constantinople, but which the Alans conquered from the Tagus.
More definite still is the notice of a colony of the Thaifalse (a nation from Moldavia), in Poitou. Of this, however, notice has already been taken.
How the France of Charlemagne became separated from the Empire will appear in a future chapter. The first King of France, as opposed to a King of the Franks, was Charles the Bald, the son of Louis the Pious by a second wife, and the grandson of Charlemagne. The last Frenchman who aspired to the Empire was Charles of Valois; and he aspired unsuccessfully. By Louis IX. the kingdom was consolidated. Under Louis XIV. it made its chief conquests on the German frontier.
The districts of France which are, even now, other than French in language are—
1.	The northern part of French Flanders; or the parts between St. Omer, the sea, and the Belgian frontier. Here the common language is the Flemish.
2.	The Breton (i. e. the southern) part of Britany; especially the Morbihan, the country about Vannes.
3.	The eastern part of Lorraine and the northern part of Alsace; where the language is German.
4.	5, 6. Savoy, Nice, and Monaco, of which the history is recent: the language of the last two being, to a great extent, Italian.
7. Corsica, which is Italian in language, and which contains a Greek colony. Of all the nationalities in France, that of Corsica is the most comfortable, for a Corsican may flatter himself that France belongs to Corsica rather than Corsica to France.THE BASQUES.	297
Mutatis mutandis, this is the relation between the Channel Islands and England.
8. The Basques of the districts of Labourd, Soule, and Lower Navarre, in the parts about Bayonne, Biarritz, and St. Jean de Luz; the Basques from whom the province of Gascony takes its name.
Of all these, the Basques and Bretons are most isolated. The Flemings, the Italians, and the Germans, all belong to powerful populations on and beyond their several frontiers. The nearest congeners, however, of the Bretons are in Wales, where they are not numerous.
In conjunction with the Basques, the Bretons represent the old blood of Gaul, the basis upon which the Latin, German, and other elements have been superadded.
For the French language beyond France, Belgium and the Channel Islands are the only European localities.
The Basques lead from France to Spain.298
SPAIN.
CHAPTER XX.
The Spanish Peninsula.—The Basque National Poetry,
The Basques of France amount to about 140,000 : those of Spain to about 700,000. Guipuscoa, Biscay, Navarre, and Alava, contain the Basque Provinces of Spain.
No language stands so much by itself as the language of these fragmentary Basques.
The men who speak it, though good Frenchmen in France and good Spaniards in Spain, are intensely proud of their nationality, and jealous of any encroachment on their privileges.
The following are specimens of their national poetry :—
Lyric :—To the Tree of Guerniga.
1.
3.
The tree of Guernica
Is blessed
Among the Basques. Loved by all,
Grow and spread Your fruit over the world. We adore thee,
Holy tree!
You shall not fall,
Beloved tree;
If I understand The magistrates of Biscay. We shall take a warrant With you
That the Basque people Live in peace.
2.
4.
If you fall We shall be lost.
It is
About a thousand years since
God planted
The tree of Guernica.
Gather round!
Now is the time.
Live for ever !
To pray for thee Let us place ourselves On our knees;
And when we have asked With all our heart,
The tree shall live Now and for ever.
Satiric*—Liars.
1.
2.
Liars, listen,
I will sing you a few verses. You have long vexed me :
Just for once, at least,
I will now have my will of you,
Signor Longtongue, with a big head, The first place to you.
For lying you have no match;
Some fear fire, some water ;
The only thing you fear is truth.BASQUE SONGS.
299
3.
What a monster is Monsieur Paunch I Big-bellied, gaping-mouthed,
He has news by the dozen.
I quench my thirst and ease my hunger by hard work ;
You, for a few lies, can get a feast.
4.
The girls of the neighbourhood Are taken with Bed-beard,
Who has seen towns Made of silver and gold.
Those are his Indies.
5.
Longtongue vexes me ;
Paunch with me would die of hunger; As for Bed-beard, fathers and brothers Keep him away from the girls If you prize a good name.
The Basque country is the land of the Cagots; individuals afflicted with goitre, and fatuous.
Shepherd.
With the dawn of day I have come with my flock,
Always listening; wishing to hear a voice.
Where have you left the sheep ? whence comes it
That I see your lovely eyes filled with tears 1
Shepherdess.
Unknown to my father I have hither come,
Brokenhearted, to tell you yourself
That they have changed the feeding-ground for my sheep;
Forbidden me for ever to speak to you.
Shepherd.
Am I deaf 1 have I heard ? what have you said 1
That you are come to say adieu for ever!
Kemember you not that we have promised
To love one another as long as we live on the earth ?
Shepherdess.
Some one came yesterday to my father and mother
To tell them that you and I love one another j
That they must lose no time in parting us,
And that their daughter must not marry a cagot.
Shepherd.
Yes ! I have heard that they are cagots;
You tell me that I belong to that race.
If I had but a shadow of a cagot
I should not be allowed to lift an eye towards you.
Shepherdess.
Everywhere the cagot is held to be the fairest:
Flaxen hair, white skin, eyes blue.
You are the fairest shepherd I ever saw:
To be fair one must be a cagot.
Shepherd.
Do you know how to tell a cagot ?
Look at his ear;
One is bigger than the other,
And the shell is covered with down.
Shepherdess.
If that is true you are not of that sort,
For your ears are exactly alike.
If a cagot has one ear less than the other,
I shall tell my father that yours are both of a size.
The following is from the Basque of France. To an Englishman it suggests the fable of the Lion and the Statue. As naval victories won over English sailors are not common subjects, let us then hear the Basque Dibdin.300
SPAIN.
1.
Let us talk about the Count D’Estaigne,
The commander of a squadron without a rival!
Let him be famous throughout the whole kingdom !
Let him be equally famous amongst us !
2.
Over all men of war, oh, noble D’Estaigne,
You have a right to glory !
In blood you are descended from the purest
Of the most ancient houses of France.
3.
Often have your ancestors been distinguished ;
They are the supports of the crown of France.
But altho’ your origin gives you rank,
Your own worth sets it forth.
4.
Not without reason has Louis chosen you,
And has intrusted you with the command!
What has he not gained by relying on you,
And by intrusting to you his highest interest !
5.
How many English ships have you not taken,
Conquered, and swept by the fire ?
You have fought with bravery at sea,
You have covered the French flag with honour.
6.
By land as well as by sea,
You know, when needed, how to distinguish yourself under fire !
Everywhere and in all things, you are fit for anything.
Where is there one like you!
7.
You have made our distant possessions strong,
You have kept them well from the hands of the enemy.
More than this, new conquests,
And gainful conquests, have you made for us.
8.
You took Grenada at dead of night, Marching yourself at the head of the troop.
Your presence no doubt was wanted To attack with so much ardour.
9.
To prevent the French from taking Grenada,*
Byron came to the rescue.
What became of him, this bold Englishman 1
After a sharp lesson he ran away.
10.
Byron just smelt the Grenada,
But he would not take a bite of the fruit. Surely he found it too bitter,
While D’Estaigne found it so sweet.
11.
The English began to tremble,
When they saw the French so successful.
They said, these kings of the sea,
That to-day they must speak differently.
12.
They remembered the war with grief. They lost their beloved islands.
I would not answer for England itself, If the French and Spaniards landed there.
13.
Oh, D’Estaigne ! all the kingdom is afflicted
That you were wounded by two gunshots !
Now your recovery comforts us,
And we ought to praise God for your recovery.
14.
If France has further need for you All good Frenchmen will say with me, That instead of De profundis in our churches,
It is a Te Deum that should be sung everywhere.
* The West-Indian Island. In the following stanza there is a play on the name of the island and the name of the pomgranate.BASQUE SONGS.
301
15.
Proud nation, intractable enemy,
This year you can sing no song of victory!
The king of Prance will give you a lesson,
And you shall pay dearly for it.
The two following belong to a different genus. They are heroic and national; the first gives us the Basque account of the famous defeat of the Franks,—
When Charlemagne with all his peerage fell At Ponterabbia.
Many critics are willing to believe it to he as old as the event it commemorates.
1.
The cry is raised,
In the middle of the mountains of the Basques ;
And the husband, before the door,
Opens his ear, and says, “ Who is there 1 who wants me 1 ”
The dog, asleep at the foot of his master,
Gets up, and fills all Altabiscar with his barking.
2.
#
On the height of Ibaneta, a noise is heard ;
It comes nearer, striking the rocks to the right and the left:
It is the hollow murmur of an army marching.
Our men are on the tops of the mountains ;
The sound of the signal of the horns is heard,
The husband sharpens his arrows.
3.
They come ! they come ! what a heap of lances !
Banners of all colours float in the midst.
What lightnings flash from their arms !
How many are they 1 count, boy, count well!
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve,
Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty.
4.
Twenty, and thousands besides!
We shall lose time in counting:
Join hands, pull up the rocks !
Throw them down from the top
On their heads! crush them, strike them dead!
5.
What want they in our mountains, these men of the north 1
Wherefore come they to disturb our peace ?
God made these rocks, that no qne should cross them :
The rocks will fall upon them, and crush the troop !
The blood gushes, the strips of flesh quiver;
Oh, the breaking of bones, the sea of blood !
6.
Fly, fly, those who have strength, those who have horses !
Fly, King Carloman, with your black feathers and your red coat!
Your nephew, the well-beloved Poland the Strong, lies dead—
His bravery has done nothing for him !
And now, Basques, let us leave the rocks,
Let us go down and shoot our arrows at those who fly !
7.
They fly ! they fly ! Where is the heap of lances?302
SPAIN.
The banners of all countries that floated in the midst of them, where are they ]
No lightnings flash from their arms!
How many are they] count, boy, count well!
Twenty, nineteen, eighteen, seventeen, sixteen, fifteen, fourteen, thirteen,
Twelve, eleven, ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one.
8.
One!—no more !
’Tis over, husband, you can now go back with your dog,
Embrace your wife and little ones,
Clean your arrows, put up your horn, lie down on your bed and sleep.
To-night, the eagles shall feed on the crushed flesh,
And the bones shall lie bleaching to eternity.
The next, more curious still, is believed to give us the struggle of the indomitable Cantabrians against Augustus. The language is said to be archaic.
1.
Lelo ! Lelo is dead;
Lelo ! Lelo is dead;
O Lelo ! Zara Has killed Lelo.
2.
The strangers from Rome Would conquer Biscay. Biscay raises Its war-song.
8.
Octavian,
Lord of the world : Lecobidi,
Of Biscay.
4.
From the side of the sea, From the side of the land, He lays The siege.
5.
Level ground Is theirs;
The woods and mountains, The caverns, ours.
6.
On a vantage ground We are set;
Each firm In spirit.
7.
Little fear With equal arms;
But our loaf .... unfurnished.
1.
Lelo ! il Lelo; Lelo ! il Lelo; Leloa! Zarac Il Leloa.
2.
Eromaco arotzac Aloguin, eta Vizcaiac daroa Cansoa.
3.
Octabiano Munduco jauna, Lecobidi Yizcaioa.
4.
Itchassotatic Eta leorrez, Imini deuscu Molsoa.
5.
Leor celaiac Bereac dira, Mendi tansaiac, Leusoac.
6.
Lecu ironean Gago-zanean Norberac sendo (Dau) gogoa.
7.
Bildurric gutchi, Arma bardinaz; Oramaia, zu Guexoa!BASQUE SONGS.
303
8.
If they wear Hard cuirasses,
Unarmed bodies Are nimble.
9.
Five years,
Day and night,
Without rest,
Is the siege.
10.
When they kill One of us,
Five dozen of them Are killed.
11.
They are many,
We few:
At length Peace.
12.
In our land,
And their country, There’s a fashion of tying Bundles.
13.
No more
The city on the Tiber Stretches out Uchin . . .
Great.
Of the great oaks,
The strength Ever clasps The rock.
8.
Soyac gogorrac Badirituiz,
Narru billosta Surboa.
9.
Bost urteco,
Egun, gabean,
Gheldi bagaric,
Bochoa.
10.
Guerco bata II badaguian,
Bost amarren Galdua.
11.
Aec aniz, ta Gu gutchi-taia,
Azquen indugu Lalboa.
12.
Gheure lurrean Ta aen errian Biroch ain baten Zamoa.
13.
Ecin gheyago.
Tiber lecua Gueldico zabal.
Uchin tamalo . . . . Grandojo.
Handi arichac Ghesto sindoaz Bethigo naiaz Nardoa.
Though these specimens are hut few out of many, the Basque language is by no means so rich in native poetry as the Lithuanic, the Estonian, the Romaic, the Servian, and others. As poems that even pretend to any antiquity, the two that have just been given stand alone. The modem character of the others is apparent. * * * * *
Portugal is wholly homogeneous in respect to its population. No part of it is Spanish. On the other hand, Galicia, though Spanish in its politics, is all but Portuguese in language.304
EARLY GERMANY.
CHAPTER XXI.
Germany.—Its Connection with Italy and Austria.—Original German Area.—Its Extension.—Chiefly at the Expense of the Slavonians and Lithuanians.—The Original Slavonic Area.—Objections Considered.—The Germania of Tacitus.
__Extract from Constantine Porphyrogeneta.—The Term Goth.—The Thurin-
gians.—The Franks, Merovingian and Carlovingian.—The Alemanni and Bavarians.—The Saxons.—Brandenburg.—The Hessians.
For the reason that it was convenient to take Italy before Germany it is convenient to take a general view of Germany before we notice Austria; Austria, which, besides being to a great extent truly German, is bound to Germany by the Empire. But the Empire, in its origin, was half Italian.
How large a portion of Europe belongs, at the present moment, to Germany is well known. On the other hand, the limits of the original German area are doubtful. Was it always of its present magnitude ? If not, from what spot did the first Germans spread as conquerors over so large a portion of the earths surface? What were the populations upon which they most especially intruded? At whose expense did they spread themselves abroad ? Were the nations which opposed them exterminated, or was there fusion and intermarriage ? If mixture took place, the German blood must be mixed accordingly. What is its amount ? This question applies not only to Germany, in the limited sense of the term, but to Holland, Scandinavia, and England.
The German world, as measured by the German language, is one of inordinate magnitude. Supposing the amount of the German element in it to be ascertained, what is its value ? Does it carry with it any superiority? Ask an Englishman of Ulster, and he will probably glorify the Anglo-Saxon at the expense of the Kelt. Ask a Prussian of Posen, and he will probably pay his own countrymen a similar compliment at the expense of theEARLY GERMANY.
805
Slavonian. Is the German mind antagonistic to the Latin? Ask Frenchmen or Italians what they think of Germans, and Germans what they think of Frenchmen, and the answer will convey the notion that, on some ground or other, there is some belief in something that may be magnified into what may be called an inherent or original difference; a difference, perhaps, of race, whatever that term may mean. Even careful writers talk of such abstractions as the Teutonic independence, the Teutonic stability, the Teutonic mind, as if they were real entities. Speculative as such doctrines are they rise into something like practical importance. Even in Great Britain the double assumption that the Anglo-Saxon is not only something different from, but something superior to, the Kelt has helped to embitter the strife between England and Ireland. In Germany matters have gone further; and, in the writings of even the highest authorities, politics have unduly encroached upon science.
In this cursory view of the bearings of the inquiry lies the excuse for the present chapter; which is almost exclusively critical. The opinions it delivers are at variance with the current ones. This is because upon one fact more stress is laid than is usual; and upon three others less. The fundamentum argu-mentí is the existing state of things at the dawn of the true historical period in eastern and southern Germany. Beyond doubt, at the beginning of the true historical period, more than half Germany was Slavonic. That it may have been either German or something else, before it was Slavonic, is admitted; but it is held that the burden of proof lies on those who affirm that it was so.
There are, of course, some grounds or other for this affirmation. They lie chiefly in the text of the Germania of Tacitus and in a notice of Constantine Porphyrogeta. Each of these authorities is held to be inadequate. The text of Constantine will be given in the sequel. The exceptions to the Germania have been given elsewhere : * so that, at present, all that need be said about them is that they are reducible to two heads; (1) that, except for a small part of the country described under the name of Germania, the information of Tacitus was insufficient; (2) that the import in
* The Germania of Tacitus, with Ethnological Notes. Also a paper on the same subject in the Cambridge Classical Museum.
VOL. IT.
X306
EARLY GERMANY.
the eyes of Tacitus of the word Germania was different from what it is in our own.
The third point which has materially regulated the present writers criticism is connected with the word Goth.
He holds that the Goths were Germans only as the English are Britons, i. e. not at all in blood, hut only by the occupancy of soil originally British; the true Goths being Lithuanians.
The principles, however, best show themselves in their application in detail. I begin, then, with the distribution of the Slavonians when they first appear, on different spots and at different times, in continuous history. Those of the south come first.
Of these, the earliest are the immediate frontagers of the Bavarians, the probable occupants of Styria; and a.d. 595 is the date of the notice of them. Then it was that Bavaria was held as a fief (if the name be an anticipation the fact is not) under the Emperor Childebert by Tassilo. Indeed Tassilo bears the title rex. Yet it was under the orders of Childebert that he made an inroad into the province of the Slavonians, and, having gained a victory over them, returned to his own kingdom with a great booty. A second onslaught was less successful. Two thousand Bavarians invade the Slaves; but the Kakhan comes down upon them, and they are cut to pieces. Fifteen years later, when Tassilo is dead, his son Garibald, with his characteristic Bavarian name, makes another descent, and is repulsed. Indeed, he is followed up into his own kingdom and the frontier of Bavaria is insulted. But only for a time. The Bavarians rally and drive back the invaders. About the same time, the Slavonians of the parts about Zellia are reduced by Taso and Caco, the sons of Gisulf, Duke of Friuli, and that so effectively that they pay tribute to the Lombards until the reign of Rachis. The evidence to this is Paulus Diaconus; no contemporary, it is admitted, but a writer with fair means of knowing the details of the parts and times in question. Now, if these Slaves were of old standing, they were also, to some extent, Christians; inasmuch as, at the Council of Grado, the Bishops of Tiburnia and Celeia were present.
For Garinthia being Slave, we have a statement, from the same writer, that in the time of King Grimoald, Warnefrid tookEXTENSION OF THE SLAVONIANS.
307
refuge in Carnuntum or Carantanum. For a.d. 769, we Lave a charter conveying a district named India (?), reaching from the river Tesis to the frontier of the Slaves, in order that that unbelieving generation may he brought into the path of truth. The district on the Upper Drave is named Slavinia in 891.
It is Paulus Diaconus, for the time of GrimoaJd, who names Carniola the country of the Slaves. It was a boundary or March, that being the meaning of the word in Slavonic—in comitatu Poponis Comitis quod Carniola vocatur et qui vulgo Creinamarcha appellatur — nostra proprietatis partem, in regione vulgari vocabulo Cheirne et in Marcha et in comitatu Poponis Gomitis.
That these Carinthians and Carniolans were the descendants of the Carni of the Alpes Carnicee would never have been doubted but for the statement, already noticed, of Constantine. It runs thus—“ The Krohati who now occupy the parts in the direction of Delmatia are derived from the Unbaptized Krohati, the Krohati Aspri so-called; who dwelt on the other side of Turkey, and near France, conterminous with the Unbaptized Slaves—i. e. the Serhi. The word Krohati is explained by the dialect of the Slaves. It means the possessors of a large country/*
Again—“But the Krohati dwelt then in the direction of Bagi-vareia (Bavaria) wThere the Belokrobati are now. One tribe (yei/ea) separated. Five brothers led them, viz.:—Clukas and Lobelos, and Kosentes, and Muklo, and Krobatos, and two sisters, Tuga, and Buga. These with their people came to Delmatia. The other Krohati stayed about France, and are called Belokrobati, i. e. Aspri Krohati, having their own leader. They are subject to Otho, the great king of France and Saxony. They continue unhaptized, intermarrying with the Turks/* The statement that the Croatians of Dalmatia came from the Asprocroatians is repeated. The main evidence, however, lies in the preceding passages; upon which it is scarcely necessary to remark that belzn white in Slavonic, and asproziwhite in Bomaic.
So much for the Croatians. The evidence that the Servians were in the same category, is also Constantine*s.—“ It must be understood that the Servians are from the Unhaptized Servians, called also Aspri, beyond Turkey, near a place called Boiki, near France—just like the Great Crobatia, also Unbaptized and White.
x 2308
EARLY GERMANY.
Thence, originally, came the Servians/’ In the following passages the evidence improves—“ The same Krobati came as suppliants to the Emperor Heraclius, before the Servians did the same, at the time of the inroads of the Avars.—By his order, these same Krobati, having conquered the Avars, expelled them, occupied their country and do so now.”
This country extended from the River Zentina to the frontier of Istria, and, thence, to Tzentina and Chlebena in Servia. Their towns were Nona, Belogradon, Belitzein, Scordona, Chlebena, Stolpon, Tenen, Kori, Klaboca. Their country was divided into eleven Supan-rics (Zouvravias).
They extended themselves. From the Krobati “ who came into Dalmatia, a portion detached themselves, and conquered the Illyrian country and Pannonia.”
The further notices of the Servians are of the same kind. Two brothers succeeded to the kingdom, of which one offered his men and services to Heraclius, who placed them at first in the Theme Thessalonica, where they grew home-sick, crossed the Danube about Belgrad, repented, turned hack, were placed in Servia in the parts occupied by the Avars, and, finally, were baptized.
It is clear that all this applies to the Slavonians of Croatia, Bosnia, Servia, and Slavonia, and has no application to Istria, Camiola, Carinthia, and Styria. Even as applied to the Croa-tians, &c., it must he set against their position in real history. Valeat quantum.
For Bohemia, as a Slavonic country, our earliest notice is a.d. 625, and that from so early a writer as Eredegar. The account is strange. Samo is the hero of the narrative. He is called a German, hut the name is not German ; perhaps not Slavonic. It is a strange one for these parts. However, the account runs, that he, a Frank, along with others, visited the Bohemian Slaves (who were also called Vends) as a trader. The Avars were then strong and hostile; hut the Slaves put Samo at their head, and drove them hack, and, after their victory raised Samo from their captain to be their king. For seven years he ruled them quietly ; hut in the eighth, some Franks, who, like himself, had visited the country as traders were murdered, and a war between the Slaves and the Germans broke out. This was in the reign of Dagobert.EXTENSION OF THE SLAVONIANS.
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The Germans invaded the land and were beaten. After this, Samo became formidable. The details of his alliance give us the date of a fresh name.
The Sorbs of Lusatia and parts of Saxony and Brandenburg, men of the Slavonic stock, who had long looked towards (ad-spexerant) the Franks, joined him : but only to be detached at an early opportunity. As the German army appproaches they waver; and they end by promising to keep the frontier against Samo. During Samo’s reign, however, the Slaves keep their ground.
The ordinary notices of the next three centuries separate these Sorbs or Sorabians from the Tsheks of Bohemia, and carry them up to the frontiers of Thuringia and Saxony; Saxony meaning the parts to the south of the Hartz, rather than the country about Dresden and Leipzig, which, at that time, was simply Slave. The Saale is the ordinary boundary; though there are numerous Slavonic names to the west of it: indeed, a division of the Slaves which Zeuss treats as that of the Thuringian or Frankish Wends is sufficiently important to claim a somewhat minute notice»
For the parts between the Saale and the Bhine^ i. e. for a great part of the drainage of the Mayn, Zeuss has given us from old charters more than twenty names of places in which special notice is found of a Slavonic occupancy, sometimes single-handed, sometimes in conjunction with Saxons and Franks. He then gives several names compounded of the word Wend, such as Wenats&z, Winidheim and Eitenmniden; among which the Moinwinidi, or Wends of the Mayn, and Batanzwinidi, or Wends of the Bednitz, are the most important. Other names are not only decidedly Slavonic but are stated by Zeuss to be so. In some cases there is a special notice of a Slavonic family. The dates for these are late; belonging chiefly to the tenth century ; few to the ninth. Nor is this to be wondered at. Thuringia, taken as a whole, and considered in its political relations, had long been German. Hence, the Slaves of its area would be mentioned by a German as the Britons of Cornwall would be mentioned by an Englishman, i. e. incidentally, and only on rare occasions; whereas the Welsh, whose nationality and politics were different, would scarcely be mentioned at all except as other than English. That Zeuss treats all these Slavonic occupancies as310
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colonies and recent settlements is only what we expect from his general view of the relations of the two great stocks. The present writer treats them as the aborigines of the land.
For the Slaves to the north of Saxony, the notices are late. This is because, whilst the Merovingian Franks had to defend the Thuringian and Hessian frontiers, it was not till the time of Charlemagne that the Slaves of the parts beyond Hanover commanded much notice. Helmoldus, writing in the eleventh century, is the chief authority here.
In Brandenburg the prominent names are those of the Brizani (the original Brandenburgers) and the Stoderani on the banks of the Havel, sometimes called Havellani. To ,the north-west lay the Dossani, on the Dosse. The history of these is scanty.
The Smeldingi and Bethenici lay on the east of the Elbe (perhaps on the west also), opposite the Linones of Luneburg; though there seem to have been Linones on both sides of that river. The Smeldings held a large and strong town. The Linones, at the present time, are recognized as Slaves in, at least, the three villages of Wustrow, Luchow, and Danneberg; and, though they now speak German, we know, from specimens of their language, that little more than a hundred years ago it was Slavonic. The last service performed in this, their original tongue, wras performed in 1751, at Wustrow. In stating this, our author remarks, that no notice of the introduction of these Slaves is to be found; a remark which implies that, in the case of the others, a notice is to be found. But this is not the case. As far as I can state a negative at all, I state without fear of contradiction, that, with one, or, at most, two exceptions, there is nothing appertaining to the history of any one of the numerous Slavonic populations enumerated by Zeuss having been introduced aliunde. The whole doctrine of their transplantation is gratuitous and hypothetical.
In Mecklenburg, we have the names of the Warnabi on the Warnow, and the Morizani on the Muritz-see. These, however, seem to be but details of the great Mecklenburg division of the Obotrits; whose area, bounded on the west by the Trave, contained the important towns of Zuerin and Malacowe, or Schwerin and Mecklenburg. They seem to have been the traitors to the cause of Slavonism; at any rate, they were reduced be-EXTENSION OF THE SLAVONIANS.
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times and remained faithful to their conqueror ever after. It is the Obotrits who formed the single real Slavonic colony ; for Charles transplanted the Saxons into Francia (Frankish Germany), and gave their villages beyond the Elbe to the Obotrits.
Of the TJcri of Uckermark, and other smaller sections, I take no notice ; considering that if a case he made out for the Slavonic character of countries so far west as Mecklenburg, &c., the Slavonic character of the more inland districts may he left to take care of itself.
Of the Pomeranians, the very name is Slavonic. It means the people more—on the sea.
That the Island of Rügen was Slavonic is known from its antiquities, as well as from its history. Like so many other islands it was a holy one. The famous Obotrit, or Pomeranian temple, stood in the Isle of Rügen, sacred to the great god Zuantevit, whose oracle it was. In 1169, it was demolished by the Danish King, Yaldemar.
The Polabi and Wagri now stand over for notice; and, like the Linones, they are important, from the fact of their lying further westward than any of their congeners. Of Polabi, or Polabin-gians, there may have been many ; inasmuch as the word simply means on the Elbe. The Polabingians, however, under notice occupied Lauenburg ; and Ratzeburg was their capital.
The Wagri were the Slaves of Holstein. In the ninth century they reached no further westward than the river Bille, on the other side of which lay the Nordalbingian Saxons. Northwards, they extended to Kiel : so that Eutin and the parts about the Plöner Lake belonged to Wagria.
This leaves but little room for ancient Germany, still less if we suppose that, before the Roman conquest, the Slavonians of Bohemia and Styria extended further westwards ; still less, too, if we give to the Linones the whole of Lüneburg. Yet we may safely do all this. We may, also, carry the southern Slavonians as far west as the Gallic frontier. But of this more will appear hereafter. What, then, were the limits of Germany ? The Rhine, the Mayn, the North Sea, the southern boundary of the Linonian country, the Lower Elbe, and the Saale. The area, which certainly did not exceed this, is small. Is it too small ? too small for the phenomena exhibited in German history ? too312
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small to be the nucleus of such great conquests as the Germans achieved ? too small to contain within its boundaries differences of language so great as those between the mother-tongues of the English, the Dutch of Holland, the Alemannic, and the Moesogothic ?
To this I answer that it is greater than the original nucleus of the Roman Empire, greater than the area of the Latin, Oscan, and Umbrian languages.
How did the Germans of this limited area spread ? The first great conquests within the historical period were made from the south-east. Let us investigate the early history of—
1. The Thuringicms; for whom is claimed the main part of the conquests made during the Marcomannic and Gotho-vandalic wars. The Goths seem to be merely an eastern prolongation of the Marcomanni.
Though unwilling to spoil an important notice by repetition, I must again draw the readers attention to the fact that, until the Ostrogoths and Nmgoths reached the country of the Getce, they were not called Goths. They left Germany under other names. We know what these were. When they reach the Lower Danube, the native denominations show themselves. The Dniester ran through the Yallis Grutungorum, and Grutung was the name that the Ostrogoths gave themselves. The Visigoths had called themselves differently. This is what we expect. General names are in many cases given not by the men who bear it but by their neighbours. The men themselves keep their sectional denominations. Their frontagers, confederates, or enemies are those who feel the want of a general one; and it is they who, in nine cases out of ten, give it. There are exceptions to this, of course. When empires or kingdoms get consolidated a general name is required, even by the consolidators. As a rule, however, general names are of foreign origin. Hence it is scarcely a paradox to maintain that it was the Germans who called the Slavonians of the confederation Vandals and the Slavonians who called the Germans Goths.	Afterwards, the
latter name became native. At first it was strange.
Now, the native name of the Visigoths was Thewing. This points to Thuringia. So do the presumptions: Thuringia being the nearest point, distant as it was, to the scene of theirTHE GOTHS? THGRINGIAN.
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later conquests. If so, the Thervings and Grutungs reached the Dniester by way of the Danube, and the Danube by either the Naab or the Eegnitz.
What is the early history of the Thervings and Grutungs who were left in Thuringia? Failing this, what is the early history of the land they left ? The two need, by no means, coincide. The remnant may have been nil, which is unlikely; or it may have been absorbed by subsequent invasions, which is likely enough. Now I think that the history of the immediate congeners of the Grutungs and Thervings, who did so much in the east and south of Europe and even in Asia, was like that of our own continental ancestors; who, though they have founded an empire in England and a republic in America, failed to keep their ground in Germany. That the Thuringians became the dominant population in northern Bavaria along the valleys of the Naab and Eegnitz I infer from a passage in the Geographer of Eavenna, who heard from an authority whom he cites as Athanarit, that the rivers Bac and Eeganus, which flowed into the Danube, ran through the country of the Thuringians. Again, before the birth of Clovis there was a king in Thuringia. Cotemporary with the father of the Frank conqueror, lived Bisinus, King of Thuringia, whose Queen was named Bisina; this principle of naming the female by a modification of the name of the man being other than German. Bisina proposed to Chilperic that he should make her the mother of a hero; and Chilperic did so by begetting Clovis. Three brothers succeeded Bisinus; Baderich, Berthar, and Herminifrid. Upon these Clovis made war. But the brothers were allied with the great Theodoric, whose niece, Amaburga, Herminifrid had married.
The evidence to the Thuringian origin of the Ostrogoths is improved by a letter from the uncle to the nephew, which has come down to us; one out of many. It is curious as a sample of the rhetoric of either the Gothic king or his secretary: “ In our desire to unite ourselves to our parents, we associate you by the dear pledge of our niece; so that you, who already are descended from a kingly race, may shine with all the splendour conferred by the illustriousness of Imperial blood. Happy Thuringia! inasmuch as she takes one whom Italy has trained— learned, erudite (well-grounded) in morals; honourable in these314
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as in descent. May her adopted country shine forth in her morals not less than in its own triumphs/* Besides this, Theodoric had induced the kings of the Varni and Heruli to join his niece’s husband in a protest against the aggression of Clovis.
This was not the only passage of diplomacy between the King of Italy and the king of the Franks : but with no one did Theodoric take so little by his motions as with Clovis. Clovis conquered Thuringia. With this the history of the Thuringia of the Gothic conquerors ends. It was a definite and well-marked division of Germany ; the Thuringian form of speech (of which we have samples from Mœsia and Italy) as a dialect of Thuringia being unknown. In Thuringia it was swamped by something else ; probably by the Angle on the north, the Bavarian on the south, and the Hessian on the west quarter. At any rate, no such thing as a linear descendant of the language of Theodoric’s ancestors exists.
On the east Thuringia was bounded by Slavonia; and it was from this that the Slavonic Yandals of the Goth-and-Yandal confederation were derived. They might, of course, have been taken-up on the way ; but the history of the conquest of Spain suggests the doctrine of the text. The Yandals who with the Goths and Alans reduced the Spanish peninsula; the Yandals of Genseric and Hunneric; the Yandals who sacked Borne, ravaged Sicily, and founded a second Carthaginian empire, which lasted until Gelimer was conquered by Belisarius; the Yandals who gave their name to Anda-lusia are expressly stated to have been Silingian Yandals, i. e. Yandals of Silesia—descendants, probably, of the formidable Semnones. Koughly speaking, then, we may say that from Thuringian Saxony and the Slavonic districts of its frontier came the conquerors of Mœsia, Moldavia, Italy, Gaul, Spain, Tunis, and parts of Asia Minor.
After this the relations of the Thuringians are purely German. To the south of the Fichtelgebirge they are replaced by the Bavarians, Suevi, and Franconians. On the east they are divided by the Saale from the Slavonians, though Slavonic names are found in great number on this side of that river. This induces me to place the original Thuringia in the parts between the Vogelsberg, the Höhe Bhöne, and the Thüringer-wald ratherTHE FRANKS.
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than the parts between the Frankenwald and the Saale. The Werra divided them from Hesse; the Hartz (an indefinite boundary) from the Saxons. It was the Saxons, however, with whom they were the most connected: chiefly as enemies of the Franks, against whom any Saxon would ally himself with any one. One of the last notices we have of the Angles of Germany, as opposed to those of England, is the heading of a law Anglo-rum et Werinorum, hoc est Thuringorum. The Werini were the Yarni, to whom Theodoric applied in his bootless protest against the ambition of Clovis. In our own time the old alliance in a different form has repeated itself under more favourable auspices.
Though the Thuringian origin of the Germans of the Gothic conquests is here given as an undoubted fact, it is by no means the current doctrine. In the last century, indeed, Michaelis suggested it; stating that the Mcesogothic dialect was more like the Thuringian than any other form of the provincial German. I have never, however, seen the full import of the facts fairly stated, nor the presumptions arising out of the name Therving definitely combated. The letter of Theodoric and the notice of the geographer of Ravenna (though both are taken from a German author) I have never seen connected with the question.
2. The foundations of the Franh Empire were laid in Belgium rather than in Germany Proper: Duysborck in Brabant being, as suggested by Zeuss, word for word the same as Dispargum the capital of Cloio. It was Cloio who, before Clovis, comported himself as an independent Frank, eo nomine, and threw off his allegiance to Rome. His chief battles were fought in the county of the Atrebates or Artois, i. e. on Gallic soil; and as his authority reached the Somme, he must be looked upon as a Romanized German, with a mixed army.
Toumay is one of the towns specially mentioned to have been conquered by him. The mysterious Meroveus, according to Gregory of Tours, succeeded him, succeeded by Chilperic, who was succeeded by Clovis.
Clovis, a Christian, though a bad one, and a German from the Roman part of Germany, represents, with his Franks, what is called the Low German division of Germany. He does this, however, only when we look at what Germany was in the time of the316
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Eomans and what it is now in respect to language. Compared with the Bavarians, Thuringians, Burgundians, and Goths, the Franks were Northern, compared with the Frisians and Saxons they were Southern, Germans. Still more are they this when we generalize the import attached to the word German, and allow it to include Scandinavia. As the occupant of a middle district Clovis stood between everything to the south of his own domain and the Germany of the Angles and the Frisians. As a warrior who looked southwards for conquests he is a German of the extreme north. And the fact of his having been this is important; inasmuch as it isolates the parts beyond the Frank dominions, leaving them to the development of a separate history. This they are left to do for more than three centuries, or until the time of Charlemagne; when they come into the field as portions of Germany in the eyes of the modern German, and as portions of Germany in the eyes of the historian; though to the cotemporaries of Charlemagne they were well-nigh as foreign as if they had been Fin or Slave. In their political history there is a great gap between Roman Germany and Saxony, or the parts beyond the direct influence of Rome and beyond the field of Christianity. To the south of the Ysel the Imperial system had begun. Beyond it, lay what a Roman who recognized Germany at all would only recognize as a Germania Barbarorum.
With Clovis begins the union of Germany and France as parts of an Imperial system: for Clovis was not so much the conqueror of Gaul as the conqueror of the conquerors of Gaul. He reduced the Burgundians who had reduced that part of France which takes its name from them, along with Franche Compté; and he reduced the Goths who had reduced Southern Gaul. His own domain was essentially North German; and this it is that made the extended Empire of Charlemagne North German also. That his successors comported themselves as suzerains to subaltern dukes and even kings will he seen as we proceed. Two great countries were brought under his sway. As far as an Imperial system in kind is concerned, an aggregate of this sort gives one. It was only in degree, in name, and in dignity that it was increased when Charlemagne brought Italy within the same sphere. It was a difference of degree, however, which simulated one of kind; inasmuch as the Imperial dignity and the Ecclesiastic sanction were connectedTHE FRANKS.
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with Italy. One thing, however, was thoroughly effected by Clovis; the pre-eminent dignity of the term Frank. To Gaul it gave a new name. In Germany the distinction between the Frank proper and the Hessian, the Thuringian, or the Bavarian was kept up. Still, the Frank dynasty represented Germany.
I am far from thinking that the ancestors of Charlemagne were simply magnates of the country belonging to the descendants of Clovis, who, when intestine quarrels, fratricide, and sensuality had reduced the Merovingians to the condition of rois faineam had merely succeeded in usurping power. I think that they were rather the members of a concurrent family, with a different, though near, nationality; who succeeded in dethroning the Merovingians, much as a Scotchman from the Lothians might succeed in making himself king of Northumberland at the expense of a dynasty from Yorkshire or Durham. Of course, there must be refinement and minute criticism in such an hypothesis as this.
I begin, then, by suggesting that the chief scene of the battles of Cloio was the Koman Province of Germania; that the chief influence of the Carlovingian family was in Belgica Prima. But this scarcely gives the division. It will be more convenient to take the Maas as a rough and loose boundary, with a margin on each side. On the west of this the Merovingian power began; on the east, the Carlovingian. In the Merovingian portion lay the countries of the Batavi, and Toxandri; in the Carlovingian, those of the Ubii and Treviri. Cloio had his camp at Dispargum in Brabant. Camaracum, or Arras, is the town which he is specially stated to have sacked. After staying there for a time he moved onwards to the Somme. Toumay, too, he reduced. His son is Meroveus, of whom, in the way of trustworthy history, little is known; but he is mentioned here as being called the son of Cloio and the father of Clovis. The capital of Clovis is Soissons.
Let us now take the Maas on the east. The father of Charlemagne is Pepin, the father of Pepin Charles Martel, the father of Charles Martel Pepin of Heristal. This gives four generations. They suggest the notion of territorial domains rather than mere court influence; and they lie in a quarter which was always separated from the domain of the Merovingians. At the present time the Merovingian district is Dutch and Belgian, the318
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Carlovingian Prussian. The Merovingian is Flemish: the Carlo-vingian Low German. The Merovingian road leads towards Paris, the Carlovingian towards Aachen, or Aix-la-Chapelle ; and it was not by accident that Aachen was Charlemagne’s capital. Again— this distinction gives precision to the difference between the Western Franks and the Eastern or Austrasian. Elsewhere the complications of North and South com e-in. Here it is purely and simply West and East.
Let us go farther. Of the two divisions, the Western or Merovingian was the more barbarous; whereas the Eastern, or Carlovingian, took more than an average share of Eoman culture from Cologne. Indeed, the Eastern were the Eipuarian Franks as opposed to the Salian.
The Ifo)t?uarians were the Germans of the Ripa or Bank of the Ehine; and, to avoid the charge of making a hybrid word, we must suppose that the Latin term passed from a common into a proper name. If so, the Eipuarii were the Ripwcere, or Ripicola. There was a Lex Eipuariorum just as there was a Lex Saliorum, or the famous Salian Law. When the Eipa became Frank there was a Ducatus, and (or) Pagus Eipuariorum, which roughly represented the ancient Eoman division. It was bounded by the Ardennes (where between Namur and Liege we find, at the present time, a March), by Hesse (whence the Chatti had helped to Germanize it), and by Alemannia between Worms and Speyen; the Palatinate, or Pfalz, representing one of the last memorials of Eoman rule. Juliers, Berg, part (perhaps) of Cleves, and Treves belonged to it. Bonn, Aachen, Zulpich, and Ziilich (Juliers) were ^ts towns. The nucleus, then, of the Austrasian Empire was a large one.
It affected independence early. Gregory of Tours, who, by never naming either the Salii or the Eipuarii, though the professed historian of the Franks, teaches us how much we must rely upon inference and how little upon testimony, names Sigibert as a king of these parts, whose son was murdered by Clovis. This makes the two dynasties of equal antiquity.
Let us now analyze its Eoman and barbaric elements. Towards the end of the fourth century we get two names—both barbarous—Bucher and Arbogast, and an epistle from Sidonius Apol-linaris to the latter, which is curious. “ Drinker of the Moselle,THE FRANKS.
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thou hiccuppest the Tiber” (the original is ructas). “Knowing in the ways of the Barbarians thou knowest not barbarisms. Hence, the pomp of the Boman language, abolished in Belgium and on the Rhine, if it reside anywhere, resides with thee; with whom, whether safe or drawing towards an end (vel incolumi vel perorante), though even, on the boundary (limes) laws have fallen, words do not stumble.” That the rhetorical writer had the Horatian
“-------verba
Blsesa cadunt titubante lingua ”
in his mind is probable: probable, too, that there is a dash of satire in his praise, and that the drinker of the Moselle when he hiccupped Latin after the fashion of the Romans of the Tiber tasted its wines as well as its waters. Be this as it may, the magnates of the land of Charlemagne, in the fifth century, spoke Latin, the mother-tongue of the Walloon of Liege.
Can we see our way to further details, and even guess at the pedigree of Charlemagne ? His father called him Carloman, and it was owing to the similarity of the name and the title that the two have coalesced. His grandfather is the first who is known to have borne it. It was not common until the Carlovingians made it so. It is not, like the mass of German names, a compound. It is significant in German as fellow, churl, with a mean import; but it is also significant in Slavonic as chief \ captain, or king ; and is a common title.
Pepin is a strange name. One of the names like it is Mappin; that of a bishop of Rheims in the middle of the sixth century. Perhaps he was from Suabia or Bavaria, and called himself Pfeffin. In South Germany, i. e. in Styria and Bavaria, the name (Popo and Pepo) is commoner.
Before the close of the Merovingian dynasty, East and West had become North and South. Pepin marched to the Scald; so that northern France became Oarlovingian. Then came the term Niwestria, or the New Western Kingdom, coinciding with France minus Belgium and Lorraine—Lorraine or Lotliaringia, which, having been made an appanage for Lothaire, or Chlotachar, went with the German portion of the Empire. Niwestria, as a ttame, went westwards; so as, at last, to mean Normandy and320
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part of Britany. It was destined, however, to die out by time. The Northmen converted it into Normandy.
3. The Germans who stood in the same relation to Italy and the districts along the Danube in which the Franks stood to Gaul were the occupants of the parts between the Mayn, the Rhine, and the Danube. They were certainly a mixed body. They differed from the Salian Franks in speaking a High-German dialect. They had already effected conquests in Gaul, and spread towards, or into, Switzerland; chiefly as Burgundians and Alemanni. The importance of the latter name is measured by the term Lamagna, and Allemand, the names by which the French and Italian designate Germany. The most important nation, however, if we value it by the extent to which it diffused the German language and German power beyond Germany (and that permanently) is that of the Bavarians. The Goth and Lombards effected equal conquests ; but the Goths and Lombards are now so many Italians, Spaniards, and Frenchmen. The projection, however, of the Bavarians gives us the Germans not only of Bavaria but of Austria.
The analysis of their blood and pedigree is connected with the notice of the Thuringians and the Marcomanni. These I hold to have been Goths. This doctrine, as far as the Marcomanni are concerned, is the reverse of that of Zeuss. Zeuss makes the name Marcomanni special, the name Thuringi general. I reverse this; considering that there may have been, at different times and places, some hundreds of Marches, and that any one of them in contact with a German population which could give it a German name might be called the land of the Marchmen or Marcomanni. Thuringian, on the other hand, meant simply a German from Thuringia.
The very earliest history of the parts between the Mayn and Danube I believe to have been as follows. Originally they were Slavonic; originally meaning the time before the first Romans put foot on the soil. A sketch of the evidence on this point has already been given. In Baden, Wurtemburg, and Hohenzollern, these original Slavonians had already been obliterated, removed, or mixed-up with Romans, Gauls, Germans, convicts, and all sorts of heterogeneous populations when Tacitus wrote his Germania. This mixture constituted the Decumates Agri, a sort of No Mans Land; bounded on the West by the Rhine, on the South byTHE MARCOMANNI.
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the Danube, and (afterwards) on the east hy the Vallum Eomanum which ran from the Danube to the Mayn.
The Valley of the Eegnitz, however, remained what it was, i. e. subject to invasions and indentations on the part of the Germans ; between whom and the Slavonians it was much such a boundary as the Ehine between the Germans and the Gauls.
The Valley of the Naab, however, I consider to have been the scene of an earlier and a more definite encroachment. Down this, I submit, that the Thuringian Germans of the Frankenwald and the Thuringerwald cut their way to the Danube; so making the first great projection of the German name and language. By the end of the first century these encroachers had reached the frontiers of Vindelicia and Noricum.
They moved eastwards, and, having doubled (so to say) the southern extremity of Bohemia, became formidable on the frontier of Pannonia as the Marcomanni of Tacitus and the great Mar-comannic war under Antoninus. Moving on and moving on, eastward and more eastward still, they became the Goths of Thrace; until having crossed the Danube, they re-cross it, and become the Goths of Moesia ; divided into the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths of Alaric and his successors in Gaul and Spain and of Theodoric and Italy.
How many remained in Germany to represent the original name, how many remained on the Pannonian, Noric, Vindelician, or Ehsetian frontiers, as Marcomanni, is unknown. How long such as might so he left remained there is also uncertain. The name Marcomanni proves nothing. A new set of invaders may have succeeded and given it to themselves. The name Thuringian proves as little. The original Thuringians may have been superseded by new comers. What is certain is this, that the only specimens of the Gothic language are from the Lower Danube, and that the latest of them is earlier than a.d. 600—so much did these invaders carry with them, so little did they leave behind them. In their native Germany they were (as aforesaid) Thervings, and Grutungs.
Let us say that by the year 600, as Thervings and Grutungs and as speakers of that particular language which is called the Moeso-Gothic, these important conquerors are, for everything but the minutest questions of minute history, practically extinct on
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tbe Upper Danube. By this time the Vallum Romanum is useless; the Vindelician, Noric, and Rheetian frontiers, but indifferently protected by the Danube; and the Decumates Agri open to the first comers—the Germans of Franconia having become strong, bold, and aggressive. These, in language, at least, belong to a different division from that which gave the Ostrogoths and Visigoths.
They are on the Gallic frontier. They are on the Slavonic frontier. They are on the Roman frontier. They are on the frontier of a Debateable Land, a March, a Ukraine, or a Desertum, according as it is named by a German, a Slavonian, or a Roman. They form alliances with their neighbours. Sometimes one name, sometimes another predominates. Sometimes we hear of the Suevi, sometimes of the Alemanni.
The true ancestors of the present Alsatians I hold to have been the Alemanni, and, by the converse of the argument, I hold that the true Alemanni were the men who settled in Alsatia. The present French name for Germany, AUemagne, suggests this. It was taken from that part of Germany which lay nearest to Gaul. But it was a German name, and in the German language alone was it significant. What it meant is doubtful. There are two German words which give us a meaning—all, meaning all, and al, as it appears in else, meaning otherwise. Common sense and geography tell us that the prefixed element is the same in both words; i. e. that if Alisaz, or A/satia, meant the settlement of the strangers, the word Alemanni meant the strangers themselves. Yet such is not the current doctrine. That Alsatia is the Foreign Land, rather than a land of all kinds of men, no one has doubted. That Alemanni means men of all kinds rather than foreigners is generally maintained. I submit, however, that both views can scarce be right: and I prefer the power given to the al- in Alsatia, In other words, I believe that Alemanni means foreigners or strangers; these being chiefly Suevi. They might have been mixed: but it is submitted that the al- in Alemmn is the el- in else, not the all of all. If so, Alsatia is at the present time French in politics, German in name and language, and Germano-Slavonic in blood.
The Burgundians, like the Suevi and Alemanni, were Germanized Slavonians, of the Upper Mayn, and, perhaps, of theTHE BAVARIANS.
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Eegnitz and Naab. They were generally in alliance, though sometimes at war, with the Alemanni. As early as the reign of Diocletian, they had encroached upon Gaul. It is not, however, until more than a century later that they seem to have consolidated a kingdom. In 412, however, Jovinus is raised, as a pretender to the purple, in Mentz; and one of his chief supporters is the King of the Burgundians, Gunthar or Gondicar, so conspicuous in the Nibelungen Lied and other legendary poems. About this time they became converted to Christianity. Overthrown by the Franks under Clovis, they have left their name behind them: though it applies to only a part of their occupancy, which at one time touched Lorraine, and at one time the Lake of Geneva. They moved from north to south; Mentz being the town where their name first appears as an important one. The title of their king was Hendinos; of their chief priest, Sinistus.
More important, however, than either of these names is that of the Bavarians. The most general way of looking at the men who bore it is to consider them as the Germans who made their way through the Valley of the Eegnitz, between Windsheim and Pegnitz, to the Danube. I give these words because they are Slavonic; and they are, by no means, the only signs of Slavonic occupancy that could be given. Under what names these intruders left Germany is uncertain. They reach, however, the country of the ancient Boii and become Baiovarii, or inhabitants of the Boiian district.
Pergis ad Augustam, quam Virdo et Licca fluentant.
Ulic ossa sacrse venerabere martyris Afrae.
Si vacat ire viam, neque te JBajoarius obstet,
Qua vicina sedent Breonum loca, perge per Alpes.
In respect to the several countries, the Grison part of Switzerland was in language, at least, Eoman; just as it is now: the language representing the conquests of Drusus and Tiberius, with a minimum discernible amount of the indigenous element. Saltz-burg was in the same condition. So was the northern Tyrol. Styria, however, seems to have been what Carinthia and Camiola are at present—an occupancy, to a great extent, of the original population, that population being Slavonic. So were, perhaps, Upper and Lower Austria; so far, at least, as they were not324
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Gothic and Turk, i. e. Avar or Hun. The Romanized portion was, probably, the easiest prey. Our authorities, here, are not of the best; so that they can only he taken for the generalities. However, when Aonulf, brother of Odoacer, had the charge of the frontier, he received orders to send hack all the Romans to Italy; and the saintly narrator tells us that they went hack to he dispersed over the Roman territory even as the Israelites went out of Egypt from the House of Servitude. The next notice is that Yeruca, on the Adige, must he defended as the outpost of the Empire. Let us say that this gives the conquerors, at least the valley of the Lech, and, probably, everything between Augsburg and Botzen. If so, we have the origin of Bavaria, as the great German outpost in this direction. In this movement, the Germanization of Upper and Lower Austria is a mere detail. So is that of the Voralberg, and the north-eastern part of Switzerland. Switzerland, however, was Germanized from another quarter as well. The exact line of demarcation between the two streams of German immigration is more than I can give. It was Burgundian and Alemannic rather than Bavarian.
Erom this time forward, the questions of frontier are between the Bavarians and the Goths, the Bavarians and the Lombards, the Bavarians and the Avars. The prominent name as that of either the founder or the chief members of a dynasty for Bavaria in this its early period of national and imperial existence is Garibald: and the nationality of the dynasty is sufficiently marked. Concurrently with the Bavarian, the Erank kingdom was growing up; whilst, between the Eranks of the north and Italy and the Avars on the south, lay the Bavarians.
Tassilo succeeds Garibald, and that under Erank influence—perhaps, Erank suzerainty. It is m the conflicts between the Bavarians and the Lombards that we meet the word Graf {Graplvio) as a Bavarian title. How the Bavarians conquered the true Lombards, and replaced the dynasty of Audoin and Alboin by that of the line of Garibald, has been noticed elsewhere. These Bavarians were the first Germans who crossed the Alps as members of an organized German Empire, for the Visigoths, the Ostrogoths, and the Lombards, were unorganized, or (at least) insubordinate plunderers.THE BAVARIANS.
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Wliat were the relations between the Bavarians and the Avars ? What was the Avar frontier and what its power west of the Theiss in the seventh century ? Can an Avar ever have been King of Bavaria ? Tassilo is no German name. Odilo is very like Attila. I believe it to be, word for word, the same; the probability of its being so lying in the extent to which the Avar and the Bavarian histories are mixed-up. There were political relations of all kinds between the Merovingian Franks and the Avars. Sigisbert conquered them, but afterwards they conquered him. Then they made peace. Childebert they attacked in Thuringia. A peace followed. What if he then conferred on an Avar Khan the title of king, or duke, of Bavaria ? He it was who nominated Tassilo.
With the Lombards the Avars were in either friendly or hostile relations from the beginning. They were this under the dynasty of Audoin. They were this in the reigns of Grimoald and Agilulf, Lombard kings of the Bavarian dynasty.
Thirdly. The river Inn, which (when the different portions of the empire became consolidated) is named as the boundary between the Bavarians and the Franks, is, on one occasion at least, named as the boundary of the Avars to the west. That Upper and Lower Austria, with parts of Salzburg and Styria, were Slavonic first, and afterwards, more or less, Avar, is certain.
The likelihood of Tassilo and Odilo being Avar names depends upon the likelihood of the Bavarians having elected their own chiefs. A Bavarian might affirm, an ordinary German deny, this. The Bavarian might lay great stress on the title rex being attached to the names of certain Agilulfings, kings of the line of Garibald; but it is not constant. Dux is sometimes used. A remarkable passage gives us the rex Alamannorum and the princess Baiovariorum. In London I may do what I should hesitate to do in Munich, suggest the possibility of the real title having been Khakan or Khan, and of princess having been the German for it. The reading Fagana, suspiciously like it, occurs in one document at least. Upon the fact, however, of the Bavarian king, duke, prince, or khan, having been nominated by the Frank king the evidence is strong. Theodebald gave Walderada as wife to Garibald, and he gave her to him as uni e suis.
Of the Bavarian massacre of the Bulgarian refugees from the khan of the Avars notice has already been taken.32G
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Another point of antiquarian nationality is the relation between the names Bavaria and Bohemia. Both mean the same; the former the occupants of the country of the Boii, the latter the country itself, or home of the Boii = Boiohemum. Yet Bavaria and Bohemia are different countries, and the history of the Bavarians is one thing, that of the Bohemians another. Nevertheless, the points connected with even the name are worth notice; inasmuch as political capital has, ere now, been made out of them.
When—
The bold Bavarian, in a luckless hour,
Tried the dread summit of Caesarian power—
in plain prose, when the Elector of Bohemia was made Emperor of Germany the question emerged into prominence, and patriotic Bavarians maintained that the true descendants of the Boii were themselves. In this they were wrong, so far as the Boii were concerned; since, whatever else they may have been, the Boii were never Germans. The Germans of Bohemia and Bavaria were what they were in their relation to the Boii, only as Englishmen are Britons, i. e. as men who occupied the Boian country; what they took up of the Boian blood being a minor question.
Which first took the name, Bavaria or Bohemia ? This is the question; and it is a question concerning the history of a term not the history of a population. The name Boiohemum is the older. It appears in Ceesar. It is German, and must have been given by Germans. It might have been applied to anyone; to a Chinese if he lived on a certain spot of ground. It makes the Boii frontagers of certain Germans, nothing more. It applies, at the present time, and from an early period, to Bohemia: and, apparently, it always did so. But between its use in Csesar and Tacitus, and the beginning of its present use, there is an interval of five hundred years or more. As a modern name it is not so old as Bavaria: a name which arose spontaneously, and apparently, from no other reason than the fact of the men who bore it having succeeded the Boii. There is no doubt of this. Where these lay is also beyond doubt. There were Boii in Gaul; Boii in Italy; Boii inNoricum ; Boii in Pannonia; concerning each and all of which divisions of the name we have definite historical notices. OfBAVARIA AND BOHEMIA.
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Boii, however, within the confines of Bohemia we have none. Caesar, though he uses the term Boiohemum, nowhere leads us to befieve that he meant Bohemia. He probably meant some place beyond the Bhine of which he knew nothing accurately.
I submit, then, that if it were not for the application of the modern name to Bohemia, the common-place view that Boi-hemum and Bajovarii pointed to the same district would take its stand without contradiction. But the present application contravenes this. What is it worth ? But little. In the first place, Bohemia is not, like Bavaria, a native name. The true Bohemians, the Slavonic Tsheks, know it only as a German word. It is not they who profess descent from the Boii; or who, if they did, would call any country by any word ending in -heim. Certain Germans have given it, and I submit that they have given it out of their book-learning; just as some sixty years ago a certain country between Holland and France was called Belgium. That some Boii may have lain within the boundaries of Bohemia is likely. The true Boii, however, are the men whose name is incorporated with Bavaria; and, in this respect, the patriotic Bavarians, of the time of the Bavarian Kaiser, were on the side of reason.
Just as little was Bohemia the land of the Marcomanni. A March is essentially linear. Bohemia is conspicuous as a massive rhomb. That the name is native is out of the question. The Tsheks about Prague could scarcely have considered their country a March, That the mountain ridge was one is likely enough; and, if it were so, the name Ukraine, or something like it, is the name by which the natives would have called it.
4. The next great division is that comprising the Saxons and the Frisians. These it was who carried the German language and German blood across the sea; the Saxons into England, the Frisians (by a hypothesis which will be more fully elucidated) into Scandinaiva. It was the fate of the settlements thus made to be independent of the Empire: as, until conquered by the Carlovingian Franks, the Saxons and the Frisians themselves were. Of the Frisians but a fragment remains in Germany; of the English, so far as language is the test, nothing. Charlemagne cut them up root and branch. In the account of his conquest the term Saxon misleads us. It was a general name, and as such implies, at first sight, a united nation. But it was not native. It was merely328
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a name given by the conquering Christians and the organized Franks to a population of Pagans, whose rudeness, hostility, and independence separated them from themselves. These Pagans held together hut loosely. In respect to their alliances they were more Slavonic than German. Many, like the Lombards, and possibly the Angles themselves, seem to have been little more than Germanized Slavonians. Their history, however, has been transferred to the soil of Germany and to the domain of the Empire.
5.	The Franks spread northwards and eastwards at the expense of the Slavonians and Saxons. After Slavonic Brandenburg had become German, it became a fresh starting-point, from which were conquered the Lithuanians of Prussia, the Lets of Curland and Livonia and the Fins of Estonia.
6.	In few populations is the break between their older and their newer history more decided than it is with the Hessians, the descendants of the GHaiti; word for word the two names being the same. Whether the Hessi, first mentioned a.d. 720 as such, pronounced their name with a t is uncertain. Probably they did not. They are now High rather than Low Germans; and the use of the s is a High German character. All that we learn from the form Chatti is that the Homans got the name from a Low German source. The bearers of it seem to have been simply the occupants of pagus, or provincia Hessorum, bounded by the Franks proper, the Thuringians, and the Saxons, with whom they divided the valley of the Diemel; in the north of which was a pagus Hessi Saxonicus, in the south a pagus Hessi Franconicus, whilst in the town of Wolfshanger the Franks and Saxons were mixed.
The Hessians are pre-eminently the central population of Germany; being the only one of equal size which has never had either Slavonians or Gauls on its frontiers. Yet Hesse constitutes a natural division. The Thuringians, so long as they spoke the language of the Goths, and the Saxons, so long as they spoke a near congener of the Anglo-Saxon, were decidedly differentiated. Again, in language, at least, the Franks were Low, rather than High, Germans. The Bavarians, on the other hand, were not only High, but High in an extreme and peculiar degree.
It is this which has, perhaps, saved Hesse from being cut-up into marches and similar feudalisms. It has also kept the bloodHESSE.
329
pure: Hesse being tbe district where we have its purity at its maximum; a district which never seems to have been anything but German.
That there is Hessian blood, however, beyond the limits of Hesse, is suggested by the history of the Chatti; besides which, it can scarcely be doubted that Hesse has largely helped to assimilate Thuringia and Saxony to the general type of the present Germans: the former of which in the first, and the latter in the seventh, century can scarcely have been German as Germany is now.
Of all these conquests, the mass, laying England and Scandinavia aside, has held together; so that Germany, in the political sense of the term, nearly represents the results of the German invasions. The exceptions are—
1.	The Baltic Provinces, which are Eussian.
2.	Holland with its separate nationality and its own independent history.
3.	The Flemish part of Belgium.
4.	The German part of Switzerland.
5.	Lorraine and Alsatia, which are French.
The great divisions within the Empire itself, so far as they are not simply territorial and dynastic, are those of religion and language. The south is Catholic and High German, the north Low German and Protestant. The literary language is High German. The blood varies with the district. In Hesse Cassel, Nassau, the Sauerland, on the Lower Ehine and in Westphalia, it is comparatively pure. Elsewhere, if we suppose that the German conquests were attended with any intermixture or fusion at all, it is largely Slavonic.330
THE EMPIRE.
CHAPTER XXII.
Germany.—The Empire.—Connection with the Empire of Rome.—Carlovingian Period.—The Hohenstauffen Dynasty, &c.—The Secularizations.—Present Organization.—Value as a Bond of Union.
The present chapter is devoted to a sketch of the Empire, with special reference to its import as a bond of union between the several States of Germany.
Its Imperial character is derived from the Empire of Ancient Rome.
The history of the Popes is, for the first three centuries, the history of the Emperors; and, although, in our notice of the Popes, the early history of the Papacy was only considered so far as it was also the history of Rome, enough was said, even in it, concerning the disputes about the Imperial succession, to show the complications by which it was attended. Still, in a very cursory manner, the ground will he gone over again; will be gone over again for the sake of taking a fresh view of the same objects from a different point. What has hitherto been seen has been the Emperor of Germany in his relations to the Pope of Rome. What will now come under notice will be the Pope of Rome in his relations to the Emperor of Germany.
That there was never a time, within the last thousand years, when the Germans were not crossing the Alps, descending into Italy, interfering in Italian politics, and forming alliances with some Italian Powers of some sort or other, has, over and over again, been stated; especially by those who have persuaded themselves, that Germany has a kind of vested interest in Italy. Whatever may he the practical inference from this, the simple historical fact is true enough : indeed, in one sense, it is understated. The ordinary date from which the interposition on the part of Germany in the affairs of Italy is that of the coronation of Charle-GERMANS IN ITALY.
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magne, or (if we go back as far as we can), that of the application of Gregory II. to Charles Martel. And as far as we limit our view to the Germans of the Empire, these dates are sufficiently accurate. Of German invasions, however, in general, of A^-imperial German conquests, the dates go further hack. Garibald, and his Bavarians, though no Emperor, was a German. Alboin, before him, with his Lombards, was the same. The same was Theodoric before Alboin. The same was Alaric before Theodoric. All these invaders, however, German as they were, were scarcely the Germans of Germany; scarcely (even ethnologically) the ancestors of the present Germans. They invaded Italy as any other marauders equally bold might have invaded a tempting country. The Goths and Lombards, indeed, invaded it from Pannonia: Pannonia being a country of which the occupants always threatened Borne.
Counting, then, from the invasion of Alaric (about a.d. 400) there are (about) three centuries between them and the application of Gregory II. to Charles Martel. Counting from that of the Goths, there are (about) two. Counting from that of the Lombards, there is something more than one. Though none of those interferences were, at one and the same time, Imperial and German, they deserve notice. So do the three centuries during which they occurred. This is because, during them, the tradition of the Empire was still kept up. In Constantinople, it was, of course, wholly unbroken. But, even in Italy, it was kept up with an approximation to continuity. Of the western Emperors, Augustulus was the last; and during the reigns of Odoacer and Theodoric, though there was nothing definitely Imperial in Borne, there was still an indefinite connection between Borne and the truly Imperial Constantinople. And, besides this, there were within the boundaries of Italy itself the exarchate of Bavenna and a portion of Southern Italy; which were parts and parcels of the Empire—Eastern, Western, or One and Indivisible, as we choose to call it.
As the theological differences between the Greek and Latin Churches increased, the bond became weaker. Weaker, too, it became in proportion as the Gothic and Lombard powers grew strong. Erom this it naturally followed that, as the Imperial pretensions were neither wholly abandoned nor recognized by the Bomans as having been transferred to Constantinople, there was something332
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left which the chief authority in Home might claim as his own; either to keep or to give away. The municipal organization of Rome itself, with its prefects of the city as real officers, and its patricians, senators, and consuls as a sort of aristocracy, favoured this view. Meanwhile, the head of Rome was its Bishop.
Of these bishops, the immediate predecessors of Gregory II. had been notable for their extreme subservience to the Emperors; and of these Emperors many had been heterodox, many tyrannically cruel. As a general rule, they had recognized in the bishops of Rome little more than so many refractory subjects, who, like the humblest of the mob of Constantinople, might be degraded, insulted, imprisoned—even put to death. And upon this view of their powers the most violent of them had acted. The points of contact, points which were almost always productive of opposition and hostility, were innumerable. During the seventh century the great Monothelite, during the eighth the greater Iconoclastic, controversy divided the two Churches. It was this last which made the division final. The Exarchate of Ravenna was lost at the death of Leo III.; when all of Italy that remained to the Con-stantinopolitan Emperors consisted of those parts of Sicily and Calabria which had yet to be overrun by the Saracens. Meanwhile, as the Greek power sank, that of the Lombards rose.
That the Lombards were strong enough to defend the Pope against either the Greek Emperor or the Saracens is beyond doubt. They had ceased to be Barbarians—ceased to be Pagans. They had almost ceased to be Arians. They had consolidated a powerful kingdom in the north of Italy, and had founded semi-independent duchies in Benevento and Spoleto ; the latter on the frontier of the Roman territory. Between the Pope and the Lombards, Italy might now have been consolidated into a kingdom; and such a kingdom would have been an Italian one. The details of the period during which the Lombards, after abandoning their Saxonism, their barbarism, and their Arianism, retained their language, are unknown. It is only certain that, in all essential points, they became Italian at an early period. Agreement, however, between the two powers was impossible. The Lombard kings were full as crafty as the Pope, and more aggressive. As a rule, they were opposed to the Emperors; yet, on more than one occasion, they tampered with them; and, on more than one occasion, the Pope lent hisGERMANS IN ITALY.
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aid to the rebellious chieftains of the duchies. From the moment, however, that the great appeal was made to the Franks, both the chances and the hopes of a reconciliation vanished, and the hostility became deadly.
Whilst the final severance between the two Empires was going on in Italy (so that the power of the Pope grew more and more independent and temporal) a complementary movement was taking place among the Franks. Not only was the Merovingian dynasty of the descendants of Clovis sinking, hut the power under which it sunk was growing spiritual or theocratic. Leodegar (St, Leger), Bishop of Autun, is the protaganist here. The Merovingian kings were hut puppets under the Mayors of the Palace. Leodegar strove to subdue the Mayors of the Palace to the bishops. He perished in the struggle. Still, for a time, the ecclesiastical element was of inordinate strength among the Franks. These were the times when the law (if law it may be called) of regal succession was throughout Europe little better than what it was under the first Ottoman Sultans, and what it is in Asia at the present time. It was, in the main, hereditary; hut the elective element might show itself at any time, and incompetent kings might he set aside. The Turkish Sultans, who -----------------------bore no brother near the throne,
caused the younger, or weaker, sons of their fathers to he murdered. The Christian kings of this time either blinded or made monks of them. They married, too, at random ; for a time; two wives at once; within the prohibited degrees. There was vice and there was disorder. But there was also superstition ; and on the fears of the most violent and licentious of the Frank kings, the power of the Church had its basis.
Hence, when, on the one side, a Pope renounced all allegiance to the Byzantine Emperor, and, on the other, sanctioned the deposition of the last of the Merovingians by Charles Martel, it is no wonder that an alliance between an Italian and a German, a spiritual and a temporal, power was the result.
There was a spiritual power to he protected: there were temporal offices to be sanctioned.
For help against the Lombards, Charles Martel was to take the titles of Consul and Patrician of Rome; hut he died before he encountered the Lombards. For similar help his son Pepin—no334
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longer a Mayor of the Palace, but the founder of the Carlovingian dynasty of kings and emperors—took the same titles, and helped the Pope who granted them most efficiently. Charlemagne, who helped more efficiently still, was still more amply recompensed. By Charlemagne’s first descent on Italy, Lombardy was reduced to the condition of a province, and the Lombard dynasty ended with Desiderius. The honours and titles with which the conqueror was welcomed in Home are the same in kind with those that were granted to Pepin. Neither were his second and third visits of any notable importance The imperial visit was the fourth. It has already been alluded to. The Pope was, in some sense, under a judgment. We measure the amount of his subordination to the Consul and Patrician (for this is all that Charlemagne is at present) by the following confession :—“ I, Leo, Pontiff of the Holy Roman Church, being subject to no judgment, under no compulsion, of my own free will, in your presence, before God who reads the conscience, and His angels, and the blessed Apostle Peter, in whose sight we stand, declare myself not guilty of the ^barges made against me. I have never perpetrated, nor commanded to be perpetrated, the wicked deeds of which I have been accused. This I call God to witness, whose judgment we must all undergo ; and this I do, bound by no law, nor wishing to impose this custom on my successors, or on my brother bishops, but that I may altogether relieve you from any unjust suspicions against myself.”
And now came the Feast of the Nativity—the last Christmas of the eighth century, when the Pope himself chaunted the Mass, and Charlemagne attended. At the close, the Pope approached him, placed a crown on his head, and proclaimed him Cæsar Augustus. “ God grant life and victory to the great and pacific Emperor ! ”
The Emperor, and his son Pepin, were afterwards anointed by the same holy hands that had conferred the crown.
The death of Charlemagne showed that the kingdom of Italy might be held without carrying with it the title and rights of the Emperor. There was an anomaly in this ; inasmuch as the ratification of the election of the Pope was the Imperial prerogative. However, it was to his son Pepin that Charlemagne bequeathed Italy ; which Pepin bequeathed to Bernhardt, his ownGERMANS IN ITALY.
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son also; though illegitimate. The Emperor, meanwhile, was Louis the Pious: who, during his fathers lifetime, had held Aquitaine.
Under Louis the Pious it seemed good to consider the question of succession: and, this being done, the principle of primogeniture was acknowledged; hut at the same time the principle of appanages. Lhotair was the eldest son. To him was awarded Italy, of which Bernhardt was unwillingly relieved: whilst Pepin had the South of France, and Louis Bavaria, Bohemia, &c.
Lhotair succeeds Louis I.; and Louis II. succeeds his father Lhotair; both kings of Italy, both emperors. The anomaly which showed itself in the separation of Italy and the Empire under Pepin and Bernhardt was now rectified ; though only for a time. It is convenient to consider the Imperial dignity as that which originated in the Imperatores of Borne; the Kingship of Italy, symbolized by the iron crown, as a title resting on the subjugation of the Lombards.
But Louis the Pious marries a second wife; and names the son by this union King of Aquitaine. The brothers, who had rebelled against the father before, are now even more flagrantly rebellious. They treat the infant King of Aquitaine, afterwards Charles the Bald, as the son of Bernhardt of Septimana the mother’s imputed paramour. However, Louis lives till Charles grows up, and, after certain minor details in the way of re-divisions, Charles becomes King of France, and his cousin Louis the German King of Germany. Lhotair, before his father’s death, is associated with him in the Empire; from which Louis the father is eventually deposed. Lhotair’s son, Louis II., like himself, is both King of Italy and Emperor; but Lhotair, another son, takes, by a fresh division, the district which, at the present time, retains his name, Lotharingia or Lorraine. After a few years, this is incorporated with Charles the Bald’s French kingdom.
Charles the Bald succeeds his nephew Louis II., son of Lhotair the Emperor (as opposed to the King of Lorraine) as Emperor—Emperor and King of France and Italy. Then come Charles the Fat, a legitimate, and Arnulf, an illegitimate, Carlovingian, as full Emperors; then the Lamberts, Guidos, and Berengars as Kings of Italy. Their feuds have already been noticed. They were, so far as they were Emperors, Emperors336
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only in their own eyes, and in those of the Italians. Louis III. was little more; he was the son of Count Boso, of Provençe, by a daughter of Louis II. But he was a. Provençal rather than Frenchman or German. However, he was crowned at Borne, and recognized for a time as King of Italy. The title, however, was regained by Berengar, who put out Louis eyes.
This is a point from which we may conveniently take a retrospect, and examine the two main elements embodied in the idea of the Empire ; the real and material, and the nominal, titular, or moral, one.
The real elements of the Empire lay in the vast conquests of Charlemagne. These comprised the Frank, Alemannic, Bavarian, Hessian, Thuringian, and Saxon parts of Germany; France, whether French, Burgundian, or Flemish ; the northern part of Spain ; Italy so far as it was not Imperial in another sense (i. e. belonging to the Byzantine Empire) ; Bohemia, and vast sections of the Slavonic area; and Hungary, which, in the time of Charlemagne, meant the Avar countries—for in the time of Charlemagne the Magyar Hungarians were not. With the exception of Scandinavia and the British Isles, the temporal Empire of Charlemagne coincided with the spiritual Empire of the Pope, i. e. with Latin Christianity, as opposed to the Paganism of parts of Hungary and Saxony, to the Mahometanism of Spain, and to the Greek creed of the Eastern Empire.
The titular elements were by no means so definite. What the titles of Patrician, Consul, and Emperor, carried with them is uncertain. They implied the duty on the part of him who bore them to protect Borne and its Bishop. They put him in possession of that indefinite and hypothetical authority which a true Western Emperor, had such a thing existed, would have wielded. And the two Powers were complementary to one another. That the explanation is an indistinct one is certain ; but I cannot make it precise. The authority was essentially, perhaps intentionally, indefinite from the first. That there was an Imperial power of some kind, and that it was in some sense a power continuously derived from the old Boman Empire, we have seen. It might on occasions be more Constantinopolitan than Boman, more Greek than Italian ; still, it was an Imperial power after the fashion of the Imperial power of Diocletian or Constantine.THE EMPIRE.
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The few details we have concerning the administration of Italy under Odoacer and Theodoric give us the little information we have about these movements. They tell us, in the first place, that the system of suzerainty and vassalage, so far as it touched the great dukes and counts, was by no means so German as it is believed to have been; in other words, that the system of dukes and counts on Roman soil was as early as the sixth century. That of marquises, I believe to have been earlier; as old as the oldest word that ever signified March or Marchman. That the full organization of that great system which afterwards became feudal, was, at this early period, as truly Roman as it afterwards came to be German I do not hold. I only hold that the great feudal characteristic of certain areas being held by certain subaltern officers (officers with inferiors under them, while they were, themselves, responsible to some sovereign authority) is, at one and the same time, old and Roman. Let us look at the titles of honour. Duke is Dux; Count, Comes. Wherever there was a March, there was a Marquis. In German, however, a marquis is a Markgrave; and Graff is a word which has never been accounted for. It is German enough at the present time. It is English. A Sheriff is a Shir e-reeve, Shne gerefa, or Shire-grave. Yet Graf, Grev, or Graphio, is admitted by so decided a German as Mr. Kemble, not to be a word of German origin. I submit that it is the Slavonic krai, krav, krao—king or captain ; and, in confirmation of this, I find it for the first time on the German and Slavonic frontier. Earl, too, has yet to be accounted for. It is almost peculiar to England and Scandinavia, and, as such, is probably Norse.
The greatest of the Emperors between the break-up of the Carlovingian line and the reconstruction under Otho the Great, was the conqueror of the terrible Magyars, Henry the Fowler.
The three Othos, father, son, and grandson, were Saxons. Otho I., or the Great, was an Emperor after the fashion of Charlemagne. He was crowned at Rome. He treated the Pope as a subordinate* During the reign of Otho III., the Carlovingian dynasty of France came to an end; following the fate of the kindred dynasty in Germany. Under the line of Hugh Capet,
VOL. II.	z338
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the divergence between France and Germany developed itself into antagonism.
Conrad as well as the second and the third Henry was crowned at Home. Then came the time of the German Popes. In a series of biographies, no emperor would stand out with greater prominence than Henry IV. This is because he belongs to a period different from any of those which preceded it. His great contemporary rival and bitter enemy was Hildebrand, or Gregory VII.; the founder of the Papal power as founded upon the purely spiritual weapon of excommunication. The authority of Gregory was only different in degree from that of Innocent III.; if, indeed, it were not altogether equal to it. The most bitter penance ever undergone by a king at the bidding of a Pope was undergone by Henry IV. He succeeded his father whilst a minor, and, during his minority, it was the German Popes who ruled. But emancipation, and something more than emancipation, was in store for the Papacy. The days of her power were dawning. France was not only separate from, but politically and systematically opposed to, Germany. In Germany itself, there was the struggle between the temporal and the spiritual powers. More than all, the Norman power was consolidating itself in the south of Italy and Sicily; and in the Normans the Popes had begun to seek allies against the Germans, just as they had before sought help at the hands of the Germans against the Lombards.
Lastly, a prince of Germany, hostile to the imperial house, Godfrey of Lorraine, had married the widow of Boniface, Duke of Tuscany. Another German afterwards married her daughter, a heiress. Hence, whether Tuscany was to be Papal or German was the chief temporal question, in the long and chronic quarrel between Henry IV. and the Pope. Meanwhile Germany was divided against itself; and, towards the end of Henry’s unhappy life, his own son rose in arms against him. From 1073, when the Emperor totally defeated the Saxons, who had revolted against him, until his death in 1106, we have one tissue of excommunication, defiance, submission, and penance, ending in the imprisonment of the aged emperor at the order of his own son and successor, Henry V. Henry V., so far as humbling the successor of the Popes who humbled his father is revenge, avenged the persecutions of hisTHE EMPIRE.
339
predecessor. Notwithstanding the biographical interest attached to the reign of the two Henry s, there is, if we make allowance for the peculiar connection between Italy and Germany, little in the long quarrel which is purely imperial. To a great extent, though not wholly, the antagonism between Henry IV. and Gregory VII. might have shown itself between a Pope and a king of France. Still the connection must be borne in mind. Both the Henrys visited Borne, and Henry V. was crowned there.
Henry V., the last of the Franconian Emperors, was succeeded by Lhotair, of the House of Saxony. The Pope was in haste to acknowledge Lhotair and Lhotair in haste to anticipate the wishes of the Pope.
The Pope dreaded the rising power of the Hohenstaufens of Suabia. But Conrad the Hohenstauffen, at the death of Lhotair, was elected Emperor. His nephew, Frederic I. (Barbarossa), succeeded him. Frederic Barbarossa claimed all the authority over Italy that had been claimed by either Otho or Charlemagne— in the way of actual territorial dominion, more. Tuscany he awarded to his uncle, Henry of Bavaria. To Constantia, the heiress to the crown of Sicily and Naples, he married his son Henry. By the Pope he was crowned in Rome. But the Pope and Emperor suspected one another. Coldness grew into hostility. With Venice and the Lombard cities the Pope formed a league, and in the battle of Legnano the powerful Emperor was defeated. Drowned during the second crusade in a little river of Asia Minor Frederic left the Empire, along with Sicily and Naples, to his son Henry VI., infamous for the cruel way in which he carried on the war against the Pope and the Italians. His son, at his father s death, was an infant. Barbarossa supported an Antipope. During the minority of Frederic II. (the son of Henry VI.), the Popes supported Anti-emperors.
Frederic II. was even more bitterly excommunicated than Henry IV. His reign was one long war against the Popes. His son, the last of the HohenstaufFens, was beheaded on the public scaffold at Rome. Sicily became a bone of contention to the Houses of Arragon and Anjou.
Then there was anarchy. The imperial crown was anyone’s— the Duke of Cornwall’s, the King of Denmark’s, the King of Norway’s. It went a-begging.
z 2340
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In 1273 Eodolf of Hapsburgh, the founder of the Austrian house, became both Archduke of Austria, and Emperor; and after Eodolf s death the Imperial crown continued German, being worn by Adolf of Nassau and Albert of Austria.
The independence of Germany hung upon the next election. France was all-powerful. Charles of Valois was the French candidate. The best of the emperors, Henry of Luxemburg, was elected in opposition to him. He claimed the crown at the hands of the Pope. On crossing the Alps he allied himself to neither of the factions; but he chastised the opposition of some of the Lombard cities, and restored both Guelph and Ghibelline exiles.
Dies Even the Pope was accused of being a Ghibelline. a.d. 1313.	the candidature of Charles of Valois ends the
intervention of the Non-german powers; a fortiori, that of France.
Sigismund was Emperor when the great Council of Constance washeld, the Council which condemned Huss and Jerome of Prague to the flames. The Council did this; not the Pope. There was no Pope then. There were only three Anti-popes; upon the claims of whom the Council sat in judgment; the Council over which the Emperor presided, and for which he issued safe-conducts, which, on more occasions than one, he foully violated. And here we may remark that among the great powers of Germany the Bishops were the first; especially those of Saxony, Franconia, and, above all, the three great ecclesiastics of the Ehine, the noble, and often military holders of the great Sees of Treves, Cologne, and Mentz. More than this. There were, except in Bohemia, no kings. The Emperor was merely a Duke or some other influential dynast invested with Imperial power. Even Austria had no king. Nor has she now. The King is the King of Bohemia; the Emperor the regal Archduke of Austria. More, however, about the importance of Bohemia will appear in its proper place.
Frederic III. was the last emperor crowned at Eome.
Then came the connection between Austria and Spain; Spain at the height of her power; Spain the chief ruler of the New World; Spain the heir to the great Burgundian possessions in the Netherlands ; Spain with its claims, through the house of Arragon, on Naples.
Then, too, came the Thirty Years’ Wan This did more to divideME EMPIRE.
341
Germany against itself than any previous event. The north was Protestant, the south Roman Catholic. The great Protestant hero, however, was no German, hut a Swede—Gustavus Adolphus. Sweden has now taken hold of a great part of Pomerania.
The power of Austria has become so formidable that France, Roman Catholic as she is, supports the Protestant cause against her; and, as the Germans themselves are divided, the alliances formed with or against Austria, give us German unity at its minimum. At the Treaty of Westphalia several ecclesiastic States were secularized. WTiat this was will soon he seen.
And now comes the evolution of a German Kingdom as opposed to the one and indivisible Empire on the one side, and to the innumerable Dukedoms, Landgraviates, and Markgraviates, on the other. The Elector of Brandenburg becomes King of Prussia. The dichotomy between North and South, Protestant and Roman Catholic, Prussia and Austria, becomes decided.	Again—
German Electors become kings elsewhere, e. g. the Elector of Saxony becomes King of Poland. The Empire ramifies and becomes complex. The parts approach the magnitude of the whole. Sweden and Poland have Imperial connections : Russia forms German alliances.
Ever since the time of Sigismund, the King of Bohemia (one and the same with the Archduke of Austria) has always been Emperor; the succession being ensured to the House of Austria. Only once was this succession broken ; and that by the Elector of Bavaria, who, during the reign of Maria Theresa, was elected Emperor. The real representation of Germany, however, lay between Austria and Prussia; Prussia as it was under Frederic the Great.
After the Thirty Years War the Seven Years War gives us the maximum of intestine division within the circle of the Empire. Frederic the Great, at the beginning of his reign, had, without provocation, and without even the shadow of a shade of a legitimate claim, wrested Silesia from Austria, then under the rule of a queen. The wars which arose out of this were as bitter and as savage as if, instead of being waged by Germans against Germans, they had been campaigns on the Rhine against France, or against the Ottomans on the Danube. Yet, simply because they were fought by Germans on each side, they can scarcely be called civil wars. They were wars for territorial aggrandisement.342
THE EMPIRE.
They were wars of one king and kingdom against another. They were civil so far as each kingdom belonged to the Empire; civil so far as each belonged to Germany. But they were wars like those between England and Scotland before The Union. We must realize this, or the generality of the terms, Germany and Empire, will mislead us. Taken by themselves they suggest the notion of an unity of which the violation is exceptional.
In one sense, however, they had a tendency to Germanize the Germans. The King of Prussia fought single-handed not only against Austria, but against the most powerful foreign alliances ever directed against a single man. However heterogeneous may have been the armaments of his enemy, his own soldiers were, almost all, not only Prussians but Germans. And the victories which they won, and the conquests over difficulties which they achieved, were felt to be German. The Seven Years’ War made Frederic, to a great extent, a German and a national hero. Still the war itself was a sad measure of the looseness of the bond which held the Germans together.
During the wars of the French Republic there was some fighting of even Germans against Germans. There were some Germans entangled in a French alliance. The great sign, however, of the want of unity was the neutrality of one Power during the humiliation of another. Austria and Prussia were beaten in detail. Over an united Germany, neither France nor any other country has ever triumphed; but there was no united Germany until after the Russian campaign.
Between the peace of Amiens and the outbreak of the second war the Secularization of the ecclesiastical States was effected.
Of this a general sketch will be attempted.
By the French conquest of the left bank of the Rhine, a certain amount of German territory was lost to Germany. The particular States upon which the loss fell were—(1) Wurtemburg, (2) Baden, (3) Hesse Cassel, (4) Hesse Darmstadt, (5) the Bishopric of Basil, (6) the Bishopric of Liege, (7, 8, 9) the three episcopal electorates of Cologne, Treves, and Mentz, and (10), to a greater extent than any of them, Bavaria. A few other petty princes suffered; and, along with them, all the inferior clergy, who were ejected from their benefices without, in the first instance at least, any compensation.THE SECULARIZATIONS.
343
All the losses here were purely and properly German. The lands that were attached to France were taken from Germany, whilst the potentates who were dispossessed were genuine German princes. With three others, however, this was not the case. One Austrian archduke had been ejected from Modena, another from Tuscany. The brother-in-law of the King of Prussia had lost the stadholdership of Holland. Rightly, or wrongly, the claims for compensation on the part of these three outliers were placed on a level with those of the true Germans. Had it not been for this, less than half the sequestrations would have sufficed.
The territory liable to secularization formed about one-sixth of Germany ; the territory conquered by France was far less than this. The claims, however, of the archdukes and the stadholder were too well backed to be criticized; and it ended in their getting more than half of the whole mass.
The value of the dividend was carefully appraised; and great princes haggled about the value of equivalents like petty chapmen. Austria put the loss of Tuscany at four million florins; but Prussia observed that this represented the gross revenue, and not the net. It was held that two million five hundred thousand was nearer the mark. On her own part Prussia valued the bishopric of Osnaburg at one hundred and fifty thousand florins; whilst at Paris it was valued at three hundred and sixty-nine thousand. Indeed, in almost every case, the same want of principle showed itself in the common huckstering practice of doubling the value of the loss and of halving that of the compensation. Then came questions as to the money-value of certain advantages of position. If such or such a district lay convenient, or was specially coveted, it was to be assessed at so much the more. There was much astuteness shown in these valuations.
France and Russia were mediators: France something more than this. It was to France that Prussia, to Russia that Austria looked. Austria wanted the minimum, Prussia the maximum, of change. Then there was the balance of votes in the several chambers between the Protestant and the Roman Catholic creeds. Fortunate was it for Germany that France could put out a strong hand in the mediation; fortunate, that afterwards such battles as she won were great ones. Nothing less than such blows as those struck at Austerlitz and Jena could have welded Germany in the unity of 1813.THE EMPIRE,
344
Of the bishoprics the following were the chief :—
1.	Those on the French frontier—Treves, Cologne, Mentz, the three first in value and dignity ; then Speir, Worms, Strasburg, Basil, and Constance. Of these, only such portions as lay on the right hank of the Bhine were German. The rest had gone to France. They were not always compact. Mentz, for instance, had territory in Thuringia ; others elsewhere.
2.	Brixen and Trent in the Tyrol.—These Austria claimed as her own, and demurred (though in vain) to their being placed among the indemnities.
8. Salzburg, of great value and importance.
4.	Augsburg, Freisingen, andPassau, in Bavaria.
5.	In Franconia; Würtzburg, Bamberg, and Eichstädt.
6.	In Lower Saxony ; Paderborn, Osnabrück, and Hildesheim.
To these add several minor bishoprics, abbeys, and ecclesiastical duchies.
These were to be secularized.
But there was another list : that of the mediatized estates.
Forty-nine free cities and a great number of petty jurisdictions were held immediately of the Emperor, i. e. with no intervening liege lord. The general principle was that these should belong to the State in which they lay ; in which case there was a step between them and the representative of the Empire. To subordinate them thus was to mediatize them. That this was a movement in the way of consolidation is clear : and it is also clear that it was Antiimperial or Anti-austrian.
Again, what was the State to which they appertained ?
A town or petty State might be in what was geographically called Bavaria; but so sporadic was the distribution of the minor estates, that, if Prussia or Austria had an outlying piece of territory in their neighbourhood, an Austrian or a Prussian claim might be established. In this way Prussia was brought to covet Nüremburg ; for though Nüremburg was in Bavaria, Anspach and Bayreuth, which were also in Bavaria, were Prussian. Of these sporadic dependencies Austria had the most in Suabia, Prussia in Franconia.
Hence, the elements with which the secularizing and mediatizing Powers had to deal were not merely the ecclesiastic and immediate States, but a whole mass of others ; which had to be chopped and changed in order to make the arrangements satisfactory. ThereTHE SECULARIZATIONS.
345
was greediness; there was intrigue; there was unabashed unscrupulousness in the preferment of claims; there was, in one case, armed resistance to the award. The consultation of the wishes of the States transferred was, of course, out of the question. They were treated as chattels. The only notable case of resistance was on the part of the two Mecklenburgs. They peremptorily declined to be tampered with. Neither would the King of Sweden have anything to do with the plan. The King of England had good reason for being satisfied with it. In exchange for some tolls and similar feudal dues (but for no loss of territory) he got the bishopric of Osnaburg. There was much that was had throughout the whole affair. On the other hand, if we simply look at its effect upon Germany as a whole, without inquiring whether Austria and Prussia got too much, or Bavaria too little, and without caring whether the spoliation were not carried unnecessarily far, the good was out of all proportion to the evil.
The organization of the Empire was as follows:—
The Emperor was elected by—
1.	The King of Bohemia, i.e. the Archduke of Austria, i.e. himself, a Koman Catholic and layman.
2,	3, 4. The Archbishops of Treves, Cologne, and Mentz— Boman Catholic and ecclesiastical.
5.	The Duke of Saxony—Lay; the Boman Catholic ruler of a Protestant territory.
6.	The Elector Palatine of Bavaria—Lay and Boman Catholic.
7.	The Elector of Brandenburg, i. e. the King of Prussia.— Lay and Protestant.
8.	The Elector of Hanover, i. e. the King of England—Lay and Protestant.
These eight electors composed the Electoral College.
The College of Princes contained all the dynasts of Germany, great and small; some having more than one vote, some only the fraction of one, i. e. a vote in conjunction with some one else.
The College of the Forty-nine Free Cities was the most unimportant of the three.
The Electors had seats in the College of Princes on the strength346
THE EMPIRE.
of some of their inferior qualifications, e. g. the Emperor, who elected as King of Bohemia, sat en prince as Archduke of Austria.
Eor local government—on account of the smallness of some of the States along with the irregularity of their distribution—a system something like that of the poor-law unions of England was in force. The whole of Germany was divided into nine Circles; Burgundy making a tenth, though only a nominal one. The chief dynast of the Circle was the director.
The details concerning the organization of the Empire are less important than those which relate to the distribution of territory. Yet even these can only he given generally. Austria coveted acquisitions in Suabia and Bavaria; nominally for the ex-duke of Tuscany, really for herself. Prussia coveted Pranconian territory. Each wished to extend its frontier in the south-west. Bussia favoured Baden, Wurtemberg, and the house of Oldenburg (which last had lost some tolls on the Weser) on dynastic grounds. France wished to keep Austria and Prussia separate and to have the smaller States on her frontier.
Eventually, however, the Austrian accessions came to lie in the south; the Prussian in the north. The ex-stadholder got Corvey and Fulda in Hesse; Baden and Wurtemburg, territory in their own neighbourhoods; Hesse and Nassau the same. England, for some tolls which she made over to Hamburg and Bremen, obtained Osnaburg; the Duke of Modena, the Brisgau. Upon the whole, Germany gained in compactness.
Such was the Empire in 1802; and such the secularization and mediatization of it.
In many points this settlement was only ephemeral. The great campaigns of Austerlitz and Jena followed. A Buonaparte became King of Westphalia. Then it was found that union alone was strength and the war of liberation began and ended.
The form that the Empire took at the Congress of Vienna was as follows:—
The basis of the calculations was the population. This we get by multiplying the figures of the following table by a hundred; the figures themselves giving us the number of soldiers, at one per cent., which each State contributed to the great Imperial, National, or German army.ITS PRESENT ORGANIZATION.	347
Austria ....	. 94,822	Meiningen		544
Prussia ....	. 79,234	Rudolstadt		539
Bavaria ....	. 35,600	Dessau		529
Wurtemburg .	. 13,955	Reuss (younger branch)		522
Hanover ....	. 13,054	Waldeck .		519
Saxony ....	. 12,000	Frankfort . .		479
Baden ....	. 10,000	Bremen . . .		4 5
Ducal Hesse .	. 6,195	Sonderhausen . .		451
Electoral Hesse	. 5,679	Lübeck .		407
Mecklenburg Schwerin .	. 3,580	Bernburg.		370
Holstein . .	. 3,600	Hohenzollen Sigmaringen		356
Nassau ....	. 3,028	Köthen .		325
Luxemburg	. 2,556	Hildburghausen		297
Oldenburg	. 2,178	Schaumburg .		240
Brunswick	. 2,096	Reuss (elder branch)		223
Weimar ....	. 2,010	Homburg		200
Gotha ....	. 1,857	Hohenzollen .		145
Hamburgh Coburg .... Mecklenburg Strelitz Lippe ....	. 1,298 800 . 718 . 691	Lichtenstein .		55 304,637
The votes were distributed on the principle of the College of Princes, i. e. some States had more than one, some only a part of one.
States with four votes each.
Austria, Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, Hanover, Wurtemburg.
States with three votes each.
Baden, Electoral Hesse, Holstein, Luxemburg.
States with two votes each.
Brunswick, Mecklenburg Schwerin, Nassau.
States with one vote each.
Saxe Weimar, Saxe Gotha, Saxe Coburg, Saxe Meiningen, Saxe Hildburg-hausen, Mecklenburg Strelitz, Holstein, Oldenburg, Anhalt Dessau, Anhalt Bernburg, Anhalt Kothen, Schwartz-Sondershausen, Schwartz-Rudolstadt, Hohenzollen Lichtenstein, Hohenzollen Hechingen, Waldeck, .Reuss, Lippe Schaumburg, Lippe Detmold, Lübeck, Frankfurt, Bremen, Hamburg.
Note the names Hanover, Holstein, and Luxemburg. They indicate a foreign element, and suggest complications. Until the accession of her present Majesty, the King of Hanover was the King of England. At present no such connection exists. With Holstein and Luxemburg it is different. They introduce two new influences. The Duke of Holstein and Lauenburg is the King of Denmark, and the Duke of Luxemburg is the King of Holland.
Such the existing constitution of the German Empire, which consists of a Federation (Bund) of States united, as far as348
THE EMPIRE.
agreements and constitutions go, by the organization of which a sketch has just been given.
How far does this strengthen the feeling of nationality ? How far is it a substitute for it ? How far, in short, does it give an approximation to the nationality of such countries as England, France, and Russia ? How far does it represent Germany ?
This last question is answered at once. Germany as Germany one and indivisible, is under-represented by it.
Germany, if one and indivisible, would be nearly all Austria ¡plus Prussia plus the minor States. As such, it would be numerically superior to France and England, the countries with which it may be compared in respect to its civilization, and numerically inferior to Russia alone, with which, however, its superior civilization would put it on either a level or a superiority. That in this condition it would be a formidable power is evident; and as all nations like to be formidable (or at any rate superabundantly secure), the desire for German unity on the part of Germans is only what we expect. On the other hand, the possibility of such a unity becoming aggressive is always a matter which other countries watch with jealousy. Germany, however, if really united, would have to consult no one’s wishes but her own. To France and Russia such unity would be unwelcome; to England it would be welcome or the contrary according to circumstances. What cosmopolitan impartiality would willingly see is, at the very least, unity sufficient for security : and of this (if there must be an error at all), an error in the way of excess is better than an error in the way of deficiency.
The real question, however, is what the principals, the Germans themselves, are likely to effect.
Within a moderate period, and at a moderate price, they are likely to achieve but little.
The feeling of the dynasties is not the feeling of the people. The princes may grow into patriot kings and make sacrifices; but patriotism of this kind grows slowly. They may part with power by degrees; but this is a slow process also.
To resist anything like force, these dynasties are strong. The Bund is on their side; and the two leading Powers have never been favourable to the recognition of the national voice. During the time of the Holy Alliance they were, to a great extent, notITS PRESENT ORGANIZATION.
349
only anti-liberal but anti-national. Still, they have grown less obstructive, and may continue to do so; just as the power to resist them on the side of the people may grow also.
The forces that would anticipate the natural course of things are easily seen. Pressure from without would do it. Eevolution from within would do it. How far either or both of these forces would involve too high a price for the good they might do is a matter of more or less. It depends on the miseries of the contest as measured against the benefits of the result. That the result, however, would be a bonum per se in the eyes of a German is as certain as it is certain that the price paid for it would be a heavy one. It would be more good than bad in the eyes of an impartial looker-on.
Lastly, it need only be suggested that the force which would unite all Germany is one thing; the force which would unite, on the one side, Protestant (or northern), and, on the other, Roman Catholic (or southern) Germany into two separate unities is another. Even thus divided (or thus united) Germany would be strong enough for defensive purposes.350
DENMARK.
CHAPTER XXIII.
Denmark.
Denmark is connected with the Empire by Holstein. Holstein is purely and exclusively German, in the way of language and political feeling. In the way of blood it is Saxon, Frisian, and Slavonic ; the whole of the eastern third, i. e. the parts about the Ploner Lake and Lubeck, having been originally Wagrian and Polabingian.
Denmark is also connected with the Empire through Lauenburg ; which was made over to her as an equivalent for the loss of Norway, which, in 1814, was transferred to Sweden.
Lauenburg, in respect to its Germanism, is in the same category with Holstein.
Sleswick is German on the south, Frisian on the west, Danish in the north. In Fredericstadt there is Dutch blood, the ancestors of the present occupants having been colonists from Holland.
In Iceland the blood is Norwegian, the language that of ancient Scandinavia. It has undergone a minimum amount of change.
In the Feroe Isles the language is Icelandic rather than Danish. Elsewhere the language, blood, and nationality are Danish in the limited sense of the term.
The points of most importance in the notice of Denmark are its political connection with Germany, its historical connection with Norway, and its ethnological connection with Sweden ; points upon which something will be said in the sequel. The terms Sleswick-Holstein Question, and Scandinavian Unity, suggest the nature of the problems they involve.HOLLAND
351
CHAPTER XXIV.
Holland.
Holland is nearly homogeneous. Of the Seven United Provinces that won their independence against the power of Spain, none were exactly alike in their constitution and their political history. Still, the nationality was one. Friesland was the nearest approach to an exception ; the language there being Saxon rather than Frank.
Beyond the boundaries, so far as the Dutch Proper is separable from the Platt Deutsch, parts of Oleves and East Friesland are Dutch. Again, in the Saterland, a district of the fenniest part of Hanover, a form of the Frisian is spoken.
Lastly, Limburg and Luxemburg belong to Germany; being annexes or appendages to Holland, on the strength of which the King of Holland has a vote in the Imperial Diet.
When Holland and Belgium separated, a case was made out in favour of Luxemburg being Belgian. It ended, however, in its being treated as an appanage of the Orange dynasty, and, as such, Dutch.
The basis of the Dutch nationality is chiefly historic. Their obstinate, heroic, and successful resistance to the tyranny of Spain, bound the Seven United Provinces into a Confederacy, a State, a Kingdom. A Protestant Fleming of Belgium is no Dutchman.
To Hollanders beyond Holland, there is an approximation in the Frisians of Heligoland, Hanover, and Sleswick, though an unimportant one*
Out of Europe, there are the more important settlements of the Cape and Demerara; where the language and nationality are Dutch, the political relations English.352
BELGIUM.
CHAPTER XXV.
Belgium.
Belgium is divided in language; being Flemish in Flanders; French in Hainault, Namur, and Liege; and mixed in South Brabant; North Brabant, divided by an imaginary line, being Dutch.
The literary French is the French of Paris; but the provincial dialect is an extreme form of the Picard, and is called in Hainault the Bouchi, in Liege the Walloon. Liege is the great Walloon town; Ghent, Antwerp, and Mechlin, the great Flemish towns. In Brussels, French has obtained the predominance; though not exclusively.
A line drawn from the boundary of French Flanders to that of Limburg gives a rough line of demarcation between the two languages. There is more of French to the west, than there is of Flemish to the east, of it.
About Arlon there is a dash of the German.
That Flemish is spoken in the north-western corner of France has already been stated.
Belgium is Boman Catholic, Holland Protestant. Belgium remained Spanish when Holland became independent. In these two points lies the chief natural difference between Holland and the Flemish part of Belgium.
The Walloon part of Belgium must be compared with France; with which it agrees in language and creed, while it differs from it in the character of its history.GREAT BRITAIN.
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CHAPTER XXVI.
The British Islands.—Heligoland.—Gibraltar.—Malta.—The Ionian Islands.— The Channel Islands.
Of the nationalities contained within the British Islands, and represented in the English Parliament, we must either write much or nothing. In the present work our own nationality is considered as one and indivisible, and as British if,not English.
Of the British dependencies in Europe but little more will be said. They are five in number :—(I.) Heligoland, (2.) Gibraltar, (3.) Malta, (4.) The Ionian Islands, (5.) The Channel Islands. They are dependencies not colonies. Their value (if the word may he applied to naval stations) is strategic. As such, it may be commercial as well. They are measures of our naval power ; and the abandonment of them upon any approximation to a menace would be a measure of our weakness. With the exception of the Channel Islands they have been bought at a price. And they are kept at a price. The holding of them precludes us from talking very consistently of nationalities. It has probably made us prefer the support of constitutions.
(I.) Heligoland is Frisian in language, Protestant in creed, Danish in respect to its previous political connections. Geographically it is as much German as Danish. Ethnologically it is rather more Dutch than aught else.
(2.) Gibraltar is the most exceptionable position in Europe. It is what Calais was in the time of Queen Mary, a foreign settlement in a foreign soil, ruling a portion of foreign waters. It is, of course, Spanish and Roman Catholic.
(3.) Malta is Arabic in language, Roman Catholic in creed, Italian, to a great extent, in blood, politically an ex-possession of the Knights of Malta.
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(4.) The Ionian Isles are Greek in language and political sympathies; Italian, Greek, and much besides, in blood; of the Greek Church and Roman Catholic in creed; in their previous political relations, Venetian. Tor accepting the protectorate of the Ionian Islands there were more reasons in 1815 than there are in 1862 for keeping them. Greece most earnestly desires them. This however, is no reason for giving them up. They as earnestly desire to be united with Greece. This is a reason as far as it goes; and, in the mind of the present writer, it goes far. Still, the paramount question as to the ability of Greece to keep them must not be lost sight of. The chances that she is unable to do so favours their retention; though only to a certain degree.*
(5.) The Channel Islands are, as far as the genuine islanders go, Trench in language, Protestant in creed, Norman in the view the Islanders take of themselves—Norman rather than French. Geographically they are French. Philologically they are French. Practically they are British; whilst their nationality is of the same satisfactory kind with that of Corsica. They are Norman, and, as part of Normandy, they helped to conquer England: England being theirs, rather than they England’s.
* This was written and printed before the outbreak of the Greek Revolution ,* I leave it, however, as it originally stood.SWITZERLAND.
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CHAPTER XXVII.
Switzerland.
In Switzerland we have twenty-two cantons; four languages; three denominations in respect to religious doctrine ; two varieties of government; a foreign complication; and a separate history for each canton.
This may he partially generalized. The four languages may he reduced to two heads; those derived from the Latin, and those akin to the German.
The three denominations, Calvinist, Lutheran, and Roman Catholic, may he reduced to Roman Catholic and Protestant. This will be shown by the details.
1.	Neuchâtel. This is a principality connected dynastically with Prussia. Its language is French, after the fashion of the dialects of Franche Compté.
2.	Geneva. Calvinist and French, French too, to some extent, during certain periods of its history. Aristocratic.
3.	The Valais. French in language after the manner of Savoy ; French too, during certain periods of its history. Contains German settlements.
4.	Bern. French and German. Mixed in language and religious doctrine.
5.	The Bays de Vaud. French in language ; originally a dependency of Berne.
6.	Argau. German, originally a dependency of Berne.
7.	8, 9. Schwytz, Uri, and Unterwalden. German, democratic.
10.	Tessino. Italian, Roman Catholic; originally a dependency of Uri.
11,	12, 13. Zug, Glarus, Ajpjpenzell. German, democratic, Lutheran.
14. Thurgau. German.
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15, 16, 17. Freiburg, Basil, Schaffhausen. German, Roman Catholic.
18, 19, 20. Solothurn, Zurich, Luzern. German, Roman Catholic.
21.	St. Galien. German.
22.	The Grisons. Romance in language. Connected in history with Austria.
The original cantons were thirteen:—Schwytz, Uri, Unter-walden, Zug, Glams, Appenzell, Bern, Solothurn, Zurich, Luzern, Freiburg, Basil, Schaffhausen. This was as matters stood, at the breaking-out of the French Revolution, when Neuchatel was Prussian; the Grisons, Geneva, and the Valais independent but allied.
What Switzerland more especially exhibits, is the extent to which, under certain favourable circumstances, a mere political bond can stand in the place of a natural one. No two cantons are exactly alike. Many of them are inordinately unlike. Yet languages as different as the German and the French, and creeds as different as Calvinism and Roman Catholicism exist side by side. During the disturbances of the Sonderbund period this unity was endangered without being destroyed.GERMANY.
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CHAPTER XXVIII.
Heterogeneous Elements in Germany—In Saxony—In Prussia.—Slavonians,
Lithuanians.
The general view of the political ethnology of Germany has, to a great extent, been anticipated in the rough analysis of its elements which has preceded. The extent to which what is usually called Germany and treated as a vast block of what is called Teutonism is, really, as far as blood goes, Slavonic is therein indicated. The best way for an amateur to realize this is to take a map; to mark out what is French on the west; what is Italian on the south; what is Polish or Bohemian on the east; and what is Lithuanic on the north-east. No learning is needed for this. He has only to look at the geographical names; and, starting from the parts about Paris, Warsaw, Vilna, and Florence, in their respective districts, observe how far the several topographical names extend into Germany. The result will be that, until we come to Westphalia, Nassau, Hesse Cassel, the Sauer-land, and Waldeck, the absolute absence of names other than German, and the predominance of names purely German, can scarcely be predicated. This is the case even if we treat the Saxon, Frisian, and Dutch parts of Germany as one.
If we look at the proper and typical German, whether High or Low, the area is still more circumscribed. The most western Slavonic name in the north is that of the river Bomlitz on the Lunenburg frontier near Verden. In the south we have the Weschnitz in Darmstadt. Thuringia (inland), and Mecklenburg (on the coast), are full of Slavic names. They occur in even the eastern parts of Holstein, in the parts about the Lake Plon. All that they give is, also, given by history.
Another way of getting an inkling of the details of the spread of the Germans is to remember that mark—boundary, and to358
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work out the distribution of the following series of marks. Altmark, on the Elbe, is the Oldmark, i. e. the old Germano-Slavonic boundary. Then comes, further east, the Middle Mark (Mittelmark), then the New Mark (Neumark). In Uckermark we have the two terms combined, the Slavonic Ukraine with the German Mark.
Slavonism, however, in a geographical nomenclature, is one thing; Slavonism, as shown by real history, another.
Let us follow the boundary: beginning at the Baltic. The present dynasty of Mecklenburg is Slave. The name Pomerania is Slave=0/& the sea. East Prussia is not Slave; but it is something even less German than what the term Slavonic suggests. It is Lithuanic; indeed the Lower Vistula, in the ninth century, was the Lithuanic boundary—East Prussia being, as has been said before and as will be said again, originally Lithuanic. However, for all the parts east of the Elbe the original Slavonic character is beyond doubt.
So now we may follow the line from the Hartz to the western corner of Bohemia. The south-eastern Hartz is full of Slavonic names. The ordinary line of demarcation between the Germans and the Slavonians of the tenth century was held to be the Saale; but there are numerous Slavonic names west of the Saale, especially in the parts about Merseburg. The town of Halle is doubtless German; but the Halloren, or the men of the salt-works, the men who take their name from the salt, and from whom the place is named, are, in even the ordinary works on geography, treated as Vends, i. e. Slaves. One of them whom I talked to on the matter said he was a Vend; but he added, on inquiry, that he knew of no one who spoke Slavonic. He was as unlike a pure German as he was unlike a Slavonian ; but he was very like a half-blood. Of Altenburg, another Vend locality, I can say nothing definite: and less of a district near Gailenreutli, where I have merely heard that Vends are to be found, and concerning whom I have instituted inquiries.
So much for the Non-germanic parts of Germany minus Austria—at least, in a general way.
Of the differences between the several sections of the German name even less need be said.
Hanover is, in the way of blood, Saxon rather than Frank;HANOVER AND SAXONY.
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Hanover being that part of Germany from which some, at least, of our own ancestors were derived. Hanover, too, was the scene of most of Charlemagne’s conquests.
Hanover, too, in the way of blood is largely Slavonic : indeed the occupants of the parts about Liiehow and Danneberg are treated as notable Vend districts at the present time. That the language is extinct is true. As late, however, as 1751, it was spoken, and a'paternoster, in which the only specimen of it has come down to us, is curious from the phenomena of intermixture that it exhibits. The basis is Polish ; but the German is mixed up with it. That this represents the language of the ancient Linones, and that it was from these that Lüneburg took its name, is well known,
In East Eriesland the language is, perhaps, more Dutch than German. In the fenny district named Saterland, as well as* in the islands off the coast, it is Frisian rather than Dutch. The differences, however, hereby suggested are unimportant. Speaking generally, we may say that there is nothing in Hanover which is notably Non-german.
In Saxony the case is different. Saxony was wholly Slavonic ; and in Lusatia a remnant of the aboriginal population is still preserved. The Sorbs, Serbs, or Vends, who form it are chiefly Roman Catholic in creed, and speak a language which, though akin to both the Polish and the Bohemian, is generally treated as a separate substantive tongue, being generally called the Sorb, Sorabic, or Sorabian.
The same population extends into the circle of Kotbus ; thus becoming Prussian. Indeed, it is Prussia which has now come under notice.
The Slavonic element in Prussia is considerable. It falls into three divisions ; which, when considered from a political point of view, are of very unequal importance. In the Circle of Kotbus, as has just been stated, lies a remnant of the aforesaid Slavonians of Saxony and Lusatia, as they extended northwards into the country reduced by the great Brandenburg conquests. They differ from their kinsmen of Saxony in dialect, and creed ; being Protestants rather than Roman Catholics.
Another fragment of the same Slavonian aborigines is found further north, i. e. in the Eastern parts of Pomerania. The lan-360
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guage here is still Slavonic; the speakers of it being called the Kassuben.
Kassub Pater nosier.
Oytsche nasch, ktory ies w niebie. Swietsono badsch imie twe. Prsvdscb twe krolestwo. Twa sie wola stani, iako w niebie, tako y na siemi. Chleb nasch powschedny day nam dschisja. Y odpusch nam nasche winy iako y my odpust-schamy nascbim winowaytsom; a nie wodsch nas w pokussenie; ale nas sbaw od sljego. Bo twe iesta krolestwo, twoia moa, y potschesnoseh (ehwala) as na wieki wiekow. Amen.
The second division contains the Slavonians of Silesia. In language these are Poles; but as Silesia, before it was wrested from Maria Theresa by Frederick the Great, was Austrian, the speakers of it are, by no means, in the same category with the Poles of Posen; the Poles of the Partitions. The same applies, though in a less degree, to the Slavonians of East Prussia. They are Slavonians of the Polish frontier, rather than true Poles.
The true Poles, the Poles of the Partitions, the Poles of the dismemberment of the Kingdom of Poland, the Poles of the sad Polish Captivity, the Poles of the unsubdued Polish nationality, the Poles who constitute a real heterogeneous element, the Poles whose future is still an open question, are the Poles of the Duchy of Posen. Of them it may be said, in general terms, that, of the three sections into which Poland has been split they constitute the one over which the misgovernment is the least. In some respects it even simulates good government. The feudalities connected with the tenure of the soil were better got over in Prussia than in either Russia or Austria. The Government of Prussia is more of a constitution than either the Austrian or the Russian; and in this Government the Poles of Posen are fairly and sufficiently represented. As voter or as member of Parliament a Slavonian Roman Catholic has all the rights of a Protestant German. And it is probable, that if these rights were either sufficiently extensive or sufficiently real, the extent to which the Poles of Prussia are invested with the prerogative of self-government might do much to make up for their losses on the side of nationality and independence. For this, however, at present, the Prussian constitution, as is well known, is insufficient. Good or bad, however, it puts the Pole, in respect to his personal security, on the level with the Germans of the kingdom at large, and, in respect to his religious creed, on a level with the Roman Catho-PRUSSIA.
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lies of the Rhine Provinces. We must subtract, then, from the purely national element all such elements of disaffection as may arise out of either simple political liberalism, or Ultramontane Romanism ; in either of which there are many full-blooded Germans who indulge. Of this, however, there is no doubt; viz. that with a genuine representation, and a genuine Parliament, the Polish members in Prussia have the same opportunities for commanding (within certain limits) justice, and (within certain limits) something more than the justice that an Irish member has in Great Britain. Whether this be enough to reconcile them, or whether that something which is either unattainable or distant may not counterbalance the other prerogatives, is a separate question.
Having allowed, however, for all this, we shall still find that the residue of Polish discontent in Prussian Poland which may be attributed to pure nationality is considerable. Nor is it, in any respect, a mere matter of sentiment: though, even if it were so, it would have to be taken as an historical fact and valued accordingly. The Pole, in respect to the tenure of official situations, is at a disadvantage. So far as he is a Roman Catholic he is merely in the predicament of the Germans of the Rhine Provinces. So far as he has the Polish for his mother-tongue he is merely in the position of a Welshman in England. Taken purely and simply, taken by themselves without the intermixture of any foreign elements, these, though grievances, are grievances with which minorities, all the world over, are constrained to put-up. But the case of a Pole of Posen is neither that of the German of the Rhine nor that of the Welshman. The German of the Rhine is still a German. The Welshman is a Cambro-Briton and nothing else. He is no part of a Great Welshland cut up into sections; which, if re-united, would make a powerful and independent whole. The Pole, on the other hand, belongs to Poland, and Poland belongs to him. The difference between a solitary nationality and a severed one is all-important.
It is a great practical evil for the Pole of Posen that whenever there is a movement in Russian or Austrian Poland he is supposed, (and that naturally) to sympathize with it and that he is put under a state of siege accordingly.
Again,—his language is, to say the least, discouraged. In the higher classes for the University the lectures are given in Ger-362
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man. It is no answer to this to say that the lectures in Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and the Isle of Man, are in English. Neither Wales nor Ireland, neither Scotland nor the Isle of Man is a fraction of a whole, which, if not forbidden to he united, would he a great unity.
The real gravamen in Posen is, that every effort is made to Germanize its Poles; the effect of which is, that, notwithstanding a comparative minimum of oppression and an approximation to good government, a Pole of Posen loves a German of the same, man and man, less than a Pole of Galicia loves an Austrian, and even less than a Pole of Warsaw loves a Eussian. In Eussia it is a tyranny with its outbreaks—outbreaks in which there is an outlet for the passion that the tyranny has created. In Posen it is chronic irritation, aggravating aggression, systematic undermining, with nothing heroic in the attempt and nothing exciting in the resistance. Even, when Germanized, the Poles of Posen become Prussians rather than Germans.
The Lithuanic element now remains to he noticed. It first shows itself to the east of Königsberg, on the Pregel and in the parts about Insterburg and Gumbinnen. On the south and along the northern frontier of Poland it is superseded by the Slavonic; which probably, like the German, has encroached upon it. Along the Kurische Haf, and in the parts between Tilsit and Memel, it is at its maximum; being, here, in contact with the Eussian Governments of Curland and Kovno, i. e. with Letland and Lithuania Proper.
That these Lithuanians ever called themselves Prussians, or that they are the exact representatives of the population from which Prussia took its name, has never been shown. Neither has the contrary; indeed, the precise details of the difference between a Prussian and a Lithuanian, iis nominibus, have yet to be made out. The true old Prussians, as a nation, are generally considered to be either extinct or amalgamated with the Germans. The Prussian language, eo nomine, is also extinct, though we have specimens of it which are well known to philologues and which have commanded more than ordinary attention.
As early as 1224 (or 1228), the Bishop of Modena, William of Savoy, visited Christian the Bishop of Kulm, and was so interested in the Prussians that he translated, or is said to havePRUSSIA.
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translated* into their language, the grammar of Donatus. The demand for it* however, was limited. At any rate, no copy either exists or has been seen; indeed three hundred years* or more, passed by before we find a specimen of their language. This is the short vocabulary of Simon Grunow, a monk of Tolkemir* who in 1526 gives an account of his visit to them.
I give it with hesitation, for the German is of the strangest. I take it from the text of Nesselmann, who says that it has never been printed. It would certainly exercise both the patience and ingenuity of a reader. Inter alia, Grunow has no full stops, and he always says and for which or who. However, he visited the Prussians, and this is what he did* saw, and heard. He went into a house, and found a roomful of Prussians, men and women, who were at a sort of service. A Waidlot preached to them. He was a peasant of their own land and language, and he preached in Prussian. When Grunow joined they all ran upon him with their knives; but the Waidlot checked them, till he (Grunow) who, by the grace of God, knew a little Prussian, spoke a few words in that tongue. Then they cried out Sta nossen Richie, nossen Richie = It is our Lord, and kept their hands off him. However, they made him swear an oath not to tell the bishop of what he had seen; and the name by which he swore it was Perhunos that of the old heathen deity. Then they made a seat for the Waidlot. It seems to have been a pulpit, for his head almost touched the ceiling. And then the Waidlot preached. He spoke about the beginning of things and the ten commandments, and the honest monk admits that he never heard a better discourse in all his days. The omne ignotum pro magnijico may have had something to do with this; for, although Grunow most especially says that he knew Prussian, and although our earliest specimen of the language is from his vocabulary, the internal and external evidence as to his scholarship scarcely coincide. This, however, is by the way. When the discourse was over they brought in a he-goat: pronounced a blessing over it; cut its throat; kept the blood for their sick cows and calves to drink, and roasted the flesh. Then there was a whispering in the way of confession, which ended with a good box-on-the-ear on the part of the Waidlot in the way of absolution. Then there was a feast. This364
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they called Kirwaiten, from which no man went away sober, hut, on the contrary, quite drunk.
Of the language he says that Poles did not understand it at all, the Lithuanians only a little. Of the Waidlots he tells us a little more. They were males and females, Waidler and Waidlinne. They had to keep the fire burning when offerings were made to the god. They lived purely, the men never touching a woman. They saw the gods in their sleep, and learnt from them what answers to give about sick cattle.
Where there is smoke there is fire; so that the saying, (which may or may not be true, or, if true, may he exaggerated,) attributed to Siegfrid of Feuchtwangen, the Grand Master, that he professed himself unable to enjoy his dinner unless he had hanged a couple of Poles, Pomeranians, or Prussians, leaves me under the impression, that he was, to say the least, a hard man to live under. His ordinance that “ whoever had a Prussian under him, must see that he went to church, that he confessed on Sundays, and that he never spoke Prussian,” is more definite. The date of this is 1310.
The old Prussians were rude. They were Pagan. They were brave. The story of their resistance is a bloody one. Their reduction was effected partly by the Knights of the Teutonic Order, partly by the Poles. Their blood runs freely in the veins of thousands of men and women who pass as Germans. They are, however, good Prussians. The hopelessness of a reconstitution of the Lithuania of Ringold and Yitolt has already been noticed. As a rule, the Lithuanians are Russian. The extent to which some of them are German has been the question under notice. It need only be added that a portion of the Yatshving territory was Prussian. The Old Prussians were the true Goths, the Gothones of Tacitus, whose place in the history of Scandinavia will be noticed in the sequel.
The Rhine Provinces are, to some extent, bilingual; the French, in the western parts at least, being generally understood.
Their laws are those of the Code Napoleon, their creed Roman Catholic. Of their political feeling the accurate measure is difficult to take. They are German in blood, and probably, as Germans, more Prussian than aught else. Religious disturbancesPRUSSIA.
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have arisen among them more than once, and may arise again. Of patriotic songs to the effect that the French shall never have the Rhine and the like, there are many. Still, the exact amount of French, or Anti-prussian feeling that exists among them is doubtful. Some certainly exists. How much blunders in government, religious bigotry, or intrigue, might evoke is another question. As Prussia is not only one of the Great Powers but a military one; as it has always been the policy of France to have small States along her frontier; and, as the principle of what France wants Germany has an interest in opposing has a strong presumption in its favour, their present political relations are satisfactory for want of any better. The Rhine Provinces, however, constitute an outlying and an heterogeneous element, so that it is doubtful whether they really increase Prussia’s strength. Their future depends upon how they are governed; or, rather, how much they govern themselves.
The nationality of Prussia rests on more grounds than one. She is less German than either Bavaria or Hanover; than Hanover, too, she is less Protestant. She has fewer traditions in her favour than Austria. Little can be said about either her popularity or the heroic character of her history.
On the other hand, she is a great military Power; the only one which is greater being Austria. But Austria is less German.
She is Protestant; in this respect being truly representative. No other Protestant State has half, or even a third, of her wealth, population, or soldiery.
She is the best representative also of German civilization. Her creed, along with the heterogeneous character of her population, prevents Austria from being this. The other States are too small to compete with Prussia. For a wide range of thought bulk is an essential element. In small areas literature and science become provincial; though the proportion of highly-cultivated minds to the rest may be greater in a small nation than in a large one. Their influence, however, on the world at large is in proportion to the influence of the country in which it is exerted.
Lastly, Prussia cultivates influence; and by means of the Zoll-verein, by an aggressive attitude towards smaller States (sometimes rightly, sometimes wrongly), and, by claiming a kind of hegemony, has acquired a good deal of it.366
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A Prussian, however, as a Prussian, is a somewhat indefinite entity. The history of his country is a short one. The true Prussian is the Brandenburgher; but a Brandenburgher has no prerogative over a Pomeranian, or Westphalian. The definitude of the provincial nationalities has passed away. In like manner a Dantziger in Berlin is simply a Prussian. In Dantzig, however, in Königsberg, and other towns of less importance, the municipal or political feeling is strong. As a general rule, however, with the exception of the Poles of Poland, all the subjects of the King of Prussia are satisfied to be Prussians. With the possible exceptions of the Rhine Provinces and Silesia they are more than satisfied. They absolutely identify themselves with Brandenburg.
I conclude this chapter with a notice of the parts about Stralsund.
At the beginning of the Thirty Years War it was a strategic as well as a political necessity, in the eyes of Gustavus Adolphus, to keep Stralsund out of the hands of the Imperialists; and he did it. The conditions were that the town should, ever after, belong to Sweden. After the relief the burghers interpreted the words of the treaty in a manner more favourable to their own independence, and held that they only meant perpetual amity and alliance. This was not the price at which Gustavus sold his effective help. The Grand-duke of Pomerania was old and childless. Whether subdued by the Imperialists, or relieved by the Swedes, he was a puppet. It was the Swedes who ejected the enemy from his soil; and as the price of their doing so he made over the Duchy to Sweden, in case he died without issue. He did so die; and Pomerania remained Swedish until 1815, when Sweden gave it up and took Norway, which was taken from Denmark as an equivalent. In this way did the Empire become free of Sweden, and Sweden of the Empire.AUSTRIA.
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CHAPTER XXIX.
Austria.
As stated before, if it had been our plan to take the empires of the ■world in the order of the complexity and heterogeneousness of their populations, Austria would have come immediately after Russia and Turkey.
Again, if we had taken them in the order of their magnitude, Austria would have come earlier.
But neither of these was our plan. France, England, and Prussia are great Powers; but France, conspicuous for its homogeneousness, has commanded but a few pages, Prussia fewer, England, for a different reason, fewer still.
Austria comes late on account of its complications with Italy and the Empire, each of which is, to a certain extent, a preliminary study.
Again, complex as it is, even when compared with Russia and Turkey, it may be dealt with briefly. This is because, though Austria in respect to its elements is heterogeneous, the elements themselves are comparatively simple, and require enumeration more than aught else. In Russia we have Pagans and Mahometans —men of numerous languages and a multiplicity of civilizations. In Turkey we had strange creeds, and all sorts of intermixtures. In Austria the reverse is the case. There is nothing new in the way of what is called race in a Slavonian or an Italian. There is but little new in the way of creed in a Roman Catholic or in a Christian of the orthodox Greek Church. All our elements—our factors—in Austria, with one exception, are already familiar to us. To deal with them, then, is merely to analyze or recombine.
As a Power, the position of Austria is peculiar. Austria is in nowise a representative Power in the way of creed. Turkey is not only a Mahometan, but it is a Mahometan Power. It gives a sort of Kalifat. Russia is not only a Greek Church Power but368
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the Greek Church Power. It is (materially at least) a patriarchate. Austria is simply one. Catholic Power out of several, and by no means the representative one. German Catholicism, however, she does represent.
Austria is in nowise a representative Power in the way of race. Austria is neither German as Russia is Slavonic, German as Turkey is Turk, nor German as French is (after a manner) Latin.
It is scarcely a representative in the way of political ideas. It is conservative no doubt; but it is conservative in association with Russia and Prussia. It is anti-revolutionary, but other States are this.
Is it German ? It is and it is not. It is German so far as it is the Empire and so far as the Empire is German; but it is not German in respect to the purely Austrian elements of its prerogative.
In diplomacy it is an essentially representative Power; indeed, in diplomacy, it represents many things at once. It represents Germany as the representative of the Empire. It represents anything that is Anti-french as opposed to anything that is French.
It is as essentially a German Power as the Porte is an Ottoman Power—no more. The Turks are a minority in Turkey. Germany is a minority in Austria. But Austria has Germany in the background. Hence the Austrian Government is the government of a majority when it is taken with what comes to it aliunde, but the government of a minority when it is taken by itself.
This is its primary characteristic. It is one by which it stands alone. It may be added that it is well that it does. The fact we take as we find it. We can, however, scarcely congratulate ourselves upon such facts being bona per se.
How far is Austria a self-containing Power ? In other words, how far are all the populations which may call themselves, or be called, Austrian, contained within the Austrian domain ? Are there any Austrians under any dominion but that of Austria? Is there any disruption of the nationality in this respect ? This kind of question has been put before. It has been shown that there are Russians, not of Russia; Frenchmen, not of France. Has Austria its parallels ? Yes and no.AUSTRIA.
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It is a difficult matter to say what is meant by an Austrian. The Austrian languages are German, Magyar, Slavonic, and what not; the creed is simply Roman Catholic. Hence, any Austrian nationality (if such a thing he) which is other than Austrian simply because it is not contained within the limits of Austria must he purely historic. Is there such a thing ?
There is an approach to it; but only an approach. There is as much, howrever, as the peculiar condition of Germany allows. Loosely connected with each other, the several States of which the Empire is composed suffer less from a change of political relations than those of any other country. To a population on the Danube it is a matter of vital importance whether it be Turkish, Russian, or Austrian. To a population on the Oder, though it may matter much whether it be German or Russian, it matters comparatively little whether it he Austrian or Bavarian, Prussian or Hanoverian. In any case it is German. That, even thus, there are some preferences and some repugnances is true; but they are of a mild and faint kind. There is a sort of family compact; and, within the pale of it, all the choppings and changes in the way of German politics are effected. Hence, anything like intensity of feeling is out of the question; and all forms of disaffection are moderate. To say, then, that certain parts of Bavaria or Prussia are more or less Austrian, means little. Nevertheless, there is something to be said. As a general rule, the Tyrolese are Austrian in their predilections. A part, however, of the Tyrol was made over by the Congress of Vienna to Bavaria.
Again, until the accession of Maria Theresa, Silesia was Austrian. When Frederic the Great became King of Prussia, he made-up his mind to seize it for himself. Without a declaration of war, he commenced hostilities. The fraction of the Austrian army that lay in Silesia was insufficient and unprepared. The resistance of some of the smaller garrisons was all that took place. The larger towns either opened their gates or were reduced off-hand.
In less than three months Silesia was occupied by a Prussian army; and, unless it could he recovered, it was wholly Prussian. In the spring, however, a large Austrian force advanced to the relief of the few fortresses that held-out. At Mollwitz they were defeated. The distress of Austria inflamed the cupidity of Ba-
VOL. II.	B B370
AUSTRIA.
varia, Saxony, and France. Austria was in danger of being partitioned. The Elector of Bavaria was elected Emperor. The Archduchess of Austria was threatened in Vienna. It was only as Queen of Hungary that she could hope to resist her enemies. More Austrian than the Austrians, more Imperial than the Germans, the Hungarians obeyed their own generous instincts, and in Latin, of which the sex of their sovereign made the grammar equivocal, they swore that they would die in her defence —moriamur pro rege nostra, Maria Theresa. The bulk of the Empire was saved, but Silesia remained Prussian; and Prussian it still continues to be.
What the Anti-prussian feeling of Silesia may be at the present time is doubtful; and, even if we could measure it, it would be difficult to say how much of it was Slavonic, how much Roman Catholic, how much purely and properly Austrian. Yet the seizure of Silesia is important in our view of Austrian nationality. In general, the Great Powers have been gainers in their struggle for dominion, rather than losers. In respect, however, to Silesia, Austria has lost; and she has lost to a German rival.
If there be any Austrian feeling beyond the limits of Austria, it is in Bavaria and in Prussia. This is as much as can be said.
The Anti-austrian feeling in the German parts of Austria is nil. This, too, is saying but little ; for the only purely German parts of Austria are the Vorarlberg, the Tyrol, Salzburg, Upper Austria, and Lower Austria. If the whole State were in the same predicament, Austria would stand alone in its compact homogeneousness.
Such, however, is far from being the case, as the following analysis may show:—
1. The primary Non-german element in Austria is the Slavonic. Of this there are six well-marked varieties.
{a.) That of which the Tsheks or Proper Bohemians are the type.
(b.) That of which the Poles are the type.
(c.) That of which the Little Russians are the type.
(d.) That of which the Carinthians are the type.
(e.) That of which the Croatians are the type.
(/.) That of which the Servians are the type.AUSTRIA.	371
2.	The Rumanyo of the Wallaehian and Moldavian frontiers, i. e. Transylvania and Bukhovinia.
3.	The Magyar of Hungary.
4.	The Italian of Yenetia and parts of the Tyrol.
Each of these is not only a definite Non-german element, but it is an important one. Those which follow are noted as ethnological curiosities rather than as political forces.
5.	There are a few families in the Tyrol speaking the Ladino, i. e. a language, or dialect, belonging to the same division of the derivatives from the Latin as the Romance of the Grisons.
6.	There are in Venice certain sporadic Armenians.
7.	8, 9. There are in the Banat, Armenians, Greeks and Bulgarians.
10, 11. There are a few Albanians, and sporadic Wallacliians.
Let us go over the list again, for the sake of noting certain divisions and sub-divisions.
The Tsheks of Bohemia are pretty homogeneous. In Moravia, however, there is a change. The term Tshek is no longer recognized as the name of the language, which is called Moravian; though the language itself is the same in the two countries. In Upper Hungary, and along the foot of the Carpathians, another change sets-in, and the term for the Slavonians of these parts is Slovak. The language of the Slovak church-service is the Tshek, Bohemian, or Moravian. The spoken language, however, is called Slovak, rather than either Tshek or Moravian. The difference, however, between the two forms would scarcely appear to constitute a separate language, if it were not for the Slovaks being occupants of Hungary. A Slovak, indeed, is little more than a Moravian beyond the borders of Moravia.
Austrian Silesia and the western part of Galicia are the occupancies of the Austrian Poles.
It is important, however, to remember that, though Galicia was taken from Poland at the first partition, and though Cracow, which, in respect to its geography, is Galician, is pre-eminently Polish, it is only western Galicia which is Polish in blood and language. Eastern Galicia is Ruthenian, Rusniak, or Little Russian ; a fact which the Poles seem to overlook, though the Russians do not.
With the Rusniaks of Galicia ends the list of the Slavonians
b b 2372
AUSTRIA.
of the northern division, i. e. the division which lies north of Austria Proper and Hungary.
On the south we have a parallel series, beginning in Styria, and ending on the Turkish frontier.
In Styria, Carinthia, Carniola,Istria and Dalmatia, the Slavonians speak what is called Illyrian. The same applies to Istria and to Dalmatia; in which, however, the language of commerce and literature is Italian. In Gorizia, where Istria joins Yenetia, the Slavono-Italian districts, as opposed to the purely Italian area, begin. In Styria, Carinthia, and Carniola the Non-slavonic element is German. In Carniola it is Italian also.
In Croatia the political relations are with Hungary rather than Germany and Italy; whilst the language and civilization approach the Servian type. Still, the phenomena of transition are obscure and equivocal. Croatia, however, gives us a separate substantive section of the Austrian populations. The descendants of the Uskoks of the parts about Zengg (Segni) represent a mixture of Croatians, Avars, and other refugees; and as Uskok means a refugee or outlaiv, there may be Uskoks in more districts than one. We have seen that there are some on the Montenegro frontier. In Slavonia, Syrmia, and the Banat, the Slaves are all but actual Servians.
Of the Rumanyo, Magyar, and Italian elements, separate notices will be given.GERMAN PORTION OF AUSTRIA.
373
CHAPTER XXX.
German portion of Austria.—Its Slavonic, Avar, Gepid, and other Elements.
Reasons for believing that the Slavonians of Carinthia, Carniola, and Styria are in situ, i. e. that they are the original occupants of their present localities, rather than comparatively recent settlers, have already been given.
The arguments in favour of their having extended as far west as the frontier of Switzerland (nay, even to the Rhone) are to be found partly in the presumptions of the case, partly in the local names of Saltzburg, the Tyrol, the Vorarlberg, and Savoy. The full evidence upon this point the author hopes to give in a special monograph. Upon this Slavonism, as a basis, was engrafted the Italian of the conquerors of Rhsetia, Noricum, and Pannonia. Then came the spread of the Bavarian Germans.
Upper and Lower Austria demand notice from the fact of their being, like Bavaria, more or less Turk, Scythian, or Turanian. Lower Austria was the great Avar district. This is a fact which has commanded the attention of the anatomical as well as that of the historical ethnologist. In one of Dr. Beddoes valuable contributions to Minute Ethnography* he writes thus :—
The population of Lower Austria, or at all events of its eastern part, is a peculiar one. There are some circumstances in its history which would lead one to think it possible that traces of the Avar blood might be present here. Up to the year 736 the Avars, having entered into possession of the lands vacated by the emigration of the Lombards, retained the whole country east of the Enns. In that year the Bavarians drove them from the Enns, and beyond the hilly region of the Kahlenberg, a little to the west of Vienna. Here the boundary long remained; and here was drawn the outermost of the nine fortified rings, pierced and destroyed by Charlemagne. In the beginning of the ninth century the subjugated Avars, harassed by their former subjects, the Slovaks, sought and
* On the Physical Character of the Natives of some Parts of Italy, and the Austrian Dominions.—Transactions of the Ethnological Society. New Series, vol i. p. 117.374
GERMAN PORTION OP AUSTRIA.
obtained permission to settle in the march of Austria ...... Thes
Avar settlers were perhaps incorporated by the next wave of eastern conqueror the Modyars; at all events, it was not until the year 1050 that the counti between the Kahlenberg and the Leitha was finally detached from Hungar It was in the eastern part of Lower Austria that those two remarkable crania wei discovered, which are by some supposed to have been the skulls of Avars, and < which, under that name, Dr. Fitzenger of Vienna has published an accourn illustrated with drawings.
Now, the present inhabitants of this district, whatever else they may be, ai certainly not Germans; at least if we allow them to be so, we must wholly db regard the evidence furnished by their physical character. Their skulls appeare to me for the most part rather short antero-posteriorly ; and in some there wa an evideut approach to the pyramidal form. The face and cheekbones wer rather broad, and the eyes small and deep-set. The complexion was often dart the hair generally so; and the number of light scarcely exceeded that of dar eyes. Eyes of neutral tint were very common, as was the combination of dar grey eyes with dark hair, which I have mentioned as so remarkably frequent i Hungary. The natives of Vienna itself are more often fair, and Germa: features are more common there.
These skulls have since commanded the notice of Yon Baer, and are now, I believe, under that of Professor Rollestone. They ar artificially compressed, like many in America and a few in the Oh World, e. g. some taken from tumuli in the Crimea.
With the Avars were associated the Lombards* and th< Gepidm.
Of the nations whose movements are connected with the de cline and fall of the Roman Empire, though several are mor< important than the Gepidae, few are of a greater interest. Thi: is because the question of their ethnological relations is mor( obscure than that of any other similar population of equa historical prominence. How far they were Goths rather thar Yandals, or Vandals rather than Goths, how far they were neithei one nor the other, has scarcely been investigated. Neither has their origin been determined. Nor have the details of their movements been ascertained. That the current account, as it stands in the pages of Jornandes and Paulus Diaconus, is anything but unexceptionable, has been shown elsewhere. It is this account, however, which has been adopted by the majority oi inquirers.
If we turn to Strabo’s account of the parts on the north-eastern side of the Adriatic, the occupancies of the numerous tribes of the Roman province of Illyricum, we shall find thatno slight prominence is given to the population called ’la7ro$e$. They join the Carni.THE GEPIDiE.
375
The Culpa flows through their land. They stretch along the coast to the river Tedanius. Senia is their chief town. The Moentini, the Avendeatae, the Auripini, are their chief tribes. Yendos is one of their occupancies. Such are the notices of Strabo, Ptolemy, Appian, and Pliny; Pliny’s form of the word being Japydes.
The Iapodes, then, or Japydes, of the authors in question, are neither an obscure nor an inconsiderable nation. They extend along the sea-coast of the Adriatic. They occupy the valley of the Culpa. They are Illyrian, hut conterminous with Pannonia.
As Pliny seems to have taken his name from Strabo, the authors just quoted may all be called Greek. With the latest of them we lose the forms ’lawofog or Japydes.
As the Roman Empire declines and its writers become less and less classical, their geographical records become less systematic and more fragmentary; and it is not till we get to the times of Probus and Maximian that we find any name approaching Prohus, however, plants a colony of Gepida within the Empire. The Tervings also fight against the Vandals and Gipedes. Sidonius makes the fierce Gepida (Gepida trux) a portion of the army of Attila. Finally, we have the Gepidae, the Lombards, and the Avars, as the three most prominent populations of the sixth century.
The Gepid locality in the fifth century is the parts about Sirmium and Singidunum (Szabacz and Belgrad) within the limits of Pannonia, and beyond those of Illyricum, i, e. a little to the north of the occupancy of the Iapodes and Japydes of Strabo and Pliny.
There is, then, a little difference in name between Japydes and Gepidae, and a little difference in locality between the Gepids and Iapodes. I ask, however, whether this is sufficient to raise any doubt as to the identity of the two words ? Whether the populations they denoted were the same is another matter. I only submit that, word for word, Japydes and Gepida are one. Yet they have never been considered so. On the contrary, the obscure history of the Japydes is generally made to end with Ptolemy; the more brilliant one of the Gepidae to begin with Vopiscus.
There is a reason for this, a reason for the agreement under notice having been ignored, a reason which lies in the great change which had taken place in the political relations of the376
GERMAN TORTION OF AUSTRIA.
populations, not only of Illyricum and Pannonia, but of all parts of the Eoman Empire. The Jajpydes are merely details in the conquest of Illyricum and Dalmatia; the Gepid history, on the contrary, is connected with that of two populations eminently foreign and intrusive on the soil of Pannonia; the Avars and the Lombards. How easy, then, to make the Gepidse foreign and intrusive also! Earely mentioned, except in connection with the exotic Goth, the exotic Vandal, the exotic Avar, and the still more exotic Lombard, the Gepid becomes, in the eyes of the historian, exotic also.
This error dates from the reign of Justinian; and occurs in the writings of such seeming authorities as Procopius and Jornandes. Procopius writes, that “ the Gothic nations are many, the greatest being the Goths, Vandals, Visigoths, and Gepaides. They were originally called the Sauromatse and Melanchheni. Some called them the Getic nations. They differ in name, but in nothing else. They are all white-skinned and yellow-haired, tall and good-looking, of the same creed, for they are all Arians. Their language is one, called Gothic.” This, though clear, is far from unexceptionable. Their common language may have been no older than their common Arianism.
Jornandes writes: —
Quomodo vero Getse Gepidseque sint parentes si quseris, paucis absolvam. Meminisse debes, me initio de Scanziae insulas gremio Gothos dixisse egressos cum Berich suo rege, tribus tantum navibus vectos ad citerioris Oceani ripam ; quarum trium una navis, ut assolet, tardius vecta, nomen genti fertur dedisse ; nam lingua eorum pigra Gepanta dicitur. Hinc factum est, ut paullatim et corrupte nomen eis ex convitio nasceretur. Gepidae namque sine dubio ex Gothorum prosapia ducunt originem : sed quia, ut dixi, Gepanta pigrum aliquid tardumque signat, pro gratuito convitio Gepidarum nomen exortum est, quod nec ipsum, credo, falsissimum. Sunt enim tardioris ingenii, graviores corporum velocitate. Hi ergo Gepidae tacti invidia, dudum spreta provincia, commane-bant in insula Yisclae amnis vadis cireumacta, quam pro patrio sermone dicebant Gepidojos. Nunc earn, ut fertur, insulam gens Yividaria incolit, ipsis ad meliores terras meantibus. Qui Yividarii ex diversis nationibus acsi in unum asylum collect! sunt, et gentem fecisse noscuntur.
I submit that this account is anything but historical. I suggest that the statements of Procopius and Jornandes being ignored, the common-sense interpretation of the geographical and etymological relations of the Iapodes and Gejddm, word for word, and place for place, be allowed to take its course; the Gepidse being looked upon as Illyrians, whatever may be the import of thatGERMAN PORTION OF AUSTRIA.	377
word; occupants, at least, of the country of the Iapodes, and probably their descendants.
Add to these the Goths, and we get an approximation to the complex analysis for the parts about Vienna.
Politically Austria is the Archdukedom of the Hapshurgs, a family originally Swiss. When Charles VI. died without male issue, his daughter Maria Theresa married the Duke of Lorraine. Hence her son, Joseph II., was of the House of Hapshurg-Lorraine. That the Empire for the last three hundred years has generally gone with the dukedom of Austria, and the kingdoms of Hungary and Bohemia, has already been stated. It is the Dukedom and Bohemia (Slavonic as it is) which connect it with the Empire.
As far as Imperial means German, Imperial Austria is the least part of itself.378
BOHEMIA.
CHAPTEK XXXI.
Bohemia and Moravia.
The exact details of Bohemia under Samo, of whom a short notice has already been taken, are pre-eminently obscure. It was Slavonic. It was Koman; i. e. it took its Christianity from Eome, and had never any connections with Constantinople. But it was never a Eoman Province. Hence, its early political relations were with Germany. Otho I. took tribute of it. When developed into a kingdom it became the seat of a Germanizing dynasty; and the King of Bohemia was the first regal Elector to the Empire. It was a concurrent kingdom with Poland; and, unfortunately, a rival and a hostile one. It was concurrent, also, with Hungary; though less of a rival, and less of an enemy.
The early history of Moravia is somewhat different. It was less in contact with Germany; more purely Slavonic; somewhat more under Greek influences; much more connected in the way of politics with Croatia, Servia, and Kussia. Under Sviatopulk in the ninth century it was a powerful kingdom. Eventually, however, its political relations coincided with its ethnological; and its history is, in the main, that of Bohemia. The archdukes of Austria became kings of Bohemia by their marriages.
The great epoch in the history of Imperial Bohemia, i. e. of Bohemia as connected with the Empire, is that of the great religious war under the Hussite leaders; a war of which some of the influences were English.
Let us suppose the earliest of Wycliffe s treatises to have been written when he was in his thirtieth year. The author, if he were the Wycliffe, of the Last Age of the Church had written earlier. But the year 1352 is a convenient epoch. He was then on his way to preferment; and it was not a difficult one. Places of authority in the University of Oxford were preparing to accumulate on him.RELIGIOUS WARS.—THE HUSSITE WARS.
379
The sister of the King of Bohemia had married Richard II.; and this seems to have been the event which took Bohemian scholars to Oxford and English scholars to Prague. The Queen favoured the bold preacher. She read the Gospels in three languages; the Latin, the Bohemian, and the Teutonic. Milman considers that Teutonic means English, which I doubt. At any rate she had the Gospels in two vulgar tongues. One of Wycliffe s hearers was Eaulfisch. He returned to Bohemia with books of Wycliffe’s, which he showed to Huss. The Archbishop of Prague had them burnt; but Huss had first read them. He saw much to approve, something to doubt. The account, however, as I find it, makes them new to him. However, he had been preaching on his own lights for some time. In this lies the plea for his originality, or rather the independence of his evidence against the Papacy. In the war which followed his death the evidence of English influence is conclusive. The fact of a Peter Payne being a leader and an authority in it is sufficient for this. Upon the main point, however, the conclusion from the state of the times is that hoth Wycliffe and Huss must be looked upon as the exponents of a general feeling; though Wycliffe, the earlier reformer, acted as a strong though secondary influence upon Huss.
With the clear consciousness of doing an impolitic piece of writership in sewing a purple patch on an homelier fabric, I introduce my short notice of the great Hussite war with the following extract from the author so often either directly or indirectly quoted elsewhere, the historian of Latin Christianity.
The Hussite war had already almost filled the whole period of A D# 1418-1431. more than thirteen years, from the close of the Council of Constance to the opening of the Council of Basle. It lasted during all the Pontificate of Martin Y., who contemplated it far aloof, if with horror and dismay, it is to be hoped not without some commiseration, though he might think it his duty to stimulate it and keep it alive with all his authority. Safe in Rome, he heard but from a distance the thundering roll of Ziska’s chariots, the shrieks of cities stormed, the wail of armies mowed down by the scythe. The war was still raging on at the accession of Eugenius, and at the meeting of the Council of Basle. They were years of terrible and fatal glory in the history of Bohemia, of achievements marvellous as to valour, military skill, patriotism, and the passion for civil and religious freedom ; to the Empire, to the Teutonic nation, beyond all precedent disastrous and ignominious. Had Bohemia possessed a race of native Sovereigns; were it not in the nature of profound religious fanaticism to awaken differences irreconcilable under the most favourable circumstances; could Bohemia have consolidated her own strength within herself, and hot carried fire and sword into the Empire, she might have been the first nation which threw off the yoke of the380
BOHEMIA.
Pope and of the hierarchy, the centre of Sclavonian independence. But that Sclavonian Reformation might perhaps have retarded, from the hostility of the two races, embittered by the long contest, the later more successful, more irrevocable Teutonic emancipation.
Of all wars none was so horribly, remorse!y, ostentatiously cruel as this—a war of races, of languages, and of religion. It was a strife of revenge, of reprisal, of extermination, considered to be the holiest of duties. On one side no faith was to be kept, no mercy shown to heretics : to cut off the spreading plague by any means was paramount to all principles of law or Gospel. On the other, vengeance was to be wreaked on the enemy of God’s people, and therefore the enemies of God ; to root out idolatry was the mission of the Bohemians; mortal sin was to be cut off with the righteous sword ; and the whole priesthood, all monks, friars, nuns, were so utterly depraved, according to their sweeping condemnation, that it was only to fulfil the Divine commandment to extirpate the irreclaimable Order. These terrible theories were relentlessly carried into more terrible, practice.
* * * * # * *
Some of the preachers proclaimed the approaching end of the world. Christ was already coming, already come. The enemies of truth were to be exterminated ; the good alone preserved, and put in the five faithful cities. Bohemia boasted, beyond all kingdoms of Europe, of her magnificent religious buildings, not in her cities alone, but in her villages. Fanaticism, maddened by persecution and by its own blind fury, warred on all that was splendid. The skyaspiring churches, of vast length and width, on their pillars and arching vaults of stone, the stately altars, where the reliques of the saints were enshrined in gold and silver, the embroidered vestments inlaid with precious stones, the gorgeous vessels, the rich painted windows—all was demolished—all was ruin, havoc desolation.
" Had Bohemia but possessed a race of native Sovereigns”— She did not possess them. History, which simply deals in narratives and records, is rarely allowed to speculate on what would have been the case if non-existent conditions had existed, and such speculations as are indulged are, at best, hut academic exercises; at worst, reveries. No country, however, tempts us to such reveries oftener than Bohemia ; a country, above all others, iron-bound with natural ramparts, a country on the very edge of the Slavonic world. What might not have been the case had certain of her dynasties been permanent ? Samos*, for instance, or the more mysterious one of Maroboduus. Germany might have been Slavonic instead of Slavonia being German. More to be regretted, yet equally uselessly, is the chronic state of hostility which separated Bohemia from Poland; Poland which kept clear of the Empire. And for this, as for much of the sadder parts of the Hungarian history, Poland with its pride, its intolerance, its oligarchy, and its anarchy, is to blame. That Bohemia was lost to the early civilization of Slavonia is to be deplored.RELIGIOUS WARS.
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Nor would Germany have been the loser. Her limits for the development of a pure and unmixed German power within Germany itself were ample.
The Emperor Sigismund had belied his safe-conduct to Huss, who was given up to the tender mercies of the Council of Constance; he with his fellow-martyr Jerome of Prague. Their martyrdom was terribly avenged.
At the time of the Council of Constance Bohemia was more nearly the equal to Germany, both in power and civilization, than she has ever been, either before or since. In the extent to which the native language had been cultivated she was decidedly inferior. Still there was some cultivation of this. There was a Bohemian translation of the Scriptures, and Huss had written both in Tshek and Latin. Prague was the seat of a University second only to those of Paris and Oxford. It had been the special pleasure of Charles IV. to adorn it. Of learned theologians there was no lack: for it was in the boldness of their views, in the purity of their lives, and in their holy dying, rather than in mere ecclesiastical learning, that Huss and Jerome stood above their contemporaries. Nor was the war either purely what we may call Protestant, or purely religious. In burning Hanska for denying Transubstantiation and the Real Presence the reformers and their opponents agreed. Besides this, there was an antagonism on other grounds. Charles IV., the son of the blind King of Bohemia, whose real or supposed motto in German garnishes the arms of the Prince of Wales, was not only the King of Bohemia and the Emperor of Germany, but he was a Bohemian Emperor. He was accused by the Germans of sacrificing the Empire to the Kingdom. The disputes at the University of Prague between the German and the Tshek students took the form of an academic war. The Germans were defeated; and, when they retired, the Poles retired with them. The two nations never made common cause. Charles IV. was succeeded by his son Wenceslaus; who, after having been elected Emperor, was deposed. In this alone lay the elements of a war. But the fate of Huss and Jerome determined the outbreak of it. Wenceslaus died, and Sigismund—he of the violated safe-conduct—succeeded. The Bohemians refused to acknowledge him. At Breslau (for Silesia was a part of the Bohemian kingdom, and like Bohemia382
BOHEMIA.
was at that time decidedly Slavonic) an insurrection broke out. It was put down with horrible cruelty. The heretical teachers were burned. A member of the town council was dragged at a horses-tail to the scaffold. Two days afterwards a hull for the crusade against the Bohemian schismatics was issued.
March 17, At this time Bohemia had no king. Hussinetz as-
1420- pired to it, hut died. Korybert, a Lithuanian prince, was elected and deposed. The crusade had sunk the political element in the religious; and, with the common people, religion had become fanaticism, millenarianism, communism. But it was a potent and a terrible stimulus.
The captain in the first four campaigns was Ziska ; successful in every battle. At Wyschebrod he drove the Emperor, panic-stricken, from Prague, where he had achieved the idle ceremony of a coronation. At Saaz, in the second campaign, the whole German army fled like hares. Of the third campaign Moravia was the scene, and the massacre at Deutschbrod was as bloody as either of the previous ones. After this the Four Articles were accepted by the Archbishop of Prague. These were—
1.	Freedom of teaching.
2.	Communion in the two kinds.
3.	Non-interference on the part of the clergy in secular matters.
4.	The punishment of deadly sins by magistrates, and the suppression of the sale of indulgences.
From the claim for the communion of both kinds the conquerors became known as Utraquists. Ziska’s immediate followers called themselves Taborites. They were republicans, fifth-monarchy men, theocrats. After his death, which took place the next year, they called themselves The Orphans.
Success brought discord; but a better politician than Ziska, if not an equal warrior, Procopius, united the factions. A blind ex-priest, a scholar, a logician, and an orator, Procopius was, perhaps, more formidable than his predecessor. These were the days of the Cardinal Cesarini, the double Crusader, and the breaker of the treaty, which was concluded after the victory of Huniades over the Turks—the Cardinal Cesarini, with whom, more than with anyone, except his superior Pope Eugenius, the doctrine of no Faith with Infidels, was at its maximum of influence. The war,RELIGIOUS WARS.
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against such an adversary, was unextinguishable. Under Procopius it was carried far into Germany; to the walls of Leipsig, Coburg, Bayreuth, Bamberg. The Germans were to be dealt with as Moabites, or Amalekites. Yet Procopius solemnly stated that he had never slain a man with his own hand, and that the war was forced upon him; which it was.
In the fifth campaign, he won the crowning victory of Taas; where the soldiers fought like priests and the priests like soldiers. The Cardinal Cesarini, the last to fly, escaped in disguise, leaving behind him his official hat, his robes, and the Papal Bull for the crusade; trophies that were kept in the church of Taas until the time of Ferdinand.
After this the war abated, without dying-out; until, at the Council of Basil, the Four Articles were discussed. And here Procopius, the warrior-priest, was a protagonist in the discussion. The communion of the two kinds was granted. The other concessions were nominally withheld, hut practically left to settle themselves. Then came faction and another war. In the fourteenth year after the death of Wenceslaus, the Tshekswere, for the first time, defeated. Procopius fell on the field of Lepan. At the death of Sigismund, there was a contest between Albert of Austria and Casimir of Poland for the Imperial Crown. The German influence prevailed, and has done so ever since. Still, as the result of the contest, a large amount of religious freedom was obtained; and Bohemia remained Utraquist until the Thirty Years’ War.
In the interval, her relations to Austria wrere materially changed for the worse. Under Sigismund, though a small part of the Empire, Bohemia was a large part of Austria; hut Hungary became Austrian. The great Burgundian inheritance became Austrian. The connection between Austria and Spain was achieved. The Empire became almost an appanage to the Austrian Archduke. Austria, in short, became the great Power that, united with Spain, became an object of suspicion and dismay to France and Europe.
Strong enough to put down heresies, Ferdinand undertook to reduce Bohemia to orthodoxy. Under Spinola, under Wallenstein, the horrors of the Hussite war were renewed. The Prince Palatine (son-in-law of James I. of England) was made the384
BOHEMIA.
ephemeral King of Bohemia. Gustavus Adolphus died before he had emancipated Germany. Bohemia became an Austrian province. * * * * *
And now we come to our own times—the times when Nationality, as such, has become a definite doctrine, and men proclaim themselves Slavonians or Germans, not so much on the strength of any specific grievance (though these were always sufficiently numerous), as on a definite consciousness that (irrespective of the badness or the goodness of the Government to which they are subject), their existing relations are artificial and unnatural.
Nationality, as such, has taken a definite form as a political force; part and parcel of which is, in many cases, the question of language. An inkling of the bearing of this in the special case of the Slavonic tongues was suggested when Bussia was under notice. Panslavonism has, to a great extent, arisen out of it. Independent, however, of the question of speech, it might have arisen wherever there were disunited Slaves with an instinct for union. Still, in its origin, it was philological; and it began in Bohemia, or, at any rate, it was in Bohemia that it took a definite form.
To state that Slavonic civilization takes its highest form in Bohemia can scarcely be done without so many reservations and qualifications as to make it no statement at all. In political influence, Bussia is far beyond it; in political activity, Poland is equally so. In native literature, none of the Slavonic countries, as compared with Germany, Scandinavia, France, Spain, or Italy, are high; in other words, they all use a language which has been hut recently cultivated, and they all lie beyond the pale of both Boman and Greek civilization. With Boman civilization, however, as developed in Germany, Bohemia is the most in contact. To the civilization of Vienna, the Bohemians have contributed in the way that Spain or Gaul contributed to that of the Boman Empire. Of pure-blooded or half-blooded Bohemians, the Austrian universities, the Austrian bureaus, the Austrian armies have always been full; just as England has always abounded in poets, orators, warriors, politicians, and philosophers of Scotch or Irish extraction. No one can look over an Austrian army-list, an Austrian university calendar, or an Austrian list af learned societies, without inferring this from the Slavonic character of the names.BOHEMIA.
385
Still, though many of the Bohemians were Tsheks only in the way that Burke was an Irishman or Adam Smith a Scotchman, there were many who were Tshek in the way that Burns was a Lowland North Briton or Carolan an Irish Gael. And of these there were many who were struck by the position of their language in its relation to the German.
Of Austria, indeed, Bohemia was not a moiety. Of Germany in general, of which Austria itself was hut a part, it was a mere fraction. Bohemia, even if taken by itself, was but a small area. But the Bohemian language, in its affinities beyond Bohemia, was second to no language in Europe; or, changing the expression, it belonged to a class; the members of which were sufficiently alike to form a world of their own. A little study enabled a Pole to read Bohemian, and vice versa. A little more made the Illyrian, Servian, and Russian intelligible; the Russian alone being spoken by more individuals than all Germany contained.
The appreciation of all this enabled certain savans of Bohemia to promulgate numerous good reasons for no longer subordinating the cultivation of the Tshek tongue to that of the German but of developing it as a vehicle of literature—if not as Tshek, eo nomine, as Slavonic : the Poles and Russians being free to do the same. It was as if the English of England having been subordinated to French, Welsh, or some other tongue in Great Britain, the appeal to the English of America had been recognized as a reason for reviving it.
Bohemians, then, who formerly would have written in German, wrote in Tshek. At the same time they investigated the gram-matical structure, the capabilities, and the archeology of the language with more than ordinary success. They founded a philological school. All that Germany taught they obtained without an effort; just as a learned Welshman might start on the cultivation of his native Welsh with all the lights of England. The Poles, the Servians, and Illyrians worked in the same spirit. Russia, which, in the way of language, was itself invaded by the German and the French, combined politics with philology, and made capital out of the movement. This, originally literary, is now political. JPa^slavonism is the current name for it. Sla-vonism, as opposed to Germanism, is the term out of which it originated.
VOL. II.	c c386
BOHEMIA.
Concurrent with the political uneasiness of which this is the measure, was that general spirit which its enemies call revolutionary, its friends constitutional. There was much that was intolerable to a Bohemian as a Slave. There was much that was equally intolerable to him as the citizen, or subject, of a despotic Government.
The Parisian revolution of 1848 broke out. How it determined a series of similar movements throughout almost the whole of Europe is well known. Prague was like the other continental capitals. There was the Bohemian insurrection, and there was the general, Prince Windischgratz, who put it down. What the insurgents demanded as aggrieved subjects was much the same as what was demanded, under similar systems of despotic government, elsewhere, viz., guarantees for personal liberty by means of some approximation to a habeas corpus; publicity of trials; responsibility on the part of political prosecutors; a real voice in the taxation of the country; freedom of the press; liberty to hold public meetings.
What they demanded as Bohemians was a separate administration with a Diet that sat at Prague and Brunn (i. e. in Bohemia and Moravia) by turns ; the recognition of the Tshek language; the exclusive employment of Tshek officials in Tshek departments.
In the demands of the former class, though there is little that surprises an Englishman, there was much that was impossible in the eyes of an Austrian. In those of the second, there was the apparent annihilation of the unity of the Empire, of the German supremacy, or of both. From a German point of view these are, of course, first principles which are always assumed. From a Tshek point of view these are simply open questions.
The Tshek insurrection, however, of 1848 was put down.GALICIA, ETC.
387
CHAPTER XXXII.
Galicia and Cracow. — Poles and Russniaks.—Austrian Silesia.—The Bukhovinia.
The early history of Galicia is obscure. The Gothini of Tacitus have fair claims to be looked upon as the nearest representatives of the aborigines. They spoke a language which Tacitus calls Gallic. They paid tribute to the Sarmatians, the Quadi, or to both. In the eyes of their lords they were men of another stock—alienigena.
This I read thus. The Quadi and Sarmatse were Slavonians, of either the Tshek or the Polish denomination. The language that Tacitus called Gallic was not Gaulish, hut Galician. It was the same as that of the Gothones on the Baltic ; which was Lithuanic. If so, the Lithuanic area, which now reaches no further southward than Grodno, originally touched the Carpathians.
The history of Galicia is short. Under Vladimir I. the western half became a Russian dependency, named from the conqueror, Vladimeria or Lodomeria. Afterwards it was held by a series of Princes (Daniels and Danieliovitshes for the most part) until, (between Poland and Lithuania,) the Russian suzerainty fell to the ground; and both Galicia Proper (or Polish Galicia) and Lodomeria (or Russian Galicia) became, first, Polish, and, afterwards (by the first partition) what they are, at present, i. e. Austrian.
The Polish character of Galicia has been inordinately overvalued ; or rather the Russian element has been overlooked. It was from Poland that Galicia was wrested. It is the Poles who have, more especially, denounced the robbery by which they lost it. Hence, the position of Galicia has been determined by the extent to which the Poles have claimed it for Poland rather than by the extent to which the Galicians themselves have desired a restoration.
c c 2388
GALICIA, ETC.
I do not say that the two feelings may not coincide: indeed, it is certain that, in a great measure, they do so. Still, Galicia is not Polish in the way that Posen is Polish.
On the other hand, it must not he placed in the same category with Kiev, Podolia, and the Polono-Lithuanic Governments of Vilna and Grodno, &c. If it he less purely Polish than Posen or Poland itself, it is more so than any of the above-named districts. The western half, indeed, is Polish; the eastern, Russniak or Ruthene. The Germans encroach on the Poles, the Poles on the Russniaks. Meanwhile, the Russniak district constitutes one of the Russias (Red Russia), and the Muscovites hanker after it accordingly. They sympathize with the oppressed Russniak nationality, and make a grievance of the subordinate condition of their language and the imperfect toleration of their creed. The desire of the Russians to obtain Lodomeria is one thing; the desire of the Russniaks to become united with Russia is another. It is more certain, however, that they prefer Russia to Poland, than that they prefer Poland to Austria.
That the political ethnology of Galicia requires analysis is evident; evident, too, that what holds good for the one part may by no means do the same for another. The western half is as decidedly Polish as the eastern is Russian.
Still more decidedly Polish is the western half of Galicia, if we attach to it the once free town of Cracow—Cracow, which, in some senses, is even more Polish than Warsaw itself. By the Treaty of Vienna, Cracow was the only part of Poland that was left undisturbed. It was a free town, and was allowed to remain so. It represented municipal Poland. As a fragmentary municipality, it represented Poland, nominis umbra.	But in 1843 it
was annexed.
The feudal tenures, with their incomplete ownership and the semi-vested rights of the agricultural labourers, were dealt with differently by the different spoliators;—by Prussia best, by Austria worst. There was an agrarian insurrection in Galicia, and the Austrian Government, in a most unprincipled manner—though in a manner which, unhappily, is neither unprecedented nor unimitated—persuaded the ignorant semi-serf peasants that the German Kaisar was their friend, the Polish nobles their enemies. The details of this agrarian movement are political rather than national,GALICIA, ETC.
389
and social rather than political. The liberal part of Cracow was revolutionary; the oligarchic, obstructive. A little persuasion achieved the admission of an Austrian garrison. The result was an annexation, of which England and France were, as far as action went, quiet spectators. With the independence of Cracow, died the last representation of Polish autonomy.
To recapitulate—Cracow and Western Galicia are Polish; Eastern Galicia, Eussian; whilst Austria Silesia, in language at least, is Slavonic, and another little district is more exceptional still.
The Bukhovinia is Moldavian in language; but, being on the boundaries of Galicia, Moldavia, and Transylvania, it was claimed and obtained by Austria.
The Bukhovinia, then, leads, to Transylvania, or the Eumanyo part of Hungary, on the one side, and to the Danubian Principalities on the other.390
TRANSYLVANIA.
CHAPTER XXXIII.
Hungary.—Transylvania, Rumanyo and German.
Hungary, as a geographical term, means something different from what it means ethnologieally. As a political term, it means something still more different.
As a geographical term, it generally includes Transylvania; as a political one, it claims to include Croatia, Slavonia, Syrmia, and the Banat.
Ethnologieally, it excludes even the Slovak country; though the Slovak country lies within the hounds of Hungary itself.
* * * # *
The aboriginal hlood of Transylvania was (I think) either Lithuanic or something very near it. This was before the invasion of the Herodotean Skoloti or Scythians.
The Scythians (who were, by hypothesis, Turks) are expressly stated to have reached as far west as the Maros. A thousand years later, the Huns of Attila—who, also, are held to have been Turks—are in the same district.
Was the Scythian occupancy continuous ? If so, a portion of Dacia was, at the time of the Roman conquest, Scythian or Turk.
With the chance of being charged with finding Turks everywhere I shall give my reasons for answering the question just suggested in the affirmative.
The text of Herodotus places the Agathyrsi in Transylvania, there or thereabouts.
The subsequent authors speak of them as a people who painted (tattooed ?) their bodies; the usual epithet being picti*
The same epithet is applied to the Geloni; also a population of the Scythia of Herodotus.
For accurate knowledge thfc locality of the Agathyrsi wasTRANSYLVANIA.
391
too remote until, at least, the date of the Dacian wars. But the Dacian wars are, themselves, eminently imperfect in their details, and unsatisfactory in respect to the authorities for them.
There is every reason, then, for a nation in the locality of the Agathyrsi remaining obscure.
But there is no reason for supposing the obliteration of the people so called; nor yet for supposing the loss of its name, whether native or otherwise.
Hence, when we get the details of Dacia we may reasonably look out for Agathyrsi.
How far must we expect to find their name unmodified ? This depends upon the populations through which the classical writers, whether Latin or Greek, derived it. Now it is submitted, that if we find a notice of them in the fifth century a.d., and that in an account relating to Dacia and Pannonia, the medium has, probably, been different from that through which Herodotus, amongst the Greek colonies of the Black Sea, obtained his accounts. A difference of medium being probable, a difference in the form of the name is probable also.
The following passage of Priscus, to whom we owe the account of one of the embassies to Attila, writes—‘O TTfEo-guTEfog rcov 'AnaTZlgcov kou tcov hoiTroov s9vav vs^o/^svcov tyiv Trgog rov Uovtov 2,KuQi)iyv. Another form (also in Priscus) is 'Anari^oi. They are specially called Akatiri Hunni. Jornandes form is Acatziri.
Place for place, then, this gives us the Agathyrsi of Herodotus as near as can be expected; and, name for name, it does the same: the inference being that the Akatziri of Priscus are the descendants of the Agathyrsi of Herodotus. Of course, evidence of any kind to the migration, extinction, or change of name on the part of the population in question would invalidate this view. Such evidence, however, has not been produced, nor has the present writer succeeded in finding, though he has sought for, it.
Descendants, then, of the Agathyrsi, and ancestors of the Akatziri, may have formed part of the population of Dacia when Domitian and Trajan fought against Decebalus; a part which may have been large or small, weak or powerful, homogeneous with the rest of Dacia or different from it. Assuming it to have been different, it may still have supplied soldiers; even leaders.392
TRANSYLVANIA.
Decebalus himself may as easily have belonged to the Agathyrsan part of Dacia as to any other.
Now, no German, no Slavonic dialect gives us either the meaning of the name Decebalus or any name like it. It stands alone in European history. Where does it appear? In the history of the Turks. The first known king of the Turks bears the same name as the last of the Dacians. Dizabulus (Ai£a@ouXo$) was that khan of the Turks of Tartary to whom Justinian sent an embassy when the Avars invaded the Eastern empire.
This, as is freely admitted, is a small fact, if taken alone; but this should not be done. The cumulative character of the evidence in all matters of this kind should be borne in mind, and the value of small facts should be measured by the extent to which they stand alone, or are strengthened by the coincidence of others.
The suggestion that the Acatziri are Agathyrsi is not one of the present writers, but one of Zeuss.* If it be accurate (and accurate it seems to be), the blood of some of the old Dacians was Agathyrsan. That the Transylvanians are Dacian is beyond doubt. In language, they are Rumanyos; in creed, Greek; sometimes after the doctrine of the Orthodox, sometimes after that of the United, Church.
The history of Transylvania is simple. Before the Hungarian invasion it was more Yalachian than aught else. Then it became a Yoivodeship under Hungary. Then came the Ottoman conquests, by which Hungary was depressed, mutilated, and, to a great extent, reduced. When Hungary united with Austria, Transylvania was won back. It is certainly, as far as its recovery goes, an Austrian conquest.
At present it can scarcely be called Hungarian. On the other hand, it is not Yalachian. The chief towns are, in the main, German. They are occupied by the descendants of German colonists (these, as in Baltic provinces of Russia, are called Saxons), whose ancestors were settled with privileges in Hermanstadt, Carsltadt, Elizabethstadt, &c., in the twelfth century. They are a frugal, industrious population; little influenced by the ideas of the mother-country; but still Germans in their nationality; and, by no means, either Rumanyos or Magyars.
See Die Deutschen und die Nachbar stamme, v. Bulgari, p. 714.TRANSYLVANIA.
393
The Magyars claim Transylvania; but the claim that makes Transylvania Magyar makes the Magyars Austrian ; or, changing the expression, if the Magyars are free to separate from Austria, Transylvania is free to separate from the Magyars. Their connection is historic.
That the feeling on the part of the Eumanyo portion of Transylvania (with the German is out of the question) in favour of the Magyars may be as strong as that of the Magyars in favour of Transylvania is possible, probable, likely. It must be shown, however, by its own proper evidence; i. e. by the extent to which the Transylvanians act with Hungary rather than by the representations and claims of the Magyars. The data for an opinion on this point are (for an Englishman) few. An Englishman can only see that (even if he lay out of the question the German element) a Transylvanian gives more than he gets by fraternizing with his Eumanyo brothers of the Danubian Principalities, and that he would probably (unless the Magyars grow more moderate in their pretensions), gain more by remaining as he is, than by throwing-in his lot with the Magyars. The Magyar claim, good for the proper Magyar domain, is worthless beyond it.394
HUNGARY.
CHAPTER XXXIV.
Hungary.—The Magyars,—Their Origin.—The Szeklers.—The Chunsag.—The Jassag.—The War of 1849.
The typical Hungarians are the Magyars.
The most definite Magyar characteristic is the language. It is a branch of the great Ugrian stock; its nearest existing congeners being the Ostiak and the Vogul of the Ural range and the hanks of the Obi. To the south of the area occupied by these two tongues in the Russian Government of Orenburg was spoken the mother-tongue of the Magyar. At the present time it is spoken in its original locality no longer; being superseded by the Bashkir and the Russian. In Orenburg, however, and on the Middle Volga it originated.
How came it into Hungary ? The fragmentary details of the history of its real or supposed introduction are as follows.
About a.d. 830 a population known, after it had settled in Hungary (but not before), to the historians of Europe as Hungarian, is in alliance with certain Bulgarians who had crossed the Danube in the service of the Emperor Theophilus. Their business was to coerce a colony of Macedonians; who, having been transplanted into either Wallachia or Moldavia, were preparing to cut their way back again. The resistance, however, was so effective that the Bulgarians had to seek allies for themselves. These they found amongst a population (or a triad of populations) named Huns, Turks, and Ugres. A little later they invade Germany, and the Empire of Ludwig the Pious is attacked by an enemy hitherto unknown, named Ungri.
The Ungri of this period lay between the Danube and the Dnieper in the present Governments of Kherson and Bessarabia.
They were either in contact, or mixed up, with the Petshenegs, theUzes, and the Khazars; and their hostile relations are chiefly with the Bulgarians and the Russians. Their conflicts with the formerTHE MAGYARS.
395
take a definite form during the wars between Simeon and the Emperor Leo, with whom the Hungarians form an alliance. It seems, however that Leo effected a separate peace for himself only; leaving the Ungri to the tender mercies of Simeon, who invaded their
territory and drove them out of it. And this it was that
•>	ad 888
took them into their present occupancies. The great
Moravian warrior, Swiatopolk, had thrown off such allegiance as he bore to the German Empire, and was organizing what was afterwards the powerful kingdom of the Great Moravia. It was not the first time that he had rebelled when Arnulf invaded Moravia with an army collected in Pannonia, of which the Hungarians, new settlers in those parts, formed a part.
After Swiatopolk’s death, they invaded it proprio Marte. The German writers call them Ungri; Constantine Porphyrogeneta Turks. Both names, doubtless, covered much beyond the mere Magyar. There were Khazars amongst them; Petshenegs amongst them; possibly some remains of the Avars; possibly some Slavonians. A barbarous word, in which I trace the old Hun name Kuturgur, is also to be found among the eight names of the eight tribes in Constantine’s notice, viz. Kurtygermatou— the other seven being Kabari (? Kazari), Neke, Megere (? Magyar), Tarianou, Genakh, Kare, Ease. This, too, seems to be the time when the Russians spoke of their enemies on the Danube and the Carpathians as White Khazars and Black Khazars—the latter being the Magyars. Occasionally, however, the simple term Khazar, without any adjunct, meant Hungarian; since the passage from which the foregoing notice is taken, expressly says that the Khazars had a different language from the Turks, and this they taught the Turks to speak: in other words, it was the Turks of the confederation who learned Magyar, and not the Magyars who learned Turkish.
They were rapid conquerors. We hear of * them in Little Russia, in Greece, in Northern Italy, in Eastern Germany. In Germany, however, their career was checked by Henry the Fowler; and though they long remained formidable, it was only in the parts beyond Vienna that they effected a permanent conquest; in the parts on each side of the Danube; but more in the south than the north.396
HUNGARY.
What they found here in the way of blood and descent was a mixture of which the elements have already been suggested. In the parts to the north of the Danube, in Upper Hungary, or in the valleys of the Gran and Waag, the mixture was at its minimum. There were the descendants of the Quadi, and the Juthungi, the descendants of the subjects of the Ban of the regnum Vannianum; the Quadi being, probably, the ancestors of the present Slovaks, the Juthungi Lithuanians. On the other hand, as this district lay beyond the limits of the Empire, there was little in it of Roman origin.
On the south, this was far from being the case: Pannonia being essentially a Roman province. Originally it was Slavonic. How far it lost its original character during the Roman period is uncertain. During the Barbarian period it ceased to be Roman — the Barbarian period meaning the time of the Goths, the Lombards, the Gepidse, and the Avars.
Beyond the Danube as, after making its great bend, it runs from north to south, the character of the population changes again. The Proper Hungary is the country between the Danube and the Theiss—the Proper Hungary, or the country of the Huns. The Magyars are Hungarians only in the way that an Englishman is a Briton, i. e. not at all. An Englishman is a German who has settled in a country originally held by the Britons. A Magyar is an Asiatic who has settled in a district originally held by the Huns. Hungary, then, is a geographical expression. The chief population of modern Hungary is that of the Magyars now under notice ; but the Huns of Attila were something different; whilst the Huns against whom Charlemagne led his armies and the Hungarians whom he reduced were Avars.
To the east of the Theiss, the country was Dacian, rather than either Pannonian or independent, and it was Rumanyo rather than either Slavonic or Avar. With these divisions before us, it is easy to see how the blood of the Hungarians, as inferred from the occupancy of tho several portions of Hungary at the time of the Magyar invasion, may differ with a difference of locality; being most Slavonic in the Magyar parts of Upper Hungary, most Hun in the parts between the Danube and the Theiss, most Dacian or Rumanyo on the frontier of Transylvania,THE MAGYARS.
897
and in Pannonia extremely heterogeneous—Slave, Italian, Gothic, Lombard, Gepid, and Avar. Lastly, must he noticed the Magyars of the Croatian and Servian frontiers; where the blood and language are at their minimum of coincidence, the blood being sometimes Hungarian whilst the language is Servian, the language being sometimes Servian while the blood is Hungarian.
Such is the rough analysis of the population upon which the Magyar element was engrafted. What was the Magyar element itself? The remarks with which this chapter begins by no means answer this question. They merely tell us in what quarter we are to look. They merely tell us that, a little before' a.d. 900, there was a series of Magyar conquests: were they exclusively Magyar ? were they the first of the hind ?
The more I go into this obscure question, the more I think that they were neither the one nor the other; and the more I strive after the details, the more I find myself unable to propound any definite hypothesis. My present impressions, however, are as follows:—
1.	That, at a very remote period (say some centuries before the time of Herodotus, or about the date of the invasion of Europe by the Scythians of that historian), the parts between the Jaik and the Volga, the original country of both the Bulgarians and the Magyars, had begun to send forth settlers, colonists, or conquerors southwards, and that some of these had stretched as far w~est as even the frontier of Moravia by the beginning of the historical period.
2.	That then, as now, the population of these primitive districts was mixed; the basis being Fin, the superadded elements Turk and Mongol.
This means that there were Ugrian, and mixed Bulgarians on the Danube long before the appearance of the term Bulgaria. Some of these I hold to have been of the same section of the same division of the Ugrian stock as the Magyars, some of whom I think were actual settlers in what is now called Hungary long before the Magyars of the proper historical Magyar invasion. Some of these may have been associated with the Huns of Attila; some may have been earlier still. In other words, I give to Ugrian Bulgaria an early place in European history, and associate, more closely than is usual, the Bulgarians with the Magyars.398
HUNGARY.
1.	The Bulgarians and the Magyars came from the same part of Asia.
2.	When the Avars settled in Pannonia, the Bulgarians contested the country with them. This was before the Magyar conquest. Supposing the Bulgarians to have been Magyar, these wars may have introduced a Magyar element before the proper Magyar conquest.
3.	The evidence of the Arabian writer, Jakut, shows a connection between Bulgaria and Hungary in the twelfth century. He met in Aleppo certain Mahometan Bashkirs from Hungary, who, when asked how it was that they came to be true believers in the middle of a country of Infidels, answered that in the time of their forefathers seven pious men from Bulgaria had visited their land and taught them the true faith. Seven is the common number with both the Magyars and the Bulgarians.
Upon this, by itself, I lay little stress. It must he taken, however, with the other details.
The notice of The Notary (of whom more anon) is as follows. Of the Hungarian heads of tribes are—
1.	Almus, the father of Arpad.
2.	Cund, the father of Ourzan.
3.	Ound, the father of Ete, from whom were descended the Calan and Oolsoy.
4.	Tosu, the father of Lelu.
5.	Huha, from whom the Zemeru are descended.
6.	Tuhutun, the father of Horca, the father of Gyula and Zombor, from whom are descended the Moglout.
7.	Eleud, the father of Zobolsu, from whom are descended the Saac.
Upon the evidence of The Notary (real or supposed), of King Bela I., the first Christian King of Hungary, I must make a preliminary remark in order to avoid the charge of blowing hot and cold in my use of him. Sometimes I.rely on him; sometimes I ignore him. I rely on him when he speaks to a fact or opinion of his own times. I ignore him when he makes a statement concerning the history of the Magyars of the first invasion; especially when it conveys a detail concerning their movements in a part of the world and at a time for which it was impossible for him to have had accurate information. Hence, in the precedingTHE MAGYARS.
399
list, I read him as evidence to certain accounts, names, opinions, inferences, or traditions being current when he wrote. In the preceding list—
1.	Arpad is the great Magyar patriarch, real or imaginary. Real or imaginary, he is a national hero.
2.	Cundu seems to be Urcund, mentioned elsewhere as a duke from the land of the Bisseni or Petshenegs.
3.	Hete, or Heten, came (as stated elsewhere) from the land of the Bulgarians. Whether this mean the Bulgaria of the Volga or the Bulgaria of the Danube, the inference is that he represented the Ugrian rather than the Turk element of the conquest.
4.	Is Tosu, the father of Lelu, the same as Tocsun, father of Billa? If so, he is in the same category with Ete; and his followers settled about Pesth. They are called Hishmaelites, a term which probably implies that they were Mahometans. If so, the Bashkirs, of Jakut, may have belonged to this division.
5.	Concerning Huba and the Zemeru I have nothing to suggest.
6.	7. Two doctrines, as the reader may possibly have observed, tinge all my inferences concerning the early history of the Asiatic settlers in Europe.
The first is that, where we have them at a late period, we may also assume them for an earlier one. That very early invasions took place is shown in the Herodotean notice of the Scythians.
The second is that where we find Turks we may always expect either Fins, or Mongols, or both. When the Turks come from the parts about Caucasus we may expect Circassians.
Now Moglout is very like Mongol: whilst Saac is a name by which the Mongols are known, even now, by many of their neighbours. As for Eleud, it is almost, letter for letter, Eleut or Olot, the name of one of the great divisions of the Mongol Kalmuks. I submit, then, that the best explanation of these three names in conjunction is the assumption of a Mongol element in Hungary—of a Mongol element in addition to the Turk and Ugrian. If space allowed, the arguments in favour of this view might be improved. All, however, that is attempted, at present, is a sketch of the analysis of the Magyar blood, and an exhibition of the reasons which induce me to believe that it is by no means so homogeneous as the language.400
HUNGARY.
Cui bono ? may be asked. What difference does it mate in the politics of the present time whether the Magyars be old or new, pure-blooded or mixed, Asiatic or European ?	“ Be they
what they may they have a right to good government,’* says the philanthropic conservative. “ Be they what they may,** says the extreme conservative, “ they are Austrian now.” “ Be they what they may,” says the revolutionary cosmopolitan, “ they have a right to choose their own government.” Under each of these views, the only recognized elements in the question are the present attributes of the Magyars.
In all this the present writer agrees. Looking merely at the Magyar world as it is, it is our only real datum; and we have no interest in what it was.
But all the world does not take this view. There are many men of influence, both in Hungary and elsewhere, who make a great difference between their sympathies for an old nation and their sympathies for a parvenue. There are many who have sympathies for race as a pure entity as opposed to breed as a mere mixed result. There are many writers of history who believe in what they call antagonisms, and, out of Asia on the one side and Europe on the other, get a kind of dualism. There are others who believe not only in race but in a mission; and hold that, if certain races have hitherto done little, the fact of their having done but little is a reason for our believing that they have much still to do. Any one familiar with the writings of several eminent men, whom it would be invidious to name (unless, indeed, they are right, when the slur would fall on the critic), knows that this is the case. As a matter of science ethnological analysis is a great desideratum in history. As a matter of practical politics it is an undoubted fact that nationality is determined not only by certain facts in history, but by certain opinions, whether right or wrong, concerning them. In no history do these ideas, and this confusion of these ideas, tell more than in that of Hungary. How many men would have been Philellenes on the mere strength of the wrongs of so many Turkish subjects ? Would Albania, if emancipated, be half so ambitious as emancipated Greece? If she were so, what sympathy would she meet ? Yet the real stimulus to resistance, and the real claim for sympathy, of any nation, in any part of theTHE MAGYARS.
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world, at any time, is the actual wrong to which it is subject. This commands justice. All beyond is generosity. That generosity may be superadded to justice is true. But the old proverb, also, tells us that it, too often, supersedes and displaces it. All that we can do is to hate oppression in esse, to guard against it in posse. To abominate or to tolerate it according to the sayings and doings of the sufferers ancestors in the thirteenth generation is to love or hate a malum per se according to circumstances.
I now continue my remarks on the early Magyar history and my analysis of the Magyar blood. And here I must distinguish and refine.
The Magyars are not the men from whom Hungary takes its name. These were the Huns of At tila, of whom the Magyars are not the representatives. The Huns of Attila were Turks rather than Ugrians; though, at the same time, there may have been an Ugrian, and even a proper Magyar, element in Attilas army.
The Magyars are not wholly the descendants of the men who became so formidable about a.d. 900; though of these their ancestors may have formed a large part.
It is necessary to admit some Magyars as old occupants of certain districts on the Danube.
That these may have been greatly reinforced by fresh invaders from the original Magyar country is likely. At the same time, the doctrine that, about a.d. 900, a body of new invaders cat their way from the Jaik to the Theiss, through Russia and the Danubian Principalities, as a rude body of barbarous bowmen, conquering all before them, and projecting themselves (so to say) upon Hungary, is improbable: while (what is more) the evidence that they did so will not bear criticism. Still, it was from these parts that they came originally.
I say that the evidence will not bear criticism. That they did so come is expressly stated. So are certain details of their inroads. Some settled in the parts about Moscow. Others branched off for Persia. The rest settled in Europe. The authorities for all this, however, are long subsequent to the supposed events. No cotemporary writer mentions any Magyars to the east of the Dnieper. How, then, are we to account for the statements ?
VOL. II.	d d402
THE MAGYARS.
Tims:—When it became known that the near kinsmen of the Magyars of the Danube were also to he found on the Volga and the Jaik, the origin of the former from the latter was inferred : and, as far as their ultimate origin was concerned, the inference was legitimate. I hold it, however, to have been faulty in respect to the main body of the particular conquerors of the eighth century. Some of these were early settlers in Europe; while, at the same time, they were not the Huns.
Some of the Magyars, as far as blood goes, belong to parts beyond the boundaries of Hungary. One of their heroes, Zuard, married a wife, and ic the people who are now called Soba-mogera, after his death, remained in Greece, and were therefore called by the Greeks Soba, which means foolish people, because, after the death of their leader, they were unwilling to return to their own country.” The word now applies to the times of the Notary writing in the eleventh century. In speaking of the actual existence of a Magyar population in Greece, he is good evidence. The story about Zuard and the origin of their name may be true or false.
Of the actual divisions of the Magyar name the most important are—(1) The Curaanians; (2) The Jassag; (3) The Szeklers.
1. The Cumanian, or Komanian, element in the blood of the men who, as speaking the Magyar language, are legitimately treated as Magyars, curious as it is, is something more than a mere ethnological or philological curiosity. The Cumanians were, with the exception of the Ottomans, the last of the Turks who made, under a definite denomination, notable conquests in Europe. In comparing them, indeed, with their congeners, there is scarcely any need to take the Ottomans into the question. The Ottomans were Turks of Asia Minor, comparatively civilized, who crossed the Hellespont under a captain who was the recognized chief of either a well-known kingdom or of a part of one. The Cumanian conquests represent a totally different state of things. They represent the invasions from the parts to the north and the east of Caucasus, the invasions of which the original seat was Independent Tartary, and in which the lines of migration were the Russian Governments of Saratov, Caucasus, and Kherson. They represent invasions like those of the old Scythians, the Petshenegs, and others. They represent theTHE CUMANIANS.
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barbarism and nomadism of Western Asia as encroaching on the similar barbarism of Eastern Europe. Of the invaders who come under this category the Cumanians were the last. The Scythians played their fierce game some thousand years before the Christian era. The Khazars did the same between 300 and 600. The Petshinegs came later; the Uzes later still. The last of all were the Cumanians. As the Khazar name loses importance, the Petshineg name emerges into prominence. The less we hear of the Petshinegs the more we hear of the Cumanians. The twelfth, thirteenth, and fourteenth centuries give the Cumanian era. That the same population may have effected, either single-handed or in union with others, earlier conquests is likely. It, apparently, did so ; in Caucasus as well as in Europe. But of the Cumanians, eo nomine, in Europe the history is late. Nor is it favourable. After such or such nation has been described in terms which imply the maximum of ferocity, the wind-up is that there was one nation which was worse: viz. that of the Cumanians.
Such their character. Such their date. The great Cumanian locality was Volhynia. The Volhynians were the people of the Volhynia, a German name for a level country; i. e. the very word we have in the Dutch word Valuwe {Fallows) in Guelder -land at the present moment. The Slavonians called them Polovczy, a word with the same meaning; i. e. Poles, or people of the Polyane, Champagne, or Levels. Hence, a Volhynian and a Polovczy are the same. But the Volhynians and the Polovczy were neither more nor less than so many Cumanian Turks who had conquered Volhynia. What portion of it they held is uncertain. It is only certain that, at the invasion of the Mongols, Volhynia (neither Polish nor Russian, and, at most, only in part Lithuanic), was Cumanian. Of these Cumanians, under their Slavonic name of Polovczy, the early Russian chronicles have numerous notices. Some of them joined the Mongols. Upon the whole, however, they seem to have fought a triangular duel; being sometimes arrayed against the new invaders, sometimes against the Poles, Russians, Lithuanians, and Yatshvings, on whose frontiers they had encroached.
Be this as it may, at the time of the Mongol conquest thirty thousand of them left Volhynia and the Volhynian frontier to
d d %404
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settle in Hungary. There they occupied a district between the Danube and the Theiss, which, at the present time, hears the name of the Great and Little Kunszag, the Little Kunszag being the bigger of the two.
2.	The Jaszag district touches that of the Kunszag; Jaszag being an important word. It is, at one and the same time, the old name Jazyges, and a Magyar term meaning bowmen. If so, it is evidence in favour of the Jazyges, old as they are, having been either Magyars or men on the Magyar frontier. Else, how did they get the name ?
3.	The Szeklers of the Transylvanian frontier form another division. They are apparently the Siculi of more than one writer of the times anterior to the proper Magyar invasion of the ninth century.
Other sections are, on good grounds, held to he Khazar, Petshineg, Avar, and Hun, rather than Magyar in the strict sense of the term, though, at the present moment, Magyar in language.
Of the Cumanian we have a vocabulary and numerous paternosters, all intelligible to a Turk of Constantinople; the last man who spoke it being named Varro. He died in the last century.
These minutiae in the way of analysis are, by no means, unimportant. In the first place, much has been written by inquirers who undervalue the evidence of language as compared with that of physical conformation upon the anatomical differences between the Magyar and the Fin. In some cases we may admit that the likeness has been overstated. We may possibly admit that, as a general rule, the Magyar physiognomy is not strictly Fin. In many cases it is certainly peculiar. On the other hand, however, I have seen Magyars that looked almost like Laplanders. Still, as a rule, the physiognomy is peculiar. Upon the likelihood of a thousand years of residence in a southern district, and upon the effects of contact with a higher civilization (whatever value I may put upon it individually), I lay little stress here. The writers who insist most on anatomical differences are, in general, incredulous as to the effect of external circumstances in changing them. Hence, what I more especially urge is the fact of the blood and the language coinciding but imperfectly; many individuals who are Magyar in language being Turk orTHE MAGYAR LANGUAGE,
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something else in blood. Wliat we may predicate of a Magyar about Pest is not to be predicated of a Magyar from the Kunszag or Jaszag localities.
And it is this Tartar origin which the Magyars themselves more especially prefer. The Pin affinity is to many of them distasteful: the more so because the first Fin language with which the Magyar was compared was that of the Laps, by no means the noblest members of their class. Still, even by those Magyars themselves, who are sufficiently versed in philology to have an authoritative opinion, the Fin character of their language is not only admitted hut insisted on; and the only Vogul grammar is one by a Magyar—written with the view of showing the resemblance; written, too, in Magyar, and (so written) affording a curious instance of the intensity of the national feeling on the matter of language. A Yogul grammar in French, German, English, or Latin would hardly find many readers. But a Yogul grammar in Magyar must he a sealed book to almost everyone. Yet such is Hunfalvy’s grammar.
Again—Circassian elements have been shown in the language: and, as a connection with Circassia is a respectable one, much has been made of it. The affinities are real enough, so far as they go; but they prove nothing except that the most southern language of the Ugrian, may be allied to the most northern one of the Dioscurian, family. Whatever may be the Magyar blood, that the language is Fin is beyond doubt.
How it spread is a difficult question. We must remember, however, that the Turkish of the Cumanians was cut-off from the Turkish of the Ottomans and the Tartars. The spread of the Magyar, however, at the expense of the Slavonic and the Rumanyo is a mystery. I suggest that the Pope may have befriended it, as being the language of the Latin Church on a Pagan and a Greek frontier. The doctrine, however, is only a suggestion; and, having made it, I pass to the less obscure periods of the Magyar history.
When converted to Christianity, and civilized, the Magyars became powerful. Their kingdom embraced Transylvania and Croatia; threatened the Danubian Principalities, Dalmatia, and even Italy—touching the Adriatic in the parts about Fiume.
By the Ottoman conquests it was endangered and dismembered, Transylvania being held as a fief under the Sultan. When406
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Austria gained the ascendancy the whole was reconquered, the parts about Temesvar being the last to he wrested from the Porte. The union, then, became complete; though only personal and dynastic. The Archduke of Austria was King of Hungary, just as the Elector of Hanover, in the time of the Georges, was King of Great Britain.
When Charles YI. died, the last representative, in the male line, of the House of Hapsburg, died with him. So did the last true Hapsburg Emperor of Germany. His daughter was the wife of the Duke of Lorraine. Long before her father’s death she had been declared his successor. The hope of male issue had been given-up by Charles many years before his death, and the last years of his lifetime were devoted to putting the law of succession, by which the dukedom of Austria along with the kingdoms of Bohemia and Hungary could be held by a female, into as strong a form as treaties and agreements could make it. The result of this was the famous Pragmatic Sanction, by which every Sovereign in Europe was bound to maintain, in their full integrity, the rights of Maria Theresa. She was in her twenty-fourth year. She was about to become the mother of Joseph II. No one was bound to defend her rights more than Frederic the Great of Prussia. How he did it has been seen. No part of her Empire had been more mutinous than Hungary: but the strongest of her claims, the claim that even without the Pragmatic Sanction would have been valid, was that to the Hungarian crown. It was for Maria Theresa as Queen of Hungary that the famous Latin war-cry of the Magyars was raised. And it was all-effective in carrying her through her troubies. Austria has forgotten it; though Hungary, with the rest of Europe, has not.
The very difference between a Queen of Hungary and an Archduchess of Austria suggests its own story. It suggests a difference and a contrast between the habits, the law of succession, and the institutions in general of the two countries. Maria Theresa was satisfied to be Queen of Hungary.
Her son, Joseph II., was a philosopher; a legislator. He was tolerant in matters of religion; and to be this covers a multitude of faults. But he was a German and a centralizationist; and Vienna was his centre. He subordinated Hungary to Austria; the Hungarian language to the German. This was one of hisTHE MAGYAR LANGUAGE.
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great reforms; or, changing our phraseology, this was one of his arch-innovations. It is difficult to say which it was; difficult even to say what was the Hungarian language. However, Joseph’s innovation was a measure upon which much has been said and written, and one which most of the sayings and writings have condemned. Still, it is one which is not very well understood, and one upon which much exaggeration prevails. What were the relative values of the two languages in 1784—the date of the Imperial edict ? The German, however much it might be the language of a minority, if we take Austria altogether, was not the language of a minority as compared with the Magyar; indeed, if we treat Croatia, Slavonia, and Transylvania as parts of Hungary, the Magyar was the language of a minority within the kingdom of Hungary itself. Still, within Hungary it was the language of a majority as compared with the German. On the other hand, as compared with the German, it was a language without a literature: and, above all, it was a language limited to Hungary. Now, I submit that in all cases where the relative value of two languages is considered, the fact of the one being useless beyond the boundaries of the country concerning which the dispute has arisen, and of the other being current and cultivated elsewhere, is an important item in the account. The German was the language of millions beyond the limits of Austria. The Magyar was spoken by no one beyond the coniines of Hungary, and only by a minority there. On the other hand, the German language, at the end of the last century, was far from having its present high value in literature. Gothe, Herder, and Lessing had only begun to write, and Schiller was a young man. Whatever value the German might have had at Vienna, it was at a discount in Berlin; where the literary associates of Frederic were Frenchmen, and where the King himself wrote in French.
But, if the German was only beginning to be what it now is, the Magyar was in a still more undeveloped condition. A bibliographical work, published at Baab by a native Magyar, in 1803, contains a chronological list of all the hooks published in the Magyar language. Those that belong to the year of the edict (1784) amount to twenty-nine, of which the greater part consists of funeral sermons. The few that are of any importance are trans-408
THE MAGYAR LANGUAGE.
lations; one of a forgotten tragedy by Cronegk, one of Voltaire’s Zaire, and one of the Cyropsedia.
But that which most especially commands our attention is the fact that the language which the Emperors edict more especially depressed, the language at the expense of which the German was to be developed, was not the Magyar, but the Latin. “ If the old, the customary, the legal Latin language is to cease from amongst us, and the novel language of Germany is to be introduced in its stead, it is impossible to say what will come of it.” Again : “ the idiom to be destroyed is the Latin, the language of the learned, the universal tongue; the tongue which, for eight centuries, up to the present time our beloved kings have studied, have used, have made their common speech : in which from the very cradle of the kingdom, all our laws, decrees, charters, and privileges have been drawn up, and so handed down to posterity.” Gruber, the historian of the Magyar language, wrote in Latin, and he tells us that, when the obnoxious edict was read at Presburg, the hall echoed with the shout of Vivat lingua materna nostra. Though the phrase was Latin, observes the writer * whom I am following throughout this part of my subject, the feeling it expressed was Magyar. The proceedings which followed will show that this was the case.
The edict itself ordered that at the end of three years (a term which peculiar circumstances, if properly laid before the Emperor, might lengthen), throughout the whole kingdom of Hungary and its dependencies, in all courts of law, higher and lower, all causes, whether on the first hearing or in cases of appeal, should be carried on in the German language, and in no other. In German, too, was the business of public meetings to be carried on; and in German were all military matters to be transacted. Einally, no one who could not read and write German was to be admitted to the Latin schools. The extent to which the Latin rather than the Magyar was attacked may be inferred from this.
Nevertheless, it was not the Latin for which the powerful advocacy of the first opposers of the edict was exerted. Before the diet that called the Magyar its materna lingua broke up, it had resolved that all the official records of its future proceedings * Mr. Watts, in Transactions of Philological Society, 1857.THE MAGYAR LANGUAGE.
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should be drawn up in Magyar. So decided was the feeling, that it was only in compliance with a suggestion of the Croatian deputies that it was voted that an official translation should be made in Latin. This request of the Croatians must take its place amongst the leading facts of the controversy. So early had the inconvenience of a sectional language shown itself. It bore hitter fruit in 1848.
Concurrently with this resolution, a committee was formed to consider the best means of promoting the cultivation of the Magyar, and the committee recommended two measures—a national theatre and a national academy. Neither was established at the time; both at a subsequent period.
The history of the Magyar literature now becomes the personal history of those energetic patriots who availed themselves of the reaction in its favour, first and foremost of whom was Francis Kazinczy. For more than forty years he laboured at the language. I say the language rather than the literature, as his literature was a means rather than an end. It was the language which he wished to improve. The efforts of the Germans in the same direction were before his eyes, and he claimed for the Magyar the same freedom in dealing with its elementary terms and making new compounds out of them, as the Germans were indulging-in. He substituted home-made terms for terms of foreign origin. In a language upon which both the Latin and the German had so long exercised what he (as a purist) would consider a baleful influence, there was much to he done in this way; and Kazinczy was not the only reformer that was tempted by his opportunities. Some went further than he did. He was, however, upon the whole, successful in his coinage. For secretary and counsellor, he introduced titoknok and tanacsnot, from titokzz a secret; and with the words ending in -ne, the sign of the feminine gender, he dealt more boldly still. They correspond with the German forms in -inn, as freudinn—female friend; hut to a certain extent only. Baratne, from bar at zz a friend, meant, up to 1800, not so much a friend of the female gender as a friend's wife. In like manner, kiralyne, from kiraly, a king, meant a king's wife rather than a queen. Both these words either changed or enlarged their meaning under the influence of Kazinczy. There was a word for the Latin virtus wanted; and there was a410
THE MAGYAR LANGUAGE.
competition between Kazinczy and others as to who was to coin it. There was a prize of fifty florins offered for a native equivalent to spiritus ; another for one for universum. These words, though manufactured rather than grown, have kept their place better than was to be expected.
At the same time the quantity of still-born words in Magyar is very great. No wonder ; the births are numerous. In 1845 Dr. Block published a German and Hungarian lexicon. In 1847 a second edition was wanted. The whole work had to be re-cast, so great had been the additions to the language within the last two years. I take this as Mr. Watts takes it, i. e. as a measure of the rate at which innovation goes on ; though only to a certain extent. It is just possible that the first edition may have been got up over-hastily. In a work like this we find the good, the
bad,	and the indifferent ; so that the simple fact of a word being found in it is no proof of either its present currency or its future vitality. The rate, however, at which the coinage goes on shows inordinate activity of some kind.
Kazinczy, as far as the works which he published during his lifetime are concerned, was almost wholly a translator ; and for his purpose translation was the best thing he could turn his mind
to.	He translated from the French, the German, and the English ; from Marmontel, from Molière, from Go the, from Lessing, from Shakspeare, from Sterne, from Macpherson ; Macpherson, whom uncritical foreigners call Ossian. The publication of his letters was posthumous.
This, however, is an anticipation. The main facts to be noted are the edict of Joseph, the resistance to it, the cultivation of the Magyar which followed.
After Joseph’s death came a lull ; and then the times of the French Revolution and the great Napoleonic wars. There was no lull here as far as matters in general went. As far, however, as the relations of Hungary to Austria were concerned, the effects were those of a calm. The antagonism between France and Austria welded the Kingdom and the Duchy into one. Then came the Treaty of Vienna and the promises of constitutional government ; then the Holy Alliance, which belied them. Hungary was as Ireland before the Union ; but as Ireland would have been with a separate Parliament which was not assembled. The yearTHE MAGYARS.
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1825 passed over and the Hungarian Diet was not convoked. That its meetings had created difficulties in the working of the system of Vienna need scarcely he suggested.
In the subsequent Diets the feeling for loosening rather than tightening the Union grew stronger and stronger. In *44 it approached a crisis.
The history of *48 is well-nigh the same for all the capitals of Continental Europe. The news of the great outbreak in Paris, which ended in the exile of Louis Philippe, reached Vienna and Pest on the same day. In each city there was a spirit of discontent. In Vienna it was simply revolutionary. In Pest it was revolutionary and national as well. At Vienna certain reforms were demanded. In Pest self-government meant not only constitutional government but government according to the constitution of Hungary.
The revolutionary spirit, pure and simple, ran high in Vienna. In Hungary it was mixed-up with the national. It was so mixed-up in every Magyars mind, though in different degrees. With the aristocrat it was at its minimum ; the national and class feeling preponderating. With the middle class it was stronger; yet it never excluded the national feeling. In Kossuth’s famous speech at Presburg, on the third of March, both took prominence. The Viennese seized the former; and the speech was received as one which was equally good for Vienna or Presburg. The program it conveyed was equally received by the Viennese reformer, by the Magyar aristocrat, and by the Archduke Stephen himself. Before the movement to which it appealed the Kaiser and his ministers yielded. But only so long as they were too weak to resist. They were guilty of tergiversation and had faith. No wonder. Bohemia and Italy were equally insubordinate.
Then was the time for constitutionalizing Austria, and fighting-out the nationalities afterwards—or vice versa. Unfortunately the two objects.were attempted at once; and the revolutionary feeling, good in its way, was complicated by the feeling of nationality, equally good when kept separate.
Croatia was the turning point. What the Magyars claimed for themselves as a part of Austria, free to unite or separate, they denied to the Croatians; whom they treated just as the Austrians were blamed for treating the Magyars themselves. The Croatian412
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nationality was insulted, and Croatia turned against Hungary. The Servians of the Banat, Syrmia, and Croatia acted alike. Then came the fruits of the Austrian maxim divide et impera. Meanwhile, Bohemia was tranquillized and Italy won hack. This brought on the conflict between Austria and Hungary. The campaign of ’49 was, in every way, honourable to the Hungarian arms. In Hungary Proper, Georgey and Klapka fought like first-rate commanders at the head of troops of more than ordinary bravery and military aptitude. Bern, in Transylvania, more than rivalled them. But Transylvania was largely German; and the towns called for aid—Austrian if it were to be had, Russian if it were not. A. little later Russian intervention settled the war. Against Austria, however, single-handed Hungary held its own. That Austria was weakened by insurrection elsewhere is true; but it is equally true that the Hungarians fought at a disadvantage. After the most successful of their battles they asked too much. They claimed absolute independence and separation. This was more than the conservative part of the Magyars themselves desired. There was heroism: but there was also division. There were the Saxons of Transylvania, the Servians, and the Croatians, against the Magyars. There were the Rum any o Transylvanians, more Magyar than German, but scarcely Magyar. There were the aristocratic Magyars, and the revolutionary Magyars. The revolution, however, all but succeeded. There was, during the campaign, a constitution, and there was a declaration of independence. The constitution recognized by the Viceroy of Hungary, was afterwards disclaimed. The Magyars were worsted; but, before they were reduced, there was royal break of faith and there was Russian intervention.
Then followed a period of depression, followed by what we have now, and what is likely to end in a compromise if not more favourably, viz. a system of passive constitutional resistance.
In the sketch just given the Magyars are the centre. Around them we group the Slovaks, the Russniaks, the Rumanyos of Transylvania, and the Saxons of Transylvania. Of the first three we may safely say that they are not actually Magyar, though probably they are more Magyar than German.
The Saxons, on the other hand, are truly German, i. e. Austrian and Imperial.THE SLAVONIANS, CROATIANS, ETO.
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CHAPTER XXXY.
The Slavonians of Slavonia, Syrmia, and the Banat.—The Croatians and Dalmatians.
These are decidedly Anti-Magyar; though not, on that account, definitely, decidedly, and actively Austrian. Still, as against the Magyars, they are more Austrian than aught else.
At the very beginning of the revolution, before Croatia had declared itself against the Magyars, the Servians of that part of Austria which lies along the frontier of Servia (the South Servians as opposed to the North Servians, or Slovaks and Russniaks) had complained of certain grievances before the Hungarian Diet. They spoke the Servian dialect of the Slavonic language, which the Magyars discouraged; and they were Greek Catholics in creed. Their claims were ignored; and a Servian war arose out of the contempt with which they were treated. It was soon absorbed in the general conflict. Still, in its origin, it was an independent quarrel.
Far more important, however, than these Servians of the frontier, who amount to no more than three hundred and fifty thousand, are the Croatians. Of all the nations of Europe, the Kosaks not excepted, they are the most military. They are this when we take the proportion of individuals engaged in the army as actual soldiers; and they are this when we consider the ordinary mode of the life of the nation in general. Indeed, they form a March, Banat, Ukraine, or Military Frontier. As long as the Ottomans were formidable this was no more than what was actually wanted. At present it is an anachronism.
When Hungary was united to Austria, Croatia was an integral part of Hungary: Hungarian, however, without being Magyar. From both the Magyar and the Transylvanian parts of Hungary it differed in language: from Slavonia and Syrmia in creed. At the present time a portion of Croatia is Turkish; differing, in414	THE SLAVONIANS, CROATIANS, ETO.
this respect, from the Croatia of the Empire as Bosnia differs from Servia.
The connection of Croatia with Hungary has always complicated Magyar politics. One of the arguments in favour of either the Latin or the German as the official language of Hungary is the Slavonism in the way of language of the Croats. That the one can only reign paramount at the expense of the other is simply a condition of the case. That the Croatian should give way to the Magyar is what no Slavonian will or ought to admit.
That the influence of Croatia in the Hungarian Diet was wholly subordinate to that of Hungary, is a patent inference from the fact that at the Revolution of 1848 the number of Croatian deputies was increased from three to eighteen. How Croatia, under its Ban, comported itself is well known. The Croatian army declared for Austria as against Hungary. The Emperor, under extreme pressure, declared for Hungary as against Croatia. The Ban Jellachich put his own value on the Emperor’s sincerity; and continued the contest against the Magyars until the storm blew over. The exact amount of the Imperial double-dealing in this matter is uncertain. It is only certain that there was quite enough of it to justify any amount of subsequent distrust on the part of the Magyars.
That the relation between them and the Croats has improved since 1848 is what sanguine Magyars are willing to believe. They are willing to believe that, now, the Croatians think as badly of the high officials at Vienna as they think themselves; and that henceforward, rendered wiser by experience, the Slaves and the Magyars may act together. That, to some extent at least, the wish in this matter is father to the thought, is evident. On the other hand, the statements on the part of the Germans as to the Imperial sympathies and the Anti-Magyar prejudices of the Slavonic portion of Hungary, are just as untrustworthy. It is the policy of Austria to encourage Anti-Magyar demonstrations, and, when such is the case, they are easily got-up.
Of the remaining Slavonic districts belonging to Austria, little need he said. The parts about Fiume once belonged to the kingdom of Hungary, and Fiume is the town which the Magyars more especially desire as a port. During the brief period of their independence they claimed it.THE SLAVONIANS, CROATIAN^, ETC.
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The mountain range to the hack of Scgni is the Uskok occupancy; the Uskoks being a population of mixed blood, in which Avar elements are believed to predominate, which betook itself to these districts, about the time of the Magyar conquest. For a long time they were formidable as pirates.
Of Istria and Dalmatia it may he said that the language of the towns is Italian rather than Slavonic, the country being purely Slavonic. Trieste, a privileged and favoured port, is, perhaps, the most Austrian of the Non-german portions of Austria. Eagusa and Cattaro possess many of their old municipal rights.
As compared with the Herzegovna, Dalmatia is Austrian, being Christian rather than Mahometan, and Eoman Catholic rather than Greek. It is probable, too, that when we lay due stress upon the influence of the towns, where Italian elements prevail, it may be almost as Italian in respect to its political feeling as Slavonic. The further, however, we go south and east, the less this Italian feeling prevails; and, in the parts about Montenegro, the character of some of the ruder districts is Montenegrian and Servian.
What was once called Austrian Albania is now reduced to a minimum, if it exist at all. The Slaves have encroached upon Northern Albania more than the Northern Albanians have encroached upon the Slaves. That the Skipitar of the frontier are but indifferent subjects of the Porte has already been stated. They are, to a great extent, Eoman Catholic Christians, and, as such, are more Austrian than Ottoman, more independent than Austrian.
In Istria there are a few Valaehians.416
VENICE.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Venetia.
Venetia, like so many more districts of Italy, is more Italian in language than in blood; indeed in blood it is largely Slavonic. It is now, and so it was during the time of the Roman republic. The Euganei and the Veneti were always connected with the Liburnians at the head of the Adriatic rather than with the Umbrians and the Cisalpine Italians. Indeed, the foreign element extended as far as Mantua.
Gens illi triplex; populi sub gente quaterni.
That the affinities of the north-east of Italy run in the direction of Carinthia, Carniola, and Dalmatia, has already been suggested.
Of Venetia in its political sense, Venice is, comparatively speaking, one of the newest parts; being younger by some centuries than Mantua, Verona, Aquileia, and other towns of less importance. Indeed its history begins when that of Imperial Rome ends. At some uncertain portion of the sixth century, the founders of Venice betook themselves to the small islands off their coast for refuge from the miseries which were inflicted upon Italy during the Gothic, Hun, Avar, and Lombard inroads. At first, they were satisfied with being beyond the reach of the Barbarians. As the several settlements grew into a united municipality, commerce and conquest became developed; the first extension of the Venetian territory being made on the opposite coast of Dalmatia, and at the expense of the Illyrian or Liburnian pirates, rather than in Italy. During the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, the progress of the new State was slow, silent, and sure. It was threatened, but only threatened, by the Magyars. It lay beyond the boundaries of both the Empires—too far to the south and west (as well as too far from the mainland) for the arms ofVENICE.
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Charlemagne, and too far to the west and the north to he attacked from Constantinople; from which it was also protected by the interjacent Bulgarians, Servians, and Dalmatians. For the Arabian conquerors of Sicily it lay too far north and was too well protected by its situation.
Under such conditions its stability during several centuries of war and anarchy was insured; so that civilization, power, and institutions of more than ordinary permanence were the result. As Venice grew, Greece declined; so that Venice became the sole representative of European civilization in the parts beyond Italy.
Of the most important of all the Venetian conquests a short and cursory sketch has already been given. We have already seen the part that the Republic played during the Fourth Crusade, and the conquest of Constantinople, which, in conjunction with the Franks, was achieved by the octogenarian Doge, the blind Dandolo. After this began the Venetian rule in the Greek Islands ; in which the only rivals were the Genoese. As against the Byzantine Emperors the Venetians held all that they had ever acquired. As against the Ottomans they held much : indeed their resistance to the conquering Sultans during the zenith of their power was more effective on the part of the Venetians than it was on the part of any other nation under circumstances equally unfavourable. That they were what is often called the bulwark of Christianity against Mahometanism is no truer of them than it is of any other population. The two antagonists were occasionally in alliance. But such was the case with Poland and Hungary. Upon the whole, however, the resistance of the Venetians was steady, continuous, and systematic. We get the measure of the extent to which it was this in the history of their wars in Crete, Candia, and the Morea; the latter of which they not only wrested from the Turks after it had been held by them for many years but succeeded in keeping until the peace of Passarowitz.
It should be noted, too, that the Morea was conquered after the discovery of America, and after the discovery of the passage to India by the way of the Cape of Good Hope. This is important, because it is too often stated that, when a New World was discovered and a new route to the East was resorted to, the power of Venice was broken. It was seriously affected—broken it was not.
VOL. II.
E E418
VENICE.
During the time of her opulence, Venice, though Italian, was inordinately free of the thousand-and-one minute quarrels which were ever undermining the power of Italy. She was rather a co-ordinate Power to Italy taken altogether than a part of Italy itself. She was free from the trammels engendered by the relations between Italy and the Empire. She held the Papal power more cheaply than any other southern Power. Leagues against her were formed (for instance, the famous League of Cambray); but Venice held her own notwithstanding. Indeed, her conquests on the soil of Italy were later than her conquests at the expense of the Byzantine Empire and the Dalmatians of the opposite coast.
Of the morality of her statecraft little can be said favourably. The vices that stigmatized it were those of an aristocracy; and that a commercial one. Still, her statecraft was long and deservedly an object of admiration. Venice, indeed, is the oldest municipality in the world with a history equally continuous and independent.
Still, decay was doing its work; and, when the first French Revolution broke out, Venice was full of the Revolutionary feeling. This helped the French arms, and Venice was conquered by France. Not, however, to be kept. It was the French policy to impoverish her first, and then to use her as a chattel in their negotiations with Austria. To Austria she was made over by the Treaty of Campo Formio.
In 1848 she revolted, and was one of the last places which was reduced. Her history since then is well known. The maximum of Austrian pressure has long been upon her, and is upon her now.
There is much Venetian blood beyond Venetia; beyond Italy. There is the most of it in the Ionian Isles, in the Morea, in the iEgean Isles, and in the ex-possessions of Venice on the mainland; in Greece; and in Albania. There is much in Dalmatia and in Istria.
So much for Venice, as a city and State. For that portion of Italy which is called Venetia the primary fact which connects it with Italy is the hatred to Austria. Continental Venetia, however, is Italian rather than Venetian proper. The three chief towns therein are Padua, which has a historic renown for medical, equal to that of Bologna for legal, science; Padua, with its University.VENICE.
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Then comes Verona, important under the sway of the Scalas; and Mantua, under that of the Gonzagas.
The other parts of Italy which, without being Venetian in the political sense of the term, are Austrian, are—
1.	The Italian Tyrol, where the line between the German and the Italian occupants is indistinct, and
2.	The Valteline, connected in its geography with Switzerland.
In Carinthia, Carniola, Istria, and Dalmatia we have little
more than so many Slavonians who speak Italian.
Of the Slavonians of the valley of the Eescia, notice has already been taken. In the parts about Verona and Vicenza, the occupants of the Sette Commune and the Tredici Commune are Germans. It has been held that they are the descendants of the Goths. In language, however, they are Bavarians, the exact date of their occupancy being unknown.
e e 2420
SCANDINAVIA.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Scandinavia.—Denmark. — Sweden.—Norway.—The Gothlands.—Lithuanic or Prussian Hypothesis.—The Liberation.
The only kingdoms that now stand over for notice are Norway and Sweden; but, as they are united, they may be dealt with as one. To these, for reasons which will appear as we^proceed, Denmark will be added. A little has been said about it already; but, when we talk of nationalities, natural assemblages of allied populations, and the like, the three must be taken together. They constitute Scandinavia.
Nevertheless, Scandinavia is not a very convenient word. Norway and Sweden it suits; because, in Norway and Sweden, the geographical boundaries coincide with the phenomena of language and blood. But Denmark is not only divided from them by water, but is in actual contact with Germany. More than this, it is connected with the Empire: Holstein being German and Imperial, Sleswick partly German though not Imperial. The unhappy quarrels that still threaten to disturb the peace of Europe arising out of these unfortunate conditions are but too well known. Whatever may be the approximation of Denmark to Germany in the matter of geography, the difference between the German and Scandinavian in the way of nationality amply makes up for it.
Hence, the term Scandinavia is, to some extent, a party word. And so are others. The spirit of nationality invades even the domain of orthography. To talk about Sleswick-Holstein is to use a word from which the German assumes so much that the Dane is forced to ignore it altogether : yet an Englishman must have some name for the Sleswick-Holstein question— and when he has got it he must look how he spells it. Slesvig is the Danish, Schleswig the German, form. Luckily, an Englishman isSCANDINAVIA.
421
free to write SleswicJc, spelling it as lie spells Brunswick. If all this give us but a trifle, it is a trifle by which we may measure matters of greater weight.
Generically, a Scandinavian is a German. Of the great German stock there are two divisions—the Scandinavian or Norse, and the Teutonic or German Proper. Of the Germans Proper the nearest congeners to the Scandinavians are the Frisians; and, after them, the Saxons. Yet a Scandinavian is scarcely so German as is an Englishman—for, though the Englishman’s blood and habits have been affected by the Norman Conquest and other important influences more than those of the Scandinavian, the original difference on the side of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, was, apparently, somewhat greater. That parts of Great Britain, such as Lincolnshire and the Orkney Islands, are, to a great extent, Norse in descent, scarcely affects the general proposition. It suggests, however, the fact that, beyond the bounds of Scandinavia, there is much Scandinavian blood. There is this, even if we cut down the Norse element in Great Britain to a minimum. There is this, even if we treat many of the Northmen who conquered Normandy, and (from Normandy) reduced Sicily along with parts of Southern Italy and Greece, as mere Northern Germans. There is this, to a great extent, in many quarters; and the result is some of the best blood in the world, so far as an aptitude for conquest and civilization makes it so.
In all this early history the three countries are claimants; though in different degrees and in different manners. The Norwegians cut their way in the north and east; and North Britain, the Hebrides, and Ireland, are the districts where they did the most single-handed. In England and Normandy the Danes were, apparently, the chief actors: in Finland and on the coast of the Baltic, especially in Estonia, the Swedes.
The time when these conquests were effected was the heroic age of the north: and in the apportionment of the heroism Norway has been favoured. It was Norway from which Iceland was colonized, and it was Iceland wherein the narratives were most expanded into history and set-off by poetry. How far the old Scandinavian literature, with its heroes and its Paganism, is real, how far it rests upon anything like contemporary evidence, is another question. Historical, however, or mythological, it is part and parcel of the national belief throughout the three kingdoms, and it has done422
SCANDINAVIA.
much towards development of the strong Norse feeling which is everywhere predominant.
At present the languages of Sweden and Denmark, though mutually intelligible, are treated as distinct: the real differences being exaggerated by differences of orthography, and by the use on the part of the Swedes of the ordinary Italian alphabet, whilst the Danes prefer the old German black-letter. The literary Norwegian is Danish rather than Swedish. Meanwhile, the old language, the mother-tongue, is the common property of all, and so is the old literature with its Edda and Sagas; though, as has just been stated, the Norwegians are the chief heroes of it. The language in which it is embodied is preserved with but little alteration in Iceland ; so that it may fairly be called Icelandic, though the Norwegians denominate it Old Norse. In doing this they give us another instance of the punctiliousness of their nationality.
The histories of the three countries are alike in their general character though different in detail. Denmark, when we have got away from the heroic age into the dawn of the true historical period, is definitely separated from Germany in the parts about the Eyder—perhaps by the river itself. It is Pagan and Anti-imperial; the Danes being, in the eyes of the Carlovingians, little better than the hated Saxons. Nor is it ever an integral part of the Empire; though Danish and German alliances are common. They end in Holstein being Danish, and in its encroaching on Sleswick and largely influencing the kingdom in general. As being the most in contact with the civilization of the South, Denmark encroaches on Sweden, and, for a long time, holds Skaane and other Swedish districts. Indeed, it is always a check upon the ambition of its northern neighbour. Before, then, that Sweden becomes one and indivisible, the Danes have to be ejected from its southern provinces. Norway, too, when dynastic alliances begin and when kingdoms become consolidated, is united with Denmark; and Danish it remains from the time of the Union of Kalmar to the Treaty of Vienna, when it is transferred to Sweden. At present, though satisfied to remain as it is, it is by no means Swedish in feeling—less Swedish, perhaps, than Danish ; certainly more purely Norwegian than either. Hence, with Danish antecedents, and a Union with Sweden, it stands nearly by itself. Its influence on the history of Europe it shares, during the interval between the Kalmar Union and 1814, with Denmark.SCANDINAVIA.
423
Sweden had its chronic wars with Denmark as a matter of course. Its others were cheifly in Finland (which it reduced and held till 1808) ; in Estonia; and in Livonia against Eussia and Poland. With the Empire it was connected until 1814, when it took Norway in exchange for Pomerania. Its pre-eminent enemy has always been Eussia, to which it ceased to be formidable after the battle of Pultova: or rather, Eussia has been formidable to Sweden since the time of Peter the Great. Germany, in the time of Gustavus Adolphus, it overran; and it is at the expense of Germany that its chief military glory has been reaped.
Denmark and Norway have been naval rather than military Powers; Sweden military rather than naval.
That the Scandinavians, like the Germans, feel the necessity of a closer union than that which at present exists, is implied in the fact of their being grouped together in the present chapter. How far it is likely to be accomplished will be considered in the sequel.
* * * *
In the way of language the Scandinavians are Germans—the term being taken in its wider and more general sense. Whether the blood coincide with the language is another question; nor is it an easy one. The one point upon which most ethnologists agree, is the doctrine that, in Norway and Sweden (at least), or in the parts north of the Baltic, the Germans are by no means aboriginal; the real aborigines having been congeners of either the Laps or the Fins; who, at a time anterior to the German immigrations, covered the whole land from the North Cape to the Naze in Norway, and from Tornea to Ystadt in Sweden. Towards these aborigines the newer occupants comported themselves much as the Angles of England comported themselves towards the Britons. At the same time, in both Britain and Scandinavia the extent to which the two populations intermarried or kept separate is doubtful. It may be added that, in both countries, there are extreme opinions on each side of the question. In Scandinavia, however, some Fin blood (little or much), is acknowledged ; just as in England, some British (little or much), is acknowledged.
With Fins for the aborigines and with Germans for the intruders, we have the factors in our analysis of the blood of Scandinavia —only, however, when we exclude any third element.42é
SCANDINAVIA.
In not excluding some third element, the present writer goes further than any of his predecessors. Not only does he not exclude, but he attaches considerable importance to, one. That Slavonic and Lithuanic elements in the analytical ethnology of Scandinavia have been utterly ignored can scarcely be said with safety. It can only be said that they have never been made much of. So much, however, will be made of them here, that the doctrine of which the following pages give the exposition is neither more nor less than what, for the sake of precision and convenience, may be called the Prussian, Gothic, or Lithuanic hypothesis. It stands thus : —
1.	In Norway alone did the primary invaders from Germany come in immediate contact with the aboriginal Fins as a dominant population.
2.	Into Sweden they extended themselves from Norway; and, so doing, settled in the middle districts rather than in the northern or southern ones; i. e. in the parts about Stockholm and Upsala, rather than the parts about Gefle or Gottenburg; in Upland and Sudermannia rather than in Skaane or the Gothlands.
3.	The Gothlands were not German but Lithuanic ; the Goths having been either the Old Prussians or their near congeners— piratical conquerors from the south shore of the Baltic.
Let us follow the text of the chief Swedish historian, Geijer, who begins his valuable but unfinished work with a general survey of the several divisions of the soil of Sweden; noting, in each district, how far it is an old or a new occupancy of the present Swedes, whose ancestors he treats as intrusive conquerors, spreading themselves at the expense of the aboriginal Pins. From these Swedes he separates the Goths; though not to the extent to which they are separated in the present hypothesis.
Beginning in the south he connects Bleking and Halland in respect to their early history with Skaane; and Skaane, in respect to its early history, with Denmark rather than with Sweden. It was Danish during a great part of the Middle Ages; and, at the present moment, it is, in the way of dialect, more Danish than any other part of Sweden.
The two Gothlands command more notice. They are connected, even if it be only the name which connects them.
Their early history, however, coincides with their name; though that of East Gothland is very dark and doubtful. Three great forests, the Holawed, the Kolmard, and the Tiwed, covered up soSWEDES AND GOTHS.
425
large a tract of its interior with an impenetrable shade, and formed such an impassable belt as to throw nearly the whole of its scanty population upon the coast. And, there, we must suppose that it was chiefly accumulated in small towns, filled with piratical seamen; who, whilst the Norwegians and Danes spent their energy and eased their poverty in plundering Britain, Normandy, and Ireland, were fain to he satisfied with the humbler booty supplied by Finland, Liefland, Curland. The impracticable nature of the interior is no mere inference from its physical conditions, definite and prominent as they are. As late as 1177, it formed, according to an authentic account of a royal progress, a serious obstacle to one of the Swedish kings. In the Middle Ages, it was surrounded by an atmosphere of danger; and travellers who wished to visit Nerike used to commend their souls to God at the little chapel of Husahy Fell on its borders.
West Gothland gave a larger population, and one of which more account is taken in the early history of the Swedes. It is between the West Gothlanders and the Swedes that we meet with the numerous and best-marked cases of political antagonism.
Between the Gothlands and Skaane lies Smaaland, a province of which the name is pre-eminenently suggestive of speculations that point to the south side of the Baltic. Geijer makes it the small land; and, in doing this, he probably adopts the current interpretation of his countrymen. I differ from him, and hold it to be, word for word, 8amland; in which case it agrees with the name of that part of East Prussia which lies around Königsberg. The Prussian Sami and, in the ninth and tenth centuries, though now German, and, at an earlier period, Lithuanian, was probably Fin ; and it is just about the Swedish Smaland that the traces of a Fin occupancy are supplied by the geographical names to an extent beyond that which is. found elsewhere in any district equally to the south. In stating that Western Samland, towards the borders of Halland, was long called the Fin waste, the Fin weald, the Fin moor, and also Fmland, I only transcribe Geijer, who extends the Fin weald to the frontier of Norway. It was a mark or boundary, and so it was called.
With Skaane pointing towards Denmark, and the Gothlands and Smaland towards the south of the Baltic, we may leave the inter-426
SCANDINAVIA.
mediate districts and pass to Vermeland on the north. Above Yermeland, in the eleventh century, lay the occupancy of the Laps : in other words, with Yermeland Sweden ended.
That Vermeland was settled from NeriJce, chiefly by the followers of Olaf the Treefeller (Olaf Tràtàlja) is specially stated on the authority of either a real narrative, or a trustworthy tradition ; so that it was a prolongation of one of the older settlements. It touched the Norwegian frontier, and was to some extent, a de-bateable land. Jemptland was decidedly a settlement from Norway ; and so thoroughly is it recognized as such, that there are numerous Norwegians who claim it as a part of the Norway of the present century. With Helsingland, Dalecarlia, and Halagoland (still further to the north) the recent settlement is so undoubted as to require nothing beyond a mere allusion.
Of Sweden (as opposed to Gothland) Upland and Suderman-land were the two great provinces; Upland and Sudermanland,with their ancient towns of Birca, Sigtuna, and Upsala. In Upland lay the old Swedish capital, Upsala. In Sudermanland lies Stockholm. How far its present site coincides with that of the ancient Birca is uncertain. It is certain, however, that the coast of the Malar Water was the occupancy of the Swedes as opposed to the Goths.
Making so much of this opposition as I do, I shall, in passing from the geographical to the historical view of Sweden, continue the method with which I have begun, and, omitting such details as are indifferent in their bearing upon the question, give prominence to those only which more especially either illustrate or account for the distinction.
Of the so-called native traditions, however, I take no cognizance. None (with the exception of a few fragments) are older than the twelfth century. Yet it is not because they make against my view that I ignore them. On the contrary, it would suit me well if they were worth more than they are. The Ynglingatal, as stated by Geijer, never connects the kingdom of Gothland with that of Sweden ; whilst Snorro draws abundant distinctions between them. I doubt, however, whether, in his time the difference of the kind I uphold existed ; my doctrine being that the difference between the Goths and the Swedes was a difference of kind rather than degree.SWEDES AND GOTHS.
427
Let us look at the few trustworthy facts in the early history which hear upon this question; these being found in the accounts of the early Christian missionaries, and, with few exceptions, nowhere else.
In a.d. 826, when Harald, king of Jutland, was baptized at Mentz, a monk from the Westphalian abbey of Corvy, named Anskar, accompanied him home; offered himself as a missionary for the terra incognita of Norway and Sweden; visited Birca, where he was favourably received by King Biorn ; returned to Hamburg, of which city he was constituted archbishop; and died in 868. With the exception of his immediate successor, Kimbert, no one, for seventy years after his death, revisited Sweden; so that when Unne, Archbishop of Bremen, at the end of that time, reached Birca, the work of conversion had to begin de novo. The earliest notices, then, in Swedish history, belong to the times of these three missionaries; and it is remarkable that they give us an expedition of one king against Curland, and one of another, Eric Edmund-son, against not only Curland, but Estonia, Finland, and Karelia.
Of Biorn the Old, of Eric and Olaf his sons, of EricEdmundson Styrhiorn the son of Olaf, we get some eminently dies A-D* 885-picturesque and eminently untrustworthy details. They point, however, to the famous fortress of the Pomeranian pirates, Jomsburg, and to the battle-field of Fyrisvall; to an imperfect Christianity on the side of Eric, and to a unequivocal Paganism on the part of the defeated Styrhiorn. The title of Eric was The Conqueror, on account of his victory at Fyrisvall.
Olaf, the son of Eric the Conqueror, was an infant when his father died, and the people rendered him their homage whilst he was at his mother’s breast. The people called him shot konung, the word shot meaning lap=bosom=the Latin sinus. The translator of Geijer, and, doubtless, others, have translated this title as Lap king; and etymologically there is no reason against it. At a time, indeed, when I knew nothing of him but his name and got at the- meaning a priori, I fancied it had something to do with the Laps; either from the likelihood of his having been brought up in the North, or from some similar reason equally contrary to fact. I believe that others have done the same. The name, then, is one which may mislead. Hence, I shall call him the Bahy King, or perhaps the Bahy. He was a king of the Swedes, rather than a428
SCANDINAVIA.
king of the Goths; and the Swedes were Pagan. Even in the reign of his successor, there was but one chief who was a Christian ; and at Upsala, when Adam of Bremen visited it, he saw the great triune image of Thor, Frey, and Odin, the object of adoration to all Sweden—Sweden in its limited signification. The Pagan character of Sweden will take great prominence as we proceed. We must only, for the present, remember its existence; and guard against the notion which the generality of the term Sweden engenders. It is now the name of a great and Christian kingdom; and, as such, it leads to the belief that, when we talk of Sweden having become a Christian country at an early period, we mean all Sweden. Sweden Proper, however, kept its Paganism almost as long as Finland, and longer than some parts of Lithuania, the pre-eminently Pagan parts of Europe.
The first Christian king, however, of Sweden, was Olaf the Baby-king. He was baptized at the Holy Well of Husaby, in West Gothland, by Bishop Sigfrid; Sigfrid having been invited from England. This was before 1000. Up to his time the great Ting, or Meeting, was held at Upsala at the same time with the great sacrifice to Odin, Thor, and Freya; but when Christianity became, if not the law of the land, the religion of the king, the sacrifice was omitted, and the meeting became a fair and a court. It was to the chief lawman or head of the law in Sweden, that certain envoys from the other Olaf—Olaf Trygvason the King of Norway, and, like Olaf the Baby-king, a Christian— who had business with the Swedish monarch, betook themselves in the first instance. There was a bitter hatred to his brother king on the part of the Baby, and it was doubted whether the envoys would he received. If a reception could be obtained it would be through the great legal potentate now under notice. He is called a lagman—and, if necessary, this title will be given him in our narrative. Thorgny was his name, and he was reputed to be the wisest man in Sweden. He was also foster-father of Earl Ragvald, one of the first of the Norse chiefs. No man had such a household, no man such a look and bearing, as the strong and venerable Thorgny. That he had a bold tongue we shall see. He sat on a high seat, and his beard reached his knees. The envoys laid before him their business, and added that they had fear about being received. Then Thorgny spoke: “ Know, ye men of UpperSWEDES AND GOTHS.
429
Sweden, and the future will show it, that those who will now hear of nought else than that the kingship should remain in the old line, will live to see the day when it shall pass with their own consent to another race; and this will have a happier issue.”
So they went to try the question, when Thorgny addressed the peasants, who decided that the king’s word should be trusted. But the king failed in his word, and the question as to whether he and his line were to he set aside grew-up. The West Gothlanders urged that it should be so. But the Swedes were against it.
Meanwhile, the daughter who was meant to he the wife of Olaf of Norway had been married to Yaroslav of Russia; and Olaf of Norway had to put-up with Astrild, the second daughter, who married him against her father’s wishes. Two years after, Olaf the Baby died, and Anund succeeded. His chief dealings were with Olaf of Norway and Cnut of England, Denmark, and Norway —we may call him, if we will, the King of the Anglo-Saxons and Northmen. Anund is not only a truly historical king, but he was personally known to the writer who for these times is our great authority—Adam of Bremen, whose testimony is that he was a good king. The West Gothlanders, however, disliked him.
Anund was succeeded by the Ancient of Days, or Edmund the Old; so called because he was an old man before he wore the crown. Indeed, he w~as Olafs elder brother, though illegitimate. His mother was a Vend captive, and he was half a Vend. He was the last of his line; and when his line wras extinct the contest between the Gothlanders and the Swedes becomes prominent.
Olaf the Baby had refused the title of Upsala-king, or King of the Swedes, because there was more Paganism in Sweden than he would recognize; or, perhaps, more than would recognize him. On the other hand, the Swedes would not allow him to be a king of Gothland ruling over Sweden.
Now come the kings of the line of Stenkil. Stenkil, whose name seems to be Lithuanic, wTas elected, and he was a king whose memory was long dear in. West Gothland—more so than in Sweden. He was pre-eminently a king of the West Goths. He was, however, connected by marriage and blood with Sweden as well as Denmark and other countries. lie was pressed to raze the temple in Upsala; but, though a Chris-430
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tian, refused. He seems to have been, at least, prudent; possibly tolerant from principle. Geijer states that, in an unimportant war against Norway, it is only the Goths who are mentioned. He died in the year of the Battle of Hastings; Harald Hardrada of Norway, dying the same year. The disputes concerning the succession, which followed the death of Stenkil, I give, verbatim et literatim, from Geijer: directing the attention of the reader to two points : (1) the extent to which the Goths and Swedes were antagonistic nations; (2) the obscure character of the history of the times under notice.
A great civil war now broke out in Sweden. “ After the death of that most Christian king, Stenkil,” says Adam of Bremen, “ two kings, both bearing the name of Eric, contended for the throne; and, in the war between them, all the chief men among the Swedes, and the kings themselves, are said to have fallen. When in this way the royal house had become extinct, the condition of the realm was so utterly changed, and the Christians were so molested, that, from fear of persecution, no bishops dared to enter Sweden. Only the Bishop of Scania directed the congregations of the faithful in Gothland.” A single Swedish chief is mentioned as a defender of Christianity. This is the sole account preserved to us of these intestine commotions, and it deserves the more attention, as proceeding from almost the only contemporary witness to whom we can appeal for the events of those times. Who these contending princes were that drew down with them in their fall the chief men of Sweden, no other source informs us. They belonged to the old reigning family, as we may infer from the statement, that with them the royal lineage became extinct; for this cannot apply to the house of Stenkil, since he left two sons, both of whom afterwards filled the throne. We observe here the first violent outbreak of those civil wars, often subsequently renewed, and extending over a long period, but which both in the motives immediately producing them, and in their progress, are but imperfectly known to us. The great general causes, however, lie before our eyes; in them was fought the last struggle between heathenism and Christianity ; in them, after the federal association founded on the ancient religion was dissolved, the rival peoples combated for predominance. That this was a war waged between the Pagans and the Christians is proved by the sufferings which the Christians are said to have undergone, but it appears also to have been a contest against the new sovereign house.* Another nearly contemporaneous account informs us, that when the contending princes had perished in their mutual hostility, both the sons of Stenkil, one after the other, were raised to the throne, and expelled therefrom, after which a king named Haco was chosen.
This Haco is also mentioned after Stenkil by Snorro Sturleson. The old Table of Kings in the West Gothic Law, on the contrary, assigns him a place before Stenkil, and names him Haco the Red, but communicates no other particulars of his history, than that he had been king for thirteen winters, and that he died in West Gothland at the place of his birth. He probably possessed the
* The italics are the present writer’s.SWEDES AND GOTHS.
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name and dignity of king in this province during the period when the remainder of the country was torn by civil discord, for both these troubles and the thirteen years’ reign of Haco fall between 1066 and 1081. The first is the year of Stenkil’s demise; in the latter we already find his sons Inge and Halstan reigning conjointly; for they are doubtless the same “kings of the West Goths” whom Pope Gregory VII., in a rescript of this date, exhorts to protection of the Christians, and submission towards the Church.
Inge, who is also called Ingemunder and Anunder, is said to have been invited over from Eussia. In the course of more than two centuries from the foundation of the Eussian empire by the Varangians, both the Eussian and Scandinavian annals contain manifold proofs of the closeness of the ties which connected our forefathers with Eussia. About 980, in the reign of Eric the Victorious, the Eussian grand-duke Vladimir (in the Sagas, Valdemar) the Great, sought and obtained help, beyond the sea among the Varangians; and if any further proof were required that these Eussian Varangians are the same who in the North, from their service in the Imperial body-guard at Constantinople, were called Veerings, it would be found in the fact that Vladimir, designing, after his object had been attained, to rid himself of his dangerous auxiliaries, induced them to repair to Constantinople, at the same time requesting the Greek emperor not to permit their return to Eussia. With the assistance of the Varangians, Vladimir’s son, Jaroslav, afterwards consolidated his power, and chose for his bride a princess of their nation, the daughter of Olave of Sweden. She was accompanied to Eussia by Earl Eagwald, father of King Stenkil. Eagwald and his son Earl Eilif are both mentioned among the chiefs of the Eussians, and with them Inge, who was now called to the throne, passed a portion of his youth.
Soon after the accession of this prince, discontents broke out anew in Upper Sweden. It is stated in the appendix to the Hervara Saga, “Inge was son of Stenkil, and the Swedes took him next for their king. His reign lasted a long time; he was blessed in his friends, and was a good Christian. He abolished the sacrifices in Suithiod, and enjoined that all folk should be christened, yet the Swedes put great trust in their heathen gods, and held firm to their old customs. They deemed that Inge violated the old law of the land, because he annulled much that King Stenkil had allowed to subsist. At a diet which the Swedes held with Inge, they proposed to him two alternatives, either to follow the old law or to abdicate the kingship. Inge answered and said, that he would not reject the faith which was the truest. Then the Swedes raised a cry, pelted him with stones, and drove him out of the diet. Swen, the king’s brother-in-law, the most powerful man in Suithiod, remained behind him in the meeting. He offered the Swedes to maintain the sacrifices, if they would grant him the king-ship, and to this they all consented. Then Swen was made king over all Suithiod. A horse was led forward in the assembly, cut in pieces, and divided for the sacrificial feast, and the tree of victims (the idol) was besprinkled with the blood. Then all the Swedes again rejected Christianity, began to sacrifice, and drove out Inge, who repaired to West Gothland. Blot Swen was for three ■winters king over the Swedes. Thereafter Inge marched with his household-men and an army, although but small in number, eastwards to Smaland, thence to East Gothland, and so on to Suithiod. He marched continually day and night, and came unexpectedly upon Swen one morning, surrounded the house set fire thereto, and burned all that were within. Swen came forth and was there slain. Then Inge again recovered the kingship over the Swedes, and432
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raised up the Christians anew, governing the realm to his latest day, and dying a natural death. Halstein was also son of Stenkil, and was king together with his brother Inge.” It is doubtless by this relation that more recent historians have been induced to ascribe to the king the destruction of the idol temple in IJpsala, although of this old writers say nothing.
Inge waged war with the Norwegian king, Magnus Barefoot, who claimed the land between the Vena Lake, the Gota River, and the sea, as belonging to Norway, and obliged him to abandon this pretension. At a personal conference of the three Scandian sovereigns (Eric Eiegod of Denmark was also present), held in Konghall in the year 1101, a peace was concluded. This reconciliation was strengthened by the marriage of Magnus with Inge’s daughter, Margaret, who thence received the surname of Fridkulla (the maid of peace). Another of his daughters was married to a Russian grand-duke. To what period his life was prolonged is not known. Probably the defection of the Jemtelanders to Norway in the year 1111, would not have been left unpunished if it had occurred under his reign. The sagas celebrate him as a gracious and mighty king, the strongest and tallest of men. The Upper Swedes rose in rebellion against him, alleging as their grievance that he did not keep to the old law of the land. The West Goths allege that he ruled over Sweeden with rigorous hand, but never violated the laws observed in each individual province. The testimonies of Pagans and Christians differ upon this point. His brother Halstan survived him, and was succeeded by his own sons, whence it is probable that the son whom some accounts give to Inge died before him.
The sons of Halstan, who reigned conjointly after their father and uncle, were called Philip and Ingo, but have left to history little beside their names. The former died in 1118 ; the year of the latter’s decease is unknown, but in 1129 he had already a successor. That conspiracies were formed against him may be concluded from the manner of his death. He expired of poison—“ brought to his end by an ill draught.” He was the last of his house on the male side, and with him the progeny of Stenkil became extinct, of which the Table of Kings in the West Gothic law attests that it had ever gone well with the realm of Sweden so long as this family reigned.
In the royal house of Denmark there still existed descendants of this line on the female side, through Margaret Fridkulla, daughter of Inge the elder, who, after a long and childless wedlock with the Norwegian sovereign, her first husband, married Nils Swenson, King of Denmark, and bore him a son called Magnus. This prince, of traitorous memory, by the hereditary estates of his mother, and his descent from the family of Stenkil, acquired in West Gothland influence sufficient to procure his election to the throne upon the death of Inge, a choice which incensed in the highest degree the people of Upper Sweden. Saxo, who wrote towards the end of the same century, and whose testimony respecting these times is perfectly trustworthy, says, “ The Goths, venturing to offer the supreme power to Magnus, and passing over the Swedes, who alone possessed the right of conferring it, attempted to raise their own importance at the expense of the prerogative of their neighbours. But the Swedes, despising this usurpation, did not suffer their own privilege to be diminished by the envy of an inferior people. Fixing their gaze on the shadow of their ancient power, they declared the title of king, prematurely usurped, to be invalid, and themselves elected a new sovereign, who was forthwith slain by the Goths, and by his death left the kingship open to Magnus.” Who this sovereign was, the old catalogues inform us; they mention after Inge a king Ragwald, surnamed Short-SWEDES AND GOTHS.
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head (Knaphofde), of whom they remark, that he came audaciously and arrogantly to the diet of the West Goths, without receiving their hostages, and not as the law prescribed, and therefore they slew him for the disrespect he had shown to the nation. This befel in the year 1129. He was a son of Olave Naskonung, who himself appears as king in some catalogues; and thus, notwithstanding the power of Stenkil’s family, must have governed independently some portion of the kingdom. The Danish prince appears hardly to have reached the threshold of his reign; he murdered in 1131 his cousin, Canute Laward, who was venerated as a saint after death, and fell three years afterwards in the civil war which this homicide produced in Denmark. But in 1183 a new election had already taken place in Sweden, by which Swerker was called to the throne.
By the conversion of Blot Swen’s family to Christianity, the Pagans had now lost the last support of their cause. This prince, set up by them as the antagonist of Inge the elder, had a son named Kol, who, notwithstanding the disastrous fate of his father, obtained after some time the sovereignty of Upper Sweden; for he is mentioned as king, with the remark that the Swedes styled him “ happy in harvests,” to denote the plenty which they enjoyed under his reign. He is said to have become a Christian in his old age, and to have died in East Gothland; and, according to the most probable accounts, he was the father of Swerker, whom the East Goths, moved by the fear of having a foreigner to rule them, first raised to the throne. The West Goths delayed to acknowledge him, and were for some time without a king, for we are told that after the death of Eagwald, “ the justiciary and the chief men of the districts governed West Gothland well, and were all faithful to their charge.” The first monasteries in Sweden were founded in the time of king Swerker; the oldest were Alvastra, Hydala, and Warnhem. Monks of Clairvaux in France were sent thither by
St. Bernard, who had, at first, to contend with great difficulties........
Swerker was an unwarlike king, yet he lived to see many troubles in his old age. His son John, who had made himself by his excesses an object of hatred, and had occasioned hostilities with Denmark, fell a victim to popular indignation. King Swerker was assassinated by his groom while on his way to church, upon Christmas Day, 1155.
Swerker was succeeded by St. Eric; who was succeeded by Karl Swerkerson. Eive kings succeeded Karl Swerkerson,* and then came the Folkungers.
Folkunger is the name of a powerful family, just as Macdonald or Douglass is the name of a powerful Scotch clan or family, whose real or supposed ancestor was one Folke. Birger, an ambitious earl, and Ulf were the founders of its power: Birger more especially. Like John of Gaunt he was the ancestor of kings, though no king himself. His son was made king over and before him. Birger bore with this. But he divided his power: and the times of the Folkungers were one hundred and fifteen years of domestic and civil war. One of his de-
* Fuller details for this period are given as extracts from Geijer in the Appendix.
VOL. II.
F F434
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scendants was Ladislas, whose name, according to an old Swedish chronicle, meant Barn Lock. It is neither more nor less than the Polish Vladislas.
What took place during the reign of the later Folkungers will soon be seen. At present, attention is directed to the following list of Swedish kings from the earliest dawn of history to the time of Albert of Mecklenburg, the founder of that German and Danish dynasty under which the Union of Kalmar was effected and which ended in the Liberation. The alternation of the names of Swerker and Eric, with their respective sons, can scarcely be accidental. It probably points to a system of alternate successions between two families ; one Gothic, the other Swedish.
Edmund, and Biorn of the Hill in 829		Olave the Lap-king .	. 1024
Eric Edmundson	. 885	Anund Jacob	. 1052
Biorn Ericson	. 935	Edmund the Old.	
Eric the Victorious .	. 993		
	Line op	Stenkil.	
Stenkil ....		Inge the elder and Halstan.	
Haco the Red.	. 1066 J	Philip (1118) and Inge the Younger.	
Lines	of Swerker and St. Eric.		
Swerker ....	. 1155	Swerker Carlson	. 1210
St. Eric ....	. 1160	Eric Canuteson .	. 1216
Charles Swerkerson .	. 1168	John Swerkerson	. 1222
Canute Ericson	. 1195	Eric Ericson	. 1250
	The Folkungers.		
Waldemar (dethroned)	. 1302	| Birger Magnusson (dethroned)	. 1321
Magnus Ladulas	. 1290	1 Magnus Ericson (dethroned)	. 1374
That the difference between Swede and Goth was considerable is amply shown in the preceding extracts from Geijer. That it was merely a difference between two allied members of the German stock is nowhere even suggested by any old authority; though, on the other hand, it is nowhere suggested that the difference was that between a German and a Lithuanian. What this silence is worth is a difficult question. It may be argued plausibly, and even fairly, that, if it were actually a difference of the kind in question, it would not have been overlooked. Still this is arguing from a negative. On the whole, I have no hesitation in committing myself to the following statement; viz., that in most cases of the same kind elsewhere, even where, fromSWEDEN.
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other facts or other trains of reasonings, similar differences are admitted to have existed, they are overlooked in the scanty and unsystematic notices of such authors as the times anterior to the establishment of Christianity and the common use of letters by which it was succeeded have supplied.
The positive doctrine, then, that the Goths were Germans (and it is not only a positive doctrine hut one which is widely recognized) finds the arguments by which it is supported elsewhere. It finds them in the doctrine that the Goths as such were Germans. My reasons for denying this and for holding them to have been Lithuanians are given elsewhere. At present I maintain that, before the German conquest of Sweden, there was, in the southern parts of Scandinavia, an earlier one and a Lithuanic one —one effected by the Lithuanians of East Prussia and Curland. This is as much as the present limits enable me to say.
So much for the question of blood as relating to Southern Sweden or the Gothlands.
He	He	He	He	*
I now go on the time when there was a tri-une Scandinavia, to the time of the later Eolkungers. By the Union of Kalmar the crowns of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were united in the person of Margaret.
Margaret is the daughter of Yaldemar, king of Denmark.
Haco is the son of Magnus, king of Norway and Sweden.
The sister to Magnus is Euphemia, whose son is Albert, duke of Mecklenburg.
To Albert, twenty-four Swedish nobles, banished by Magnus, had offered the crown of Sweden, which he accepted and was crowned in 1363 ; Magnus and his son Haco being both alive to oppose him, which they did ineffectually; Magnus being made prisoner, but Haco being left king of Norway and at the head of a strong party of supporters of the Folkunger dynasty in Sweden. Albert, hated as a foreigner, and justly accused of favouring the Germans, is little more than a puppet in the hands of the Swedish Council, itself governed by the kingmaker, Boece Jonson, the most powerful subject ever known in Sweden. Albert, then, is deposed ; and, on his deposition, the crown is offered to Eric, the son of Margaret, the legitimate king of Denmark and Norway. He is a minor, and his able mother is yet alive. This ends in
f f 2436
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the Union of Kalmar. Albert, however, has his parti-sans, supported, for the most part, by the Hans Towns and the men of his own dukedom. Erie, however, remains king of the three kingdoms, with his mother as the real regent—for a time at least. It was the Council, the Jonson interest, that had made him king.
But the spirit of the people rose against him. The nobles were, to a great extent, with him ; the clergy still more so. But the people were rebellious. His foreign blood had much to do with their discontent: bad government as much or more.
In all countries there is always some particular district where, under the name of independence or insubordination according to the views of the historian, the spirit of bold opposition and fearless freedom burns with more than average strength. Sometimes it is a mountain district like Maina in Greece. Sometimes it is a fen, as it was with the followers of the English Hereward against William the Conqueror. Sometimes it is a municipality; in which case, from the mixture of freedom, intelligence, and discipline, it is formidable. In Sweden it was one of those tracts which always abound in skilled strength, a mining district. The prominence taken by the Dalecarlians during the early and dangerous period of the Liberation has overshadowed the numerous other instances of their bold spirit and intolerance of tyranny. But the history of Dalecarlia is nearly the history of all the popular movements in Sweden. Not once, nor twice, but often, both before the Liberation and after, have they shown a bold and a formidable front to their kings and nobles, which only rose the stronger for being checked.
The misgovernment and tyranny of Eric (he was duke of Pomerania) and his Danish mother were tolerated by the nobles and clergy when Engelbert Engelbertson undertook to lay before the king the grievances of the Dalecarlians. He undertook to go in person to Denmark, to lay before the Council the charges of oppression on the part of certain officials, and to stake his life against theirs on the result. His charges were allowed, but an admonition wTas all that was visited upon the offenders against the law. Again he appeared for redress; when he was sent back contemptuously, and ordered never to appear again. “ Yet once more will I return/’ was his reply. And atSWEDEN.
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the head of the men of Dalecarlia he returned. On the Midsummer’s Day of 1434 the Dalesmen rose like one man to purge the land of the strangers. Westmannalan'd joined Dalecarlia, and at Westeraas the nobles were warned that they must look to themselves. Many, perhaps most of them, cast their lot with Engelbertson. At Upsala he appealed to a vast meeting of Uplanders, and every man joined his banner. With the consent of the nobles he remitted one-third of the taxes.
And now comes the name of Eric Puke, who brought-in the Norlanders and East Bothnians. The strong fortress of Gripsholm was burnt'by the Sudermanians. The governor of Stockholm, one of the few foreigners who had acted with moderation, was allowed a truce; but Nykoping and Örebro were to be surrendered unless relieved within six weeks. In Yermeland the castles of the governors were razed to the ground. At Vadstena the insurgents met the Swedish councillors returning from Denmark. A renunciation of Eric was extorted from them. The heading to his numerous addresses, which were despatched to every part of the kingdom, was, “ I, Engelbert Engelbertson, with all my coadjutors/’ &c., and the import of them was that they must obey the Council of Stockholm, now amenable and patriotic. If expulsion, with the single exception of the hated Josse Ericson, who was put to death, was all the penalty they paid, and if the saying which was afloat some time after the insurrection that “ under Engelbert Engelbertson no man lost the value of a fowl” be true, the whole revolution must have been conducted with a moderation that has no precedent and has never been imitated. By the end of October Halland had been wrested from the Danes, and the army was on its way home, peacefully disbanded.
The next year Engelbert was made Administrator; but the nobles were impatient of his well-earned honours.
The year after Carl Cnutson was x^dministrator—a noble, who had done but little when compared with Engelbert and Puke.
Of Engelbert’s life this year was the last. He was basely assassinated.
If we look upon Carl Cnutson as a subject, an exception lies against the statement made about Jonson. Carl Cnutson s power was the greater. But he was in reality an uncrowned king of Sweden. The details of his life are biographical rather than,438
SCANDINAVIA.
historical, except so far as they show what faction was and what aristocracy was in Sweden. His power was transmitted to the Sture family.
Eric’s nominal authority went to Christopher of Bavaria, the son of his sister, who was called to the crown by the Danes. In Sweden the feeling fluctuated, or rather the parties were balanced. In ’39 it was decided that the union of Kalmar should be adhered to. In ’40 it was determined that no foreigner should be king of Sweden. In ’43 Christopher was acknowledged in Norway, in which country, as in Denmark, Christian I. succeeded. But in Sweden Carl Cnutson was twice made and twice unmade the native sovereign. Before his death, in ’70, he nominated Steno Sture to the realities of his monarchical authority, advising him not to affect either the title or the insignia of royalty.
Between 1470 and 1520 three Stures represented Sweden; Christian I., John and Christian II. Norway and Denmark. With the last of these three the claim to the kingly power in Sweden had become a sad reality. He it was whose tyranny ended in the Liberation.
Of all the countries in Europe, with the exception of Turkey, there is none in which the feeling of nationality is so strongly intertwined with that of personal loyalty to the sovereign and the sovereign’s dynasty as it was in Sweden under the Yasas. Indeed, with the exception of Turkey, Sweden is the only country wherein the sceptre has been held for more than a few generations by a prince of native blood, the details of whose origin are known to be native.
The Stuarts and Tudors of our own country belonged to a different age. The origin of the French kings of the reigns before the Bevolution loses itself in the times of uncertain history and indefinite genealogies. The Grand Duke of Mecklenburg is, I believe, Slavonic. The House of Savoy was connected with royalty, and was quasi-regal, before it was kingly. As a general rule the royal blood of Europe is German. The kings of Sweden, on the other hand, were simply so many members of the Yasa family; and, in some degree, something less commanding than that. Though belonging to a family of the highest connections in Sweden, the name by which Gustavus Yasa wrote himself,SWEDEN.
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before his coronation, was one without a surname; Gustaf Ericson. His fathers name was Eric Johanson. Yet surnames, though not common in Sweden in the fifteenth century, were in use.
The details of the Liberation are the details of the life of this Gustaf Ericson, or Gustavus Yasa; and, if the present work, instead of being ethnological and political, were biographical, the narrative of his personal adventures would be a long one. More elaborate still would be the notice of his career as a statesman and administrator; in which respect he was, perhaps, the greatest of his family. As it is, however, he must be taken as a landmark or an epoch rather than aught else.
1.	In the first place, he was the cotemporary of the Reformation and a supporter of it. Under him Sweden became Protestant; and how important, as a Protestant Power, it was under Gustavus Adolphus, is well known.
2.	In the second place he was the founder of a native dynasty. How exceptional such dynasties are has already been noticed.
3.	In the third place, he was the founder of the Vasa dynasty : a dynasty which was not only Swedish, but which was that of the most remarkable family in history. Lest this be thought an overstatement, let us consider how few families have been illustrious for many generations ; and how few, even at long intervals, have produced such individuals as Gustavus Yasa, Gustavus Adolphus, and Charles XII. These are names known to the most cursory and general of readers. Those of Charles IX., Charles X., and Queen Christina, though less prominent as great historical landmarks, are still conspicuous.
No wonder, then, that the history of Sweden under the Vasas has been, to an inordinate extent, the history of their kings. Though glorious, its glory has been bought at a price. No nation has gone into war for ideas more truly than Sweden. No nation has a history more exclusively military. No nation, with equal aptitude for self-government, is less constitutionally governed.
As Norway now comes under notice all these points must be borne in mind; for they are just those wherein the contrast between the two kingdoms is the most conspicuous. Norway is naval rather than military; chary of both its blood and money for mere ideas; republican rather than monarchical in feeling.440
NORWAY.
Its history, in short, has been different from Sweden's. When Sweden rejected the Union, Norway kept to it: and, though in geographical contact with Sweden, remained in political union with Denmark until 1814.
And then the transfer was looked upon with suspicion and dislike by almost all Norway; so much so that resistance began, and coercion on the part of the allies was threatened. If Norway has since become contented, it has become so on* the same principle which has made Genoa acquiesce in being Sardinian. The transfer has been attended by practical independence and followed by material prosperity.
For this, Norway has to thank herself. She has to thank herself for obtaining as a practical reality what, with almost all the other nations of Europe, has been little more than a snare and a delusion. Constitutional government, so liberally promised, elsewhere, was and is a reality in Norway. There wTas a Constitution. In itself, this was but little. Constitutions were numerous enough elsewhere. The Norwegian Constitution satisfied every man in Norway, and (so doing) made a revolutionary feeling impossible. There was much in this : but not all. The great characteristic in the history of Norway since the Union, is the fact of the Constitution having been upheld against attempted encroachments on the part of Sweden. The abolition of the hereditary aristocracy is an instance of this. The King had a suspending veto ; and the first and second bills on that subject which passed the Storting, or Norwegian Parliament, were vetoed by him. The third he would fain have prevented from becoming law; and he intrigued and threatened accordingly. Law, however, it became.
In this matter the contest was serious and important. In many other matters it has also been important. But even in all minor matters, down to the very smallest, the Norwegians have shown equal steadiness. In some cases we may call it punctiliousness. The effect, however, has been that, in Norway, there is a Constitution which, unlike most of the Constitutions of 1814, works well: and a Union which, unlike most other Unions, has all the validity of an amalgamation.
It is in these two respects that Norway in itself and Norway in relation to Sweden most especially commands our attention.DANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
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CHAPTER XXXVIII.
Denmark.—The Danish and German Languages in Sleswick.
In Sleswick the Danes are doing their best to supersede the German language by their own : and the Germans make a grievance out of their attempt.
Holstein, the Danes leave alone. Neither do they attempt the whole of Sleswick. The parts immediately to the north of the Eyder, of which the southern boundary coincides with the northern frontier of Holstein, and which contain the interesting districts of Eydersted and the Danischwald, are treated as irrevocably German. The towns of Tonning, of Garding, of Fredericstad, of Svabsted, and of Husurn, belong to this district. On the east, it runs northward as far as Kappel, so as to include the island or peninsula of Svanso as well as the metropolitan town of Sleswick. All this is German; by which it is meant not only that the language of the people {Folkesprog=Folk-speech) is German, but that the language of the schools and the churches (Skoles-prog and Kirkesprog), is German also—German, and allowed to remain so.
That the Skolesprog and the Kirkesprog, (the names, though foreign, are convenient) are the weapons by which the Folkesprog is attacked, is clear. We know what a Welshman would do who had a chance of re-introducing the original British into Radnorshire or Shropshire. He would just make it the vehicle of secular and religious instruction ; and, in time, the thing might be done.
Nowt comes a district which is neither Danish nor German, as far as the Folkesprog goes; but which, in respect to the Kirke-sprog and the Skolesprog, is the latter. It lies on the western side of the Peninsula, and runs along the German Ocean from Husum northwards. The chief town within its limits is Bredsted;442
DANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
in which, however, as in the towns in general, the language is German. It nowhere stretches far inland ; never more than ten English miles: so that its breadth rarely exceeds one-fourth of that of the Peninsula. Originally, it extended as far to the north as the parts about Tonder, and, in all probability, further. At present, however, it scarcely reaches so far; having been superseded at its extremity by the Danish: which has also encroached upon it in the parts about Leek. The language of this district is that of the islands opposite, with the exception of Pelvorm and Nordstrand, where it has given way to the German.
This language is the Frisian. It differs from the Frisian of the Dutch province of Friesland as one dialect from another: the men and women who speak it calling themselves Friese — Friese, or Frisian. They distinguish themselves from the Danes. They distinguish themselves from the Germans. They thank no one for confounding them with either. They never, for an instant, mistake their language for anything but what it is : viz. a form of speech akin to both the leading tongues of its neighbourhood but different from each. Many of them know that its nearest congener is to be found in Hoi]and: and many believe, not without good reason, that it is not very unlike the English.
The number of villages in which this Frisian—North Frisian as it is called by philologues—is spoken, is about thirty-eight, the number of individuals who speak it being about thirty thousand. Here ends the domain of the German language as Kirkesprog and Skolesprog.
Except in a few localities (on the north and east) of the Frisian area, where the Danish has spread itself at the expense of its neighbour, North Friesland is, throughout, absolutely and wholly, in the matter of the Folkesprog, other than Danish. So it is now. So it was centuries ago. In some cases it seems always to have been so—in some cases, but not in all. Over the whole length and breadth of Friesland, the Frisian seems to have been the original language; as old as, or older, than the Danish with which it is in contact. The same applies to Eydersted. Before it became German, it was Frisian—Frisian, but not Danish. When the Danish reached the Eyder, the points of contact were the parts about Rendsborg and in the Danischwald. That theseDANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
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once existed is not to be denied. The Danish, however, of the parts along the Holstein frontier is much in the same predicament as the Welsh of Hereford or Worcestershire. For all purposes, except those of the antiquary and ethnologist, it is not only'non-existent, hut it has never been. The southern sixth of Sleswick is, so far as language is concerned, as German as Holstein itself; whilst Holstein itself is as German as Hanover or Brunswick.
In the district named Anglen, however, there is a change. In Anglen the Kirkesjwog is alternately German and Danish; the Skolesprog exclusively Danish. Whether this he right or wrong depends, of course, upon the Folkesprog. However, on the face of the matter, as it stands even at present, the following suggestion is prominent. With an exclusive language for the schools, an alternation in the church language is either too much or too little. It is too much if the Folkesprog be wholly Danish; too little if it be wholly German. Or rather, if there be such a notable amount of German as to require that language for alternate services in church, there is enough to require its recognition in the teachings of the schoolmaster.
What, then, is really the Folkesprog of Anglen? Anglen, the district from which the Angles are said to have conquered England; Anglen, the Angulus of Beda; Anglen, of which able men have persuaded themselves that the original language was Anglo-Saxon. It is a district about the size of the county of Middlesex, and it lies on the eastern side of the Peninsula. Whether these are the exact conditions that would give such a conquest as that of Great Britain is foreign to our present question.
Boughly speaking, there are, on its two sides, the Baltic (into which, half promontory and half block, Anglen thrusts itself forward) and the high road between the towns of Sleswick and Flensburgh. It is the most favoured district in the Duchy; pleasant to look at, rich in soil, and well cultivated. Nevertheless, it is the battle-field for the Language Question. If the exclusive use of the Danish as a Sholesprog be good for Anglen, it is good for the remainder of the Duchy—save and except the parts already disposed-of as German.
Let us prepare ourselves, then, for some strength of statement. That there is some German in Anglen is suggested by the alter-444
DANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
nate services; that there is some Danish, by the exclusive Skoles-prog. There ought to be a good deal. So says the German : so says the Englishman: so says any impartial looker-on. What says the Dane ? The Dane says for Anglen what a Welshman, mutatis mutandis, might say for Monmouthshire; viz. that, though there is not much of his native language in that particular locality at the present moment, there used to be a great deal; and that, if the Danish tongue had its just rights, it would be there now—and that, even now, it is there in fragments. Upon this principle, in a map of 1857, in which the area of the Danish as the Folkesprog is pink, Anglen is made Danish. Not, however, purely pink. The ground colour is dotted; the dots indicating the degree to which the German has squeezed, itself in by the side of the Danish —del punkterede antyder den Styrke, hvormed det Plattydske liar troenght sig ind ved Siden af det Danske,
Now this covers a good deal. A candid geographer, however, may doubt whether it legitimately covers all that it is applied to. For Danish read Welsh, and for German English, using our pink tints and our black dots as before. Would it be quite right to paint all Monmouthshire pink, and then dot it over ? Surely the idea so conveyed would he that the country was much less English than it really is.
Such the map of Anglen for ’57. One for ’88 makes one-half of the country purely and simply German: the other “ more German than Danish/’ In the middle, however, of the latter division a small triangular space containing the parishes of Great and Little Solt is marked off as half- and-half.
In a modified form this map of ’38 (by Geerz, and in German) is adopted by Biernatzki, and dedicated to the German National Assembly. We may take it, then, as giving us the maximum of the German element. Nor is this maximum an undue one. There is some Danish in the district. Perhaps there is enough to make a grievance of. But there is very little nevertheless. The modicum that survives is chiefly in the north; and, even there, German is understood. To no man, woman, or child, is the Danish a necessity. The majority can understand it when spoken; possibly the majority can speak it. Those, however, who speak it from choice form the minority. A smaller minorityDANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
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still neither speaks nor understands it. Meanwhile, German is understood and spoken by everyone, and (as has just been stated), with a few exceptions, by choice.
What, then, justifies the exclusive use of Danish as the Skoles-prog ? The fact of the German being intrusive and the wish of the Danes to re-establish the original form of speech ? Valeat quantum. This means Valeat quam minime. No one, who is not a Dane, can, at one and the same time, take-in all the facts, eliminate all the sentiment, and, for a single instant, defend the machinery and machinations by which Danish is being thrust upon Anglen. The Danish Skolesprog of Anglen is patent and flagrant both as a wrong deed and as an anachronism. The important town of Flenshurg lies just to the north of Anglen; a German town, within the influence of which Danish (as the language of the country between it and Holstein) is as impossible as the re-establishment of the original Dutch is an impossibility in New York. That it may he kept alive is possible. That it can replace the prevailing form of speech except under a system that is strong enough and bad enough to use coercion is out of the question.
For practical purposes a line drawn from Flenshurg to the German Ocean, due east, gives a good philological boundary. It favours the Danes more than it favours the Frisians. Between the Danes and the Germans it is (so far as a line can he so) as broad as it is long. It places a few of the former among the latter and a few of the latter amongst the former. The maps carry the area of alternate Church services beyond it. In this we have sufficient evidence that the Germans are not in any very decided minority.
With Anglen on the east, and the Frisian districts on the west, the southernmost prolongation of the Danish area must be sought in the central parts of the peninsula. And here it is obscure. The very suspicious principle which makes Anglen Danish, makes Treia, Swesing, and some other districts as far south as the line between Husum and Sleswick, the same. All, however, that can be said of these is, that their original Danish is still to be found in fragments: though, for all practical purposes, German has replaced it. About Fjolde, or Viol, however, even the German map-makers allow that Danish predominates. To the north of Flenshurg,446
DANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
except in the towns, and certain isolated districts, it prevails exclusively.
Such the data. They have been given as they affect districts rather than individuals: i. e. they have been given after the fashion of the geographer rather than the statistician. The statistical view, however, has shown that the Danish is the language of a minority; though a large one.
The whole population of Sleswick is as follows:—
Germans . .	
Danes . . .	
Frisians. . .	
	Total 350,000
this being an approximation.
It is the German view which has just been given. Can anything he said for the Danish one? Let us omit all those reasons which are supplied by the mere generalities of the case. Every one knows how much can he said in favour of all the subjects of a given king speaking and thinking alike. Every one also knows how much can be said against forcing them to do. so. The special arguments are all we want.
One of the arguments on the Danish side is that a great deal of the German has not only intruded itself upon the Danish hut that it has done this so lately that the lost ground can he retrieved. Still, it has been done. How far it is easier for A to learn a strange language, which his father knew, than one which (though his father did not know) his grandfather did, is a question to he decided by those who are learned in the doctrine of transmitted, or hereditary, aptitudes. Had the last families who spoke Cornish lived till the present century it would hardly have been a reason for encouraging the re-establishment of the Cornish.
Another reason is, to some extent, a valid one. It rests upon the distinction between the High, or Literary, German, and the German as it is spoken in Sleswick. That this last is an extreme form of the Platt-Deutsch is well known; and it is also well known, that, in no part of Germany itself, is the Platt-Deutsch recognized as the language of the schools. In Hanover, in Mecklenburg, in Prussia and elsewhere, the Follcesprog is, with aDANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
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slight difference, that of Sleswick. Yet just as little as in Sleswick is this Platt-Deutsch Folkesprog either a Skolesprog or a Kirkesprog. It is simply a patois. Yet it is a patois which in Holland is the cultivated language of one of the most learned and the most liberal countries in the world, the language of Yondel and of Bilderdijk. The Danes say that the German of Sleswick is no vehicle for sermons and spelling-books, and that, if we are to have a substitute, we may as well have Danish as High “German. There is something in this. But they rush into overstatements on both sides. In the first place the Low-German is a literary language. It is not only the literary language of Holland; but it is the Kirkesprog of two of the Sleswick churches, (Fredericstadt and Nordstrand), where the service is in Dutch, and where the maps admit it to be so. In the next place it is nearer to the High-German than it is to the Danish.
That this last statement has been objected to no one knows better than the present writer, and no one believes in it less. He has seen it in scores of places. He has seen it stated that the Low-German learns Danish more easily than he learns High-German. He has, also, seen it stated that the Frisian learns Danish more easily than he learns High-German. He has seen and heard these statements often; but he has never heard them from a Frisian, and he has never seen them in any work of a German. From his own knowledge, he doubts, rather than denies, them. All that he can say is that, wherever he has found them, he has found them either in Danish writings or in the writings of that section of his own countrymen which thinks it a fine thing to call itself Norse, or Scandinavian, rather than English or German. That the Frisians take to the Danish rather than the High-German he is not inclined to disbelieve. That they take to it rather than the Zcw-German is untrue. Neither does it follow that because they take to the Danish of their neighbourhood they have any special aptitudes for that of Copenhagen. There is a High and Low Danish as well as a High and Low German.
The third argument lies in the chances of success. Call the efforts of the Danes an exertion of undue pressure upon the German language if you will. Provided there be enough of it, it may be successful. Now, in one small district it has done its448
DANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
work. In a small district, opposite the Isle of Alsen, and just to the north of Flensburg, there is a piece of colouring, which says, “Danish, originally Danish and German — Danisch, ehemals Danisch und Dentsch” This is little, still it shows what can he done by interference.
This historical view of the original extension of the Danish language is natural on the part of the Danes. Every one of them believes that between Germany and Denmark the Eyder is the natural boundary. The German language encroached, and the Danish retreated; and thus sang a poet of the twelfth century, addressing the latter as a distressed and fallen female:—•
“ Eras lata prolongata,
Dominans in Albiam;
Nunc curfcata eclipsata,
Yix attingis Eidriam.
Tandem Slea fluvius Finis fuit ultimus,
Paulatina, gradatim,
Refringit, restringit,
Amnis secans Jutiam.”
This amnis is the Kongeaa, or the river which divides Jutland from Sleswick. Whatever else this may show, it plainly shows that the encroachment of the German is nothing new. First it touched the parts beyond the Elbe; then those beyond the Eyder; then the Slee; then the river which divided North from South Jutland.
South Jutland is a name which has been rescued from a long oblivion. Just as the Germans talk, catachrestically, of a Sles-wick-Holstein, so does Young Denmark talk of a South Jutland, meaning thereby the Duchy of Sleswick. Nor is this the only name which is tampered with: nor is the tampering limited to names. In more than one sample of the Platt-Deutsch of Anglen the third person of the verb ends, not as in German, but as in Danish. In others it ends as in Holstein and elsewhere. The inference from the first specimens is plain. It is that the German (German though it be) is more or less Danish, and, as such, fit to be replaced by the Danish altogether. What the real fact may be is doubtful. The only thing which is certain is, that it is only in the samples collected by Danes that these solecismsDANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
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appear. The German of Anglen, as given by a German, reads very much like the German of other places.
Again, the Danes always ignore the Frisians. That their language is never to he preached in and never to he prayed in is taken as a matter of course. It is assumed that it is incapable of being printed : yet there are laws in the old Frisian of Hanover as old as the thirteenth century; good poems in the Middle Frisian of Holland ; and not a few compositions of more than ordinary merit in the despised North Frisian of the present time, especially in the dialect of the Island Sylt.
The following are specimens of the several languages in question :—
Fribian.
En Faamel oon Eidum haei her forlaavet, med en jungen Moan, en hem taasvaeret, dat’s ier taa en Stiin vorde vil, es en vorde en oern Moans Yöf. Dii junge Moan forleet hem aev her Trauhaeid, en ging taa Saeie. Man sin Faamel forgaeit hem bal, en nom moit oere Freiere em Nagtem, en forlaavet her taaliast med en Stagter foan Keitum. De Brellupsdaei vord besternt, en de Tog ordnet hem, med sen Formoan foraet, aeve Yaei foan Eidum taa Keitum. Der kommens onervegens en uil Yöf oontmoit, en det es en hün Fortiken for en Braeid. Man jü sae : “Eidumbonne, Keitumbonne, jernge Braeid es en Hex.” iEergerlik en forbittert svaart de Formoan : “ Es yys Braeid en Hex, denn vil ik, det vi her altaamoal dealsunken, en vydder epväxten es grae Stiine.” Es hü evende Uurde saeid haei, saank det hiile Selskab med Braeid en Bredgom deal oone Grynn, ex vaxet vydder hulv ep es grae Stiine. For ei menning Jir heves hjem nog visset es grot Stiine, tveer en tveer aeve Sid bei enooer med de Formoan oone Spesse. Jestontaa’d Norden foan Tinnum, ei vid foant uil Thinghuged, en taa en Erinnering em jo Beigevenhaeid vorn aeve sid bei det Huged tau lait trinn Huge epsmenn, der ’s Brceidefartshuge namden.
In the Danish of ihe same district.
En Pig’ i Eidum häj forlovvet sae mae en ong Kael aa svorren aa, te hun ferr skuld blyvv te Stein, end hun skuld, blyvv en A’ens Kuen. Den ongg Kael troj no godt aa hind aa drovv tilsoes. Men de var int laengg inden ae Pig’ forglaemt ham aa tovv om Nat aemor ander Frieres Besaeg aa forlovvet sae tesist mae en Slavter fra Keitum. iE Davv, te ae Brollop skuld staae, vaar besternt, aa ae Brujskar saat sae i Gaang fra Eidum, te Keitum mae ae Anforer i ae Spids. Saa kom de da undervej aemor engammel Kuen aa de betyer int novver Godt for en Bruj. Men hun öjt aa so : “ Eidumbynder, Keitumbynder, Jer Bruj ae ’en Hex ! ” No blovv ae Anforer aergele aa gall i ae Hoj aa svar aa so : ‘'Ja hvinner vor Bruj vaar en Hex, saa vild ae onnsk, te vi Oll saank i ae Jord aa groj Oll hall op aegjen som graae Steen.” Allersaasnar häj han saaj di Ord, inden ae heel Selskob mae samt ae Bruj aa ae Brögom saank neer i ae Jord aa gröp hall op aegjen som graae Steen. Enno for int manne Aar sin vidst di aa vis di fern stör Steen, to om to ve ae Si a
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senaen mse se AnfÖrer i se Spids. Di stod Noren for Tinnum, int laant fra den gammel Thingpold, aa for aa hovs, hya de ske de Gaang, yaa der ve se Si a se Hy opsmedt to smaa Bjerre sum di kaaldt se BrujsJcarhy.
Literary Danish.
En Pige i Eidum havde forlovet sig med en ung Karl og svoren paa, at hun för skulde blive til Steen, end hun skulde blive en Andens Kone. Den unge Karl troede nu godt paa hende og drog tilsöes. Men det varede ikke lsenge, inden Pigen forglemte ham og tog om Natten imod andre Erieres Besög og forlovede sig tilsidst med en Slagter fra Keitum. Dagen, da Bryllupet skulde staae, var besternt, og Brudeskaren satte sig i Gang fra Eidum til Keitum med Anföreren i Spidsen. Saa kom de da underveis imode med en gammel Kone og det betyder ikke noget Godt for en Brud. Men hun vaabte og sagde : “ Eidum-bönder, Keitumbönder, jer Brud er en Hex ! ” Nü blev Anföreren sergerlig og gal i Hovedet og svor og sagde: “ Ja h vis vor Brud var en Hex, saa vilde jeg önske, at vi Alle sank i Jorden og groede halvt op igjen som graae Steen.” Aldrigsaasnart havde han sagt de Ord, inden det hele Selskab med samt Brüden og Brudgommen sank ned i Jorden og groede halvt op igjen som graae Steen. Endnu for ikke mange Aar siden vidste de at vise de fern störe Steen, to og to ved Siden af hinanden med Anföreren i Spidsen. De stode Norden for Tinum, ikke langt fra dem gamle Thingpold, og for at huske, hvad der skeede den Gang, var der ved Siden af Höjen opkastet to smaa Bjerge, som de kaldte Bmdskarhöierne.
The Prodigal Bon.
Parts about Bol.—Danish.
En Man ho to Senner, a den yngest a dem so te se Faer. “ Faer gi mse den Diel a se Gos, der filder mse te a han diel dem se Gos. A it manne Dav deretter saanked den yngest Sön olt sit, a dro vsek i et Laend vidt dsefraa, a han la der ö hva han ho i et ruglost Lövne. Men som han sin ho fotseer olt, hva han ho, blev der en stur Honger i de saem Laend a han begynt a li Nö. A han gik hen a holdt sse te en Borrer der i se Laend, a han skekked ham ur aa ae Mark a vaer ae Sviin. A han ho gjern aet Mask, hva ae Sviin fek, men dae var ingen a ga ham novve. Men han gik i sae sjel a so “ hvomanne Davlönner haer min Faer di haer rigele Bre, a ae dyer a Honger. jE vil staa op a gaa te min Faer a si te ham : M haer fo(r)si mae emor ae Himmel a emor dae; ae er it bet vaer a jerr din Sön, gyr mae te jen a din Davlönner.” A han sto op a gik te sin Faer. Mön som han enön var et laant Stykk daefraa, so sin Faer ham, a defotryer ham fo ham, a han löf hen a foldt ham om ae Hals a kyssed ham.
Platt-Deutsch of the same district.
En Man har twe Sons. Un de jüngste von se sä to de Fatter: “ Fatter, gif mi de Deel von et Vermögen, de mi tofallt.” Un he deler se dat Gut. Un nich vehl Dag danah Sammler de jüngste Sön al wat he har to samen un trok no en fremde Land wit weg un verkehm do sin Gut in en ruchlose Lebend. Awer als he vertährt har al wat he har, wurr’ da en grote Hungersnoth in et sölbige Land, un he begynner un le Mangel. Un he ging hen un hei sik to een von de Börgers da in et Land, un de schicker em ut op sin Land, de Swein to wahren. Un he har sik gern holpen mit Masch, wat de Swün eten ; awer da währ kein un gev em watt. Awer he ging in sik selbst un sä; “ Worvehl Daglöhners bi min Fatter hem riklig Brot; awer ik mott Hungerstarben. Ik will opstahn un to min Fatter ghan unto em seggen : Fatter, ik heff mi versehn gegen de Himmel un gegenDANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
451
di. Un bin nich mehr werth un'heten din Son, mak mi to een yon dinDagloh-ners.” Un he stunn op un kehm to sin Fatter. Awer als he nach wit weg wahr, seg sin Fatter em, un et vedroot em haertlich, un he lib hen un fall em om de hals un kiisser em.
Such are the details of a part of the great Sleswick-Holstein question, a question in which, without any flagrant turpitude connected with its treatment, and without any gross oppression on the part of the Power against which the chief complaints are laid, is, from the congeries of minute vexations and insincere tergiversations with which it is encumbered, discreditable to the principals and distasteful to the lookers-on. In England, it is a matter upon which a writer on the antiquarian and heraldic part of the subject, or the relations between Holstein and the Got-torps, between the Gottorps and one another, between the Sleswick-Gottorp and Denmark, between Denmark and the Empire, et hoc genus omne, (however conversant he might be with both the facts themselves, and the principles of international law by which they are interpreted,) could scarcely command a hearing. In Germany and Denmark a dispassionate opinion is impossible. All that the present chapter conveys is the opinion of the writer upon one of the few subjects contained in the present volume, in which he speaks less from his book-learning than from his personal knowledge. It is a subject upon which he is a witness as well as a judge. And in this lies his excuse for the space he has given to the matter; and for the exclusive prominence given to the language element of a question which is otherwise complex.
Two points he looks upon as beyond doubt.
1.	That in their attempts to introduce Danish in the parts to the south of Flensburg, the Danes are in the wrong.
2.	That the Germans are wrong in claiming that Sleswick be put in the same category with Holstein.
Since the main part of the preceding was written, the matter has gone further, and the attention of our own country has been drawn to the subject. The following is an extract from a well-known paper by the Secretary for Foreign Affairs. As it represents the English view, it may fairly be taken as a text for a comment. Who the agent alluded to was, and when he went over, I cannot say. As I have gone over the same ground myself, and with equal opportunities in the way of language, I may be
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allowed to criticise him without the imputation of presumption —the more so because my criticism is really a confirmation.*
Some time ago a British agent, acquainted with the country and with the language, was sent into Schleswig to ascertain on which side the truth lay.
His report, which was very detailed, and appeared very trustworthy, was to the effect that the inhabitants of Schleswig did not wish to change masters, that they were loyal to the crown of Denmark, but that in many places the German inhabitants complained that they were obliged to attend church service in Danish, to send their children to schools where the teaching is in Danish, and that before their children could receive the rite of confirmation they are obliged to undergo an examination in the Danish language.
When I reported these complaints the Danish Government replied that the parents might employ private tutors, and that their children might receive the rite of confirmation in German, although the examination must be in Danish. These replies appeared to Her Majesty’s Government to be insufficient and illusory.
Among other instances, I reported, from information I had received, that the inhabitants of Schleswig were not allowed to sign more than three names to one petition, and that the liberty of the press, which exists to the fullest extent in Denmark, is not allowed in Schleswig. When these restrictions were mentioned to the Danish Minister in London he did not deny the truth of these allegations, but justified them by urgingthe necessity of counteracting German aggressive agitation.
Such being the case, there are various courses to pursue:—
1.	To allow the present state of uneasiness and danger to continue till it ends in some violent explosion.
2.	To adopt a common Constitution, in which the German element would have more weight than mere numbers would give it.
3.	To divide Schleswig into two parts, of which one to be German, and closely connected with Holstein; and the other to be Danish, and to be incorporated with Denmark.
4.	To adopt a plan framed upon the basis which I have suggested.
* My own visit to these parts was in 1851. It was my first visit to South Sles-wick ; but neither my first nor my second to Holstein and Denmark. I stayed in Flensburg; saw a little of the country around, and traversed the whole Frisian district on foot. I had come from Denmark, so that I went on the principle of speaking Danish as far as I could. It was understood in Flensburg; an essentially German town. It was understood on the road from Flensburg to Lek; but was not the favoured language. In the Frisian district it was rather less current than the German in the villages. In Bredsted, the first town, the sound of Danish was hateful. So it was in Husum; the intermediate country being Frisian—indifferent rather than fanatic either way; but still more for the Platt-Deutsch than the Hoch-Deutsch, and more for the Hoch-Deutsch than the Danish. Upon this point, an important one, I have no doubt. Of Danish south of the road from Flensburg to Lek, I found no more traces than are to be found in Holstein itself.
In giving this, I merely give it as so much ballast; i. e. with the special statement that it is not on my personal experience only that my opinion is formed. Still, it is as well to say that the personal experience exists.BANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
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Let this be our text, and let it be dealt with in detail.
The country and the language.—What language ? Danish alone or German alone would do more harm than good. Frisian could hardly be expected; yet, the envoy should have known all about the Frisians; all the more because both parties ignore them. He should also have recognized the Dutch of Fredericstadt and Nordstrand.
The inhabitants of Sleswick did not wish to change masters.—What part of Sleswick? For South Sleswick the statement is wrong. For North Sleswick it is right. For the whole of Sleswick it is a nice point of calculation. Latet error in generalibus.
The German inhabitants were obliged to attend church service, dec.—True, even for the Danish part of Sleswick in the towns.
What then follows in the despatch lies beyond the pale of the Language Question. Still, it deserves notice. The restrictions on the liberty of the press are bad. On the other hand the Germans are aggressive.
Then comes (if we may use the expression) the quadruple alternative.
*****
• Unless he have failed in conveying his opinion with the necessary clearness, the alternative suggested by the present writer is, not the fourth, but the third in the previous list, viz. the division of Sleswick; and this, he may add, is also the general opinion in the only two countries where the question is, at one and the same time, of sufficient interest to be thoroughly understood and not personal enough to warp the judgment—Norway and Sweden.
Note.
Since this was written the Danish Minister of Foreign Affairs has replied to the document from which the preceding extract is taken, in a despatch dated January 5, 1863.
“ Lord Russell next occupies himself with Schleswig, and he takes as starting-point for his remarks the agreement which, according to him, exists as to the question of right, so that there only remains to be discussed a question of facts. I cannot follow Lord Russell in this rather too practical a manner of454
DANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
simplifying the question. The great question overruling the whole matter—both the question of facts and that of the means of modifying a state of things which does not agree with the wishes of Germany—is just this :—Has the Confederation really a right to interfere in the affairs of a Danish province for which the King has never joined the Confederation 1 We have established—and up to the present time the Germanic Diet has never seriously tried to prove the contrary, preferring—and unfortunately with too great success—the more convenient method of ignoring our arguments,—we have established that all that the King engaged himself to do in respect to Schleswig he immediately and completely accomplished. Those engagements did not contain any clause whatever respecting the languages in Schleswig. What the King did was this:—In an ordinance addressed to his own subjects he proclaimed the principles which he intended to follow, and, among others, also those respecting the regulation of languages and the equal maintenance of both nationalities. Now, this circumstance can assuredly not justify any foreign interference whatever for the purpose of controlling the King’s Government in the exercise of its functions. That ordinance was communicated to the Diet at Frankfort; but on communicating it the King’s Envoy expressly remarked that the Diet would learn from it what position the Government assigned to Holstein, and it is with the same restriction that the Diet took note of that document by its decree of July 29, 1852. All the rest of the ordinance did not, therefore, concern the Diet, and the same pretended right of which it now avails itself for interfering in the question of languages in Schleswig, it might any day equally well invoke also for the purpose of controlling the King’s Government in respect to the manner in which it observed the stipulations of the fundamental law of the kingdom, for the observance of that law is quite as much promised in the ordinance as the equality of languages.
“ Thus neither public law generally, nor the diplomatic correspondence of 1851, authorizes any intervention whatever of the Confederation in the affairs of Schleswig; and the King’s Government would betray the most sacred interests of the State if it made a compromise as to this capital principle,—that the authority of the Germanic Confederation can in no case be extended beyond the frontier of Holstein.”
It is clear from this explanation that, in respect to the Language Question, the main fact is admitted, viz. that of the Danish being, to some extent, forced upon the Germans. All that the minister says is, that there was no promise made about it.
From the question thus suggested the present writer keeps entirely free. It is a mere matter touching the personal character of certain crowned heads and high ministers for truthfulness. What Denmark meant Germany to expect, or how Germany ought to have interpreted what Denmark said, is, like all such questions, a matter of little interest to a looker-on. Two points, however, are clear. First, that a promise hearing the extreme interpretation which is put upon it by the Germans, to the effect that all Sleswick should practically become a part of the Empire, is an impossible one. It was competent to noDANISH AND GERMAN IN SLESWICK.
455
ministry or to no King of Denmark to make it. Secondly, that the explanations on the part of Denmark are, on the face of them, unsatisfactory. Less may have been promised than the Germans claim. On the other hand, less is granted than was promised.
The fact is, that the Danes are excessively sensitive as to the position of their language; upon which, from the mere force of natural causes, the German has encroached, and, spite of all that can he done against it, will encroach. On the other hand, the Germans want harbours on the Baltic—especially Kiel. That the English despatch is sufficiently trenchant and off-hand is certain: hut it is also certain that the conduct on the parts of both Germany and Denmark has tried the patience of Europe. Neither is there much with which we can sympathize in the hearing of the South Sleswickers. Putting aside the attack on their language they have little to complain of—indeed, a looker-on would sooner he under the Danish rule than the German. With proper energy even the Language Question ought to he reduced to very small dimensions. Why look to the Government alone for schools and church-services ? By voluntary associations both could be supplied; and, in a country where the political life was active, both would soon be forthcoming. But political life is not active in Sleswick; except so far as it is active rather than healthy. Part of the anti-Danish movement is genuine; part of it the result of agitation from without.456
LANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Language Questions.—Panslavonism, &c.—Conclusion.
The extent to ■which similarity of language is a bond of union among nations under different government has already been indicated. In the chapter that has just preceded, and in the notice of the Magyars, what may be called the Language Questions took considerable prominence. But neither Hungary nor Denmark are, by any means, the only countries where it does so. There is a Language Question almost everywhere.
Of these the most important is that connected with the great family of the Slaves.
The influence of the Slavonic stock upon the history of the world is material rather than moral or intellectual, its great representative being Russia. Yet the Slavonic languages are spoken by, perhaps, eighty millions of human beings.
It is difficult to contemplate such a vast brotherhood in language as this, without asking why it is that the literary influence of the Slavonians is so little. It is certainly no fault of the language : the nearest congeners of which are the Sanskrit, the Latin, and the Greek. As little is it due to any inferiority of organization. The list of true and undoubted Slavonians who have walked in the first ranks of science is a long one. That half Germany is Slavonia in disguise has already been suggested. Still, there is not much that worthily and legitimately can be denominated a national Slavonic literature. Yet, if there were one, the number of the actual and potential readers of it would be greater than that of the readers in either the French or the German. Fifty years ago, it would have been greater than that of the readers in English. At present, however, the English is spoken by more individuals than the Slave.
One of the reasons (and, perhaps, the chief one) for this comparative silence of the Slavonic languages in the world of thought lies in their geographical position. They lie beyond the immediate influences of the two ecclesiastical centres; Rome and Constantinople. They lie, indeed, to a great extent, beyond the boundaries of the Roman Empire. It was late before the alphabet reached them.PANSLAVONISM.
457
In the second place, the great material expansion of the Slavonian tongue has been towards the parts most remote from Europe and in the quarters where the civilization is the least European. It is Russia that, at the expense of the Ugrians, has spread itself abroad. It is the Slavonism of Mecklenburg, Pomerania, Brandenburg, Bohemia, and Austria, which, under the pressure of Germanism, has receded, and is receding.
Again, the influences of Christianity and civilization, when they did reach Slavonia, reached it from different quarters.
How they did this is easily divined from the following tables ; the first of which gives us the political, the second the religious distribution of the Slaves. Two terms—The Greek Church and The Latin Church—tell us all. The former points to Constantinople with its Greek, the latter to Borne with its Italian, alphabet.
	RUSSIA.	AUSTRIA.
Great Russians 		35,314,000	
Little Russians 		10,370,000	2,774,000
White Rusians 		2,726,000	
Bulgarians 		80,000	7,000
Servians and Bosnians		100,000	2,594,000
Croatians			801,000
Carinthians			1,151,000
Poles		4,912,000	2,341,000
Tshekhs 			4.370,000
Slovaks			2,753,000
Upper Sorabians			
Lower Sorabians			
Total		53,502,000	16,791,000
PRUSSIA.	TURKEY.	* CRACOW.	SAXONY.	TOTAL.
1,982,000 44.000 38.000 44.000	3,500’,000 2,600,000	130,000	60,000	35.314.000 13.144.000 2,726,000 3.587.000 5.294.000 801,000 1.151.000 9.365.000 4.414.000 2.753.000 98.000 44.000
2,108,000	6,100,000	130,000	60,000	78,691,000
Great Russians ......
Little Russians .....
White Russians ......
Bulgarians ..........
Servians and Bosnians
Croatians............
Carinthians .........
Poles................
Tshekhs .............
Slovaks .............
Upper Sorabians......
Lower Sorabians......
Total.
GREEK CHURCH.	UNITED GREEK CHURCH.	ROMAN CATHOLIC.	PROTESTANT.	MAHO- METAN.
35.314.000 10.154.000 2.376.000 3.287.000 2.880.000	2,990,000	350.000 50.000 1.864.000 801.000 1.138.000 8.923.000 4.270.000 1.953.000 10.000	ié'ooo 442.000 144.000 800.000 88,000 44,000	250*000 550,000
54,011,000	2,990,000	19,359,000	1,531,000	800,000
* This table, drawn-up at the dawn of Panslavonism, represents the distribution of the language as it existed before the annexation of Cracow by Austria. Old as it is, it is the only complete one I know.458
LANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
The Greek influences were the first to come into play ; so that the earliest Slavonic language which was reduced to writing was a near congener of the Russian and the Servian rather than one of the Bohemian and Polish. Its alphabet was founded, not only on the Greek alphabet rather than the Latin, hut on the Greek capitals rather than on the ordinary letters in their cursive form. The effect of such an alphabet as this is to exaggerate the differences between the dialects to which it is applied and those which are written in the ordinary character of Western Europe; making them greater to the eye than they are to the ear.
The exact dialect to which this alphabet, called, from the monk who introduced it, the Cyrillian, was applied is uncertain. It was not exactly the ancestor of the modern Servian ; nor yet exactly the ancestor of the modern Russian; though it was sufficiently akin to each to pass for the old ecclesiastical language in both Russia and Servia. Cultivated as early as the eleventh century in the Russian monasteries, this language, as a vehicle of literature, dates from the time of the Provencal and the Anglo-Norman, and is earlier and older than the modern Italian. That much was written in it is hardly to he expected. Servia was a# rude country; rich in popular poetry, poor in the materials for prose. In Bulgaria there was a difference of dialect, amounting, perhaps, to a difference of language, with rudeness to boot. Russia was both rude and unsettled. Still, in the Russian monasteries, learning, to some extent, was cultivated; and the old chronicles in this dialect are both numerous and valuable. It was not, however, until Russia entered into the brotherhood of the other European nations that a true vernacular literature began—and this it did under an undue influence of French and German models.
On the other hand, it must he remembered that the national character of the alphabet, combined with the vast size of the Russian territory, the ignorance of the people, and the depression of the Greek language during the Middle Ages, prevented the vernacular from being superseded by the Greek : a fact in which the history of the eastern Slavonic differs widely from that of the western.
The contrast to all this took place in Poland and Bohemia. In Poland the first religious teachers were foreigners; and, in order toPAN SLAY ONISM.
459
teach, they had to teach in Latin. They came into the country
when Christianity was first introduced, and it is only ,	. «	A.D. 964.
by inference that we can arrive at an approximation
of what they found—probably, a strong poetic feeling widely
diffused, with its imagery taken from the face of nature, and its
incidents from the warlike and active aptitudes of the people.
But of this there are no traces; in other words, the analogues of
the Kalevala in the way of mythology, and of the minstrelsy of
the Scottish Border in the way of Romance, have no present
existence in Poland. Writing, during the time in which they
existed, was unknown, and it was no part of a purely monastic
system of religious civilization to either preserve or modify them.
The chief teachers were of the Cistercian and Benedictine orders.
Nevertheless, a hymn to the Virgin, attributed to St. Adalbert, passes for the earliest composition in Polish; the Polish of the tenth century. It was sung by the Poles as they went to battle, and is still chanted in the Cathedral of Gnesna on certain solemn occasions. How far it retains its original form, supposing thé reputed authorship to be genuine, is a matter of doubt; though, from being a purely philological question, its discussion is foreign to the present work.
An edict of a.d. 1325, to the effect that no benefice should be conferred on a foreigner, and that no one should officiate in a Polish church who was ignorant of the Polish language, proves nothing in favour of the vernacular being the current form of speech for ecclesiastical purposes, but the contrary. It shows that the mother-tongue needed protection.
The establishment of the University of Cracow, some ten years later, strengthened the influence of the Latin. It was excluded, however, from the courts of law and from the Diet ; in this respect being less of an approximation to a vernacular than it was in Hungary.
With the exception, then, of the field of politics, the Latin language, as the language of literature, covered the whole of Poland ; being well adapted both to the Slavonic organs and the Slavonic ways of thought. Like the Slavonian it had no article. Like the Slavonian it had, as compared with the languages of Germany, a full declension. In short (to use a common460
LANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
phrase) it came natural to a Slavonic population. It has not done so in Germany or England: though in the one country by dint of learning, and in the other by its being treated as an elegant accomplishment in a country where there is both wealth and leisure for accomplishments to he studied, it has taken root, and produced, in the shape of accurate scholarship and neat verses, some fruit and much foliage. In neither countries, however, has it made the remotest approach to a living (or revived) tongue. It has done this, however, in Poland.
And this tells us that classical Polish literature, until nearly our own time, is either nil or other than Polish. It is in Latin that the earliest Polish histories are written; and it was the University of Cracow which invested them, and similar compositions, with an academic, rather than a popular, halo, and which for three centuries must he looked upon as the focus of Polish literature. It seems to have given and taken. Pupils from other parts of Europe flocked to Cracow, and pupils from Cracow either completed their studies, or became teachers, in Padua, Bologna, and Paris.
That the Latin, if it were ever to give way at all, should give way under the first Jagellons is what we expect a priori. As far as the influence of Borne was concerned the Lithuanians were Pagans; and, though it was one of the effects (to some extent condition) of the union that their Paganism should he abated, it was not through the direct influence of Borne that they were Christianized. Borne converted Poland through the medium of the Latin; hut Poland converted Lithuania through its own mother-tongue: and as the first Jagellon was a Pagan, and his queen, to some extent, a missionary; it is easy to see why it should have been Queen Hedvig who introduced the Polish language into the Church services. The Boman Catholics followed her but partially; the Catholics of the Greek Church wholly.
The impulse thus given—an impulse which I cannot hut connect with the negative relations of Lithuania to Borne—by the Jagellons in favour of the Polish was strengthened by the Beformation. But the Beformation itself was destined to be reformed; and that by the most scholastic and Latinizing members of the Bomish Church—the Jesuits.PANSLAVONISM.
461
The Jesuits, favoured more especially by Sigis- ^ mund III., attempted a reaction and effected it: not, however, without exciting an opposition which ended in their downfall. What the Jansenists were in Trance, the Piarists were in Poland: and (a fact that ought always to be remembered even when the mixture of intrigue, hypocrisy, and violence by which the First Partition was effected is condemned) the year that saw Frederic and Catherine dismember the Empire saw them also expel the Jesuits.
Then, and scarcely till then, began the true cultivation of the vernacular language. Then began the real Polish literature. Like that of Russia it began late. Like that of Russia, on the strength of its having begun late, it was formed, to a great extent, on foreign models.
The Tshek language, like the Polish, has, as a vehicle of literature, been a secondary language. Like the Polish and the Russian it was reduced to writing early enough to make it an old language. But its cultivation never went far. What the Latin was in Poland the German was in Bohemia. That it was written and preached in the time of Huss we have seen; nor are the writings of this time the earlier specimens of it. But in the time of Huss the German was concurrent with, and antagonistic to, it.
Yet the Polish and Bohemian, each written in the alphabet of Western Europe, are as mutually intelligible as English and Lowland Scotch; whilst a little study, and a common alphabet, would make both of them intelligible to the Russian, the Servian, the Croatian, the Dalmatian, and even the Bulgarian. No wonder, then, that the time came when patriotic Slavonians, especially those of Bohemia, asked if this great language were always to be dumb ; always secondary or subordinate; whether, even the nineteenth century were too late a date for the cultivation of it. Let Slaves write in Slavic for Slaves. The circle is a large one—far larger than that of Germany, far larger than that of France. The creation of a few literary men in Prague, Panslavonism, in the first instance, meant that, with such slight differences as actually exist between the extreme forms of the Slavonic speech, a literature should be developed, which all Slavonians might read ; that462
LANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
in Austria and Posen it should replace the German ; and that in Servia and Kussia it should be national.
Ere long, however, it took a political, as well as a literary hearing. This varies with the country. In Poland, it means absolute equality between the Pole and Russian, the two separate nationalities being merged under the great generality of Slavonism. In Russia it means the propagation of the Greek creed, and the displacement of such languages as the Turk and Rum any o by the Russian or Servian. In Servia and Montenegro, it means dislike to all things Ottoman; and in Hungary, the denial of the right of predominance to the Magyar minority. It means, in short, different things in different places. It means, however, most especially, the non-recognition of the assumed superiority in literature and science on the part of the Germans and the development of the Slavonic press, whose domain shall be co-* extensive with the language. It began, as has been stated, in Bohemia, where the Slavonic civilization is high, and where the German contact is the least satisfactory to the Slavonian.
It began in Bohemia; hut it was worked-up into political capital in Russia; and it is chiefly as a political question that Panslavonism now commands attention. In this respect it is complicated. The broad statement that of all the Slavonic Powers the first and foremost is Russia is clear enough. The Russians are not only more numerous than any other Slavonic nation, hut they are more numerous than all the others put together. Representative, then, to a great extent on this ground, Russia is pre-eminently the representative of the Slavonians of the Greek Church. On the other hand the philological and religious affinities of Russia by no means coincide with her geographical relations. Russia lying to the north of the Carpathians is separated from the southern Slavonians by the Magyar districts of Hungary and the Rumanyos of Transylvania, Valaehia, and Moldavia. Yet it is with the Servians and the Bulgarians that she is connected by similarity of creed, with the Servians by similarity of dialect as well. Meanwhile her geographical frontagers are the Poles and Slovaks, between whom and the Russians the difference of language is at its maximum, whilst the differences of history, religion, political relations, and nationalPANSLAVONISM.
463
feeling are greater still. On this side, then, the recognition of Russia as the representative Power is inconsiderable.
Hence, the influence of Russia is the greatest in the districts from which it is geographically separated. What is it in the intervening area ? It is scarcely too much to say that for Russian purposes the Danubian Principalities are, at least, what we may call Semi-Slavonic. Though other than Russian in language, their alphabet is Russian; their religion that of the Greek Church; and their political feelings (to say the least) Russian as against the Ottomans. How truly Yalachia is a stepping-stone from Russia to South Slavonia has just been shown, in the late discreditable case of the smuggled arms; arms forged in Russia for the Prince of Servia, and forwarded with the cognizance of Prince Couza through his own principality, a fief of the Sultans, to be used against his suzerain.*
In Transylvania the case is somewhat different. The Greek creed is less prevalent than in the Principalities: whilst the political relations are with Austria.
In the Magyar and Slovak parts of Hungary, as a country connecting the northern Slaves with the southern, it is almost needless to say that Russia has no footing at all. That there is a Russian element in Hungary will be stated in the sequel.
Among the southern Slaves themselves the influence of Russia is the greatest in Servia and Montenegro; least in Bosnia and the Herzegovna—those being, to a great extent, Mahometan districts. There is also a large amount of Mahometanism in Bulgaria, and not a little Romanism. That the Bulgarians sympathize less with the other Slavonians of the Greek Church than we may expect a priori has already been stated. On the other hand, they are numerous as colonists and favoured settlers in Russia itself. Upon the whole Bulgaria may be considered as a Russian-minded country; though less so than either Servia, Montenegro, or the Greek Church districts of Bosnia and the Herzegovna.
In the next division of the southern Slaves the creed is Roman Catholic; the alphabet Italian; the political relations Austrian. The language, though other than Russian, is, never-
* The chapter on the Danubian Principalities was written before this case came before the public.464
LANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
theless, more Russian than it is either Polish or Bohemian. Russia, so far as she is an influence here, is an influence solely on the strength of her Slavonism. What this may be depends more upon the general feeling of the Austrian Empire at any particular time than upon any general cause. Indeed, the sympathies of the Western, Austrian, or Roman Catholic branch of the Slavonians are both indefinite and miscellaneous. In Dalmatia, in Carniola, the Italian element is strong. The Croatians are sometimes Austrian, sometimes Magyar, in their predilections. So far as they are Panslavonic, they are Panslavonic without being Russian.
Plow little Poland, and how little Bohemia are Russian, need only be suggested. Slavonism with them means Antigerm anism.
That Panslavonism is anything but unlimited Russian influence is certain; but it is also certain that it represents an idea out of which Russia has made more political capital than any other country. The spirit, however, that withstands the encroachments of the Germans, the claims of the Magyars, and the misgovernment of the Ottomans, is legitimate: and it is powerful in proportion as it is prudently directed.
In the island of Ruatan, and in a few others off the coast of Honduras, resided, when that small territory was ceded to Nicaragua, a few subjects of Queen Victoria. Some of them are, in all probability, there now: though they were encouraged to move to the West Indies at the cession. These, then, are men who speak the English language, yet are subject to laws other than those of Great Britain or the United States. They are, however, the only exceptions to the general statement that no community of the English blood and language is subject to a non-English Power. In being able to make this assertion England (in which, as we are speaking ethnologically, the United States are included) stands alone. Of almost every other family in Europe, and of many in Asia, Africa, America, Australia, and Polynesia, there are representatives within the British dominions—the Slavonic only being excepted. But of English blood every community is English in respect to its political relatious. There are Frenchmen in the Canadas and the Channel Islands, Dutchmen at the Cape, Frisians in Heligoland,LANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
465
Spaniards in Gibraltar, Greeks in the Ionian Islands, Italians in Malta, Danes in certain African possessions, Germans and Norwegians in the United States.
That this makes us bad judges in many matters connected with foreign politics is beyond doubt. Having no members of our own kith and kin either misgoverned elsewhere or burning for a union with the mother-country, and having no outlying portion of Angledom (to coin a convenient term) which we wish to incorporate with ourselves, such aspirations as direct the policy of the Greeks, the Germans, and even the French, are unknown to us in their full intensity. We can understand them by an effort, but we fail to feel them. That this makes us impartial is true; but it by no means makes us either appreciative or demonstrative. Other points, also, upon which Europe in general troubles itself, we are slow to comprehend. To the working of Unions and Confederations we are strangers. Of the machinery of secret societies we know little; and are slow to believe that they ever give any important results. A Language Question is to us scarcely a question at all. We cannot conceive the English tongue oppressed. That Welshmen and Gaels may understand how a noble form of speech, under pressure of circumstances, may be driven to the wall, is true. Still, they also know that such pressure arises from natural causes. If Government tried to effect it the remedy would be simple. By the side of every church and school where the exotic tongue was fostered, a Dissenting chapel would rise-up. The matter, in short, would be taken in their own hands. If newspapers in Welsh and Gaelic fail to pay proprietors, the Welshmen and Gaels know the reason why.
Englishmen ask why the Germans of Sleswick, or the Magyars of Austria, cannot do the same. The answer is, that the Germans and Magyars are neither British subjects nor under the circumstances of British subjects.
All Language Questions fall into two classes—
1. In the first, the language is, itself, strong and vital when viewed as a whole, but weak under certain conditions. The German language is at a discount in Sleswick and the Baltic Provinces of Russia. As a whole, however, it is infinitely more important than the Danish; and, in many respects, more important than the Russian.
VOL. II.
H H466
IMPORTANCE OF LANGUAGES.
2. In the second, the language is not only weak on a given area, but weak altogether—isolated. This is the case with the Magyar. If it were stronger than it is, it would still have nothing to hack it.
Intensity of feeling on the point of language is in proportion to the degree in which the language is encroached upon and endangered. If all Holstein spoke Danish there would, still, be Danes who would write in German. The Danish policy in fighting against the German of Anglen is to he condemned. Yet the feeling that prompts it is natural.
The strength, or vis viva, of a language varies with the case under notice.
1.	The value of their literature, their importance in politics and commerce, combined with the great number of individuals who speak them, make the French, German, and Italian important.
2.	The Russian and Spanish are important, not only from the number of individuals who speak them, hut from the large portion of the earth’s surface over which they are spoken and the chance of their being spoken over a larger.
The French, German, and Italian, however, have but few chances of expansion. They may be spoken, at some future time, by twice as many Frenchmen and Germans as they are spoken by now; inasmuch as France and Germany, in the course of time, may double their populations. But their areas will be much the same as at present. Spanish, however, and Portuguese have all South America before them.
3.	In expansive power, as well as in the number of its speakers, and the area over which it is spoken (not to mention its value in literature, science, and commerce), the English stands alone.
The true philologue, probably, loves languages too well rather than wisely. He loves them for their own sake. He has a vague feeling, though he may hesitate to avow it, that the final cause of the human race is the speaking of mutually unintelligible tongues. He thinks more of a rude language, as such, than of the best literature a cultivated one can embody. He sympathizes with no tongue in particular, but with all in general. He makes more of the twelve individuals who speak the all-hut extinct Lief, than of a million Greeks : more of the ten Kot families, and of theLANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
467
fragments of the Yukahiri, than'of all Russia. He holds that a certain parrot of the Orinoco which had been taken from the Aturai tribe, and which ended in being the only animal that knew a word of the Aturai language, was the noblest of birds. He would fain see a different form of speech in every parish; hoping that, if great languages must become consolidated, they may lose no time in breaking-up into dialects. But the pure and genuine philologue, to be worth his salt, must be something else. The philologue regrets the extinction of the Cornish; but, as an Englishman, and, even as a Cornishman, he may think that, in getting the English in its stead, there has been the gain of a loss. Mutatis mutandis, the philologue, in the case of a declining language, is like the naturalist when a species is in danger of becoming extinct. Though the habitat of a rare plant, itself the food of a rarer insect, be ploughed-up, wheat must be grown.
To return to Russia.
The languages other than Russian, of any notable importance, that are spoken within the Russian Empire, are—
1.	The Turkish of Kazan, which the Russians encourage; being able to do so with impunity.
2.	The Fin of Finland. This also is encouraged, in odium tertii. The original literary language of Finland was the Swedish. It is a wise policy to back the vernacular against it.
3.	The Rumanyo of Bessarabia; upon which the Russian and Bulgarian are encouraged to encroach.
4.	The German of the Baltic provinces. This is still the language of the lecture-rooms at Dorpat, a university in a Fin district.
Of the Lithuanic, notwithstanding its high philological value, the political importance is but small.
Of less importance are tbe languages of Siberia; the chief of which are the Mongol, the Mantshu, and the Yakut. Some of these are taken-up by the Russians from the mere contact of servants, nurses, and employees. The Russian, however, on the whole, encroaches on them.
. Within the Russian itself, however, there is a slight division. The Malorussian has, within the last few years, begun to assert itself, and an inchoate cultivation of it has set-in.
Galicia, again, is to Russia as Sleswick is to Germany. In
h h 2468
LANGUAGE QUESTIONS.
Galicia the Russian is a subordinate—a Muscovite would call it an oppressed—language. The German of Vienna encroaches on the Polish of Cracow, whilst the Polish of Cracow encroaches on the Russniak, or Ruthenian, of Lodomeria.
In considering the chances of the Russian spreading westwards, we must remember that it has a different alphabet from that of Western Europe, and that this stands in the way of its diffusion. The Czar, however, who 'is able to alter it (however much, by so doing, he would increase its efficiency as an instrument of philological aggression) has yet to be born.
In Turkey, both the Slavonic and the Greek encroach.
In Austria there is the Magyar, of which enough has already been said. The Rumanyo of Transylvania and the Bukhovinia are backed by that of the Danubian Principalities. The Italian is important in Dalmatia and Istria. Of the minor Slavonic dialects the history varies. As against the German they are discouraged, encouraged as against the Magyar.
The Tshekh asserts itself as a separate substantive language. The fact, however, of its doing this has already been noticed. Of all the Slavonic countries, Bohemia has, for good or for bad, the least connection with Russia.
In Switzerland, the different languages agree with each other better than the philological ethnographer expects a priori.
So, also, in France do the Flemish and the German. The Breton has nothing but the Welsh to back it: so that, practically, it stands alone. The Basque is both French and Spanish in the way of geography: in the way of ethnology neither Spanish nor French; but Basque per se. The Provengal, like the Platt-Deutsch of Germany,, is a separate language, superseded as a vehicle of literature by its near congener.
In Belgium there is a strong Flemish movement as against the French. In calculating the chances of success, we must remember that though the French is backed by the French of France, the Flemish is, practically, the Dutch of Holland; besides which, it is not very distantly removed from the German of Germany.
Denmark has already been noticed.
In Sweden, where there is no pressure from without, the language is left to take care of itself; and papers in French,CONCLUSION.
469
Latin, and German are common in the Transactions of the Swedish Academies.
In Norway a curiosity of philology presents itself: viz. an attempt to convert the current Danish into a new language, in which a Dative Case and a Feminine Gender are introduced from the Old Norse. The extent to which this is a retrograde step may be measured by any one who will think what we should say in England to a patriotic North Briton who, in an excess of nationality, should try to individualize the Lowland Scotch by taking a case and a gender from the Anglo-Saxon.
If two languages are to be spoken by a hundred millions of individuals, and by each to any notable extent, it is best for them to be spoken in equal proportions. For one great language to replace twenty small ones is a saving of power. For one great language to indent, or encroach on, another great one, leads to little. This applies to the question of gain or loss for civilization in general arising from one powerful language encroaching on another in the way that German encroaches on the Slavonic.
The Polish is encroached upon on all sides; by the German from Berlin and Vienna, by the Bussian from St. Petersburg.
* * * * *
Let us now take a retrospect.
In Russia the heterogeneousness of its population, great as it is, scarcely affects the predominant Slavonism. The most warlike of the Non-russians are the Bashkirs; yet in Orenburg, the great Bashkir Government, the Kosaks predominate.
Bessarabia is Bumanyo; but the Bumanyos have yet to be either important or Anti-russian. Still, on the strength of their language, they pass for Latins; and, in a recent letter by the Emperor of the French,* we see a sort of Panlatinism (not for the first time) suggested. Next to Bussia, the Bumanyos look to France.
How far is Finland Swedish ? During the Crimean war this question was often asked. Few ventured to answer it. All that seemed certain was that, if the Fins wished to become Swedish, they wished to be so in the way that Norway is Swedish, i. e. as an independent, though united, State. The less, however, the * To General Forey, on the conduct of the Mexican Expedition,470
CONCLUSION.
Swedes aspire to Finland the better. The frontier is too near to St. Petersburg to make the notion of its being Swedish other than absolutely intolerable to a Russian. He would never be quiet till it was got back.
That the Non-russian feeling in Lithuania, Little Russia, and Podolia, has, probably, been undervalued is stated in the preface. Still, it can scarcely be formidable.
The Russniak portion of Galicia gives us Russians—Little Russians it is true, but still Russians—beyond the domain of the Czar. These Russia covets; and, as far as an opinion on an obscure matter can be formed, the wish is not altogether one-sided.
In the Crimea the Turk element daily decreases. By the encouragement of emigration, and by the discouragement of residence, it is hardly too much to say that it is made away with.
The Mongols and Turks of Astrakan and the Government of Caucasus would be formidable if they made common cause with the Circassians and their fellow mountaineers. But this, at present, is unlikely. The Mongols are no Mahometans—but Buddhists and proselytes to Christianity.
The Germans of the Baltic provinces are probably dissatisfied and suspicious. They have hitherto been favoured both in the army and the civil service. The native Russian party, however, is strongly and effectively opposed to them. A sudden onslaught on their language, which the Russians are, perhaps, wise enough to avoid, would, probably, show a dangerous amount of disaffection ; especially if Germany were more united than it is, or Prussia less Russian.
Such, laying Poland out of the question, are the possible elements of an Anti-russian movement in Russia. They are numerous rather than important.
o
In Scandinavia the Aland Islands, held as they are by Russia, though inhabited by Swedes, are sad eyesores to Stockholm. They are naturally Swedish. Yet, as the Gulf of Bothnia has been crossed on the ice, it is doubtful whether the strongest navy in Europe could guarantee them.
In Finmark there is a portion of Russian Lapland which indents the Norwegian frontier to within a few miles of the sea; and here any marauding Laplander may create a grievance which may end in a war which may give Russia a harbour on theCONCLUSION.
471
Atlantic. The treaty which was made somewhat late during the Crimean war, by which England and France guaranteed the integrity of the Swedish Empire, had its special reference to this dangerous hit of No-man’s-land.
To Scandinavian Unity Russia and Prussia are most especially hostile.	England—unless she is belied—is lukewarm on the
matter. The difficulties, however, lie in the differences between the Norwegian, the Swedish, and the Danish constitutions rather than in any external impediment. If these could be got over (and it is probable that they can) the Scandinavians need care little about the opposition from without.
In Northern Germany there is confusion. The liberals of Prussia are showing themselves equal to the demands on their prudence and temper. Yet it is to be feared, that a diversion of the national feeling towards Hesse, or Austria, or Denmark, might be sufficiently effective to cost Prussia its constitution.
To a United Germany, the great opponents are Russia and France; the influence of each of whom it would certainly weaken. It is to be regretted that, at present, they have but little to fear.
In Spain, the two main questions of nationality have yet to take form. One, however, is that of the recovery of Gibraltar, the other that of the union with Portugal. In each, England will have much to say. What this will be remains to be seen. Neither question presses.
Not so in the sister peninsula. That the cession of Sardinia to France would facilitate the evacuation of Rome, few doubt. Rut it is reasonably hoped that Sardinia will always remain Italian. Whether Rome will be evacuated is another question. It is a sad waste of power for the Italians to trouble themselves about the matter. That Rome is the natural capital of Italy is true enough. Yet it may possibly be more correct to say that Italy has always been the province to Rome. That Rome is something more than the capital of any geographical area is beyond doubt. It is the capital of a ubiquitous religion. This, however, is a question of words, rather than realities. The stern reality is the fact of a powerful patron having been disappointed in his plan, and the certainty that he will leave no means untried to obtain in one way what he has missed in another.
But it is argued that, without Rome as a capital, Italy cannot472
CONCLUSION.
be administered. If such be really the case, the whole national movement is self-condemned. If the unity of a country depend on so slight a question as that of the head-quarters of the Government, it is a very tottering fabric.
For Italy to desire Eome as a capital is one thing ; for Home to desire Italy as its complement is another. The two desires may, of course, coincide.
They do coincide; but Eome has for centuries been in the habit of ejecting its Popes, and for centuries been in the habit of recalling them, and what it desires now it may not always adhere to. Indeed, the Papal Government in Eome is not a question of nationality, but, on the contrary, one of politics. It is not disliked because it is foreign (which it is not), but because it is bad. It may be added, that in the eyes of many Protestants, a Pope would be more formidable out of Eome than in Eome.
The real anti-national element in Eome is not the Papal Government but the Prench myrmidons of the Pope. The resistance to these, however, is a matter of prudence rather than aught else.
Yenetia is in a far different predicament, and for the emancipation of Yenetia, all the power of Italy should be economized and all its watchfulness exerted. It is a waste of power to think about Eome. It is a greater waste to indulge in revolutionary movements. Eevolutionary movements and national movements always impede each other. Still, Yenetia must be waited for. France considers that it has done enough. Germany in general has a real or supposed interest in the Quadrilateral. The feeling of the Austrians themselves, concerning either a cession or a sale, is that of a Prussian concerning a Sleswick, or an American concerning the Union— i. e. it is violent, patriotic, and honestly unreasonable. On the Magyar schism, little reliance can be placed. Few Magyars have shown that they care much for any one but themselves. Again, what is Yenetia, and where does Italy end ? The Tagliamento is scarcely the boundary that would satisfy the Italians if they were successful. Istria and much of Dalmatia are largely Italian. Without clearly understanding what would satisfy Italy, Austria can scarcely be blamed for being slow 4;oCONCLUSION.
473
admit the principle of concession. Venetia, then, must be waited for. Austria’s difficulty is Italy’s opportunity. But there are no opportunities for nations that divide their attention and try at two things at once.
In Austria the Diets are now meeting. In the Tyrol there is a petition from the Southern division in favour of a separation between the Italians and the Germans. In Bohemia the Tshekhs are strong enough to he obstructive; not strong enough to carry measures with a commanding majority.
In Galicia there is a schism between the Poles and the Ru-thenians, the Germans being on the side of the Poles, whilst the Czar watches the conflict. In Lower Austria there is political discontent. In Croatia there is a see-saw of feeling between Austria as against the Magyars, and between the Magyars as against the despotic misgovernment of Austria. There are secret societies everywhere.
Above all, there is the Magyar part of Hungary sullenly and passively resistant—asking much in reason, but likely, if armed with power, to attempt much that is unreasonable—above all, justly and wisely, distrustful of all promises, ministerial and imperial.
This within. Without is Russia, bitter and ambitious; France, powerful, and not unprepared to strike; Turkey, conscious of the way in which Austria, by intrigues on the Croatian, is emulating the policy of Russia on the Servian, frontier. In every one of these possible quarrels the element of nationality is mixed-up. Meanwhile, Prussia is dividing Germany.
Concerning Yenetia, the view just exhibited is one from a purely Italian point of view. But it is no part of the present writer’s principles to confound the wish of the Italians to unite certain districts with Italy with the wish of certain Italian districts to become a part of the union. The two may, of course, coincide; but the coincidence must rest on its own proper evidence. Venice is Italian as against Austria; but it has never been purely, properly, and positively Italian to the extent that the other districts of Italy have been so. It rather joins Italy Proper to an Italy beyond the Italian boundary—with Istria, with the Littorale of Dalmatia, with Ragusa, and with Cattaro. That this Trans-Italian Italy will become Italian after474
CONCLUSION.
the maimer of Florence or Parma, no one expects—few wish. Yet it would easily bear a union with Venice, and the result of such a union would be Venice as she stood originally. With a practical autonomy, such a province as this might possibly satisfy both Venetia and Austria. Italy it would not satisfy. Italy, however, is only the second quarter at which we must look. The first is the country of the principals, i. e. the Venetians themselves.
If ethnologists had the command of armies, or if the kings and ministers of Europe were chessmen, it might not be difficult to put both the Polish and the Scandinavian questions into form. Thus—(1.) A united Scandinavia; (2.) South Sleswick for Northern Germany; (3.) Prussian hegemony in the same; (4.) an Austrian Archduke as King of Poland; and (5.) theRuss-niak part of Galicia for the Czar, are elements which might give a Restored Poland. It is to be feared, however, that the real hope for Poland (putting out of the question the hazardous chances that might be developed by a general war) lies in the improved feeling of the Russians themselves—the people as opposed to the Czar.*
Turkey is a question by itself. The Servian and Montenegro troubles are going on. The Danubian Principalities are playing false. Greece is promising not to be aggressive, but contemplating a struggle. The Pope is recommending mutual forbearance and union in a common cause to the Greek and Latin Christians of the north-western districts. Greece finds it easier to get an accession of territory than to fill a vacant throne. That the Ionian islanders are somewhat less Greek-minded than was supposed, and that some of them feel aggrieved by being deprived of a grievance, is certain. Still the dominant feeling seems to be for Greece. Si populus vult 'EmwIZeiv 'EKMviZstCO,
* In the eleventh hour, when this very page is under revision, I find that a sudden insurrection has broken-out. Provocation excuses, success may justify it.APPENDIX.
475
APPENDIX.
The following are extracts from Geijer, showing the extent to which, during the obscure period of the early history of Sweden, the Goths and Swedes were separate. A few of the details go further, and, as far as they go, suggest Lithuanic or Prussian affinities.
We are now arrived at the times of St. Eric, the first sovereign who saw Christianity firmly established in Upper Sweden, and may cast a glance retrospectively upon its slow progress. .Regular ministers were first appointed in Gothland, where episcopal sees were speedily erected in Skara and Linköping. The measures previously taken for the diffusion of Christianity in Swedeland were confined to Birca and its environs. While Christianity had attained ascendancy in Gothland, the old sacrifices were still continued for a long time in Upsala, and the first Christians were compelled to purchase exemption from the obligation of attending at their performance and contributing to their support. Conformably to a public decree, both religions had been recognized by law since the time of Olave. The same edict remained in force under his sons, and even Stenkil found himself obliged to observe its provisions. This peace, or truce, of long duration, terminated in the civil war which followed his death, and the change in the relations of parties, appears clearly from the attempt of Ingo the elder to abolish the sacrifices, the ensuing revolt of the Swedes, and the election by the heathens of counter-kings.
These commotions extended to Gothland and the rest of the North. Sigurd, King of Norway, and Nils of Denmark, had concerted in 1123 a crusade against the heathens of Smaland, which, however, was only carried into execution by the former; and the Danish prince Magnus Nilson, the same who afterwards procured himself to be chosen king of the Goths, boasted of plundering a temple consecrated to Thor, among the islets of the coast of Swedeland, whence the Swedish Pagans held him in abhorrence as a robber of sanctuaries. Meanwhile Christianity was advancing among them through detached efforts of individual zeal, and almost every province of Sweden had its own apostle. Thus the West-manlanders reverenced St. David, the Sudermanians St. Botwid and St. Askill,
the Norrlanders St. Stephen..............Thus it came to pass that the Upper
Swedes “placed in the royal chair of Upsala” Eric, called after his death the Saint, although the East Gothlanders chose for their king Charles, the son of Swerker.476
APPENDIX.
Eric’s father was called Edward, “ a good and wealthy yeoman,” says the Swedish chronicle; his mother Cecilia was sister of Eric, already mentioned as reigning in Swedeland. He was himself married to Christina, daughter of the younger Ingo, or, as others state, the grand-daughter of Ingo the elder. Three things did holy king Eric endeavour—says the old legend—to build churches and reform religion, to govern the people as law and justice pointed out, and to overcome the enemies of his faith and realm. The establishment of Christianity in Upper Sweden was undoubtedly his work. Before him there were, even at Upsala, neither priests nor a conveniently-built house for the congregation, wherefore he first applied himself to complete the Church “ now called Old Upsala, and appointed clerks for the minstry of the altar.” An old^able of kings denominates him the Law-giver, and the rights of Swedish matrons to the place of honour and housewifedom, to lock and key, to the half of the marriage-bed, and the legal third of the property, as the law of Upland expresses it, are said to have been conferred by the law of St. Eric. Against the heathens of Finland, whose piracies harassed the Swedish coast, he undertook a crusade, and by introducing Christianity, as also probably by transplanting Swedish colonists thither, he laid the foundation of the connection which so long subsisted between Sweden and that country. St. Henry, the first bishop of Upsala, of whose active exertions in propagating Christianity, history has preserved some record, accompanied the king on this expedition; he was the first apostle of the Finns, and suffered at their hands the death of a martyr. His sovereignty at first extended only over Sweden Proper; indeed he was acknowledged but for a time in Gothland, whose inhabitants had nominated Charles Swerkerson. The latter is said to have held real possession of the government for two years before the death of St. Eric, and is even accused of having been a party to the plot against him.
The Danish prince Magnus Henryson was descended from Stenkil by his mother, who was daughter of the elder Ingo’s son, and was thereby a coparcener of those hereditary estates in West-Gothland devolving on the Danish royal family, which according to Saxo were the source of so much strife. It is expressly said that Magnus claimed the throne as his inheritance in right of his mother, and that he obtained a powerful native party of supporters. If we consider that he already possessed by his descent the strongest claim on the attachment of the West Goths, and that the latter had once before called a Danish prince to the crown upon a like occasion, we shall probably conclude that this was the last attempt at the restoration of the West-Gothic dynasty. Magnus Henryson, who is charged with having been privy to the murder of the old king Swerker, was in effect elected, and the West-Gothic catalogue of kings mentions him as the fourteenth Christian sovereign of Sweden. He was not long allowed to remain in the enjoyment of his new dignity ; the people revolted, and Charles Swerkerson also turning his arms against him, he was defeated and slain in the year 1161. Canute, son of St. Eric, was constrained to flee into Norway, where two of his sisters afterwards married; he had a brother named Philip, of whom nothing is known.
Charles Swerkerson is the first whom we find mentioned as king of the Swedes and Goths ; he is likewise, so far as is known, the first Swedish king who bore the name of Charles. In the fabulous and partly-invented list of Sovereigns of early ages given by Joannes Magnus, Charles Swerkerson was made the seventh of his name among Swedish kings, a computation which usage afterward sanctioned.
Charles Swerkerson, who is said to have governed the realm sagaciously andAPPENDIX.
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with good intent, was slain in 1167 on the isle of Vising by Canute, son of St. Eric, who returned from Norway after a three years’ exile. A civil war ensued, in which Kol and Burislev, sons of the brother of Charles, were raised “ one after the other to be kings against Canute; but he overcame and slew them both. It may certainly be presumed that Canute had with him the men of Upland, who chose his father to be king, and the followers of Charles who opposed him, had on their side the East Goths, and perhaps several other provinces.” Such are the expressions employed by Olave Peterson respecting these intestine troubles. In the West-Gothic catalogue of kings it is said of Canute Ericson, that he had won Sweden with the sword, bereft three kings of life, and fought many battles before he possessed the realm in quiet; afterwards he proved a good king, and reigned twenty-three years...........
Although the king had previously to his death caused his subjects to pay homage to one of his sons as his successor elect, yet Swerker II., son of Charles, who was carried, while a child, at his father’s death to Denmark, where he obtained protection, was now raised to the throne. ...... Swerker took refuge in
Denmark, whence he brought back an army to aid him in asserting his rights, but after an utter defeat at Lena in West Gothland in the year 1208, he saw himself again compelled to flee. The memory of this bloody engagement was long preserved, and in the neighbourhood of the field of battle it is not yet forgotten; children’s children, says the Swedish chronicle, yet spoke of the deeds done that day. A Norwegian account represents the spirit of Odin as present (for the last time) in this conflict. Monkish verses celebrate the victory as won over a doubly-superior number of Danes. An old Danish ballad asserts that the preponderance of force was on the Swedish side, and that of eight thousand men who marched out of Denmark only five and fifty returned, representing the combat likewise as one of a civil war, in which the nearest kinsmen bore arms against each other. The gaining of the victory is ascribed to the peasants^of Upland; and a Swedish chronicle informs us, that the Upper Swedes were animated by a profound hatred of Swerker, on account of the fate which had befallen the sons of king Canute. Gothic records, on the contrary, attest that the memory of Swerker held a high place in the popular affections. He made a fresh attempt to regain the crown, but fell in another battle which was fought at Gestibren in the same province in the year 1210, it is said by the hands of his own kinsmen, the Eolkungers. His second wife, Ingrid, was of this powerful family, a daughter of the earl of Swedeland, Birga Brossa. By her Swerker had two children, Helen (whose abduction from the convent of Vreta an old Swedish song describes), and John, who at his father’s death was still of tender years.
Eric Canuteson had resided during his exile with his kinsmen in Norway, and succeeded to the government by his victory over his competitor. He essayed to invest his office with new sanctity, for he is the first Swedish Sovereign who is mentioned as having been crowned...........
The Swedish prelates and magnates now elected John, son of Swerker, called the young or the pious, to fill the throne, though he was still a child. On his coronation-day he freed the estates and property of the churches from contribution to the crown, and granted to the bishops the right of levying all fines from the peasants holding land of the church. These privileges he confirmed in 1219, the third year of his reign, by a special brief setting forth as his ground, that “ since our first father’s transgression, all human memory is frail and perishable without the undying evidence of letters.” Against the election of the Swedes king Waldemar appealed to the papal chair, alleging the hereditary right478.
APPENDIX.
of his nephew, the young prince Eric, to the throne, in preference to John! On the other side, the princes of Swerker’s family style themselves in their letters hereditary kings of the dominion of Sweden. Considering the frequent civil wars, which only died away because the competitors were of too tender age to appear in person at the head of their followers, it is impossible to suppose that in the so-called partition of the kingdom between the houses of Swerker and Eric, there was any other compact between the parties than what might be extorted by arms, and written in characters of blood.
After .John, the last of Swerker’s lineage, had died in 1222, the young Eric Ericson, called “ the halt and the lisper,” was in fact raised to the throne, which, however, was scarcely to prove a more tranquil possession, although the family which had so long struggled with his had now descended to the tomb.
The contests between the Gothic and Swedish ruling houses had gradually effaced the old generic diversities among the population. At the same time they powerfully contributed to elevate the magnates of the country at the expense of the kingly power, and one circumstance which marks their growing importance is, that in papal briefs they are separately addressed as the lords and princes of Sweden. One family, in particular, attained great influence in affairs, that of the Folkungers.
While the upper part of the kingdom had too few churches, their number in West Gothland was already so large, that in 1234 the junction of the smaller parishes was decreed. For their privilege of contracting marriage the Swedish priesthood appealed to an old papal grace.
Earl Birger the younger, elevated to this dignity in 1248, and like his predecessor Ulf a Folkunger, was married to the sister of king Eric. The greatness of his power is attested by the words of the papal legate; “ By him is this land wholly governed.” After the synod of Skenninge, measures were taken for the restoration of harmony with Norway, which had been for a long time back disturbed by the frequent interference of the Vermelanders in the Norwegian troubles, and a Norse inroad thereby provoked. The earl next put himself at the head of a crusade against the Tavasters of Finland, who had relapsed into Paganism, practising the most horrid cruelties against the Christians residing in that country, and often annoying the Swedish coasts in conjunction with the Carelians and Esthonians. Birger subdued the Tavasters, and compelled them to embrace Christianity; he also founded the castle of Tavasteborg, and transplanted Christian settlers into the country. To him is ascribed the location of the Swedish colony in East Bothnia, as that in Nyland is to St. Eric. The Rhyme Chronicle asserts that Tavastland, now become Christian, had formerly been subject to Russia. It is certain that the Swedes made an incursion into Russia shortly before or during this war; but they were driven back, as the Russian annals tell us, by the grand duke Alexander Newsky. He is alleged to have wounded Birger in the battle, wherein the earl’s son, perhaps his natural son Guttorm, is said to have been also present.
King Eric Ericson died on the 2nd February, 1250; a grave and righteous prince say the old writers, but little versed in martial exercises. He had been married since 1243 to Catherine, whose parents were the Folkunger Sune Folk-erson, and a daughter of Swerker II.; but she gave her husband no heirs, and after his death entered a cloister.
Earl Birger, who in the last days of Eric Ericson was already the real possessor of supreme power, was absent on his crusade against the Finlanders, when the throne became vacant. It was suddenly filled by the election of the earl’s eldestAPPENDIX.
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son, young Waldemar, brought about chiefly through the influence of the Lord Ivar Bla of Groneborg, a powerful baron, whose object in this expedient seems to have been to avert a civil war. To elevate Waldemar to the throne was to deliver the government into his father’s hands; yet Birger, having returned with his army, manifested no small dissatisfaction, and demanded in wrath who it was that had dared to appoint a king] “ That have I dared,” was Lord Ivar’s answer ; “and if thou rest not content herewith we know right well where stands a king.” The earl was silent for a while, and at last exclaimed, “Whom then would you have to be king]” “ Under this mantle of mine,” Ivar replied, “a king might well enough be found at need.” With that Earl Birger was fain to be content, and Waldemar, yet a child, who with his brother was under the care of a preceptor, was crowned at Linköping in 1251.
The foundation of-the town of Stockholm has also been ascribed to Birger, although a settlement had been in progress upon this site since the destruction of Sigtuna by the Finnish pirates in 1187. The little island lying between the two outlets of lake Malar, which contained the first town, was now fortified for defence against the piratical incursions of the Finns. These were still so formidable in this age, that a papal bull of the year 1259 exhorted the kings of Sweden and Denmark to make a joint effort to check the ravages of the pirates on the Swedish coast. Stockholm was a castle before the Malar, says the Rhyme Chronicle; its earliest author enumerates seven towns upon the banks of that lake, and the rise of these is also attested by several commercial treaties. With Lubeck and Hamburg reciprocal freedom of trade was established, which was not long afterwards extended to Riga. In the renewed treaty with Lubeck, reference is made to the alliance which had already subsisted between Sweden and the German towns since King Canute Ericson’s time. Birger sought also to form connections with England. In the disputes of Denmark and Norway his mediation was received with deference, and he afforded shelter in his court to a Russian grand duke. Earl Birger, king without the name, the last and most powerful of the earls of Sweden, died on the 21st of October (a.d. 1266), lamented after his death, whatever blame might have attached to many of his actions during life. Old and young, it is said, mourned for him, and the women whose rights and peace he had taken under his guard, prayed for his soul.
THE END.
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